A Question Of Agency?

[Lanefan]

There's no intrinsic reason, but it should be noted some players hate it like hell.

If they are or have become used to a success-is-absolute paradigm it's not hard to see why.

This is something of a concern, I suppose: a huge cohort of players being introduced to RPGing through 5e D&D are going to balk on meeting a system where things don't come so easily and where success is to be valued rather than expected.

 

[prabe]

There's no intrinsic reason, but it should be noted some players hate it like hell. Its one reason no one locally wants much to do with PbtA games, which have a lot of "success, but..." results.

I'll admit that's the cause for part of my distaste for those games, combined with the fact I interpret "success with complications" as "partial failure." The fact that putatively competent characters seem to fail so routinely ... bothers me.

 

[Manbearcat]

Just a note about something that struck me as jarring: at one point Lanefan referred to an error in distance of 600' to 800', and it appears some others have referred to this as "minutia". Even on an in-character level I'd expect, no matter what the game system does in terms of movement, speed and so on, to be able to get an indication of size on those scales and expect it to stay the same. You have to have a really awfully zoomed out view of a game for that sort of difference to be considered trivial or irrelevant.

I'm going to meander my way through this, because there are a lot of moving parts to this, so hopefully this comes out somewhat coherently. If you (or someone else) needs clarification, let me know. I'm going to call this:

D&D THEORY OF MIND

D&D's genesis was as a wargame (as we all know).

Over the years it has evolved from those wargaming roots and has attempted to straddle multiple fences (depending on edition). The most prominent pair of fences it has attempted to straddle is this is this wargaming aesthetic + setting/metaplot tourism = story paradigm. While this is undeniably the most popular form of D&D, In my opinion, the formulation is incoherent (not as an epithet but as a descriptor) because even a moment's worth of scrutiny reveals it to require an undeniable mental toggle to inhabit these disparate vantages. However, it just so happens that many (through hard-earned hours and hours and hours of play inhabiting this mental framework) have internalized it to the point that they don't even realize they're engaging in cognitive gymnastics. Because of this synthesis of these "D&D oddities" (and presumably the enjoyment of the byproducts), there is often a spirited defense of this "state of D&D and its participants' internalized mindset" as "immersive" or "verisimilitude." When alternatives are proposed or actualized (in the form of game systems that achieve the same genre tropes but through different systemization and attendant cognitive framework), its decried as inherently "jarring" or "immersion-breaking."

The problem is the inherently. There is nothing inherently jarring or immersion-breaking about changing from the orthodox D&D systematized approach to another one. In fact, if scrutinized by an outside 3rd party of even a 30+ year D&D player, it may be clear that a newly systematized approach either (a) requires 0 mental toggle to engage in the varying constituent parts of play (because everything is unified mechanically and/or ethos-wise) or (b) it does require a mental toggle but the nature of this new mental toggle isn't objectively more or less "jarring" (therefore the only difference is the prior-earned assimilation of the old mental toggle...so basically people are saying "NO NEW GAME WITH NEW MENTAL TOGGLE BECAUSE I'VE EARNED MY ASSIMILATION OF THE WEIRD MENTAL TOGGLE OF YORE SO NEW ITERATIONS OF THE GAME MUST BE PREMISED UPON IT!")

To put it all together:

* Torchbearer's brutal Dungeon Crawl Attrition (of mind, body, and loadout) and Logistics Management game is 100 % a more coherent experience (cognitively) than 1e or B/X (the standard bearers for crawls) because of its holistic, tight design and consistent cognitive positioning.

* Dungeon World (as a Powered By the Apocalypse "love letter to D&D) runs circles around classic and 5e D&D as an engine that produces emergent D&D trappings and tropes. The cognitive consistency a player/GM inhabits is approximately a 0 on the "jarring-o-meter" when compared to the toggle-requirement of D&D.

* 4e D&D absolutely has the same toggle that D&D historically has but its (let's call it) micro-toggles (of which all D&D possesses) are different than the D&D that has come before it (Noncombat Conflict Resolution - The Skill Challenge - is like Clocks in Apocalypse World/Blades or Conflict! in Mouse Guard or Cortex+ while its Combat Resolution is kindred with classic D&D except that the units weighed and decision-points made have shifted). But there is nothing inherently "jarring" or "immersion-breaking" with 4e D&D, its just that players that feel that way haven't earned the internalization of those cognitive gymnastics through decades and perhaps they (not consciously) feel their neuroplasticity isn't up to the task to earn new cognitive gymnastics or that its all cost with benefit pending (and they're older now with a different partitioning of time/mental exertion)

TLDR - The D&D mental gymnastics that we've all been saddled with makes conversations about "jarring" and "immersion" and "verisimilitude" unbelievably fraught.

 

[prabe]

TLDR - The D&D mental gymnastics that we've all been saddled with makes conversations about "jarring" and "immersion" and "verisimilitude" unbelievably fraught.

I actually did read it, I just didn't want to quote the whole thing to reply (and I wanted this to be a reply).

Do you think that the lack, or different sets, of toggles would by why a long-time player of D&D might feel as though they'd have less agency in a game like Dungeon World than in (well-run) D&D 5E? I'm asking because that's me: 5E clicked more-or-less audibly for me when we acquired the rulebooks, and it has rarely behaved in ways I didn't expect; I'm not asking in a quest for an argument or as an invitation to convince me I'm wrong (I recognize that a game might play differently from how it reads, and I haven't played anything PbtA).

 

[Manbearcat]

I'll admit that's the cause for part of my distaste for those games, combined with the fact I interpret "success with complications" as "partial failure." The fact that putatively competent characters seem to fail so routinely ... bothers me.

People who are competent (even hyper-competent) deal with failure and setbacks constantly. Master-level climbers and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu players suffer setbacks and complications that they have to overcome (injuries, equipment failure, mental fatigue/distraction leading to suboptimal outcome, technical soundness failing in a challenging situation 1 in 20 times, misjudged route to success - applies to both, etc). Its all "success with complications." In my martial life (which includes BJJ among other things) its overwhelmingly success with complications despite being very accomplished. In my social and intellectual life, its, again, overwhelmingly "success with complications" with a smattering of successes and failures. By my reckoning, "success with complications" being the engine of the snowballing nature of PBtA games both (a) makes for compelling play and (b) comports with the experience of being a social animal thrust into competition/conflict with other social animals.

So, in this, I think one of a few things are happening (or both):

1) Your calibration of "failure" vs "success but complication/cost" vs "success" is off (I remember we had the discussion prior about the AW example and I don't think we ever had a meeting of the minds...so my guess is this is part of it).

2) The GM you've seen run it (I don't believe you've played it?) wasn't doing their job correctly.

 

[prabe]

So, in this, I think one of a few things are happening (or both):

1) Your calibration of "failure" vs "success but complication/cost" vs "success" is off (I remember we had the discussion prior about the AW example and I don't think we ever had a meeting of the minds...so my guess is this is part of it).

2) The GM you've seen run it (I don't believe you've played it?) wasn't doing their job correctly.

I don't know that I've ever even seen anyone play it. PbtA games are all so ... tightly-focused on telling one narrow type of story (I'm intending that to be a neutral description; I don't believe it to be an unintended feature) and I've never read one that was focused on telling a type of story I'd want to have emerge at a table, either as a player or as a GM.

I'm more of a glass-half-empty guy, and the perpetual perceived failures (as I'd interpret "success with complication" as "partial failure") don't seem as though they would be fun. Frankly, I suspect it'd be too much like my real life ...

 

[Manbearcat]

I actually did read it, I just didn't want to quote the whole thing to reply (and I wanted this to be a reply).

Do you think that the lack, or different sets, of toggles would by why a long-time player of D&D might feel as though they'd have less agency in a game like Dungeon World than in (well-run) D&D 5E? I'm asking because that's me: 5E clicked more-or-less audibly for me when we acquired the rulebooks, and it has rarely behaved in ways I didn't expect; I'm not asking in a quest for an argument or as an invitation to convince me I'm wrong (I recognize that a game might play differently from how it reads, and I haven't played anything PbtA).

Lets call it 80 % (not quite 100 %). Garbage, back of the envelope made up nonsense numbers but lets say the other 20 % are made up of 10 % people who just don't like the gameplay and for 10 % its a partisan thing (a culture war between indie games and trad games).

But the lack of and/or different sets of toggles is THE issue (and the biggest cross-section overall in terms of population) when it comes to a long-term D&D player citing "jarring" for these other games.

And its sincere. I believe them. I know it to be true because I personally know many of these people (who are sincere, earnest people).

The problem is/was (certainly a decade ago and 5 years hence) the culture war aspect of it and those 10 % above being not so self-aware or intellectually dishonest (about the nature of the toggle paradigm) and asserting aggressively and endlessly that the locus of the "jarring" was the new game itself...and not the habituation of themselves to another toggle over a period of years.

 

[Manbearcat]

I don't know that I've ever even seen anyone play it. PbtA games are all so ... tightly-focused on telling one narrow type of story (I'm intending that to be a neutral description; I don't believe it to be an unintended feature) and I've never read one that was focused on telling a type of story I'd want to have emerge at a table, either as a player or as a GM.

I'm more of a glass-half-empty guy, and the perpetual perceived failures (as I'd interpret "success with complication" as "partial failure") don't seem as though they would be fun. Frankly, I suspect it'd be too much like my real life ...

Could be! I don't know!

I have friends who share your aesthetic tastes (and who are long time trad gamers) that I've run various PBtA games. I've had overwhelming success with them, but I do have to (much to my dismay) admit to having one friend be completely at odds and bow out after 4 sessions (of Blades no less...and I was very confident going in that he would love it because he loves the genre).

 

[prabe]

I have friends who share your aesthetic tastes (and who are long time trad gamers) that I've run various PBtA games. I've had overwhelming success with them, but I do have to (much to my dismay) admit to having one friend be completely at odds and bow out after 4 sessions (of Blades no less...and I was very confident going in that he would love it because he loves the genre).

I read the rules for Blades, somewhere between wanting and expecting to like the game, and ... didn't. I can't and won't speak for your friend, but to me it seemed to approach the Heist thing kinda backward--and I know that's the intent, it just seems too determined for things to start in medias res.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If they are or have become used to a success-is-absolute paradigm it's not hard to see why.

Its more than that; its that marred success doesn't feel like, well, success.

This is something of a concern, I suppose: a huge cohort of players being introduced to RPGing through 5e D&D are going to balk on meeting a system where things don't come so easily and where success is to be valued rather than expected.

That isn't an issue specific to D&D 5e; the people in my group either have never played that or didn't like it much. Its just not a common paradigm, and for better or worse, people who have a tendency to focus on failure don't see it as success--they see it as conditional failure. I think its got far less to do with system experience and far more to do with general life outlook by a lot of people.