A Question Of Agency?

[nevin]

This doesn't seem right to me.

I work closely with many students. All aspire to be good writers/thinkers. But many of them just don't know how. I teach them principles. These can address general issues of text structure, such as where and how to use headings (students who are still learning tend to place their headings either too early, so the first paragraph under the heading actually deals with the previous topic, or too late, so that the topic is introduced before we get to the heading), or detailed issues of sentence structure (eg students have a tendency to bury important assertions inside subordinate clauses in long sentences, which makes their key ideas and arguments hard to extract).

These students are bad writers and arguers, in the sense that their writing and arguments need to improve. But bad writer is not some sort of essential or inevitable category. By learning and practising in accordance with certain principles, they can (and in my experience they do) get better.

It's not a "people problem". It's a skills and techniques problem.

Likewise for GMing. If a GM is running a railroad, but doesn't want to, how does s/he change? Part of that is introducing him/her to new principles. And I don't mean principles of little practical applicability, like don't railroad! I mean much more concrete principles like Here's how you should frame a scene or Here's how to avoid the game bogging down in endless retries - Let it Ride! or Here's how to handle failure without your game grinding to a halt - focus on intent moreso than on task. Etc.

I've learned many principles and techniques from reading good RPGs and good RPG commentary. I've adapted them to the play of games that don't themselves feature them at all (eg Rolemaster) or terribly clearly (1977 Classic Traveller) or as consistently as one might desire (4e D&D).

I've got no reason to think I'm unique or even terribly atypical in this capability.


Or in other words, this.

I agree the issue is most DM's never get any real education on how to do it. Dragon magazine and others used to fill that void, for awhile the RPGA society was good for teaching stuff like that but Organized play morphed into a weekly dungeon crawl thing that doesn't really require anything but a body to read the captions to the players and adjudicate the dice.

Hopefully the videos and stuff Available online these days help out players but I think the RPG game companies have always hobbled themselves not having more online resources for DMs

 

[darkbard]

I agree the issue is most DM's never get any real education on how to do it. Dragon magazine and others used to fill that void, for awhile the RPGA society was good for teaching stuff like that but Organized play morphed into a weekly dungeon crawl thing that doesn't really require anything but a body to read the captions to the players and adjudicate the dice.

Hopefully the videos and stuff Available online these days help out players but I think the RPG game companies have always hobbled themselves not having more online resources for DMs

If only there were some means of diverse GMs exchanging thoughtful, in depth analysis and examples from their own games as a means of facilitating this learning. I dunno, like messageboard forums or something....

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

House rules and treating the rules as guidelines is actually a common practice for board games, IME.


Hmmm... One of my takeaways from the OSR movement as a critical movement was that it involved a collection of people looking back at early roleplay, particularly 0-1e and B/X, with the presumption that the system did matter and how that system cultivated a particular game experience. While there are a number of OSR games that are straight-up retro clones, many also take "system matters" seriously for the purposes of designing non-retroclone games that adhere to OSR principles.

But nobody seems to be able to agree on what those principles are, and while there are some fairly insightful people who seem to have a handle on what specifically in the system created the game play experience of, say, Holmes Basic (which is a pretty good distillation of the OD&D game play process with some clarifications). However, there are a lot of people who just seem to believe that you have to play virtually exactly the game that Gary developed, and must use a crazy quilt of different dice for everything, and other rather dubious ideas (I mean, maybe the nostalgia factor of these is the point for them, but many times it is confused with some kind of game design concept).

The idea that "system doesn't matter" should, by this late date, be utterly disposed of. Anyone still spouting that, IMHO, lacks critical experience. I mean, I've met some very 'strong' GMs who simply have a 'system' in their heads, and whatever game they run gets mutated into an implementation of their process. FOR THEM it may be 'true', but it is simply the exception which proves the rule. These are people for whom the system is THEM, it just isn't written down. I used to play with a guy like this. No matter what game we played, it turned into a version of his RP experience. Even if it started out as Monopoly. To be honest, a lot of people couldn't stand it, but he always had an enthusiastic group of core players and no problem finding more. But don't ever confuse this with 'normal', he is the least normal person I have ever met! (in a nice way, great person). You or I could not ever reproduce what he does. For US, we have systems which produce the 'structure' of the game, and shape its experience.

In fact, I would like to say, I'm a 'by the book' GM. When I go buy a game I run it exactly as written. I rarely make house rules (I will add homebrew material if its called for). I have found that many people ignore a lot of the details of a specific game, so I may play quite differently from what everyone else THINKS the game is. When I've talked to game designers I usually find that what I'm doing is closer to what they imagined, but not always...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@pemerton if we are talking about 'rules' as in 'principles' instead of 'mechanics' I kinda agree. I'm a teacher too, an art teacher. Mastering techniques, understanding principles etc is important, but ultimately captain Barbossa had the right of it; they're just guidelines. You go to to have your own vision, and you must be able to asses what tools (both literal and figurative) are best for achieving it. For every 'rule' you can come up with an situation where where breaking it was the right call. 'How' is important, but 'why' is more important.

Let me illustrate a fairly straightforward example:

There is a principle embodied in 'classic' D&D (OD&D, BASIC et al, 1e AD&D, even 2e mostly) which is NEVER articulated, but which is fundamental to making the model work. That principle is "Players must understand the risk they are taking with their PCs." This principle is implicitly embodied in the structure of the game. Dungeons ALWAYS have 'levels', which are clearly distinct and which present tiered levels of danger (and reward). The wilderness is a clearly designated 'other place' where the risks are more varied (but even here mountains and swamps are no-go areas for lower levels, usually). This is a STRONG convention too! The DM can, SPARINGLY apply the dirty trick of elevators, ramps, etc. which suddenly force the PCs into a riskier mode of play. This trick should not be used too much, and only to raise the stakes a bit (IE a ramp down one level). Even then dwarves can detect this, and anyone with a ball bearing could also do so (in the traditions of classic D&D where player skill is supreme, another foundational principle).

This example shows how principles are both not specifically embodied as rules (they may be explicit however, as in DW) and yet DO form a structural part of the game. The above principle must exist for a classic D&D game, because it is a game of skill, and balancing risk to reward is part of that skill set. Arbitrary danger levels would simply be a meat grinder filled with pointless death. You could run a game like that, but it would mostly be filled with some form of helpless PCs.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Let me illustrate a fairly straightforward example:

There is a principle embodied in 'classic' D&D (OD&D, BASIC et al, 1e AD&D, even 2e mostly) which is NEVER articulated, but which is fundamental to making the model work. That principle is "Players must understand the risk they are taking with their PCs." This principle is implicitly embodied in the structure of the game. Dungeons ALWAYS have 'levels', which are clearly distinct and which present tiered levels of danger (and reward). The wilderness is a clearly designated 'other place' where the risks are more varied (but even here mountains and swamps are no-go areas for lower levels, usually). This is a STRONG convention too! The DM can, SPARINGLY apply the dirty trick of elevators, ramps, etc. which suddenly force the PCs into a riskier mode of play. This trick should not be used too much, and only to raise the stakes a bit (IE a ramp down one level). Even then dwarves can detect this, and anyone with a ball bearing could also do so (in the traditions of classic D&D where player skill is supreme, another foundational principle).

This example shows how principles are both not specifically embodied as rules (they may be explicit however, as in DW) and yet DO form a structural part of the game. The above principle must exist for a classic D&D game, because it is a game of skill, and balancing risk to reward is part of that skill set. Arbitrary danger levels would simply be a meat grinder filled with pointless death. You could run a game like that, but it would mostly be filled with some form of helpless PCs.

So here the 'why' is "for the skill of risk balancing risk and reward to matter, the players must understand the risks." Fair enough. But 'how' can easily be changed. There are other ways to give the players the information they need than building unnaturally level-bracketed dungeons. And of course some people might just decide that this 'why' is not even something they care about, and decide to use basic D&D to play a game focused on romance, drama and court intrigue interposed with occasional fights. And it would probably work just fine and they wouldn't be in wrong for doing so.

 

[Aldarc]

But nobody seems to be able to agree on what those principles are, and while there are some fairly insightful people who seem to have a handle on what specifically in the system created the game play experience of, say, Holmes Basic (which is a pretty good distillation of the OD&D game play process with some clarifications). However, there are a lot of people who just seem to believe that you have to play virtually exactly the game that Gary developed, and must use a crazy quilt of different dice for everything, and other rather dubious ideas (I mean, maybe the nostalgia factor of these is the point for them, but many times it is confused with some kind of game design concept).

Hence my point that you quoted about how there are a number of OSR games that are fairly direct retro-clones.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So here the 'why' is "for the skill of risk balancing risk and reward to matter, the players must understand the risks." Fair enough. But 'how' can easily be changed. There are other ways to give the players the information they need than building unnaturally level-bracketed dungeons. And of course some people might just decide that this 'why' is not even something they care about, and decide to use basic D&D to play a game focused on romance, drama and court intrigue interposed with occasional fights. And it would probably work just fine and they wouldn't be in wrong for doing so.

Well, OK, you could devise "some other form of D&D" where you telegraph risk/reward in a different way. However, IF YOU DON'T CODIFY THAT, then you run a serious risk of failing to communicate that to other people who play your game. In the case of classic D&D it was codified in the encounter tables (organized by level) and the outdoor encounter tables (organized by terrain type and expected to be customized by 'region' by the DM). This was also tied into the wandering monster mechanic, etc. So it was fairly deeply ingrained in the rest of the process of the game. If you remove it, you better make it very clear to the GM that there still need to be tie-ins between how wandering monsters work and 'risk/reward', however that is determined.

If you are just making up your own stuff, then this is all pretty much up to the DM. Instead of 'dungeon level' there are just maybe different 'named dungeons' (which if you think about it is actually kind of how modules work). But if you're actually writing a game, you have to do this work up front. If you don't, people's games won't work!

The same is true for playing "romance" instead of D&D. The 'rules' for that game are going to be VERY different! Sure, you can pound the square peg of D&D rules into the round hole of a romance story and simply get 'something'. If it is just some one-shot thing your doing for yourself, that MIGHT work, though you probably will have to make up additional rules that don't exist in D&D. If you were publishing such a game, it would be senseless to make it based on D&D however. D&D isn't going to provide you with any of the needed structure which you have to convey to another person who is going to run the game!

Here's another example of a set of principles embodied into a game system: 4th edition D&D has 'role' and 'power source' as explicit attributes of each class. These embody, in a formalized structure, the niche and theme of a given class. This WORKS. 3.x is FILLED with 'trash classes' that barely work (if at all) and are grossly different from each other in terms of utility, power level, etc. such that many are essentially useless. EVERY SINGLE 4E CLASS WORKS. That is ENTIRELY because the role and power source define for the designers how something should work (A/E/D/U then provided further structure to keep it on track as it levels up). In fact, the very classes which were considered 'poor designs' are the very ones where the designers tried to skirt/subvert those attributes! Even THOSE classes still work (OK Binders are pretty worthless in the sense of being needed thematically, and they're weaker than they should be, but not by enough to be unplayable by any means). 3.5 has entire core classes that are drastically shortchanged (FIGHTERS, you can't get more core than that).

 

[PsyzhranV2]

@pemerton if we are talking about 'rules' as in 'principles' instead of 'mechanics' I kinda agree. I'm a teacher too, an art teacher. Mastering techniques, understanding principles etc is important, but ultimately captain Barbossa had the right of it; they're just guidelines. You got to to have your own vision, and you must be able to asses what tools (both literal and figurative) are best for achieving it. For every 'rule' you can come up with a situation where breaking it was the right call. 'How' is important, but 'why' is more important.

I don't want to play in an RPG scene where Dada is the dominant artistic paradigm.

All respect to the historical Dadaists, but I don't think their artistic philosophy is a good match for games design.

Yes, game designers don't have the ability to teleport to peoples' homes and punch GMs that make house rules that get in the way of or even break the RAW game system. No matter how much intentionality and coherence of vision and design the designers put into their works and products, they can't stop people doing what they want at the home table. I can't fault them for trying though. Certainly a better design approach than throwing turds at the wall and seeing which ones stick, leading to a game lacking any thematic and mechanical consistency, constantly fighting with itself at every turn.

Also, I feel that when the topic at hand is comparisons between different game systems, discussions of principles as mechanics is most relevant and most useful approach. The objective of the conversation is to elucidate the different approaches used by different games, see if there is any designer intent behind the rule they've chosen - what they mechanized vs what they left blank, how decisions are resolved, etc. - and assess if the designers succeeded or failed in communicating their intentions.

Invoking GM fiat as the trump card of "system doesn't matter" only serves to obfuscate the argument, as then the conversation loses the foundation of the above. In a discussion about table etiquette and social dynamics, it would berelevant, but when talking about design itself, all it does is make all the participants of the conversation unsure if they are still even talking about the same thing.

 

[hawkeyefan]

@pemerton if we are talking about 'rules' as in 'principles' instead of 'mechanics' I kinda agree. I'm a teacher too, an art teacher. Mastering techniques, understanding principles etc is important, but ultimately captain Barbossa had the right of it; they're just guidelines. You got to to have your own vision, and you must be able to asses what tools (both literal and figurative) are best for achieving it. For every 'rule' you can come up with a situation where breaking it was the right call. 'How' is important, but 'why' is more important.

I get your point about breaking the rules when it comes to art. Escaping those confines can really inspire great work. I think I remember reading that Quentin Taratino took all the "rules" that a writing instructor gave him....a story must be chronological, your protagonists must be admirable, etc.....and then wrote Pulp Fiction in response, breaking each of the rules. George RR Martin was writing a script for a proposed television series, and was told "you can't have too large a cast, you can't have characters with the same first name, you can't have all this unseen history affecting the current events, you can't kill your protagonist early in the story, you can't portray moral ambiguity, etc" and so he decided to write a novel, where he could do all that.

But I think these kind of "rules" for a creative endeavor are guidelines. They are good to help one learn craft, but eventually they are there to be questioned. The trick with breaking these rules is to justify it by doing something creative.

But with a game, it's different. Yes, RPGing is a creative endeavor, but it is also a game. It is both things. And the rules of a game are not meant to be broken the same way that rules of writing or art are. Rules in a game give it its structure. Breaking them means you are either undermining the game so that it does not work or you are making it work differently than intended.

Making the game work differently than intended is perfectly fine if that's what people want to do. Taking D&D and making a romance game, to use your example, is a perfectly fine thing. If you have clearly defined play procedures and mechanics, then it will make such a conversion far easier. If you want to effectively alter a rule, you have to understand what it's doing and why in the first place.

Like with teaching....I'm sure there are foundational things that you teach first and try to get students to understand before you move on to how to subvert or alter those foundational elements.

 

[Campbell]

Even in the context of games where players can only influence the fiction by declaring actions for their character (which I personally tend to prefer) I find it extraordinarily important to distinguish between my character's theoretical agency within the fiction and my ability as a player to see that through given the social constraints of the game being played.

From my perspective we are talking about a game we are all playing together (including the GM). I think we all agree to play a particular game together is important. Like we're playing Dungeons and Dragons or Apocalypse World. That should mean something. We should not all be trying to play different games. I do not see this as any different than sitting down to play Risk, Azul, or Battle for Rokugan. RPGs are not like special in that sense.

I do not mean to come across as being rude here, but it seems like there are a fair number of people in our community who are just not interested in like playing game with other people where we play to find out how it goes. Like the idea that there is a skill to playing and running a specific game that you can like get better at is crucial to my personal enjoyment of all games. Outcomes actually being in doubt even more so.

I think all this talk about creative vision misses the point that we are all doing this thing together. When you try to control or shape how things go you are like not respecting the integrity of play. Speaking as someone who runs a fair number of games I also do not think the GM is special in this regard. Their creative vision is no more important than the creative vision of anyone else at the table. We are all creating this fiction together. I highly value framing and situation being in the GM's purview, but that authority does not imply a greater stake than the players in the outcome of the fiction.

I believe in a relationship of creative peers, not one where the GM is telling stories or providing an experience. It's a game we all play together.