A Question Of Agency?

[Fenris-77]

So, the only real question would be, again, is the system in BitD too abstract? For some players it would probably work OK. For other groups they would be constantly running up against the problem of trying to do very concrete things and then the GM having to try to filter that through the abstract system and producing generalized benefits and such. They would probably complain about how this all hangs together. It would create a lot of work to elaborate each instance of "you got +1 to your X roll" in terms of "we bribed the judge with 78gp last week" or whatever.

This is almost impossible to talk about in the, heh, abstract. You can posit the situation, sure, but I suspect that most groups wouldn't have that problem. Lots of games have more or less abstract systems for all manner of things, and players that like those games seem to do just fine. Obviously not every game is for everyone of course, so I'm sure at least some people would have the problem you outline, but I don't think it's a matter of Blades being too abstract at all, but rather a matter of some players enjoying an different play experience.

 

[Campbell]

I would consider something like that to be in line with the sorts of 'subsystems' one might construct in 'classic' D&D. There's nothing quite this elaborate in the more mainstream material, but IIRC there were a few specialized products. I recall Birthright has a bunch of 'kingdom management' subsystems, and wasn't there something in 'Council of Wyrms' too? For that matter even the 1e DMG has some domain management rules and whatnot, though they are not very well developed.

So, the only real question would be, again, is the system in BitD too abstract? For some players it would probably work OK. For other groups they would be constantly running up against the problem of trying to do very concrete things and then the GM having to try to filter that through the abstract system and producing generalized benefits and such. They would probably complain about how this all hangs together. It would create a lot of work to elaborate each instance of "you got +1 to your X roll" in terms of "we bribed the judge with 78gp last week" or whatever.

So mostly I think Blades just leans on different abstractions then D&D does. Obviously a fair number of people will internalize the abstractions they are used to.

 

[Fenris-77]

So mostly I think Blades just leans on different abstractions then D&D does. Obviously a fair number of people will internalize the abstractions they are used to.

That sounds right yeah. Most of the objections I hear about the system from people who haven't really played are things that pretty much vanish once you're comfy with the game. It does feel a little awkward the first time, or at least it did for me, but that passed quickly.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

To kind of put that in perspective, I'm far less worried about a tyrant GM who stomps all over any decision I make and who openly shoves my PC back on the path of his plot and brags about his authority to do so......I'm far more concerned with the GM who is thoughtful and has a method, but who doesn't realize that certain decisions he makes are undermining my decisions as a player.

Right. I find this to be the case in the 5e games I've played in (both GMed by the same person, who is really a very good GM overall, AKA my sister...). So, these were reasonably fun games. But I have noted in both cases that the lack of principles and methods in 5e which lead to building on the player's interests caused things to not be ideal.

I'd also say that the 2nd (ongoing) 5e campaign seems more interesting in terms of the GM going out of her way to literally instantiate character agendas as having a kind of mechanical support. For instance we were given a magical book. If you write a goal in the book, it will magically guide you to the thing you seek. It is a one-time effect and has significant limits, but it is clearly intended to inject some "you can work on your character's agenda" into the game. I'd just note that it would be better if this was a part of 5e itself!

The same people in this game, with the same GM, have played Dungeon World games on several occasions. I would say that the DW games definitely come out a bit different, although it seems to me you can kind of play DW in a fashion that is more reminiscent of classical D&D play if the participants (especially the GM) haven't fully internalized PbtA. I really want to run another DW, or maybe Ironsworn, game and sort of push things to the uttermost limits of the system and really see what will happen. Maybe I can pitch that as an off-game for when the 5e campaign isn't running.

 

[robconley]

I also watched a couple of bits of @estar's video. The start seemed to have a lot of GM-led framing.

Yes the details of the initial situation were established by me i.e. "framed by the referee." However the fact the players were there at all was the result of a two week long discussion about running a session about medieval fantasy. I piped up well I got an adventure that would work. Here the background of how it starts when I run it as a one shot. The players agreed, and I gave the info they needed to create characters. As @Bedrockgames will attest they came up with all kinds of background details for their character that I incorporated.

I go out of my way to make it easy for players to make their own character even at a con or game store event where time is restricted. It generally more fun that way and players feel more in control of the situation.

And then the bit with the shooting of the person who was threatening (? I think, if I followed - it's around the 44 minute mark) the two women, seemed to be a GM-framed scene with GM-determined responses by the NPCs and no real player contribution that I could see beyond rolling for the fight as the GM appeared to expect.

You and your group are camped alongside a road having stopped on a journey to the shrine. You see a campfire in the distance with maybe two or three people making camp around it. Later that night* you are awakened by screams of terror in the distance and more figures around that distant campfire. Clearly there something going on over there.

What do you do?

My adventure wasn't about creating a medieval story, it was about experience a medieval fantasy adventure as a character that could exist within that setting. The first time I ran the adventure was part of a sandbox campaign and the player frequented the area, and that was one situation that could happen if the players were at the right place at the right time. They were and the adventure unfolded.

I noticed that out of the stuff I created for that campaign this adventure worked as as a self-contained sandbox so I developed it further like I did the Scourge of the Demon Wolf. The reason it works is because it has a clear inciting incident. The attack on the peasant boy and knight's daughter. Plus it is enough of a stereotype that most hobbyist "get" what the situation is without the overhead of the campaign background.

I added the whole "Get my tithe" elements because it turns "most" into "nearly all". A big problem with a poorly run sandbox is decision paralysis. But the expectation is that the player can do anything their character can do and that includes stealing the tithe for themselves if that what they want to do.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I agree that talking about processes helps some, but I think that principles matter at least as much from a GMing standpoint as game mechanics. I know there are some in this thread who prefer to consider games as they are published--so the principles of play in, e.g., BitD, don't apply to D&D, even if a given DM is importing things. @Ovinomancer said elsewhere, IIRC, that he runs D&D 5E with much more of the mechanical bits player-facing (announced DC, public rolls, maybe other things) but when he talks about D&D 5E, the game, he's talking about what's in the books. That's fine, when one is talking about what's in the books; but I think it's fair to think of it as incomplete if someone who runs 5E is looking for ways to increase player engagement (since I think one can grab tricks or principles from other games and apply them to 5E to great effect).

I can see this. Of course, I'm not sure many of the instances of bad GMing I've seen discussed have been exactly degenerate--there have been systems published that seemed almost intended to generate what many would describe as "bad GMing" if played according to what was in the books.

Yeah. I think intentionally bad (abusive) GMs are ... less common than some people seem to think, but more common than I think most people would prefer. I think unintentionally bad GMs are much more common, and led astray by the games they're running (or by games they've run, and now they're applying those lessons to other games).

I think principles and mechanics go hand in hand. While principles matter, it is at best very difficult to actualize them when the mechanics of the game simply don't provide the avenues by which they can naturally enter into play, particularly at the more granular levels of individual scenes which actually make up most of a game.

I say this from experience playing with the same GM in both 5e and DW, and of running PACE, DW, and 4e in a certain way, vs running classical versions of D&D, CoC, and a very long list of other games which lack these mechanics. I was especially disappointed with the experience I had with CoC a few years ago when trying to play it in a way analogous to how I would run narrative games. It just got in the way so much that I would really never run it again, though I am a fan of the genre. Maybe someone more skilled than I am can do it, but CoC actively inhibits narrative style play in multiple ways (and is just painfully clunky, I'm amazed I was able to run it back in the 80's without more trouble). I would have a lot of the same problems with 5e, which is why I basically wrote my own story game '4e hack'.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

but this argument has come up again and again, and the point my side makes is of course it isn't an actual pond. But the purpose is for the GM to emulate causality as best he or she can, within the confines of the genre of course (I expect different degrees of it in Silence of the Lambs than I do in Porky's). But no one here is claiming to be running a 1-1 simuailtion of reality (in fact, over the course of these discussions, we've made that point countries times). No analogy or metaphor is going to hold up to that level of scrutiny because it is just a comparison for aiding understanding of a point.

Right, and my position is that it is so far removed from anything like reality that this 'purpose' is meaningless and doesn't happen. There is instead a sort of 'genre sensibility' that definitely incorporates a lot of visceral ideas about basic ordinary situations and translates them into rulings at a granular level (IE what happens when you fall, etc.). However, anything beyond that is essentially just governed by these genre and table conventions, and steered by whatever creative inputs are at the table.

To be clear, obviously no other type of game gets any closer than this to reality, I just dispute the claim that a session of Dungeon World is any less realistic than a session of D&D, all other things being equal. IMHO the claim simply doesn't hold water. In fact what it does in inhibit objective analysis of game play.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I think the distinction between play and play done with shared purpose in mind. There is a large body of research and practice dedicated to this sort of game design. A significant chunk of people value that sort of play. Academically they have talked about purposeful play as games. If we need some other form of terminology to discuss I am fine with that.

I am not trying to put any moral weight on my words. I am just trying to be precise here. The current body of work in game design does not have anything to say about that sort of unstructured play. How can I talk about this in a way that you will not object to?

First of, I would avoid any phrasing that implies that some games are not actually games. Secondly, I'd have to wonder how useful it is to apply these theories to roleplaying games, if they have nothing to say about a huge chunk of stuff that is actually happening in these games. If this thread is any indication, the answer would be "not very."

 

[robconley]

I think principles and mechanics go hand in hand. While principles matter, it is at best very difficult to actualize them when the mechanics of the game simply don't provide the avenues by which they can naturally enter into play, particularly at the more granular levels of individual scenes which actually make up most of a game.

We not talking software but people. People do the actualizing not the mechanics. When mechanics are used it because people chose to use them as the way to actualize the principle. But is not necessary or a requirement but a preference.

I say this from experience playing with the same GM in both 5e and DW, and of running PACE, DW, and 4e in a certain way, vs running classical versions of D&D, CoC, and a very long list of other games which lack these mechanics. I was especially disappointed with the experience I had with CoC a few years ago when trying to play it in a way analogous to how I would run narrative games. It just got in the way so much that I would really never run it again, though I am a fan of the genre. Maybe someone more skilled than I am can do it, but CoC actively inhibits narrative style play in multiple ways (and is just painfully clunky, I'm amazed I was able to run it back in the 80's without more trouble). I would have a lot of the same problems with 5e, which is why I basically wrote my own story game '4e hack'.

Well I would suggest you write out to yourself how you run narrative games in a manner that relatively systemless. Then whenever you use a system don't use what fits, alter what needed and go from there.

This is speaking from the experience of dragging the same setting, Majestic Wilderlands, through a dozen system over 40 years. A hopefully more accessible example is Adventures in Middle Earth versus 5e. AiME successfully adapt 5e into a Middle Earth roleplaying by jettisoning most of the lists and creating new elements for their lists (class, creatures, cultures, items, etc). Adapting an existing mechanics (feats) into something different (virtues) but better suited for a ME mechanics. Finally adding new subsystems (Audiences, Shadow, etc) fill in things that needed to be addressed in a ME campaign but wasn't in 5e.

The same with how you run narrative. List out all that you do without reference to a system. Then evaluate the new system in that light. Jettison what doesn't fit like Wizards, Spells, and Cleric for AiME, kept what does, add what missing and keep it consistent with the bases system like AiME's Journey, Audience, and Shadow rules.

There is no reason you can't use adapt the D&D mechanics to the structure that Blades in the Dark as long as you understand how D&D works and what it means to use that but not this. For example many people consider the encounter balance guidelines as part of the rules. They are not. However they were use extensively in D&D 4e organized play and the published modules. But one could, as I did, ignore them completely and run a D&D 4e campaign like one did for GURPS or AD&D. Like I did with my Majestic Wilderlands.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Thanks. It's a setting and character creation process that I would like to see ported to other games. It's almost surprising to me that it hasn't. IME, it gives the players both a nice starting sense of place as well as personal investment in the setting. It's also easy for players to create kickers or play agendas from that as well.

Now, that whole idea, player input as rumor/myth/legend definitely seems like an interesting idea. It could work in a lot of games. I should think of a way to work that into HoML