A Question Of Agency?

[robconley]

Simulationism is a preference. It there it exists people choose RPGs on how realistic it is but it is narrow niche.

Also I think people do themselves a disservice that if emulating reality is involves detailed mechanics. Level of abstraction still come into play. You can be realistic at a high level of abstraction. Like a subsystem that tells you what happens to a kingdom of that game year. Or a system that resolves a combat encounter with opposing check instead of blow by blow.

The criteria for me is that for the level of detail presented I am considering the reverent factors, I am doing relevant actions at that level of detail, and do the result fall in the same range as the real world. Now I may like the system because if I as a player that think it makes a big difference whether it matters if I use 5x scope versus a 3x scope. Whether I am using a set of Craftsmen tool versus a set of Channellock tools. Or the reverse where as a player I am interested that level of detail, and find them bogging down play wished the designer or referee just assumed that people would equip a sniper rifle with the proper scope or a mechanic would have decent tools.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I would strongly recommend Cthulhu Dark. 4 pages. I've used it twice for one-shots. No prep required for an excellent play experience.

Yeah, I've glanced at it and heard good things.

Now, I just had a thought, what if we turned the genre inside out? Instead of the players being investigators, what if they play the cosmic horrors? hehehehehe. Admittedly this would be a very different sort of game, maybe not really a classic kind of RPG setup at all, but it could be fun.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Hmm, there's some middle ground there. Flashbacks work just fine in D&D, and the idea of a roll to determine starting position works fine too. I know becauce I've adapted some Blades stuff to run heist games in D&D. It's not identical of course, but you can nudge D&D closer than you might think with just some minor tinkering. It would be easier to just run Blades of course, but sometimes what you have is D&D players who want to play a heist. Anythewho, not to derail us, just tossing that out there.

Right, I think if you are willing to adopt some of the BitD techniques, you can create a 'D&D heist game' that borrows from the 'FitD' engine and subsystems. At least to a degree. I am also sure you can add significant narrative game elements to D&D, 4e is a little covert about it, but it does a pretty decent job given that it had to not stray too far from the classic formula. My own hack, Heroes of Myth and Legend, takes that a bunch further, but is still recognizably akin to D&D and is probably not really 'further out' than 13th Age. HoML could do this kind of stuff fairly well, although I never developed something akin to BitD's elaborate tracks and clocks (there is the 'affliction track' but it only tracks bad things, and SCs are a bit different from clocks). Still, you can easily start a scenario 'at the action', and the players have resources they can expend to create favorable plot elements. So a heist could well be an SC, with plot elements, and expenditures to push for better odds (IE use a ritual, pay extra, burn your Inspiration, etc.). I think I could produce approximately the results of the epic battle of one Crew against a Demon and another superior crew for example, though I think BitD clearly does it better, being its main focus.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think these responses are mostly missing the point of what @AbdulAlhazred and @Campbell are talking about. It gets back to what I was talking about waaaaaaaaaaay up thread.

If the primary play loop is centered around:

1) GM looks at card (setting notes).

2) GM draws picture, attempting to deftly telegraph what is on card based on principled constraints (if you just tell the players the right answer then there can be no skilled play).

3) Players attempt to solve the puzzle.

When this kind of multi-dimensional Pictionary serves as the primary means of action resolution mediation for virtually all arenas of conflict outside of combat, any given instantiation of play is vulnerable to:

1) GM extrapolation of setting collisions with PCs and modeling of events (THIS is the simulation component...and it doesn’t matter whether genre emulation is a part of it or not...in fact that could make things more fraught) will diverge from another GM’s modeling or even from themselves on a different day/year.

2) The GM may draw too opaque a picture, rendering it indecipherable to the players attempting the solve.

3) Cognitive load and the wear and tear of daily life over the course of many weeks will have an impact on the bandwidth of GM and players when a multi-month-spanning series of pictures is being drawn and solved for, leading up to one huge gambit (where all the prior pictures we’re supposed to be inputs).

Those are three significant failure points built into the model; modeling/extrapolation error + cipher error + multiple input assimilation along with the wear and test of time.

Most of us here have been doing this for 30+ years. I’ve spent 5000 + hours running or watching “trad” games. WAY more than the overwhelming # of GMs on this planet.

The number of times things go wrong in a campaign that GMs want to chalk up to “my players are dense and reckless” when it’s actually 1 or more of these 3 things (and the players will tell you so if you ask them in confidence) is legion.

And this doesn’t touch on the “interesting situations” question (which I brought up upthread):

How do GMs protect against sterile modeling/extrapolation where nothing unexpected happens when PCs and setting collide? How do you protect against an endless array of deterministic models (particularly when you’re trying to draw pictures that can be inferred by players so the can solve puzzles!)?

I think your primary playloop part is missing a lot or incorrect, at least in relation to a sandbox.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In my experience, that's the only viable goal, since the adventures are written so you're not really saving the world--succeed at the adventure or horribly bomb, the world won't end; the stakes you're playing for are a lie.

Can you tell I fell out of CoC a while ago?

Sounds as though you're using Lovecraftian tropes to play a game that generates non-Lovecraftian stories. Which is cool--I'm not a huge fan of undiluted Lovecraftian fiction in my TRPGs myself.

Yeah, you could say that. I mean, I'm OK with a story that is pretty close to some of the classics. OTOH The Laundry Files material provides an example of what is probably a more interesting variation of the milieu. The world IS DOOMED, eventually 'Case Nightmare Green' is going to happen (return of the Great Old Ones/The Stars are Right) and nobody is coming out of that 'intact' in any sense we would accept. However, in the meantime, which could be centuries if we're lucky, we can strive to keep things going. Maybe The Laundry and its allies will find a way to at least construct some sort of 'lifeboat' or make some allies who will help us out, etc. None of the main characters in the stories seem to believe that will happen, but they go on about their business because there simply isn't any other choice. Once in a while someone goes mad and becomes a 'case' that has to be dealt with. There's already an RPG built on that specific milieu, but I have not ever had a chance to read it. In any case, it makes a bit more of a workable setting, since the PCs have the backing of an organization with significant resources and the ability to resolve situations and possible survive, and even advance in ability, while retaining the fundamental cosmic horror vibe.

 

[Manbearcat]

I think your primary playloop part is missing a lot or incorrect, at least in relation to a sandbox.

That is because its not the play loop. Its a game analogy meant to map to the (a) modeling aspect (turning the card into a picture) and (b) cipher aspect (drawing the picture for the players to decipher).

Those are the two features that are relevant to the simulation/modeling issue that I was addressing.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Just because prep exists for a sandbox doesn't mean the DM is beholden to it. It happens all the time. So sure, in a vacuum, a dungeon or brother could be manufactured on the fly. I've done it, as, I'm sure, have lots of people. Not all of course, and maybe not even many, but some. I think it's a mistake to take the pov of the most prep beholden sandbox GMs and then project that onto the wider group. This is why taking playstyle as the first layer of analysis is so fraught IMO.

Oh, sure, you can mix and match, I think that is one of @estar's most salient points. Probably the vast majority of GMs running high-prep games will do something like that. If the PCs take some detail and start chewing on it, the GM will often add substance to it. The reason zero myth has been fairly popular in story now games is that it just makes this easier, and avoids the distraction of 'stuff that the GM unilaterally wanted included'. If the players are determined to find something in the ruined south gatehouse, then maybe they uncover the Wizard's Tomb, which they were searching for, but the entrance is inscribed with a dark curse! This could happen in any type of game, but the denser the existing fiction is, the more likely some other material that is less salient is already placed there. Also the more tempting it is for the GM to reason "well, if I just encourage the players to send their PCs 5 miles north, I won't have to write up a whole new thing." and it is pretty easy to just steer things that way.

So, there are certainly also heavy-prep story now games, and ones set in existing extensive settings/genres (IE superheros would be an example) where a LOT of lore already exists. Naturally this can have advantages too. If the players already have a lot of genre knowledge then they are in a better position to leverage that in their play.

 

[FrogReaver]

That is because its not the play loop. Its a game analogy meant to map to the (a) modeling aspect (turning the card into a picture) and (b) cipher aspect (drawing the picture for the players to decipher).

Those are the two features that are relevant to the simulation/modeling issue that I was addressing.

Okay. I’m still confused. You said above “if X is the primary playloop”. My contention was that X is not the primary playloop of a sandbox.

but if your not really talking about that then have at it.

 

[Manbearcat]

Okay. I’m still confused. You said above “if X is the primary playloop”. My contention was that X is not the primary playloop of a sandbox.

but if your not really talking about that then have at it.

Check out the post again. Not what I said.

I said "if the primary play loop is centered around <then I go on to make the analogy of modeling + cipher and the downstream effects of that >"

Every moment of GM describes situation > player asks clarifying questions > rinse/repeat until player declares action > GM handles action resolution (yes, no, rolls themselves, tells player to roll d20, tells player to roll d20 and gives target number, etc etc) pivots upon what I depicted above.

If it goes south (due to modeling error, due to cipher error, due to bandwidth/fatigue error) its all related to that.

 

[prabe]

Yeah, you could say that. I mean, I'm OK with a story that is pretty close to some of the classics. OTOH The Laundry Files material provides an example of what is probably a more interesting variation of the milieu. The world IS DOOMED, eventually 'Case Nightmare Green' is going to happen (return of the Great Old Ones/The Stars are Right) and nobody is coming out of that 'intact' in any sense we would accept. However, in the meantime, which could be centuries if we're lucky, we can strive to keep things going. Maybe The Laundry and its allies will find a way to at least construct some sort of 'lifeboat' or make some allies who will help us out, etc. None of the main characters in the stories seem to believe that will happen, but they go on about their business because there simply isn't any other choice. Once in a while someone goes mad and becomes a 'case' that has to be dealt with. There's already an RPG built on that specific milieu, but I have not ever had a chance to read it. In any case, it makes a bit more of a workable setting, since the PCs have the backing of an organization with significant resources and the ability to resolve situations and possible survive, and even advance in ability, while retaining the fundamental cosmic horror vibe.

That setting does sound as though it would allow for more heroism in a TRPG (depending on the game system, of course).