That Thread in Which We Ruminate on the Confluence of Actor Stance, Immersion, and "Playing as if I Was My Character"

[Fenris-77]

Is the way you earn x.p. the main point? I mean gold is something that almost any sort of opposition will typically have. No one in my group ever said "Let's fight this creature as it has more x.p." They do check their sheets outside the game and get excited for what may be coming up in terms of improvements to their class but that is because they want to use those new abilities to advance their agenda in the game world. So their game world agenda is their prime goal. Power and money though make achieving any agenda useful in most cases. It's why I've often said that dungeon exploring for profit is their job. On occasion they need money so they will go for the gold. Why do they need money? They have some other game agenda.

Gold is how you advance in the game, that makes it a central conceit. There's not really an argument contra there. IDK why we're arguing about it honestly.

 

[Umbran]

And, in this argument, I think we reveal a major point...

Whether a mechanic is "dissociated" is really not the important bit. Whether a mechanic is dissasociative - whether it causes dissociation in the player, a breaking from the in-game experience, is. However, that is an entirely subjective thing. We could discuss tendencies, but none of us have actually asked enough players to really have data on that.

I will grant that Fate Points are a dissociated mechanic in the standard parlance as I know it. However, they don't break me from the in-game experience, so I don't have an issue with them.

 

[Lanefan]

In RM you very often have to roll to find out what happens when you do that thing. But if what you're doing is casting a teleport spell so you and your friends can get from place A to place B as part of a journey, it's hard for me to see it as resolving a conflict because there may not be very much at stake besides the possible consequences that the spell failure system imposes.

If instead of 'conflict resolution' one sees and uses mechanics as 'risk resolution' including but not limited to conflict, does that help?

 

[Lanefan]

Indiana Jones is not a story of collecting treasure. Unless you count Marion, or Indy's father, as treasures.

I have to disagree.

The Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail, the Cross of Coronado, etc., etc. - all of these are treasures the (attempted) collection/recovery of which are central to his stories. That he ultimately ends up being more successful at saving people than at saving treasures isn't really the point: finding and recovering the treasures (but not for himself; "this should be in a museum!") is what drives him.

 

[Manbearcat]

Gold is how you advance in the game, that makes it a central conceit. There's not really an argument contra there. IDK why we're arguing about it honestly.

Its not clear how gold = xp is anything more than keeping score (which I think is what you're saying here and I don't know what Emerikol is saying about it) which also works with the rest of the system to create the carrot to "push on" rather than "retreat with the spoils we have (either because we're nearing encumbered or resource exhaustion."

"I suddenly got better at swinging a sword, not succumbing to poison, not perishing from falls because of the gold we got from that treasure room (as a first order function)" is clearly not anchored within the game world in any way.

Looting a fancy +3 sword will makes you better at sword-swinging.

Buying a Periapt of Proof against Poison from the strange peddler will make you better at not succumbing to poison (and is a 2nd order function of getting gold...you have the gold...now you have to turn it into something useful).

Crafting a Feather Fall Scroll with the attained gold will make you better at not perishing from falls (again, 2nd order).


But if gold is a sort of 1st order adventuring competency force-multiplier (the "for xp" part) that it is in the real world in terms of wealth creation...then something very strange is happening in D&D land.

Like a great many things D&D, its (as you say) both an end and a means to facilitate the Skilled Play priority of classic D&D delving.

 

[Lanefan]

"I suddenly got better at swinging a sword, not succumbing to poison, not perishing from falls because of the gold we got from that treasure room (as a first order function)" is clearly not anchored within the game world in any way.

Which is a key reason why we dropped the concept lo these many years ago: it just didn't make - and couldn't be made to make - in-game sense.

Looting a fancy +3 sword will makes you better at sword-swinging.

If you're the one who gets to keep and-or use it, yes. Where this falls apart is that looting said +3 sword also somehow makes the MU equally better at spellcasting, which is rather ludicrous.

 

[Fenris-77]

Nope, it's just score keeping, and a slightly odd one. But is the advancement mechanism, which pushes players to seek out gold as a goal.

 

[pemerton]

gold is something that almost any sort of opposition will typically have.

REH's Conan is an inspiration for FRPGing. So is LotR. The latter does not involve acquiring gold from loot. There are the Barrow Blades, but those have much more backstory than the typical D&D module gives a +1 sword in the troll's treasure chest.

One of the best Conan stories is Tower of the Elephant. In D&D terms that episode would be a failure because Conan didn't get the jewels. In The Scarlet Citadel he befriends a magician which helps him reconquer Aquilonia, but he doesn't accrue significant amounts of gold.

In our Prince Valiant game the PCs have not acquired gold through looting dead bodies or buried treasure. They have taken arms and horses from defeated knights, and have taken castles by force.

The whole structure of much D&D play - the discrete encounter with the enemies to be defeated in battle so that their nearby treasure can be taken - is a game device.

 

[pemerton]

If instead of 'conflict resolution' one sees and uses mechanics as 'risk resolution' including but not limited to conflict, does that help?

Not really, because in many systems the thing only becomes risky because there is a stipulated mechanic! RM has no framework for spraining one's ankle hurrying to work, even though that is a real risk which real people in the real world fall victim to more often than they would like!

 

[Campbell]

Not really, because in many systems the thing only becomes risky because there is a stipulated mechanic! RM has no framework for spraining one's ankle hurrying to work, even though that is a real risk which real people in the real world fall victim to more often than they would like!

I prefer what Vincent Baker had to say here : RPG mechanics tell us what happens in the shared fiction full stop. They might be representative of how things work, but that is not their purpose. Their purpose is just to tell us what happens so play can move forward.

I can track down a quote later.