D&D 5E 5e* - D&D-now

[AbdulAlhazred]

5e unambiguously states it: DMG 237.

Hmmmm. I think we suffer from a terminological and/or conceptual mismatch here. I see nothing in this section of the 5e DMG which equates to anything I would understand as an AGENDA. I see some description of recommendations regarding process (and also an admonition that there IS NO defined process except what the GM intends there to be!). I would think of an agenda as something similar to the kinds of things proposed under that heading in DW. That is, the agenda would describe WHAT the goals of the GM are in running the game, or maybe more broadly what the overall goals of playing a game of 5e D&D ARE (I mean, at a more concrete level than just "play a game and have fun").

So, for example, in Dungeon World we are told that the GM's agenda is "Portray a Fantastic World", "Fill the character's lives with adventure", and "Play to find out what happens." Thus whenever the GM makes a move, these 3 considerations are the fundamental bedrock upon which the narration of that move is based. The move will be 'fantastic' or at least push things in the direction of the fantastic; the move will produce 'adventure', which I would interpret as action, exploration, self-actualization, etc.; and it will be open-ended, so that it helps tell us both what happens NOW and provides opportunity for more things to be 'found out' later on.

You can see how a game based on these three things very much defines something like "should we use the dice now to resolve something" or conversely "under what conditions should we roll the dice?" That will be answered by asking if the results will be fantastic, adventurous for the party, and telling us 'what happens' without making that some canned pre-ordained thing (because it has to be 'played for', which I interpret to mean that issues are in doubt and can fall in different ways based on player skill and possibly luck). Note how DW introduces these elements on p161.

"Your agenda makes up the things you aim to do at all times while GMing a game of Dungeon World:"

Next the things are examined in detail, and more is exposed. We find out, significantly, that "A Dungeon World adventure portrays a world in motion..." and then that "play to find out what happens" is pretty specifically meant to tie into that. We are to find out what happens TO THE WORLD because the PCs adventure in it. Their part is to be pivotal to the outcome of events in that world, BY DESIGN. Its very clear, crystal clear in fact.

The Principles, outlined starting on p162, build on the Agenda. They give you a more concrete list of techniques, prescriptive and sometimes restrictive rules to follow as a GM, presumably intended to build on the Agenda. Anyway, this is what I would consider an 'agenda'.

Obviously every game has a different agenda, to a degree, and they are not always so explicitly stated. 5e certainly doesn't present one on p237 of the DMG! It might be said to touch on a couple of principles, though oddly it also seems to almost disavow the existence of such things in any hard sense (in the first paragraphs of on that page). I find myself deeply ambivalent about what I'm being told as a GM by 5e. It certainly isn't all that clear! I'm not at all convinced that an admonition to 'narrate meaningfully' is clarifying the agenda AT ALL. It might be clarifying part of the Principles of play (AKA techniques), that I would gladly concede.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No, I'm not making any claim about the surface experiences. My question is whether 5e, played naturally and consistently, produces fiction-first roleplay? 5e* is my argument to the effect that it does. I like this discussion in the context of FATE. (The link is to an article in the FATE SRD.)

7. Narrate the resolution within the given constraints.
3. The DM narrates the results of their actions.
3. The GM narrates the results, based on the player's roll.

Over the course of this thread I've even come to feel that grasping "narrates" as an imperative regulatory rule is vital to 5e*. It signals the shift from system to fiction, ending the basic loop in the fiction. I know we don't agree on the intertextual interpretation, so I will just say that seeing this word used the same way in games that we have no reason to doubt are fiction-first, inspires me to interpret it that way in 5e*.


In the quoted texts above I notice variation. What has 5e to say about bringing complications or constraints back into the fiction? 5e* says that this is mandated because a roll wasn't called for unless it had complications correlated with it. That is something I wanted to explore as a follow up to @Faolyn's latest.


Oh, I'm surprised you can take that from anything I've written. On the one hand, I am saying Baker was influential. On the other hand, I'm saying that he made important progress on problems that communities of RPG theorists were concerned with (whether designers, players, or scholars, systematically or casually). Solutions to those problems didn't create new space for RPG, but clarified and structured space already in view. I'm reading The Elusive Shift at present, and perhaps will have a differing view of that later on. Design arcs such as FUDGE to FATE are of interest to me.


Your question here might be more one of whether 5e can be naturally and consistently interpreted to play as story-now? As you and others have pointed out, there is some rules support in TIBFs and Inspiration. I currently see fiction-first and story-now as sympathetic rather than synonymous.


When we discussed the LP earlier, this was something I was trying to get at. System does seem to do some work beyond ensuring agreement. The possibility of differing systems producing differing experiences seems to require it. The LP describes what is necessary, but doesn't say what is sufficient (to create such differences.) What does system do to make the imagining we agree to, the particular play experience?


Exactly. Failure alone isn't sufficient. 5e* insists on the upholding of the DMG 237 rule, and through insistence on reaching meaningful narration, ensures that rule influences the game holistically.


Reflecting here on conversation about FK a few months back, 5e* says that DM doesn't need to be told expressly what to narrate. 5e* even suspects it might be better to leave that up to DM (due in part to skepticism about the possibility of complete instructions.)


Good questions, and I do plan to explore that. Not today though (work looms.)


As I anticipated, it's easy to quibble my examples. They're simply the most barebones case that had so far come up. With them I only wanted to address some basic doubts. Recollecting that I say fictional positioning is the total set of all of the valid gameplay options available to player at this moment of play. I believe they encourage understanding saying something meaningful, to be saying something that matters in the fiction (which it must, to produce coherent gameplay, given the F > S > F core loop!)


Knowing your tastes, it has never been on my agenda to persuade you to play 5e, in any form! I'd sooner suspect your account of being usurped.




I like the way you put that. Certainly I now believe that grasping the 5e* rule as an imperative regulatory rule successfully ensures players begin and end their core loop in the fiction. Interpreting "narrates" as "say something meaningful" ensures that the principle captured in the DMG 237 rule lives in the PHB 6 basic pattern, i.e. matters throughout. That is one way that it counts.

Hmmmmm, all of the above is illuminating in terms of your belief that your 'consequential narrative imperative' would generate a process of play that moves back and forth between fiction and mechanics. I don't think I'm going to try to dispute that, it certainly seems to be, at least, a hypothesis that could be tested. I'm not convinced, ala my last post about agenda in DW and the contrast with your statements about 5e, that that imperative will 'drive the car' though. That is, we're not really left with a useful definition of consequential/meaningful. Presumably this can be achieved in play, but I'm still concerned that other 5e statements about the central influence of the GM in terms of setting the rules of adjudication and the lack of any indication that players act in any capacity to direct the fiction or focus of play doesn't give me confidence in calling 5e* a 'story telling game'. I don't think your asking for consequential checks and thus consequential narration is BAD, it seems like it pushes in the direction of more focus on 'play to find out what happens' in a sense, but is it really nearly enough to bridge the gap with 'ground up' story games?

I mean, I have my doubts that my own game even bridges the gap between 4e and something like DW. I think I'm going to provide some added structure there. I've got some ideas, but they WILL tend to more heavily focus the genre and tone of the game in some respects. Honestly, I think the idea of a 'kitchen sink' kind of D&D fights against any kind of explicit technique built into the system pretty hard. You gotta get off the fence if you're going to really dance!

 

[clearstream]

So, for example, in Dungeon World we are told that the GM's agenda is "Portray a Fantastic World", "Fill the character's lives with adventure", and "Play to find out what happens." Thus whenever the GM makes a move, these 3 considerations are the fundamental bedrock upon which the narration of that move is based. The move will be 'fantastic' or at least push things in the direction of the fantastic; the move will produce 'adventure', which I would interpret as action, exploration, self-actualization, etc.; and it will be open-ended, so that it helps tell us both what happens NOW and provides opportunity for more things to be 'found out' later on.

You can see how a game based on these three things very much defines something like "should we use the dice now to resolve something" or conversely "under what conditions should we roll the dice?" That will be answered by asking if the results will be fantastic, adventurous for the party, and telling us 'what happens' without making that some canned pre-ordained thing (because it has to be 'played for', which I interpret to mean that issues are in doubt and can fall in different ways based on player skill and possibly luck). Note how DW introduces these elements on p161.

"Your agenda makes up the things you aim to do at all times while GMing a game of Dungeon World:"

Next the things are examined in detail, and more is exposed. We find out, significantly, that "A Dungeon World adventure portrays a world in motion..." and then that "play to find out what happens" is pretty specifically meant to tie into that. We are to find out what happens TO THE WORLD because the PCs adventure in it. Their part is to be pivotal to the outcome of events in that world, BY DESIGN. Its very clear, crystal clear in fact.

The Principles, outlined starting on p162, build on the Agenda. They give you a more concrete list of techniques, prescriptive and sometimes restrictive rules to follow as a GM, presumably intended to build on the Agenda. Anyway, this is what I would consider an 'agenda'.

Obviously every game has a different agenda, to a degree, and they are not always so explicitly stated. 5e certainly doesn't present one on p237 of the DMG! It might be said to touch on a couple of principles, though oddly it also seems to almost disavow the existence of such things in any hard sense (in the first paragraphs of on that page). I find myself deeply ambivalent about what I'm being told as a GM by 5e. It certainly isn't all that clear! I'm not at all convinced that an admonition to 'narrate meaningfully' is clarifying the agenda AT ALL. It might be clarifying part of the Principles of play (AKA techniques), that I would gladly concede.

Perhaps another perspective on this is to ask - where do principles and agenda come from? Is it the case that there was no inkling of principles or agendas in role-players until they saw those words written? Thus and only thus they came to have those things!? Or might it be that DMs always had inklings of principles and agendas, well or less-well formed, clear or obscure, and what is written acts to clarify, include and exclude, and organise those inklings.

That's vital work. For one thing, advancement in understanding of principles and agendas is well-served by articulating them. I think one can get a much clearer idea of productive approaches to roleplaying from that line of thought and work. The impact of that could be especially valuable to those picking this up for the first time, or perhaps steeped in (and defaulting to) other traditions. It comes back to something I've said several times

• I can say - it is excellent game design to consider, organise and articulate principles and agenda
• I can't say - DM cannot have principles and agenda unless game designer considered, organised and articulated them

One useful consequence of articulated principles and agenda is to secure that X is done and not Y. Surely that's valuable work, making sure that the game the designer crafted is played. But then consider the FKR movement, and these possible RPG designs (in abstract):

• an RPG that has only a title
• an RPG that has only an agenda
• an RPG that has only principles
• an RPG that has only rules
• an RPG that has only examples
• an RPG that has only agenda and principles
• an RPG that has only rules and examples
• an RPG that has only agenda and examples
• an RPG that has only principles and rules
• an RPG that has title, agenda, principles, rules, examples

Which is playable? Which will give the most vivid and compelling experiences at the table? I believe (and I'm far from alone from believing, on the matter of rules and rule following) that the game played - rules as interpreted - are unavoidably influenced by principles from outside the game. It's the only way that interpretation is possible.

That creates an interesting space for us. The possibility of choosing the principles under which we will interpret an RPG text to suit our creative purposes. We had to 'choose' or have it chosen for us anyway, so why not do it consciously? I'm not sure we need to avoid anarchic re-interpretations (in fact, I believe them potentially exciting and valuable), but supposing we want to, how do we make sure that our interpretation arises naturally and consistently from the whole text?

5e* (revised and updated!) says, interpret the text like this:

• interpret "narrates" as "say something meaningful"
• understand "narrates the results" is an imperative regulatory rule: it signals a shift or arrow to fiction
• narrating the results secures that the basic pattern begins and ends in the fiction (F > S > F)
• saying something meaningful is a guarantee: players can respond to what DM says as if it is meaningful (finding meaning later)
• the imperative to say something meaningful encourages a DM to ensure there's something meaningful to say
• follow the rule on DMG 237, knowing that the implied principle influences everything (read everything in its light)
• most often, what will turn out to be meaningful will have consequences that matter to fictional positioning - the set of valid gameplay options available to player at this moment of play

5e* is fiction-first. There are other ways to interpret and play 5e. None have to be all-or-nothing.

 

[pemerton]

My question is whether 5e, played naturally and consistently, produces fiction-first roleplay? 5e* is my argument to the effect that it does.

<snip>

As I anticipated, it's easy to quibble my examples. They're simply the most barebones case that had so far come up. With them I only wanted to address some basic doubts. Recollecting that I say fictional positioning is the total set of all of the valid gameplay options available to player at this moment of play. I believe they encourage understanding saying something meaningful, to be saying something that matters in the fiction (which it must, to produce coherent gameplay, given the F > S > F core loop!)

Given the argument you state in the first quoted para, the response to your examples is not mere quibbling. It's at the core of the "fiction first" claim!

D&D combat is notorious for not being fiction first; for being, in phenomenological terms, dice-roll "bingo" (ie a lot of calling out of numbers and comparing them to pre-given numbers on bits of paper). Some of the earliest RPG designs (C&S, RQ, later RM, GURPS) were reactions to this. Gygax is aware of the reaction, and responds to it, in his DMG - with his criticism of hit location tables and damage types, for instance, and his extremely non-simulationist approach to the resolution of attacks by poisonous monsters and blades (see pp 61, 81-82).

The core of 5e D&D RAW combat resolution is the same as AD&D's: take one's turn within a strict action economy, roll to hit vs AC, if successful roll damage which is applied as a depletion of a hit point tally. This is not fiction first. It's mechanics. I appreciate that 5e* mandates that the mechanics be accompanied by GM narration (I assume that this is why your list of examples didn't include the GM saying The giant now has 125 hp left. But until some account is given of how that GM narration than affects downstream resolution (as in the examples I suggested: a bonus to save vs Thunderwave, or an AC penalty) then we don't have fiction first, we just have D&D combat with colourful narration overlaid. That may be a good thing, in terms of producing a more engaging or enjoyable play experience (and some D&D GMs have been doing it for decades for just that reason) but it doesn't make the game a fiction first one.

Contrast Rolemaster: when one of the PCs in our game suffered a crit result of a severed hand, that meant something in the fiction: he could no longer shoot his bow!

Here's an example of fiction first in D&D combat resolution: in our session the weekend before last, the Epic Defender who is infused with earth power stolen from the Primordials was under an effect that, so long as he stays in contact with the ground, grants temp hp at the top of each round. In a discussion about where the PC should move to, I suggested that if he were to step up onto a plinth that sits above the floor of the building he is on, he would no longer be in contact with the ground. That suggestion was readily acceded to. So here we have fiction to mechanics (a rightward arrow, in Vincent Baker's framework).

And another example: in the same combat, a Huge Primordial Colossus tried to smash a PC (also Huge, being an Emergent Primordial in Primordial form) who had fallen into the water. The Colossus missed - I rolled a 1. The water had a current specified, that would slide the character a particular direction at the start of their next turn. The players suggested that the waves caused by the great splash of the Colossus striking and missing should amplify the effect of the current, washing the PC further down the map. I agreed with that suggestion, and we resolved the wave effect (the player failed an Acrobatics check, and so in fact the wave disturbed the current and reduced rather than increased the PC's movement at the start of the turn). Again, this is fiction to mechanics, and back to fiction.

My own view is that it's not a coincidence that I'm providing these examples from 4e - 4e has a very robust set of system tools (eg a variety of keywords; level-by-DC chart; a standardised framework for forced movement; etc) for translating fiction into mechanics and then back again. My own knowledge of 5e makes feel that it is not as robust in this respect. Perhaps 5e* adds to that robustness, but from the examples you've given I'm not seeing where or how. And as I said, I don't think this is just quibbling.

I like this discussion in the context of FATE. (The link is to an article in the FATE SRD.)

My knowledge of Fate is modest, and my experience less than that. I do know that, for reasons similar to MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic which I know well, it creates controversy about the relationship of resolution to mechanics because the fiction needs to be "sytematised" - as an Aspect in Fate, as a Distinction in MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic - before it matters, and often needs to be further paid for to invoke it or include it as part of an action's resolution.

Both systems, therefore, can tend towards what Baker describes here as Case 2:

Case 1:

1. When you want to describe the weather where the characters are, roll. On a success, say what the weather's like there. (On a failure, it's 76°, few clouds, with a pleasant little breeze.)

2. When your character's taking strenuous action, if it's oppressively hot where your character is, you get -2 to your roll.

That's boxes to cloud, then cloud to boxes.

Case 2:

1. When you want to give another player a die penalty, make a roll. On a success, a) say what's making life hard for their character, and b) give them a -2 to their roll.

That's a) boxes to cloud, with a simultaneous b) boxes to boxes.

(So, Guy: no, it doesn't count as a rightward arrow.)

<snip>

Rob: You seriously read that to mean that the (unmentioned) oppressive heat the character's suffering is responsible for the -2, not the successful give-a-penalty roll?

How do you want me to write it so that it's rock-solid-clear that the successful give-a-penalty roll is responsible for the -2?

Maybe this: When you want to give another player a die penalty, make a roll. On a success, give them a -2 to their roll. (Also, incidentally, say what's making life hard for their character.)

An arrow cubes to cubes. (Also, incidentally, an arrow cubes to cloud.) Right?​

To me, the narrations of the giant pressing forward, or couching her club, look a bit like the incidental narration of what's making life hard for the character: the heavy lifting is being done by the mechanics (boxes-to-boxes) an the narration is epiphenomenal.

In Fate or MHRP, the more that (i) some fictional context for the "impose a -2 penalty check" is required as a precursor to making the check, and (ii) the more that fictional context is constrained by prior narration, the less the play will look like Baker's Case 2. In 5e D&D, no fictional context is required to impose hit point loss other than the distance requirements necessary to declare an attack with the given weapon or spell. The GM's narration of how a NPC responds to an attack is not part of those fictional constraints, at least by RAW.

Over the course of this thread I've even come to feel that grasping "narrates" as an imperative regulatory rule is vital to 5e*. It signals the shift from system to fiction, ending the basic loop in the fiction. I know we don't agree on the intertextual interpretation, so I will just say that seeing this word used the same way in games that we have no reason to doubt are fiction-first, inspires me to interpret it that way in 5e*.

<snip>

5e* says that DM doesn't need to be told expressly what to narrate. 5e* even suspects it might be better to leave that up to DM (due in part to skepticism about the possibility of complete instructions.)

The issue of being told expressly seems a bit of a red herring. In Prince Valiant the GM has extreme freedom - more than a D&D GM - to narrate what happens when a check is resolved. But that narration will then matter to subsequent resolution - eg certain narrations of what happens as a character suffers a reduction of their pool in a duel might provide the opening for an Agility or Dexterity check to wrongfoot them or disarm them or similar.

That is what makes a system "fiction first": the fiction that flows from "cycle N" feeds into the framing and resolution of "cycle N+1".

How does the giant pressing forward, or couching her club, or the 1 hp loss being a scratch, feed into the declaration and resolution of actions on subsequent rounds? This is where, to me, it seems to be purely epiphenomenal.

Your question here might be more one of whether 5e can be naturally and consistently interpreted to play as story-now?

I don't think so. It was about what is distinctive, in 5e or 5e*, compared to (say) DW, as far as making the setting seem "real". To me this seems orthogonal to whether or not it can be played "story now"; although there are some techniques for making the setting seem "real" that are not available in story now play.

When we discussed the LP earlier, this was something I was trying to get at. System does seem to do some work beyond ensuring agreement. The possibility of differing systems producing differing experiences seems to require it. The LP describes what is necessary, but doesn't say what is sufficient (to create such differences.) What does system do to make the imagining we agree to, the particular play experience?

This provoked two thoughts in me.

First, the Lumpley Principle has been stated differently at different times, and those statements aren't all equivalent (either semantically or functionally). This page states two formulations. The first is the one I encountered when I first encountered The Forge: rules and their consequences only take effect when taken up and assented to by the group. The contrast, here, might be with rules of mathematics which (at least on some mainstream accounts) generate consequences even if no one has yet worked out what those are.

The second one is that systems is a means for agreeing on the content of the shared fiction. I think that is what you are meaning by it.

Anyway, on this second formulation of the principle, it does not require anything more to explain why different systems produce different experiences. They are different means.

A vehicle, we might say, is a means for getting from A to B. Using different vehicles will produce different experiences of getting from A to B. This doesn't require adding anything to our concept of a vehicle beyond what is stated in the first sentence of this paragraph. Likewise for system.

For instance, a system that allocates ownership of different elements to different participants will produce different experiences. (Contrast, say, AD&D and Burning Wheel as far as ownership of backstory elements is concerned.) A system that determines what happens next by polling the participants, or inviting them to bid, will obviously produce a different play experience from one which determines it by rolling on a chart or one that determines it by allowing one privileged participant to decide. Etc.

 

[pemerton]

A RPG cannot achieve a given agenda, or conform to given principles, if its techniques won't support that.

For instance, suppose that you state that your agenda is present a grim and foreboding world. And then you state that you're going to use Tunnels & Trolls as your system. Straight away you are stuck with a problem: T&T, while pretty deadly as a system, is not very grim or foreboding in the world it presents. It's relatively lighthearted.

Or suppose your agenda is fill the character's lives with adventure. And then you state that you're going to use Classic Traveller as your system. I think Classic Traveller supports interesting lives, but not always adventuresome ones - it has rules for dealing with bureaucracy, for managing your ship mortgage, and for avoiding misjumps based on the fuel you use.

What makes AD&D 2nd ed incoherent - as @AbdulAlhazred posted upthread - is that it states an agenda of heroic fantasy stortytelling, but provides as its techniques a slightly cut-down and streamlined version of Gygax's AD&D, which is not suitable for that agenda at all!

If the agenda is stated in meta-terms rather than by reference to the content or tone of the fiction - eg play to find out what happens or always begin and end with the fiction - that puts demands on techniques too. You can't realise the first of those two agendas using a system of GM fiat or GM pre-authorship of the major events of play. You can't realise the second of those two agendas if key elements of your resolution system do not take the state of the fiction as an input, but are conditioned purely on other mechanical states of affairs.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Perhaps another perspective on this is to ask - where do principles and agenda come from? Is it the case that there was no inkling of principles or agendas in role-players until they saw those words written? Thus and only thus they came to have those things!? Or might it be that DMs always had inklings of principles and agendas, well or less-well formed, clear or obscure, and what is written acts to clarify, include and exclude, and organise those inklings.

Of course they had an agenda. No, AFAIK it was not really written down, aside from 'have fun', which Gygax certainly mentions in 1e. Back in the days of actual D&D (which I played and own) no, there was nothing explicit. D&D grew out of wargaming, as we know, and IMHO there was INTENDED to be a sort of play to find out what happens, TO THE PLAYERS. That is, do they solve clever traps and puzzles and advance PCs to higher levels of play? Honestly I think all else can be seen as an outgrowth of that, and so as such it forms a legitimate agenda. But nobody is arguing that an agenda, or principles/techniques/process of play don't exist without explication; just that it is, at best, hard to justify a statement that they are 'this' or 'that'. Hard to say what in fact they are in any certain way.

That's vital work. For one thing, advancement in understanding of principles and agendas is well-served by articulating them. I think one can get a much clearer idea of productive approaches to roleplaying from that line of thought and work. The impact of that could be especially valuable to those picking this up for the first time, or perhaps steeped in (and defaulting to) other traditions. It comes back to something I've said several times

• I can say - it is excellent game design to consider, organise and articulate principles and agenda
• I can't say - DM cannot have principles and agenda unless game designer considered, organised and articulated them

Again, nobody is maintaining otherwise. Heck, you and @Manbearcat cannot even agree that you're playing Dungeon World or not, and it cannot get more explicit than DW (IMHO, maybe BitD or TB2 manage to top it a bit, not sure). People go into virtually every activity with something resembling an agenda, though it is very often unclear what it is, even to them.

One useful consequence of articulated principles and agenda is to secure that X is done and not Y. Surely that's valuable work, making sure that the game the designer crafted is played. But then consider the FKR movement, and these possible RPG designs (in abstract):

• an RPG that has only a title
• an RPG that has only an agenda
• an RPG that has only principles
• an RPG that has only rules
• an RPG that has only examples
• an RPG that has only agenda and principles
• an RPG that has only rules and examples
• an RPG that has only agenda and examples
• an RPG that has only principles and rules
• an RPG that has title, agenda, principles, rules, examples

Which is playable? Which will give the most vivid and compelling experiences at the table? I believe (and I'm far from alone from believing, on the matter of rules and rule following) that the game played - rules as interpreted - are unavoidably influenced by principles from outside the game. It's the only way that interpretation is possible.

I would probably not consider some of these to be 'games' in any recognizable sense, first of all. Nor am I sure what this entire line of discussion is leading towards when the topic was an existing (and quite specific) game! Now, I don't know anything much about any 'FKR movement' or what they propose, etc. so I can't even really comment on that, but 'Kriegspiel' is a very particular sort of activity with a significant amount of agenda and structure, though most of that is usually either developed in, or extended and particularized to form a scenario.

Kriegspiel was specifically designed as a tool for training operational staff in a realistic manner which would develop skills directly applicable to field operations in wartime. So it has a rather definite agenda, though when it was applied to a more general set of scenarios and finally as a form of recreation this obviously shifted. Still, there has always been a certain structured approach, specific techniques, a general process of play, and I would argue an agenda of injecting a certain type of 'operational realism' into play of the game. Also I would use the term 'game' guardedly. Kriegspielen can be PLAY in that they are an entertaining activity (some of them anyway), but they are also much more performative and open-ended in structure than is typical for games. That is to say, if 'Cowboys & Indians' is a game (arguably) then so is your average Kriegspiel, but that's only one perspective on it.

That creates an interesting space for us. The possibility of choosing the principles under which we will interpret an RPG text to suit our creative purposes. We had to 'choose' or have it chosen for us anyway, so why not do it consciously? I'm not sure we need to avoid anarchic re-interpretations (in fact, I believe them potentially exciting and valuable), but supposing we want to, how do we make sure that our interpretation arises naturally and consistently from the whole text?

Yes, you can always substitute your agenda for one that is presupposed by a game, or provide one where none is explicitly given, and you can thus override any existing explicit or implicit agenda. You do risk incoherence with the game design though (OTOH coherence may not exist anyway, so you may risk nothing).

5e* (revised and updated!) says, interpret the text like this:

• interpret "narrates" as "say something meaningful"
• understand "narrates the results" is an imperative regulatory rule: it signals a shift or arrow to fiction

I think here we need to state that 'narrate the results' was not clearly stated by 5e to mean 'in fictional terms', at least that is a reasonably position taken by many. So we can take it as such, but I would consider this an independent extension to the sense of the rules text, not a corollary of your originally proposed 'say something meaningful'.

• narrating the results secures that the basic pattern begins and ends in the fiction (F > S > F)

I accept that it means it ENDS with the fiction. I think we need to be careful to avoid the situation (very common in D&D) where the next assertion doesn't reference that fiction. That is we need to form our process in such a way that (IMHO) it strongly encourages or even requires, in a procedural and non-optional sense, that the next 'move' be made in fiction. This is one of the reasons DW so strongly emphasizes talking in terms of fiction at the table (various parts of the principles restate elements of this). There is always the danger that fiction can become secondary to mechanics, and become sort of just a 'pro forma' or even be elided entirely. I would ask how your 'Story 5e' proposes to avoid that.

• saying something meaningful is a guarantee: players can respond to what DM says as if it is meaningful (finding meaning later)
• the imperative to say something meaningful encourages a DM to ensure there's something meaningful to say
• follow the rule on DMG 237, knowing that the implied principle influences everything (read everything in its light)
• most often, what will turn out to be meaningful will have consequences that matter to fictional positioning - the set of valid gameplay options available to player at this moment of play

5e* is fiction-first. There are other ways to interpret and play 5e. None have to be all-or-nothing.

As I note above, I have a concern about the robustness of a loop between fiction and mechanical play which will tend to break down. It is surely under pressure at least in combat, though I think out of combat 5e lacks sufficient structure to likely produce entirely mechanically-driven sequences of play. It might happen to a degree when spells are involved though. I mean, I can certainly imagine a player saying something like "I just charm him and get the information I need." There are situations where that wouldn't appear to actively violate your framework, but it would elide fiction. Its always going to be somewhat grey though, as in any Story Game you might consider such elision to be more a factor of there being no dramatic impulse to act out by stating some fiction there, like there's no character building or definition that could happen, etc.

Overall my other observation is just that I don't see 5e* as a particularly strong Story Game in that unstated conceptions of agenda and lack of specifics in things like genre and tone to match up to them make me think that you could not pick up 5e, read your essay, and say you had a real shot at running what you, @clearstream, are envisaging they would play.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Contrast Rolemaster: when one of the PCs in our game suffered a crit result of a severed hand, that meant something in the fiction: he could no longer shoot his bow!

I recall imposing a similar result ONCE in a (probably Holmes Basic) D&D game to my sister, @Gilladian's character (the eponymous Gilladian the Dwarf). It was accepted basically because the situation was A) not a combat result, and B) so clearly appropriate to the situation. I think Gygax and D&D in general weren't hostile to the concept, but it was 'thin ice' as it opens up a large unregulated realm of unstructured consequences into a dungeon crawl skill test game where this kind of permanent disability kind of goes against the style of play and perhaps the agenda of the game to a degree. OTOH failing to disarm a trap is legitimately punishable by death, so "you lose a hand" didn't seem so bad (besides, a dwarf with a hook was kinda funny, apologies to anyone reading this who happens to be an amputee, I know its no joke).

Here's an example of fiction first in D&D combat resolution: in our session the weekend before last, the Epic Defender who is infused with earth power stolen from the Primordials was under an effect that, so long as he stays in contact with the ground, grants temp hp at the top of each round. In a discussion about where the PC should move to, I suggested that if he were to step up onto a plinth that sits above the floor of the building he is on, he would no longer be in contact with the ground. That suggestion was readily acceded to. So here we have fiction to mechanics (a rightward arrow, in Vincent Baker's framework).

And another example: in the same combat, a Huge Primordial Colossus tried to smash a PC (also Huge, being an Emergent Primordial in Primordial form) who had fallen into the water. The Colossus missed - I rolled a 1. The water had a current specified, that would slide the character a particular direction at the start of their next turn. The players suggested that the waves caused by the great splash of the Colossus striking and missing should amplify the effect of the current, washing the PC further down the map. I agreed with that suggestion, and we resolved the wave effect (the player failed an Acrobatics check, and so in fact the wave disturbed the current and reduced rather than increased the PC's movement at the start of the turn). Again, this is fiction to mechanics, and back to fiction.

My own view is that it's not a coincidence that I'm providing these examples from 4e - 4e has a very robust set of system tools (eg a variety of keywords; level-by-DC chart; a standardised framework for forced movement; etc) for translating fiction into mechanics and then back again. My own knowledge of 5e makes feel that it is not as robust in this respect. Perhaps 5e* adds to that robustness, but from the examples you've given I'm not seeing where or how. And as I said, I don't think this is just quibbling.

Right, so 5e doesn't even have, as a matter of rules, any specifics on playing on a 'map'. While it defines ranges and areas, there's no operationalizable mechanism for translating fiction into terms which work with that, or back again. At best the GM has to do this in an ad-hoc way. There are some optional rules which basically introduce a number of the more basic 'grid rules' from 4e, but they aren't really well-connected with the body of 5e rules. For example they don't really talk about movement in any comprehensive way, nor is there any explanation of how forced movement would work, or even a definition. So we can see that 5e's 'mechanics to fiction' process is MUCH WEAKER than 4e's! I'd say that there's another important aspect here, the lack of specificity removes certainty and thus decreases the authority of the players. In 4e the fiction is affected in very specific ways by the mechanical results of, say, using Thunderwave. This could play out with a definite degree of ambiguity in 5e, even if you play with a grid pretty consistently (IE is a give square in the AoE, well, AoE isn't defined in such terms, so its up to the GM).

My knowledge of Fate is modest, and my experience less than that. I do know that, for reasons similar to MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic which I know well, it creates controversy about the relationship of resolution to mechanics because the fiction needs to be "sytematised" - as an Aspect in Fate, as a Distinction in MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic - before it matters, and often needs to be further paid for to invoke it or include it as part of an action's resolution.

Both systems, therefore, can tend towards what Baker describes here as Case 2:

Case 1:​

​

1. When you want to describe the weather where the characters are, roll. On a success, say what the weather's like there. (On a failure, it's 76°, few clouds, with a pleasant little breeze.)​

​

2. When your character's taking strenuous action, if it's oppressively hot where your character is, you get -2 to your roll.​

​

That's boxes to cloud, then cloud to boxes.​

​

Case 2:​

​

1. When you want to give another player a die penalty, make a roll. On a success, a) say what's making life hard for their character, and b) give them a -2 to their roll.​

​

That's a) boxes to cloud, with a simultaneous b) boxes to boxes.​

​

(So, Guy: no, it doesn't count as a rightward arrow.)​

​

<snip>​

​

Rob: You seriously read that to mean that the (unmentioned) oppressive heat the character's suffering is responsible for the -2, not the successful give-a-penalty roll?​

​

How do you want me to write it so that it's rock-solid-clear that the successful give-a-penalty roll is responsible for the -2?​

​

Maybe this: When you want to give another player a die penalty, make a roll. On a success, give them a -2 to their roll. (Also, incidentally, say what's making life hard for their character.)​

​

An arrow cubes to cubes. (Also, incidentally, an arrow cubes to cloud.) Right?​

To me, the narrations of the giant pressing forward, or couching her club, look a bit like the incidental narration of what's making life hard for the character: the heavy lifting is being done by the mechanics (boxes-to-boxes) an the narration is epiphenomenal.

In Fate or MHRP, the more that (i) some fictional context for the "impose a -2 penalty check" is required as a precursor to making the check, and (ii) the more that fictional context is constrained by prior narration, the less the play will look like Baker's Case 2. In 5e D&D, no fictional context is required to impose hit point loss other than the distance requirements necessary to declare an attack with the given weapon or spell. The GM's narration of how a NPC responds to an attack is not part of those fictional constraints, at least by RAW.

The issue of being told expressly seems a bit of a red herring. In Prince Valiant the GM has extreme freedom - more than a D&D GM - to narrate what happens when a check is resolved. But that narration will then matter to subsequent resolution - eg certain narrations of what happens as a character suffers a reduction of their pool in a duel might provide the opening for an Agility or Dexterity check to wrongfoot them or disarm them or similar.

That is what makes a system "fiction first": the fiction that flows from "cycle N" feeds into the framing and resolution of "cycle N+1".

How does the giant pressing forward, or couching her club, or the 1 hp loss being a scratch, feed into the declaration and resolution of actions on subsequent rounds? This is where, to me, it seems to be purely epiphenomenal.

Well, I think there's a confusion between something which INFORMS the next action (IE the 1 hit point being a scratch clues the players/PCs that this monster has a lot hit points/is very tough, and they act accordingly) vs something which CONSTRAINS the move space, or triggers (maybe indirectly) another mechanical effect (IE if a wound is narrated as smashing my shield arm and breaking my shield in DW then I am surely not still equipped with said shield and I lose whatever benefit it provided, this would be potentially a legitimate hard move in DW). Note that IF 5e DID produce a 'lose use of your shield arm' effect, it could almost surely be handled in a totally mechanical way, though it would likely inform later fiction in most games (or maybe a CLW would cure it, this is STILL an open question after 50 years of D&D!!!!).

I don't think so. It was about what is distinctive, in 5e or 5e*, compared to (say) DW, as far as making the setting seem "real". To me this seems orthogonal to whether or not it can be played "story now"; although there are some techniques for making the setting seem "real" that are not available in story now play.

This provoked two thoughts in me.

First, the Lumpley Principle has been stated differently at different times, and those statements aren't all equivalent (either semantically or functionally). This page states two formulations. The first is the one I encountered when I first encountered The Forge: rules and their consequences only take effect when taken up and assented to by the group. The contrast, here, might be with rules of mathematics which (at least on some mainstream accounts) generate consequences even if no one has yet worked out what those are.

The second one is that systems is a means for agreeing on the content of the shared fiction. I think that is what you are meaning by it.

Anyway, on this second formulation of the principle, it does not require anything more to explain why different systems produce different experiences. They are different means.

A vehicle, we might say, is a means for getting from A to B. Using different vehicles will produce different experiences of getting from A to B. This doesn't require adding anything to our concept of a vehicle beyond what is stated in the first sentence of this paragraph. Likewise for system.

For instance, a system that allocates ownership of different elements to different participants will produce different experiences. (Contrast, say, AD&D and Burning Wheel as far as ownership of backstory elements is concerned.) A system that determines what happens next by polling the participants, or inviting them to bid, will obviously produce a different play experience from one which determines it by rolling on a chart or one that determines it by allowing one privileged participant to decide. Etc.

Right, honestly even the first statement of the LP seems to produce the same conclusion. I mean 'rules and their consequences' are certainly a key concern of almost ANY game text (I think something like PACE might close to maximally decouple these considerations, but even in THAT game rules govern when and where consequences are to be applied, even if their nature and scope is pretty much unregulated).

 

[clearstream]

If the agenda is stated in meta-terms rather than by reference to the content or tone of the fiction - eg play to find out what happens or always begin and end with the fiction - that puts demands on techniques too. You can't realise the first of those two agendas using a system of GM fiat or GM pre-authorship of the major events of play.

"You’ll make plans, yes. You’ll make preparations. But once play begins, it’s your job to follow where the players lead, where the dice lead, and where the fiction leads." I've never found pre-authorship an obstacle to playing to find out. It's unwillingness to let it burn, more.

You can't realise the second of those two agendas if key elements of your resolution system do not take the state of the fiction as an input, but are conditioned purely on other mechanical states of affairs.

Conditioned purely? Where that is so, are you not really discussing an encapsulated mechanism?

 

[clearstream]

Right, so 5e doesn't even have, as a matter of rules, any specifics on playing on a 'map'. While it defines ranges and areas, there's no operationalizable mechanism for translating fiction into terms which work with that, or back again. At best the GM has to do this in an ad-hoc way. There are some optional rules which basically introduce a number of the more basic 'grid rules' from 4e, but they aren't really well-connected with the body of 5e rules. For example they don't really talk about movement in any comprehensive way, nor is there any explanation of how forced movement would work, or even a definition. So we can see that 5e's 'mechanics to fiction' process is MUCH WEAKER than 4e's! I'd say that there's another important aspect here, the lack of specificity removes certainty and thus decreases the authority of the players. In 4e the fiction is affected in very specific ways by the mechanical results of, say, using Thunderwave. This could play out with a definite degree of ambiguity in 5e, even if you play with a grid pretty consistently (IE is a give square in the AoE, well, AoE isn't defined in such terms, so its up to the GM).

5e has some strong mechanisms for system to fiction, whether folk are aware of and use them much is up for debate. But do you have a sense that DM doing that translation should be discounted? You say ad-hoc, but this was the point of FK: that the "ad-hoc" would lead to better results than the prescribed.

Well, I think there's a confusion between something which INFORMS the next action (IE the 1 hit point being a scratch clues the players/PCs that this monster has a lot hit points/is very tough, and they act accordingly) vs something which CONSTRAINS the move space, or triggers (maybe indirectly) another mechanical effect (IE if a wound is narrated as smashing my shield arm and breaking my shield in DW then I am surely not still equipped with said shield and I lose whatever benefit it provided, this would be potentially a legitimate hard move in DW). Note that IF 5e DID produce a 'lose use of your shield arm' effect, it could almost surely be handled in a totally mechanical way, though it would likely inform later fiction in most games (or maybe a CLW would cure it, this is STILL an open question after 50 years of D&D!!!!).

Not really. The lingering injuries say what cures them. Often that's regenerate.

 

[clearstream]

I think here we need to state that 'narrate the results' was not clearly stated by 5e to mean 'in fictional terms', at least that is a reasonably position taken by many. So we can take it as such, but I would consider this an independent extension to the sense of the rules text, not a corollary of your originally proposed 'say something meaningful'.

I don't agree on that. It seems likely to me that the designers intended it to go to the fiction. I find that "say something meaningful" reinforces it nicely.

I accept that it means it ENDS with the fiction. I think we need to be careful to avoid the situation (very common in D&D) where the next assertion doesn't reference that fiction. That is we need to form our process in such a way that (IMHO) it strongly encourages or even requires, in a procedural and non-optional sense, that the next 'move' be made in fiction. This is one of the reasons DW so strongly emphasizes talking in terms of fiction at the table (various parts of the principles restate elements of this). There is always the danger that fiction can become secondary to mechanics, and become sort of just a 'pro forma' or even be elided entirely. I would ask how your 'Story 5e' proposes to avoid that.

Fiction-first 5e, rather than story-now 5e I think. If that's what you mean by story? There's no mystery: it avoids it by agreeing to avoid it.

Overall my other observation is just that I don't see 5e* as a particularly strong Story Game in that unstated conceptions of agenda and lack of specifics in things like genre and tone to match up to them make me think that you could not pick up 5e, read your essay, and say you had a real shot at running what you, @clearstream, are envisaging they would play.

I like this criticism. I'll think about whether I can write up my 5e* interpretation in a better way.