If the authorship isn't being used, then we don't have pre-authorship of the major events of play, do we?
D&D 5E 5e* - D&D-now
Right.
I mean, consider all the NPCs (kobolds, goblins, some orcs and hobgoblins and even gnolls, not to mention the many many villagers and townsfolk) with 2 hp. A 1 hp blow is just short of killing them - hardly a "mere scratch". But whatever exactly it does to them, that can be healed by the weakest possible healing effect in the game (ie restoration of 1 hp). So whatever the fiction is that is narrated around that 1 hp blow, I don't see how it is feeding back into resolution in any meaningful fashion.
The contrast with RQ or RM is stark.
Your hp example seems similar to what I described, upthread, as "D&Ders' code" - ie describing a scratch is a conventional way for the GM to signal that only a small proportion of hp were knocked off by the attack.
But the scratch is just colour. You can't do anything with it, at least by 5e RAW as I understand them,
Another contrast: in my 4e game, when the PCs went purple worm hunting, they first took a whole lot of lime (? I think it was) with them, so that if they got swallowed it would help them neutralise the stomach acid. I just did a search, and here is the actual play report (which confirms that it was lime):
There's a lot of rightward arrows there:
- The lime partially neutralises the acid, reducing the OG damage;
- The dirt and rock in the worm's gullet allows conjuring up a pillar of earth, which is a power with a specific fiction-based requirement;
- The Rod being an artefact of Law allows redirecting the elemental chaos, among other things changing who takes a certain amount of damage;
- The worm's mouth being forced open establishes line of sight, permitting a teleport.
This is also illustrates what I was trying to get at earlier: whether or not a particular approach to a system actually exemplifies a principle like "fiction first" depends on what the system actually provides for in its technical details.
At least in respect of the comparison that you are drawing here, DW and 4e are as different from one another as 4e is from RQ or RM.
In DW, fiction is everything as you say.
in RM and RQ, the mechanics aspire to "manage" and mathematise all fictional inputs and outputs, so that (eg) in RM the crit result tells you that you suffer a -10 bruise (which is both fiction, and a mechanical specification of it) or that you bleed at 5 concussion hits per round (again, both fiction - you're bleeding badly - and mechanical specification). And the jumping resolution chart tells you what the bonus is for (eg) having a springboard to leap from. This is why, in RM, there can by no real "say 'yes'" - every spell casting, for instance, no matter how trivial, demands a check because in the fiction that check corresponds to the possibility of the magical forces escaping the caster's control.
In 4e, the fiction is often "loose" in relation to the mechanics, which is more like DW. But the mechanics have all the referents you mention that set up the parameters and constraints and minimum implications for the fiction that results from the mechanics.
I would say that DW is "fiction first", that RQ/RM are not (neither are they fiction last; fiction and mechanics happen simultaneously), and that 4e sometimes is (as per my purple worm example) but sometimes is not (eg when it comes to the ranger's turn, and the player just Twin Strikes the most dangerous opponent on the map).
I don't know what an encapsulated mechanism is.
But here's an example of a key element of a resolution system that is conditioned purely on other mechanical states of affairs: basic T&T combat resolution.
Another example: this can be an issue in a BW Duel of Wits, where for many of the "moves" the resolution does not depend on or change based on the narration of the character's action; so that the narration that the game tells us is a necessary precursor to rolling the dice becomes a "voluntary" act of the sort that Vincent Baker talks about when describing In a Wicked Age.
Another example: a player in MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic is meant to narrate how their PC incorporates a Scene Distinction into their dice pool, but nothing about the resolution process will falter if they don't. They can just add the die to their pool and roll away. Another example of a system that, in this respect, permits "lazy play" (in Baker's sense) no matter how much one might wish that play begin and end with the fiction.
I don't know if any of these is an illustration of an encapsulated mechanism.
For my part, what would make 5e* clearer - and hence might also address @AbdulAlhazred's point about whether a GM, reading your essay, would have a real shot at running it as you envisage - would be to provide actual examples of what beginning and ending with the fiction looks like, that illustrate how a GM is determining (out of combat) whether or not to call for a check, and how narration, in combat, is actually feeding back into action declaration and resolution.
I don't understand how what you describe here is consistent with the 5e D&D, RAW, systems for resolving combat and spell casting.
By RAW, a player casts a spell and this can trigger a roll - an attack roll by the caster player, or a saving throw by another participant's character, are the most common ones.
By RAW, a successful attack roll triggers a damage roll demands a change in the hp tally, and then the action moves via the action economy and initiative sequence rules, and then if the next participant declares an attack they make a roll.
I'm extremely familiar with these processes from other versions of D&D (B/X, AD&D, 4e) and in the 5e RAW see nothing that is fundamentally different, in the processes presented or the descriptions of them. Where, in 5e*, does the fiction factor in?
I don't know what you mean by better or worse. The Lumpley Principle says nothing about what means should be adopted. Contra your post, the Lumpley principle does not even talk about better or worse in terms of securing agreement. It only tells us that system is a means for securing agreement (second formulation), and that rules are not self-realising but need to be operationalised via social processes (first formulation).
Among some people, with certain preferences and expectations, perhaps the most reliable means for securing agreement on the fiction is to have one authority figure say what it is. Perhaps the same group of people would have the most fun deciding on the fiction by bidding. The Lumpley Principle does not, and does not purport, to say anything about what those people should do.
If by "better or worse" you mean better or worse at producing play experience XYZ then the Lumpley Principle says nothing about that either. But Vincent Baker has said a great deal about that. I've repeatedly cited and quoted from some of his discussions, which are not abstract speculations at the level of principle but concrete diagnoses based on experience as a RPG player and designer.
To add to @AbdulAlhazred's post, I think Baker is pretty clear that he's talking about the things said by participants that trigger responses from other participants. Statements that establish situations and prompt action declarations; statements that declare actions; statements uttered in the course of resolving those declared actions, including statements of outcomes and consequences.
In his example of one character trying to get away from another who is trying to shoot them, he says
What do the rules never, ever, ever require us to say? The details of our characters' actual actions. It's like one minute both our characters are poised to act, and the next minute my character's stuck in the room and your character's shot her, but we never see my character scrambling to open the window and we never hear your character's gun go off.
In standard D&D combat we see the characters on both sides enter the fray, and we see some of them fall and others emerge victorious - but the rules never require us to say what is happening to them. We don't see how a character is worn down. One can, as an act of supererogation, add narration as to what is happening - D&D GMs have been doing that for decades - but most of the time it is mere colour, in that it does not provide a basis for subsequent action declarations. It makes no difference to the parameters for action declarations to say "It takes 1 hp of damage; it's got a lot left" or to say "Your attack barely scratches it." The latter is more colourful, but doesn't shape subsequent play any differently.
Of course a to hit roll triggering a damage roll is cubes to cubes! I mean, it's there in the canonical example: see step 5 of the first of Baker's 3 example resolution systems. We look at one cue - the attack die - and that tells us to do something with more cues - the damage dice - and then something further with a different cue - the adjustment of the hp tally.
In a game like RM, cubes and clouds are very tightly correlated - eg if a character is bleeding at 5 hits per round, there are a very specific range of spells needed to heal that wound. That doesn't make it cubes-to-cubes anyway. At nearly every point we know what is happening in the fiction, and that generates fictional positioning that can then factor into action declarations and resolution - eg "You're bleeding; I'll stitch your wound shut" <make Second Aid check>; or the GM says to the player of the character under an invisibility spell "You're bleeding; once you step away from where your blood is pooling, it will stop being invisible and everyone will be able to see it".
Narrating the 1 hp loss as a bare scratch doesn't establish any fictional positioning, at least in standard D&D play.
I don't follow the stuff about texts. "Fiction first" is not a property of a text. It's a property of a particular RPG considered as a type; or of an episode of RPG play that tokens that type.
As far as the constraint from Hack and Slash passed into the fiction: the most obvious would flow from failure results. Eg Your sword breaks on the giant snake's scaly hide seems to me to be a pretty immediate change in fictional position.
On a 7-9, and on some 10+ results, the GM gets to narrate the enemy's attack. If the enemy is an ogre, then this could include that the ogre's blow (which has the Forceful tag: DW p 272) knocks them over the cliff edge. That's a change in fictional position that (most likely, I would say) leads to a Defy Danger roll. Or it could knock them back, meaning they have to Defy Danger - the ogre's club - to get back in close enough to attack. Unless, of course, they have a Reach-tagged weapon - more fictional positioning.
On a 10+ result where the player chooses only to deal damage while avoiding the enemies attack, then we get cubes-to-cubes with no new rightward arrows resulting from the leftward one that establishes (in the fiction) a successful attack. But even here there is a fairly clear contrast with D&D - DW has a very narrow hp range (eg a dragon has 16 hp: p 302) and armour provides damage reduction, so it is much easier to treat rolled damage results as representing relatively light blows (eg 1 hp) or very heavy ones (eg 10 hp), and so the leftward arrows are generated more along the lines of RQ or Classic Traveller than in D&D, where a damage roll of 10 hp can sometimes still be a completely superficial scratch (eg if rolled against a dragon that has 100 hp remaining even after the damage is deducted).
The last paragraph has provoked a slightly tangential thought, which is why are you using 5e D&D as your chassis if those are your goals for play?
My non-tangential thought is that I don't know of a RPG that doesn't satisfy the characterisations you set out here. In T&T the combats may at least sometimes be motivated, and the GM can narrate the antagonists saying things to the PC. In my experience of RM, nearly all combats were motivated and as the GM I would frequently narrate my antagonists saying things to the PCs. The same is true of 4e D&D, Cortex+ Heroic, Classic Traveller, and Burning Wheel.
But these are not all the same game. They are not all fiction first all of the time. If 5e* boils down to As the GM, periodically remind the players why the ingame situation matters then I don't see how it really bears upon processes of action resolution, or even the basic cycle of play, at all.
This does not seem the same to me, at least as you describe it. The key words being "I", where "I" is the GM who then sets the DC.
In BW the obstacle is established via a set of descriptors, and the GM does not have any discretion to decide whether or not both success and failure are possible. This is why BW is able to tell players: if you don't like the current content or trajectory of the fiction, change it! (By using your Wises, your Circles etc.)
Perhaps one could introduce a rule, analogous to Wises, into 5e D&D. (Though I think there are features of the system which would somewhat push against that.) But to the best of my knowledge it is not there in RAW.
That's also before we get to failure results for the Wises check, which in the BW context contribute significantly to the nature of the experience. (More on failure below.)
As per my earlier post, this does not seem canonical to me, as we now have the possibility that a player is no longer deciding what their PC thinks and feels. (Which is also something that you seemed to include as part of 5e* in your OP.)
In BW, the Mending test is resolved like any other. So if it fails, the GM is required to narrate the consequences of failure having primary regard to the intent and secondary regard to the task. And in BW, every time a blow is struck in Fight! there is a chance of damage to armour (armour works by making a test: roll armour dice against Ob 1 + attacker's Versus Armour rating; 1s on the armour dice signify damage).
Those are elements of the BW context that mark the difference from the D&D play experience. In BW, the need for repairs is routine; but when the dice are rolled for Aramina's Mending it's as suspenseful as any other check. I don't see how that is the case for finding out whether or not the repairs take an hour or a day.
More fundamentally, I have never read an account of actual D&D play, nor myself had a D&D experience, that resembled what I've described. I've had experiences in RM that come close to the armour aspect (not the Evard's Tower aspect) but they break down because RM does not have as elegant a framework for either armour damage or repairs: it is held back by the clunkiness induced by its simulationist aspirations, and by its simulationist-induced lack of a general framework for narrating effective failures.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
I'm not convinced that Dave Arneson, would put it that way, however. I think he might point out to you that the 'Braunstein' format they were using was not a wargame at all, in any sense. It was operational simulation, done for (AFAIK) entertainment. Any individual instance of it might have more or less 'game' (mechanics and structure) injected, depending on the subject matter, but IMHO what Dave did was take role playing and open-ended operational simulation, and GRAFT ON some additional structure in the form of rules taken from places like Chainmail to produce the familiar D&D TTRPG.
It is even more complex than that really. Kriegspiel itself began as an early TT wargame, much like minis games (IE Chainmail) back in the earlier part of the 19th Century. This was recognized by the Prussian military as possibly useful in their training of officers/staff (it was invented by a former military officer). Soon they discovered that the rigid formalisms of stands of troops and fixed sorts of moves and such was too rigid to provide a useful degree of realistic training as such. Referees were added, and much of the rules structure was discarded, and the game evolved over time into 'Free' Kriegspiel exercises, which are much closer in structure to a Braunstein.
BOTH the more formal miniatures wargame strain AND the more generalized operational simulation/'Braunstein' type of play spread from there (and there was already some existing wargaming traditions unrelated to early Kriegspiel). Dave Arneson really represents a RECONNECTION of these disparate lines of development, with the product being predictably a fusion of rules, process, and conceptual framework drawing from both.
My point is, there was no 'evolution through the 60s' of an idea of open-ended play. Open ended play was invented IN THE 1870s at the Prussian General Staff!!! The innovation was really the thematics of FRPG, and the conceptual framework of 'parties' and 'adventures' and such which was really a rather original concept that Dave came up with in c1973. Games like Chainmail, though more rigid than Braunsteins and thus D&D, also drew from the same 19th Century tradition, and a degree of openness ALWAYS existed. In fact the development of Avalon Hill style totally systematized games is the more recent development which only happened in the 1950's, perhaps under the influence of parlor games.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Right, this is why in my own game design the process of constructing a 'check' and resolving it very explicitly binds to the fiction. The GM has to decide what 'aspect' governs the check, and this translates to a knack, or perhaps some knowledge or use of a tool (basically attacks fall under tool use). The players get a chance to do things like utilize a practice in order to alter the aspect, but practices bind to mechanics purely in terms of description (IE fiction) plus keywords, so you cannot simply state by rote that you turn any old situation into an Arcana check simply because you know a practice which could do that, you have to refer back to the fiction and explain how this practice use is justified in this situation.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
I do not believe you can separate, in a meaningful way, between 'principles' and 'mechanics', it is all of a whole. I mean, I think you can classify some things as one and some as the other, but I think they are, in effect, often very similar. A principle might be constitutive, it tells you a thing to do, like "draw maps, leave holes", or it might be restrictive "never name your move." These principles ARE RULES, they may not be very 'mechanical' in structure, and they may have referents either in cues or in fiction, but they are certainly very similar to what you call 'mechanics'. Now, I've taken to using that term in the way you seem to use it, but maybe I regret it to a degree, as refactoring the debate into a discussion of cues and fiction seems to show us how fundamentally anything that tells us about playing is a RULE. I would state that RPG texts contain Rules, Advice, and Fiction/Color. That might be a fruitful parsing to explore (maybe there are other categories and subcategories, I am not trying to be canonical here).
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
This is why I tried to draw the distinction between DRIVING and INFORMING. In 5e fiction largely INFORMS mechanics, it serves as the structure upon which basic motivations and decisions hang (IE will I enter into combat against X or will I try to recruit him as an ally). Once decisions are made, D&D (and 5e being typical) largely drive at least COMBAT decisions almost purely via the mechanics. Given 5e's loose and murky tiebacks from mechanics to fiction it can often be pretty hard to even KNOW what the fiction is, but you can still go ahead and execute the next mechanical action! When fiction DRIVES mechanics, the linkage is causal and strong. The fiction of iron hard scales CAUSED the fighter's attempt at Hack & Slash to be adjudged ineffective, meaning his player had to come up with a different option, which was again supplied purely by fiction.
In AD&D, for example, it isn't at all clear how this kind of thing could happen. The player would have to assess, via knowledge of attack charts and such plus translating some fictional clue back into mechanics, that a melee attack was non-viable, and then either query the DM, or perhaps directly engage some special mechanics in the Monster Manual that grant a way to make an attack against the creature's unarmored mouth (certain monsters have these kinds of things). Certainly it is PRIMARILY driven by mechanics, the bad guy's AC value caused the attack to be impossible, and some special rule opened up an alternative. It is granted that there is an associated fiction. It is just questionable that it even needs to be referred to at the table!
I think the other hang up is, nobody is ever positing that trad D&D doesn't have rightward arrows, it does! Every RPG has them, I think it is a definition of RPG. Still, AD&D, for example, is not necessarily 'fiction first'. The action is embedded IN a fiction, but in a lot of cases that fiction could be a pretty thin veneer! Your typical dungeon illustrates exactly that, the important constraints are the mechanics of exploration turns, effects of darkness, wandering monster check rules, and the formal dungeon map structure with associated typical features. Dungeons definitely depart into more fictional territory when they have idiosyncratic features, or if players attempt unconventional actions, but there's a very strongly mechanistic process in place that is somewhat loosely coupled to fiction (or you can view it as there is a lot of fiction, but it is of a structured and predetermined variety).
Again, DW shows how fiction first/story games differ. The 'map' of a dungeon will have 'holes in it' (canonically), so it is just a loose description of what might be present, or partially describing some elements. Due to the lack of any sort of mechanistic "boxes to boxes" means to resolve ANYTHING in DW, that dungeon will be 'explored' by a process of the players describing their moves, and the GM describing outcomes, or even asking the players to supply fiction. The outcomes are arbitrated by checks, but all those do is tell us if the PCs are getting into more hot water or if they are progressing in a way that achieves their ends (or a mix of both). It is a very immediate kind of fiction where the rules are really secondary (many moves for instance don't trigger any dice, they are just fiction to fiction).
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