At the Intersection of Skilled Play, System Intricacy, Prep, and Story Now

[pemerton]

How much Force can be applied before we stop being able to call it Story Now and move to Story Before?

I don't see the Force in @AbdulAlhazred's scenario.

To elaborate: suppose that the space station is doomed because its reactor is melting down. And suppose on of the (Traveller) PCs has Engineering-4. Well, that PC clearly - by the game rules - has the technical skill and knowledge to hand failing reactors. And so the only way to ensure the doom would be to block/veto attempts to repair the reactor. That would be force, absolutely.

But suppose that none of the PCs has Engineering skill? Maybe it's a group of Rogues and Diplomats who have been stranded there.

Or suppose that the doom is due to failing food or fuel supplies - Traveller has no player-side mechanic to try and make such supplies available, so if the GM decides, as part of establishing backstory and subsequent framing, that no supplies are coming, then that's that. No force is needed to maintain those elements of the fiction.

That was why, in my 4e example, I contrasted Heroic tier PCs - who have no abilities to do anything about the Dusk War - and Epic tier PCs, who do.

I don't know what the source of doom was in the space station scenario, but I can easily see it being there without requiring any force. Just backstory and framing.

As to the question of how much of the fiction needs to be up for grabs if it is to be story now and not story before, I think there's no concrete answer here. It's certainly not about quantity (if that even makes sense) nor about content in the abstract. It's more about the capacity of the players to exercise protagonism in relation to the thematically salient fiction. In some RPGs and some scenarios that will be tightly focused, in others it will be more open-ended.

Another example I just thought of would be an Arthurian RPG where the core legend is pre-scripted (maybe like the Great Pendragon Campaign? I know of it but have never actually looked at it). There obviously are approaches to that which would be Right to Dream and not story now, and I think Pendragon by default probably encourages such approaches.

But in a game in which we all know that Arthur and Mordred will have a confrontation at a certain time and place, with a certain consequence, there could still be story now play. What choice does the player make for their PC? What alliances do they try and forge? Whom do they betray? And of course the GM has to make certain choices, like not allowing the PCs and Mordred into the same scene, if that means the former getting a chance to kill the latter. That's relatively pro-active scene-framing, but needn't vitiate story-now play. I could imagine myself getting into the game I've just described fairly easily.

 

[kenada]

At least within Edwards's framework set in motion and allowed to operate is a sub-set of "right to dream", namely, "purist for system". Trad and OC/trad would also count as "right to dream", but within the "high concept" sub-set rather than the purist-for-system sub-set.

I’d always lumped those styles into Step On Up because of the focus on challenges and balance, but I was mistaken (for the reasons outlined). I’m glad to have my thinking confirmed here. It provides clarity for what I’ve been trying to do with my homebrew system.

 

[pemerton]

I’d always lumped those styles into Step On Up because of the focus on challenges and balance, but I was mistaken (for the reasons outlined). I’m glad to have my thinking confirmed here. It provides clarity for what I’ve been trying to do with my homebrew system.

Glad to be of some assistance in providing clarity!

I don't think it's any sort of secret that Edwards personally was not enamoured of the "high concept" approach. Despite that, I think he tries to fit it into his framework. But he thinks there is a tendency towards incoherence - the same one that you're noting (though maybe you don't regard it as incoherence - regardless of that, it's the same phenomenon that you're both seeing). The tendency results from the use of challenge-oriented techniques (points-based, or "choose from a list to build combos", PC building; D&D-ish combat; etc) in a game where the main goal seems to be to experience and enjoy a series of story beats. If you let the challenge really have its head, the story beats aren't guaranteed; conversely, to guarantee the story beats you have to make the challenge stuff not really count.

Edwards talks about various ways of doing that last thing. I think that 5e D&D has achieved it, to a significant extent, by putting a pretty solid "minimum effectiveness" floor under the PC build options, and by making the maths of combat pretty forgiving for the players unless the GM moves into territory that the game clearly calls out as hardcore. That's also why we see so many complaints about 5e being "easy mode": that's a consequence of deliberate design to support high concept play using recognisably D&D-esque tools without having to resort to GM fudging as crudely as post-DL AD&D depended upon.

I hope this post makes sense and helps preserve the clarity rather than obscure it!

 

[kenada]

Glad to be of some assistance in providing clarity!

I don't think it's any sort of secret that Edwards personally was not enamoured of the "high concept" approach. Despite that, I think he tries to fit it into his framework. But he thinks there is a tendency towards incoherence - the same one that you're noting (though maybe you don't regard it as incoherence - regardless of that, it's the same phenomenon that you're both seeing). The tendency results from the use of challenge-oriented techniques (points-based, or "choose from a list to build combos", PC building; D&D-ish combat; etc) in a game where the main goal seems to be to experience and enjoy a series of story beats. If you let the challenge really have its head, the story beats aren't guaranteed; conversely, to guarantee the story beats you have to make the challenge stuff not really count.

Edwards talks about various ways of doing that last thing. I think that 5e D&D has achieved it, to a significant extent, by putting a pretty solid "minimum effectiveness" floor under the PC build options, and by making the maths of combat pretty forgiving for the players unless the GM moves into territory that the game clearly calls out as hardcore. That's also why we see so many complaints about 5e being "easy mode": that's a consequence of deliberate design to support high concept play using recognisably D&D-esque tools without having to resort to GM fudging as crudely as post-DL AD&D depended upon.

I hope this post makes sense and helps preserve the clarity rather than obscure it!

It does, and I think I’d agree regarding incoherence. I’ve long conflated Purist for System with games like GURPS and HERO, but that’s not necessarily the case if Purist for System can be about setting things in motion and allowing them to operate. That’s what “campaign as experiment” is about and what I’m trying to do in my homebrew system.

 

[pemerton]

I’ve long conflated Purist for System with games like GURPS and HERO, but that’s not necessarily the case if Purist for System can be about setting things in motion and allowing them to operate.

Is you homebrew system in the neighbourhood of something like Stars Without Number?

When I think of purist for system RPGs, I think that the core is that system reliably answers questions of what happened? without the need for a lot of ad hoc participant intervention. (GM-decides is obviously a system in one sense of that world, but can't count as one in the context of purism-for-system.)

What counts as the what, though, can be pretty varied. Contrast RQ's "what happened when I hit them with a spear?" to Traveller's "what do we see when we jump 2 hexes into the next sector?"

Most systems requires some ad hoc intervention at some points - eg Classic Traveller has mechanics to determine patron encounters, but the referee still has to decide what the task is that the patron wants undertaken. And it also encourages the GM to make up special worlds as well as using the mechanical system of world generation. In RQ, the GM has to make a lot of decisions about scene-framing, immediate backstory, etc.

Those intervention points are often where the opportunity arises to drift away from right-to-dream play, if some other agenda informs the decision-making.

 

[Fenris-77]

When I think of purist for system RPGs, I think that the core is that system reliably answers questions of what happened? without the need for a lot of ad hoc participant intervention. (GM-decides is obviously a system in one sense of that world, but can't count as one in the context of purism-for-system.)

What counts as the what, though, can be pretty varied. Contrast RQ's "what happened when I hit them with a spear?" to Traveller's "what do we see when we jump 2 hexes into the next sector?"

I think I know what you mean here, but could you float a couple of examples for the sake of clarity? For example, I'm not at all sure that binary pass/fail systems (like skills in D&D for example) pass that particular smell test (but I'm sure). Anyway, I'd a clearer picture of how correct or incorrect my assumptions are here before I weigh in.

 

[kenada]

Is you homebrew system in the neighbourhood of something like Stars Without Number?

Worlds Without Number, but actually, yeah. I’ve been running WWN, but I find its GM-side mechanics to be lacking in ways important to what I want to do.

The system started as an attempt to graft some of the things I do like from WWN back onto OSE, but things are taking on a life of their own. Skills, for example, aren’t proficiencies or representative of anything but your character’s ability to bring their background and past experiences to bear when performing actions (something you do to overcome an obstacle).

Alas, I’ve spent more time on refining the core so far (and converting the OSE classes to the new system) than I have on the GM-side stuff, which is just some concepts and ideas. What I want is something that functions more broadly for maintaining a “living world” without requiring a bunch of fiddly stuff and scaling up and down to various types (and scales) of factions and projects.

When I think of purist for system RPGs, I think that the core is that system reliably answers questions of what happened? without the need for a lot of ad hoc participant intervention. (GM-decides is obviously a system in one sense of that world, but can't count as one in the context of purism-for-system.)

What counts as the what, though, can be pretty varied. Contrast RQ's "what happened when I hit them with a spear?" to Traveller's "what do we see when we jump 2 hexes into the next sector?"

Most systems requires some ad hoc intervention at some points - eg Classic Traveller has mechanics to determine patron encounters, but the referee still has to decide what the task is that the patron wants undertaken. And it also encourages the GM to make up special worlds as well as using the mechanical system of world generation. In RQ, the GM has to make a lot of decisions about scene-framing, immediate backstory, etc.

Those intervention points are often where the opportunity arises to drift away from right-to-dream play, if some other agenda informs the decision-making.

My biggest worry is accidentally drifting play towards Story Now, but I’ve got an enumerated a set of principles in an attempt to keep myself honest.

 

[chaochou]

That looks like a straight forward story game. It looks very much like a more constrained and prompt driven version of Fiasco. It has no conflict resolution other than consensus.

It's also a game with a fixed start and fixed end which nonetheless produces nothing but 'story now' play driven by the premises introduced by the players into the situation.

 

[pemerton]

When I think of purist for system RPGs, I think that the core is that system reliably answers questions of what happened? without the need for a lot of ad hoc participant intervention. (GM-decides is obviously a system in one sense of that world, but can't count as one in the context of purism-for-system.)

What counts as the what, though, can be pretty varied. Contrast RQ's "what happened when I hit them with a spear?" to Traveller's "what do we see when we jump 2 hexes into the next sector?"

I think I know what you mean here, but could you float a couple of examples for the sake of clarity? For example, I'm not at all sure that binary pass/fail systems (like skills in D&D for example) pass that particular smell test (but I'm sure). Anyway, I'd a clearer picture of how correct or incorrect my assumptions are here before I weigh in.

I think RQ and RM combat are my poster children here.

In RM, likewise when a skill is used, the system tells us what happened - eg did the speech move the crowd a lot, or a little, or not at all? RM uses various look-up tables for this.

Classic Traveller can be approached in a purist for system fashion - its skill system is more discrete than RM's (ie each skill tends to be its own little thing) and it doesn't have all the look-up tables, so sometimes the GM has to establish the "what happens" by extrapolation from the established fiction plus the roll. (I'm thinking of some social checks here, and some vacc suit and vehicle checks.)

Burning Wheel has strong purist-for-system technology in it - eg in Fight!, we know who struck when, and which body part they hit, and how serious the wound was - and the PC build is every bit as intricate as RM, RQ or Traveller; but it departs at key points, because it relies on the GM to frame and to narrate most consequences of failure, and in neither case is this to be done by extrapolation from the established fiction. Rather, it's to be done in a fashion that will pull the player into protagonistic and thematic engagement.

A system that establishes success or failure, but relies on the participants to fill in the details of what that means in the fiction, won't do the job. What counts as details here is a bit up for grabs - RQ tells you you got hit in the arm, while RM also tells you if you were bruised or which bone is broken etc - but I think D&D hit points are an example of no details and, in most cases, you successfully pick the lock counts as sufficient detail.

 

[pemerton]

@Fenris-77

I realise that my post doesn't expressly address your question about the D&D skill system. My tentative conjecture is that - at least in its basic presentation - the 5e D&D system doesn't establish sufficient parameters around when a skill check is triggered, and what follows from succeeding or failing, to support purist-for-system play. I suspect that there are individual tables that tighten that up in their own play, however.