D&D General Supposing D&D is gamist, what does that mean?

[AbdulAlhazred]

Free Kriegsspiel, as actually practised by the Prussian army, has fairly clear success conditions beyond the merely aesthetic. (EDIT: that condition being, do our officers win wars?)

That's one reason why, like you, I find the FKR nomenclature a bit puzzling. The FKR games, as I understand them, seem to emphasise high concept simulation, with an emphasis on setting, and the principle resolution mechanism being Drama (in Tweet's sense) flowing from the GM's adjudication of the fiction.

Right, as I understand it, they never actually got rid of most of the rules that existed in the early Kriegsspiel (which was a pretty classic TT wargame with minis and such). They simply empowered their refs to refs to use more judgment and to rule on things such that certain types of outcomes could arise (IE if you want to train your staff to handle a situation where the enemy breaks through your lines, you MAKE THAT HAPPEN by making a ruling which creates that situation. Prussian FK DID need to be realistic in terms of the experience of being a Prussian officer at war. As you say, the criteria being "we trained, and when we went to war our officers did their jobs well." Apparently, judging by Austria and France, they were pretty successful! lol.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Sure. My overall philosophy with designing stuff is very similar to that expounded by the developers of the game Strike! (which is also inspired by 4e as it happens). So the concept is to just focus on what really matters and make the granularity of what the system deals with in any given 'concern' is as low resolution as it can be and still do its work. The idea is that this puts the focus on what is important, and reduces distractions significantly. Strike! for instance replaced the d20 with a d6, which has the effect of making rampant modifiers impossible, the smallest one you can have is roughly on a par with what Advantage gives you in HoML or 5e, and a +2 is a giant bonus, while +3 basically means "you almost cannot fail." I don't think +3 even exists in Strike!. Honestly, I also feel like, for most purposes if there's a bunch of things that would give you advantage, then why is this even a check? In combat things IMHO shouldn't really ever BE that lopsided, assuming your opponent is at all competent we can assume they're doing something to help themselves. Again, once things get to something like "You are unseen, and flanking, and a rogue, and the guy is surprised" I feel like the situation isn't really a fight anymore.

Well, there's a couple of things in there: first, even if someone generically agrees with you, in a fight that involves multiple participants, that doesn't mean fiat is going to be appealing.

And again, if you're going to tell me "Once someone is flanked, nothing else matters" then I think that's because you're putting too much heft on being flanked.

The model I contrast Advantage/Disadvantage with is Shadow of the Demon Lord Boons and Banes. When you get a Boon or a Bane there, it gives you a D6 bonus or penalty to your D20 roll--but if you have multiples, you just roll them all and take the best. At some point, obviously, this becomes frequently indistinguishable from just having a + or - 6, but it takes a while there, and it doesn't add significantly to the overhead for most people, and at least the first few are still getting you somewhere (and this is a system where the difficulty caps pretty low, too; you never need more than a 25 as I recall).

Basically, I'm not a fan of a system telling me that making any effort beyond the first breakpoint is pointless, and I'm not going to find "it doesn't matter until the mod is relatively huge" a virtue. That doesn't mean the 3e "search for a dozen different small modifiers" is a virtue, but the swing in A/D is a bridge way too far the other way.

 

[niklinna]

The thought experiment my question is intended to guide toward is this

1. I could begin with a pre-authored game-world, such as Stonetop, that I count vivid and inhabitable
2. In an alternative world, I could begin with a tabula-rasa, and my group will author our game-world on the fly. Here I mean tabula-rasa with utmost sincerity! No sneaking in of any preliminary sketches. Nothing about the world is pre-authored. It is perforce the case that no adjectives can be reliably assigned to it by me, thus inviting each reader to make their own judgement (as you do.)

These are dichotomous so that there is no world in which it is possible for me to begin with both a pre-authored game-world and a tabula-rasa at the same time. I could begin with those things at different times, or with different groups, but that is to invent a different thought-experiment and abandon the one I proposed.

My question proposes resisting that dichotomy. If we were to avoid either extreme, to find a balance, where might that lie? Can there be some pre-authoring mixed with some authoring-on-the-fly? Might it matter who does the pre-authoring in those respective timeframes? Is any amount of pre-authoring - even an iota - a curse? Or is there a way to grasp the pre-authored game-world that dissolves the tension - so that we need not choose a point on a line, but make decisions about each independently? All of these thoughts and others like them are intended to be invited by my question.

While your 2 points above are a dichotomy, (1) is not an extreme; it's a spectrum. The point opposite (2) would be a pre-authored game-world in which all details and the story were fully specified and play would have no effect. That is, (1) is already the area where you can find or create balance.

As for where that might lie, you've left out the thing that matters—which is, what matters to the players (including the GM). What issues do they want to explore? That's where you leave the blanks. Or make or find them, if using pre-authored material, by deliberate editing or seeking areas that haven't been fleshed out. Detail the rest in advance as much as you like—or fill that in during play too, since it doesn't matter so much. Unless the point of play is to experience a detailed world, rather than explore values in tension/conflict.... Or perhaps you want to do both! It's possible to have both, without Edwards's dreaded incoherence, as long as you're clear about what you're doing, when.

Any pre-established info is both blessing and curse, in that it provides a necessary departure point for exploration (you gotta start somewhere), but, since it's where you start, also discourages exploration (since you're already there). But there's more kinds of exploration than trekking to unknown lands, of course. The metaphor is unfortunately liable to taken as literal geography, so I'll clarify that this info could be about characters in the world, or factions, or social phenomena, ethics, and the like.

What you dig into here is close to what I am asking. Is Edwards right? So that Stonetop's - 229 extraordinarily detailed pages of canonical setting is indeed an irredeemable curse!? (There is a technical detail here as to the game texts that I am glossing over, and will get into if necessary.)

Edwards will Edwards—that is, make a dynamic tension into a do-or-die binary. I haven't read Stonetop's setting either, but I have read Over the Edge, and its setting is chock-full of the very stuff I as a more Story Now-oriented player might be expecting to generate and explore through play. NPCs and factions and plots are presented, named, and given gobs of detail about who they are, what they're up to, and how they're entangled with others. So in that particular case, I would say that most of OTE's setting gets in the way—particuarly because it's so interwoven and tangled (by design!) that it would be hard to remove anything in order to create blanks, and it would be hard to insert anything new without massive editing of many factions, NPCs, plots, etc. (Notably, however, OTE describes things as they are and where they're headed, but leaves it very much open as to how the PCs might muck with that.)

Now, I am familiar with Doskvol from Blades in the Dark, and that setting, although not 229 pages, is fairly detailed in some senses, but it leaves so much obvious open space that players and GM can grab onto a random named NPC/faction/location and run with it, because most often all a given element has is its name and a few key facts (is a noble vampire, has sway over a given neighborhood, is where the rich folk live). What setting is provided is not meant to be experienced, but built on, in play.

Tweet's caveats might discount any characterisation of his world-text as "canonical", but Edwards seems skeptical that there can be any value in pre-authored material such as Stonetop's 229 pages at all (canonical or otherwise). Strandberg has wasted his time, or even worse, cursed others with a ball-and-chain around their necks. Nothing in what Edwards says here lets in the possibility of unique answers for individual groups of RPGers.

He did like to take an extreme position, didn't he?

But as you say, there really isn't likely to be one answer that applies to all, at all times. My question doesn't demand one. My question is - sincerely - a question. It suggests that there could possibly be a balance between pre-authorship and player-authorship-on-the-fly, and asks where each reader feels that balance lies for them between pre-authored world and authorship-on-the-fly? Do they genuinely feel the greatest benefit in proceeding from tabula-rasa, or do they benefit from some preliminary sketches?

"Balance" more often than not implies a stable state. But there is a dynamic tension between prior detail and open field. You can view it as a tug-of-war or a necessary tensile strength to hold a structure together, but because the thing in question is an RPG, things will be changing, and the open field of the moment becomes prior detail as soon as anything is established. As for the questions, well, that depends on the folks at the table! How much of their limited play time do they want to spend having stuff revealed to them, vs. generating it on the fly?

As an aside, I have run a few actual tabula-rasa freeform RPGs. Someone always has to open with something. Typically me

Like I said, you gotta start somewhere. And folks might not even show up unless they know what that somewhere is (genre, premise, hook, etc.).

My question is intended to imply skepticism about the dichotomy I first put in mind. I suggest that there can be a balance - some of each. That turns not on the question of what adjectives might be applied to authored-on-the-fly game-worlds (that's up to each reader) but whether a dichotomy is forced upon us at all, and relatedly what value (or values, at different times) could inform choices about how much of each we best benefit from (which must be contextualised in our criteria for counts-as-a-benefit which as you imply will vary.)

I argue that it isn't a dichotomy. Or rather the dichotomy isn't in pre-authored/on-the-fly setting/world, but in specifically what in the world is pre-authored vs. on-the-fly.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And that would be rather unusable in most situations outside combat where you need to swim longer distances.

Sure, but outside combat you'd normally be in an SC. I mean, it is also technically possible to make something that is a 'combat-like' scenario. I call it 'action sequence' in HoML where the PCs use the combat style turn structure but instead of actual melee opponents they face terrain, hazards, etc. 4e could, for instance run the famous 'Indiana Jones' sequence at the start of the first movie that way, as basically one giant 'combat' (though I think it works fine as an SC).

I don't understand why the skill challenge doesn't have similar issues you complained about. The GM sets DCs, number of needed success or failures, what skills apply and what the stakes are potentially arbitrarily, just like with skill checks.

No, each skill challenge has a level, which plugs into the rest of 4e just like the levels of combats do, so a really extreme SC will be party level +4. All checks within the challenge take on the DC of that level, with the rules specifying how many will be easy, medium, and hard checks (RC pp159). It is every bit as nailed-down as combat! Yes, the GM decides which skills are applicable as primary and/or secondary, and has various other options, but the one inviolable rule is that the DCs and number of checks require for success/failure are fixed according to the level and complexity of the SC (which really should be conveyed to the players when the SC starts, though difficulty can be left to the players to discover by what the DCs are).

Also, 5e has very similar mechanic in group checks.

Perhaps, and yet I've never actually seen a group check used, myself. I guess there may be GMs who rely heavily on them, but in my 5e experience its pretty much all just one-off checks. 5e doesn't even really clearly spell out something like ongoing success, though it certainly isn't ruled out.

So most of the skill checks?

I assume you mean this in reference to "the GM will probably feel obliged..." but my point is EVEN IF THEY DO there are many reasons why a GM is likely to give checks quite different valence in different GAME situations. Even assuming the most rigidly principled play individual skill checks don't have much relationship to the achievement of player intent. That is exactly what they have in the SC system! And to be clear, as I see it 4e strongly intends SCs to cover all but fairly trivial situations where little or nothing is at stake. I mean, this is an area where participants were rather free to take 4e's structure in various directions. Many GMs hated giving guarantees and simply banished SCs from the game, taking a lot of power back and making a much more 5e-like curated content game where skills, as @pemerton notes, mostly just serve as 'prompts', almost in the ancient tradition of Old when a lot of GMs sat behind their GM screen and secretly tossed dice while saying to themselves "Yeah, if I get a 1-3 I'll rule that he fell into a pit." One of the earliest passes through HoML was looking at all the 4e mechanics and ditching everything that said "roll some dice..." unless it could be cast strictly in terms of an SC or turned into a 'Power' so it would just work in combat.

 

[clearstream]

Right, as I understand it, they never actually got rid of most of the rules that existed in the early Kriegsspiel (which was a pretty classic TT wargame with minis and such). They simply empowered their refs to refs to use more judgment and to rule on things such that certain types of outcomes could arise (IE if you want to train your staff to handle a situation where the enemy breaks through your lines, you MAKE THAT HAPPEN by making a ruling which creates that situation. Prussian FK DID need to be realistic in terms of the experience of being a Prussian officer at war. As you say, the criteria being "we trained, and when we went to war our officers did their jobs well." Apparently, judging by Austria and France, they were pretty successful! lol.

Similarly, what I've read suggests they retained the losses rules. Those were felt to be essential, even if otherwise freeform.

FWIW Advocates of FKR also talk about retaining some lightweight resolution mechanics

 

[Crimson Longinus]

@AbdulAlhazred my experience is that skill challenges in 4e and group checks in 5e were used rather similarly. That is in some extended situation involving several people. One-off skill uses were still the norm. But these are just play culture issues and I'm sure there are a lot of differences between the groups, IIRC the actual printed advice in both editions is somewhat sparse.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, again I'm going to go up to bat for this: You have excessively reduced the benefit-space already. Either searching for Advantage is a generally wasted effort, because you have to bring overwhelming benefits to get it and that's not gonna happen much, or it's a pointless effort, because you already have it and thus never need to do anything further. From what you've said here, you aren't actually solving the "it's the weapon of last resort being used simultaneously as the weapon of first resort" problem. You've just added a "...first resort should only come when you can't justify not doing something" clause.

There's still plenty of space for where you have a small edge that might matter, but not one so great as to be Advantage. (Personally, my preference is to have a sliding scale: something like +2, +2-and-Advantage, auto-success, mirrored for negatives. This also permits the possibility of -2+Advantage or +2+Disadvantage, allowing for "risky-but-powerful" and "restrained but reliable.") Plethoras of tiny bonuses are a problem, I don't deny that. But surely there is a space between "literally just ONE bonus" and "an absolute smorgasbord of things."

Well, my experience (certainly with 4e) was that it, and 3e, and 2e, and 1e, etc. were all FILLED with this plethora of small bonuses. Now you have to remember all this junk, and total it all up each round, etc. In contrast, in HoML you are not that likely to get advantage or disadvantage from very many things, which can be quite quickly enumerated. For example it is VERY VERY unlikely a power would EVER exist, or an item attribute, that gave advantage, even situationally. Virtually ALL of these situations are codified as Conditions, and thus condition tracking is the focus and not 'bonus situation adding up'. Nor are any of them inordinately easy to obtain against competent opponents. IME advantage comes up a handful of times in each combat in HoML, usually due to either some sort of calculation that expending some PP to generate an effect is worth it NOW, or by consciously employing tactics that get you an advantage like flanking or cover.

Also, remember, there are tons of ways to get MODIFIERS in HoML, they are simply not things you need to RECALCULATE. So, you can have practices or boons which provide a fixed modifier, etc. These also never stack, but it is quite possible to get between +1 and +3 depending on what you are doing, and then there's proficiency as well. Beyond that various interactions could exist, so it may well be that a given character is able to get slightly (or greatly) improved effectiveness in some situations. Strikers also have striker damage bonus features, etc. Overall there's really no dearth of variety there. I've just taken the focus a bit away from grinding out a whole bunch of small bonuses.

Here's the thing, my game is intended to portray a very 'high action' kind of a setup where 'big moves' and 'signature abilities' are fairly important, and not get lost in the chaff of loads of little bitty stuff. I found that my 4e play was focused more and more this way and that it PAID OFF, that when the encounters were structured so that big moves and incredible action were the grist of the game that it got more engaging and fun. A lot of the 'little stuff' then started to actually detract. In a HoML combat you are looking for how to BE AWESOME, not how to squeeze out another +1 because of some obscure bonus that you can get from using a device that was 'blessed' by the Artificer or something.

Efficient and effective officer training. Unless you mean to claim that Free Kriegsspeil's referees would have been happy if their work was more realistic but did not produce effective officers? That doesn't seem to be the case, from what I'm seeing. It seems to be that there was no gain in officer training from the precise rules, so they ditched the unnecessary weight of (what I call) Simulation in order to more effectively Emulate the experience of "commanders of armies." Because that experience is what's valuable, isn't it? It doesn't matter if the skill comes from totally unreal things or extremely precise realism.

That is how I understand it. Some might also be kind of 'gamist' in a sense. Like the casualty rules were mostly elided as not being very useful. That is most likely because all the participants could easily agree on what would happen if a bunch of infantry rushed a mitrellieuse (an early sort of machine gun). Yeah, most of them die, we're all officers, we've seen it, that's what happens, who needs to go look it up in a table?

 

[clearstream]

I don't really get what this is saying. I mean, we play RPGs, and I've played 1000's upon 1000's of sessions, and there's always been some process and rules. Some games may be more free form in terms of specifying less than others, but whatever the procedures, process, principles, and rules of play are, they are governing. When combat starts you do certain things. Sure, there's an attitude of suspension of disbelief and (possibly, not in all RPGs) taking up of 'character stance' and RP. That doesn't ignore the game elements though! You don't go into some mystical 'circle' where people stop playing and just tell a story. No, when in HoML a player describes their character's intent to accomplish something, and then proposes the means by which it will happen, a specific section of the rules is invoked! The GM will say "OK, hmmm, that seems like Surviving is the governing mode, use your Survival knack!" and then the player does their part in that process, maybe they ask for help, maybe they utilize a practice of some sort to improve their chances, or even change the mode to something else "Oh, I drink my potion of flying and avoid the nasty swim across the icy river." OK, now its an Athletics check to see if you fly to the right place. I mean, hopefully, the players are experiencing the feeling of 'being there' and inhabiting the character, but its far from the whole experience, and it isn't disengaged from the system.

Now, other games may be closer to what you're talking about, where there are many fewer rules and/or they are all handled on the GM side, or whatever. I don't know. I can think of games that certainly could be/are played with very little OOC decision making by players, like maybe PACE when really well run could do that.

What I'm thinking of is kind of indicated by @Campbell's response (about how bad my definition is, but let's set that aside for the time being.) It could be easiest to just search Magic Circle of Play. I'll assume you've done that and we're all on the same page (at least that far) going forward.

So as @Campbell points out, we're going to leave some things behind and take on new roles. Think about consent guidelines. As we enter the magic circle, we make some agreements about what we consent to happen inside it. Some things are taken off the table.

The situation I am suggesting is quite similar. As we enter the magic circle, we follow some rules that say what is going to be inside the circle. But there are no further rules followed inside the circle: they're all left on the threshold. Consent rules as an analogy don't provide any method of resolution, so - following my analogy - we have some lines and veils but there are no rules for a method of resolution.

One might prefer to call rules on the threshold, principles

 

[EzekielRaiden]

What I'm thinking of is kind of indicated by @Campbell's response (about how bad my definition is, but let's set that aside for the time being.) It could be easiest to just search Magic Circle of Play. I'll assume you've done that and we're all on the same page (at least that far) going forward.

So as @Campbell points out, we're going to leave some things behind and take on new roles. Think about consent guidelines. As we enter the magic circle, we make some agreements about what we consent to happen inside it. Some things are taken off the table.

The situation I am suggesting is quite similar. As we enter the magic circle, we follow some rules that say what is going to be inside the circle. But there are no further rules followed inside the circle: they're all left on the threshold. Consent rules as an analogy don't provide any method of resolution, so - following my analogy - we have some lines and veils but there are no rules for a method of resolution.

One might prefer to call rules on the threshold, principles

I fail to see how "rules on the threshold" differs from "DM says," just making it explicit that they must do so politely.

 

[clearstream]

I fail to see how "rules on the threshold" differs from "DM says," just making it explicit that they must do so politely.

It's a rule, they agree to follow it and they can refer back to it (it's written down) in case of doubt.