Why Jargon is Bad, and Some Modern Resources for RPG Theory

[overgeeked]

I can see where fiction first would have been a useful concept to specifically identify during the height of 3e “I make a Diplomacy check” gameplay. While the concept might not have been novel to folks who started with B/X or AD&D, the folks who were new at the time (like myself) certainly benefited from having this concept presented to us in a more academic format than just having “it’s called role-play, not roll-play!” repeatedly shouted at us.

Sorry you had to deal with that.

I would submit that the people shouting were not interested in being helpful and that them having some bit of jargon to shout (rather than a slogan) would not have helped matters. And as we're all well aware of at this point, especially on the internet, those that shout tend to drown out those who don't. I do remember having conversations with people about focusing on the character, getting into their character's mindset, and making choices based on what their character would do given the "realities" of the world. Along with various other things like describing what the character is doing in the game, etc. People were around who played in that style and some of us tried to help rather than shout. Not all, obviously.

But I think that's all part of these threads on this topic. If, back in the day, someone simply said to you "fiction first," you'd have no idea what that meant. And if it were delivered in the same shouty and unhelpful manner as "it's called role-play..." then you'd have much the same reaction to "fiction first" as you have to "it's called...," right?

It's only the full concept, carefully explained that is the helping hand in that situation, not the jargon alone, even if calmly and politely repeated ad nauseam. It's not the jargon or the phrase itself that's beneficial. It's the explanation of what it means that's helpful. As exemplified in this tangent on "fiction first". The concept existed prior to the naming of it, and, more importantly it could be explained prior to the naming of it. It simply lacked a catchy phrase or jargon. Lack of a name or jargon is not a hindrance to understanding.

The jargon is only a stand in. Oftentimes it's an obstacle between two people in understanding the concept the jargon is meant to be shorthand for. As we repeatedly see in these threads when two or more proponents of GNS jargon disagree on what the jargon means and what GNS is even fundamentally all about. But, generally, instead of drilling down past the jargon and discussing the ideas and concepts behind it, they often get locked into arguing about what the jargon means.

To show my age, here's a quote. "It's like a finger pointing away to the moon...don't concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory."

 

[Lanefan]

Can you not think of any examples of things/concepts that were in use or existed long before people coined a term for it? In this case, "fiction first" was a term coined out of a discussion that desired to root things into a particular prioritization, i.e., "fiction first." The fact that this phenomenon or method existed before the coinage of the term is kind of irrelevant.

Until and unless people start using the term as if it refers to a Big New Concept that didn't exist before.

If anything, that provides a greater validation of the term as it describes a practical play experience. Similarly, the playstyle that "sandbox" describes may have existed before its coinage (during the 3e era, as a borrowing from video games), but the adoption of a term to describe that playstyle is what's important.

I'm sure I heard both "sandbox" and "railroad" in relatively common use long before the 3e era - as in, back in 1e days - and being used to mean roughly what they mean today.

 

[pemerton]

There's a judgement component happening in this thread when it comes to fiction first that I'm really not a fan of.

I'll add to this:

Cthulhu Dark, at least as I've played it, is entirely fiction first.

Burning Wheel is often fiction first, but not always - for instance, its complex resolution subsystems (Duel of Wits, Range and Cover, Fight!) begin by dividing the action into "exchanges" of three "volleys" each (this is analogous to the action economy in modern D&D combat).

But I think Burning Wheel is more visceral than Cthulhu Dark. Including during the moments of a Duel of Wits, a Range and Cover skirmish, or a Fight! Because you know what's at stake when you're scripting (all three subsystems use blind declaration) and then when you're resolving the scripted actions. The blind scripting, then the revelation, and then the potential significance of the consequences all generate an intensity that I think is greater than what Cthulhu Dark offers.

Another comparison would be within 4e D&D: skill challenges are fully fiction first, but combat is not - bits of it are (eg p 42) but bits of it are not (eg the whole action economy, plus the imperative of hit point ablation). But the best 4e combats are as fun and compelling as the best 4e skill challenges.

 

[niklinna]

This has already been talked about.

1. I'm in the audience of this thread. I am included in the target audience of any general statement made here.

Agreed, but, somebody in this conversation asked for a definition of "kicker", and @pemerton (and some others before him) gave a definition.

2. I have never heard the word kicker as defined in this thread until today. To me kicker is something added to sweeten a deal.

Yes, that is one common meaning of kicker. Another is:

2 North American informal - an unexpected and often unpleasant discovery or turn of events (Oxford American Dictionary)

3. The definition of kicker is very subtle, nuanced, and difficult to convey.

I found @pemerton's definition pretty clear, including the points that apparently needed later highlighting, especially considering the fact he wrote it most likely during a busy day and didn't have opportunity to check and revise multiple times, as one would do in the usually much more involved process used for publication. And, when asked for clarification, he provided it.

4. By using the word kicker earlier in the thread we now have added 1000+ words to this thread just trying to nail down a definition.

In a thread that is about jargon, perhaps as an example of how people can explain jargon so that others can learn it and thereby develop some common ground for further conversation? I'm pretty chuffed to have learned a new word, myself!

5. The word kicker has done nothing to save time in THIS PARTICULAR conversation, thus it's an excellent example of "jargon" best used in an audience already on the same page.

Again, this particular conversation is about jargon as such. I would hope that includes how jargon can be shared and learned. If folks were routinely refusing to explain words when asked, that would clearly be exclusionary behavior.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Another comparison would be within 4e D&D: skill challenges are fully fiction first,

How is that fiction first? You first set the level of the challenge, deriving the needed fails and success, as well as DCs from that. The you start to come up with fiction to allow those checks to happen. The challenge ends at certain number of fails or successes and you need to conform the narrative of the resolution to make sense with that (or not, the mechanics don't care.) This seems like the exact opposite of "fiction first" to me.

 

[niklinna]

As a light aside, I'll share an inciting incident from one of my characters from back in my larping days. I was playing a hobling (halfling) but of course I am nearly 6' tall (most people who played hoblings were even taller or larger than me, for some reason). My character would occasionally tell people he began his career when, after he bumped his head on the rafters for the umpteenth time and knocked several pots to the floor, his mother said, "Kieran, have you ever thought of becoming an adventurer?"

Clearly not a kicker, though.

Edit: Fixed a dangling participle, yikes!

 

[Ovinomancer]

How is that fiction first? You first set the level of the challenge, deriving the needed fails and success, as well as DCs from that. The you start to come up with fiction to allow those checks to happen. The challenge ends at certain number of fails or successes and you need to conform the narrative of the resolution to make sense with that (or not, the mechanics don't care.) This seems like the exact opposite of "fiction first" to me.

Skill challenges are a thing that's going to different depending on whether or not you're approaching it from one agenda or another. If you're trying to use it to simulate the world, to in effect mechanicalize the cause effect of the world, it's going to clunk, hard. It's going to clunk because it's, at the start, not at all aligned with the world. The idea of X successes before Y failures to succeed at the goal is utterly divorced from any consideration of cause and effect in the world. So, if verisimilitude is a priority for you, skill challenges clunk. And we see this clearly in much of the criticism.

If your agenda is one of gamism, or leveraging the system and resources in a skillful way, then yeah, skill challenges work. They're clear, understandable minigames where you can push hard and use your resources to succeed. This doesn't rarely engages fiction first, though, because the agenda only cares about the fiction as secondary to the game parts, and so is fine doing after the fact alignment of the fiction to what happened with the game mechanics.

If your agenda is Story Now, well, skill challenges offer an interesting option. You can declare them on the fly, follow each resolution into a new challenge, with each individual success moving forward to a new wicket based on what just happened and each failure yielding a new complication or closing an avenue of approach so a realignment needs to happen. This fully follows and engages the fiction, and uses scene framing techniques to create linked scenes along the path as needed. It's not improv, because there's a clear structure to how you do this, but it shares some similarities. And I link this to Story Now because these are the same techniques you use for all play in that agenda -- follow the play, create new play off of current play, and always drive to the action (even if the action is conducting a tea ceremony properly).

 

[pemerton]

I get the idea that as a GM in a kicker style game I'm not going to be running an "adventure" and instead the session is largely about my players giving me menu of items they want to progress and the session is us diving into the various bits. I'm assuming the idea would be to shape at least some of them into some overall general story. I'm not sure however in this model exactly how much the GM is allowed to inject into the resulting soup. I'm not sure what a kicker game campaign is like or how it avoids hogging the spotlight but that's a different discussion best left for some other time.

If the above are close enough to understand kickers....then the most important part of the kicker concept (that was left out of a lot of the early discussion) is that kickers entirely (or almost entirely) replace a GM supplied story instead of adding to it.

Yep.

 

[pemerton]

How is that fiction first? You first set the level of the challenge, deriving the needed fails and success, as well as DCs from that. The you start to come up with fiction to allow those checks to happen. The challenge ends at certain number of fails or successes and you need to conform the narrative of the resolution to make sense with that (or not, the mechanics don't care.) This seems like the exact opposite of "fiction first" to me.

Just to add a bit to @Ovinomancer's reply:

Skill challenges being with the fiction: what is the situation? what do the PCs want out of it? Then each action declaration begins with the fiction: what are you doing to try and change the situation? what are you trying to achieve? Only then is it "mechanised" and turned into a skill check. The outcome of that check ends with the fiction: the GM narrates what has changed (for better or worse!) as a result of that PC doing that thing. And this provides the context for the next skill check. The GM's narration of the fiction is also having regard to the overall progression of the challenge, making sure that some final resolution is available in the fiction as it is emerging. (Parenthetically: in my view this is the single hardest thing a 4e GM has to do. It's harder than running a 4e combat. I think it's on the same difficulty level as managing the Doom Pool in MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic.)

When the skill challenge reaches its conclusion, the GM narrates the consequences of that check, which are also a fictional state of affairs that reveal the challenge as concluded: either the PCs have got what they want, or they haven't and some new adverse situation has emerged instead.

Thus, both overall and within the challenge, we begin and end with the fiction.

 

[Campbell]

@Lanefan

I feel like your analysis of the two play structures smuggles in a view that setting must be predefined that is not a fundamental conceit of that second play structure. That second play structure uses setting as a means rather than an ends. We only define what we need for play to happen, often on an as needed basis. The event in step #1 comes first and is later justified.

It's also important to note that the player is not free to just do whatever they want. They must address the threat in some way in step #2. Casually exploring their environment will generally only lead to more trouble.

In step #3 fallout does some work. What happens must have an impact on the player character in some way. It should change the way they view the world or themselves. It's not just a naturalistic extrapolation of what should happen.

In general, there seems to be this desire to extend an emphasis on world building and exploration of setting as like a thing onto games that do not feature either to any great extent in their play process. I'm not quite sure why.