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

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

You presumably set the stakes for the skill challenge when you declare it. So there is two ways it can go, the determined pass stake and the determined fail stake. The fiction cannot evolve into some completely different direction. Also, it really doesn't matter much what the characters do, they just need to make up something to trigger the skill roll. And if someone comes up with something that seems really easy, or really hard in the fiction, it doesn't matter, the DC is the same. If someone comes up with something ingenious that should solve the whole issue at once or something utterly disastrous that should instantly doom the whole attempt, it cannot happen without deviating from the skill challenge structure. Nope, sorry, this is mostly just weaving some flavour on rigid and fixed mechanics. If we want to truly put the fiction first, then we don't have some inflexible framework the fiction needs to conform to, we apply the mechanics to the situation as the fiction warrants it.

 

[pemerton]

You presumably set the stakes for the skill challenge when you declare it. So there is two ways it can go, the determined pass stake and the determined fail stake. The fiction cannot evolve into some completely different direction.

I don't think this is correct. What's at stake during a skill challenge can change, as the situation evolves via play. Here's an example, from actual 4e play:

On the weekend I ran my first session of 4e that invovled only social interaction. So I thought I'd post about how it went.

The starting point
The PCs are low paragon - a dwarf fighter/warpriest of Moradin, a paladin of the Raven Queen, a wizard/invoker, a drow chaos sorcerer/demonskin adept, and a ranger-cleric of the Raven Queen. The player of the ranger-cleric was absent from the session.

The scenario combines elements of Thunderspire Labyringth (a 4e module), Heathen (from a 2008 online Dragon magazine), Speaker in Dreams (a 3E module from WotC) and Night's Dark Terror (a B/X module from TSR), plus some other elements of my own.

The PCs have recently entered a town which is under increasing pressure from hobgoblin and allied raiders. The town is ruled by a Patriarch of Bahamut and a Baron. The PCs are still getting the lay of the political land.

The PCs entered the town as heroes, having saved an affiliated village from being destroyed by hobgoblins. They were lauded by the Patriarch, and invited to join the Baron for dinner that evening. Later that day they then went on to stop an uprising by Demogorgon/Dagon cultists, and to cleanse the cultists' headquarters. In the headquarters, they rescued a priestess of Ioun who had been chained down next to a gibbering mouther, and had gone insane from the constant gibbering - the wizard cured her insanity using Remove Affliction.

The session begain with the PCs talking to the rescued priestess, and interrogating the one surviving and captured cultist.

Talking to the NPCs
This was almost entirely free roleplaying. The PC paladin had made a successful Intimidate check last session to cow the cultist and stop him running away. He made another check this session to interrogate him - the check was sufficiently high (in the high 20s or low 30s, from memory) that I decided nothing would be held back by the cultist. Some other skill rolls were made (History, Arcana) to see what sense the PCs could make of some of the things that the cultist revealed.

The conversations with the cultist and with the priestess happened side-by-side in play, and mostly side-by-side in the fiction. Three PCs were heavily involved - the paladin interrogating the cultist, the wizard and the sorcerer talking to the priestess. The dwarf was less heavily involved in the conversation, but the player of the dwarf was helping the other players put together and make sense of the information being obtained.

I awarded XP as per the guidelines in DMG2 - one monster's worth for 15 minutes of play.

Two revelations had the biggest immediate impact. One involved the PCs' principal enemy. This is the leader of the hobgoblins, a powerful wizard called Paldemar (but called Golthar in Goblinish). The PCs learned that in the town he is not known to be a villain, but is apparently well-thought of, is an important scholar and astrologer, is an advisor to the Baron, and is engaged to the Baron's niece. The PCs (and the players) became worried that he might be at dinner that evening. This was a worry for two reasons - (i) they didn't really want to fight him, and (ii) they know some secrets about an ancient minotaur kingdom that he does not, but has been trying to discover. One of those secrets involves a magic tapestry that the PCs carry around with them (because they don't have anywhere safe to leave it).

The second revelation was that the Baron was prophesied to die that night. The paladin had already sensed a catoblepas in the swamps outside the town, and had sensed it approaching the town earlier that day. The priestess explained that a year ago the Baron had been visited by a catoblepas, as a type of forewarning. And the cultist explained that the uprising had taken place today in anticipation of the Baron's imminent demise.

After learning these things, the PCs cleaned up in the cultists' bathroom and then hurried off to dinner.

The dinner
The PCs arrived late, and were the last ones there. On the high table they could see the Baron, and his sister and brother-in-law, and also Paldemar, their wizard enemy. They left their more gratuitous weapons - a halberd for the dwarf and a longbow for the ranger - with the dwarf's herald - an NPC dwarf minion called Gutboy Barrelhouse - and took their seats at the high table. Gutboy was also carrying the backpack with the tapestry.

The PCs also noticed a series of portraits hanging behind the high table. One had a young woman, who was the spitting image of a wizard's apprentice they had recently freed from a trapping mirror - except that adventure had happened 100 years in the past (under a time displacement ritual), and this painting was clearly newly painted. Another, older, painting was of a couple, a man resembling the Baron, and a woman resembling the rescued apprentice but at an older age.

About this time the players started talking about the skill checks they wanted to make, and I asked them what they were hoping to achieve. Their main goal was to get through the evening without upsetting the baron, without getting into a fight with Paldemar (which meant, at a minimum, not outing him as the leader of the hobgoblin raiders), and without revealing any secrets to him. In particular, they didn't want him to learn that they had found the tapestry, and that it was in fact 15' away from him in Gutboy's backpack. But it also quickly became clear that they wanted to learn about the people in the portraits, to try and learn what had happened over the past 100 years to the apprentice they freed, and how she related to the Baron's family.

This whole scene was resolved as a complexity 5 skill challenge. It ran for more than an hour, but probably not more than two. The general pattern involved - Paldemar asking the PCs about their exploits; either the paladin or the sorcerer using Bluff to defuse the question and/or evade revealing various secrets they didn't want Paldemar to know; either the paladin or the wizard then using Diplomacy to try to change the topic of conversation to something else - including the Baron's family history; and Paldemar dragging things back onto the PCs exploits and discoveries over the course of their adventures.

Following advice given by LostSoul on these boards back in the early days of 4e, my general approach to running the skill challenge was to keep pouring on the pressure, so as to give the players a reason to have their PCs do things. And one particular point of pressure was the dwarf fighter/cleric - in two senses. In story terms, he was the natural focus of the Baron's attention, because the PCs had been presenting him as their leader upon entering the town, and subsequently. And the Baron was treating him as, in effect, a noble peer, "Lord Derrik of the Dwarfholm to the East". And in mechanical terms, he has no training in social skills and a CHA of 10, so putting the pressure on him forced the players to work out how they would save the situation, and stop the Baron inadvertently, or Paldemar deliberately, leading Derrik into saying or denying something that would give away secrets. (Up until the climax of the challenge, the only skill check that Derriks' player made in contribution to the challenge was an Athletics check - at one point the Baron described himself as a man of action rather than ideas, and Derrik agreed - I let his player make an Athletics check - a very easy check for him with a +15 bonus - to make the fact of agreement contribute mechanically to the party's success in dealing with the situation.)

Besides the standard skill checks, other strategies were used to defuse the tension at various points. About half way through, the sorcerer - feigning drunkenness with his +20 Bluff bonus - announced "Derrik, it's time to take a piss" - and then led Derrik off to the privy, and then up onto the balcony with the minstrel, so that Paldemar couldn't keep goading and trying to ensnare him. At another point, when the conversation turned to how one might fight a gelatinous cube (Paldemar having explained that he had failed in exploring one particular minotaur ruin because of some cubes, and the PCs not wanting to reveal that they had explored that same ruin after beating the cubes) the sorcerer gave an impromptu demonstration by using Bedevilling Burst to knock over the servants carrying in the jellies for desert. (I as GM had mentioned that desert was being brought in. It was the player who suggested that it should probably include jellies.) That he cast Bedevilling Burst he kept secret (another Bluff check). But he loudly made the point that jellies can be squashed at least as easily as anything else.

While fresh jellies were prepared, Derrik left the table to give a demonstration of how one might fight oozes using a halberd and fancy footwork. But he then had to return to the table for desert.

Around this time, the challenge had evolved to a point where one final roll was needed, and 2 failures had been accrued. Paldemar, once again, was badgering Derrik to try to learn the secrets of the minotaur ruins that he was sure the PCs knew. And the player of Derrik was becoming more and more frustrated with the whole situation, declaring (not speaking in character, but speaking from the perspective of his PC) "I'm sick of putting up with this. I want Paldemar to come clean."

The Baron said to Derrik, "The whole evening, Lord Derrik, it has seemed to me that you are burdened by something. Will you not speak to me?" Derrik got out of his seat and went over to the Baron, knelt beside him, and whispered to him, telling him that out of decorum he would not name anyone, but there was someone close to the Baron who was not what he seemed, and was in fact a villainous leader of the hobgoblin raiders. The Baron asked how he knew this, and Derrik replied that he had seen him flying out of goblin strongholds on his flying carpet. The Baron asked him if he would swear this in Moradin's name. Derrik replied "I swear". At which point the Baron rose from the table and went upstairs to brood on the balcony, near the minstrel.

With one check still needed to resolve the situation, I had Paldemar turn to Derrik once again, saying "You must have said something very serious, to so upset the Baron." Derrik's player was talking to the other players, and trying to decide what to do. He clearly wanted to fight. I asked him whether he really wanted to provoke Paldemar into attacking him. He said that he did. So he had Derrik reply to Paldemar, 'Yes, I did, Golthar". And made an Intimidate check. Which failed by one. So the skill challenge was over, but a failure - I described Paldemar/Golthar standing up, pickup up his staff from where it leaned against the wall behind him, and walking towards the door.

Now we use a houserule (perhaps, in light of DMG2, not so much a houserule as a precisification of a suggestion in that book) that a PC can spend an action point to make a secondary check to give another PC a +2 bonus, or a reroll, to a failed check. The player of the wizard PC spent an action point, and called out "Golthar, have you fixed the tear yet in your robe?" - this was a reference to the fact that the PCs had, on a much earlier occasion, found a bit of the hem of Paldemar's robe that had torn off in the ruins when he had had to flee the gelatinous cubes. I can't remember now whether I asked for an Intimidate check, or decided that this was an automatic +2 bonus for Derrik - but in any event, it turned the failure into a success. We ended the session by noting down everyone's location on the map of the Baron's great hall, and making initiative rolls. Next session will begin with the fight against Paldemar (which may or may not evolve into a fight with a catoblepas also - the players are a bit anxious that it may do so).

This is the most sophisticated skill challenge I've run to date, in terms of the subtlety of the framing, the degree of back and forth (two major PCs with whom the PCs were interacting, with different stakes in the interaction with each of them), my concentration on evolving the scene to reflect the skill checks and the other action while still keeping up the pressure on the players (and on their PCs), and the goals of the players, which started out a little uncertain and somewhat mixed, but ended up being almost the opposite of what they were going into the challenge.

This post says a bit more about the methodology:

I can say that the principle of applying a goal to most scenes/encounters has enriched my game quite a bit, mostly because I'm an obsessive about how my game is paced. In pemerton's encounter, the goals were quite clear: investigate the paintings, don't embarrass the Baron, keep their secrets from Paldemar. Once these are defined it's quite easy to define a Challenge which keeps the PC's on their toes and which, if they prevail, feels like a victory.

One thing I liked about the way the encounter resolved - and I don't know if this is orthodox or unorthodox in terms of skill challenge methodology - was that the way in which those goals would be achieved changed over the course of the encounter. It started out as "Let's just get through the dinner until the catoblepas gets here" and ended as "I'm so sick of this guy, and his smarminess, that I'm going to push him harder than he's pushing me!"

So the goals - investigation, propriety, secrecy - were still in play, but what counted as a successful realisation of them changed. The PCs went from "defenders" to "attackers" - they will preserve propriety by goading Paldemar into outing himself, and thereby stop him being in a position to learn the secrets.

I think that this was to a significant extent a function of making it a maximum complexity challenge. The mechanical constraints of that made us all - but especially me, as GM - work to keep the scene alive. Which then created the "space" in the fiction for this sort of change in orientation - both the players' orientation and their PCs' orientation - to occur. This creation of "space" is another reason I like a skill challenge-style mechanic. I haven't had the same sort of experiences with the "method acting" approach to GMing. (Not that every social skill challenge involves this sort of transformation. Sometimes the players are pushing for the same thing at the end as they were at the start.)

it really doesn't matter much what the characters do, they just need to make up something to trigger the skill roll.

This isn't right at all. See the example above, for instance. Or this one:

The bear encounter

The scenario I ran yesterday (from the Eden Odyssesy d20 book called "Wonders Out of Time") called for a Large bear.

I wasn't sure exactly how many 10th level PCs would be facing it at once, and so in prepping I placed a single elite level 13 dire bear, rather than a lower level solo bear (a level 7 or 8 solo would be a rough XP equivalent), because I thought the slightly swingier high level elite would produce a more interesting range of outcomes across a wider range of possible PC party size. This is a case, then, of metagame considerations ("How will this play out at the table?") influencing my decisions about how to go about representing the gameworld in mechanical terms.

As it turns out, the whole party encountered the bear. I didn't want to do any re-statting on the fly, so stuck with the level 13 elite. They players decided that their PCs would try to tame and befriend the bear instead of fighting it. To keep the XP and pacing about the same as I'd planned, I decided to run this as a level 13 complexity 2 skill challenge (6 successes before 3 failures). That was another metagame-driven decision.

The ranger and the wizard made Nature checks. The ranger was adjacent, so reached out to the bear. The wizard, however, was at range, giving rise to the question - how does he actually calm the bear? Answer: he used Ghost Sound to make soothing noises and Mage Hand to stroke it. The sorcerer wanted (i) to back away so as not to get slammed in case the bear remained angry, and (ii) to try and intimidate the bear into submission. I (as GM) asked the player how, exactly, the PC was being intimidating while backing up? His answer: he is expending Spark Form (a lightning-based encounter power) to create a show of magical power arcing between his staff and his dagger, that would scare the bear. A successful Intimidate roll confirmed that the light show did indeed tend to subdue rather than enrage the bear.

The player of the paladin actually said, after the bear had been pacified, "I feel really good about not having killed that bear." (He was the player who, in the one previous bear encounter in the campaign, had also initiated non-violent means then.)

The bear was befriended by the ranger, but not the sorcerer.

Both skill challenges begin and end with the fiction: framing, action declaration, resolution, developed situation.

the DC is the same. If someone comes up with something ingenious that should solve the whole issue at once or something utterly disastrous that should instantly doom the whole attempt, it cannot happen without deviating from the skill challenge structure. Nope, sorry, this is mostly just weaving some flavour on rigid and fixed mechanics. If we want to truly put the fiction first, then we don't have some inflexible framework the fiction needs to conform to, we apply the mechanics to the situation as the fiction warrants it.

What you're describing here is not "fiction first" - at least as I've ever seen that phrase used - but a particular approach to resolution - roughly, extrapolation of consequences (by the GM?) from the fiction without mechanical intermediation.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

A fair number of game designers from the Forge have moved past, but I think that it's also important to understand where their ideas came from and how they still reverberate in tabletop game design. IMO, some Forge jargon is "stickier" or more enduring in their usefulness as terms and principles than others. The main goals of the Forge, IMHO, have been met. They recognized that they wanted something different out of their gaming experience than what Storyteller and similar games were marketing themselves as, and they began developing games that were meant to support those principles: e.g., Burning Wheel, Dogs in the Vineyard, Lady Blackbird, Fiasco, Fate, Cortex, Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, etc.

I wasn't going to come back (I think I explained most of what I had to say in the OP), but I have some general thoughts both regarding what you wrote (which I largely agree with) and what I see in this thread, which is largely the reason I wrote the OP, and to illustrate the actual concern some people have - even though this thread, has, to date, been largely productive and I think that is a credit to the people involved.

In the OP, I think I acknowledged that good use came out of those discussions on the Forge. The history of TTRPGs is always smart people looking at what is around them, saying "I don't like that," coming up with a way to justify not liking it, and then making something new. That's great! That's how we get new stuff! And no matter what other opinions any person might have, a lot of new indie games (and indie game designers) were, um, forged at the Forge. In addition, while I appreciate that there are those who say it helps them with all sorts of games ... I think that there is a reason that (1) the Forge changed the terminology from GDS to GNS, and (2) all those games we specifically credit from the Forge tend to be narrativism. It's more ...gNs.

But the point I keep making (and the reason I quoted you) is that the Forge officially closed a decade ago, and was "closed" in terms of vitality before that. Why are people still recycling the same quotes from 20 years ago? Why aren't we discussing anything new about new games, instead of using the same tired (and often controversial) framework to discuss new games? Why is it that when other people try and discuss TTRPG theory here, we have to discuss GNS, and Ron Edwards, and Forge principles? Always?

There is a reason that modern game designers, even those that acknowledge an influence from Forge ideas, have moved away- because those ideas are associated with a specific time, place, and a strong "N" ideology and use of certain jargon that is disfavored by others. Not all of it- a lot of the ideas have continuing value. But it's kind of like seeing a picture of yourself wearing clothes from 15 years ago- yeah, you wore those, and it worked at the time, but you've moved on. (I hope ... no judgment).

Look, let's say someone wanted to learn about, oh, Fiasco, or Night Witches, or any of a number of Storygames? Would they be better served by engaging with essays from Ron Edwards from 2002?. Or going .... I don't know ... here-

What Is A Storygame?

I’m going to be moving soon. I’ve been lucky to live for the past few years in a city which has a deep and diverse pool of gaming communities, with enough space in the ecosystem for the…

heterogenoustasks.wordpress.com

Now, even though that's old (I mean... 2016!) you can see a few things. Sure, it has some lingering GNS influence (stating that there is little emphasis on "simulations mechanics" for example). But in other ways, it is refreshingly modern in its concerns- discussing how the underlying themes of the games matter, and how issues related to player safety and boundaries are to be negotiated (rather than assumed through norms, as you have in most traditional games), and it also strives to be inclusive of other games- rather than saying D&D isn't a story game, it just says it can be played as one, but doesn't support the style very well. I can read that, and it's clear, it's concise, and while it is descriptive (discussing a set of games by properties) instead of prescriptive (announcing a manifesto and demanding games produced to it), it's immensely more helpful.

(Finally, if you look into the comments, there's a fascinating comment by the author responding to a question regarding GNS and Ron Edwards.)

Simply put, this tells me more, on its own terms, about Storygames than trying to pigeonhole those games back into a model designed as a reaction to specific games and playing styles from the 90s.

For that matter, did anyone here realize that others were parsing our comments to learn about transgressive monsters in D&D?

The Computational Sublime in Monster Design | Analog Game Studies

analoggamestudies.org

@the Jester


Heck, we just had the publication of a book that, for the first time, detailed the early history of TTRPG theory, discussed the shifting paradigm from wargaming to roleplaying, and showed how the debates we continue to have today are the same ones that we had at the beginning- and yet, there seems to be little interest in discussing it on its own terms (that was Peterson's Elusive Shift).

And as far as I can tell ... I am the only person that seems to care that a major book was published that is an academic look at ... THE FORGE. A favorable one. The one by William J. White? The one I keep posting the link to? I know the hardcover is expensive, but I thought that at least one of the people that keeps the conversation about GNS and the Forge going would have bought the Kindle copy and posted their review. Did I miss the review?

I mean ... don't wait for me to do the review.

Look- I truly appreciate that there are people that continue to use techniques that they learned to improve their games; when they are discussing that, I don't bother them. I just think it would be nifty if we could have some conversations about the ... newer ... topics in TTRPG theory. There are a few.

(Finally, allowing conversations to be dominated purely by aspects of dense jargon related to debates over aspects of gameplay privileges certain perspectives over others. This is a fraught issue, as, for example, there is a continuing debate about the influence of fluff and crunch as it relates to LGBTQA+ representation in games; it has been the case that games with significant fluff and no mechanics regarding social mechanics or gender norms (such as early D&D) were productive; it is also certainly the case the games that followed in the footsteps of "system matters" such as Monsterhearts, with explicit mechanics, were certainly representative- but this is the type of conversation we aren't seeing. Which, given the month ... maybe that's a better theory conversation to have than have another "framing" conversation).

 

[overgeeked]

I wasn't going to come back (I think I explained most of what I had to say in the OP), but I have some general thoughts both regarding what you wrote (which I largely agree with) and what I see in this thread, which is largely the reason I wrote the OP, and to illustrate the actual concern some people have - even though this thread, has, to date, been largely productive and I think that is a credit to the people involved.

In the OP, I think I acknowledged that good use came out of those discussions on the Forge. The history of TTRPGs is always smart people looking at what is around them, saying "I don't like that," coming up with a way to justify not liking it, and then making something new. That's great! That's how we get new stuff! And no matter what other opinions any person might have, a lot of new indie games (and indie game designers) were, um, forged at the Forge. In addition, while I appreciate that there are those who say it helps them with all sorts of games ... I think that there is a reason that (1) the Forge changed the terminology from GDS to GNS, and (2) all those games we specifically credit from the Forge tend to be narrativism. It's more ...gNs.

But the point I keep making (and the reason I quoted you) is that the Forge officially closed a decade ago, and was "closed" in terms of vitality before that. Why are people still recycling the same quotes from 20 years ago? Why aren't we discussing anything new about new games, instead of using the same tired (and often controversial) framework to discuss new games? Why is it that when other people try and discuss TTRPG theory here, we have to discuss GNS, and Ron Edwards, and Forge principles? Always?

There is a reason that modern game designers, even those that acknowledge an influence from Forge ideas, have moved away- because those ideas are associated with a specific time, place, and a strong "N" ideology and use of certain jargon that is disfavored by others. Not all of it- a lot of the ideas have continuing value. But it's kind of like seeing a picture of yourself wearing clothes from 15 years ago- yeah, you wore those, and it worked at the time, but you've moved on. (I hope ... no judgment).

Look, let's say someone wanted to learn about, oh, Fiasco, or Night Witches, or any of a number of Storygames? Would they be better served by engaging with essays from Ron Edwards from 2002?. Or going .... I don't know ... here-

What Is A Storygame?

I’m going to be moving soon. I’ve been lucky to live for the past few years in a city which has a deep and diverse pool of gaming communities, with enough space in the ecosystem for the…

heterogenoustasks.wordpress.com

Now, even though that's old (I mean... 2016!) you can see a few things. Sure, it has some lingering GNS influence (stating that there is little emphasis on "simulations mechanics" for example). But in other ways, it is refreshingly modern in its concerns- discussing how the underlying themes of the games matter, and how issues related to player safety and boundaries are to be negotiated (rather than assumed through norms, as you have in most traditional games), and it also strives to be inclusive of other games- rather than saying D&D isn't a story game, it just says it can be played as one, but doesn't support the style very well. I can read that, and it's clear, it's concise, and while it is descriptive (discussing a set of games by properties) instead of prescriptive (announcing a manifesto and demanding games produced to it), it's immensely more helpful.

(Finally, if you look into the comments, there's a fascinating comment by the author responding to a question regarding GNS and Ron Edwards.)

Simply put, this tells me more, on its own terms, about Storygames than trying to pigeonhole those games back into a model designed as a reaction to specific games and playing styles from the 90s.

For that matter, did anyone here realize that others were parsing our comments to learn about transgressive monsters in D&D?

The Computational Sublime in Monster Design | Analog Game Studies

analoggamestudies.org

@the Jester


Heck, we just had the publication of a book that, for the first time, detailed the early history of TTRPG theory, discussed the shifting paradigm from wargaming to roleplaying, and showed how the debates we continue to have today are the same ones that we had at the beginning- and yet, there seems to be little interest in discussing it on its own terms (that was Peterson's Elusive Shift).

And as far as I can tell ... I am the only person that seems to care that a major book was published that is an academic look at ... THE FORGE. A favorable one. The one by William J. White? The one I keep posting the link to? I know the hardcover is expensive, but I thought that at least one of the people that keeps the conversation about GNS and the Forge going would have bought the Kindle copy and posted their review. Did I miss the review?

I mean ... don't wait for me to do the review.

Look- I truly appreciate that there are people that continue to use techniques that they learned to improve their games; when they are discussing that, I don't bother them. I just think it would be nifty if we could have some conversations about the ... newer ... topics in TTRPG theory. There are a few.

(Finally, allowing conversations to be dominated purely by aspects of dense jargon related to debates over aspects of gameplay privileges certain perspectives over others. This is a fraught issue, as, for example, there is a continuing debate about the influence of fluff and crunch as it relates to LGBTQA+ representation in games; it has been the case that games with significant fluff and no mechanics regarding social mechanics or gender norms (such as early D&D) were productive; it is also certainly the case the games that followed in the footsteps of "system matters" such as Monsterhearts, with explicit mechanics, were certainly representative- but this is the type of conversation we aren't seeing. Which, given the month ... maybe that's a better theory conversation to have than have another "framing" conversation).

I’m finally reading The Elusive Shift and it’s maddening how limited in scope modern RPG theory conversations are as well as how historically repetitive. We’re literally rehashing a tiny subset of the exact same conversations that have spanned from the invention of Prussian Kriegsspiel to the 1970s when D&D came out and the wargamers and sci-fi fandoms both took up the game and started hashing things out. There really is nothing new under the sun.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don't think this is correct. What's at stake during a skill challenge can change, as the situation evolves via play. Here's an example, from actual 4e play:

How do you set the level and complexity of the challenge if you don't even know the stakes? How the players know what to do if they don't know what they try to achieve? This makes it even more mechanics first. You choose the mechanical framework without even having concrete idea what sort of fiction it is to represent.

Both skill challenges begin and end with the fiction: framing, action declaration, resolution, developed situation.

Your examples imply you pretty tightly control what sort of checks the players can attempt and when. I'm not quite sure that's how the rulebook instructs one to do it. But yes, it probably works better that way. However, in your examples we can see that the underlying mechanics inform the fiction, and not the other way around. You know that one check is still needed so you come up with fiction to justify it etc.

What you're describing here is not "fiction first" - at least as I've ever seen that phrase used - but a particular approach to resolution - roughly, extrapolation of consequences (by the GM?) from the fiction without mechanical intermediation.

For my point it doesn't really matter who is doing the extrapolating, albeit in most games it would be the GM. But I was merely articulating what actually putting the fiction first would entail. But yes, I know it is a Forge buzzword, so it doesn't actually mean what it intuitively sounds like.

 

[innerdude]

I wasn't going to come back (I think I explained most of what I had to say in the OP), but I have some general thoughts both regarding what you wrote (which I largely agree with) and what I see in this thread, which is largely the reason I wrote the OP, and to illustrate the actual concern some people have - even though this thread, has, to date, been largely productive and I think that is a credit to the people involved.

In the OP, I think I acknowledged that good use came out of those discussions on the Forge. The history of TTRPGs is always smart people looking at what is around them, saying "I don't like that," coming up with a way to justify not liking it, and then making something new. That's great! That's how we get new stuff! And no matter what other opinions any person might have, a lot of new indie games (and indie game designers) were, um, forged at the Forge. In addition, while I appreciate that there are those who say it helps them with all sorts of games ... I think that there is a reason that (1) the Forge changed the terminology from GDS to GNS, and (2) all those games we specifically credit from the Forge tend to be narrativism. It's more ...gNs.

But the point I keep making (and the reason I quoted you) is that the Forge officially closed a decade ago, and was "closed" in terms of vitality before that. Why are people still recycling the same quotes from 20 years ago? Why aren't we discussing anything new about new games, instead of using the same tired (and often controversial) framework to discuss new games? Why is it that when other people try and discuss TTRPG theory here, we have to discuss GNS, and Ron Edwards, and Forge principles? Always?

Heck, we just had the publication of a book that, for the first time, detailed the early history of TTRPG theory, discussed the shifting paradigm from wargaming to roleplaying, and showed how the debates we continue to have today are the same ones that we had at the beginning- and yet, there seems to be little interest in discussing it on its own terms (that was Peterson's Elusive Shift).

And as far as I can tell ... I am the only person that seems to care that a major book was published that is an academic look at ... THE FORGE. A favorable one. The one by William J. White? The one I keep posting the link to? I know the hardcover is expensive, but I thought that at least one of the people that keeps the conversation about GNS and the Forge going would have bought the Kindle copy and posted their review. Did I miss the review?

I mean ... don't wait for me to do the review.

Look- I truly appreciate that there are people that continue to use techniques that they learned to improve their games; when they are discussing that, I don't bother them. I just think it would be nifty if we could have some conversations about the ... newer ... topics in TTRPG theory. There are a few.

(Finally, allowing conversations to be dominated purely by aspects of dense jargon related to debates over aspects of gameplay privileges certain perspectives over others. This is a fraught issue, as, for example, there is a continuing debate about the influence of fluff and crunch as it relates to LGBTQA+ representation in games; it has been the case that games with significant fluff and no mechanics regarding social mechanics or gender norms (such as early D&D) were productive; it is also certainly the case the games that followed in the footsteps of "system matters" such as Monsterhearts, with explicit mechanics, were certainly representative- but this is the type of conversation we aren't seeing. Which, given the month ... maybe that's a better theory conversation to have than have another "framing" conversation).

The thing you're forgetting in all this is that the principle of the innovation adoption curve is a very real thing. And that exposure to any fraction of the principles surrounding RPG theory is something that only a small percentage of the player base ever experiences.

And why is this important? Because the dominant, normative styles of RPG play remain, to this day, based in "traditional", "neo-traditional," and OSR / "classic" play. (See descriptions in the 6 Cultures of Play article here: Six Cultures of Play)

For players like me, when you eventually come to the point where you begin to question the radically dominant lines of thought of "how RPGs are supposed to work", you're faced with a massive, difficult process to even begin to conceive of new ways of playing. The process becomes even more difficult if you've been entrenched in the dominance of "traditional" Dungeons and Dragons ways of playing.

There are many, many RPG hobbyists that will never look outside "traditional" D&D play, and more to the point, will never care if they don't.

So consider --- it's now 20+ years since the Forge was really active. Yet you're asking the question, why does RPG theory still seem like it's stuck on addressing principles from this now "antiquated" set of Forge musings?

The problem is that even now, unless anyone cares to specifically look for them, getting cogent perspectives outside the "privileged" (your term) viewpoints of "trad" and "neo-trad" that dominate D&D-focused gameplay is a difficult undertaking. And furthermore, getting access to those viewpoints in any concrete, organized way is even more difficult.

In this regard, I very much appreciate your attempt to organize a coherent set of material that talks through a multitude of RPG theory perspectives.

But the fact of the matter is, "narrativism" as proposed by the Forge, remains perhaps the most radical departure and re-envisioning of what "RPG play can be" of the past 20+ years. There's a reason it remains a touchstone point in the evolution of RPG theory. And isn't it interesting that the RPG market clearly, CLEARLY bears this out, with the success of the Powered by the Apocalypse and Blades in the Dark engines over the past decade?

If we're fighting over the same issues over and over, it's because the battle remains the same. The battle remains getting anyone, anywhere, to look at RPG play from outside the "privileged," "trad," radically-D&D-centric viewpoint.

It took me 20+ years, from age 9 to age 32, to even begin to question what I was getting out of "traditional" D&D gameplay, and took another 7 or 8 years of experimentation to even consider looking at PbtA as a "valid" style of play.

Until 2017, when I finally took a deep breath and gave Dungeon World a try, you'd never have heard me give even an ounce of credence to "GNS" and "narrativist" theory.

But once I took the plunge and gave Dungeon World a try, even though it didn't go perfectly, it gave me key glimpses and hints and takeaways of how that type of game could possibly work.

And boy am I glad it did, because I would absolutely never have discovered the awesomeness of Ironsworn if I hadn't taken that initial risk 5 years ago.

If the same theories keep cropping up in conversations, it's not a failing of the community to "open their eyes to new things". It's because the same problems continue to present themselves, and GNS's "narrativism" continues to provide a touchstone perspective that is largely unaddressed elsewhere.

GNS and its proposal of narrativism remains a topic of conversation because it is the most immediate and obvious counter-narrative to the "privileged", dominant mindsets of "trad" and "neo-trad" play. If you want to have RPG theory evolve past this point, then maybe its time to chat with the "trad" and "neo-trad" player base and ask them to, you know, look outside their "privileged" box occasionally.

Because from what I observe from conversations on these discussion boards---and my own experience bears it out---is that when someone does finally, perhaps gingerly, try to look outside the "trad" box, the very first thing they bump up against is the flashing neon sign of Forge-ist narrativism. So of course it's going to be a topic of ongoing conversation.

 

[niklinna]

How do you set the level and complexity of the challenge if you don't even know the stakes? How the players know what to do if they don't know what they try to achieve? This makes it even more mechanics first. You choose the mechanical framework without even having concrete idea what sort of fiction it is to represent.

That the stakes can change doesn't mean you don't know what they are. Unless the DM specifically hides them! If there were no fiction—first—a skill challenge would be nothing more than, for example: "Okay, so you have to pass 5 skill checks at DC 15 before you fail 3. You can use Persuasion, Intimidation, and Survival. Go!" And I'd wager that even in writing an adventure the author doesn't think of something like that first. They'll think of the fictional situation, first, and then try to put the mechanical details of the skill challenge in to support that.

Your examples imply you pretty tightly control what sort of checks the players can attempt and when. I'm not quite sure that's how the rulebook instructs one to do it. But yes, it probably works better that way. However, in your examples we can see that the underlying mechanics inform the fiction, and not the other way around. You know that one check is still needed so you come up with fiction to justify it etc.

My reading of the 4e text is that the DM sets a default DC for all the skill checks, provides the applicable skills (that are relevant to the fiction), and # successes / failures. There is explicit text about handling when players come up with approaches that are out of the box, with different skills, etc.

Even in the basic case, though, the players are free to take whatever actions they like as seems plausible in the fiction—first—and then map that onto skill checks. They could just pick some skills and roll dice without describing what they do, of course, but then they're missing out on most of the fun. They could also pick a skill first, and then decide how they go about using it, but that's really little different than, "John's good at persuading, let him do the talking".

Compare to my description of dramatic skill challenges in Torg Eternity, which are rigidly scripted in terms of the exact skills in the exact order they must be performed. Even then, while the mechanics of the thing clearly step forward to upstage the fiction during play, some fiction motivated the setup and scripting, and the fiction is what gets described to the players before the players are given the rigid mechanics of how to deal with it. That is, the fiction comes first.

For my point it doesn't really matter who is doing the extrapolating, albeit in most games it would be the GM. But I was merely articulating what actually putting the fiction first would entail. But yes, I know it is a Forge buzzword, so it doesn't actually mean what it intuitively sounds like.

To me, it does mean what it intuitively sounds like. Fiction comes first, and then you deal with mechanics.

 

[overgeeked]

So consider --- it's now 20+ years since the Forge was really active. Yet you're asking the question, why does RPG theory still seem like it's stuck on addressing principles from this now "antiquated" set of Forge musings?

It’s way worse than that. These exact same conversations (only using slightly different terms and jargon) have been going on since at least the late 1960s (yes, they predate D&D), if not all the way back to Reisswitz’s Kriegsspiel game in 1812. We’re stuck in a conversational loop that’s at least 60 years old at this point, if not one that’s 210 years old.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Because from what I observe from conversations on these discussion boards---and my own experience bears it out---is that when someone does finally, perhaps gingerly, try to look outside the "trad" box, the very first thing they bump up against is the flashing neon sign of Forge-ist narrativism. So of course it's going to be a topic of ongoing conversation.

I will address this very briefly, as I choose specifically not to in the post you are replying to.

There seems to be confusion regarding two separate issues; the first is regarding conversations on these discussions boards. On this, I tend to largely agree with @Umbran and @Malmuria - which is to say ... know your audience. Look at the threads. Once you exclude the Geek Media threads, do you notice anything? The vast majority of them are about 5e. And then older editions of D&D. And then Level Up (which is advanced 5e). This board covers general TTRPG topics, but is so firmly entrenched in "D&D" that it was one of the few websites specifically called out on the last, 34 hour survey on D&D by WoTC (the time taken is approximate, but feels accurate).

With that in mind, when you are already in a place with large numbers of D&D players, and you are employing a theory (pace @Malmuria that is, at best, seen as dismissive of D&D and trad games, and at worst, is considered hostile to "trad" games), you will likely get pushback on the jargon as people will not accept it. That's neither good, nor bad, but is.

That's separate from what I was just saying, which is that there is a lot of stuff out there since the Forge. And the games that are out there may have some debt to those theories, but if you listen to the people designing games today, as opposed to the players theorizing on these boards, they eschew those restrictive labels. And sometimes, when people try and discuss other new games and styles that aren't trad and also aren't under narrativism, we end up with pushback (sometimes very aggressive pushback) regarding those indie games and theories, and demands that we justify it under Forge jargon. Which ... again, if you aren't doing "N," isn't helpful.


But yes, I am glad you have found games and a play style that you find satisfying! And I hope that you are able to discuss it with others in an open and productive way here, and that you accord others the same respect when they are discussing other issues as well. That's how it should be!

 

[pemerton]

You say where you can only go from A to B to C in that order. But what generates the can only? Where is the constraint on possibility coming from? Does the adventure tell the players what action declarations are permitted, kind of like a choose your own adventure book does?

Well, one way is through physical restrictions. A dungeon that only has one path through it, for example

Consider each keyed encounter a scene. There’s really only one order these scenes can play out. The party can backtrack to a room they have already visited, but they’ve presumably already resolved the encounter there, so there isn’t much to be done.

The focus here seems to be on geography: there's a single tunnel with things spread along it.

So the linearity is the geography.

But there seems to be some other premise at work that I'm not quite getting. Still looking at the dungeon scenario that @Malmuria linked to, I don't see how each of the dungeon rooms is a scene. Different scenes could happen in the same room: for instance, a Halfling could sneak forward from room 2 to room 4, get spotted by the boss, call for help, and then when their bigger friends come running the pressure plate triggers. Now we've had two different scenes in room 3.

There’s also a bit of a spectrum. Yes, the fact that there are two ways to open the secret door and the use of random encounters means that this dungeon won’t play out exactly the same way every time, but there’s pretty minimal room for variation. The keyed scenes still play out in the same order every time. So, maybe it’s not completely linear, but it is pretty far towards the linear end of the spectrum.

I'm still not really getting it. On top of the example I just gave, one group might read all the stuff in room 2 first time through, whereas another group - in a hurry to avoid being ambushed by Goblins - keeps going, but then has to backtrack to try and solve the riddle.

Contrast it with, like, The Caverns of Thracia, which has multiple entrances to each level, and many paths between any two keyed encounters. That dungeon’s structure is far less linear, but still not totally open, as the players are for the most part restricted to the dungeon’s predesigned paths. I would call it a branching structure. Contrast both with Isle of Dread, where there is no restrictive dungeon structure, merely an open hex map that the players can explore in any direction.

A dungeon with looping paths isn’t really what I would consider open, because the paths still create restrictions on the players’ ability to navigate the space. I mean, unless they’re freely able to just tunnel through walls or something. A hexcrawl is, in my view, the clearest example of an open structure, though not the only example.

This seems to be all about geography. And also seems to equate adventure (as in "linear adventure") with exploration of the imagined geography. And for the reasons I've give above, I don't really see how geography and scenes are being correlated.

Another way is through illusionism. No matter where the players decide to go, the DM has the next scene they had planned play out there.

This, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have anything to do with maps or geography at all. It seems to be about GMing techniques.

A third way is through player buy-in. The group agrees in advance that there’s a set plot that they’re going to follow. In some cases, this kind of arrangement is implicit - the DM doesn’t outright state that the adventure has a linear plot that the players agree to follow, but the players understand that there’s not really any adventure to be found except where the DM telegraphs that there’s going to be.

This seems like a consensual variation of what you've called "illusionism". (I'm not sure if you're meaning to use illusionism in the Forge sense or not. If you are, then they had a corresponding bit of jargon for consensual illusionism: participationism. But maybe you're using "illusionism" in some other sense? I'm not sure.)

Anyway, as I said I don't really get what people mean by linear adventures and I'm still pretty unclear, as it seems to rest on some distinctions I'm not sensitive to, or some premise I don't get, around the relationship between maps and geography, GM techniques, and exploratory play.