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

[AbdulAlhazred]

Those are included, but it also includes things like "In a superhero setting an energy blast that can blow through a wall will never hit a non-invulnerable hero dead on". Or in noir detective stories, the client is always suspect.

These are not things that have any real in-world reason. They're just dramatic conceits.

But again, when the world is NOT REAL, they are ALL just constraints that are built from conceits! Physics itself is simply a conceit in a world that is not real! This is the kind of thing that I mean when I say that Edwards really cuts deep and focuses on core attributes and GDS is more a catalog of surface attributes.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

What do you mean by "dramatic logic"? It seems to imply a pre-set idea of how things must go.

Challenging dramatic needs is about putting the player/character on the spot, right now, with no obvious answer dictated by dramatic tropes. The action decision and its outcome are not bound by such things, in Blades in the Dark.

Answer of course is not dictated, but the very act of framing is. This is how dramatic moments in stories are constructed. The protagonist has a dramatic need -> a situation challenging that need occurs. Principles of running story now game are instructions to follow dramatic logic to make this happen.

 

[Ovinomancer]

What part you don't get? What is framed is based on creating situations that create a dramatic conflict. The game runs on dramatic logic, it is plain as day.

Okay, so, to you, using dramatic logic just means framing things around the characters according to their dramatic need? That's nowhere close to what I take from that term. Logic is used to parse out what comes next -- with these inputs, I use this logic to determine what that implies and what conclusions can be shown from that. So, dramatic logic would be the logic I'm using to determine how things work out. But you're using it only to mean 'how do I set things up.' If that's the form of jargon you wish to use, and you're going to be 100% clear that this is all that you mean by it, then, sure, carry on. But, I might warn you, it's probably going to cause confusion as to what you mean.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

But the whole premise of how to GM such a game is based on dramatic logic.

Well, in a sense. It is based mostly on taking a dramatic need of a character (in many cases, it could also be some other conceit/theme) and 'boiling it'. Every time the player narrates an action the game takes that, or its intent, and runs it through some sort of process which produces something, blowback, progress, setbacks, complications, something. That 'something' generally propels things forward into a new situation which is more urgent in some sense. The AIM is to examine the need/conceit and drive play forward. It COULD be dramatic in outcome, or not. Just like an OD&D dungeon crawl will present challenges and MAY produce some sort of narrative of daring-do, or it might just describe how the PCs opened the door to the first room and were instantly stung to death by giant wasps... Most of us are not good enough players or GMs to produce really excellent dramatic narratives out of SN play, and I don't really consciously aim for that. I just try to make each new scene evoke some sort of "Oh my gosh! What now!!!???"

 

[niklinna]

Answer of course is not dictated, but the very act of framing is. This is how dramatic moments in stories are constructed. The protagonist has a dramatic need -> a situation challenging that need occurs. Principles of running story now game are instructions to follow dramatic logic to make this happen.

I really need to know what you mean by "dramatic logic" to respond. My best guess is something along the lines of "how events should turn out in order to conform to dramatic tropes". That is not at all the same as having a "dramatic need".

Framing is just the setup for what Narrativist play is concerned with: Which of these outcomes do I want most, and what am I willing to pay, what consequences am I willing to risk, to get it? Followed of course by what actually winds up happening. Deciding that isn't beholden to any genre tropes, and, at least in Blades in the Dark, mechanically resolving the outcome is almost entirely mechanical (one might even say Gamist).

 

[niklinna]

Well, in a sense. It is based mostly on taking a dramatic need of a character (in many cases, it could also be some other conceit/theme) and 'boiling it'. Every time the player narrates an action the game takes that, or its intent, and runs it through some sort of process which produces something, blowback, progress, setbacks, complications, something. That 'something' generally propels things forward into a new situation which is more urgent in some sense. The AIM is to examine the need/conceit and drive play forward. It COULD be dramatic in outcome, or not. Just like an OD&D dungeon crawl will present challenges and MAY produce some sort of narrative of daring-do, or it might just describe how the PCs opened the door to the first room and were instantly stung to death by giant wasps... Most of us are not good enough players or GMs to produce really excellent dramatic narratives out of SN play, and I don't really consciously aim for that. I just try to make each new scene evoke some sort of "Oh my gosh! What now!!!???"

The nature of this "some sort of process which produces something" is more than a little important to the question at hand.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I really need to know what you mean by "dramatic logic" to respond. My best guess is something along the lines of "how events should turn out in order to conform to dramatic tropes". That is not at all the same as having a "dramatic need".

I'm not really talking about any specific tropes. But the GM is answering to questions of what to frame based on dramatic logic. They don't answer it based on what would make sense or what would be a level appropriate challenge (these are different types of internal logic,) they're answering it based on what would work with the dramatic needs of the character. But this too is a type of internal logic.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yep. As you know my favourite is actually Burning Wheel, which predates AW, but I agree that AW is the "pivot point".

hehehe, yeah, BW has done well, and definitely has been used as a basis for a bunch of other interesting games. I think the main reason it didn't quite single-handedly trigger something like AW has is just that it is a bit complex, there are a bunch of moving parts in there. The beauty of AW is its sheer simplicity! You almost cannot fail to grasp what it is about conceptually because there's so little GAME there (in a mechanical or elaborate process sense).

Well, I quoted from some of the chapters in the Routledge collection upthread. As I said, to me they don't seem to be across it. They have definitions of "system" and "setting" and "adventure" that don't seem able to capture the development at all.

I definitely think, from examining a bunch of stuff than Torner has written, references to his work, etc. that he's clearly got many views on games, and a lot of familiarity with the culture of GAMERS. None of this is particularly something I would criticize. I just don't think he's got the same level of razor sharp logical mind for what the process of actually playing an RPG consists of at the most core fundamental logical level. Torner is probably the guy you want to go to and discuss what gamers think about and how they communicate, but if I want to build a game itself, or learn about why things happen at the table, I look at Edwards, or Baker, or some of the other people in that category like Czege.

 

[pemerton]

But you CANNOT split out different INTERNAL sources of this logic! Because a game world is PRETEND there is no ACTUAL physics for example. So if a game is trying to impose physics as a realistic constraint, it is really imposing ITSELF, or the conception of the participants, just like if you impose genre logic as a constraint, which is also going to be how it is conceived by the participants. So there is no CORE fundamental difference, they are all "imposition of a conception of how play should proceed" with the details of what that is determining the sub-type of the agenda.

I think this is why Edwards distinguishes categories of simulation based on how the participants set about ordering an implementing their conceptions.

In purist-for-system play, system - "a means by which in-game events are determined to occur" - is prioritised. The ambition is that the system, in operation, will generate the setting, situations and characters that the participants want to enjoy imagining. In various ways Classic Traveller, RQ, RM and Champions all aspire to this.

In high concept play, one (or sometimes more) of character, situation and/or setting is prioritised as the object of exploration, and system is subordinated: "The formula starts with one of Character, Situation, or Setting, with lots of Color, then the other two (Character, Situation, or Setting, whichever weren't in first place), with System being last in priority."

GM decision-making or "suspending" of the rules is part and parcel of high concept play, precisely because a consistent and "pure" means for determining what happens is not a high priority. And we can easily see this borne out in many discussions about how to GM D&D, how to GM CoC, etc.

Part of the cleverness of a system like Fate or GUMSHOE is that it reconciles a consistent means with the prioritisation of character (FATE) or situation (GUMSHOE). I don't think this is as fundamental a pivot as AW (that we were discussing not far above), but I think these systems deserve recognition for having squared an important RPGing circle.

 

[niklinna]

I'm not really talking about any specific tropes. But the GM is answering to questions of what to frame based on dramatic logic. They don't answer it based on what would make sense or what would be a level appropriate challenge (these are different types of internal logic,) they're answering it based on what would work with the dramatic needs of the character. But this too is a type of internal logic.

The fact that the character's needs are dramatic does not make the process of challenging them itself dramatic. It's just giving the player what they asked for (in the "buddy, you asked for it!" sense).