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

[AbdulAlhazred]

So completely divergent from AD&D

I don't think 1e is TOO far 'out there', its a mix of G and various flavors of S, and it definitely reneges on the promise at the start of the PHB to deliver a kind of 'epic high fantasy' play (at least until you get to high levels, which is intended to require a long period of skilled play). OTOH mostly in practice it is a game of skilled play gamist dungeon crawling and hex crawling. If you stick to just using the reaction system, and the morale/obedience systems, for everything social, then you are playing it as I suspect Gygax mostly intended. Certainly when you warp off into purely RPed social stuff, then the game kind of falls all apart. Its a lot better than 2e though, with its "there's a story and by gosh the GM should cheat to make it happen if he's gotta!" craziness (when coupled with a rule system that forces you to do exactly that constantly).

 

[Garthanos]

I don't think 1e is TOO far 'out there', its a mix of G and various flavors of S, and it definitely reneges on the promise at the start of the PHB to deliver a kind of 'epic high fantasy' play (at least until you get to high levels, which is intended to require a long period of skilled play). OTOH mostly in practice it is a game of skilled play gamist dungeon crawling and hex crawling. If you stick to just using the reaction system, and the morale/obedience systems, for everything social, then you are playing it as I suspect Gygax mostly intended. Certainly when you warp off into purely RPed social stuff, then the game kind of falls all apart. Its a lot better than 2e though, with its "there's a story and by gosh the GM should cheat to make it happen if he's gotta!" craziness (when coupled with a rule system that forces you to do exactly that constantly).

I felt like there were plenty of mixed messages between G and S. His huge explanation of HP was an attempt to give simulation to that high fantasy and very game oriented mechanic.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't think 1e is TOO far 'out there', its a mix of G and various flavors of S, and it definitely reneges on the promise at the start of the PHB to deliver a kind of 'epic high fantasy' play (at least until you get to high levels, which is intended to require a long period of skilled play). OTOH mostly in practice it is a game of skilled play gamist dungeon crawling and hex crawling. If you stick to just using the reaction system, and the morale/obedience systems, for everything social, then you are playing it as I suspect Gygax mostly intended. Certainly when you warp off into purely RPed social stuff, then the game kind of falls all apart.

I disagree with the last bit here. The game doesn't fall apart when things move into purely RPed social stuff, it more just gets out of the way - like it should.

Which makes sense if one sees the mechanics mostly as being means to abstract that (mostly physical action stuff) which almost universally cannot be replicated at the table, leaving things which can be (at least vaguely) replicated at the table for the players and-or GM to do with as they can/will.

Its a lot better than 2e though, with its "there's a story and by gosh the GM should cheat to make it happen if he's gotta!" craziness (when coupled with a rule system that forces you to do exactly that constantly).

If the focus of the rules agrees with the intended outcome then that's coherence, isn't it?

Whether it's a coherence one likes or not is an entirely different question.

 

[Malmuria]

The first of the later essays has no use of the word "dysfunction" that I can find. The second does, and so does this one. The diagnoses of dysfunctional play about competing agendas among participants - eg gamists who wreck or break simulationist-oriented play, or would-be narrativists who struggle with the GM over control of the story in a game that the GM is intending to be high concept simulationist with the GM making the major plot decisions. I think this is pretty consistent with what is said in the original GNS pieces: dysfunction, when it occurs, is often (not always) a result of incompatible creative agendas.

The problem with incoherent game texts is not that they make such dysfunction inevitable - no claim of that nature is made that I can see - but that they make it more likely, by encouraging RPGers to refrain from asking What is their creative agenda? and How are the particular techniques and procedures set out in this rules text going to help achieve that agenda?

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition:
coherent

1. Sticking together; cohering
2. Marked by an orderly, logical, and aesthetically consistent relation of parts.

incoherent
1. Lacking cohesion, connection, or harmony; not coherent.
2. Unable to think or express one's thoughts in a clear or orderly manner.

The reviewers of White object to 'incoherent' by stating it has ONLY meaning 2 above, and are oblivious to meaning 1. As to "multiple principles, relationships, or interests" I'm not sure what you mean by that. I think coherent definition #2 above talks about "aesthetically consistent relation of parts." It isn't a question of multiplicity, it is a question of aesthetic consistency and thus things 'sticking together' and possessing 'cohesion, connection, or harmony' (or the lack thereof). So I think what RE means by 'incoherent' is literally that, but the reviewers took the meaning #2 of incoherent and assumed that was the only possible reading he could have meant, and thus objected to the term on the basis of claiming it implies that a lack of adherence to a single GNS agenda literally implies that the game participants will be unable to express themselves clearly.

It simply appeared to be a rather narrow and ill-considered criticism by the podcasters. Lets give them the benefit of the doubt, you often stumble a bit when speaking live.

See above... this was simply the first dictionary definition that popped up for each word in a DuckDuckGo search. It is a commonly used and perfectly cromulent dictionary AFAIK (not being some great expert on such).

Yeah, I'd be interested to know if there is some great degree of divergence of opinion on these words. I mean, I certainly agree that people use 'incoherent' to mean "someone said something to me and it was impossible to understand." but that seems at best a specific variation of a secondary meaning of the word.

For the purposes of its use in the forge essays quoted above, I think the key thing is the relationship between incoherence and dysfunction. It might not be strict causation, but there seems to be a strong association between the two in his thinking, such that a lack of consistency or sticking together might very well produce unsuccessful and unfun gameplay if not addressed. And incoherent game design inhibit players to have a clear understanding of their creative agenda, i.e. to "think or express one's thoughts in a clear or orderly manner," hence people thinking they are doing 'roleplay not rollplay' but not being clear about what that means for the game they are playing.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I disagree with the last bit here. The game doesn't fall apart when things move into purely RPed social stuff, it more just gets out of the way - like it should.

Which makes sense if one sees the mechanics mostly as being means to abstract that (mostly physical action stuff) which almost universally cannot be replicated at the table, leaving things which can be (at least vaguely) replicated at the table for the players and-or GM to do with as they can/will.

I think it falls apart if you tend to view the game mechanics as the means of how we determine what happens in the game. If that’s how you think of the mechanics, then anytime they become absent, or “get out of the way”, then it would seem something has gone wrong. For many of us, and (importantly) for many games, there’s no distinction between actions based on physical or social lines. Game mechanics are applied to all to determine what happens.

For folks (or games) that look at it this way, having some situations where rules apply and others where they do not just seems odd. The reasons for not using rules some of the time seem questionable.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I disagree with the last bit here. The game doesn't fall apart when things move into purely RPed social stuff, it more just gets out of the way - like it should.

Well, but it doesn't always. Frankly I think if you set up a game with certain parameters and its focus is going to be mostly this stuff, then you can have a pretty good game, but when the random dungeon loot party goes and does social, meh things don't really play that well in a lot of cases.

Which makes sense if one sees the mechanics mostly as being means to abstract that (mostly physical action stuff) which almost universally cannot be replicated at the table, leaving things which can be (at least vaguely) replicated at the table for the players and-or GM to do with as they can/will.

If the focus of the rules agrees with the intended outcome then that's coherence, isn't it?

Whether it's a coherence one likes or not is an entirely different question.

In the case of 2e it is REALLY incoherent! The game very vehemently claims its purpose is creating fantastical fantasy stories about heroic adventurers. It then provides a whole set of rules that are meant mainly for dungeon crawls, and oriented towards test-of-player-skill type play (though with NWPs grafted on, which is a whole other topic, but also about incoherence). This just DOES NOT WORK, unless the GM fudges heavily, at best. I mean, 99.9% of all people playing 2e simply read past the 'its a story game' part and ignored it totally and played 1e revised, but if you actually read 2e and try to play the game that is described in the books, it just cannot be done without lots of GM force. Worse, half the players are likely to play '1e revised' and the GM and the other players are trying to play '2e story game' and the two don't mix at all, fudging in a skill test dungeon crawl is cheating, pure and simple.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

For the purposes of its use in the forge essays quoted above, I think the key thing is the relationship between incoherence and dysfunction. It might not be strict causation, but there seems to be a strong association between the two in his thinking, such that a lack of consistency or sticking together might very well produce unsuccessful and unfun gameplay if not addressed. And incoherent game design inhibit players to have a clear understanding of their creative agenda, i.e. to "think or express one's thoughts in a clear or orderly manner," hence people thinking they are doing 'roleplay not rollplay' but not being clear about what that means for the game they are playing.

Well, I think that when Edwards started saying 'dysfunction' that is a more judgmental statement, but the podcast guys didn't even reach there, they just dissed on incoherent itself and defined it in a way that was clearly not what RE intended...

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I think it falls apart if you tend to view the game mechanics as the means of how we determine what happens in the game. If that’s how you think of the mechanics, then anytime they become absent, or “get out of the way”, then it would seem something has gone wrong. For many of us, and (importantly) for many games, there’s no distinction between actions based on physical or social lines. Game mechanics are applied to all to determine what happens.

For folks (or games) that look at it this way, having some situations where rules apply and others where they do not just seems odd. The reasons for not using rules some of the time seem questionable.

I don't think it is odd at all and I fully get where @Lanefan is coming from. Have you ever been at a LARP? There almost never is rules for social stuff yet that tends to be the main part of many LARPs.

 

[Campbell]

I don't understand why damn near 20 years later we are so caught up on the words of one man who has said lots of things since and designed a lot of games. It's not as if Ron being wrong about thing would make him wrong about everything. That's not the way any of this works.

That first sort of incoherence that Ron and most of us at the Forge saw - that of players playing fundamentally different sorts of games - that does not happen at the vast majority of tables. What we missed is that despite rules pulled from wargames the vast majority of games lacked differences of creative agenda because they didn't use the rules in their 500-page books. They used unwritten rules that were socially enforced to keep games centered on story and setting. We kept looking at the rulebooks, instead of the actual play when it came to coherence. To a certain extent people like Vincent Baker absolutely understood that Vampire, Shadowrun, Ars Magica, AD&D Second Edition were all pretty much expensive paper weights outside of the setting material.

The actual game structure, reward systems and expectations were all part of a system of elaborate mostly unspoken social norms. This is fundamentally why power gamers and rules lawyers are looked down upon - they're trying to play the game in the book. Not the game we are actually playing.

That second sort was pretty widespread and still kind of is, although less and less with games like 5e, Numenera, Edge of the Empire, Conan 2d20, Vampire 5e, L5R 5e. They largely drop a lot of the war gaming stuff they don't care about. They can be played in setting/story exploration mode mostly without ignoring the rules. There's a whole lot less getting in the way of GM curated play. The resource management minigames in 5e are a sort of proud nail that way, but can be finessed much more easily than AD&D.

 

[pemerton]

For the purposes of its use in the forge essays quoted above, I think the key thing is the relationship between incoherence and dysfunction. It might not be strict causation, but there seems to be a strong association between the two in his thinking, such that a lack of consistency or sticking together might very well produce unsuccessful and unfun gameplay if not addressed.

Yes. See every post ever about powergamers mucking up a 2nd ed AD&D, 3E, PF (not PF2) or 5e game.

See every post ever about players who don't build their PCs to fit the GM's campaign/plot, or who won't follow the hooks the GM is setting out.

See every post ever about the 5 min working day and how to solve it.

The sorts of posts I've just described are not rare. They are common. And they are manifestations of game texts and game rules being "incoherent" in the sense intended.

Is resolving those issues an inevitable cost of RPGing? Some people think so. Edwards doesn't.