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

[hawkeyefan]

Personally I wouldn't phrase it this way. But I also don't think this distinction is terribly important. For me, this isn't having a solution in mind. All I have in mind is the NPCs motivations and weaknesses (and even then the players may probe further into the NPCs personality to find things I hadn't thought of where I have flesh out the NPC further in play). But I am sitting there thinking: in order to trick this NPC they have to find his womanizing weakness, get a woman to seduce them, then copy the key. In the case of the Goodfellas example, that is just a scheme the players would have concocted themselves based on what they found out. But it could have gone in a number of other directions (for example if they had decided to take a close look at his finances it might have gone in a different direction). For me, I want to be just as surprised about where things go as the players.

Yeah, I get that! I think the motive so to speak is there....portray this NPC with integrity. I can understand that.

But when you are also the one who crafts the NPC and their place in things, when you determine these traits, they have an impact on play. Deciding to place an incorruptible guard at a key door has an impact on the game, certainly a different impact than placing a guard who is open to bribes would have.

 

[Bedrockgames]

But that's it; people assume some experience with social interactions means they understand how to extend it. That's not a premise I think actually holds water. Other people obviously do, but the astonishment they have that people don't share that view is, well, a bit much.

But again I think you are setting the bar way higher than anyone here is. No one is saying because they understand how buying a loaf of bread works they can realistically depict how a cocaine deal is going to go down. An accurate and objectively real outcome is not the goal. They want believable and fun for the group. For that you just need enough experiences to draw on as analogies. Your players aren't expecting you to morph into a hardened drug lord like you spent 9 months in deep immersive research in an outlaw motorcycle gang or something. They are mostly expecting stuff drawn from mundane experiences, tv and maybe what you read about it.

I don't have any astonishment that people don't share the view. People want different things. That's the way the hobby has been from the beginning.

 

[overgeeked]

Right. But to me the whole point of roleplaying is that you try to imagine that and immerse into it the best you can. It may be far from perfect, but the goal still is clear. I really don't see what's even the point of playing if we give up on this.

Seriously, at this point I don't even understand what people want to get out of RPGs.

A lot of people seem to want to play a board game where there are no limits on choices. Others want to express their creativity in making their own playing piece. Others want to act and improvise in character. Others want to immerse themselves in a world. Others want an excuse to hang out with their friends and play. Others want...

Some people focus on one of those, others focus on two or more.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think if your goal is perfect realism, sure. I don't know what it is like to be a secret agent in another country trying to persuade an asset to sell their country's secrets. And if you put me in that situation, I'd probably just end up bungling it because I have no experience with it, I don't understand the complexities. But I do have a lot of film and book analogies I can draw on for the purposes of play. And I have a lot of non-spy experience in my life that I can draw on as an approximation. I think for those of us interested in live RP at the table, this is where that is fun. But at least for me the goal isn't to achieve any kind of realism.

But then, you've seen a lot of sword fights in books and films too, haven't you? And even if you've done no combat of any sort, you've done a lot of physical activity across the course of your life.

So in the end, the difference is you're comfortable with assuming your narrative emulation of one is adequate and the other isn't. But that's the issue--its one of comfort, not something that can be demonstrated its more true with one than the other.

Still, I don't think any RPG can really capture the complex psychological processes and other details going on in a real social interaction either.

They don't capture the physical processes in combat and results either. This is incredibly obvious when you look at injury systems in RPGs, but its true of all of it. All you do is get one that's close enough for your purposes.

As I said, from where I sit it appears that two things go on, one I find more legitimate than the other:

1. People are more comfortable offloading physical processes on mechanics than they are with social (and to some degree intellectual) ones. That's fine; it can turn on how distant you feel from one or the other, and what value you get out of resolving them narratively rather than mechanically.

2. They think they have a better model for resolving social situations outside their experience than they do physical ones outside their experience. This is a massive assumption I don't think is warranted, but that some people take as a baseline that is not subject to argument.

In addition, there's a certain blindness to the fact at least some of them are okay with a problem in one area they aren't in another. As has been noted, some people are really bad at a lot of social interactions; if they're expected to be able to do so effectively in a game, they effectively can't play; they certainly can't play any character type that would be dependent on it. If you required some of the same people to actually make decisions in combat or climbing a mountain to a significant degree to participate in those, they'd have nothing but bad things to say about it. But since its not their ox being gored with the social issue, its okay there.

Also just because this free form RP, it doesn't mean you can't stop to look things up or ask someone at the table who knows about a subject that comes up. I do that a lot and don't find it disruptive. For instance if a player knows a lot about firearms, and the players go to a gunstore, I would probably ask that player for help answering questions that come up.

Watch how a fair number of GMs react to that, though. This is a case where the desire for speed in games with some people trumps damn near everything.

 

[Bedrockgames]

What I find interesting is that there are people I know, and if I walked up and punched them in the face, I'm sure I would be able to reasonably predict what would happen afterwards. Those same people, if I walked up and hugged them, I have no idea how they'd respond.

This idea that combat is inherently more complicated than social interaction doesn't seem quite right to me. At least, not enough to treat it as a given in all cases.

Combat isn't more complicated, but I do think it is more chaotic and harder to predict. And that might be part of it here. Usually I find most social situations play out as I imagine they would. If I am planning on having a difficult conversation with someone, and I know them, I am rarely surprised by the reactions they have over the course of the conversation. People do surprise you from time to time, and something very random, like giving a person a hug out of the blue, especially if you've never hugged them before, that might be more difficult to gauge (even then I feel like I have a sense of who would hug me back and who would react negatively to a sudden hug).

But I do think there is something to this point as it relates to fighting. It might be hard to predict what will happen in a fight with someone you've never fought with before. But if you spent several days a week sparing with the same person, in the same way you spend time each week talking to a friend, you probably would have a good idea of how things might play out in a fight. There may be a more chaotic and random element because it is a physical act and you might slip or the person might try to do something you aren't expecting intentionally, but it is more predictable the more familiar you are with a person's movement and habits. How you could translate that into an all talking combat system though I am not sure.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Watch how a fair number of GMs react to that, though. This is a case where the desire for speed in games with some people trumps damn near everything.

I think

They don't capture the physical processes in combat and results either. This is incredibly obvious when you look at injury systems in RPGs, but its true of all of it. All you do is get one that's close enough for your purposes.

I definitely would agree they do not. I think there are reasons combat tends to be resolved mechanically more than social stuff in RPGs, that aren't related to realism (I think part of it may be we expect combat to be exciting and unpredictable as part of the fun).

 

[overgeeked]

What I find interesting is that there are people I know, and if I walked up and punched them in the face, I'm sure I would be able to reasonably predict what would happen afterwards. Those same people, if I walked up and hugged them, I have no idea how they'd respond.

This idea that combat is inherently more complicated than social interaction doesn't seem quite right to me. At least, not enough to treat it as a given in all cases.

I think it's a lot of cart-before-the-horse thinking. We're gamers. We play games. Most games have rather involved rules for combat, but very few rules for socialization. That's the trad game template at least. And some of us have internalized that over decades of play. So we assume that's not only how games should work but how the world actually works. Which is a really silly thing to do.

In a fight, you have mostly no control over your instinctual response and it comes in one of three varieties: fight, flight, or freeze.

In a conversation, you have a literal infinite variety of choices...almost all of which are entirely up to you.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It is not really about accuracy of the model. But talking feels more like talking than talking feels like fighting. The former has immediate immersiveness in the way latter doesn't. YMMV and all that, but I don't think this concept is even remotely weird or hard to get.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't have any astonishment that people don't share the view. People want different things. That's the way the hobby has been from the beginning.

That was directed mostly at Longinius who I usually sympathize with, but who who seemed baffled that people were making the argument that just roleplaying the social elements wasn't any better than just doing so in a swordfight. That there's a vast difference to him is fine, but acting like its shocking that others feel differently is being a little tunnel-vision about the whole discussion.

 

[Bedrockgames]

But then, you've seen a lot of sword fights in books and films too, haven't you? And even if you've done no combat of any sort, you've done a lot of physical activity across the course of your life.

So in the end, the difference is you're comfortable with assuming your narrative emulation of one is adequate and the other isn't. But that's the issue--its one of comfort, not something that can be demonstrated its more true with one than the other.

Absotluely and they do inform my rulings when players do something like try to leap to a chandelier. But I think in combat, because its the 'action' part of the game, we want the excitement of a system, especially one with dice rolls. I have no problem admitting for me, when it comes to feats of daring and combat in RPGs, the excitement for me is in the roll of the die and I am particularly drawn to games where the stakes of death are higher.