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

[hawkeyefan]

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.

It’s not weird or hard to get. I absolutely understand the point.

I just think the similarity isn’t nearly as meaningful as you do.

 

[Lanefan]

Outside of social areas you're familiar with, I'd argue it has, if anything, a worse one. Its just one people think they understand better than they do.

Sure - but as it's a game of imagination anyway, what's wrong with us just taking our misunderstandings and running with them anyway?

To use (was it @pemerton 's?) example from upthread: I've never done any real-life haggling like he has but that doesn't stop me from trying it in an RPG setting and seeing what happens.

Hell, I can take any number of social things I've never been-done-said in real life and try portraying them through my characters; and if those portrayals accidentally veer into inaccuracy or even parody then so be it.

 

[overgeeked]

That's fine. I am not disagreeing with any of this. I have only tried to clarify why handling conversation via conversation has correspondence in a way handling fighting via conversation doesn't. Whether one values that correspondence of course is a matter of preference.

Okay. Maybe take a moment to recognize that you've gone from trying to clarify to being aghast that others don't understand it. If your goal is clarification, you apparently cannot reach it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It also isn't what anyone has argued for.

Well.... kinda! I mean, speaking for myself, I am kind of poking the issue with a stick, because as I said earlier, its easy enough to 'get it'. D&D started out based on a wargame and the essence of wargames is combat rules, usually with randomizers (dice) included. They also tend to at least pretend to some degree of modeling reality (WH40k and its ilk aside). It has been asserted that nobody really knows jack about combat in any realistic sense, and we all agree it cannot be 'played out' (even in LARPs really, but certainly not at the table). So the options are 'talk it through' or 'wargame it'. Talking it through kind of generally (maybe not for certain formulations of games) run us into the Czege Principle, unless it is left 100% to the GM to decide all consequences. Thus I take it that dice effectively are really a way for the GM to offload this burden. Since she cannot really say what would 'really happen' she's got to either rule according to some goals (agenda) or else submit it to the dice/mechanics almost entirely.

So, the question boils down to whether or not the situation is thus on the 'social conflict' side of the house. Personally I kinda think its pretty much the same. While people can certainly pretend that character action X produces reaction Y in some NPC, its pretty much entirely up to the GM. There could just as easily be reactions A, B, C, or D instead and they could trivially be justified by details of the character's backstory or nature that are simply too subtle to be included in any world description. People are extremely complex and while we can often judge an individual in real life with full access to various queues, even that is pretty dicey, let alone judging a mere 2 sentence outline of one which you cannot even visualize. The GM is thus in ESSENTIALLY the exact same situation as they would be in terms of combat, they simply have to either resort to a randomizer/mechanics, or answer "what happens when I do X?" according to some sort of agenda.

There REALLY ARE only a few elements available to any theory on why one is traditionally preferred over the other, at least by some people. They just prefer it! Combat has traditionally been using randomizers/mechanics and doing it the other way, while consistent, runs into matters of tradition. Meanwhile the argument against using mechanics in social conflict exactly mirrors that, tradition. Yes, you may feel more 'in character', but then we get to a final question about that. How do you achieve the notion that the GM is not simply following a script or their own agenda? If they are, and that is perfectly fine (which I guess it must be) then we finally land back at why that isn't acceptable for combat, and we are DOUBLE justified in concluding it can only be a matter of tradition and really nothing else. See what I mean?

 

[Lanefan]

The trouble you're running into the is very basis of the game is conversation. So everything is already handled via conversation between the referee and players. Occasionally dice are involved, too. Yes, conversation representing conversation feels more "natural" as you're using the game mechanic (conversation) that exactly mirrors the activity it represents (conversation). But for literally everything else, you're using the game mechanic (conversation) for something that is not actually that thing (everything that's not conversation).

The difference is in-character conversation vs out-of-character (or meta) conversation. In-character conversation is the social-interaction piece of the game and is IMO the piece that rarely if ever needs to involve game mechanics. Out-of-character conversation isn't what's being talked about here.

Ideally it's easy for all involved to tell one type of conversation apart from the other, be it by use of different voice tones or phrasing or accents or whatever.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It’s not weird or hard to get. I absolutely understand the point.

I just think the similarity isn’t nearly as meaningful as you do.

Yeah, that's fair enough.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Why, when I'm role-playing a character in-character based on what that character would think and-or do, would you assume I'm just playing myself?

Further, in my view it's still part of a game even if the game's actual mechanics aren't being used in that moment.

Because you can't not be yourself? When you do this, it's you thinking about how to be someone else, but it's still you. You aren't going to have thoughts or feelings that wouldn't occur to you.

And there's nothing wrong with that. The more I've considered this kind of play, the more I've moved to "puzzle box" play when I use it -- I'm presenting a puzzle to be solved that players are poking at for clues until they figure it out and solve the puzzle. The idea that I can actually present the thinking of a 1,000 year old vampire or 6,000 year old dragon or and immortal embodiment of elemental fire -- things that have radically different thinking than I do -- is increasingly unrealistic to me. So I either want to build them out as a puzzle to be solved or I want useful mechanics to hang my play on. Just freeforming is really just trying to engage what I think about immortal embodiments of elemental fire and not actually immortal embodiments of elemental fire (or what have you). I suppose it works well enough if I'm portraying a shopkeep, because I've been a shopkeep, but I still can't predict how real world shopkeeps will react to things very well, especially having heavily armed and pushy customers around thinking they can wink and get better prices.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You could argue it technically isn't terribly much 'a game' at that point. Which is not a big deal in my book. RPGs are very unlike most other games to begin with and the term 'game' is vague anyway.

But of course you can play a character different from you and it is weird to think that you couldn't. Most of the characterisation doesn't depend on the rules. Actors can play characters that are not like them (even when improvising) and authors can write characters that are not like them. They don't need rules to do this.

Sure, but very few people are good actors! The college I attended had a pretty highly acclaimed acting program, so I played a good bit of D&D with some seriously talented actors (like some of them have spent their lives as professional actors, though none you would probably have heard of). I learned very quickly just how much they could bring to the APPEARANCE of being in character. Interestingly though, I don't really think any of those people had any greater insight into real people than anyone else does, except at the level of 'reading' them. In other words, I think people can certainly take a script and play a part, but I don't think people are especially good at realistically predicting what other people will do in an open-ended situation. Doing that really requires deep knowledge of the subject and a lot of subject matter experience. For example in WWII the allies had Hitler's Psychotherapist from when he lived in Vienna, plus a lot of data on him (since he was obviously a public figure). They did a fairly good job of sussing out his likely actions, but they were still pretty much entirely unable to say which possibilities would actually come to pass. Likewise I don't think there's any hope of realistically portraying ANY character in an open-ended sense. So NPCs at least, they act according to some GM agenda based pattern. PCs, well, you have fun imagining what they will do and doing something, and it doesn't have to match with anyone's expectations, obviously. So it works, within that set of bounds.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

Obviously there are a bunch of different possible agendas! I think we all recognize that. I wouldn't take the questioning on this topic as an attack on any given method, or criticism, more as an analytical process. By asking such questions as "why dice for combat but not social" we explicate how these things work, what our tastes are, how we think about these things, and that informs our thinking on the topic generally.

 

[overgeeked]

The difference is in-character conversation vs out-of-character (or meta) conversation. In-character conversation is the social-interaction piece of the game and is IMO the piece that rarely if ever needs to involve game mechanics. Out-of-character conversation isn't what's being talked about here.

I'm including the meta-conversation as a game mechanic. When the referee describes the situation to the players, when the players ask clarifying questions, when the players declare their intentions and actions, and when the referee describes the outcome of those actions...that's all engaging the game's mechanics. It's just not the mechanics on a character sheet nor are dice always involved.

I disagree about dice, character sheets, and mechanics being involved with in-character social interaction. RPing it all was fun up to a point...though after the first hour or so it lost its luster. I can do without the hammy accents and having long and involved conversations with random NPCs. I'd rather skip ahead to the important conversations. The pointless little conversations are like all the pointless filler fights in most dungeons. Fewer, more important, meaningful, and impactful conversations/fights please.

Ideally it's easy for all involved to tell one type of conversation apart from the other, be it by use of different voice tones or phrasing or accents or whatever.

Maybe for you. For me the fewer players "pulling a voice" the better.