Disconnect Between Designer's Intent and Player Intepretation

[Old Fezziwig]

So then, should D&D try to follow the then-hot pop culture item or instead try to forge its own path and maybe become the hot culture item other things follow? I ask this because hot culture items don't always stay hot.

I think that D&D is always going to have a hard time with this. It's the first TTRPG and has a large legacy player base across the various editions that has very strong feelings about what D&D is and is change-resistant. (And people who don't play D&D that have similarly strong feelings about what it is.) On top of that, it exists in a market where a lot of its direct competitors position themselves implictly or explicitly in response to it and its choices. And it has a good deal of indirect competitors angling for the same time and pitching somewhat similar experiences. Absent the arrival of a game designer with a singular talent for game design and the charisma to not only convince whoever's publishing the game to give them a free hand but also manage the revolt in the player base as details of the work get leaked, innovation in D&D will be incremental and reactive to larger changes in gamer culture, especially so long as it's owned by a corporation.

 

[billd91]

If these come apart, to me that suggests terrible rules.

Not really. Depends on what the rules are trying to do. Are they trying to enforce the genre or trying to include the genre while also nodding toward elements of verisimilitude? I don’t think one approach is necessarily superior to the other.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

Not really. Depends on what the rules are trying to do. Are they trying to enforce the genre or trying to include the genre while also nodding toward elements of verisimilitude? I don’t think one approach is necessarily superior to the other.

I'm not sure I'm understanding, but if I am understanding, I don't think either is superior to the other, but I do think that we're still just talking about genre. D&D and HarnMaster are both fantasy RPGs. That the latter is more concerned with verisimilitude and modeling a medieval world doesn't make it any less of a fantasy RPG, just one with some different concerns. The rules should enforce those concerns if it's claiming to have them. Otherwise, it's a failure of design. Am I missing your point?

Edit: Added "..., just one with some different concerns. The rules should enforce those concerns if it's claiming to have them. Otherwise, it's a failure of design."

 

[pemerton]

Not really. Depends on what the rules are trying to do. Are they trying to enforce the genre or trying to include the genre while also nodding toward elements of verisimilitude? I don’t think one approach is necessarily superior to the other.

Why would players of a game whose rules enforce "verisimilitude" in the way that @Citizen Mane describes - especially the sorts of combat rules found in systems like RM, RQ and (I'm guessing) HarnMaster - ignore both the rules, and the verisimilitude that they underpin, to make genre-relevant choices? Because they're relying on the GM to blunt the consequences? Or because they're expected to play genre even if that means being hosed?

I agree with Citizen Mane that rules that don't enforce/speak to what the game is supposed to be about, genre-wise, are bad rules.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Unintended consequences may be a thing (3e magic item creation rules and the Big Six + wands of CLW, I’m looking at you), but some of this discussion also sounds like the difference between players playing to the rules vs playing to the genre.

If you write a rules set that benefits (in a game sense) those who play counter-genre, in and of itself that's a design error. Rules should reinforce genre, not encourage you to play against it. The degree of severity varies, and some early designs just didn't have this as a concept, but in a modern game, blaming the players because they're playing the game you wrote is off.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If these come apart, to me that suggests terrible rules.

My prior post notwithstanding,. some games are not playing to hard-genre, and that's a legitimate design choice; but then you don't have a right to complain its not being played hard-genre.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Not really. Depends on what the rules are trying to do. Are they trying to enforce the genre or trying to include the genre while also nodding toward elements of verisimilitude? I don’t think one approach is necessarily superior to the other.

But then, as I said at that point the authors should not be expecting players to play against the rules given, which is clearly the case in some examples. As I said, if you write D&D 3e and expect it to be played primarily like earlier editions, you either don't understand what you've written or don't understand how rules influence play.

 

[billd91]

I'm not sure I'm understanding, but if I am understanding, I don't think either is superior to the other, but I do think that we're still just talking about genre. D&D and HarnMaster are both fantasy RPGs. That the latter is more concerned with verisimilitude and modeling a medieval world doesn't make it any less of a fantasy RPG, just one with some different concerns. The rules should enforce those concerns if it's claiming to have them. Otherwise, it's a failure of design. Am I missing your point?

A little bit. Using Call of Cthulhu as an example, it makes sense to include Thompson SMGs in a 1920s campaign. Tommy gun wielding mobsters are iconic for the timeframe. But arming all of the investigators with them and goin’ in guns-blazing isn‘t a good fit for the cosmic horror genre. The rules for Tommy guns should nod toward verisimilitude in how they behave and affect targets relative to other firearms, otherwise, why incorporate them at all? You could “enforce” genre by restricting them to mobster or G-Man archetypes, but that feels excessively restrictive for a 1920s game with equipment that anybody could reasonably pick up and use. So what do you do? Encouraging the players to embrace the genre themselves even if rules allow them more latitude to potentially bust genre convention is entirely reasonable - just accept the responsibility that you may experience something different from designer expectations by doing so.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Of course I still maintain that as a solution to cultists and bottom-end monsters, there's no reason they shouldn't be a viable solution in the genre per se; the reasons they aren't in the books are more an issue of the kind of characters involved, and the decisions whether you want that sort of narrowness of character choice is a separate issue from general mechanics.

 

[pemerton]

My prior post notwithstanding,. some games are not playing to hard-genre, and that's a legitimate design choice; but then you don't have a right to complain its not being played hard-genre.

Sure, I was taking it as a premise for my response that we care about conformity to genre.