Not a Conspiracy Theory: Moving Toward Better Criticism in RPGs

[Thomas Shey]

I'm sorry but you didn't ask what the dominant assumption around here is, please go back and read what you actually asked me. That said, what I find is trad players aren't necessarily the majority of those who participate in theory threads, which IMO, is much more relevant to how those threads progress.

I think its absolutely relevant to the assumptions trad players usually go in with.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm certainly not evangelizing, at least in this instance. But I'm extremely glad I gave FitD and PbtA multiple tries, because they wound up solving a whole slew of frustrations that I've had with trad gaming, ever since I started playing any RPGs more than 30 years ago. I just had to embrace the notion that "winning" the game doesn't have to always mean being optimized and hyper-cautious.

Again, as always, nothing wrong with optimized play. I just resist the idea that every game in every setting in every genre should be played the same.

I'm not suggesting you are. But I've absolutely seen people do so (even moreso with Fate in the past) and acting like people don't know their own tastes at all when doing so.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

But of course you can. You just did it with me. That was my point that there needs to be more specific contextualization on some of these at the front end, because you can't make many assumptions how it'll be perceived at the receiving end.

...except I didn't. I had to make this lengthy circumlocution about narrative sense. I didn't have direct specific vocabulary that would allow me to dispense with the too-generic terms I had already used. That's what I'm asking for. A way to talk about what I'm talking about directly, without having to spend three paragraphs explaining what I mean every single time I want to say something.

 

[kenada]

I think we're into the declaration of player intent equivalent of pixelbitching here, but I would also read "don't get caught" as precluding any interaction with a guard. This whole thing seems to be hinging on different definitions of "caught."

Not getting shot or caught feels like sneaking around in vents, spying from rooftops and so on. If the player had said something about blending in and counting the guards, I'd think your resolution made more sense. My perceived sense of what that action would entail doesn't align with the outcome you proposed. I suspect at an actual table we could negotiate that to a satisfactory conclusion.

My experience is with Blades in the Dark, but I expect Apocalypse World should be similar. That kind of thing would be determined as part of the conversation as the scene is framed by the MC. If the MC is leaning towards e.g., the confrontation (“put someone in a spot”), then establishing that would be part of the initial framing (e.g., there are guard patrols, and the PC is just hanging out). If the intent isn’t clear, the MC and the player need to work that out, so the scene can proceed correctly.

For example, in our BitD game, I wanted to take the place of the champion the Silver Nails were sending out into the Deathlands to fight the Rot King and win over the The Red Queen Coven. @Manbearcat’s initial conception had me attacking them as they left, so I could take the champion’s letter of introduction and use that as my in. I thought that was too risky, so we went back and forth a bit to clarify my intent.

What I ended up doing was reaching out to a friendly faction, paying them off to get onto the champion’s boat, and then waiting. After the champion boarded and the boat had departed, I described how my trap went off. I’d rigged up something (via flashback) that would cover the champion in standstill powder when he sat down at the one place where he would on that small boat. While he was paralyzed, I took the letter, glued a brick to his chest (using binding oil), then booted him overboard. Much less risky.

 

[FrogReaver]

That's not true, otherwise the game of 20 Questions would never work.

But, yes, @pemerton, I would say that this is generally how D&D is played most of the time. At least, that has always been my experience. Call it exploration, fine. That's groovy. I can work with that term. But, essentially, the players go from a position of almost zero information and, through applying a heuristic, move from zero information to... well... more than zero information because, by the time they actually have enough information to make truly informed decisions, typically everything in the adventure has already been resolved.

IMO one problem with proof by counterexample is that you can disprove a general statement without commenting on whether it's applicable in the particular context being discussed. For example, I think your 20 questions does a great example of countering my general assertion about questions not being able to yield more info. Yet, 20 questions functions primarily based on hierarchical categories and combinations of questions. May and key play doesn't function on those principles and so while the counterexample disproved the overly general statement it still says nothing about whether 'guesses' in a map and key game can provide more information than that the information needed isn't at this particular location.

 

[pemerton]

its going to be very, very hard for people to not view consequences as a result of their die rolls as connected to them.

Why?

 

[pemerton]

I think we're into the declaration of player intent equivalent of pixelbitching here, but I would also read "don't get caught" as precluding any interaction with a guard. This whole thing seems to be hinging on different definitions of "caught."

Not getting shot or caught feels like sneaking around in vents, spying from rooftops and so on. If the player had said something about blending in and counting the guards, I'd think your resolution made more sense. My perceived sense of what that action would entail doesn't align with the outcome you proposed. I suspect at an actual table we could negotiate that to a satisfactory conclusion.

My experience is with Blades in the Dark, but I expect Apocalypse World should be similar. That kind of thing would be determined as part of the conversation as the scene is framed by the MC. If the MC is leaning towards e.g., the confrontation (“put someone in a spot”), then establishing that would be part of the initial framing (e.g., there are guard patrols, and the PC is just hanging out). If the intent isn’t clear, the MC and the player need to work that out, so the scene can proceed correctly.

On top of what kenada said, I reiterate: this was my hypothetical example. So I'm allowed to assume that the understanding reached between GM and player is the one that is consistent with what I've gone on to describe.

@Pedantic @Lanefan If you want to explain how you think your version of the action declaration, in which the player has their PC skulking in the shadows, would be resolved in Apocalypse World, I'm happy to hear it.

 

[clearstream]

The notion of "trade offs" implies that something is lost and something is gained. As I posted in reply to @clearstream, I take it that he is confining the description to his own experience. Because when I choose to play (say) Burning Wheel rather than (say) Rolemaster I am not trading anything off. RM has nothing to offer me that I don't get from BW.

I see what I mean, and that doesn't quite get at my intent. I am not saying that - for given aims - the "cost" will feel like a loss. Rather I am saying something quite similar to your analysis up-thread about armour repair, which is that a technical feature of a game can be predicted to have some results in play. I suggested that any evaluation of those results will depend on a group's purposes. A better term than "trade-offs" would have been "differences", so I will revert to that.

At a high-level, I believe that games scaffold meaning in a way similar to other rituals. Objects and actions that would have no or different meanings outside the magic circle, acquire their (what I will call) "ludic-meanings" inside it. An ambiguity between game as artifact and game as process has been noted by scholars like Bjork and Juul, and Aarseth and Grabarczyk. I think this ambiguity is resolved by saying that games as artifacts are tools. As they are grasped by players – tool users – they fabricate mechanisms comprising some number of parts, that produce play phenomena. To say that a thing is a tool is to say that there is a tool-user who knows the use of that tool and will use that tool, and to imply a purpose that is not solely the wielding, but the product of the wielding. It is to suppose an ability to obey and to interpret a proper use, without ruling out improper use. Two tool-users may disagree on how to wield a tool – one may be unaware of a use known by the other and they may differ in purpose – while being satisfied to agree upon the familial identity of that tool. The function of a tool is contingent on how a tool-user uses that tool. As players wield game artifacts – tools – to fabricate mechanisms, they may determine properties of those mechanisms.

Which is to say that when it comes to ongoing authorship of common fiction, through a continuous process of drafting and revising, that all participate in, within a scaffolding of regulatory and constitutive rules that have a linkage from fictional position (and thus the fiction) to the regulatory and constitutive rules, it is possible to describe technical features and say something useful about their probable results on play. However, it is the purposes of the participants that are decisive: player purposes provide the lenses for evaluating, choosing and wielding the tools, appreciating the fabricated mechanism, and determining in which ways it is satisfactory. RE's Forge thinking perhaps rests heavily upon observing a set of norms for purposes of play, and from that advancing arguments as to what technical features serve those purposes. Here, the differences that I am ascribing technical features make an essentially similar claim, only possibly less rigid.

 

[FrogReaver]

Why?

Not to me but IMO.

1. Mechanically a failed roll caused the consequences (if you had fully succeeded there would have been no consequences).

2. Mechanical failure of an action normally corresponds to a fictional failure of that action, even in a game like BitD, but sometimes in BitD mechanical failure doesn't correspond to a fictional failure of the action. Example: skirmish action -> failed roll -> consequence -> add clock tick -> clock is now full -> demon is summoned by the cultists and arrives on the scene. In this case mechanical consequence is ultimately the Demon arrives on the scene but there that wasn't a fictional consequence for failing your skrimish attempt in the fiction. In fictional terms, it just didn't work and then a demon arrived.

Now for fun imagine a game that only used such mechanical consequences without corresponding fictional consequences. Most people would be very confused with why the mechanical consequence and ficitonal consequences weren't aligning.

the TLDR version - mechanical consequences are typically linked to fictional consequences - even if they aren't always. That's why people tend to expect to be able to view it that way.

 

[pemerton]

Which is to say that when it comes to ongoing authorship of common fiction, through a continuous process of drafting and revising, that all participate in, within a scaffolding of regulatory and constitutive rules that have a linkage from fictional position (and thus the fiction) to the regulatory and constitutive rules, it is possible to describe technical features and say something useful about their probable results on play.

I'm not sure I have a clear grasp of what is meant by "a scaffolding of regulatory and constitutive rules that have a linkage from fictional position (and thus the fiction) to the regulatory and constitutive rules". Does this mean the same as "a scaffold of regulatory and constitutive rules that are linked to the fiction, including by taking fictional position as input"?

IF so, then I think I've said much the same, maybe in this thread and also in the "theory thread" thread:

the key proposition: at the heart of RPGing is shared imagination. Imaginary people do imagined things in imagined places.

<snip>

The main difference between the participant roles is how they contribute to the fiction and how they engage with the fiction. The players "insert" themselves into the fiction by way of imagined persons who are at the centre of the shared fiction, in the sense that most of the shared fiction is concerned with the events involving and surrounding these imaginary people. The players contribute to the fiction first-and-foremost by saying what it is that their characters do.

The players can only perform that function if there is some context in which their characters act: an imagined situation in which those character find themselves. The GM's principal job is to provide that context.

Different RPGs set different rules for what the players are allowed to tell us about their characters; and for what the GM is allowed to tell us about the situation/context.

<snip>

Moving on: suppose the GM provides a context, and a player says "Cool, I do [= my character will attempt to do] such-and-such". The next step is to work out what happens in the fiction. How does the shared imaginary stuff change? Up to that moment, everyone was imaging one thing - some combination of what the GM said about the situation, and what the player said about their character. What do they have to imagine now?

This is where action resolution comes in. The variety here is at least as much as the variety in rules about establishing characters and establishing contexts.

games as artifacts are tools. As they are grasped by players – tool users – they fabricate mechanisms comprising some number of parts, that produce play phenomena. To say that a thing is a tool is to say that there is a tool-user who knows the use of that tool and will use that tool, and to imply a purpose that is not solely the wielding, but the product of the wielding. It is to suppose an ability to obey and to interpret a proper use, without ruling out improper use. Two tool-users may disagree on how to wield a tool – one may be unaware of a use known by the other and they may differ in purpose – while being satisfied to agree upon the familial identity of that tool. The function of a tool is contingent on how a tool-user uses that tool.

<snip>

it is possible to describe technical features and say something useful about their probable results on play. However, it is the purposes of the participants that are decisive: player purposes provide the lenses for evaluating, choosing and wielding the tools, appreciating the fabricated mechanism, and determining in which ways it is satisfactory.

I personally don't think we need to take up controversial positions pertaining to the metaphysics of artefacts and the metaphysics of tools in order to successfully analyse RPGing.

For instance, a RPG ruleset is an abstract object. But it is at least arguable that tools are concrete things. Certainly the most paradigmatic tools and other artefacts (hammers, knives, chairs, computers, etc) are concrete things.

It is probably more consistent with the standard approaches to rules and conventions - and also with the Lumpley principle - to say that the rules of a RPG are constituted (in part at least) by the purposes of those whose play is guided by them, and hence that it is not a case of a common tool being wielded differently (which makes sense for concrete things which are literally wielded) but rather of different practices yielding different games.

Thus when we talk about, say, both @Manbearcat and I playing 4e D&D, what we are really referring to is similarity classes of games rather than literally the same game. But because we can talk reasonably useful about those similarity classes, as I said I don't think we really need to settle these issues to analyse RPGing.

RE's Forge thinking perhaps rests heavily upon observing a set of norms for purposes of play, and from that advancing arguments as to what technical features serve those purposes. Here, the differences that I am ascribing technical features make an essentially similar claim, only possibly less rigid.

Well unsurprisingly I think that Ron Edwards is pretty consistent with what I'm saying (given how much I've learned from reading him).

I'm not really able to assess your comparison of rigidity: Edwards obviously has many many forum posts, blogs etc actually outlining practical techniques for RPGing, which give me a sense of how flexible his thinking is. I don't think I've ready many of your posts of this sort.