Not a Conspiracy Theory: Moving Toward Better Criticism in RPGs

[pemerton]

Well, that's not how the game system equates them. As I've noted, whether a player involved considers them such is a more complex question.

These sound like the backgammon players who, when invited over for a game of chess, just can't help rolling the dice for each move.

 

[pemerton]

I think you're conflating two things though. The hit roll is purely success/fail. It's the damage roll that gives you partial success, but, even then not really because you entirely succeeded (presumably) in dealing damage. The trick is, you need several successes before achieving your goal.

This isn't really true. It just happens to be the damage roll is an accumulated success roll not produced by a simple roll. Its like the accumulated success rolls in some other systems. However I think there's a big difference between "success with consequences" and "success over time" especially when the vast majority of tasks using that specific subsystem will cost you time, and it may, in fact, not be possible to do so with one simple roll. I guess if you want to be really picky you could call "taking extra time" a consequence, but I think that only makes sense when succeeding without that consequence is possible, and in most cases it isn't; its simply not a single-die-roll resolution.

Edit: I suppose you could also call the opportunity to take damage a "consequence", but again, it just seems like success-over-time are a different thing than partial success/partial failure systems, because, again, its usually a given that you can't solve the problem with one success (at least barring a critical, but then, crit/success/failure/fumble systems can all be argued to be partial success/failure systems, its just that the "true" success is the crit and the "true" failure is the fumble).

The consequence, in D&D combat, is that the failure to remove the enemy from the board means that you take damage and/or deplete other resources (hp, arrows, whatever). In a more complex combat scenario maybe other stuff happens too. (Eg the not-yet-dead Gnoll sacrifices the prisoner; the Goblin pulls the lever that drops the portcullis; etc.)

I assume the above is what @hawkeyefan had in mind.

 

[pemerton]

An important feature of an ontological description is that it includes everything expected to be in the category and excludes everything expected to be outside it.

What is the source of this proposition?

By "ontological description" do you just mean "definition stated in terms of necessary and sufficient criteria"?

 

[clearstream]

What is the source of this proposition?

By "ontological description" do you just mean "definition stated in terms of necessary and sufficient criteria"?

The source are scholarly papers proposing ontological definitions of (in the cases I am thinking of) games, and critique thereof often pointing out over-productive definitions. A good example is commentary around definitions offered by Jesper Juul. The book "Rules of Play" by Salen and Zimmerman includes an analytical comparison of definitions. Such definitions are generally seen to have usefulness (cited in other papers, for example), so perfection isn't necessarily strived for (and I suspect that many ludologists would also say it isn't even to be hoped for, beyond the very highest-level onotological statements of the sort Aarseth offers.)

@Baron Opal II asked about differentiating DM from players, and whether that was further down in the taxonomy. If I say that GM is not adopting or playing any role (or that they are at times not doing that) then does that imply that GM is not a player? Thus more like a referee - someone outside the game who ensures its formally adequate conduct? Or might I find ways to say that the GM is adopting or playing roles sufficiently to count among players of the game? Or I might want to relax the requirement: pushing it further down the taxonomy.

 

[Aldarc]

You're doing precisely the opposite. The thing that everyone gets up in arms about is when you attempt to frame the underlying thing we're all doing as part of a unified theory that can fit comfortably on your terms alone. That's the thing that makes it look like you're claiming a monopoly on the truth about what roleplaying is, and makes all the trad gamers who are still in the room after the jargon has come out growl.

If you wanted to offer a bridge, then you'd do it backwards. Explain how success at cost is really equivalent to hit point ablation, or really, how you can map everything that happens in Story Now framing to a map and key model with just a bit of effort (both things I do not think are true, nor worth doing). Or, you could not do that, and accept the two play loops are not the same. We will all get along better if you don't attempt to frame them as equivalent, and instead focus on what is achieved and desired by people doing different things, or if you move your analysis back up a level and find commonality at a more fundamental trait of the activity, like @clearstream has been trying to do.

I don't know how new you are here, Pedantic, but I can tell you from past experiences over about a decade or more on this forum having been in similar positions as @hawkeyefan, is that we are sometimes damned if we do or damned if we don't. It doesn't really matter how we frame the situation or how we say anything. I can tell you from past experience that if we tried tackling the topic the way that you insist would work, I can guarantee you that it wouldn't. The usual crew would come out and claim that our games can't possibly work or that they are invalid ways of playing. We've been there, done that. Gone around the block numerous times. We have tried it your way. It's never good enough. The games we like, our play preferences, or even discussing them are invalid. I apologize for being somewhat cynical here, but it's hard not feel jaded after awhile with these recurring discussions.

 

[Manbearcat]

I think what @Hussar is getting at is not that you don't care about the failure--of course you care; your character has been denied a want.

The point is that in PbtA, any given success or failure is more important in the context of reframing your character's inner narrative/story approach than the externality of the "Did I get what I want?"

If you want a good example of this, try playing Ironsworn solo for 4 or 5 hours, and actually go through the mechanical process of abandoning an Iron Vow.

If you can grasp what that mechanical sequence represents at a character/narrative level, that's the sort of thing PbtA generally sees as the relevant process behind success or failure of compounding action declarations.

Quick, related anecdote seems relevant!

Last night in our Stonetop game, the group is on a long and harrowing journey to the far north of The Great Wood with the goal being to prevent The Golden Oak, which has been untended for centuries due to an unfulfilled and forgotten Stonetop covenant, from fading from their world (and into the equivalent of The Feywild).

While tracking (reverse engineering their charted course since they slew them last session) some fey giants to what they hope will be Danu's Causeway (the means to traverse this world to get to the fading tree), they encountered a large group of massive (as in size Large to Huge) magical bucks with prismatic antlers in full rut for the mating season. One of those was corrupted by the putrefaction of The Darkness Underfoot. All of the bucks occupied with their own clashes and giving this sickened buck a wide berth, the corrupted beast charged the group in an open, deforested area.

This was a result of a 7-9 on their tracking move; they track the Fey Giants but a significant change in situation occurs to stall the tracking.

They all attempted to haul ass, get to the treeline and get away from the blighted beast and this earth-quaking, tree-splintering rut.

On their Struggle As One, they got a collective 7-9 result. They have a large group of NPCs with them (Wisent the Air Spirit, Henry, Cliff, Voistek, Tooth, the Blessed's two remaining wolf companions Finn and Thorn) including a pair of of trusty Draft Horses Delly and Hoss. So we have Success with Consequence. They get the slow NPCs on the horses and scatter and all of the other NPCs get away.

However, The Blessed and The Heavy are stuck because of how much time it took to get the big, lumbering Tooth on the back of Hoss and get them out of danger. The massive, corrupted buck is bearing down on them and is going to trample them without intervention. Its still at Near range so The Blessed can act with his Far range Danu's Grasp (the equivalent of "Entangle" with some other stuff).

The Blessed's player gets a 6-. He marks xp and I make a hard move. The vines are too slow, the creature too powerful, and the buck vomits a corruptive line of Scarlet Putrefaction at Gavin The Blessed. This is a big damage, magic attack w/ No Armor Applies + Grabby tag (it entombs you in a putrefying cocoon that will infect you if you don't break out immediately; think Aliens).

@hawkeyefan (who plays The Judge; a Paladin of Knowledge, Harmony, Rebuker of Chaos), saw the trouble with Tooth, Hoss, Gavin, and Trys (the Heavy). So instead of shepherding everyone to safety, he makes a beeline for his friends to try to protect them.

Someone is taking this Scarlet Putrefaction attack. Cullen ( @hawkeyefan 's character) throws himself in front of the attack, interceding to save his (fragile compared to Cullen) friend. This could be a Defend move (of which Cullen has an array of moves to amplify it and broaden it) or it could be a Defy Danger; the Danger here being Scarlet Putrefaction to Gavin...the Defying it meaning "intercede to take the blow in Gavin's stead."

@hawkeyefan has a Defy Danger move (The Tower Eternal) that turns any 6- result against Magic/Supernatural into a 7-9. So he elects to go with that instead of Defend. He ends up getting his 7-9.

Gavin is safe as Cullen barrels into him, knocking him out of the way, taking the blow instead. Cullen takes damage and is cocooned in a putrefying shell. I let him decide on either worst of 2 dice for damage or to mitigate the putrefying shell (Grabby tag) effect. He elects to go with worst of 2 dice for damage.

I think Cullen took 4 of his 19 HP? He's entombed in a putrefying cocoon (he has a thematic resource that can get him out of this automatically, but he's also very capable of bursting it with Defy Danger...but he has to or he'll become infected with the Scarlet Putrefaction) with the corrupted buck bearing down on him.

But Gavin is safe.

@hawkeyefan , did that feel like "a failure?" Did the Tracking move of 7-9 feek like "a failure?" Did the Struggle As One (collective Defy Danger) move of 7-9 feel like "a failure?"

Did the rest of the play of our evening feel like it was downstream of/a signature of "failure?"

I'm confident some folks here would feel "failure" (all the way down). But that is just an autobiographical idiosyncratic component of their mental orienting and processing. Its not an objective outgrowth of the system or the play.

 

[Aldarc]

Perhaps, but I've been trying to get at something a step earlier here: where a prior failure is assumed by the scene where there wasn't any roll or opportunity to avoid that failure.

@Lanefan, I probably would have handled the scene differently. I will try breaking it down. I will be using the D&D analogue, Dungeon World.

To elaborate: Player states "I'll spend the day discreetly watching the warehouse looking for entrances, guard patterns, shift changes, that sort of thing; all the while trying not to get caught or shot." No dice are rolled.

As the GM I sense that we need to have a conversation. Because what you describe here sounds to me like your PC is trying to Discern Realities, so dice may need to be rolled:

Discern Realities​

When you closely study a situation or person, roll+Wis.

It sounds like your PC is trying to study the situation at the warehouse.

But as @Campbell says, you actually have to do something to provoke a Move. I don't think that you declare that you are being discreet in DW anymore than you can declare that you are stealthed in D&D. Everyone needs to know how you are trying to do this discreetly because that helps provide guidelines and parameters about potential consequences.

So let us say that we decide that you attempting to Discern Realities. You roll an 10. It should be good enough for a full success, but you have a -1 Wis, so the result goes down to a 9. That's a mixed success (7-9). If you had a full success (10+ result), you could have asked the GM three questions from the below list, and they would be required to answer you truthfully. But as you have a result of 9, you can only ask the GM one question, though they must still answer you truthfully.

Either way, take +1 forward when acting on the answers.

• What happened here recently?
• What is about to happen?
• What should I be on the lookout for?
• What here is useful or valuable to me?
• Who’s really in control here?
• What here is not what it appears to be?

I'm not sure what one question you would ask here, but you would get a truthful answer. But as you say, the 7-9 result also means that as the GM that I make a soft move.

Thinking it a soft move, the GM says something like: "OK. After a few hours a guard approaches you... <then speaks in character as the guard, asking what I'm doing here> ..."

Here is where I would differ. I personally think that this is jumping the gun, so to speak. As you were trying to be discreet, I would probably first announce that the guard was coming in your direction or hints to that effect: "As you are assessing the situation at the warehouse, you hear the sounds of heavy boots getting louder, possibly closer in your direction. Based on your observation, you recognize the walking pattern or rhythm as a guard. What do you do?" (Soft Move: show signs of an approaching threat.)

What the GM just did there was arbitrarily decide my attempt at being discreet has failed (a big part of being discreet is not being noticed or attracting attention, and clearly I've done both)...or, perhaps less charitably, has railroaded me into a situation I-as-character (and thus as player) didn't want as an outcome.

Now if I'd been given, say, a roll to maintain my discreet-ness and come up with partial success (on outright failure I assume guards-plural would be coming at me with handcuffs! ) - and-or a roll (which I then fail) to notice the guard's approach in time that I could innocently turn my face away, wander off, and avoid any conversation - all would be cool; and now I gotta talk my way out of this in character and-or make what I can of it. Absent those chances (or similar) to avoid the undesired scene, however, I posit the scene as presented is invalid.

Yeah, and if we followed my above version of events, your character could decide to slink away to avoid notice or even to hide. Depending on our conversation of the events, you could be provoking the move Defy Danger with a wide range of options, highlighting some likely applicable ones in bold:

Defy Danger​

When you act despite an imminent threat or suffer a calamity, say how you deal with it and roll. If you do it

• by powering through, +Str
• by getting out of the way or acting fast, +Dex
• by enduring, +Con
• with quick thinking, +Int
• through mental fortitude, +Wis
• using charm and social grace, +Cha

 

[FrogReaver]

I talked about cognitive/intellectual grasp. Someone can grasp it even if it doesn't "feel right".

So if a person is not introduced in thinking about various approaches to RPGing, that deploy different techniques, different structure of authority over the fiction, etc, then why would they care about criticism or theoretical frameworks.

This is back to the person who likes what they like and is not interested in the rest. That person doesn't need criticism.

@FrogReaver @Xamnam This idea that we can't judge cultural or artistic products without judging those who like them or engage with them is just weird. Some food is better than other food. The mushroom pasta I had the other day at a good Italian restaurant is nicer than the mushroom pasta I make at home. Maybe if I tried to make something nicer I could - but I don't, and I get what I make.

I have to mark students' work pretty often. Some just write better than others. Some think better than others, That's what grading is all about.

Some movies are better than others. I watched The Magnificent Ambersons on DVD the other day. It's clearly a better movie than the first Dr Strange movie. That's a view about films. It's not a view about people (beyond the implication that Orson Welles was a brilliant filmmaker).

From the descriptions in this post, I would say that you struggle treating your subjectivity as anything but objective.

For me I wouldn’t claim one movie or dish is better. I might say I like one better. Or that one is better to me.

Now, something can be objectively better - if it’s better in every category of both intrinsic and extrinsic qualities. But the games we tend to discuss aren’t like that. They all provide trade offs. Then each of us individually grade the RPG based on what trade offs we value.

So the only reason I can see someone being so concerned with whether some RPGs are objectively better than others in this context is if they think the RPGs they like are objectively better than the games another likes. This position that my games are objectively better is objectively offensive to anyone that doesn’t hold it. You see this happen on all sides of this conversation. The pain, irritation and baggage comes from claims that some games or style of games, etc are objectively better with the implication being that the games the other likes are inferior and often with the implied, if only you could see how inferior your game was you would like mine.

 

[clearstream]

From the descriptions in this post, I would say that you struggle treating your subjectivity as anything but objective.

For me I wouldn’t claim one movie or dish is better. I might say I like one better. Or that one is better to me.

Now, something can be objectively better - if it’s better in every category of both intrinsic and extrinsic qualities. But the games we tend to discuss aren’t like that. They all provide trade offs.

So the only reason I can see someone being so concerned with whether some RPGs are objectively better than others in this context is if they think the RPGs they like are objectively better than the games another likes. This position that my games are objectively better is objectively offensive to anyone that doesn’t hold it. You see this happen on all sides of this conversation. The pain, irritation and baggage comes from claims that some games or style of games, etc are objectively better with the implication being that the games the other likes are inferior and often with the implied, if only you could see how inferior your game was you would like mine.

Perhaps it can go like this

1. We can have a high-level ontological description, so all know something fundamental about the subject of discussion
2. There can then be description and analysis of technical features
3. Predictions can be made about gameplay likely to result from such features
4. Using purposes as lenses and qualifiers, technical features can be critically evaluated

Using the example of pasta

1. food typically made from an unleavened dough of wheat flour mixed with water or eggs, and formed into sheets or other shapes, then cooked
2. pasta can take the form of mushroom ravioli
3. depending on the chosen fungi, it will have an earthy, fungusy taste, and like all ravioli be a neat mouthful to fork and bite
4. as a lover of mushroom dishes in particular, who also enjoys cooking pasta at home, the ravioli at my local restaurant is qualitatively superior because they use fresh pasta, patted in semolina for handling, and filled with porcini, which typically has a stronger, richer mushroomy taste

Something like that. Essentially technical feature > predicted play > purpose-based evaluation. Notice also that rather than use words like X is poorer and Y is better, it seems important to spell out the way in which X is poorer and Y is better. I have been pulled up on that in this thread and I believe that is absolutely right to do. From an objective viewpoint - outside of purposes - X and Y can only be said to be different. From a subjective viewpoint - qualified by purpose(s) - X can be said to be poorer than Y in the ways spelled out.

 

[FrogReaver]

Perhaps it can go like this

1. We can have a high-level ontological description, so all know something fundamental about the subject of discussion
2. There can then be description and analysis of technical features
3. Predictions can be made about gameplay likely to result from such features
4. Using purposes as lenses and qualifiers, technical features can be critically evaluated

Using the example of pasta

1. food typically made from an unleavened dough of wheat flour mixed with water or eggs, and formed into sheets or other shapes, then cooked
2. pasta can take the form of mushroom ravioli
3. depending on the chosen fungi, it will have an earthy, fungusy taste, and like all ravioli be a neat mouthful to fork and bite
4. as a lover of mushroom dishes in particular, who also enjoys cooking pasta at home, the ravioli at my local restaurant is qualitatively superior because they use fresh pasta, patted in semolina for handling, and filled with porcini, which typically has a stronger, richer mushroomy taste

Something like that. Essentially technical feature > predicted play > purpose-based evaluation. Notice also that rather than use words like X is poorer and Y is better, it seems important to spell out the way in which X is poorer and Y is better. I have been pulled up on that in this thread and I believe that is absolutely right to do. From an objective viewpoint - outside of purposes - X and Y can only be said to be different. From a subjective viewpoint - qualified by purpose(s) - X can be said to be poorer than Y in the ways spelled out.

More thoughts but will have to spell them out later.

I just wanted to make clear - I don’t have an issue in general of saying 1 quality of a thing is better or worse in a given comparison.