Not a Conspiracy Theory: Moving Toward Better Criticism in RPGs

[Lanefan]

Ugh, I haven't played Hockey since high school!

I was searching for an offside rule in the FIH rules of hockey and could not find one. And to some extent this speaks to my point, what would it mean for me to take the field with a different (or no) version of the offside rule in mind? Does it mean that I am not playing Hockey?

Field?

What's this "field" you're speaking of?

I'm talking real hockey here, with ice and skates and pucks and less teeth once you're finished playing it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The point I was making was that I think people who dislike some game elements, and explain why, sometimes get pushback that adds up to "You say this is what bothers you, but this other thing you seem okay with does the same thing." I at least insist if someone is going to make that argument they look at the first person's reaction and actually make sure it "does the same thing". There's a fairly bright-line you can draw between resources that are clearly narrative/Authorial in function and things like hit points, which are a big gross simplification of a process but aren't, per se, there to direct narrative control.

I think hit points basically exist as a gamist thing though. They are there to be a resource that you can risk depleting (and thus dying), or else you withdraw. They are also heavily tied to voluntary resources. In classic D&D, for example, they are refreshed by 'daily' renewable Cure Light Wounds spells, or consumable healing potions. In 5e they are recoverable via Hit Dice, which are themselves a daily renewable resource AND CLW spells/potions. Given that there is no fictional defined effect, nor any mechanical effect, from hit point loss short of death/unconsciousness I actually tend to think they are like 99.9% meta.

Sure. I'd suspect (with just your description to by) that's an example of a mechanic with a leg in each camp; its probably representing something with an in-game existence, but in a fairly gamist/abstract kind of way that has the player making a decision that doesn't very directly map to anything the character is doing (I'd be interested to know how the 5e Barbarian handles its rage, because that's another case where that's often done that).

Well, again, Superiority Dice are not described as representing anything fictionally, and their use is entirely at the option of the player, where they are consumed to power maneuvers, which are quite similar to 4e powers. As for barbarians, they get a specified number of rages per day, so for whatever reason they're a daily resource 'martial' class, where fighters are mostly a short rest based one. However, once you start raging, generally it lasts the whole fight, so mechanically that's the reason for the difference. No real fictional reason is given, so I would consider both Superiority Dice and Rages to be meta-currency.

I would agree with a statement that there are 'kinds' of meta-currency though. Some are 'process currency' and don't cause any in-fiction resolution at all, 5e inspiration is of this type. Others, like Rages and Superiority Dice trigger fiction and mechanics directly (IE spending a Superiority Die lets your PC invoke one of her maneuvers, which has both mechanical and fictional effects, though being D&D combat the fiction part is often of no further consequence). The former type of currency doesn't really admit of any specific interpretation at all and is really a pure game mechanic (though it will often lead to downstream fiction via whatever rules it invokes). The later type of currency is sometimes glossed as something like 'fatigue', or sometimes 'luck', but is more properly a pacing kind of mechanism.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Field?

What's this "field" you're speaking of?

I'm talking real hockey here, with ice and skates and pucks and less teeth once you're finished playing it.

I'd highly advise not setting foot in Vermont. Your heresy has been noted by the Green Mountain Boys and they will happily show you the errors of your ways if you are unwise enough to show up on their turf!

 

[Lanefan]

This is true only at a very zoomed out scale that misses some key issues, as I will try to explain:



What are the limits on what they can ask to do? What narrative authority do they have? Can they declare actions, or goals, or acceptable outcomes? Who frames 'the current state of fiction' in the first place?

With one exception, the current state of the fiction follows on from whatever it was before. That one exception is the very start of the campaign, at which point someone kinda has to set a genre-appropriate scene as a backdrop.

Your other questions there are the sort of detail I'm trying to strip away in order to define the fundamental play loop that underpins it all. Once that's defined, then we can argue about what types and degrees of details to overlay upon it.

Who decides whether or not to consult the resolution engine? What conflicts can it resolve? What kind of result can it generate? What influence if any does each participant have on the outcome? Can any participants override it altogether?

In sequence:

There's no decision. Every action no matter how trivial has to go through the game's resolution engine, even though in many cases it might not be obvious that it does so. Silly example: player declares that his character will put on her boots. GM says "fine, your boots are on." In between those was a tiny but not-zero reference to the resolution engine, in this case the GM deciding the action is an auto-success and jumping straight to narrating the result.

The next two questions again speak to extraneous details overlying the root play loop.

The last two questions are fine-tunings of who or what might (partially or fully) comprise the resolution engine.

Who is that 'someone'? Is it always the same someone? What factors do they have to take into account in their narration? Can they just describe, or can they interpret? What can they ignore or double down on? Can anyone else veto their efforts?

Again, more fine-tuned details that overlay the root play loop. Description often cannot be done without interpretation so there's no either-or there. Vetoing narration sounds more like a part of the resolution engine, as actual (as in, binding on the fiction) narration can't occur until the resolution engine has finished its work.

Who gets to frame the transition back to 1? Who gets to decide what 1 is?

Without a transition back to 1 (player(s) declare action(s)) the game probably ends.

As for who gets to decide, I think that's covered by the very essence of what an RPG is: players roleplaying characters. A non-avoidable part of roleplaying a character is deciding (and then declaring) what it does in the fiction; and even if the character does nothing at all that's still an action declaration even if maybe unspoken.

This really feels like saying all movies are the same, just some noises and movements of images that in the end come to a stop. I mean, yeah, kinda, but a whole lot of relevant factors are being overlooked.

Perhaps. What I'm after is to strip it down to the studs: what makes an RPG tick. Someone (was is Manbearcat? I forget now) said upthread that different games have greatly different play loops; I'm trying to say no, this is not the case; all they have are different details overlying the same fundamental play loop that every TTRPG has. In order to say this, it's only fair that I try to define and delineate what that underlying basic play loop looks like.

 

[Malmuria]

As an addendum to my earlier post: it mainly applies to people who aren't new to discussions. I want to be clear about something. If someone hasn't read Tolkien before or the major works of Marx but wants to jump into a discussion on those topics, that's actually great. I appreciate the eagerness. We have to start somewhere. They're more than welcome. Maybe they will decide to read those books on their own. But it's a bit more grating when it's someone who seemingly has no desire to do their due diligence after a certain point.

One can read the major works of Marx and come to quite different interpretations of those works and can agree or disagree with the main ideas. If you look at the history of Marxist thought, it proliferates rather than consolidates, with different philosophers emphasizing different aspects and developing the core ideas in new ways.

By contrast, I find that discussions of RPG "theory," especially here, have in my experience tended to present a much more consolidated set of ideas. Meaning, there is a sense that there is a singular, "right" way to understand, categorize, and play different types of games; and moreover, that as one gains more experience with games one has more authority to expound upon what is a consolidated and (and, to me, prescriptive) understanding.

There is perhaps one way in which the comparison makes sense, which is in the consistently annoying tendency of Marxist intellectuals to tell working class people how they should view and understand their own experiences, on the basis of the former having read more theory.

 

[Lanefan]

The table I ended up with to enact the DMG 237 and DMG 242 rules looks like this

Ability check	Result​	Decision-making…
Nat. 20​	+ve Critical​	[Player] Change a miss into a hit, or describe an extra or increased benefit
>(DC)​	Success​	[Player] You do it
≥(DC−2)​	Success with hindrance​	[Player] You do it, and [DM] describe a complication or hindrance
≤(DC−5) ​	Failure​	You botch it, and [DM] describe a consequential injury or loss
Nat. 1​	−ve Critical​	[DM] Change a hit into a miss, or describe an extra or increased cost

In use, I "flip" this so that I can employ a mathematically equivalent version that is easier to read at a glance (I've explained how in another thread.) Note that I am emphatically not trying to reproduce AW moves like-for-like in 5e. Following the rules in DMG237 consequences are laid out up front, so that in play it's perfectly possible to land on arrangements like the examples.

I like this, but just have one question: there's a hole in the table - what happens if the DC is missed by -3 or -4?

Were it me, I'd have it something like:

Nat 20 - critical - something extra-beneficial happens
DC+2 or better - success - you do it
DC+0-1 - success with complication - you do it but something happens you maybe didn't want
DC-1--2 - failure with progress - you don't do it but something happens that moves you forward (or maybe gives a chance to try again)
DC-3 or worse - failure - you don't do it
Nat 1 - fumble - something extra-bad happens.

 

[Aldarc]

There is perhaps one way in which the comparison makes sense, which is in the consistently annoying tendency of Marxist intellectuals to tell working class people how they should view and understand their own experiences, on the basis of the former having read more theory.

This is utter irrelvancy to the point I was making. I was not making this comparison so you could take unrelated shots at Marxists, intellectuals, or theorists.

 

[pemerton]

Or whose opinions into Karl Marx's philosophy should I find more engaging and insightful when we are talking about Marxism? The person who actually read the major works of Karl Marx for themselves or the person whose knowledge and opinions were entirely formed around some variation of the syllogism "Communism is bad; Karl Marx is a Communist; ergo, Karl Marx is bad"?

As someone who has taught Marx from the primary texts, and who has cited Marx in published work, I enjoyed this comparison.

 

[pemerton]

I respectfully disagree, and will comment further when I have read the rules.

Fair enough. I think I've set out pretty clearly the reasons for my doubts: 5e D&D doesn't have the requisite moving parts within the scope of resolution (eg @clearstream's table does not emulate key PbtA moves), and doesn't have the requisite contrast between what does or does not trigger a player-side move, and that's before we get to the sorts of questions that @kenada is raising about the relationship between consequence narration and adventure prep.

 

[Aldarc]

As someone who has taught Marx from the primary texts, and who has cited Marx in published work, I enjoyed this comparison.

I was speaking from a place of my own personal frustration. Way back in the day, I was in a modern political philosophy course in my undergrad. We inevitably talked about Marx using primary texts. Most people in the class, who clearly had aspirations for law school and/or political careers, didn't do the reading and were just arguing whether they liked Communism/Marxism or not, often with the tinges of lingering Cold War politics. But the point of discussion was never meant to be "Do you like Marxism or not?" It was always "But do you understand what Marx is arguing in the text?" I could tell the teacher was exasperated by the inability of students to talk around basic questions like "What does Marx say about this particular topic in the twenty assigned pages of reading?" That class left quite an impression on me as a result.

Edit: @pemerton, this class was also my first encounter with John Rawls.