Not a Conspiracy Theory: Moving Toward Better Criticism in RPGs

[clearstream]

More analagous to how I see metagaming might be if you started that game of chess on Monday but didn't finish it; talked with your friend on Tuesday and got some advice (be it general or specific to that particular game), then returned to finish the game on Wednesday armed with this new advice.

That reminds me of the scenes in The Queen's Gambit when IIRC the two opponents are shown conferring with their peers in the evening break mid-game.

If while strategizing the players are only using knowledge their characters would have, all they're doing is some out-of-session roleplaying. IMO it doesn't enter the metagame until non-character knowledge gets involved.

Under my definition, the metagaming takes place in both situations. Perhaps a group could characterise one as acceptable within their norms and the other as egregious, but neither is more nor less metagame activity.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Most replies I could possibly write to that would probably trample all over the no-politics rule.

The one thing I can point out is that while Canada functions (more or less) as a liberal democracy in practice, it is in fact still technically a monarchy, answering to King Charles. Which means, where the deeper you dig into the foundations of TTRPGs the more similar they come to look (culminating in their all meeting at the baseline play loop I posted upthread), the deeper you dig into the foundations of Amreican and Canadian political systems the more different they become at their core.

Put another way: in TTRPGs you've got surface-level differences but the deep-lying foundation under it all is similar. In politics you've got the reverse: surface-level similarities built up from very different foundations.

So basically this is a model of weak analysis in action. You take two deeply similar systems which share fundamental traits, find the superficial differences and treat those as defining. From there the flawed conclusion is drawn. One should first ask if a trait is actually fundamental first. For example many nations have traded a king for a President with very little substantive difference.

 

[Campbell]

So, when it comes to broadly comparing more traditional styles of play from the sort of play with the sort of play, I see in games like Sorcerer and Apocalypse World I like to think in terms of the frames we would see in the movie of the game.

A game like Apocalypse World solely focuses the frame on its viewpoint characters. We follow them around and there are no shots that do not include one of them. We also get a strong sense of their internal monologue. What they think, what they feel.

A game like Legends of the Five Rings does not just follow the protagonists around. It thrives in cinematic realism (not actual realism). There's a strong focus on the details the other characters around them get their own frames of reference. We see their own actions. Motives and emotions are inferred from action. We pan the camera over the scenery geography. There's an almost exaggerated sense of space/time. There's a lot more exposition.

Part of the reason I loved our L5R game is that there's a real focus on the NPCs as much as the PCs. We get to know them a lot better than we would in a game like Apocalypse World where the only thing important about an NPC is their relationship to the PCs. Kakita Azami's journey is as important to the overall scope of our game as Bayushi Haruka (my PC).

 

[innerdude]

So what is gained by trying to make 5e into something that it's not?

Isn't it obvious? The ability to point to the metamorphosized result and say, "See? I told you that your other systems and ideas are unnecessary, and moreover are dangerous, degenerate ideas that will ruin the hobby if you don't desist."

 

[clearstream]

Isn't it obvious? The ability to point to the metamorphosized result and say, "See? I told you that your other systems and ideas are unnecessary, and moreover are dangerous, degenerate ideas that will ruin the hobby if you don't desist."

Reading this I am reminded of where we started this excursion (my post addressing @Campbell). I can certainly appreciate that with such fears in mind, one would want to see any such endeavour choked out.

All I can really do is say that nothing like that is on my mind. I would like to challenge some assumptions about how D&D can be played in order to influence players of D&D. To say "See, other systems and ideas are exciting and appealing, and will expand your hobby if you engage with them."

 

[Staffan]

Yeah I have heard that one. It's not bad, and you could use it for Battlemaster too, though you are right it's a bit different. All of these are what I would term 'weak' meta, they're tied to fiction by one degree. OTOH say Inspiration is more indirect as it could represent a player rolling different dice or simply changing the narrative slightly without a direct connection to the character.

Yes and no, but that is more a matter of the difference in short rests between 4e and 5e. In 4e a short rest is 5 minutes, so you're expected to take one after every fight – so your encounter powers are actually encounter powers. In 5e, a short rest is an hour, so you might recharge them once, maybe twice, in a day, and go through 2-3 fights on one "load". And the opponents in the second fight didn't see you do your stuff in the first one, so it makes less sense that you couldn't use your tricks on them.

The other difference is that each 4e encounter exploit is a distinct ability. Once you've used your Spinning Sweep to knock your opponent prone, you can't do that again. But there's nothing (other than resource management) preventing a 5e Battlemaster from using Trip on every attack they make.

The result is that Superiority dice feel more like a resource internal to the fighter, while if you squint you can pretend that encounter exploits live somewhere in the relationship between the fighter and the foe.

(Yes, I know it's not a perfect excuse, because it doesn't account for things like new combatants entering the fray or a rushed party moving on without even a 5-minute rest, but those are edge cases.)

 

[clearstream]

There are a lot of PbtA games that don't have that same sort of embedding of who the characters are as people. Games like Monster of Week and The Sprawl are much closer to more traditional play than Apocalypse World and Monsterhearts. It's part of the reason I don't really like talking about Powered by the Apocalypse as a system. It's much more of a design language. There are some pretty significant structural differences between some of the games.

This and your post following resonate strongly with me. I've quoted this specific paragraph because it explains an important facet of what I feel.

 

[Aldarc]

There are a lot of PbtA games that don't have that same sort of embedding of who the characters are as people. Games like Monster of Week and The Sprawl are much closer to more traditional play than Apocalypse World and Monsterhearts. It's part of the reason I don't really like talking about Powered by the Apocalypse as a system. It's much more of a design language. There are some pretty significant structural differences between some of the games.

This and your post following resonate strongly with me. I've quoted this specific paragraph because it explains an important facet of what I feel.

Vincent Baker even said as much on his blog when talking about Powered by the Apocalypse:

What do I mean when I say that PbtA isn’t a game system, it’s an approach to system design?

First we have the D&D approach to system design: races, classes, levels, hit points, you know the one.

Next we have the GURPS approach, which I guess was actually spearheaded by Champions: skill-based, point-buy, with an expansive description of your character’s competencies in any number of situations, and a limited set of mechanisms for testing them for success and failure.

Not pictured is the Forge approach, which appears in several of my games pre-Apocalypse World: a more-or-less specified situation of conflict, freeform character traits, and a universal conflict resolution system.

PbtA represents an approach to RPG design as broad as any of these. Choose two given PbtA games, and you shouldn’t expect them to be any more similar than two point-buy games or two Forge games.

PbtA isn’t a system you can adapt to different genres, like GURPS, d20, Fate, One-Roll Engine. It’s an approach, a framework, a vocabulary for designing new systems that work how you want them to work.

 

[AnotherGuy]

My issue with that take is that success with complication is still, in the end, success. In effect, you're reducing the net success/fail cutoff point by 4 in trade for some complications, which (assuming you're talking 5e D&D here) makes an already relatively easy game easier...

Maybe in some cases, in others the trade-off for progressing the story, and possibly in an interesting way, is worth it.

Recently in my campaign
The characters after having found a powerful spell (Dream of the Blue Veil), with all its upgraded variations, in an ancient library, sat down to understand it and learn to cast it in a very short amount of time. I set the DC at 20, group check.
Failure imposed certain loss conditions (rolled randomly) but the casting of the spell would be an overall success.
1. Loss of one willing creature, selected at random (quite bad as is)
2. Duration of the spell would be increased by a further hour (they were in a time crunch, so it would cause further complications)
3. The characters would be transported 1 further mile away from their intended destination (more obstacles set upon the party at the new location).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I find Level Up's exertion point system much easier to wrap my head around vis a vis explaining it in-universe.

Yeah, I have no real exposure to Level Up. Last I played 5e was 3-4 years ago pretty much. I think its fine if 'currency' is matched with some kind of fiction. That could be limiting in a design sense though. Then again, it might be possible to construct an interesting game around currencies that have various fictional limitations and skilled play evolves out of manipulating the situation so you can be most effective. Maybe almost like 4e, but where the limiters are specific kinds of things in the fiction instead of slots or APs or HS. I mean, a magic system could certainly work that way. And if you take a bit more Chinese-like kind of spin on some of the martial stuff, you could do similar things. I mean, 4e kind of does do it with monsters to a high degree in MV and MM4 where a lot of them operate in pretty specific tactical modes. It would be a tough game to design though, because it would easily devolve down into pure puzzle-monster solving.