Thinking About the Purpose of Mechanics from a Neo-Trad Perspective

[pemerton]

I think that viewing things at too fine a scale can lead to confusing preferred technique with motivation.

My thought about this is that we need to split the two apart. (So on that I think we're ad idem.)

I think it's possible to talk about how some techniques are well-suited to some motivations/"creative agendas". Sometimes it even makes sense at least tentatively conjecture someone's motivation based on the techniques they're using.

But there is no necessary one-to-one correspondence here, and so those conjectures have to be provisional until confirmed by more direct evidence of motivation (eg testimony, or fuller examples of play). Apart from anything else, "vanilla narrativism" is a thing. (I know because I've done it.)

My own preferences probably lie more toward the 'story now' than 'OC' side of things, but I'd often rather get there via more granular and naturalistic resolution techniques.

As someone who has a lot of experience with this (mostly in Rolemaster) I think there are challenges that those techniques pose. I think part of the genius of Burning Wheel is that PCs have RM-esque skill lists and rankings, and the combat can be RM-esque in its visceral nature (with injuries, and armour, and positioning, etc), but it (mostly) avoids some of the problems with RM. (I say mostly because there are still some rough edges, like the way recovery times and spell durations are specified - I think it's no coincidence that in the Magic Burner/Codex, enchantment durations are specified in terms of units of play rather than in-fiction time periods.)

Something like (say) Agon 2e is more or less at the opposite end of the spectrum, with all conflicts resolved in a single roll, and the details narrated after the event having regard to the outcome.

They're different experiences. I enjoy both. I've never been a player (in the strict sense, ie a Hero player) in Agon, but strongly suspect that I would not enjoy it as much as BW, which is my pinnacle for player-side RPGing. I think I'm a better GM of Agon than of BW, though.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is getting closer to what I don't like (as per my reply to @Manbearcat upthread) - in my mind, because of my particular experiences, it's an approach I especially associate with CoC, Cyberpunk, TMNT, or some other modern-era RPG where there will inevitably be details of any situation that the GM hasn't initially set out and yet which, once elucidated (and as per Manbearcat's label of "realistic?/in-fiction-causal factors), can make a difference to difficulty and/or consequences.

But there's a reason other than bad players which makes this happen: in a system where resolution is based on granular detail (which is most RPGs before the year 2000, and plenty since), and where it's impossible for the GM to articulate all that detail up front (which is especially the case for modern-era RPGs), it makes absolute sense as a player not just to do what @kenada described upthread (ie play the GM's already-established fiction) but to do what you (Thomas Shey) describe, namely, trying to get more fiction established that will run your way.

Systems that use non-granular resolution completely sidestep all this stuff. (Examples I think of straight away are AW and MHRP.)

I personally think its dishonest; its one thing to try and get enough data to be able to make your decisions intelligently and have a proper internal model of what's going on, its another to walk a GM into a corner that makes a game go in a particular way (which, I should point out, the GM isn't necessarily the only one that wouldn't want it to go that way--its not uncommonly done not only to favor the players group success but the particular player's ability to grandstand at the expense of other players spotlight times and/or make resources they went to the trouble to invest in moot because the manipulative player has worked the GM).

In the end it all too easily turns into a situation where one player is playing a different game than the GM or other players, without their choice. Its hard for me to find that virtuous.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

*I wink;​

​

*I wink at the barmaid;​

​

*I make the barmaid smile;​

lets just take these three

On the other hand, I think in neo-trad play it is descriptions closer to the top of my list that will tend to be important, precisely because of the general hesitance to push towards conflict or challenge to the character. In which case, the fiction on its own will tend not to generate the same degree of and distinctness of texture and definition, and the actual mechanical expression might therefore become more important.

And I think those are probably the ones which meet your criteria. How does their actual mechanical expression become more important? And how does that support character portrayal specifically? Which design characteristics of a resolution system are going to best do that?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think this is a really important observation. With apologies to @pemerton , I think that viewing things at too fine a scale can lead to confusing preferred technique with motivation. My own preferences probably lie more toward the 'story now' than 'OC' side of things, but I'd often rather get there via more granular and naturalistic resolution techniques.

Is that possible? i mean, I'm sure its possible to get some mix of things, but how can you get something like Dungeon World's "the dice decide how the player's actions actually change the fiction" and be naturalistic? The two simply don't live in the same house. There's no sense in which a throw of the dice in DW takes into account stuff in the fiction beyond "could this work at all?" Once we're past the "yes I have fictional position such as to be able to declare this action" then its all process from there on out and its certainly not naturalistic, and MAY not be granular at all.

I guess what I'm saying is, you have to examine the stuff that is actually happening at the table in the FINEST detail to see how and why some things work and other things work a different way. This is why I just asked @pemerton about the detail of his 'winking' example. I guess my play has a whole other agenda that doesn't even fall into the 6 cultures at all. That is I want to BUILD GAMES THAT WORK!

 

[Fenris-77]

I personally think its dishonest; its one thing to try and get enough data to be able to make your decisions intelligently and have a proper internal model of what's going on, its another to walk a GM into a corner that makes a game go in a particular way (which, I should point out, the GM isn't necessarily the only one that wouldn't want it to go that way--its not uncommonly done not only to favor the players group success but the particular player's ability to grandstand at the expense of other players spotlight times and/or make resources they went to the trouble to invest in moot because the manipulative player has worked the GM).

In the end it all too easily turns into a situation where one player is playing a different game than the GM or other players, without their choice. Its hard for me to find that virtuous.

I find your characterization of dishonesty here interesting. Personally, I think this is an underappreciated issues with granular high-crunch games. When you have a long list of specific skills and a player happens to be some kind of authority on one of the skills their character has, I really don't think it's dishonest to really drill down in terms of action declaration. Now, we need some caveats here I think - so porting real-life expertise over to action declaration is, IMO, fine but depending on intention. If the intention is to add evocative detail and possibly add some mechanical benefit then I have no issues. That said, there is a certain kind of player who does indeed want to paint the GM into a corner using some version of the notion that if I explain in enough detail I shouldn't have to role. The second version is not good.

 

[pemerton]

lets just take these three

And I think those are probably the ones which meet your criteria. How does their actual mechanical expression become more important? And how does that support character portrayal specifically? Which design characteristics of a resolution system are going to best do that?

To answer the first question: because the fiction around them, not having the "layers" or "depth" that the more conflict-y/"story now" stuff has, is not doing as much expressive work. So the mechanics loom proportionately larger.

As to the other two questions, if I could answer them properly I'd be a great RPG designer! @The-Magic-Sword gave some examples upthread from PF2, but they all pertained to combat.

Maybe it's enough that the mechanic for winking - which is about reaching out to someone and communicating with them - feels different from the mechanic for (say) stabbing - which is about unilaterally affecting someone, rather than engaging with some degree of reciprocity.

 

[pemerton]

there is a certain kind of player who does indeed want to paint the GM into a corner using some version of the notion that if I explain in enough detail I shouldn't have to role. The second version is not good.

Well, there are multiple posters on these boards who take the view that players should be aspiring to declare actions that require no roll. In that context, it's harder for me to agree with you that the second version is not good.

Now for my part, as I posted upthread, this approach to play is generally not one that enthuses me, but I tend to sidestep the whole issue by using less granular resolution systems.

The last time I remember this at my table . . .

porting real-life expertise over to action declaration <snippage> to add evocative detail and possibly add some mechanical benefit

. . . was in a Classic Traveller game. The PCs wanted to use their ship's triple laser turret to "drill" through several kilometres of ice.

As a group, we (ie the players and I) Googled up some info about lasers drilling through ice, and did our best to extrapolate to the bigger, more powerful lasers of the "far future"!

I certainly have no interest in doing this sort of thing in an adversarial fashion! A session or two later in the same game, I described some feature of an alien scientific installation (the one buried under the ice) and one of the players, who is a pretty experienced electrical/IT engineer, shook his head and maybe face-palmed for a moment, but he let it pass.

 

[Fenris-77]

I've been thinking a lot lately about the relationship between crunch and how players represent their characters (as well as what crunch actually means in terms of design goals and resolution). In the TTRPG sphere we have character sheets running from index card-sized to sheets that are four or more pages long. If we want to parse what 'crunch' means in terms of characters we have two main axis - first we have what I'll call breadth, which appears as long lists of skills, spells, gear, or whatever - but in all cases the (I'll assume) goal is to institute a certain level of coverage in terms of what the character can do mechanically speaking. The premise there is that increased crunch, so more skills or whatever, has the specific (but not solitary) goal of making more granular the number of mechanical button the player can press to alter the game state. In terms of modern of Sci-Fi settings this makes a lot of sense, so don't take this as a criticism.

The second axis is depth, which I'll identify as specific mechanics and subsytems designed to model/represent/handle/whatever certain specific actions. The low hanging fruit here is combat, which often gets far more mechanical attention than other things. To take Mythras for example, you have a bunch of special actions designed to make combat more granular and controllable for the player. Some might blanche at my assertion that granular equals player control, but I think it is a supportable position. If we take some thing like Free Kriegspiel as one end of the TTRPG spectrum, and with something in a crunch-drenched BRP game at the other end, I think this idea becomes pretty uncontroversial. The more skills, the more mechanics, the more specific buttons a payer can push to effect diegetic change the more specific control the player has. Why more specific control? Because that granularity takes some parts of the adjudication process out of the hands of the GM. A specific example might be the notional difference between adjudicating a roll vs a generic 'knowledge' skill in some sort of OSR game versus the cornucopia of academic skills present in a game like CoC. In the first instance the GM has rather a lot of latitude about what the PC might or might not know, but which becomes more fixed as the range of skills gets more and more specific. This isn't a value judgment, nor even something I'm completely sure of, but it makes enough sense for me to toss it out here and let people pull at the flaky bits.

I have more to say, but I suspect I'll start to ramble, so I'll stop here and let people stress test the idea above (if they feel like it).

 

[Voadam]

The more skills, the more mechanics, the more specific buttons a payer can push to effect diegetic change the more specific control the player has. Why more specific control? Because that granularity takes some parts of the adjudication process out of the hands of the GM. A specific example might be the notional difference between adjudicating a roll vs a generic 'knowledge' skill in some sort of OSR game versus the cornucopia of academic skills present in a game like CoC. In the first instance the GM has rather a lot of latitude about what the PC might or might not know, but which becomes more fixed as the range of skills gets more and more specific. This isn't a value judgment, nor even something I'm completely sure of, but it makes enough sense for me to toss it out here and let people pull at the flaky bits.

I think it is more that with more defined mechanics stuff gets taken out of DM adjudication and placed into more system defined results rather than directly to increased player control. Players can refer to the rules for defined results, but they can only control stuff within the defined confines of the mechanics which often includes a random dice element.

In B/X D&D having a crappy detect traps skill mechanic is often not really more player control than interrogating the DM about the scene the characters are in and trying to figure stuff out without mechanics. Narratively using a 10 foot pole is often better at detecting pit traps as the party explores.

 

[Pedantic]

Well, there are multiple posters on these boards who take the view that players should be aspiring to declare actions that require no roll. In that context, it's harder for me to agree with you that the second version is not good.

I'm definitely one of those, but I do want to clarify that I very much intend that to be achieved through use of specified mechanics relying on a described world, (and "not rolling" is not nearly as important as "knowing and accounting for the odds of success before declaring actions").

You can run into a situation where a player has to play both ends of that game at once, which is the most frustrating form of play. It's one thing to know your possible action declarations, and then to get more information about the doctor world to leverage those abilities, and then a whole other one to not know the what will require a roll at what odds and try to maneuver the GM into giving you the best possible outcome.

If there aren't clear actions for a player to declare, they're simultaneously trying to establish their own capabilities, and the fiction in which they're leveraging them, and every action declaration becomes an argument about precedent. Conversely, if you know what you can do, then you're just asking for more clarity about the situation to validate which actions are available from the set of so actions, or looking for clarity about the situation before submitting an action.

I think there's a difference between "arguing about what the board state should be" and "determining what the board state is" and that "arguing about what I can do" is a complicating factor that encourage muddying the two.