Vincent Baker on mechanics, system and fiction in RPGs

[AbdulAlhazred]

Such discussions are of course sometimes necessary. The rules however should endeavour for clarity, so that it is minimised. For example I find the intentionally muddy skill in Blades rather annoying as they invite constant pondering on which to use.

In any case, this specific situation goes further than that. It is not just clarifying what the character does now, it is clarifying what they will do in the future, even though the character might not have actually made that decision yet. So it is more "writer's room" in a sense that we are deciding story beats rather than just clarifying facts.

The skills in Blades are different from the moves in AW, they are APPROACHES to problem-solving, not specific clear technical 'skills' as such (though they certainly include an element of expertise and technique). So, when my character uses 'Skirmish', that means he's employing some sort of fighting technique involving maneuver, feints, etc. If he's using some sort of elaborate formal dueling technique, then it might be better described as finesse, and berserk attacks with a nail-studded club is probably Wreck. It isn't that the proper use of each action is 'muddy', it is more that you describe the fiction and THEN one of the actions is selected as an appropriate reflection of that. Characterization results because presumably the player wants to play in a fairly optimal way, so they develop chosen approaches. Takeo takes actions that are likely to fall under Skirmish, Command, or secondarily Study, Finesse, Wreck, or Sway. If he's stuck doing something else, well that's where pushing and playbook features, equipment, and teamwork come into play.

So, the design goals of BitD are different from AW, and it derives its mapping of design onto agenda in a bit different way at the detailed design level. You could use PbtA style playbooks to implement something like BitD, but BitD's design really strongly favors optimization and reinforcement of techniques, where PbtA playbooks don't necessarily do that. In BitD the primary focus is on actions and advancing your pips in the ones you use, with the playbook features being 'sauce' you can use to bolster your shtick or add some new dimension to it (Takeo for instance got 'Ghost Fighter' so he could use his formidable fighting skills against supernatural forces, which fit well with his backstory as well). AW is not so much focused on PROGRESSION, things tend to break down, not move forward. The playbook moves specifically relate to the situations that game engenders and characterization and such are more tied to moves purely. This is also why VB discusses the possibility of exchanging playbooks, where a character might switch at some point from Brainer to Battlebabe or something like that.

 

[Emberashh]

That’s an interesting take on it. It sounds to me like you want to apply the level-headedness of a person sitting in a chair surrounded by friends playing a game in place of the hot-blooded, adrenaline jacked behavior of a person with a gun to someone’s head.

I think you're making pretty drastic assumptions. We're talking about not abstracting all the elements that go into the interaction.

That doesn't preclude nor exclude the capability to portray an irrational character.

 

[kenada]

Its the same thing. It may well just be that you're getting hung up on the baggage of a certain word, meta in this instance.

We can after all clarify what we intend to mean and agree to stick to those definitions. If I for example want to utilize the word anarchy to make for an expedient and less formal talk on anarchism, we shouldn't be worrying about the implication of the word anarchy as being walking into a deli and urinating on the cheese. We just have to be sure we're establishing that and I'm actually trying to be better about recognizing when what words I'm inclined might not convey the same definition.

Meta in this sense refers to speaking about a game concern outside of the reality of the gameworld. Clarifying player intent is a meta concern, and one Id prefer if the game didn't produce an excessive amount of.

Meta in this sense does not, nor have to, refer to meta as in the derogatory "metagaming", where out of game knowledge is leveraged for an unfair advantage within the in-game.

Ie, you introduce your Player knowledge that Trolls are weak to fire to win a battle, despite your character Frildo never having left the Bubblegum Forest until a week ago and never seeing a troll before until this moment.

In the specific example of clarifying player intent, this isn't the same thing as metagaming as its within the bounds of fairness in the game, but both are still meta in the sense that they're rooted outside the gameworld itself.

I’m not hung up on labels. I’m pushing back on the idea that Apocalypse World is doing something unusual in its resolution process (note: versus what is being resolved, which is different). If the discussion were about D&D, I don’t think we would be having this conversation.

Obviously, some players like the mechanics to be as invisible as possible. That is a legitimate preference and way to play. I don’t think that’s the issue that was being raised (and even if it were, the problem identified would not be unique to AW but also to D&D and other games like it).

That produces an itchy aesthetic concern, though. Reactions aren't intuitively something you, the person who made an Action, rolls for. Someone else does, because intuitively unless you're the one reacting you shouldn't be doing anything.

I don’t particularly like moves as a play structure, but I thought translating them to an analogous structure in another game might help show how they’re not all that different.

I think thats pretty relatable to another interpretation of these games where the GM/MV is the only one interacting with dice or Moves. If playing that way feels better its probably because they have a strong adverse reaction to controlling more than just their character, which results from control of other characters being wrapped up in the Actions they take.

That seems like a questionable interpretation. Admittedly, I’m not following you on the last part.

It isn't, but Go Aggro is just one move in a greater spread of Playbooks and general moves. All of them collectively evoke a genre, and individual examples can prove that by being specifically and notably present in other examples of the Genre.

In post-apocalyptic stories, people being on edge constantly and at each others throats is a consistent theme (in the writing sense) that plays into the overall messages of these stories of succumbing to our lesser instincts in the absence of the social contracts that normally bind us.

Go Aggro as an individual trope exists in a lot of different genres, but its inclusion and specific design in AW is explicitly meant to convey how post-apocalypic fiction handles it.

As noted in my edit, I would call that an aesthetic concern. Moves themselves (as mechanics) are not about genre emulation. That may be the end (aesthetic), but they’re just the means.

 

[kenada]

Go Aggro seems like confused and superfluous move to me. You can handle the threatening part with Manipulate/Seduce, and if you decide to escalate to violence you can use battle moves. Then the whole issue we are dealing with there is avoided.

If someone draws their weapon and puts it to a target’s throat for a Charisma (Intimidate) check and then fails the roll, can the DM have the blade slip and kill the target?

 

[Emberashh]

If the discussion were about D&D, I don’t think we would be having this conversation.

(We would)

I don't like negotiation period. Doesn't matter the game.

I don’t particularly like moves as a play structure, but I thought translating them to an analogous structure in another game might help show how they’re not all that different.

Different aesthetics are different.

Admittedly, I’m not following you on the last part.

I'm referring to the player's roll on part of a Move controlling other characters. If the Move is percieved as a direct action on part of the player, then it produces an aesthetic issue that conflicts with idea that the action is a reaction.

That issue dissapears the more the theme of the Move is shifted away from being a task, which you can do willingly with buy in or by playing in a particular way, such as having the GM do all of the Moves, or by just calling for Moves because you want the Outcomes, rather than trying to make the triggers happen organically through Improv.

Moves themselves (as mechanics) are not about genre emulation. That may be the end (aesthetic), but they’re just the means.

Mechanics are what produce gameplay. Genre Emulation is a specific kind of gameplay. Ergo, genre emulation mechanics contribute to creating that kind of gameplay.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

If someone draws their weapon and puts it to a target’s throat for a Charisma (Intimidate) check and then fails the roll, can the DM have the blade slip and kill the target?

"Aw, man. I cut Marvin's head off."

 

[niklinna]

"Aw, man. I cut Marvin's head off."

I laughed, but I have read and watched plenty of fiction where somebody got something much different than what they wanted from their poorly-controlled attempt at "mere threat" of violence. If you put a sharp blade to somebody's jugular, or draw a loaded gun at all, that's a fraught situation. I'd be strongly inclined as an Apocalypse World GM to make clear to players that doing either of those things clearly counts as Going Aggro rather than Seduce or Manipulate. A roll of 6- when harm or death is very much on the table, especially if by accident, means that harm or death is very much happening.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I touch on this in my reply in post #156, which you obviously couldn’t have seen since I posted it after this reply, but I agree. The difference is the nature of the stakes in Apocalypse World. You’re not rolling to see if the PC completed some task but if they get what they want.

In that context, of course you need to establish an intent to escalate to violence to determine whether the move for resolving escalations to violence is the one being triggered. The rest of the process is basically the same as a task resolution process: player makes a declaration, clarify as needed, roll the dice, then the GM describes the result.


The example starts with some set up and then the player’s declaring, “ I’m going aggro on him.” That’s the extent of the context. It’s reasonable in that case for the MC to ask clarifying questions to make sure the player wasn’t speaking casually and intended the outcome that would result from a successful test. As a rule of thumb, it’s usually not good when a test results in an unintended outcome (especially on a success). This just looks like an example of good GMing practice integrated into AW’s conflict resolution process.


Apocalypse World requires you to do the thing that triggers the move. To do it, you have to do it. This is explained in “Moves and Actions”, which I quoted in full in post #120. If the player just calls out the move, you have to stop and establish what and how they’re doing it. That’s nothing special about AW. I’d expect the same in other games.

Right, this is a strength of PbtA IMHO and it directly addresses the criticism made of In a Wicked Age where the game MOVES ON if the players start just describing mechanical action, and then falls apart later on! In AW (etc.) you CANNOT PROCEED without the fiction, there are no moves divorced from fiction whatsoever! If someone in a DW game I am running names a move, it means nothing to me as GM. I simply ask them (often again) "what do you do?" because its up to the GM to trigger moves and up to the players to make them. Players cannot and should not 'make moves'. They're playing their PCs, RPing, and the GM's task is to apply some mechanics in order to allow things to move forward in a structured way in accordance with the themes and agendas inherent in the game.

In fact, I am kind of appalled at the idea that somehow AW or DW is less an experience of pure visceral RP than, say, 5e D&D. NOTHING could be further from the truth! There is no possible way in a D&D game I can purely inhabit my character. I can do exactly that in AW!! I can literally simply speak as my character and describe the action of my character in pure fictional terms, and I have no other obligation or function in play, aside from tossing the dice and then potentially making a few very simply mechanical choices depending on what move the GM decided was in play. This is the very farthest thing from a 'writers room' or any such thing.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't think there is much point in continuing. If you don't see why in a roleplaying game it is important to make decisions from character's perspective and actually react organically to what characters and NPCs are saying and doing, then we are not in this to do the same thing to begin with.

Again, you need to play these games, because NOTHING I have played in almost 50 years of RPG play experience is more visceral or directly to the point and in character than AW, nothing. You are pontificating about something you clearly have not experienced! No other game, aside from some clearly derived by the application of the same design philosophy delivers the same raw stream of consciousness in character play. This sort of play is, IMHO, not even close to approachable by the techniques you espouse, at least in games I've experienced. 4e and a few others do get close, and have their own virtues, but if your objection to AW and PbtA as a general design pattern is that it cannot deliver visceral, convincing, in-character play, you are simply in error.

 

[Shardstone]

Eh, I didn't read through it in a super thorough way, and haven't played it, but I feel like its basically drawing on a lot of existing game design. The basic 'range band' concept dates all the way back to Traveller. 13a isn't quite as detailed in terms of positioning as Hollows, but it is basically doing the same sort of thing. I don't recall specifically a game with a 'healing area' (the refuge) but moving to an extreme range band in Traveller does basically the same sort of thing. In terms of the action economy and move/turn architecture it seems pretty reminiscent of a number of other d20 games, 4e, 5e, 3e, PF2 maybe (don't know a lot about it), etc. There's definitely a specific tone, and obviously the pure focus on single "solo" monsters is a bit unique. I think it definitely has combined things in a bit of its own way, but at the same time it is pretty solidly in the design tradition of quite a few games going way back as far as the 1970s.

The terrain tags and threats are interesting, although the tags at least seem to be a bit of a mix between scene distinctions and fairly standard terrain, just handled in a bit of an abstract way. I assume the idea is you might narrate what all this looks like in play, though I am reminded of @Manbearcat's point that games which don't REQUIRE things don't really ask for them.

Drawing on existing game design has nothing to do with my point. Nothing innovative comes out of nowhere. Yes, you can trace back its design, but it is a new thing.