RPGing and imagination: a fundamental point

[FrogReaver]

No one is saying that they're disinterested, just that everyone is on board with the chance of failure. You can conceptualise things via this negotiation model if you want, to me trying to get things fit to it starts to seem a bit torturous, and others will not conceptualise things in the same way than you nor see much value in this formulation.

Right. For my typical mode of play I view it as a mischaracterization.

Though as always, sometimes my mode of play breaks down and negotiaton does happen ‘mid game’. It’s a sometimes necessary but not particularly desirable aspect associated with my. Though I think it’s important to note that I’ve seen this kind of breakdown and negotiation happen in many non-rpg games.

A example: Pickup basketball usually has a rule where the player calls his own fouls. But players typically don’t call fouls except for significant contact. Occasionally you’ll get a guy calling fouls on all piddly stuff, sometimes this results in a negotiation to get him not to do that. In pickup basketball it’s clear that negotiation is occurring outside the game.

Point is, when people are involved, breakdowns happen, but those breakdowns aren’t core to the experience. They are most often unwelcome necessities.

 

[FrogReaver]

Baker has it that participants are "suggesting things that might be true" (emphasis mine). I observe participants in some modes of play asserting what is true. Compelling some assertions is doing what the rules say to do.

I think @pemerton would counter that what you are describing is the rules easing/constraining the negotiation. What are your thoughts there?

 

[clearstream]

I think @pemerton would counter that what you are describing is the rules easing/constraining the negotiation. What are your thoughts there?

If by easing/constraining one means obviating, then I'm in agreement!

Less flippantly, as I commented up thread I believe that norms established up front can obviate negotiation in a preponderance of later moments. A common example is where the right to say what is true is firmly appointed.

Conversely, if norms established up front unsettle or dilute the right to say what's true, then negotiation in a preponderance of (if not all) later moments would be a foreseeable (and desirable) outcome.

Speculatively, the motives driving what on surface could look like quibbling over semantics are reflective of a fracture in roleplaying culture. For some, it is crucial that what any participant says is a "suggestion" that "might" be true, and which isn't true until everyone else agrees. The contingency of every participant's contribution to the ongoing fiction, and right of others to dissent or propose alternatives at any moment, is firmly asserted. That given, it is indeed the crucial normative function of rules to ease and constrain, or in a sense reassemble, agreement in each moment. And they can be crafted to produce that agreement in surprising and challenging ways.

For others, that could all seem unnecessary and unsettling. They're comfortable appointing someone to say what is true and in so doing giving their umbrella consent to that person's entire chain of contributions; which is to say that they've established or assumed that norm. Reproducing consent in the moment becomes less crucial for rules, and I suppose that draws focus to what they can do to model world and craft interesting gameplay.

I take Baker's analysis to represent an explosive challenge to prevailing assumptions at the time. "So look, you!" Take notice! What you thought was going on, well that's actually not all that is or could be going on. And in a sense this is right, because as we've discussed before, rules put in place or reshape norms. And the norms here are not self-enforcing, they require your cooperation, which you can - at any moment - withhold. Thus, if I have the rules of Chess - crafted to create an intriguing decision-space - well, I still can just not follow those rules, and what you do when I do that is up to you. If you like, you can accept it. And Baker isn't interested just in things we would go along with, normally, but things we wouldn't go along with, normally.

 

[Pedantic]

I take Baker's analysis to represent an explosive challenge to prevailing assumptions at the time. "So look, you!" Take notice! What you thought was going on, well that's actually not all that is or could be going on. And in a sense this is right, because as we've discussed before, rules put in place or reshape norms. And the norms here are not self-enforcing, they require your cooperation, which you can - at any moment - withhold. Thus, if I have the rules of Chess - crafted to create an intriguing decision-space - well, I still can just not follow those rules, and what you do when I do that is up to you. If you like, you can accept it. And Baker isn't interested just in things we would go along with, normally, but things we wouldn't go along with, normally.

It is troubling that we're still stuck on trying to reach a unified theory of TTRPG design. Really, this feels like two different schools of design, one working from essentially a freeform roleplaying model and striving to see what rules can do to add to the experience (the "unwanted" point we hear so much about), vs. something closer to board game design, where a closed system of actions is assumed to produce a knowable game state. The first treats as the fundamental unit of play what the latter views as a breakdown in communication.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

It is troubling that we're still stuck on trying to reach a unified theory of TTRPG design. Really, this feels like two different schools of design, one working from essentially a freeform roleplaying model and striving to see what rules can do to add to the experience (the "unwanted" point we hear so much about), vs. something closer to board game design, where a closed system of actions is assumed to produce a knowable game state. The first treats as the fundamental unit of play what the latter views as a breakdown in communication.

Why is this troubling? It seems to me that having multiple approaches to TTRPG design would be desirable and that the push and pull between them would ultimately yield better games. It's typical in other fields to have multiple competing creative agendas operating simultaneously or near simultaneously, usually to the benefit of the field overall. Why not here?

 

[hawkeyefan]

To respond more directly, I don't see this turning on what player is interested in so much as what process is followed.

Baker has it that participants are "suggesting things that might be true" (emphasis mine). I observe participants in some modes of play asserting what is true. Compelling some assertions is doing what the rules say to do.

Yes, when a player declares an action, there is some goal. The goal of the action is not to try something, the goal is to achieve something. So they declare "I want to climb the wall" and we know the goal is to get to the top of the wall.

The DM then has to determine if there's uncertainty and if so, determine a DC and call for a roll.

That process is how success or failure is worked out. It's not that both parties are somehow unaware of the process. The player knows a declared action that involves uncertainty will most likely require a roll.

That's all negotiation means in this sense. How do we work out X? How do the rules help us to determine the outcome of uncertain events.

In the case where someone simply declares that something is true, it's still subject to the rules. Baker addresses this by pointing out that participants are allowed to declare truths in specific cases... the GM very often to convey information about the world ("There's a big chasm before you, with a rickety rope bridge swaying in the wind, running to the far side") or the players about their characters ("Rolf has a beard and a wild mane of red hair" or "Rolf hails from the northern islands" and so on).

That's all still worked out. It's still subject to the rules. It's in the way the game is designed, or it's in the way that the participants have agreed to play it. Neither the GM nor player can simply declare anything at anytime... they're subject to restrictions (though the GM will generally have far fewer than the player).

I mean... bringing two or more parties into agreement. All this balking about the word negotiation... I really don't get it. We all know what it means. We can all clearly see it applies.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It is troubling that we're still stuck on trying to reach a unified theory of TTRPG design. Really, this feels like two different schools of design, one working from essentially a freeform roleplaying model and striving to see what rules can do to add to the experience (the "unwanted" point we hear so much about), vs. something closer to board game design, where a closed system of actions is assumed to produce a knowable game state. The first treats as the fundamental unit of play what the latter views as a breakdown in communication.

This is what happens when you try to hybridize two things that aren't, necessarily, all that compatible; each tries to fish in the virtues of the other to expand their own experience, but sometimes in vastly different ways.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I mean... bringing two or more parties into agreement. All this balking about the word negotiation... I really don't get it. We all know what it means. We can all clearly see it applies.

You have the choice of assuming that's not true or assuming the other parties are being disingenuous. I know which one is likely to lead to a better conversation.

 

[Pedantic]

Why is this troubling? It seems to me that having multiple approaches to TTRPG design would be desirable and that the push and pull between them would ultimately yield better games. It's typical in other fields to have multiple competing creative agendas operating simultaneously or near simultaneously, usually to the benefit of the field overall. Why not here?

I'm saying the troubling bit is the unified theory.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

I'm saying the troubling bit is the unified theory.

That we've not reached it or that we're bothering trying to reach it?