Be a GAME-MASTER, not a DIRECTOR

[pemerton]

X has the property that it causes Y, and in that it differs from some X' that doesn't have the property of causing Y.

Such that it is distinctive of X, that it has the property of causing Y.

Typical range before refueling is exactly a property of the designed components. (Taking "typical" here to imply differences over otherwise similar conditions.) What else could it be?

I think you are arguing something like Y in series S (where S is an observed performance) is a property of S rather than X (being factors that give rise to that performance). I'm focused on the distinctive properties of X compared with X', where one gives rise to Y and the other does not: making choices over X amount to choices over Y.

I'm saying that if X causes Y, it doesn't follow that X has property Y. A certain sort of engine might cause a vehicle to have a certain capacity for speed; it doesn't follow that that engine has that capacity for speed. The engine isn't a vehicle at all, and hence doesn't have a capacity for speed.

The rule make a soft move when the rest of the table look at you to find out what happens next, unless (i) a prior soft move has gone unanswered/uncontested, or (ii) a player has missed a roll (ie a 6- move result), in which case you can make as hard and direct a move as you like, will produce rising action and crisis. But the rule itself does not have the property of rising action, or crisis. The rule is a technical piece of instruction, not a piece of fiction.

 

[clearstream]

I'm saying that if X causes Y, it doesn't follow that X has property Y. A certain sort of engine might cause a vehicle to have a certain capacity for speed; it doesn't follow that that engine has that capacity for speed. The engine isn't a vehicle at all, and hence doesn't have a capacity for speed.

The rule make a soft move when the rest of the table look at you to find out what happens next, unless (i) a prior soft move has gone unanswered/uncontested, or (ii) a player has missed a roll (ie a 6- move result), in which case you can make as hard and direct a move as you like, will produce rising action and crisis. But the rule itself does not have the property of rising action, or crisis. The rule is a technical piece of instruction, not a piece of fiction.

One motive for preferring my framing is that it empowers a designer to say "given cue X has result on play Y, I can make choices about that cue with consequences for Y". A designer has more direct control over the cues they incorporate into their design than over any given eventual player. Emphasizing that link is worthwhile.

If I rightly characterise your argument in my #129 above, it's not in any direct contradiction with mine. You are focusing on features of the performance itself. I am focusing on features of the cues that inform that performance. That is because I want to be able to say something like "When the game designer makes changes to the cues they incorporate into their text, that has the foreseeable consequence of changing the way their game normally plays at table." My claim is that it is distinctive of TTRPG play that the game text can be prescriptive without scripting the story precisely (as it is in other media). With the delightful consequences we've discussed elsewhere (the extension of play into the imagination, being one.)

 

[niklinna]

I'm saying that if X causes Y, it doesn't follow that X has property Y. A certain sort of engine might cause a vehicle to have a certain capacity for speed; it doesn't follow that that engine has that capacity for speed. The engine isn't a vehicle at all, and hence doesn't have a capacity for speed.

The rule make a soft move when the rest of the table look at you to find out what happens next, unless (i) a prior soft move has gone unanswered/uncontested, or (ii) a player has missed a roll (ie a 6- move result), in which case you can make as hard and direct a move as you like, will produce rising action and crisis. But the rule itself does not have the property of rising action, or crisis. The rule is a technical piece of instruction, not a piece of fiction.

That seems pretty sensible.

 

[thefutilist]

That doesn't seem right. Theme and rising action are built into (part of the intent of) the rules of some games, and communicated by them. Maybe not everyone notices that, but it's there to see. This comes back to prospective play. When I read a game text, I imagine the play - that gives me a taste of the experience it will offer at the table. I think such qualities are in some sense a property of the cues, else how does one explain one set of cues more likely having those consequences than another.

Maybe I still get befuddled by mechanics rather easily but when I'm mocking up play it's first to see if I can actually use the mechanics in any sensible way. Then it's to see what they bring to play.

Part of my ambivalence toward Apocalypse World's mechanics is that they do lots of cool stuff when I'm alone thinking about how to use them. In play they can often lead me to befuddlement.

Anyway I think in practice people bring all this stuff about how role-playing functions, aesthetic literary criteria, preferences for process and then that gets funnelled into the cue.

So I think in terms of theme and rising action and so on, the inclination to that stuff and the form it takes is already there. It's just modified a bit.

 

[bloodtide]

Yeah, the common picture of, "The DM can be a despot if they want, and nobody can stop them." As if this is an attractive, or useful, concept. Might as well just lay it out as, "The GM can abuse their position."

But the action is not abuse by default. It can be abused, but then so can most things.

In the social situation that is a game session, doing "whatever you want" can lose the trust of the players, and sour the play experience. There are consequences for breaking social expectations. "I can do whatever I want," is putting the self before the overall social group. When done elsewhere, it is commonly called, "being a jerk." (Or, more colorful monikers that aren't appropriate here.)

Not exactly true. As long as the DM is not jumping on the table and waving things in the players faces......they will never know unless they are told.

Asserting that a GM can do a thing rather overlooks the question of what the GM should do, and when, and for what desired end. Victor Frankenstein did whatever he wanted, and the villagers came with torches and pitchforks. Don't be Victor Frankenstein.

Yea, but the other side of "you should be so scared of your players as to take no action" is also wrong.

This is just as true for the players. If a player decides that their PC is now a sorcerer and not a fighter, what is stopping them . . .

Most RPGs don't work that way though. A player can't just do things, as when a player does it they are just being selfish and not playing the game. If the player can just sit back and do whatever and end the game...well, there is no game.

For play to work, there needs to be some consensus in respect of that fiction - that is, it needs to become a shared fiction. Maybe the players agree with the GM that the former fighter Galt is now a sorcerer, maybe they don't. Maybe the GM and other players agree that the former fighter PC is now a sorcerer PC, or maybe they don't. There's nothing special here about the GM's role vis-a-vis the players'.

But it can be hard to run a game by group votes. The players are not impartial and are self serving. So how do you take that into account? You can't. The players will just out vote the DM and "win the game forever."

You can't even expect most players to be rational. A DM can say "Galt has always been a sorcerer, just your characters have never seen him cast a spell". And many players would never accept that rational logic.

That may be good play or bad play, it may or may not make sense to the participants. But nothing has been edited.

So...changing something is not editing?

Sounds like a crappy GM.

I'd point out @hawkeyefan as my example one. When presented with the idea that something in the game has changed OR something about the game was not what they thought was true, his response was "sounds like a crappy DM".

Even "in the fiction" there are many ways a DM can change things on a whim......but some players will never accept it and just say "crappy dm".

As for how I or others play RPGs, I prefer you not make any assumptions about that. I don't think you understand any method other than the one you seem to use.

Guess you don't understand either.

 

[clearstream]

Maybe I still get befuddled by mechanics rather easily but when I'm mocking up play it's first to see if I can actually use the mechanics in any sensible way. Then it's to see what they bring to play.

Part of my ambivalence toward Apocalypse World's mechanics is that they do lots of cool stuff when I'm alone thinking about how to use them. In play they can often lead me to befuddlement.

Anyway I think in practice people bring all this stuff about how role-playing functions, aesthetic literary criteria, preferences for process and then that gets funnelled into the cue.

So I think in terms of theme and rising action and so on, the inclination to that stuff and the form it takes is already there. It's just modified a bit.

I was reflecting along those lines after posting my last. An aspect that motivates having in mind @pemerton's viewpoint is that designer may see play that they want to reliably repeat, or repeat with some modification, and draft rules to that end. Baker speaks directly to that sort of design process, describing noticing play in Ars Magica, freeform, etc., and crafting rules to innovate play along lines he put stock in. Being able to see play clearly - see what was really going on at the table - has been one of the great skills that Baker has brought to his design work, and a lesson for other designers.

Both ways of looking at it have worth. A designer ought to want to see the phenomena of play clearly. And they ought to see how rules and cues etc can recreate that phenomena and innovate it as desired. The "prospective play" I referred to is needed when the play conceived is nascent.

 

[pemerton]

most DMs understand they can change anything in the game they want: it is part of the Role of the DM. Sure lots of DMs make a little pile of stuff and say "oh, I say I can touch any of that stuff"......but that is a choice.

This is just as true for the players. If a player decides that their PC is now a sorcerer and not a fighter, what is stopping them . . .

All you're really pointing out here is that RPGing involves multiple persons more-or-less spontaneously producing a fiction.

Most RPGs don't work that way though. A player can't just do things, as when a player does it they are just being selfish and not playing the game. If the player can just sit back and do whatever and end the game...well, there is no game.

Everything you say here about players is equally true of GMs. A GM can't just do things - if the GM can just do whatever and end the game, then there is no game.

Hence why I posted that,

For play to work, there needs to be some consensus in respect of that fiction - that is, it needs to become a shared fiction. Maybe the players agree with the GM that the former fighter Galt is now a sorcerer, maybe they don't. Maybe the GM and other players agree that the former fighter PC is now a sorcerer PC, or maybe they don't. There's nothing special here about the GM's role vis-a-vis the players'.

But it can be hard to run a game by group votes. The players are not impartial and are self serving. So how do you take that into account? You can't. The players will just out vote the DM and "win the game forever."

This makes me think you have very little familiarity with the variety of contemporary RPG design, and likewise very little experience in RPGing outside of the AD&D 2nd ed/"storyteller" paradigm.

Do you know any RPG that uses group votes as its method of action resolution? Off the top of my head, I don't. But there are other ways of mediating multiple inputs into a single decision - for instance, allocation of "ownership" of different bits of the fiction to different participants; using structured processes to elicit different participants' vision for how the fiction might unfold, and then using dice to determine whose vision prevails; or, slightly different from the immediately preceding, using dice to distribute obligations on one or more participants to come up with ideas for how the fiction might unfold that depart from their initial vision.

There's nothing wrong with RPGing in the mode of the 1991 mainstream, but if that's all you're familiar with it will limit your ability to make true generalisations about RPGing as such.

So...changing something is not editing?

What are you changing?

I was working with a student this morning, helping her edit her draft. That involves changing words, sentences and paragraphs. But this is not being done in front of the audience - the intended readers of her paper - who will only see the final version.

What similar process do you have in mind that is taking place in the play of a RPG in respect of the shared fiction?

 

[pemerton]

One motive for preferring my framing is that it empowers a designer to say "given cue X has result on play Y, I can make choices about that cue with consequences for Y". A designer has more direct control over the cues they incorporate into their design than over any given eventual player. Emphasizing that link is worthwhile.

I don't know what you think is obscured, in my characterisation, of the connection between design and play outcomes. These are generalisations about the effects of cues. They don't require imputing those outcomes to the cues as properties of the cues themselves.

There is actually a well-known paper relevant to this point, in the field of political and social philosophy: John Rawls, "Two Concepts of Rules". Rawls' basic point in that paper is that (i) we may have reason to want a social institution that will achieve outcome X, and (ii) we may have reason to avoid making X, or the aiming at X, or the attainment of X, itself a component of the social institution in question.

A simple example: we may wish to increase safe driving and reduce the incidence of dangerous driving, by (i) adopting a road safety law; but (ii) we may best achieve that goal not by adopting a law that refers to safety or danger, but rather that proscribes some particular sorts of behaviour (eg driving fast than N kph, or with more than such-and-such an amount of alcohol in one's system).

Likewise, the RPG designer who wants to engender a certain sort of conversation (a cool one; one with rising action and crisis; etc) will want rules that do that, but it may or may not make sense for the rules to talk about those things (the AW rules don't) and for the presentation of the rules to exhibit those features themselves (again, the AW rules don't - they are nicely and colourfully written, but they don't have rising action).

I want to be able to say something like "When the game designer makes changes to the cues they incorporate into their text, that has the foreseeable consequence of changing the way their game normally plays at table."

Well, the way to say that is to say it. It seems pretty straightforwardly true in some cases of changing the cues - but not in all cases, obviously, as there is clearly a lot of conjecture and hope in RPG design.

There is no relationship between pointing out that aspect of the RPG design endeavour, and other things like whether or not RPGing involves rehearsal, or typically permits significant editing of the shared fiction.

My claim is that it is distinctive of TTRPG play that the game text can be prescriptive without scripting the story precisely (as it is in other media).

This isn't distinctive of RPGing. It applies to any story-telling game, doesn't it? (The one I'm familiar with is A Penny For My Thoughts; I'm sure there are others. Maybe Rory's Story Cubes counts too? I've certainly seen children use the cubes to play a storytelling game, and the procedures they use could be written down if anyone wanted to.)

 

[clearstream]

I don't know what you think is obscured, in my characterisation, of the connection between design and play outcomes. These are generalisations about the effects of cues. They don't require imputing those outcomes to the cues as properties of the cues themselves.

There is actually a well-known paper relevant to this point, in the field of political and social philosophy: John Rawls, "Two Concepts of Rules". Rawls' basic point in that paper is that (i) we may have reason to want a social institution that will achieve outcome X, and (ii) we may have reason to avoid making X, or the aiming at X, or the attainment of X, itself a component of the social institution in question.

A simple example: we may wish to increase safe driving and reduce the incidence of dangerous driving, by (i) adopting a road safety law; but (ii) we may best achieve that goal not by adopting a law that refers to safety or danger, but rather that proscribes some particular sorts of behaviour (eg driving fast than N kph, or with more than such-and-such an amount of alcohol in one's system).

Likewise, the RPG designer who wants to engender a certain sort of conversation (a cool one; one with rising action and crisis; etc) will want rules that do that, but it may or may not make sense for the rules to talk about those things (the AW rules don't) and for the presentation of the rules to exhibit those features themselves (again, the AW rules don't - they are nicely and colourfully written, but they don't have rising action).

I've read that paper and see what you are saying, and it reemphasises for me that we are discussing two different things. To assay an analogy

I am not saying that 3d6 (cues) is a normal distribution, I'm saying that we may choose 3d6 for its liability to produce a normal distribution. A designer can know that 3d6 has that tendency, and choose it when they want their outcome to have the feature of being normally distributed. And (in reference to Rawls) this is true whether or not the application of 3d6 cues in a game itself obeys a normal distribution.

3d6 are not a normal distribution, but it is a feature of 3d6 that they are liable to produce a normal distribution. Having the feature of liability to produce outcomes of a sort is even more evident for collections of cues forming mechanics. Earlier I put it that the game text implies the play, were that not the case TTRPGs would not be designable.

Well, the way to say that is to say it. It seems pretty straightforwardly true in some cases of changing the cues - but not in all cases, obviously, as there is clearly a lot of conjecture and hope in RPG design.

That's true, albeit it's useful for a designer to be able to talk about cues (particularly arrangements of cues forming mechanisms) in terms of the consequences they're liable to have on play; and playtesting is effective at dispelling hope and conjecture.

This isn't distinctive of RPGing. It applies to any story-telling game, doesn't it? (The one I'm familiar with is A Penny For My Thoughts; I'm sure there are others. Maybe Rory's Story Cubes counts too? I've certainly seen children use the cubes to play a storytelling game, and the procedures they use could be written down if anyone wanted to.)

Distinctive, not exclusive. It might similarly be distinctive of the fictions created in the process of RPGing that they are not edited, but that doesn't rule out other fictions that aren't edited. I'd conjecture that it's hard to find any one feature of RPGing that is exclusive to it!

 

[pemerton]

It might similarly be distinctive of the fictions created in the process of RPGing that they are not edited, but that doesn't rule out other fictions that aren't edited. I'd conjecture that it's hard to find any one feature of RPGing that is exclusive to it!

I agree with the second sentence. The core of RPGing, I think, is the combination of two things that were present in wargaming:

*A figure as being a single person, rather than a unit - this then permits an approach of "inhabitation" rather than mere "command"/"direction" of the figure;

*The fiction mattering to resolution, as is found in some wargaming.​

Other typical (not necessary essential) elements, like continuity of protagonists and setting, seem to build on this base. And they're also not exclusive to RPGing - they're found in serial fiction.

Not being edited is a typical feature of live performances. And even the absence of rehearsals, though less typical for a live performance, is not unique to RPGing.