What Do You Think Of As "Modern TTRPG Mechanics"?

[billd91]

But that's not a specific intention. That describes every halfway complete game ever. The question is what kind of experience it was supposed to produce, and it didn't have much focus there.

Honestly, this kind of thing just tells me that people discussing "specific intentions" vs "creating aimlessly" are incredibly pretentious.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

Did he have examples of games "created aimlessly"? Because I have a hard time imagining a game created aimlessly - even original D&D, adapted and cobbled together from about a zillion influences, wasn't exactly "created aimlessly". The aim was creating a reasonably fun game that used mechanics that seemed to work.

The main comment was in the context of advocating for designing to address specific questions rather than, say, cobbling together mechanics in the absence of goals. He didn't name any names, which I assume was at least partly out of politeness, but also because the point wasn't to slag off on other games as much as to say what he thought made for successful games.

 

[Campbell]

I don't think D&D or Traveller were aimless at all. I do think most 90s era design was. L5R (before 5th edition), Shadowrun, Vampire, Witchcraft, Earthdawn, Cyberpunk, etc. People basically did a bunch of world building (and not even with an eye towards its suitability for gaming) and basically treating the game as an afterthought with many rules carried over from other games without consideration of it served their game well. No real instructions on how to structure play, character creation that did not establish purpose or why characters should give a damn about each other. No real thought put into reward cycles.

I get that a fair number of people don't really want a structured experience and actually prefer the sort of raw worldbuilding of older designs. But the sort of free verse world building is not really an intentional effort to create a game to a specific premise or vision.

 

[Campbell]

So I view success with consequences as very distinct from degrees of success and failure in games like RuneQuest. Sure, in both there is a lack of binary results, but success with consequences is rooted in conflict resolution where we are answering "Do I achieve what I set out to do?" while degrees of success answers "How well did I perform this task?"

Success With Consequences says you get what you want but something you probably won't like will happen whereas degrees of success does not care what you want.

 

[SableWyvern]

The main comment was in the context of advocating for designing to address specific questions rather than, say, cobbling together mechanics in the absence of goals. He didn't name any names, which I assume was at least partly out of politeness, but also because the point wasn't to slag off on other games as much as to say what he thought made for successful games.

Well, it's easy to say that you should have a goal when you're designing a mechanic. I tend to say something along these lines frequently on reddit when people ask open-ended questions like, "How do I make initiative interesting in my game?" The first step isn't to come up with a cool gimmick, it's to work out what initiative is actually meant to do in the wider context of the system.

But I also think its very fair to ask if anyone who is actually releasing professionally presented games is doing so without any real cohesive goal, because I, too, struggle to think of anyone who is. I can think of people who have released games that I consider mechanically or conceptually flawed or of no interest to me, but not games that are aimless and just a random assortment of unrelated and purposeless mechanics. Without any specific examples, it sounds like a strawman to me.

 

[loverdrive]

So I view success with consequences as very distinct from degrees of success and failure in games like RuneQuest. Sure, in both there is a lack of binary results, but success with consequences is rooted in conflict resolution where we are answering "Do I achieve what I set out to do?" while degrees of success answers "How well did I perform this task?"

Success With Consequences says you get what you want but something you probably won't like will happen whereas degrees of success does not care what you want.

I'm kind of drawing blanks trying to remember a degrees of success system that has, well, consequences or costs associated with it. Degrees of success are mostly either used to tiebreak opposed rolls or add damage on attacks, but not for "yes, but:" kind of resolution.

 

[SableWyvern]

I don't think D&D or Traveller were aimless at all. I do think most 90s era design was. L5R (before 5th edition), Shadowrun, Vampire, Witchcraft, Earthdawn, Cyberpunk, etc. People basically did a bunch of world building (and not even with an eye towards its suitability for gaming) and basically treating the game as an afterthought with many rules carried over from other games without consideration of it served their game well. No real instructions on how to structure play, character creation that did not establish purpose or why characters should give a damn about each other. No real thought put into reward cycles.

I get that a fair number of people don't really want a structured experience and actually prefer the sort of raw worldbuilding of older designs. But the sort of free verse world building is not really an intentional effort to create a game to a specific premise or vision.

This sounds like the sort of thing I was talking about earlier, where "intention" is being linked to making sure every mechanic overtly feeds back into a narrow, precise vision and is driving players towards interacting in a particular way.

You may want mechanics that drive players to invest in an underlying premise, but it's just as valid to expect the players to arrive motivated and driven, and then give them to tools to work out what happens when those characters do things.

Providing mechanics that assist the players in simulating the reality of the gameworld isn't aimless, it's just not the aim you want. Someone designing that way isn't doing so with out intention -- they just aren't intent on making the sort of game you seem to prefer.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

But I also think its very fair to ask if anyone who is actually releasing professionally presented games is doing so without any real cohesive goal, because I, too, struggle to think of anyone who is. I can think of people who have released games that I consider mechanically or conceptually flawed or of no interest to me, but not games that are aimless and just a random assortment of unrelated and purposeless mechanics. Without any specific examples, it sounds like a strawman to me.

He was talking about it from the position of designing a game and what he thought was important during that process, so games before they get to market. Without being in the room as something was designed or gaining special knowledge some other way, I'd hesitate to call a published game aimlessly designed. I mean, how would I know? A lot can happen between design and publishing. I can imagine aimless design in the design process, because I've engaged in aimless faffing around in my creative life (not game design) to fruitless ends. But that work usually ends up in the round file. Really, I just thought it was interesting (edit: to me it was interesting) that intentionality was popping up in two separate ends of my RPG reading/listening today.

 

[SableWyvern]

I'm kind of drawing blanks trying to remember a degrees of success system that has, well, consequences or costs associated with it. Degrees of success are mostly either used to tiebreak opposed rolls or add damage on attacks, but not for "yes, but:" kind of resolution.

MERP (1984) and one of the RM2 companions (1988) offer static manoeuvre tables with two or three degrees of failure and three degrees of success (near, partial and complete success). Off the top of my head, I can't think of any specific examples of these being presented as success with a complication. However:

Rolemaster Standard System (1994) adds an additional degree of success (success with additional, unexpected benefit) and unusual events, the latter of which can be either success with a complication or failure with a benefit, at the GM's discretion. They're not common results, but they're definitely there, and the first formal presentation of "yes, but" results that I'm aware of.

One of these actually showed up in our last session. A player observing the entrance to a kobold lair had a traumatic flashback to a childhood event when he was spying on his father and saw his beaten to within an inch of his life.

On a vaguely related note, numerous specific critical results in RM are "yes, but" outcomes. You level a heavy blow, but your weapon breaks/is stuck/you're drenched in blood (the latter potentially deadly if fighting a dragon). Conversely, for "no, and", "you fumble so ridiculously that your foe is stunned for two rounds laughing."

 

[SableWyvern]

He was talking about it from the position of designing a game and what he thought was important during that process, so games before they get to market. Without being in the room as something was designed or gaining special knowledge some other way, I'd hesitate to call a published game aimlessly designed. I mean, how would I know? A lot can happen between design and publishing. I can imagine aimless design in the design process, because I've engaged in aimless faffing around in my creative life (not game design) to fruitless ends. But that work usually ends up in the round file. Really, I just thought it was interesting (edit: to me it was interesting) that intentionality was popping up in two separate ends of my RPG reading/listening today.

Well, I also don't think it's fair or reasonable to claim you should never just play with mechanics for the fun of it and see what you come up with, nor does the fact the someone has done so at some point mean the design process as a whole is "aimless".

The individual actions you take in a brainstorming session may be aimless, as the objective is to just throw things out there without too much thought, but you don't then use any useful output aimlessly, and I can't see how you could argue that engaging in brainstorming makes the overall process aimless.

It's fair enough if you found the coincidence and the original discussion interesting, but I happen to find the original assertion (not your own, but the one you're referring to) as questionable.