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

[Jahydin]

Mork Borg isn't really that modern, it's an OSR game and based very solidly on some very old games and mechanics (older than Harn for sure). Nothing about the character build or core mechanics is new anyway (IMO). The ones that govern the coming apocalypse might be described as new though.

In fairness, we might call it a modern remix, but that's a halfway measure at best IMO. I'll allow that there may be a specific mechanic or two in there that are more modern than I remember, but the system itself it not.

[Edit] I forgot that MB uses entirely player facing rolls, so take everything above with a grain of salt.

Yeah, I see it as a Modern take on the OSR.

Modern to me can mean two things: Having a non-Gygaxian (mathematical crunch) trajectory or using some sort of meta mechanic/currency.

All completely subjective of course.

 

[Fenris-77]

Yeah, I see it as a Modern take on the OSR.

Modern to me can mean two things: Having a non-Gygaxian mathematical "crunch" trajectory or using some sort of meta mechanic/currency.

All completely subjective of course.

I was editing my post as you posted. I'd forgotten how much Nilsson filed off and altered from the older games that inspired MB. It's more modern than I was remembering.

 

[Lanefan]

No, I think they remember that there were a lot of low level monsters that did enough to one-shot even second and third level characters. It seriously wasn't uncommon with anyone but fighters (and even with them the 3D8 could sometimes be treacherous).

A few things here:

--- remember, to one-shot anyone the monsters had to a) hit and b) roll well on their damage die; neither was at all guaranteed
--- also keep in mind that most players pretty quickly learned (usually by their second or third character) that combat was far from the best way to accomplish anything, and to be avoided when possible/practical.

 

[Fenris-77]

A few things here:

--- remember, to one-shot anyone the monsters had to a) hit and b) roll well on their damage die; neither was at all guaranteed
--- also keep in mind that most players pretty quickly learned (usually by their second or third character) that combat was far from the best way to accomplish anything, and to be avoided when possible/practical.

Something we may want to examine is if that last point, which is certainly true of classic D&D and well as much OSR play is still somehow evocative of the fantasy source material or if it's more an artifact of the game itself.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't think that the 'trope' currently exemplified by classes really existed in the literature at the time in anything like the same way as it would subsequently. So no, not class as trope, but class as reflective of the different characters presented in fantasy fiction. To take ranger as the example, there wasn't a huge depth of rangers of which Aragorn was an exemplar, there was really just Aragorn. So there's no ranger 'trope' in same way at the time that there will be later as more and more fantasy authors include 'rangers' with a wink and guns to JRR.

There's been Thief/Rogue characters in tales and literature since about forever (Ali Baba, anyone?); ditto Fighters or similar, ditto Assassins or hired killers or similar.

The tales and legends of King Arthur give us Knights and chivalry; directly leading to Cavaliers and similar classes.

There's also been numerous variants of Wizard, of which Gandalf is the most famous. Arthur had one too.

There's also Rangers that long pre-date Aragorn: though they weren't named as such, Robin Hood and some of his merry men were Rangers to the core.

Bards and-or skalds are also a fairly old character trope; Robin Hood had one, and Skalds were a real-world thing in Viking times (though without the magic).

Clerics are the only character trope that's fairly rare, but guess where you'll find one? Yep, Robin Hood again. Good ol' Tuck.

So, in a formative sense at least, I'd say most of the 1e-era classes have a pretty long background in folk tales, literature, etc. That said, Robin Hood is a glaring omission from ye olde Appendix N.

 

[Lanefan]

Something we may want to examine is if that last point, which is certainly true of classic D&D and well as much OSR play is still somehow evocative of the fantasy source material

I'd say yes and no.

Yes in that it's evocative of a real-world sense of the fantasy material, that some of these people are flat out gonna die doing stuff like what they do and it's just not believable if they don't.

No in that in the source material the hero always pulls through somehow, because it's the single hero's story rather than the story of a team with interchanging parts.

And to me that's the big difference between a single hero's tale and an RPG: in an RPG, assuming a typical table of several-plus players and a GM, you're primarily telling or generating the tale of the team/party/company as a whole rather than that of any single character.

 

[Fenris-77]

I'd say yes and no.

Yes in that it's evocative of a real-world sense of the fantasy material, that some of these people are flat out gonna die doing stuff like what they do and it's just not believable if they don't.

No in that in the source material the hero always pulls through somehow, because it's the single hero's story rather than the story of a team with interchanging parts.

And to me that's the big difference between a single hero's tale and an RPG: in an RPG, assuming a typical table of several-plus players and a GM, you're primarily telling or generating the tale of the team/party/company as a whole rather than that of any single character.

I think the team with parts is a feature of several of the folktales you mention, and it's certainly true of some of the fantasy literature in question. So while I agree with you to some point about 'the hero's tale' I don't think that's whole story.

Another interesting point is that from the perspective of any one player at the table that RPG play seems lot more like that hero's tale than it does when we interrogate play at the group level. I'm not sure exactly what that 'proves', but I do think it needs to be discussed somewhere in an account of what RPG play looks or feels like (or does not), or is 'supposed to emulate', or whatever word we want to use there.

FWIW, upstream I did mention historical inspirations as well as those pulled from fantasy literature.

 

[GobHag]

I'd personally prefer if the thing that @Lanefan values to be important to the 'group narrative' is lessened and played down however.

 

[pemerton]

I don't disagree that class to some extent functions as class-as-game-piece, I think that's quite obviously true. But I would disagree that this is it's primary function because without the framework or example provided by the fictional (and historical) exemplars the game piece is a cypher. There is no recognizable game piece function without the exemplar, at least not one that's recognizable as a D&D class. I think I might use the word synergy to describe the relationship between the mechanical game-piece elements and the skills and evocative dressing that comes from the fictional inspirations. It seems to me that the end product was greater and more engaging than the sum of its parts.

I think I'm not as sure that the original game pieces needed a particular trope or exemplar to work. Heroes and Superheroes can be Aragorn, Eomer, Conan, Lancelot, etc without worrying too much about details beyond that. And all we need to know about Wizards, exemplar wise, is that they use magic. The artillery-like effects are a product of wargaming requirements and conventions, plus maybe a dash of Dr Strange.

The role of classes, and their relationship to tropes, has changed a lot since Chainmail; and beginnings of that change can be seen even with the Druid and the Monk. I still think that, in the original conception of the game, game function was primary.

I generally agree, for example that RPGs need resolution mechanics and a framework for deciding on the consequences of actions. The term framing is a bit sticky though. Not because it's not useful, but it often gets a bit kludged up in the narrative/not-narrative argument. Setting that aside, I think it's trivially obvious that what GMs do is frame scenes (or encounters, or moments, or whatever one chooses to call them) and allows the players to respond. This is the essence of RPG play, of the conversation that drives recursive alterations of the diegetic frame.

However, I also think that the above is perfectly possible without any reference to specifically narrative terms like rising action. Is that an aesthetic choice? Probably, yeah, I think that sounds correct. What that tells us though is that the options involved in that aesthetic choice aren't fundamental to RPG play, but rather interchangeable.

What I'm sensitive to - most recently, I was commenting on it in relation to Mythic Bastionland - is when a RPG doesn't tell the GM how they should be making framing decisions.

Classic D&D does (although it doesn't use the language of framing) - the GM frames by reference to the location of the PCs on the map, with reference to the key; and also by reference to the outcomes of wandering monster rolls. Burning Wheel does too, albeit it's rules for framing are completely different from classic D&D. Apocalypse World is a little bit more indirect, but does set out a method for framing - the interplay between the prep of fronts, and the making of GM moves.

But the GM-as-world-mediator approach, at least when explained by its proponents, tends to eschew giving an account of how the GM is to make these framing decisions. It doesn't want them to be done by reference to rising action, or theme; but what approach should be used is not normally explained.

 

[pemerton]

Something we may want to examine is if that last point, which is certainly true of classic D&D and well as much OSR play is still somehow evocative of the fantasy source material or if it's more an artifact of the game itself.

Right. Conan doesn't resort to combat as a last resort.

Having fighter PCs begin at 1st level, rather than as Heroes, is already a departure from the source material.