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

[pemerton]

But it doesn't represent an explicit action that could be taken (and be aware of being taken) by the character, which from my recollection is a necessary component of "I'm in the world play".

It might be diegetic, but it's also that magic word: disassociated.

Sigh. Ok, sure. Just because a mechanic directly indexes class mechanics and per day usage and also has no direct or useful connection to the fiction it must be non-meta. Moving on...

At least I've now learned that there's nothing "meta" about 4e D&D martial encounter and daily powers. After all, they reference something real in the fiction - martial effort - and the mechanical rationing is just a gameplay device.

EDIT: I was ninja'd by @soviet (who clearly expended an encounter power, or force point, or similar "diegetic" resource):

Well, we accept that physical exhaustion is a thing, and that people can't maintain peak performance and do the exact same thing over and over all day long without a rest. So are encounter and daily martial powers diegetic?

 

[soviet]

At least I've now learned that there's nothing "meta" about 4e D&D martial encounter and daily powers. After all, they reference something real in the fiction - martial effort - and the mechanical rationing is just a gameplay device.

EDIT: I was ninja'd by @soviet (who clearly expended an encounter power, or force point, or similar "diegetic" resource):

Sorry man, this is what peak performance looks like

 

[zakael19]

I think it can be useful to distinguish between establishing consequences of declared actions and framing a (new) scene. Although the borderline is not always clear (and sometimes, even often, it makes sense to describe consequence-narration as reframing a scene), I still think there is a useful difference:

*Framing a scene presents an opportunity and/or a threat;​

​

*Resolving a declared action, and establishing its consequence, realises the opportunity and/or brings home the threat.​

The way I've just put it is especially tuned for narrativist(ish) play, and I'm thinking through my recent session of Mythic Bastionland (which was 100% gamist, in the Big Model lexicon) to see if the above still fits. Probably "obstacle" rather than "threat" works better for that sort of play. But I still think the contrast holds.

In this example, the opportunity provided by the ravine is to have a new scene framed on the other side of the ravine (and the threat is that a new scene will be framed in the ravine).

But what about action declarations that aren't aimed at establishing new scenes, but rather other sorts of goals/stakes within a scene?

(As a bit of an aside, and in the context of "modern mechanics", I think the integration of action resolution and scene framing via PC movement - which is such a big deal in so much RPGing - shows the huge footprint of the Gygax/Arneson dungeon exploration game.)

I don’t care as much about labels on play, but discussing MythicBL on the Blades discord I came to the conclusion that it’s ripe for the sort of risk-framing as the BITD Threat Roll. In fact the procedure MBL lays out is almost exactly the same as the threat roll, down to “you can just pay a cost here because there’s no threat.”

 

[thefutilist]

I think it can be useful to distinguish between establishing consequences of declared actions and framing a (new) scene. Although the borderline is not always clear (and sometimes, even often, it makes sense to describe consequence-narration as reframing a scene), I still think there is a useful difference:

*Framing a scene presents an opportunity and/or a threat;​

​

*Resolving a declared action, and establishing its consequence, realises the opportunity and/or brings home the threat.​

it gets fuzzy doesn't it. I think of scenes as involving conflicts between the characters in the scene. So a scene could take place over ten years in hundreds of different locations, involving several rolls. Or the next scene could be, you fail to make the jump and crash into the bottom of the ravine: next scene > you wake up three months later in hospital.

 

[soviet]

They might, but it's not necessarily about what the characters believe. Plenty of people in Star Wars don't believe the Force exists, but they're wrong.

OK, but we know that things like willpower, anger, stamina etc all exist IRL, we just don't know how to measure their effect, or to control their effect (to even the extent to which we can control them). So is any metacurrency called those things OK?

We also know that luck exists, in the sense of probability turning out one way or another, although I don't think that people 'are' lucky in some inherent way as opposed to having good (or bad) probabilities happen to them.

 

[pemerton]

Here’s an example of how a very “modern” game handles a combination of stuff. Mythic Bastionland is a super lean d20 based game that places its emphasis on a) exploration within premise and implied setting and b) player decision making about interesting situations for their knights. A NSR hexcrawl with some great theming.

It expects the following GM prep:

• roll up the 12x12 realm off its spark tables
• read the rules
• … I think that’s it?

During play, it helps the GM adjudicate off the player’s decisions and its procedural generations (eg: the hex exploration procedure) by just loading every freaking page with Spark rolls. Each knight and myth has entries, there’s entries for settlements and environments and etc.

The GM has a core procedure they follow to adjudicate if a Knight (PC) is facing risk (roll), or if they simple get their intent with or without a cost.

So after you do the hex world, low prep. Built to run at the table no matter what your players decide they want to do within the confines of the agreed premise. Procedures that guide adjudication. Tables to drive creativity. It’s pretty glorious.

I feel a little bit qualified to comment on this one, having just run a session of it.

The rules are pretty straightforward. We didn't notice any particular glitches, though the designer website indicates that the Impair gambit may be a bit overpowered: Impairing Impairing

The guidelines for building the hex map are excellent.

But I didn't find framing or resolution easy. Like any new game, I'm sure practice will help. But I do think the game rules could be improved by giving a touch more guidance. For instance, the rules contemplate prep (eg p 16: "At the end of each session . . . Ask the players if they have any plans or ambitions for the next session. This gives you a direction for any preparation you do before then."). But don't tell you what it is that you might be prepping!

It's light-years ahead of something like The Isle of Dread. But I don't think quite has the elegance of something like In A Wicked Age.

Assuming my group keeps playing it, I'll definitely post more about my experiences with it.

 

[pemerton]

it gets fuzzy doesn't it. I think of scenes as involving conflicts between the characters in the scene. So a scene could take place over ten years in hundreds of different locations, involving several rolls. Or the next scene could be, you fail to make the jump and crash into the bottom of the ravine: next scene > you wake up three months later in hospital.

I also think of scenes in terms of how much "momentum"/"trajectory" carries across, and in what sort of way.

In a RPG, this can include fictional elements (eg which characters are present and able to exert influence on whatever it is that's at stake) and game elements (eg do the players get some sort of refresh of position or resources?).

 

[zakael19]

I feel a little bit qualified to comment on this one, having just run a session of it.

The rules are pretty straightforward. We didn't notice any particular glitches, though the designer website indicates that the Impair gambit may be a bit overpowered: Impairing Impairing

The guidelines for building the hex map are excellent.

But I didn't find framing or resolution easy. Like any new game, I'm sure practice will help. But I do think the game rules could be improved by giving a touch more guidance. For instance, the rules contemplate prep (eg p 16: "At the end of each session . . . Ask the players if they have any plans or ambitions for the next session. This gives you a direction for any preparation you do before then."). But don't tell you what it is that you might be prepping!

It's light-years ahead of something like The Isle of Dread. But I don't think quite has the elegance of something like In A Wicked Age.

Assuming my group keeps playing it, I'll definitely post more about my experiences with it.

Yeah this is really funny because I was reading through the map procedures in prep to start building a realm and just flailing. I've never really populated a hex with tables like this and found myself pretty confused by a lot of it (reading some of teh author's blog posts helped clear a little up).

Whereas the risk adjudication procedure reads and feels exactly like how I'd handled dozens of sessions of FITD play using the Threat Roll, just with only the attributes instead of all the sub-skills!

 

[Neonchameleon]

If Force Points aren't meta because The Force is a thing in the universe then Fate Points aren't meta in a whole lot of settings because fate is a thing.

 

[pemerton]

Yeah this is really funny because I was reading through the map procedures in prep to start building a realm and just flailing. I've never really populated a hex with tables like this and found myself pretty confused by a lot of it (reading some of teh author's blog posts helped clear a little up).

It's a long time since I've prepped a hex map from scratch (like, 40-ish years?) but found the procedures to be solid.

Whereas the risk adjudication procedure reads and feels exactly like how I'd handled dozens of sessions of FITD play using the Threat Roll, just with only the attributes instead of all the sub-skills!

@AbdulAlhazred made the comparison to BitD too, in another conversation: though in the context of Position and Effect (I think the Threat Roll is from Deeper Cuts?, but I could be wrong about that as I'm pretty ignorant of BitD).

Here's the action procedure from Mythic Bastionland:

1. Intent: What are you trying to do?
2. Leverage: What makes it possible?
3. Cost: Would it use a resource, cause Virtue Loss, or have a side-effect?
4. Risk: What's at risk? No risk, no roll. Otherwise make a Save or a Luck Roll.
5. Impact: Show the consequences, honour the established risk, and move forward.​

So 1 I get - I'm used to intent-based resolution (eg Burning Wheel, Torchbearer, 4e D&D).

And 2 I get - this is the "credibility test" from HeroQuest Revised, the "no roll for beam weaponry in the Duke's toilet" from Burning Wheel, etc. I think this is the bit that @TwoSix doesn't want to have to do unilaterally as GM ("Dear GM, can I try and do this thing?").

And 5 I'm find with: that's just GMing as I conceive of it.

3 and 4 are, for me, the trickier bits. I'll try and explain why. First, "cost" and "risk" are separated from one another. So it seems to be possible to suffer a cost, but not have to make a roll. This is borne out by the discussion of Exploration, which talks about time taken, and especially uses a phase as a type of cost. And also in the travel rules, which use virtue loss as a cost without a roll (eg for not travelling at night).

I think I would like just a few more examples, especially for non-exploration contexts, of virtue loss as a cost. And the idea of "side-effects" as a cost is also interesting. Some are obvious - a side effect of jumping into water is getting wet - but an example or two beyond that sort of thing would help me.

And then there is the issue of risk, which you've seen me post about before. I'm very used to the BW heuristic, which is (roughly) if the action pertains to something the player has put at stake - via Belief or similar signal - then there is a risk; otherwise, say "yes". But Mythic Bastionland is (to use the old lexicon) gamist and not narrativist. There aren't BW-style beliefs or stakes; the players are trying to earn Glory for their Knights by resolving Myths. So when is there risk? Common sense can get me some of the way, but it's not an entirely common-sense world (eg The Mountain has crag cats that lure human prey by placing jewels; and has glamorous peacock riders). And obviously these judgements of risk, and hence the need for a roll, implicate the difficulty for the players of attaining their goal.

I think it will take me some time to feel my way with this.