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

[zakael19]

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.

Yeah see, Deep Cuts / TR actually discusses "just do a thing for a cost" a lot. Like if there's no Threat (what the game called a Controlled position in the past), it suggests like "yeah just pay a Coin or a Stress and you'll get it."But if there's a clear threat (or the GM feels one would serve the table), bring it in and ask if they want to do it!

So Intent & Task establish fictional position, Cost and Risk are brought in depending on the fictional position (eg: what's a Risk for one Knight may not be for another, such as the Mule Knight using their ability to do a thing vs another Knight).

And generally in the Threat Roll system, the flow of conversation turns into "yeah, you'll get X, but it'll have the risk of Y" (so telling them that based on Task and Leverage, they'll get this outcome but Risk ...).

There's some good examples in teh book I think? Yeah, the "Danger" one is like exactly how I run FITD (although I'm a little more formal with the conversation).

Whereas with the hex stuff I'm like, Where do I put the landmarks! I just decide? How does all this rolling fit places? AAAAAaaa, lol

Edit: I should take the MBL specific discussion to one of your threads!

 

[thefutilist]

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?").

I hate the credibility check but it took me years, and a massive shift in how I gamed, to understand why.

We’ve talked a lot recently about emergent constraints, fictional positioning really but I’m not sure it’s a great term for it. I’ve seen the following types of dynamics in play.

A) The GM has to enforce positioning constraints against an antagonistic player. It’s a horrible dynamic.

B) The player or GM suggest that the positioning itself provides constraint/emergence. The player or GM could go ‘well I’m in a cramped space so I don’t think I can use my staff.’ This is the good stuff.

C) The constraint being a prompt for an improv style challenge: but I could use my staff in such and such a way so that the negative features don’t apply. This rewards creativity but I hate it. In low functionality cases it becomes this really boring ‘sing for your supper’ type play.

When I was first getting into Forge theory stuff I was having issues with A and C and wanted the system to deal with them. The most obvious way to do that is to get rid of unreliable currency. After a few years of that I realised that the big issue was really the table dynamics and I’d thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

Not that this has much relevance to what you were actually saying, I'm just reminded of how dysfunctional my HQ group was. At the time I blamed the system but I'm not sure it was actually the systems fault.

 

[pemerton]

I hate the credibility check but it took me years, and a massive shift in how I gamed, to understand why.

We’ve talked a lot recently about emergent constraints, fictional positioning really but I’m not sure it’s a great term for it. I’ve seen the following types of dynamics in play.

A) The GM has to enforce positioning constraints against an antagonistic player. It’s a horrible dynamic.

B) The player or GM suggest that the positioning itself provides constraint/emergence. The player or GM could go ‘well I’m in a cramped space so I don’t think I can use my staff.’ This is the good stuff.

C) The constraint being a prompt for an improv style challenge: but I could use my staff in such and such a way so that the negative features don’t apply. This rewards creativity but I hate it. In low functionality cases it becomes this really boring ‘sing for your supper’ type play.

When I was first getting into Forge theory stuff I was having issues with A and C and wanted the system to deal with them. The most obvious way to do that is to get rid of unreliable currency. After a few years of that I realised that the big issue was really the table dynamics and I’d thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

Not that this has much relevance to what you were actually saying, I'm just reminded of how dysfunctional my HQ group was. At the time I blamed the system but I'm not sure it was actually the systems fault.

Agreed re A and C.

I think there's a D, or maybe it's a variant of B, where the group expresses a view about what is/isn't possible based on fictional position. It can verge into A - ie a degree of enforcement - but because it's the group rather than the GM, it doesn't have the horrible dynamic.

Having agreed with you on C, I'm now remembering a couple of C-type moments from Mythic Bastionland on the weekend. Both involved the Lance Knight, and for a good reason: his best attack is a mounted charge, and the PCs spent a lot of time in the mountains, and so the issue of whether the terrain permits a charge came up.

At one point I resolved it by (in an ad hoc way) converting unreliable to reliable currency: the Lance Knight had charged a crag cat, and had spent one of his dice on a Gambit (a type of special action) to move following the attack. And then asked whether this could set him up to charge two cats on his next turn (in effect, lining them up and running them down).

I said yes, on the basis that it satisfied the most simple credibility test (no one at the table seemed to think it was ridiculous), and it rewarded the Gambit (this is what I've got in mind in saying it was a type of currency-laundering from unreliable to reliable).

 

[TwoSix]

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.

I mean, in a fantasy setting, can’t you just justify any “metagame” currency as being a blessing of the gods diegetically, and thus now OK?

Did Micah just end the 4e edition war?

 

[thefutilist]

Agreed re A and C.

I think there's a D, or maybe it's a variant of B, where the group expresses a view about what is/isn't possible based on fictional position. It can verge into A - ie a degree of enforcement - but because it's the group rather than the GM, it doesn't have the horrible dynamic.

Having agreed with you on C, I'm now remembering a couple of C-type moments from Mythic Bastionland on the weekend. Both involved the Lance Knight, and for a good reason: his best attack is a mounted charge, and the PCs spent a lot of time in the mountains, and so the issue of whether the terrain permits a charge came up.

At one point I resolved it by (in an ad hoc way) converting unreliable to reliable currency: the Lance Knight had charged a crag cat, and had spent one of his dice on a Gambit (a type of special action) to move following the attack. And then asked whether this could set him up to charge two cats on his next turn (in effect, lining them up and running them down).

I said yes, on the basis that it satisfied the most simple credibility test (no one at the table seemed to think it was ridiculous), and it rewarded the Gambit (this is what I've got in mind in saying it was a type of currency-laundering from unreliable to reliable).

Yeah contra my position on the D&D ranger from a far earlier discussion we had, currency really has to play a part in framing and resolution decisions.

On the macro level it’s part of my whole confusion around Apocalypse World. How many NPC’s are taking part in the fight to defend the water station. It really matters a lot and I don’t know how to decide.

On the scene/resolution level, I hope I would be cognisant enough to make the same type of decision you made re the gambit dice.

 

[pemerton]

On the macro level it’s part of my whole confusion around Apocalypse World. How many NPC’s are taking part in the fight to defend the water station. It really matters a lot and I don’t know how to decide.

For violent conflict/combat, I look at 4e D&D as the gold standard on this particular issue. It's encounter level guidelines are really reliable. It doesn't fully articulate the tier escalation (it's correct that at Heroic, Level +2 to Level +4 is pretty challenging, but at Paragon step that up by +2 and at Epic by +4 - so at Epic, level +8 is a big challenge)., but it's stable and consistent and easy to work with.

Torchbearer is not too bad, because you can compare the notional dice pool sizes and get a sense of things - though I did wipe (or near-wipe) my group by way of a kill conflict with some Trollbats, who I thought would be challenging but turned out to be tougher than I'd anticipated.

The only answer I can see in AW is what makes sense in the fiction. But that's a pretty unhelpful guideline (in my view) - I think there's some overlap there with my frustration at Mythic Bastionland leaving "risk" as a matter simply for the GM and play group to work out.

Now I've had another thought. Prince Valiant has no more guidelines than AW. But in Prince Valiant, being hosed by a rival warband doesn't matter, because no PC dies unless the GM says so, and the GM is advised to say so only if the fictional situation really doesn't permit of anything else (an example given is falling from the highest tower of Camelot). So generally, defeat in a fight means being knocked out or taken prisoner or whatever, and that's just more grist for the mill of light-hearted Arthurian hijinks.

But AW's harm system has a lot more bite to it than that.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Now I've had another thought. Prince Valiant has no more guidelines than AW. But in Prince Valiant, being hosed by a rival warband doesn't matter, because no PC dies unless the GM says so, and the GM is advised to say so only if the fictional situation really doesn't permit of anything else (an example given is falling from the highest tower of Camelot). So generally, defeat in a fight means being knocked out or taken prisoner or whatever, and that's just more grist for the mill of light-hearted Arthurian hijinks.

As a side comment, this is one reason the lack of much in the way of guidelines for combat comparison in most superhero games is much more tolerable than in a lot of other types; you may misstep (and the players will probably not appreciate it) but most superhero games either have an outright ban against death without permission, or are set up so it is so immensely easier to knock out supers than kill them that the latter is kind of a black swan event. This means that barring doing this at the wrong time in-story (where the effect of the failure can be appalling in outside scope), they tend to be forgiving of the GM getting their feet under them.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I mean, in a fantasy setting, can’t you just justify any “metagame” currency as being a blessing of the gods diegetically, and thus now OK?

Did Micah just end the 4e edition war?

That's very much like the Earthdawn solution to certain D&D problems though; it works but you need to be very much overt about it, and the overt version of that one isn't more appealing to a lot of people who hated the gamist elements of limited-use powers than that gamist reasoning was.

 

[dbolack]

Oh you could easily reskin mechanics for sword thrust to instead be witty insults, and swap hit points for reputation, and have practically the same mechanics running underneath.

Lace and Steel pretty much did that in the 80s.

 

[pemerton]

That's very much like the Earthdawn solution to certain D&D problems though; it works but you need to be very much overt about it, and the overt version of that one isn't more appealing to a lot of people who hated the gamist elements of limited-use powers than that gamist reasoning was.

I don't think you have to go as far as Earthdawn.

Per the 4e D&D PHB (p 54):

Encounter powers produce more powerful, more dramatic effects than at-will powers. If you're a martial character, they are exploits that you've practiced extensively but can pull off only once in a while. . . .

Daily powers are the most powerful effects you can produce, and using one takes a significant toll on your physical and mental resources. If you're a martial character, you're reaching into your deepest reserves of energy to pull of an amazing exploit. . . .

Martial powers are not magic in the traditional sense, though some martial powers stand well beyond the capabilities of ordinary mortals. Martial characters use their own strength and willpower to vanquish their enemies. Training and dedication replace arcane formulas and prayers . . .​

Limited-used abilities correspond to effort and willpower that are limited resources for even the greatest hero.

If that's all that's required to make something non-meta (as per the discussion of Force Points) then these abilities are not meta!