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

[Fenris-77]

If the game tells you how to apportion authorial control, I don't see how that is effectively different than mechanics in the game doing it.

Probably because you only care that its happening? One is a mechanic and the other isn't (deapite protestations to the contrary). Mechanics tend to be far more specific while the other tends to much broader.

Perhaps even our uae of 'mechanic' needs to bw interrogated?

 

[Thomas Shey]

What I mean is that, regardless of how they do it, mechanics that all shift authorial control from the GM to the players to some degree (and I'm talking about control beyond their PCs here) have that in common, and can this be discussed as a group by that metric. This is particularly important if that kind of authorial control is important to you, as it is to me.

I don't think moving some authority to the players makes a game intrinsically narrative in focus. It may have been somewhat uncommon in old-school games, but it can be done for reasons and with constraints that are about group setting development, not aiming at specific outcomes. This is very clear in downtime creation, but it can even be true in on-the-fly creation.

 

[Thomas Shey]

One reason I don't personally use the term "trad" is because the actual table play between a linear adventure using milestone leveling and heroic characters and the actual table play in a group playing "xp for gold" dungeon delving within a pre-populated sandbox, picking and choosing rumors and wandering in hexes off a map is like, radically different. Yet neither is "narrative" in any way.

Things that are separated can still be separated internally, too.

 

[Fenris-77]

What are the categories you're saying can't be distinguished between? As I read you, it sounds like you have one called "trad" and one called "narrative". The 'trad' label puts in my mind the six cultures of play idea; you also say it is "like early D&D", but narrative is not one of those (story games is). You also don't want the GNS definition of narrative.

Maybe it is just that I'm late to the discussion, but I think the disconnect you and @Micah Sweet have may just be about unstated definitions.

When I say there is a hard boundary, I mean: there are some games (which @Micah Sweet and I enjoy) in which the DM takes authorial control of the world and the players control only their characters. Any mechanic which gives the players authorial control is incompatible with this, definitionally.

Based on that, we have two, binary types of games: "players have nonzero authorial control" games" and "players have no authorial control" games, right? That's a clear division. In my posts I have in mind "more authorial control = narrative", so I'm happy labeling these as "narrative" and "trad" games, respectively. Maybe that doesn't map perfectly, although I'm curious what games you'd call narrative where the DM retains all the authorial control. And cases where there is a hint of narrative control (especially limited in scope, like only prior to play) we may want to say more about.

But i think those details are details which don't contradict the core division.

Ahh, no, those aren't my categories at all, simply the ones most often used in coversations like these. One can't go dropping in new jargon willy nilly, so I've been attempting to use the common phrases to illustrate my point.

Left to my own devices (and with unlimited time) I'd build a new vocabulary from the ground up. That's more project than we need here though and than Id currently want to commit to.

 

[Fenris-77]

So, mechanics. When I use the word I mean rules and systems, but some people (and I don't just mean here), extend the definition to cover things like GM agendas, which aren't really rules, or systems, but more like advice.

I can see an argument for some cases, like the GM and Player agendas in AW to be construed as a system of some kind, but I'm not convinced it quite makes the grade. If we move away from the somewhat systematized AW version, lots of games have what I might call 'GM advice'. I really don't think that's a mechanic, but I'm willing to be convinced. It's still important, but I feel like the looseness of 'mechanic' is causing some static.

 

[pemerton]

Probably because you only care that its happening? One is a mechanic and the other isn't (deapite protestations to the contrary). Mechanics tend to be far more specific while the other tends to much broader.

Perhaps even our uae of 'mechanic' needs to bw interrogated?

So, mechanics. When I use the word I mean rules and systems, but some people (and I don't just mean here), extend the definition to cover things like GM agendas, which aren't really rules, or systems, but more like advice.

"Mechanic" is cognate with "machine". Something being mechanical means it happens via a process that doesn't require discretion or intermediating decision-making.

So when I think of a mechanic, in a RPG, I think of a process for making decisions in the game that is machine like, or is mediated via non-discretionary, non-decision-making devices; of which the most obvious is rolling dice.

"Mechanic" is not a synonym for "rule" or principle. Nor for technique.

There are perhaps some marginal instances. For instance, when talking about action resolution mechanics I might include the rule in Prince Valiant that says that a player who has a Storyteller Certificate can, in certain circumstances, spend that certificate to then narrate a certain consequence that takes effect by way of fiat. If I had to be more precise, I might say that the mechanic - the machine-like bit - is that spending the certificate permits the player to narrate the consequence.

But I wouldn't say that the consequence itself is mechanically determined. It's chosen by the player.

 

[pemerton]

I don't think moving some authority to the players makes a game intrinsically narrative in focus. It may have been somewhat uncommon in old-school games, but it can be done for reasons and with constraints that are about group setting development, not aiming at specific outcomes.

Gygax has an example of it in his DMG (in the discussion of PCs constructing strongholds). So I would say not all that radical.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Gygax has an example of it in his DMG (in the discussion of PCs constructing strongholds). So I would say not all that radical.

That's why I said "somewhat uncommon". As I've noted, I've seen it in superhero games for almost as long as there have been superhero games (in part because ones trying to emulate the Big Two are so large in scope they often exceed how much work a lot of GMs want to put in all on their own), but there's no particular reason they can't be used in an entirely conventional fantasy or SF game within constraints. It may not be what some GMs and/or players want but that's not the same thing. I could quite easily see doing something where I set up a core kingdom/empire and maybe a couple ancillery ones that had specific traits I wanted, then looking at my players and going "Each of you do an additional kingdom elsewhere on the continent; we'll work out the specific positioning on the map afterwards".

 

[Micah Sweet]

Probably because you only care that its happening? One is a mechanic and the other isn't (deapite protestations to the contrary). Mechanics tend to be far more specific while the other tends to much broader.

Perhaps even our uae of 'mechanic' needs to bw interrogated?

Please tell me what the meaningful difference is to you. Obviously I don't see it, since the result in both cases is the same.

 

[Fenris-77]

Please tell me what the meaningful difference is to you. Obviously I don't see it, since the result in both cases is the same.

One is a mechanic and the other isn't? We aren't just talking about results here - the difference is the tool, not the output, and different games use different tools, which include systems, mechanics, and advice, to accomplish different design goals. This is why I asked about people's definition of 'mechanic' a couple of posts up as those are (ostensibly) what the thread is about. I'm not being unfriendly here.