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

[Aldarc]

There is no central activity of playing a roleplaying game. We don't play "a roleplaying game" we play specific games with specific structures that fit within the broad category. That some choose to bring encultured system into the matter is on them. There is nothing about roleplaying is a medium that requires a baseline GM role. That's a rule/practice we bring in as we choose.

Or to put another way: not all board games have boards.

 

[zakael19]

I don't quite agree. There is the central structure of playing the roles of the characters; that is what makes things roleplaying games.

Doesn't that just make it "roleplaying" or "make-believe?" The definition of "game" tends to wander around depending on who you ask (and it sounds like you've subscribed to a very broad interpretation), but most include some degree of structure or rules.

 

[Lanefan]

So, in any RPG I've ever played, there will be long stretches of gameplay where the rules are not used. Yet RPG is still being played. Thus it is apparent that rules are not required for playing a RPG being possible. To me me this conclusion is obvious and irrefutable.

"Long stretches" does not mean never, and as soon as rules do come into it then I think you've met the criteria for 'game' as defined.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, the pitch itself for one, plus all the rules about how you may or may not make contact with other players as you run. Possibly also offensive strategies if you're running a passing route. Plus the play timer which tells you when to stop running and return to the huddle. So, actually rather a lot of rules. I'm not sure where that leaves us though.

I think you're talking about different types of football here...

 

[aramis erak]

Because "better" is subjective. I find streamlining to be what I think of as "modern."

I don't (personally) like looking up tables.

To pick on another system, I think Traveler had some very "modern" mechanics. And it came out a LONG time ago.

CT is HEAVY on the tables. MegaTraveller only slightly less. Lots of special case rules in the CT skills chapter. (Like, almost all skills are a special case)... CT had a lot of GMs extrapolating the resolution from Combat to be more general... but skill rolls in CT as written were NOT consistent in rules, nor streamlined, except in the table heavy combat mechanics.

There's a lot of "rose colored glasses" effect on CT. It's written far less streamlined than most ran it. Same for MegaTraveller and TNE. Marc's intended skill system resolution? See the rules for T4: nD6 ≤ Stat+skill... Marc has confirmed this several times over the years, and it's hinted at strongly in Book 0: An Introduction to Traveller. From what I gathered between Marc and Loren on COTI, SJG, and in the various books and editorials in JTAS, 2d6 was Loren's thing.

And, largely, also several other games of the late 70s.

The most streamlined 70's game I have is Starships & Spacemen: a clean, 1d20 ≤ Attribute, 6 attributes on 3d6, two more on 1d6, all modified by species, design. Very few special case rules; classes as a change in what earns experience... tho' each subclass has a specific +1 to a particular task... ideas rather far more forward than Traveller design. Not that Traveller wasn't a revolution, and it has remained a personal favorite... at least, for me, until the mongoose era. But streamlined was available elsewhere easier.

78'-'80 RuneQuest isn't streamlined, but 1981's BRP is... stripping the cruft and clunk.

 

[pemerton]

Some. Some RPGs. Sure. But if it's only some RPGs then that story with all its features isn't central to RPG play generally, but rather an intentional product of certain RPG rule sets.

Yes. I've been saying this a lot - most recently in multiple posts across two threads; but on these boards for 15+ years!

Trying to make sense of the game play that Gygax describes in his rulebooks through the lens of story is, in my view, somewhere between misleading and hopeless.

That doesn't mean there's no fiction, no imagination. Of course there is! But it's not about story. Anymore than the sort of imagining that we might do when we think about how we would prepare for a cross-country hike is storytelling.

For more clarity, I see my view - which isn't original to me! - as having a second implication, that is a type of mirror-image corollary of the implication I've stated in the preceding two paragraphs. Namely that, just as some RPGing is not concerned with story and some RPG systems are not oriented towards story, so other are. And thus, if you want your RPGing to reliably produce story as an element of the play experience (and not just as a sequence of remembered imaginary events) then it is worth paying attention to those RPG systems.

I think you'd have to do a lot more work to prove that even allocating roles is somehow less efficient than not having them. As far as the goal of freeform play goes I think you need to account for the setting itself in addition to the doings of certain protagonists. Exploring the setting itself (and I don't just mean physical exploration) is very much central to RPG play. The actions of the players are obviously also key, but don't really cover things like "let's find out what's behind that door" or "I wonder what the odd scientist is up to?". This is the bit I always assumed your use of "play to find out" at least in part referred to.

Let me try to explain this in a different way. I am Biff the fighter, and I'm in a dungeon room with my trusty compatriots, and there is a closed door. I declare that Biff will open the door to find out what lies beyond. The GM them narrates the new scene. Do we really think that at any point there that the thing being imagined is Biff physically opening the door, or that the picture being built in our imaginations by the GMs subsequent narration is somehow centered on the (currently inactive) player avatars? I don't think so, or at least it's not obviously the case. The GM describes the room and its contents plus atmosphere and whatever and that is what the players are imagining. This example covers lots of situation in lots of different RPGs.

I'll cheerfully admit that the doings of certain protagonists is at best a loose description of some RPGing. But I can substitute the nature of a fantasy world; or some more complex state of affairs with a more elaborate description; and the point about efficiency of means still holds.

This comes through in your example: gating the description of a room behind one person's account of how a particular person opens the door to that room is not the most efficient means of establishing the state of affairs that a group of people is collectively imagining the fantastic contents of a room. The most efficient means is to just read aloud the room description to everyone.

And another point for the sake of clarity: I'm not being facetious here. Compare a Choose Your Own Adventure or Fighting Fantasy-type book, to a LotR Appendices-style listing of all the events and contents of the book. The latter is a more efficient way to bring about the state of affairs that someone is imagining that stuff. But doing it as a game is less efficient. And the less efficient means are what make it fun - for instance, they create the need for decision (which is fun) and the possibility of a particular type of suspense or uncertainty (which is also fun).

 

[pemerton]

It seems to me that there may be a profitable distinction to be made between:

1. We are creating story with planned direction - 'OK in the next scene Bob can meet his nemesis and then win after a close fight, but at the cost of his friendship to Jade and he gets a scar that reminds him of his past traumas'. We know what the story is going to be, at least in the very near term.

2. We are creating story without planned direction - the game is full of story-fuel or story-generating elements such as personal enmities. fragile relationships, opportunities to escalate at a cost, pyrhhic victories, psychological traumas, goals, flaws, etc, and we bash them all together to see what happens. We know a story is going to happen but we don't know what it will be.

3. We are creating story as a byproduct of other things - the characters fight monsters and explore dungeons and our focus is really on battle tactics or experiencing a fantasy world, so story isn't really on our minds. But, sure that will constitute a story of some kind I guess, and you can tell it afterwards with more intentionality if you want.

I think a lot of games that might be in box 2 get characterised as being in box 1 by people who don't really play them.

I'm just spit-balling here, but maybe we could even come up with some labels for these different things. Like maybe the first could be labelled "neo-trad" (especially if the Bob's player has a lot of say over the scene content) or "high concept sim" (if it's the GM who has a lot of say over the scene content).

Maybe the first could be labelled "story now", because it's in the "now" of play that the story stuff crystallises and explodes (if you'll forgive the mixing of metaphors).

The last one seems to cover a few possibilities, but maybe we could distinguish "exploration-of-setting-and-situation" play, where the players who control those characters are mostly there to learn about the setting and its elements, by dint of seeing what happens when characters encounter those elements as obstacles or challenges, and a similar but not identical sort of play where the thing the players care most about is beating to win against those obstacles or challenges - so the setting and its elements are more like an arena for play, than the raison d'etre of play; that raison d'etre is about "stepping up" to confront the challenges.

Just thinking out loud!

 

[Thomas Shey]

78'-'80 RuneQuest isn't streamlined, but 1981's BRP is... stripping the cruft and clunk.

It requires a--particular--view to describe everything that was pulled out of RQ as "cruft". It may not suit everyone's needs, but that's no the same thing.

 

[pemerton]

What's the difference between 'I am a football player running up the pitch while someone else has the ball' and 'I am a D&D player making small talk in character while someone else is talking to the important NPC'?

I think it is playing a roleplaying game because there are still rules, a structure of play and defined roles. The rules and mechanics are just not written down.

GM decides what happens is as much a mechanic as an Apocalypse World basic move. Whether or not it is written down does not change it, as long as it is part of our agreement. It's the agreement that matters (even if only implied), not the written down in a book part.

This is why the idea that rules or mechanics ever get out of the way is silly because there are always some rules and mechanics in play.

Yeah, I haven't been following all of this rules/no rules discussion, but the idea that we're not rolling the dice, so we're not following any rules is odd to me. It's not as if, in those moments of play, the players suddenly start describing what they see as they look down the dungeon corridor or open a dungeon door; or what the NPC says to them; or what they read on the sign that the GM tells them about.

When we consider all the rules that structure play in a conventional RPG, the dice-rolling mechanics are only a modest subset. I'm always puzzled when they get discussed as if they're the totality.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Yes. I've been saying this a lot - most recently in multiple posts across two threads; but on these boards for 15+ years!

Trying to make sense of the game play that Gygax describes in his rulebooks through the lens of story is, in my view, somewhere between misleading and hopeless.

That doesn't mean there's no fiction, no imagination. Of course there is! But it's not about story. Anymore than the sort of imagining that we might do when we think about how we would prepare for a cross-country hike is storytelling.

I'm going to partially disagree. Terry Pratchett described humanity as Pan Narrans - the storytelling chimp and story is an inevitable result of humans doing complex human things.

It was not the goal but oD&D even had significant mechanics that strongly encouraged the growth of stories and were dropped from later editions although would fit very well in modern narrativist games:

• XP for GP made the PCs strongly motivated to do stuff and towards not always doing the obvious
• Hirelings and the soft cap changed the relationship of the PCs to the world, from one of a large mob to one of a small party, to semi-retirement as movers and shakers; that's a story
• Asymmetric class balance that balances over the career not the adventuring day generates its own stories in a way modern D&D doesn't
• Power being based on loot is almost Roguelite and makes the practical characters far more unique and thus the game more replay able than builds, and this leads to interesting stories

It's not what he intended but genuine old school games, like many modern post-Forge games IME have more emergent and organic storytelling than most trad games.