Jon Peterson: Does System Matter?

Emerikol · Mar 4, 2021

Ovinomancer said:
I'm not convinced your method of "thinking it through" is really anything different from being arbitrary, though.

Well we've probably at one time or another here or on the D&D boards years ago, debated this ad infinitum. For purposes of "system matters", even if it is arbitrary, it still matters right? I mean if rule X totally breaks my immersion but rule Y doesn't that still means it affects the game. That still means system matters. And sure any game can be fixed and yes games are a continuum on the scale of acceptability. Not everything is absolutely perfect or absolutely intolerable.

So mechanical things like HD, surges, etc... are elements that don't "feel" right to me. The fiction doesn't adequately explain them to me even within the constraints of a super heroic fantasy concept. They may explain them fine to you but not to me. It really is a matter of perspective. Yet I'm sure many can't accept that. There is a reason so many play OSR games. My guess is one of those reasons is my reason. I mean fun is a subjective concept is it not?

I'm sure we could have this same debate about some tv shows. I might say such and such tv show is just too far fetched to me. And then you might respond but you watch this other show and it's even more far fetched to me. Yeah we don't agree. It's subjective.

Emerikol · Mar 4, 2021

TheAlkaizer said:
The simplest proof that systems matter is the fact that people play with systems at all. If did not matter at all, players would absolutely drift towards the least inconvenient and easiest solution which would be no system at all. You can argue that you can play anything with one system and that it does not really make a different to move to a different one is actually arguing against your own argument.

While I agree they might gravitate to a particular system, I would argue no system is really just the system that emerges after sufficient numbers of GM adjudications. So really there is no such thing as no system.

Man in the Funny Hat · Mar 4, 2021

System matters, yes. But how you play is still more important than what you play. You can use the "wrong" system for the kind of game it was never intended for and have the time of your life. You can use the "right" system designed by experienced award winners for precisely the kind of game it was intended for and it might still suck. The creativity and investment of the players will trump system every time IME.

Ovinomancer · Mar 4, 2021

Man in the Funny Hat said:
System matters, yes. But how you play is still more important than what you play. You can use the "wrong" system for the kind of game it was never intended for and have the time of your life. You can use the "right" system designed by experienced award winners for precisely the kind of game it was intended for and it might still suck. The creativity and investment of the players will trump system every time IME.

If system is trumped by creativity and investment of the players alone, every time, then this actively counters your opening that system does matter. I mean, I'm a creative and usually invested player, and I've been in games where the system was poorly aligned to the play goals and no amount of my creativity or investment could overcome this -- unless the table chose to ignore the system. I usually find that the argument that creativity can trump system is really smuggling in the argument that you can always ignore the system and do whatever you want. This doesn't "trump" system, but rather abandons it and substitutes in some other bit of play. It notes that system does indeed matter, so much that you have to throw it out the window to do what you want.

Ovinomancer · Mar 4, 2021

Emerikol said:
Well we've probably at one time or another here or on the D&D boards years ago, debated this ad infinitum. For purposes of "system matters", even if it is arbitrary, it still matters right? I mean if rule X totally breaks my immersion but rule Y doesn't that still means it affects the game. That still means system matters. And sure any game can be fixed and yes games are a continuum on the scale of acceptability. Not everything is absolutely perfect or absolutely intolerable.

I was more pointing to the fact that your choice of metric was just personal preference, and not elevated by leaning on the "rules" in any way, not that it isn't an extremely valid method of selecting a game system to play. Preference is, ultimately, the only means of doing so.

Emerikol said:
So mechanical things like HD, surges, etc... are elements that don't "feel" right to me. The fiction doesn't adequately explain them to me even within the constraints of a super heroic fantasy concept. They may explain them fine to you but not to me. It really is a matter of perspective. Yet I'm sure many can't accept that. There is a reason so many play OSR games. My guess is one of those reasons is my reason. I mean fun is a subjective concept is it not?

I'm not sure you're fully up on OSR, if you think they're primary goals align with yours. Some of it does, for sure, but some of it doesn't at all and yet is still OSR. From your statements here, you place high value on the rules simulating a believable fictional state. It might strike you as odd, but I also place a high value on this. The difference is in how that process takes place, I think.

I'm perfectly fine with fortune in the middle concepts -- with resolving some of the fiction of an action after the result of the action is known. I suspect you are not (and this is fine). You prefer an approach where the dice only decide after everything is nailed down. This is the primary resolution method of D&D (4e having notable exceptions). I think it's shared, in large part, with the reification of game terms into the fiction, like a 'mis

Emerikol said:
I'm sure we could have this same debate about some tv shows. I might say such and such tv show is just too far fetched to me. And then you might respond but you watch this other show and it's even more far fetched to me. Yeah we don't agree. It's subjective.

That I don't care about at all. 100% fine with people liking different games.

Neonchameleon · Mar 4, 2021

Emerikol said:
Remember we are discussing multiple play styles. The fact you do not does not mean no one does. That is the whole crux of the matter.

Now, also remember that even if a DM would adjudicate an outcome without playing it out as they likely would, they would do so based on the rules and not the real world. In D&D, if a 20th level fighter is surrounded and attacked by 20 1st level fighters he will mop the floor with them. We might agree this is unlikely in the real world. Let's posit it is even if you disagree for purposes of this discussion. The DM is going to know off camera a battle occurred between the 20th level fighter and the 1st level fighters. He won't play it out but he will resolve it based on his knowledge of the rules. At least in my own way of playing.

And this is I think the major point of difference. The surrounded fighter will not mop the floor with the 20 level 1 fighters because he's a 20th level fighter. The powerful fighter is a 20th level fighter because he will mop the floor with the 20 level 1 fighters. The rules aren't a physics engine - they are a user interface.

To use another example, in Star Wars SAGA, Luke Skywalker (RotJ era) is apparently a human Scout 1/Jedi 7/Ace Pilot 2/Jedi Knight 1 and CL 11. By your way of thinking under a rules as physics model it is being level 11 character with 7 ranks of Jedi and 1 of Jedi Knight that lets Luke do things with The Force.

My way of thinking, rules as user interface, is that the Star Wars Saga Edition was published 24 years after Return of the Jedi. The idea that Luke can do ... anything ... he did in Return of the Jedi because of some RPG rules published almost a quarter of a century later is ridiculous and violates the laws of causality. The rules are, instead, intended to approximate the Star Wars setting that predated the Star Wars SAGA RPG rules and to make it easier to approximate that setting. And if I want Luke Skywalker to do something to do he does in the film that the rules don't cover then the rules are the issue.

I don't see my position on the Star Wars Saga rules and their relation to Star Wars canon to be unreasonable in the slightest. The setting is core, and the rules exist as a user interface to allow the player characters to interact with relevant (but not all; the Death Star doesn't need space battle combat stats as far as normal PCs are concerned) parts of the setting.

And I don't see a practical difference from either side of the screen between playing in the Star Wars setting and playing in most D&D settings (other than Order of the Stick) other than D&D specific settings are inspired by the D&D rules - and the rules are then used to approximate the setting.

pemerton · Mar 4, 2021

Emerikol said:
when a gargantuan reptilian creature swats you with his tail, in our world you would likely go bouncing across the ground and not get back up. In most versions of D&D, you would get back up and perhaps go slay that dragon with a sword.

So the point is games are not reality. Games lay down different ground rules. The world either reflects those ground rules or ignores them entirely and pretends things are like our world despite facts to the contrary in the world. The rules might even only apply to PCs and the rest of the world is more normal (well as normal as possible given magic).

I think I'm a bit more sympathetic to you than @Ovinomancer is, perhaps because I spent 19 years playing Rolemaster as my primary system.

In RM, for instance, spells are divided into "lists" that - in D&D terms - can be seen to correspond to different spell-casting classes. And so just like you said about a wizard or druid in your D&D game, in RM a character can talk about what spell lists s/he has been traind in; magical tomes can be discovered from which a person might learn a new spell list; etc.

This can be contrasted with 4e D&D: in 4e the categories of Arcane, Divine, Primal and Psionic are part of the fiction - that's the whole point of those keywords - but the individual powers don't need to be thought of in in-fiction terms. (An exception to this is some wizard's spells, which can be written down in spell books that are part of the fiction, just like in other versions of D&D.)

This is even moreso for martial powers: the fighter in my group's long-running 4e game was a polearm AoE forced-movement specialist, and had a range of powers, enhanced by feats and magic, that let him attack multiple targets and knock them away, lure them in, and/or take them down. At the table each time the player declared an attack he was using a discrete power; but in the fiction there was no reason to think of it in those terms - he was just a super-buff dwarven polearm master doing his thing, wrongfooting and then slaughtering his enemies with his deft polearm work.

But now here is where I agree with @Ovinomancer: a system that is going to support the in-fiction approach that you prefer, or alternatively a system that is going to support the more metagame approach found in 4e, needs to be consistent if it is going to do that. And Ovinomancer's point about dragons vs giants in D&D is (for me) a telling one: in the fiction there is really nothing to distinguish between being tail-swiped by a dragon and being hit by a rock thrown by a giant, but in 5e - based on my reading of the SRD - only the latter can knock you flat (and only if thrown by a stone giant at that).

Compare this to RM, where these similar attacks are all resolved on a similar table doing similar crits (Impact or Krush) and so all have the same sort of likelihood of causing knockback, or breaking limbs, etc.

Even AD&D has idiosyncrasies like the 5e one I just pointed to: purple worms and sperm whales can swallow you whole but dragon turtles can't. Why not? There's no in-fiction logic to it that I can see.

To me it seems that D&D uses these special abilities (knockdown, knockback, swallow whole, etc) not to create a sense of what is possible in the fiction but to create particular stories associated with particular creatures. Character abilities are the same, it seems to me - with the ranger's ability to use crystal balls, or a paladin's ability to heal with a touch, being prime examples from AD&D.

This is what I found so strong about 4e compared to 3E D&D. Whereas the latter seemed to want to move towards RM - with its skill ranks and combat manoeuvre rules and the like - but still kept the D&Disms that get in the way of that, 4e really embraced the notion that particular abilities, be they on PCs or on NPCs/creatures, are about the story of this game element, not the physics of the world.

For someone who liked those aspects of the classic versions of D&D but had little interest in "skilled play", 4e D&D was D&D done right!

For rules-as-physics, on the other hand, I would always go to a system like RM or HARP or RuneQuest. But these systems don't produce the gonzo variation of effects you see in D&D precisely because of the consistency of the fiction their systems produce.

Another system which has a strong rules-as-physics element to it is Burning Wheel (especially its full melee combat system). In some ways I think BW is easy to drift to for a RM player - it has intricate PC build including the familiar skill ranks, bloody combat with a death spiral, and a general tendency towards universal resolution rather than discrete abilities and sub-systems for each creature or each spell. It still ensures variety in the fiction, like D&D and much more reliably than RM I would say, but via its approach to consequence narration which sits alongside rather than overriding its rules-as-physics aspects.

pemerton · Mar 4, 2021

innerdude said:
Mechanics, action resolution, systems of magic, fighting styles, damage models and healing are conceptions of how, why, and when to allow (and disallow) change to the fictional construct. If they happen to bear a resemblance to the physics within the gameworld, it may be intentional on the part of the designer, but ultimately incidental to what's really at stake---control of the fiction.

100% right.

This is why barbs like "martial mind control" (for Come and Get It) or "shouting limbs back on" (for Inspiring Word) seem so inane and inapt.

CaGI means that the GM isn't able to unilaterally control how the NPCs move. In the fiction, why did they move as they did? Maybe they were tricked or lured. Maybe they were wrong-footed or feinted (that's how I normally imagined it when the polearm fighter in our game used CaGI). To get to martial mind control you have to put in some extra premise - along the lines of the only time a player can affect what a NPC does is if the player's character has gained the ability to control the mind of the NPC - which is not a necessary truth of RPGing, obviously not self-evident, and in the context of many RPG, including 4e, obviously false.

An obvious implication of Inspiring Word being part of the ruleset is that hit point restoration is not a correlate of limbs regrowing in the fiction. Which further entails that hit point loss does not necessarily correlate, in the fiction, to maiming or other severe physical injury. This evident truth is reinforced by the fact that hit points can be restored by getting one's second wind or taking a short rest. It does not follow that sword fights never cause serious injury. Rather, it follows that whether a fight in which PCs participate causes serious injury can't be established, as part of the shared fiction, until subsequent matters, including the use of healing abilities, are determined. This is only a problem if one adopts, as an additional premise, the full content of the fiction associated with some moment of mechanical resolution must be established at the moment of resolution. This premise is not a necessary truth of RPGing. It is obviously not self-evident. Gygax denied its truth, in the context of AD&D, in his DMG (in his explanations of how hit points and saving throws work). Robin Law's HeroWars/Quest is a modern system that expressly rejects the premise, and that pretty clearly had an influence on 4e D&D.

If we can't talk about how fiction is established, by whom, in relation to what mechanical procedures, then we can't talk coherently about how RPGing works. At best we can talk about minor variations of play within the parameters established by the assumed and unanalysed premises taken for granted in mainstream RPG culture.

Man in the Funny Hat · Mar 4, 2021

Ovinomancer said:
If system is trumped by creativity and investment of the players alone, every time, then this actively counters your opening that system does matter.

You seem to assume that if system matters then it must be the ONLY thing that matters. I'm saying it matters - it IS relevant and important. Just not ALL important, or MORE important than any other factors, as some people are implicating.

Ovinomancer · Mar 5, 2021

Man in the Funny Hat said:
You seem to assume that if system matters then it must be the ONLY thing that matters. I'm saying it matters - it IS relevant and important. Just not ALL important, or MORE important than any other factors, as some people are implicating.

I assume no such thing. My point is that absent system, you're not playing a game anymore. System, specifically agreed to conflict resolution, is required for a game. It's what separates a game from free play. There's a fuzzy line at the transition, of course, but at the point we get to RPGs it's no longer fuzzy. System is necessary for play of an RPG. It isn't sufficient for it, though, and I haven't argued otherwise.

What I was arguing against in your post was the statement that players' creativity and investment trumps systems every time. And, my point (it was in the bits you cut out) was when system is supposedly trumped, what actually happens is a different system is swapped in. Usually that system is "GM decides," although, to be fair, 5e largely rests on this system to begin with, so it's not really swapped in there so much as leveraged when the other bits of system conflict with a play goal. System is always present, and always matters to the play at hand. The confusion around this statement is usually in the form of missing that substitution of one system for another when creativity "trumps."