D&D General Supposing D&D is gamist, what does that mean?

Krachek said:

Awe and despair in front of an open empty safe has been seen so many time in movie and fantasy that we should consider this event as an iconic part of any plot.

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There are two main ways of ensuring this "iconic part of any plot".

Here's one:



To elaborate: the GM exercises their authority over content to declare that the safe is empty. When the players succeed in their declaration I open the safe - which might be in virtue of a successful roll, or might be because the GM just says "OK" - the GM announces the safe is empty.

Here's another:

To elaborate, by reference to the first grey bubble and the green "situation resolves":

In the first scene, the PCs shake down an informant. An appropriate check is made, which succeeds and thereby resolves the immediate conflict: the players establish that the dirt is in the safe. (There are a variety of systems that can apply here: Classic Traveller-style Streetwise; Marvel Heroic RP resource creation; Apocalypse World-style Go Aggro or Seduce/Manipulate; 4e skill challenge; etc.)

In the second scene, the PCs break into the safe. An appropriate check is made, which fails and thereby resolves the immediate conflict: the players open the safe but find it empty - the documents have been moved! (This is what Apocalypse World would call a hard move. It is feasible in a variety of systems.)

Now the situation pertaining to the dirt in the safe is resolved. It's been moved - the players will have to have their PC try a different way, or else will have to start again from scratch to try and find the dirt.

Notice how the approach modelled in this second diagram doesn't permit the "iconic part of any plot" to occur if the players succeed on their check to have their PCs open the safe. Which is Vincent Baker's point in his contrast between conflict resolution and task resolution.

clearstream said:

I feel folk pretty comprehensively mistake what I'm saying. I appreciate what Baker is saying. What I'm attempting to get at is something like this - () is magic circle of play. [] is game text. G is game system. P is principles. I is correlation of resolution with player intention.

([GPI])
([G]PI)

Harper's right-hand diagram is adduced toward a conclusion about the second arrangement; i.e. that resolution is correlated with player intention only if the game text includes system and principles.

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This claim is just wrong. Campbell has explained why:

Campbell said:

Baker is not talking about game texts at all. He's speaking to binding social agreements when he talks about system. Whether you write it down or not is immaterial.

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Substituting "Harper" for "Baker" in Campbell's statement doesn't change its truth.

What those two are saying has nothing to do with what is in game texts. It has nothing to do with what is written down. It is about the actual techniques, processes, expectations etc that operate at the table.

In the example of the safe, if the players are not able to exercise content authority at some point, in some fashion, then the resolution of the situation - of the "conflict" - depends on the GM making a decision that will resolve it. That is what is represented by the purple GM fiat component in the diagram. There are various points at which the GM's decision might be made (eg in advance, as part of preparing a map and key; or in the moment, by making a decision about what the PCs find in the safe). But it has to happen at some point.

This is the privileged authorship that Baker refers to.
.

clearstream said:

Yes, all good. No denial of that in what I am saying.

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Yes there is! To quote the bit where you deny Campbell's point: "Harper's right-hand diagram is adduced toward a conclusion about the second arrangement; i.e. that resolution is correlated with player intention only if the game text includes system and principles." That's a denial of the fact that Harper and Baker are not talking about texts. They are talking about the ways actual people actually do stuff.

kenada said:

It would be poor form (if not cheating) on the GM’s part for them to have a player test for a conflict and win, then negate their win with false information or an empty safe. It’s the equivalent of killing the PCs (“rocks fall”) after they win a combat encounter. In both cases, they won, but the GM negated that and took away their victory.

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I think this understates the point.

A chess player who knocks over the board when they are losing is not cheating, and is not making a move in chess. They are just wrecking.

Suppose instead of knocking over the board, they just shift the square their king is in, so as to improve their position. That would be cheating if they first distract the other player ("Look, what's that over there!") and then hope the player won't notice what they've done. Though it's pretty crude cheating, unless the other player is very inexperienced and hence can't remember the position of the pieces on the board after just a few seconds of looking away.

Done flagrantly in front of the other player, it's not cheating. It's wrecking or in some contexts perhaps pleading or supplication or asking for a do-over. However exactly we describe it, it's not a move in the game of chess.

Turning from chess to RPGing: If an exercise of content authority by a player has established that certain documents ("the dirt") are contained in a certain safe, and then the GM subsequently purports to narrate that the safe is empty of documents, the GM is not cheating, nor making a move in the game. They are wrecking, or pleading, or supplicating. They are asking everyone to agree to a change in the shared fiction not on the basis of any process of play but just because the GM wants the fiction to be different.

It's a type of pathology in the analysis of RPGing that some people seem to look at that sort of behaviour from GMs differently from how they would look at it in the context of chess.

clearstream said:

I am not saying that Harper's diagrams are incorrect. I am saying that supposing all RPG is captured by just two diagrams is incorrect.

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We can unpack the purple GM fiat step in the right-hand diagram in various ways (say, running ToH compared to running Dead Gods).

But no one in this thread seems to be advocating a classic dungeoncrawling approach to play; the closest I've seen is @Manbearcat's articulation of classic D&D hexcrawling.

pemerton said:

There are two main ways of ensuring this "iconic part of any plot".

Here's one:

View attachment 249646

To elaborate: the GM exercises their authority over content to declare that the safe is empty. When the players succeed in their declaration I open the safe - which might be in virtue of a successful roll, or might be because the GM just says "OK" - the GM announces the safe is empty.

Here's another:
View attachment 249647
To elaborate, by reference to the first grey bubble and the green "situation resolves":

In the first scene, the PCs shake down an informant. An appropriate check is made, which succeeds and thereby resolves the immediate conflict: the players establish that the dirt is in the safe. (There are a variety of systems that can apply here: Classic Traveller-style Streetwise; Marvel Heroic RP resource creation; Apocalypse World-style Go Aggro or Seduce/Manipulate; 4e skill challenge; etc.)

In the second scene, the PCs break into the safe. An appropriate check is made, which fails and thereby resolves the immediate conflict: the players open the safe but find it empty - the documents have been moved! (This is what Apocalypse World would call a hard move. It is feasible in a variety of systems.)

Now the situation pertaining to the dirt in the safe is resolved. It's been moved - the players will have to have their PC try a different way, or else will have to start again from scratch to try and find the dirt.

Notice how the approach modelled in this second diagram doesn't permit the "iconic part of any plot" to occur if the players succeed on their check to have their PCs open the safe. Which is Vincent Baker's point in his contrast between conflict resolution and task resolution.


This claim is just wrong. Campbell has explained why:


Substituting "Harper" for "Baker" in Campbell's statement doesn't change its truth.

What those two are saying has nothing to do with what is in game texts. It has nothing to do with what is written down. It is about the actual techniques, processes, expectations etc that operate at the table.

In the example of the safe, if the players are not able to exercise content authority at some point, in some fashion, then the resolution of the situation - of the "conflict" - depends on the GM making a decision that will resolve it. That is what is represented by the purple GM fiat component in the diagram. There are various points at which the GM's decision might be made (eg in advance, as part of preparing a map and key; or in the moment, by making a decision about what the PCs find in the safe). But it has to happen at some point.

This is the privileged authorship that Baker refers to.
.

Yes there is! To quote the bit where you deny Campbell's point: "Harper's right-hand diagram is adduced toward a conclusion about the second arrangement; i.e. that resolution is correlated with player intention only if the game text includes system and principles." That's a denial of the fact that Harper and Baker are not talking about texts. They are talking about the ways actual people actually do stuff.


I think this understates the point.

A chess player who knocks over the board when they are losing is not cheating, and is not making a move in chess. They are just wrecking.

Suppose instead of knocking over the board, they just shift the square their king is in, so as to improve their position. That would be cheating if they first distract the other player ("Look, what's that over there!") and then hope the player won't notice what they've done. Though it's pretty crude cheating, unless the other player is very inexperienced and hence can't remember the position of the pieces on the board after just a few seconds of looking away.

Done flagrantly in front of the other player, it's not cheating. It's wrecking or in some contexts perhaps pleading or supplication or asking for a do-over. However exactly we describe it, it's not a move in the game of chess.

Turning from chess to RPGing: If an exercise of content authority by a player has established that certain documents ("the dirt") are contained in a certain safe, and then the GM subsequently purports to narrate that the safe is empty of documents, the GM is not cheating, nor making a move in the game. They are wrecking, or pleading, or supplicating. They are asking everyone to agree to a change in the shared fiction not on the basis of any process of play but just because the GM wants the fiction to be different.

It's a type of pathology in the analysis of RPGing that some people seem to look at that sort of behaviour from GMs differently from how they would look at it in the context of chess.


We can unpack the purple GM fiat step in the right-hand diagram in various ways (say, running ToH compared to running Dead Gods).

But no one in this thread seems to be advocating a classic dungeoncrawling approach to play; the closest I've seen is @Manbearcat's articulation of classic D&D hexcrawling.

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It’s a game not a quantic physic lab!

clearstream said:

What I'm attempting to get at is something like this - () is magic circle of play. [] is game text. G is game system. P is principles. I is correlation of resolution with player intention.

([GPI])
([G]PI)

Harper's right-hand diagram is adduced toward a conclusion about the second arrangement; i.e. that resolution is correlated with player intention only if the game text includes system and principles. You used the word "concrete" and that seems okay to me. We can easily agree that the first arrangement more reliably ensures correlation with player intent than the second. We might also agree that the first arrangement does not absolutely ensure correlation with player intent, for example, it could be played ineptly.

That's one axis. Now consider - W is imagined world. D is dice roll. = means to index. R is results. T is tensions (with a ring of intentions). C is consequences.

D = R|T
D/W = R|C

Anyone writing a description of resolution for the second arrangement is guaranteed to suggest possible empty safes. When that is the game system, there isn't any faithful description of resolution that avoids suggesting them. Suggesting them, however, does not commit to them. Let's label my arrangements top to bottom C, U, S, O, and suppose they are axes so we have quadrants CS, CO, US, UO.

I can then make claims like

• CS ensures strong I
• CO may ensure strong I, depending on what the text says
• US ensures strong I
• UO may ensure strong I, depending on what P is

Harper's left-hand diagram is solid. Harper's right-hand diagram solidly describes one way CO and UO can go. What way they go is settled only in the actual text, or the actual principles. Harper's right-hand diagram is a conclusion about a single - often seen - settlement (i.e. that of "traditional" play); what's invisible are all the other diagrams describing the other settlements.

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This is not easy to follow.

"C" seems to have two different uses: one where it means consequences, and one where it labels an arrangement ("concrete"?). The operators | and / don't seem to have been defined.

Your CS quadrant is:


I don't know what the results are. Do you mean the result on the die? Or some component of the shared fiction? And what is the tension? Do you mean the participants wondering what the die roll will be? Or something else?

You say CS ensures strong I, ie ensure strong correlation of resolution with player intention. So I is something that admits of degrees? (It can be strong or weak.) But does it admit of degrees when it occurs in a game text in the magic circle? If I is weak in the game text - eg the game text advises the GM to module the relationship between player intentions and resolution so as to ensure a well-paced story - then what makes you say that CS will ensure strong I?

Your CO quadrant is:


I don't really know what this means. Is it meant to describe Apocalypse World? In AW a player is required to make a dice roll when their character does a particular sort of thing in the shared fiction ("If you do it, you do it!"). And in AW the dice roll determines how results and consequences are narrated. And AW has a game text that states principles. And it has the notion of soft and hard moves, which are related to player intentions in a general way (ie they are typically, though not always, things the players would prefer not occur).

The claim that "CO may ensure strong I, depending on what the text says" seems rather trivial: yes, the play of a game which proceeds in part by reference to a text may ensure a certain sort of outcome in the play of that game, depending on what the text says. Or to state it another way: where the play of a game proceeds by reference to a text, the text may sometimes affect the play of the game, depending what it says. As I said, that seems a rather trivial proposition.

You US quadrant is:


And you say this ensures strong I. I don't really know what this means. What RPG do you have in mind?

Your UO quadrant is


You then say "UO may ensure strong I, depending on what P is". I think what this means is that if a RPG is played using conflict resolution, then it will ensure that the correlation of succeed/win and fail/lose is not broken. That seems a tautology, and therefore true.

pemerton said:

Who said anything about @Manbearcat being inaccurate? Not me.

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Right. You were referring to what @clearstream said. But @Manbearcat seemed to basically agree with the characterisation, calling it "objective DCs that attempt to model the internal causality of a world."

pemerton said:

What is getting muddled together? What does in-fiction causation have to do with anything?

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Your DC is based on difficulty of the task (quality of the safe) and the numbers the player is using to overcome that is based on the character's skill in lock picking. Yet, you use these number to generate probability of something completely unrelated (the papers being in the safe.) That is muddled.

And doesn't this create weird incentives? Two characters are staring at the safe, one who is excellent at safe-smashing and one who is just OK at lock-picking. Who should try to open the safe? The smasher, obviously, as they have better chance of generating the papers in the safe! And Athe forbid if someone who's utterly terrible with safes decides to touch it, that will mean there are no papers in it for sure!

Crimson Longinus said:

Right. You were referring to what @clearstream said. But @Manbearcat seemed to basically agree with the characterisation, calling it "objective DCs that attempt to model the internal causality of a world."


Your DC is based on difficulty of the task (quality of the safe) and the numbers the player is using to overcome that is based on the character's skill in lock picking. Yet, you use these number to generate probability of something completely unrelated (the papers being in the safe.) That is muddled.

And doesn't this create weird incentives? Two characters are staring at the safe, one who is excellent at safe-smashing and one who is just OK at lock-picking. Who should try to open the safe? The smasher, obviously, as they have better chance of generating the papers in the safe! And Athe forbid if someone who's utterly terrible with safes decides to touch it, that will mean there are no papers in it for sure!

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It’s funny, but I think that system allowing content authoring are better than that!
it would be fool to tie it to the skill and ability check.

Crimson Longinus said:

Your DC is based on difficulty of the task (quality of the safe) and the numbers the player is using to overcome that is based on the character's skill in lock picking. Yet, you use these number to generate probability of something completely unrelated (the papers being in the safe.) That is muddled.

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This is an artifact of trying to apply a task-based skill system (more GNS Simulationist/possibly Gamist) to stakes-based conflict resolution (more GNS Narrativist). Look at Apocalypse World: There is no Open Locks skill, or anything remotely resembling one. It's all about how you go about getting what you want or the circumstances under which you do so—and the sorts of consequences or fallout that will result from succeeding, getting a complication, or failing in those approaches.

Crimson Longinus said:

And doesn't this create weird incentives? Two characters are staring at the safe, one who is excellent at safe-smashing and one who is just OK at lock-picking. Who should try to open the safe? The smasher, obviously, as they have better chance of generating the papers in the safe! And Athe forbid if someone who's utterly terrible with safes decides to touch it, that will mean there are no papers in it for sure!

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Blades in the Dark hews closer to task-based with its Actions such as Prowl, Finesse, and Wreck, but the structure around those particular actions very much supports stakes-based resolution, and that will be more of a factor in deciding who opens that safe. Smashing will make enough noise to draw guards; do you want to risk that? The Finesse guy may not have as high a rating, but a fight is a much less likely consequence of failing a Finesse action. Too, Blades has additional player resources for improving likelihood of getting what you want, or even reversing/blocking failures or bad consequences. (I can get into them if you want.)

So, if you have the Finesse guy do it, maybe they'll botch the roll, but again, that doesn't mean the papers aren't there—it means things don't go smoothly. Maybe they manage to open the safe, but knock over a bottle of acid that was sitting next to the papers, or set off a failsafe mechanism that burns the contents of the safe. There will be enough for them to salvage a clue to further incriminating evidence, so things don't dead-end, but the players do not get what's immediately at stake. Or they might still get them! The bottle of acid could spill on the Finesse guy instead, inflicting lasting Harm. Simply being unable to open the safe, or simply having the papers not be there, are the least interesting, most boring possible outcomes of the action.

And to address process-sim thinking—the existence of the bottle of acid or failsafe needn't be determined well in advance. Consequences are usually decided on the spot in Blades, and communicated to the players as part of negotiating the ways the story might branch from that action. If the Wrecker instead wants to bash the door off, the referee is more likely to start a clock for how quickly guards will show up to investigate, based on how well the Wrecker does on their roll—or just have them immedately show up on a bad failure. Or there could be a firebomb too, that inflicts Harm to complicate the Wrecker's life for the imminent flight/combat. The important point, though, again is that none of that need be planned in advance.

Edit: Clarified a few details about how things work in Blades.

@Crimson Longinus

I think this shows why keeping a somewhat consistent play structure is so important.

Most games that use player intent to determine stakes you do not frame the action for the overall play group, but for a specific player character. When it's your turn to act it's your turn. The expectation is that when you are called on you are doing something that will move the game forward. Inaction even for a moment will lead to a change to the fiction, often increasing the risk in someway.

In something like a 4e skill challenge the group as a whole sets the intent.

Most games that utilize player intent are not even based around a group of characters. Instead they feature individual characters with individual goals that sometimes align and sometimes do not.

I think this does highlight why using a resolution system designed to enable player protagonism in a structure meant to focus on group problem solving and exploration of story, character and setting is not the best fit. I'm personally not a fan of mixing task resolution and conflict resolution procedures within the scope of the same game because I think it's confusing to players. Player decisions are made based on how they think play is going to be structured. When you change up the fundamental structure of play from moment to moment then it becomes impossible to confidently move within the play space.

Crimson Longinus said:

Right. You were referring to what @clearstream said. But @Manbearcat seemed to basically agree with the characterisation, calling it "objective DCs that attempt to model the internal causality of a world."


Your DC is based on difficulty of the task (quality of the safe) and the numbers the player is using to overcome that is based on the character's skill in lock picking. Yet, you use these number to generate probability of something completely unrelated (the papers being in the safe.) That is muddled.

And doesn't this create weird incentives? Two characters are staring at the safe, one who is excellent at safe-smashing and one who is just OK at lock-picking. Who should try to open the safe? The smasher, obviously, as they have better chance of generating the papers in the safe! And Athe forbid if someone who's utterly terrible with safes decides to touch it, that will mean there are no papers in it for sure!

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I think we can get even crazier. Suppose there are 2 PC's. Both players want papers in that safe that point to a different arch nemesis.

How would a conflict resolution game handle that?
Which player gets first attempt? If the first player succeeds does that mean the other player failed? If the 1st player fails does he open an empty safe or does he just fail to open the safe altogether so that player 2 can get a chance to attempt to succeed at opening the safe and thus finding paper pointing to his arch nemesis?

FrogReaver said:

I think we can get even crazier. Suppose there are 2 PC's. Both players want papers in that safe that point to a different arch nemesis.

How would a conflict resolution game handle that?
Which player gets first attempt? If the first player succeeds does that mean the other player failed? If the 1st player fails does he open an empty safe or does he just fail to open the safe altogether so that player 2 can get a chance to attempt to succeed at opening the safe and thus finding paper pointing to his arch nemesis?

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Different games will have different answers, but generally speaking the most common answer I have seen is you get a chance to act when the GM asks you specifically what your character does. The spotlight and all the narrative tension is right on your character. If there is an in fiction conflict between characters we can handle that with mechanics like Burning Wheel's Duel of Wits or Apocalypse World's Interfere move. Otherwise we just go with the usual flow.

1. Frame scene/situation focused on a single character's perspective.
2. That character's player says what their character does (along with intent if applicable).
3. Narrative fallout + new framing (usually with a different spotlight character).

A big part of the GM's responsibility tends to be spreading around the spotlight to apply pressure to different characters and give everyone a chance to contribute.

Campbell said:

Baker is not talking about game texts at all. He's speaking to binding social agreements when he talks about system. Whether you write it down or not is immaterial.

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Why do you suppose a game text like Stonetop's includes principles? What function do you feel they serve there?