A "theory" thread

[niklinna]

Sure, so once you crack that nut you can break out of the limiting paradigm! (Sorry about the mixed metaphors.)

I'm ALL ABOUT breaking out of limiting paradigms. Sometimes I even succeed! But when I don't, there are usually consequences....

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I dunno, I think it might spring from the original "action tests" in D&D being pretty much restricted to combat, in which a swing of the sword either hits or misses. I'm not familiar enough with the early history to know if they did special failures on a natural 1, but even most natural 20s were often just treated as MOAR damage. Once you get fixed on that, it's like blinders when you try to extrapolate to anything else.

But, like, if I imagine having to make a test to run across a busy street, I do not at all think that missing the die roll means I simply stand there as the cars go by. The result of a failure is a serious consequence: getting hit by a car! Or maybe a bus. Or, less serious for me personally, causing a driver to swerve and hit another vehicle, leading to a pileup that does prevent me from cross the street—at least quickly. Once the pileup is piled up, I can just climb over some cars and be on my merry way!

Edit: Moved a badly placed comma.

Earliest D&D was not sure what it was doing. It adopted a combat system from Chainmail initially, and then developed a slight variant on that which, honestly, doesn't change much in terms of 'play process'. It was framed as being purely a 'task oriented' thing where you try to clout your opponent and maybe you cause him bodily harm, and maybe not. As for 'other checks', it is hard to say... The original core 3LBB D&D does not discuss task resolution AT ALL. The dungeon exploration rules in book 3 contain mechanics for determination of surprise, and for finding secret doors. There is also a hearing noise (if you listen) rule. NONE of these rules reference ability scores! In fact, aside from acting as class prerequisites and giving an XP bonus/penalty, and some small dex/con bonuses, ability scores are irrelevant to the original core rules.

Reading book 3 leaves the impression that MOST tasks are simply adjudicated. The DM describes the passage/room/feature and the players describe in detail how they interact with it. Any added detail that is required will be supplied by the respective party (IE if you are the player you may need to describe HOW you pick the lock, the DM will describe what it looks like, etc.). There is literally no formalism of 'roll dice to see what happens', at least formally. However, the example of secret doors, noises, surprise/quiet movement, and breaking down a door do indicate that the CONCEPT existed (combat certainly does this). It seems clear that the model here would be pure basic binary success/failure of the specific task, with any failure consequence being then drawn from the fiction, but nothing like 'fail forward' existing. Things like surprise checks seem more like 'fortune' vs the exercise of any particular skill. However the hearing and finding bonuses of certain races do point towards a skill/talent factor.

I mean, given the evidence of Greyhawk, we can conclude that D&D basically had the same resolution model that is still used in 5e, just an infinitely more primitive version. Where it really differs is in terms of simply 'playing out' most interactions without using dice. The only major counterpoint here being the reaction table and the morale table, though interestingly Charisma is allowed to affect morale.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Unfortunately I seem to have drawn your focus to matters that relate to "Different RPGs set different rules for what the players are allowed to tell us about their characters; and for what the GM is allowed to tell us about the situation/context" but that are peripheral to the comments of mine that you were responding to.

My post aimed to draw attention, solely, to the technical meaning of the term "fiction" as it appears in for e.g. "The fiction matters." Whereas, @pemerton rightly advanced concepts such as "shared imagination" and (of participants) "how they contribute to the fiction and how they engage with the fiction" I wanted to add a specific technical definition.

1. Consider another poster's comment about "getting the magic lamp, based on what is relevant to the story". Historically, and perhaps even today for most folk, a "story" is a prescripted linear narrative. One can have a prescripted linear narrative of a chess game just as readily as one can have a prescripted linear narrative of a band of heroes encountering a lich. This possible definition of fiction is worth having in mind in contrast to the technical definition of fiction that fits the OP's theory.

2. What's described in 1. clearly encompasses recipients of a prescripted linear narrative, and can be extended to include the relater of a prescripted linear narrative. This definition of fiction still does not fit OP's theory.

3. The "fiction" that fits the OP's theory is a technical feature distinct to RPG's that Vincent Baker labelled "fictional positioning." (I spell that out for others who might not be aware of his 2012 discussions.) It has properties that are critical to roleplaying. As you and the OP called out, it must be addressable by the participants during play. Much is made of divisions of authority, but the crucial feature is ongoing authorship of a common fiction, through a continuous process of drafting and revising, that all participate in. (Notice the way in which the foregoing wording recognises solo-RPG as RPG!)

That has a multitude of vital consequences for RPG, and up to here the OP is on solid ground that I believe isn't really in dispute. Notwithstanding, a technical term I propose we have in mind relating to that word "fiction" coming right after "ongoing" is "fictional position" as that makes it more accurate and meaningful.

It is a mystery to me what your arguing against that I have said then... I simply expounded on the nature of the relationship that fiction and game have in an RPG, and you seem to be 100% agreeing with and reinforcing everything I have said. You seem to be trying at some points to draw a contrast between how the OP describes fiction and some colloquial description. Yes, it is true that when we talk about RPGs we use some shorthand where 'fiction', and sometimes more exactly 'fictional position' (which is specific to a GIVEN SITUATION in the fiction) to stand in for some laborious phraseology like "the type of interactive fiction generating dialog peculiar to RPGs." There's no need to say "ongoing fictional position" in most cases either, as we are generally discussing how the situation at the table evolves during the interactions, which are of course 'ongoing'. Maybe it would be useful in some case where I wanted to digress and talk about some previous fictional position and its relationship to the current ongoing one, etc. Otherwise I am vastly likely to elide qualifiers like 'ongoing', as they should be understood well enough.

The upshot is, I'm not sure exactly what it is that you want to debate. There seems to be SOMETHING, but I'm stumped as to what it is!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I want to pull out part of my reply above, to highlight it.



Addressing the OP, I believe it is this - ongoing authorship of common fiction, through a continuous process of drafting and revising, that all participate in - that is at the heart of RPG. The distinct technical feature that enables it is fictional positioning. As games, another technical feature of RPG is to have regulatory and constitutive rules. Notice how the phrasing I have chosen steps back one level from the assumptions in -



The heart of RPG (as I rephrased it) makes no assumptions about number of players or the way powers of authorship are divided. In this light, much heated argument over the years has been had over something that is no big deal.

EDIT In order to be abundantly clear, I am saying that an RPG is that which has at least

1. ongoing authorship of common fiction, through a continuous process of drafting and revising, that all participate in
2. regulatory and constitutive rules

And I am suggesting that number of players and division of authorial power between them is not at the heart of RPG. It may be that once one gets to those particulars, one is discussing different games and it will in some ways confound theorising to lump them together. (I'm also saying, as an aside, that games other than RPGs may well have story - KOTOR had story - but I point that out only in order to make clearer the vital contention. It's also worth acknowledging that in any attempted ontology of games or a subset thereof, one finds the categories are blurred around the edges.)

OK, so MAYBE here is where we start to have light between what I've said and what you've said, and I would maintain my position is consistent with VB and @pemerton. That is to say you list 2 parts that define an RPG, but I insist there is a third necessary trait, which is that there is a linkage from fictional position (and thus fiction generally) to the "regulatory and constitutive rules". That is, your element 2 MUST include referents to the fiction, which means to things which are subject to the imagination of the participants in the game (though which things they can imagine may be a subject of the rules portion as well). Unless fiction can invoke rules, and rules can both invoke and regulate/be regulated by fiction, you simply have a game like chess where the story and the game are not actually associated in any way.

 

[clearstream]

OK, so MAYBE here is where we start to have light between what I've said and what you've said, and I would maintain my position is consistent with VB and @pemerton. That is to say you list 2 parts that define an RPG, but I insist there is a third necessary trait, which is that there is a linkage from fictional position (and thus fiction generally) to the "regulatory and constitutive rules".

I very much agree with you about that. Hence my emphasis on having in mind fictional positioning as the relevant (and distinct) technical feature of RPG. The way in which fiction in RPG is unlike fiction in other games. Update then to -

1. ongoing authorship of common fiction, through a continuous process of drafting and revising, that all participate in
2. regulatory and constitutive rules
3. a linkage from fictional position (and thus the fiction) to the regulatory and constitutive rules

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Even this is a conceptual challenge within the framework that @AbdulAlhazred has described - because the boundary between (i) I, the player, failed my check and hence I, the PC, failed to dodge the cars, and (ii) I, the player, failed my check and hence that NPC, the driver, failed to dodge me, the PC, is a narrow one. And (ii) is not consistent with the sort of simulationism-by-default that Abdul Alhazred has described.

So should running across the street be a saving throw (to dodge cars)? A check made on the reflexes of the NPC drivers - but who's got all of them statted out? Something else?

It should be an action roll à la Blades in the Dark, which encompasses all that and more (and which may lead to a resist roll, that game's very rough analogue to a saving throw)!

I may be just a little infatuated with that system at the moment. I'm sure the honeymoon will end soon and precipitously.

Let me just say at this point, in 1975 when I saw D&D for the first time I was already playing wargames and it was like a bolt of lightning going through my brain, this generalized open-ended fiction-driven thing was basically the ultimate game. It was the answer to the wish to be able to just say "yeah, but what happens if Pompey built a causeway to that island."

Likewise, the realization that you could use your process of play loop to model the INTENTION of the characters, and not just the resolution of actions is EQUALLY REVELATORY and the resulting thing, the narrative drive encompassing the entirety of play is as revolutionary WRT classic RPGs as the classic RPG was to games of the ilk of 'Afrika Corps' to begin with.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Sure, so once you crack that nut you can break out of the limiting paradigm! (Sorry about the mixed metaphors.)

Oh, mixed salted nuts are my favorite!

 

[niklinna]

Oh, mixed salted nuts are my favorite!

Except for those big hard ones that are always left after everybody has taken all the good ones.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I very much agree with you about that. Hence my emphasis on having in mind fictional positioning as the relevant (and distinct) technical feature of RPG. The way in which fiction in RPG is unlike fiction in other games. Update then to -

1. ongoing authorship of common fiction, through a continuous process of drafting and revising, that all participate in
2. regulatory and constitutive rules
3. a linkage from fictional position (and thus the fiction) to the regulatory and constitutive rules

Yeah, I pretty much thought you would say this. I mean, there may be some subtle point I'm missing too. I'm hardly subtle! lol. Or maybe that's subtley... no, that doesn't work. Never get old, lol.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Except for those big hard ones that are always left after everybody has taken all the good ones.

The brazil nuts! Yum, though I sure hated cracking them as a kid. The world has greatly improved though, now they come shelled!