Consequence and Reward in RPGs

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I like to compare trends in the game industry as a whole with individual segments, such as RPGs. Often what’s happening “out there” will turn up in the individual segments, if it hasn’t already.



The most striking trends in hobby games is the movement from games of consequence to games of reward. Players in hobby games in the past have been expected to earn what they received, but more and more in hobby games we’re seeing games that reward players for participation. This is a general trend in our society, where schoolkids expect rewards for participation rather than for achieving excellence, and in fact excellence is sometimes not allowed!

Reward-based games have always been with us via party games, and to a lesser extent family games. Virtually no one cares who wins a party game, and all of these games tend to be very simple and fully accessible to non-gamers. Mass-market games are much more reward-based then consequence-based. Hobby gamers might call them “not serious”.

A reward-based game is more like a playground than an organized competition, and the opposition in reward-based games tends to be weak/inconsequential/nonexistent.

Home video “save games” have always tended to make video games a “you can’t lose” proposition. We’re moving beyond that.

With free-to-play video games dominating the mobile market and a strong influence in other markets, designers reward players so that they’ll play the game long enough to decide to spend money in it. We see players who blame the game if they fail, who expect to be led around by the hand, even in games that people purchase.

Tabletop RPGs generally involve an unspoken pact between the players and the GM, so that the players can have fun and not have to worry too much about losing. But the game tends to be more enjoyable when there’s a possibility of failure - the triumphs are sweeter. The co-creator of D&D (Gary Gygax) put it this way in one of his last publications (Hall of Many Panes) "...a good campaign must have an element of danger and real risk or else it is meaningless - death walks at the shoulder of all adventurers, and that is the true appeal of the game."

Classic games involve conflict. Many so-called games nowadays do not involve conflict, and there are role-playing "games" that are storytelling exercises without much opposition.

Reflections of this trend in RPGs often involve abundant healing and ways to save characters from death, such as the ridiculous Revivify spell, usable by a mere fifth level cleric in D&D Fifth Edition, that brings back the dead on the field of battle.

35 years ago, a young player GMed his first game for our shared-characters campaign. He really wanted to ensure the players had a good time - so he gave out lots of magic items. We wanted players to earn what they received, so myself and the other lead GM waved our hands after the adventure and most of those items disappeared.

I’m a senior citizen, in my roots a wargamer, and I prefer games of consequence. But that's not where the world is headed.

contributed by Lewis Pulsipher

 

[billd91]

Heh, I'm in the same boat as [MENTION=89537]Jacob Marley[/MENTION] - we used xp for gold all the way through 1e, but, I never met a group that did so in 2e. The baseline rules were no xp for gold. To be honest, I didn't even realize it was an option in 2e. Buried somewhere in the DMG I assume?

I do remember classes had individual xp bonuses and that rogues who stole gold could earn xp that way, but, AFAIK, that was it.

Since it was right in the middle of the XP section of the DMG, I'd hardly call that "buried". In fact, it's right between the info on calculating the XP award for defeating monsters and class-based XP awards for their specific deeds.

A lot of people didn't award gold for XP in 2e the same reason people disregarded that rule in 1e, it didn't make sense to them to reward treasure a second time - for the cash value and the XP value. And the fact that it was demoted to optional in 2e probably even took out the relatively sticklers who did award XP for gold in 1e.

 

[Manbearcat]

I don't think so exactly, because a status-oriented player doesn't really get to lord it over other players at the game table, unlike in an MMORPG or basketball court. I can have powergamers and casuals at my D&D table, but it's the one who brings the home made cookies who has established her superior status.

I think powergamers do it much more for personal satisfaction.

Conversely people who engage in Internet message board demonstrations of min-max charbuild abilities I think are seeking a kind of status, akin to the MMORPG powergamer.

[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]

I don't know the MMO scene and so won't venture there.

I don't know sports very well either, but I don't think that comparison quite fits this case: a group of casual basketballers knows that what they are doing only gets its logic from some more "serious" version of the same activity (ie competitive basketball). Music is similar: my guitar playing is pretty ordinary, and I'm never going to be any sort of serious performer, but I think about the meaning and quality of what I'm doing when I play my guitar using the same framework that I use to think seriously about real musicians.

Whereas the "participationist"/"tourism" RPGing is intended by those who do it, I think, to have a meaning and value and so on that is different from classic dungeon-crawling.

If you want to take this analogy and run with it, then it's less the difference between professional basketball and a casual game for fun, and more the difference between either of those two and the sort of participation-trophy extreme where nobody is allowed to fail because they might feel bad (whether or not that's a real thing, it's an example for illustration).

It's not that the competition is slack because neither team is really invested too much, and more that one side is deliberately throwing the game by giving the other side so many get-out-of-jail-free cards that the conclusion is foregone.

Edit: I'm not saying that it's actually gone that far, but the analogy is better. It's a matter of perspective. How many extra lives do they need to give you, before winning becomes inevitable? Everyone is going to see that line in a different place. I probably could have beaten Super Mario Bros. when I was 8, if I'd had a hundred lives; but probably not if I'd only had ten lives.

This is going to be a quick (possibly incoherent) ramble, so fair warning.

There are a lot of familiar refrains in the lead article, but here are two I honed in on (in trying to tease out precisely what the premise was and what the lamentation resembled):

Classic games involve conflict. Many so-called games nowadays do not involve conflict, and there are role-playing "games" that are storytelling exercises without much opposition.

<snip>

I’m a senior citizen, in my roots a wargamer, and I prefer games of consequence. But that's not where the world is headed.

While I don't agree that "the world (of games) is headed" here, I certainly understand the lament. When once the market was significantly dominated by this perspective, there is now a deep diversity in the CRPG market, the MMORPG market, the TTRPG market, the boardgaming market, and the physical activity market. Various zeitgeists pop up now and again and gather some short-term steam (from revolutionary to retro), but the market-space doesn't seem to be contracting in such a way to preclude "challenge/consequence-based" games (if anything, I would say that the boardgame market and several CRPGs have become more difficult, more punitive). Its just that overall expansion and progress (of ideas, of clarity, of delivery upon formula, of nuance, of paradigm) necessitates that each individual market niche has more competition for attention (and maybe prospective casual buyers).

Whether the marketplace can handle that, I'll leave for someone else to decide (I know there is an opinion that the marketplace isn't robust enough to handle dilution/competition...maybe that is where Kickstarter saves the day). I was mainly just focusing on the psychology of what might animate someone to lament lack of conflict/consequence in their gaming (which seemed to harken to the two competing psychologies that underwrite the "casuals vs hardcores" refrain).

One last (unrelated) thing.

I definitely don't agree that the modern (non OSR) TTRPG market lacks conflict and consequence. That tells me that the author doesn't have the exposure necessary to take up a position.

1) The PBtA games mostly have default of hard-mode.
1a) Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark are "hard games". They very, very rarely end well for PCs and the game is not a "happy one".
1b) Dungeon World is trivially drifted from Big Damn Heroes to murderhobos fumbling in the dark. It can be done with the default game or by using a "Darkest Dungeon" hack out there which is very solid and well-integrated into the PBtA engine.

2) Torchbearer is most definitely ultra-gritty hard-mode. It is WAY more difficult than Moldvay Basic and considerably more than the Expert/Companion set that follows as the game advances.

3) 4e and Strike! are both so well-engineered that if a group sits down and wants to drift either to brutally difficult setting, they can do so just by changing default expectations and turning a few knobs.

 

[Maxperson]

It was not until 3e that I encountered a group who did not use xp for gp but that just meant that I got the xp for defeating them rather then for their stuff.

My experience is the same as [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]. We experimented a couple times with XP for gold, but it made the game too easy and we dropped it. I never encountered any others who played that way. They all knew the rules said that you got it for gold, but no one I encountered followed that rule.

 

[Hussar]

It's always funny to me when people's personal experience equates to "a lot of people" based on nothing more than a tiny, tiny slice of a sample size, pretty much universally "people I know". I have no idea how many people used XP for gold in 1e. I know that I did and so did everyone I played with. But, beyond that? I can't really make any extrapolations.

And it's also funny how "We must discuss the game as written" becomes "We must discuss the game the way I played" whenever people happen not to play the way the game is written.

 

[Libramarian]

If I really want to do a dungeon crawl, I've got Gloomhaven coming.

Interesting that you mention Gloomhaven--apparently this is critically acclaimed and selling like hotcakes right now. Reading the description it sounds extremely similar to classic sandbox D&D.

 

[Shasarak]

And it's also funny how "We must discuss the game as written" becomes "We must discuss the game the way I played" whenever people happen not to play the way the game is written.

If you have read the way the game is written then it becomes obvious that you have to discuss the game the way I (You) played.

 

[Hussar]

If you have read the way the game is written then it becomes obvious that you have to discuss the game the way I (You) played.

Yuppers. You used an optional rule that wasn't assumed as part of the core game. No worries. It's not like you were playing wrong.

Where you go wrong is the idea that everyone played the way you did and trying to extrapolate your personal experience into some sort of universal. I have no idea how common it was to play with XP for gold in 2e. To me, one of the major changes from 1e to 2e was the rejection of xp for gold, which massively slowed down advancement in 2e.

To me, the change of the importance of gold really highlights how each edition is a different game. For example:

1e - Gold is the primary source of XP in the system. Looking at the modules, you generally got FAR more xp for gold than you could for killing everything. To the point where probably about 75% (give or take) of the xp of a character was gold. Then, that gold was taken away, largely, by the training rules. The point of play was to amass cash - killing stuff was largely incidental. Plus there was the presumption of things like hirelings and henchmen which was a major source of the power of a party, all of which cost gold.

2e - Gold is largely useless. You aren't supposed to buy magic items in the game and, beyond buying your Full Plate armor, there really wasn't much you could do with gold. It just kind of sat there. To the point where, in the games I ran or played in at the time, gold wasn't particularly even awarded as treasure. Beyond a certain point, gold just wasn't all that needed.

3e - Gold again is a HUGE deal. So much so that we get the wealth by level charts which are meant as a balancing tool in the game. You can buy or make magic items which has an enormous impact on how the game is played and run. Things like healing wands and the Magic Christmas Tree are all outgrowths of tying character power to the wealth of the character. Amassing gold is a very large motivator for PC's in 3e.

4e - Gold is scaled back. It's assumed that you will have certain goodies by certain levels, so, the "reward" isn't really much of a reward at all. You're level X, so, you have equipment Y. So much so that you can completely remove plussed items and gold and go with Inherent Bonuses and the game works perfectly fine. It really doesn't matter how much gold you accrue.

5e - Gold, like in 2e, has pretty much no purpose. You're not supposed to buy magic items - at least the system doesn't assume that you can, and, outside of down time activities, gold doesn't really do anything. For example, we played through most of Curse of Strahd recently, and by 8th level, the group total cash might be a couple of thousand gold. It simply doesn't matter.

You can run this same sort of charted examples for just about anything between editions and it's not too hard to see that each edition has some pretty deep changes. Fighters go from 1 attack per round with minimal bonuses, to 3/2 (+1 to hit/+2 to damage) in 2e, to BAB and iterative attacks, back to 1 attack per round but now with additional riders, then to 1 attack per round increasing at certain levels. Just something as basic as how does a basic plain jane fighter swing his sword has changed between editions.

 

[Hussar]

Y'know, for S&G's, I dug out my 2e DMG to find the rule for awarding XP for gold. I was right, it is bloody buried in the text. I had to read it three times just to find it and this is the sum total of what we get:

As an option, the DM can award XP for the cash value of non-magical treasures. One XP can be given per gold piece found. However, overuse of this option can increase the tendency to give out too much treasure in the campaign.

Hardly a ringing endorsement of the idea that xp should be given for gold. And, certainly the implication here is that you shouldn't be always using this.

 

[Ratskinner]

Interesting conjecture, including the "smokescreen" part of it. I'm surprised you've only got one response!

I think you're right about interest in my preferred approach being modest, though I'm always a bit puzzled by that because a lot of RPGers claim to really be into "story", and I think it's the most reliable way of generating "story" without railroading.

I tried to quote [MENTION=6688858]Libramarian[/MENTION] here as well, but somehow it appears to not be working. I actually tend to agree a bit with him about playing D&D closer to its classic style. I just don't think its core engine is well suited to much else. (I'm not even sure how well-suited it is to that purpose, but...). I should also note that I'll use "D&D" in this post to refer to all of its close kin and variants, including Pathfinder and the OSR, generally.

I think there are several factors going on when it comes to the low adoption rates of story games by traditional rpgers, despite continued insistence on "story" being important to them. The most important/prominent, IME/O, is that D&D is already here, most potential players are familiar with it, and it works in a way that is relatively concrete and easy to grasp. Even though it functions poorly for almost every use it is put to....it still limps along and groups just wince and bear with it over the rough spots. The simple familiarity that so very many players have with D&D simply overwhelms all its shortcomings. It is the dominant game in this marketspace, and it will remain so for the foreseeable future.

In contrast to the OP, I actually believe that maintenance of this dominance has been the driving force in D&D's design decisions. Streamlining mechanics, simplifying modifiers and subsystems, all of it just cutting away the rough spots that make it difficult to adopt and stay with. Of course, there have been missteps here and there, but for the most part, that has been the trend AFAICT. I firmly believe that even 4e, IMO the biggest misstep, was simply a matter of poorly chosen presentation that too blatantly jerked away from traditional phrasings. Sales weren't the problem, as much as it is often cited in these arguments. The big problem with 4e was that it split the community. The edition war actually threatened to splinter that D&D Dominance. In the long run, that would spell doom for D&D in a way that slow sales never threaten to do.

If I put out a sign at me FLGS advertising a startup group for any edition of D&D, I could be playing it next week. Establishing a group based on a different system is nearly impossible by comparison. I have tried many times, with many different systems. The store even sold out of Fate Accelerated, ordered Fate Core, sold out of that and stocks claims to regularly sell sets of Fate Dice...but whoever bought those things isn't responding to my ads. (Why? I dunno. Are they all just system-collectors like me?)

Now, I suppose that may be different in different markets or at different stores. Presumably larger markets could support more fringe groups. However, I've noticed that there is a big difference between the online communities for the "fringe" games and the online communities for D&D. Namely, D&D communities tend to presume that most play is occurring in-person, while the tendency for the others is to presume either convention one-shot or online play. This seems to be reflected in the "looking for group" areas as well. I suspect that most Gumshoe, Fate, The Quiet Year, Apocalypse World, etc. players just have no other option, if they actually want to play the game. By contrast, I suspect most OSR play happens at table-top amongst players or groups that have been gaming for some time. (And note the distress caused by people claiming or questioning whether Dungeon World is and Old-School game.)

I do think there are other factors. For example, I think many folks are either unwilling or unable to discern or admit what their own preferences are. I've observed people tell me one thing and then act at-table in manners totally contrary to their claim. So, some of those people telling Pemerton that they are in it for the story are lying/wrong about themselves. Quite likely, most folks don't examine their play or enjoyment enough to know. Of course, that task is made harder by a game that is often fudged at table, or played with a raft of houserules. Most story-centric games put players in a position of much greater authorship than they have in D&D, and that can leave a game running flat. Too much authorial power takes away the visceral experience of tension that is part of the entertainment process.

Additionally, I think that the state of design for story-centric or narrative-centric games is not nearly so advanced as we might hope. I think its getting better, and lately folks have made solid strides, but I don't think its nearly as refined as commonly available war, skirmish, or board games are. For instance, early editions of D&D show much more of their its wargame roots, and they show through even today. Later rpgs don't show nearly so much wargame-derived content. Similarly, most story-centric games today cling fairly close to their D&D/rpg ancestors (one character per player except for one "GM" player, a heavy focus on action/adventure/combat, etc.) Many story games rely (perhaps overmuch on) extremely abstract mechanics, shifting resolution to the players at table. That puts players onto hazier ground an into less-sure positions than games with more concrete mechanics, and not all players are comfortable with that. I think what people are looking for in a story game is one that has a story emerging "naturally" as an artifact of play, but one that can still surprise them as play progresses.

I could go on, but this is a long post already and its late here. As always, just my $.02.

 

[Shasarak]

Y'know, for S&G's, I dug out my 2e DMG to find the rule for awarding XP for gold. I was right, it is bloody buried in the text. I had to read it three times just to find it and this is the sum total of what we get:



Hardly a ringing endorsement of the idea that xp should be given for gold. And, certainly the implication here is that you shouldn't be always using this.

How many times do they need to say it?

Besides, if you actually read the experience entry you will find it lets the DM give as much experience as they want to.

 

[pemerton]

the distress caused by people claiming or questioning whether Dungeon World is and Old-School game.

Can you elaborate? My knowledge of debates about DW is pretty poor. Speaking purely for myself, I wouldn't see DW (or Torchbearer, for that matter) as an old-school game, but I'm not really an old-school guy and so my judgement on these things mightn't carry much weight.

(Obviously Torchbearer in particular is meant to produce something like an old-school experience, but I don't think that makes it an old-school game. An imperfect analogy: whatever, exactly, Pulp Fiction is, it's not a remake of a film like The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep.)

I think many folks are either unwilling or unable to discern or admit what their own preferences are. I've observed people tell me one thing and then act at-table in manners totally contrary to their claim. So, some of those people telling Pemerton that they are in it for the story are lying/wrong about themselves. Quite likely, most folks don't examine their play or enjoyment enough to know.

This is plausible to me, although somewhat tricky to affirm in the messageboard context because it is obviously rather invidious to point to any particular poster and suggest that they suffer from this sort of lack of self-knowledge.

Of course, that task is made harder by a game that is often fudged at table, or played with a raft of houserules. Most story-centric games put players in a position of much greater authorship than they have in D&D, and that can leave a game running flat. Too much authorial power takes away the visceral experience of tension that is part of the entertainment process.

Additionally, I think that the state of design for story-centric or narrative-centric games is not nearly so advanced as we might hope. I think its getting better, and lately folks have made solid strides, but I don't think its nearly as refined as commonly available war, skirmish, or board games are. For instance, early editions of D&D show much more of their its wargame roots, and they show through even today. Later rpgs don't show nearly so much wargame-derived content. Similarly, most story-centric games today cling fairly close to their D&D/rpg ancestors (one character per player except for one "GM" player, a heavy focus on action/adventure/combat, etc.) Many story games rely (perhaps overmuch on) extremely abstract mechanics, shifting resolution to the players at table. That puts players onto hazier ground an into less-sure positions than games with more concrete mechanics, and not all players are comfortable with that. I think what people are looking for in a story game is one that has a story emerging "naturally" as an artifact of play, but one that can still surprise them as play progresses.

There's a lot going on here. I'll post some thoughts that were provoked in me.

Oversimplifying very much, and drawing only on my own experience/reading of a finite set of games none of which is wildly radical, I would divide mechanics into (roughly) two sorts: mechanics that reflect or express the ingame process, and mechanics that abstractly frame the action and leave the ingame details to be filled in. Games like Classic Traveller, RQ, RM, Burning Wheel; the 3E skill system, at least for "physical" skills; movement in most editions of D&D; etc, are all examples of the former. Games like HeroWars/Quest, Marvel Heroic RP; Tunnels & Trolls melee; 4e attack resolution; the AD&D 1-minute combat round; etc, are instances of the latter.

(D&D melee attack actions outside of 4e are an interesting case because, when read on paper they look like an instance of the latter, but many D&D players seem to treat them as an instance of the former. I think this is quite significant in the reception of RQ/RM-ish games and of 4e by the core D&D audience.)

I don't see this mechanical divide as itself being particularly significant for whether a game is "predictable" to the players. The first sort of mechanic is highly vulnerable to disputes breaking out over the precise fictional positioning of various characters and the relevance to this of resolution (and it's interesting to look at how a game like BW tries to maintain this sort of approach to resolution while using other incentives - in particular, that for a PC to advance requires not always using the largest possible dice pool - to ameliorate the tendency to fiction-lawyering). The second sort of mechanic is vulnerable to an excess of abstraction which means no one really knows what is going on in the fiction - at it's worst, the game ceases to be an RPG at all and becomes just a board/tactical game.

I don't see this mechanical divide as being particularly significant, either, for whether a game supports wargaming/"gamist" play or whether it supports "story"-oriented play. That depends on the techniques and expectations that are set up around the mechanics eg By whom, and according to what principles, and influenced in what way by the mechanical system, is fictional content introduced into the game? How is failure narrated? Who gets to choose what happens next? Etc.

I agree with you that "what people are looking for in a story game is one that has a story emerging 'naturally' as an artifact of play, but one that can still surprise them as play progresses." Maybe I'm just more optimistic than you that games - ie combinations of mechanics and techniques - that will support this actually exist. My optimisim is grounded in the fact that I believe I have played in, and am playing in, such games.

As to your comment about subject-matter (combat, adventure, etc): this is one context in which I think that mechanics matter as much as broader techniques and expectation. In particular, I'm a strong believer that if you want a game to involve story about stuff other than fighting and jumping, you need mechanics for stuff other than fighting and jumping. For me, this was part of the appeal of RM and is part of the appeal of BW. I played a BW session on the weekend. My PC is a holy warrior type, and he has as a companion a fire-mage type. The checks made over the course of the session included social checks (my two characters had an argument about how to proceed on their travels, and then - when exploring a crypt beneath a ruined fortress of my order - we encountered a knight who had ben cursed to guard the crypt even in death, and I debated with him what was the right thing to do in the interests of the order), cooking, lore/knowledge/perception-type checks (to learn stuff about the ruined fortress and the order), ritual and prayer checks (including to life the curse on the knight); but the closet thing to a combat check was a failed attempt by my companion to use her TK-ish spell to pull the knight's axe from his hands.

That could happen in 4e, but I think would put more weight on the GM to make the skill challenges work (and skill challenges can't resolve an argument between two player characters), and there isn't the breadth of skills to bring out characterisation in quite the same way as in BW (which distinguishes between skill in Persuasion, Command and Ugly Truth - all of which came up in our session) or RM.

It couldn't happen in T&T or Moldvay Basic or Gygax's AD&D, and I don't think 5e makes it all that easy.

And a final conjecture about this: even for those who like "story", non-combat/adventure stuff requires being a bit more personal/intimate in revealing one's character - especially in a classic one-character-per-player set up. That can be challenging.

 

[Ratskinner]

Can you elaborate? My knowledge of debates about DW is pretty poor. Speaking purely for myself, I wouldn't see DW (or Torchbearer, for that matter) as an old-school game, but I'm not really an old-school guy and so my judgement on these things mightn't carry much weight.

(Obviously Torchbearer in particular is meant to produce something like an old-school experience, but I don't think that makes it an old-school game. An imperfect analogy: whatever, exactly, Pulp Fiction is, it's not a remake of a film like The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep.)

Basically, (and this was a few years ago) some folks pointed out that DW could sometimes feel more like an Old-School game at-table than some of the ostensibly OSR games that were in print and favored by the community. That begged the question (in there minds, anyway) about whether the mechanics where the actually important part of the Old-School experience, or whether it was the whole Fantasy Vietnam experience being sited by the OP of this thread. I saw this on a couple of boards, both Old School and general rpg. No real resolution was reached and people just sorta went into their corners to play OSRIC when it was done, AFAICT.

This is plausible to me, although somewhat tricky to affirm in the messageboard context because it is obviously rather invidious to point to any particular poster and suggest that they suffer from this sort of lack of self-knowledge.

I agree, and such are the limitations of e-communication. Its not particularly easier, IME, to point out inconsistencies face-to-face, I might add.

There's a lot going on here. I'll post some thoughts that were provoked in me.

Oversimplifying very much, and drawing only on my own experience/reading of a finite set of games none of which is wildly radical, I would divide mechanics into (roughly) two sorts: mechanics that reflect or express the ingame process, and mechanics that abstractly frame the action and leave the ingame details to be filled in. Games like Classic Traveller, RQ, RM, Burning Wheel; the 3E skill system, at least for "physical" skills; movement in most editions of D&D; etc, are all examples of the former. Games like HeroWars/Quest, Marvel Heroic RP; Tunnels & Trolls melee; 4e attack resolution; the AD&D 1-minute combat round; etc, are instances of the latter.

<snip>

I don't see this mechanical divide as itself being particularly significant for whether a game is "predictable" to the players. The first sort of mechanic is highly vulnerable to disputes breaking out over the precise fictional positioning of various characters and the relevance to this of resolution (and it's interesting to look at how a game like BW tries to maintain this sort of approach to resolution while using other incentives - in particular, that for a PC to advance requires not always using the largest possible dice pool - to ameliorate the tendency to fiction-lawyering). The second sort of mechanic is vulnerable to an excess of abstraction which means no one really knows what is going on in the fiction - at it's worst, the game ceases to be an RPG at all and becomes just a board/tactical game.

I don't see this mechanical divide as being particularly significant, either, for whether a game supports wargaming/"gamist" play or whether it supports "story"-oriented play. That depends on the techniques and expectations that are set up around the mechanics eg By whom, and according to what principles, and influenced in what way by the mechanical system, is fictional content introduced into the game? How is failure narrated? Who gets to choose what happens next? Etc.

Given that Hit Points and Apocalypse Engine "Clocks" function basically the same way (the abstract category), I take your point. However, I've noted that many (advertised) story games seem to leave things in the realm of abstract mechanics, sometimes having precious little "concrete" mechanics at all. I believe that that "excess of abstraction" can leave players uncomfortable engaging in an argument at all and just shutting down mentally/socially retreating from the game. At that point, the game is "lost" to the player (or vice versa) because they are "not getting it."

Now, people can obviously make abstract mechanics work, but I think concrete mechanics can help "ground" players in the fiction. How much is "necessary" is variable by individual, of course.

I would point out, additionally, that the conversation has already drifted back to a traditional rpg framework. I don't feel obligated to think that a good "story game" necessarily needs to ride on an rpg chassis. In fact, I would say that having such a base is making the creative jobs of game designers harder, because it is so very easy to fall back on that familiar structure. I could imagine a game that functions like The Quiet Year where players turns are driven by cards drawn, possibly spawning questions for the whole table to answer that inform the direction of the "scene" associated with that player's turn.

I agree with you that "what people are looking for in a story game is one that has a story emerging 'naturally' as an artifact of play, but one that can still surprise them as play progresses." Maybe I'm just more optimistic than you that games - ie combinations of mechanics and techniques - that will support this actually exist. My optimisim is grounded in the fact that I believe I have played in, and am playing in, such games.

I think they are starting to get made, or rather, they are getting better. My sort-of blanket evaluation is that they have a tendency to require a lot more GM/player -- policing?, engagement?, herding?, restraint? of play than tactical play would require.

As to your comment about subject-matter (combat, adventure, etc): this is one context in which I think that mechanics matter as much as broader techniques and expectation. In particular, I'm a strong believer that if you want a game to involve story about stuff other than fighting and jumping, you need mechanics for stuff other than fighting and jumping. <snippage>

That could happen in 4e, but I think would put more weight on the GM to make the skill challenges work (and skill challenges can't resolve an argument between two player characters), and there isn't the breadth of skills to bring out characterisation in quite the same way as in BW (which distinguishes between skill in Persuasion, Command and Ugly Truth - all of which came up in our session) or RM.

It couldn't happen in T&T or Moldvay Basic or Gygax's AD&D, and I don't think 5e makes it all that easy.

Total agreement here. I think one of the not-so-subtle realizations in story mechanics has been that more specificity is good. The tough part about that WRT traditional rpgs, is the diversity of story types require vastly different events/skills/twists. I mean, events that you would expect to see in a murder investigation story aren't the same as you'd expect to see in a heroic journey. So, in a traditional rpg context, where both are (at least theoretically) acceptable story arcs, how do you include them both? I don't think that that's an impossible design task, but I think its still waiting to be done. I'm not sure that the rpg audience would be willing to pay for supplement supporting a family of plot options in the same way that its willing to spend money on current options. Plus, I gotta figure that combat needs to be subsumed under the broader story "wrapper" mechanics somehow, and that seems like a big leap for most traditional rpgs.

And a final conjecture about this: even for those who like "story", non-combat/adventure stuff requires being a bit more personal/intimate in revealing one's character - especially in a classic one-character-per-player set up. That can be challenging.

I agree and think this is another reason that I would advocate letting rpgs be rpgs and take story-centric games in another direction.

Edit: I would also add that I think explicit mechanics can alleviate a lot of that discomfort.

 

[Manbearcat]

Given that Hit Points and Apocalypse Engine "Clocks" function basically the same way (the abstract category), I take your point. However, I've noted that many (advertised) story games seem to leave things in the realm of abstract mechanics, sometimes having precious little "concrete" mechanics at all. I believe that that "excess of abstraction" can leave players uncomfortable engaging in an argument at all and just shutting down mentally/socially retreating from the game. At that point, the game is "lost" to the player (or vice versa) because they are "not getting it."

Now, people can obviously make abstract mechanics work, but I think concrete mechanics can help "ground" players in the fiction. How much is "necessary" is variable by individual, of course.

Just want to comment on this portion of the conversation.

Blades in the Dark has produced many great advances in the Powered By the Apocalypse tree of games. Relevant to the point directly above, one of the best is codified Position. Whereas in typical PBtA games, this is handled in the course of conversation or merely extrapolated from the relevant fiction (which is, of course, integrated with the game's premise, agenda, and play principles), BitD systemitizes a procedure of firming up the implications of the fictional positioning. Through the establishment of the situation as Controlled/Risky/Desperate, players not only achieve a better grip on the prospects for varying action declarations on their "menu", but also the potential rewards/fallout post-resolution and where the action might snowball to as a result.

This might seem a subtle thing, but for players (whose mental frameworks need the explicit "abstraction contraction", let us call it) who may have the trouble you're expressing above its a nice assist (and doesn't add to the GM's cognitive workload nor negatively affect table handling time in any intrusive way).

 

[Lanefan]

I would also add that I think explicit mechanics can alleviate a lot of that discomfort.

Assuming, of course, that one finds comfort in mechanics.

One of the things I didn't like about 3e was its there's-a-rule-for-everything ethos, particularly for combat; and from what I can tell 4e wasn't any better. Here, you want to take the rule-for-everything idea and expand it to all the non-combat stuff as well, which only makes it worse.

Lan-"guidelines, not rules; rulings, not rules"-efan

 

[Ratskinner]

Just want to comment on this portion of the conversation.

Blades in the Dark has produced many great advances in the Powered By the Apocalypse tree of games.

Totally agree, and although I haven't had the opportunity to play/run BitD, I highly approve of its advancements and hope to see it in action soon.

 

[Ratskinner]

Assuming, of course, that one finds comfort in mechanics.

One of the things I didn't like about 3e was its there's-a-rule-for-everything ethos, particularly for combat; and from what I can tell 4e wasn't any better. Here, you want to take the rule-for-everything idea and expand it to all the non-combat stuff as well, which only makes it worse.

Lan-"guidelines, not rules; rulings, not rules"-efan

In this case, I was referring specifically to the idea that if the mechanics specify something like "Reveal a secret about your (PCs) parents." or "You have an unusual fear of a newly introduced NPC. Explain why." That is might make it more comfortable to a player than if they have to generate such things ex nihilo at the table.

 

[pemerton]

the conversation has already drifted back to a traditional rpg framework

Yes. I'm talking about what I know, and as I posted that's nothing very radical.

But I also think the RPG idea of "I am playing my person - my me - in this fictional situation" has a genuine degree of power to it. So there's a reason to try and make this work from the story point of view.

many (advertised) story games seem to leave things in the realm of abstract mechanics, sometimes having precious little "concrete" mechanics at all. I believe that that "excess of abstraction" can leave players uncomfortable engaging in an argument at all and just shutting down mentally/socially retreating from the game. At that point, the game is "lost" to the player (or vice versa) because they are "not getting it."

Now, people can obviously make abstract mechanics work, but I think concrete mechanics can help "ground" players in the fiction. How much is "necessary" is variable by individual, of course.

Can you link this to a concrete example? For instance, putting to one side whether MHRP really counts as any sort of "story game", would you put it on the potentially overly abstract side of the line?

I think explicit mechanics can alleviate a lot of that discomfort.

I was referring specifically to the idea that if the mechanics specify something like "Reveal a secret about your (PCs) parents." or "You have an unusual fear of a newly introduced NPC. Explain why." That is might make it more comfortable to a player than if they have to generate such things ex nihilo at the table.

This is interesting.

BW doesn't have these sorts of mechanics: the rules for Beliefs, Instincts etc are "write some interesting ones, and riff off other people's" - which is close to your ex nihilo scenario, though at prep time rather than in play. MHRP does have something closer to the sort of mechanic you mention, though, because eg a character might get XP for identifying an opponent as an old foe or an old friend. So the structured milestones create a framework for the players to drive the story in certain ways.

I think I find that that MHRP approach creates a lighter, more "frothy" and slightly wacky game; whereas the BW approach - at least at it's best - can be more intense and push the player harder. (Eg because there's no framework to fall back on, the justification is that I thought this made for a good Belief. So the player's artistic (?) judgement is on the line.)

(I hope that the above comments make sense and that I haven't misconstrued your point.)

My sort-of blanket evaluation is that they [ie "story games"] have a tendency to require a lot more GM/player -- policing?, engagement?, herding?, restraint? of play than tactical play would require.

Policing of what?

I don't think I've found this, but I'm working of a narrow experience base and may not be fully following your point!

I think one of the not-so-subtle realizations in story mechanics has been that more specificity is good. The tough part about that WRT traditional rpgs, is the diversity of story types require vastly different events/skills/twists. I mean, events that you would expect to see in a murder investigation story aren't the same as you'd expect to see in a heroic journey. So, in a traditional rpg context, where both are (at least theoretically) acceptable story arcs, how do you include them both? I don't think that that's an impossible design task, but I think its still waiting to be done. I'm not sure that the rpg audience would be willing to pay for supplement supporting a family of plot options in the same way that its willing to spend money on current options. Plus, I gotta figure that combat needs to be subsumed under the broader story "wrapper" mechanics somehow, and that seems like a big leap for most traditional rpgs.

You've taken this thought further than I had in my mind when I posted. I was thinking of much more banal stuff like, if you want the cooking of a meal to be a big deal in the game, then you need a mechanical framework that can make that happen. In BW this is via the mechanics for "linked tests" - a type of augment - so if your cooking stuffs up you make your friends sick/hungry and they get a downstream penalty, but if you cook well then everyone gets an appropriate buff; and in the session I mentioned I spent metagame resources to boost my cooking dice pool in an attempt to get the buff (I didn't get the buff but didn't cause a penalty either). This can't happen in a system where there is no resolution system for cooking, no way to make it matter (eg penalties/buffs flowing from it), no way for the player to show that it matters (eg spending metagame resources on it), etc.

But if I'm understanding you properly, you're not talking just about mechanical elements that can make some subject matter of endeavour actually count - like cooking, or mending (something that also came up in my BW session), or similar "mundane" things. You're talking about resolution frameworks for establishing consequences that drive things in particular ways (eg murder mystery vs questing journey).

In the systems I run this is all put onto the GM's shoulders - the GM is expected to be able to frame scenes and narrate consequences in a way that is appropriate to the demands of genre, character, situation, etc (be that mystery or quest) using rather generic mechanics (eg the BW system for resolving checks) and rather generic techniques (eg "fail forward", "say 'yes' or roll the dice", etc). Is this part of what you have in mind when you talk about the need for GM "policing" - that when the GM's tools are the sorts of "generic" tools I've described, then s/he has to make affirmative judgement calls abut the unfolding shape of the fiction in a way that isn't the case in a tactical game?

 

[Ratskinner]

I might slice and dice your post here a bit, because you kinda came at one thing through the back door talking about another.

Yes. I'm talking about what I know, and as I posted that's nothing very radical.

But I also think the RPG idea of "I am playing my person - my me - in this fictional situation" has a genuine degree of power to it. So there's a reason to try and make this work from the story point of view.

No accusation intended.

I agree that there is a power there, but also a weakness WRT telling a story. Often, making a good/interesting story involves loss on the part of the protagonist. Most traditional rpgs have no mechanism rewarding a player for a substantive loss by their character. Reward mechanisms, like XP/leveling, are based solely on "winning" whatever goals the character has, and apply to the character and player as well. Contrast this with Fiasco, in which you the player can "win" by having your character suffer the most during the course of the game. (Although if you do win in this fashion, your character walks away winning as well.) This puts a player's immediate interests at odds with the character's immediate interests in a way that allows for plotlines that D&D would have great difficulty creating.

Can you link this to a concrete example? For instance, putting to one side whether MHRP really counts as any sort of "story game", would you put it on the potentially overly abstract side of the line?

That's a good question. Personally, I don't think so. Almost everything that I can think of in MHRP is tied directly to fiction. If you have an Asset, it has a fictional meaning/purpose/representation. I really like that about MHRP, and I feel like it shares a lot of DNA with FATE in this regard. However, they both also share one in-game "currency" that is potentially problematic this way. I have watched a very few Old-Schoolers have great difficulty utilizing a "generic" currency like Fate Points or Hero(?) Points. However, I consider that an outlier case possibly driven by obstinancy. I have never observed any young or new players having difficulty with the idea.

One example that comes to mind is Fiasco. So...on my turn, I'm going to get a black or white die, depending on if things went badly or well for my character, but otherwise me and some other guys are just gonna improv this out.

This is interesting.

BW doesn't have these sorts of mechanics: the rules for Beliefs, Instincts etc are "write some interesting ones, and riff off other people's" - which is close to your ex nihilo scenario, though at prep time rather than in play. MHRP does have something closer to the sort of mechanic you mention, though, because eg a character might get XP for identifying an opponent as an old foe or an old friend. So the structured milestones create a framework for the players to drive the story in certain ways.

Policing of what?

I don't think I've found this, but I'm working of a narrow experience base and may not be fully following your point!

In the systems I run this is all put onto the GM's shoulders - the GM is expected to be able to frame scenes and narrate consequences in a way that is appropriate to the demands of genre, character, situation, etc (be that mystery or quest) using rather generic mechanics (eg the BW system for resolving checks) and rather generic techniques (eg "fail forward", "say 'yes' or roll the dice", etc). Is this part of what you have in mind when you talk about the need for GM "policing" - that when the GM's tools are the sorts of "generic" tools I've described, then s/he has to make affirmative judgement calls abut the unfolding shape of the fiction in a way that isn't the case in a tactical game?

Yes. This is exactly what I was getting at, although I was struggling to find the correct words. Did a character actually address his belief? Who judges? How do you decide? Basically, a lot of narrative "adjudication" work gets off-loaded onto the participants. (Not that that can't be successful.) I agree with you that it puts players at more emotional risk, which, I feel might be another barrier to participation. Conversely, I suspect that some of the reason some people enjoy playing racially aggressive Dwarves or Elves, or pedantic and zealous paladins is that the existing material provides expectations that give them cover to explore their own feelings about these (or similar) odious personality traits. If you bring something similar to a Fate game as a list of aspects then that's all on you, good or ill. You don't get to pass it off on some other author. (Unless, of course, you're playing in an established setting.)

I think I find that that MHRP approach creates a lighter, more "frothy" and slightly wacky game; whereas the BW approach - at least at it's best - can be more intense and push the player harder. (Eg because there's no framework to fall back on, the justification is that I thought this made for a good Belief. So the player's artistic (?) judgement is on the line.)

IME, non-sim/narrative supers games all seem to have this problem to some degree. I dunno why. Capes has an almost irresistible tendency to silly with the supers. Yet when I switched to Fantasy...we went hours without whacky. I haven't noticed any particular tendency of the systems themselves to create this kind of atmosphere. Obviously, YMMV quite a bit.

You've taken this thought further than I had in my mind when I posted. I was thinking of much more banal stuff like, if you want the cooking of a meal to be a big deal in the game, then you need a mechanical framework that can make that happen. In BW this is via the mechanics for "linked tests" - a type of augment - so if your cooking stuffs up you make your friends sick/hungry and they get a downstream penalty, but if you cook well then everyone gets an appropriate buff; and in the session I mentioned I spent metagame resources to boost my cooking dice pool in an attempt to get the buff (I didn't get the buff but didn't cause a penalty either). This can't happen in a system where there is no resolution system for cooking, no way to make it matter (eg penalties/buffs flowing from it), no way for the player to show that it matters (eg spending metagame resources on it), etc.

But if I'm understanding you properly, you're not talking just about mechanical elements that can make some subject matter of endeavour actually count - like cooking, or mending (something that also came up in my BW session), or similar "mundane" things. You're talking about resolution frameworks for establishing consequences that drive things in particular ways (eg murder mystery vs questing journey).

Correct. I've seen several Apocalypse Engine games do this with marginal-but-substantive success, although they tend to be even more successful at recreating the atmosphere of a particular genre. One of the things I like about Blades in the Dark is that it frames all that resolution in a way that repeatedly "brings the story home". That is, sessions narratives are structured around a "score" for you and your band of miscreants. You start by choosing an opportunity, you work through it, then you recover/advance your position, etc. Want a longer session, do two scores. You can certainly have larger/longer plotlines (especially for your crew as a group), but even their operations are codified in what appears to me to be a substantial manner

I have a decent collection of story/fiction-first games, some from the Forge, some not. As I think you hit upon elsewhere, control of narrative power is often the actual crux of play. ("Sure, the Death Star is gonna get blown up, but how, and who gets to decide?") Many of the games rely on currencies of one type or another, and a few are AFAICT completely playable as token&dice games that you could ignore the fiction with. I think that's when you've got a problem. Mechanics being so divorced from the fiction as to make any connection spurious and only an artifact of direct effort put forth by the participants.* It can turn a game into some kind of weird improv session. I think they've shifted away from that, but often not entirely.

*To be fair, I don't think it was totally unjustified, from a design point of view. Faced with the problem of supporting any sort of story the players might want...naturally you try to create a universal adapter. However, that offload is (I believe) what makes it difficult to create that sort surprise or resolution tension we expect from entertainment. If the mechanics generate such results, then then can come at something more of a surprise.

anyway, that's probably enough for now.

 

[Ratskinner]

I might slice and dice your post here a bit, because you kinda came at one thing through the back door talking about another.

Yes. I'm talking about what I know, and as I posted that's nothing very radical.

But I also think the RPG idea of "I am playing my person - my me - in this fictional situation" has a genuine degree of power to it. So there's a reason to try and make this work from the story point of view.

No accusation intended.

I agree that there is a power there, but also a weakness WRT telling a story. Often, making a good/interesting story involves loss on the part of the protagonist. Most traditional rpgs have no mechanism rewarding a player for a substantive loss by their character. Reward mechanisms, like XP/leveling, are based solely on "winning" whatever goals the character has, and apply to the character and player as well. Contrast this with Fiasco, in which you the player can "win" by having your character suffer the most during the course of the game. (Although if you do win in this fashion, your character walks away winning as well.) This puts a player's immediate interests at odds with the character's immediate interests in a way that allows for plotlines that D&D would have great difficulty creating.

Can you link this to a concrete example? For instance, putting to one side whether MHRP really counts as any sort of "story game", would you put it on the potentially overly abstract side of the line?

That's a good question. Personally, I don't think so. Almost everything that I can think of in MHRP is tied directly to fiction. If you have an Asset, it has a fictional meaning/purpose/representation. I really like that about MHRP, and I feel like it shares a lot of DNA with FATE in this regard. However, they both also share one in-game "currency" that is potentially problematic this way. I have watched a very few Old-Schoolers have great difficulty utilizing a "generic" currency like Fate Points or Hero(?) Points. However, I consider that an outlier case possibly driven by obstinancy. I have never observed any young or new players having difficulty with the idea.

One example that comes to mind is Fiasco. So...on my turn, I'm going to get a black or white die, depending on if things went badly or well for my character, but otherwise me and some other guys are just gonna improv this out.

This is interesting.

BW doesn't have these sorts of mechanics: the rules for Beliefs, Instincts etc are "write some interesting ones, and riff off other people's" - which is close to your ex nihilo scenario, though at prep time rather than in play. MHRP does have something closer to the sort of mechanic you mention, though, because eg a character might get XP for identifying an opponent as an old foe or an old friend. So the structured milestones create a framework for the players to drive the story in certain ways.

Policing of what?

I don't think I've found this, but I'm working of a narrow experience base and may not be fully following your point!

In the systems I run this is all put onto the GM's shoulders - the GM is expected to be able to frame scenes and narrate consequences in a way that is appropriate to the demands of genre, character, situation, etc (be that mystery or quest) using rather generic mechanics (eg the BW system for resolving checks) and rather generic techniques (eg "fail forward", "say 'yes' or roll the dice", etc). Is this part of what you have in mind when you talk about the need for GM "policing" - that when the GM's tools are the sorts of "generic" tools I've described, then s/he has to make affirmative judgement calls abut the unfolding shape of the fiction in a way that isn't the case in a tactical game?

Yes. This is exactly what I was getting at, although I was struggling to find the correct words. Did a character actually address his belief? Who judges? How do you decide? Basically, a lot of narrative "adjudication" work gets off-loaded onto the participants. (Not that that can't be successful.) I agree with you that it puts players at more emotional risk, which, I feel might be another barrier to participation. Conversely, I suspect that some of the reason some people enjoy playing racially aggressive Dwarves or Elves, or pedantic and zealous paladins is that the existing material provides expectations that give them cover to explore their own feelings about these (or similar) odious personality traits. If you bring something similar to a Fate game as a list of aspects then that's all on you, good or ill. You don't get to pass it off on some other author. (Unless, of course, you're playing in an established setting.)

I think I find that that MHRP approach creates a lighter, more "frothy" and slightly wacky game; whereas the BW approach - at least at it's best - can be more intense and push the player harder. (Eg because there's no framework to fall back on, the justification is that I thought this made for a good Belief. So the player's artistic (?) judgement is on the line.)

IME, non-sim/narrative supers games all seem to have this problem to some degree. I dunno why. Capes has an almost irresistible tendency to silly with the supers. Yet when I switched to Fantasy...we went hours without whacky. I haven't noticed any particular tendency of the systems themselves to create this kind of atmosphere. Obviously, YMMV quite a bit.

You've taken this thought further than I had in my mind when I posted. I was thinking of much more banal stuff like, if you want the cooking of a meal to be a big deal in the game, then you need a mechanical framework that can make that happen. In BW this is via the mechanics for "linked tests" - a type of augment - so if your cooking stuffs up you make your friends sick/hungry and they get a downstream penalty, but if you cook well then everyone gets an appropriate buff; and in the session I mentioned I spent metagame resources to boost my cooking dice pool in an attempt to get the buff (I didn't get the buff but didn't cause a penalty either). This can't happen in a system where there is no resolution system for cooking, no way to make it matter (eg penalties/buffs flowing from it), no way for the player to show that it matters (eg spending metagame resources on it), etc.

But if I'm understanding you properly, you're not talking just about mechanical elements that can make some subject matter of endeavour actually count - like cooking, or mending (something that also came up in my BW session), or similar "mundane" things. You're talking about resolution frameworks for establishing consequences that drive things in particular ways (eg murder mystery vs questing journey).

Correct. I've seen several Apocalypse Engine games do this with marginal-but-substantive success, although they tend to be even more successful at recreating the atmosphere of a particular genre. One of the things I like about Blades in the Dark is that it frames all that resolution in a way that repeatedly "brings the story home". That is, sessions narratives are structured around a "score" for you and your band of miscreants. You start by choosing an opportunity, you work through it, then you recover/advance your position, etc. Want a longer session, do two scores. You can certainly have larger/longer plotlines (especially for your crew as a group), but even their operations are codified in what appears to me to be a substantial manner

I have a decent collection of story/fiction-first games, some from the Forge, some not. As I think you hit upon elsewhere, control of narrative power is often the actual crux of play. ("Sure, the Death Star is gonna get blown up, but how, and who gets to decide?") Many of the games rely on currencies of one type or another, and a few are AFAICT completely playable as token&dice games that you could ignore the fiction with. I think that's when you've got a problem. Mechanics being so divorced from the fiction as to make any connection spurious and only an artifact of direct effort put forth by the participants.* It can turn a game into some kind of weird improv session. I think they've shifted away from that, but often not entirely.

*To be fair, I don't think it was totally unjustified, from a design point of view. Faced with the problem of supporting any sort of story the players might want...naturally you try to create a universal adapter. However, that offload is (I believe) what makes it difficult to create that sort surprise or resolution tension we expect from entertainment. If the mechanics generate such results, then then can come at something more of a surprise.

anyway, that's probably enough for now.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION], there's a lot in your post, this is just picking up on the bits where I thought I had something to contribute.

Often, making a good/interesting story involves loss on the part of the protagonist. Most traditional rpgs have no mechanism rewarding a player for a substantive loss by their character. Reward mechanisms, like XP/leveling, are based solely on "winning" whatever goals the character has, and apply to the character and player as well. Contrast this with Fiasco, in which you the player can "win" by having your character suffer the most during the course of the game. (Although if you do win in this fashion, your character walks away winning as well.) This puts a player's immediate interests at odds with the character's immediate interests in a way that allows for plotlines that D&D would have great difficulty creating.

I know of Fiasco but don't know it.

Of the systems I do know (again, nothing very radical) I like BW the best in this respect: advancing your PC requires confronting challenges that you will almost certainly lose (unless you deploy a lot of metagame resources and get lucky). So loss on the part of the protagonists is a recurring, sometimes near-constant, feature of the game.

I agree that D&D has a very hard time with this, as (i) there is no reason not to try and win, and (ii) the penalty for loss is often PC death.

IME, non-sim/narrative supers games all seem to have this problem to some degree. I dunno why. Capes has an almost irresistible tendency to silly with the supers. Yet when I switched to Fantasy...we went hours without whacky.

My fantasy Cortex/MHRP isn't comedic, but it's is more light-hearted than typical D&D. I think in part because the system encourages the player to take the situation and run with it - there is no sober planning or worrying about consequences.

I find it rather liberating in this respect!

I suspect that some of the reason some people enjoy playing racially aggressive Dwarves or Elves, or pedantic and zealous paladins is that the existing material provides expectations that give them cover to explore their own feelings about these (or similar) odious personality traits. If you bring something similar to a Fate game as a list of aspects then that's all on you, good or ill. You don't get to pass it off on some other author.

Interesting point.

Because I've never done much system=story RPGing (even as simple a one as classic alignment) in a way that lets the player blame the author, I feel that I haven't seen a lot of what you describe. My players have tended to have to take responsibility for their PCs. But I'm aware that the phenomenon exists.

I have a decent collection of story/fiction-first games, some from the Forge, some not. As I think you hit upon elsewhere, control of narrative power is often the actual crux of play. ("Sure, the Death Star is gonna get blown up, but how, and who gets to decide?") Many of the games rely on currencies of one type or another, and a few are AFAICT completely playable as token&dice games that you could ignore the fiction with. I think that's when you've got a problem. Mechanics being so divorced from the fiction as to make any connection spurious and only an artifact of direct effort put forth by the participants.

Vincent Baker wrote about this a while ago, contrasting IIEE with teeth with IIEE that relies upon the participants to do the work of linking resolution to fiction (he contrasted his designs of DitV with In a Wicked Age).

Oddly enough, I think that 4e skill challenges have more "teeth" (in Baker's sense) than BW Duel of Wits, which can become just a dice game if the players don't inject their fiction into it. (Whereas a move in a skill challenge can't be adjudicated, at least if the canonical procedure is being followed, until located in the fiction.)

Of course, classic D&D combat can suffer from this problem badly: dice are rolled, hits taken, but who knows what is going on in the fiction! - it's all just numbers.

Faced with the problem of supporting any sort of story the players might want...naturally you try to create a universal adapter. However, that offload is (I believe) what makes it difficult to create that sort surprise or resolution tension we expect from entertainment. If the mechanics generate such results, then then can come at something more of a surprise.

I feel that the issue of surprise can be divorced from the issue of teeth for IIEE - but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to articulate it clearly. It's more a gut feel, based on play experiences with 4e skills and BW.

But - as per my earlier post - it shifts a big load onto the GM to be able to narrate consequences. The system won't, in itself, carry that load, though it can help (I'm thinking of the DW list of "GM moves", and a less canonical equivalent in the BW Adventure Burner advising the GM about options for narrating failure).