Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Consequence and Reward in RPGs
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7717994" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>Yes. I'm talking about what I know, and as I posted that's nothing very radical.</p><p></p><p>But I also think the RPG idea of "I am playing my person - my <em>me</em> - in this fictional situation" has a genuine degree of power to it. So there's a <em>reason</em> to try and make this work from the story point of view.</p><p></p><p>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 <em>potentially overly abstract</em> side of the line?</p><p></p><p></p><p>This is interesting.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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 <em>I thought this made for a good Belief</em>. So the player's artistic (?) judgement is on the line.)</p><p></p><p>(I hope that the above comments make sense and that I haven't misconstrued your point.)</p><p></p><p>Policing of what?</p><p></p><p>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!</p><p></p><p>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 <em>show</em> that it matters (eg spending metagame resources on it), etc.</p><p></p><p>But if I'm understanding you properly, you're not talking just about mechanical elements that can make some subject matter of endeavour <em>actually count</em> - 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).</p><p></p><p>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?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7717994, member: 42582"] 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 [I]me[/I] - in this fictional situation" has a genuine degree of power to it. So there's a [I]reason[/I] to try and make this work from the story point of view. 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 [I]potentially overly abstract[/I] side of the line? 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]I thought this made for a good Belief[/I]. 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.) 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! 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 [I]show[/I] 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 [I]actually count[/I] - 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? [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Consequence and Reward in RPGs
Top