Defining RPG's Take 2 - Prescriptive vs Descriptive

[pemerton]

Respectfully, Pemerton, I have seen enough of your posts that I have to question why you are making this argument, because I know you are quite intelligent.

The respect is mutual*, which is why I'm puzzled by you going along with this presciptive/descriptive thing.

with Mearls, it is fairly obvious to most people what he meant (and they were able to infer it pretty well) when he discussed the difference between 4e and 5e in those terms. You might disagree that this was a good change, but it's kind of jerky to argue that this was a change .... or that it wasn't noticeable. Jus' sayin'.

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D&D was going to move away from a focus on "having a rule for every possible thing" framework to a more "rules to enable a more narrative style of play" framework.

I took Mearls to be pointing to a change in D&D to make it more commercially popular. And also to change the rules so that fewer rules confer permissions on the player, and more rules confer permissions on the GM. (By "narrative" play I think Mearls means GM-narrated outcomes of player action declarations for their PCs.)

I think describing this as "descriptive" and not "prescriptive" makes no sense. 5e has rulebooks that tell people how to play the game; they're not sociological treatises containing observatins of D&D players. There's a lot of evidence that people follow those rules; and before they were published the number of D&D players using a +2 to +6 proficiency structure, or the 5e skill list or the 5e legendary actions rules, or . . . was approximately zero.

Descriptive isn't a synonym for prescription that people like. Nor for prescription that confers more permissions on a participant.

And that's before we get to the question that, if 4e is a prescriptive RPG and 5e a descriptive one, how can it be that RPGs in general are characterised by "descriptive" rules?

RPGs have some rules (to which I respond to your comment about the rules in RPGs with ... DUH... c'mon), the entire modality of play in an RPG is not subsumed with the rules.

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play itself will have to be determined in cases that require ad hoc decision making. It goes without saying (or should) that given tables in most RPGs will play differently; some subtly, some greatly, in a manner unlike that of chess.

Lots of rule-governed activities have all sorts of variation for all sorts of reasons.

Different cricket teams play by the same rules but can have very different style and approaches.

Two entrants in any essay competition might both conform to the competition rules but write very different essays having different rhetorical goals and using very different literary devices.

A game which says "Pick five cards from this deck of words and pictures: your team then has five minutes to come up with a three-act story structure that incorporates what you drew" might be fun, or might be painful, depending on what's on the cards and how much you like outling screenplays. It would certainly produce pretty different outcomes at different tables, and I don't know that a computer would be all that good at it.

And so a game - like a RPG - that says "Player moves must engage the relationship between the protagonist who is the centre of the player's action declaration, and the rest of the fictional environment in which s/he finds him/herself" is going to produce wildly varying action declarations. And if the rules then say "The game includes a referee who will adjudicate the outcomes of such declarations", those adjudications will vary quite a bit as well. (Over the past few years, I've participated in multiple thread about that, with particular reference to adjudication of declarations of actions for high level non spellcasters in D&D.)

All this has nothing to do with prescriptive vs descriptive. The rules of a RPG don't describe anything. They set out permissions, limitations, requirements, procedures for doing things, etc. That's what makes them rules. The mechanics of a RPG are a subset of those rules, and mostly they set out procedures but often also requirements. [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] wants to bracket PC build mechanics, so let's look at some others:

The DM calls for an ability check when a character or monster attempts an action (other than an attack) that has a chance of failure. (Basic PDF, p 58)

Every character and monster has a speed, which is the distance in feet that the character or monster can walk in 1 round. (Basice PDF, p 63)

The game organizes the chaos of combat into a cycle of rounds and turns. A round represents about 6 seconds in the game world. During a round, each participant in a battle takes a turn. The order of turns is determined at the beginning of a combat encounter, when everyone rolls initiative. Once everyone has taken a turn, the fight continues to the next round if neither side has defeated the other. (Basic PDF, p 69)​

Those are all prescriptions. They state procedures to be followed in the context of various sorts of action declarations. And obviously the examples could be multiplied.

As far as I can tell, the real difference that [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] has tried to get at in both threads is that (1) RPGs involve some sort of shared fiction, and (2) action declarations in RPGs play that fiction. I think that is very much worth talking about - what does it mean to play the fiction? How is the fiction established? How is playing the fiction adjudicated?

Whereas I think these attempts to describe RPGs in very abstract, formal and structural terms (their rules are descriptive - a near-contradiction; they aren't games but game-creation engines) are dead ends, that rest on ultimately unsound distinctions while also not cutting to the heart of what RPGing involves, which is that playing of a shared fiction.

And while I'm ranting, focusing on what it means to play the fiction in a RPG can take discussion away from relatively contentious topics like who writes the story or who decides what in-fiction goal the players are aiming at to more analytical and (I would imagine) at least slightly less contentious topics like what dices systems might be used if a GM doesn't want to just stipulate outcomes as successes or failures and what are the different ways in which dice systems can map the fiction or abstract away from it and what effect does it have on play if a player or the GM has to spend resources to play the fiction (as in, say Fate or MHRP, contrasted with - say - Runequest, D&D or Burning Wheel).

Those are significant questions about RPG play and design.


* I share your dislike of gnomes as a PC archetype, though have GMed for a player who loved them. I don't share your dislike of paladins (and clerics, warrior-clerics, knights, etc) as a PC archetype - I regularly GM for them, and when I play tend to play them.

 

[Hussar]

Chess actually tells you EXACTLY what you can move. You cannot make a move that is not prescribed by the rules, full stop. In play, 100% of your moves are prescribed by the mechanics.

In an RPG, I could say that the Duke gives me his horse, depending on the fiction that has been established in play. It is possible. Although, fair enough, probably unlikely.

And, note, you are changing the example. You are having the player take control of another character in order to have something happen. By and large, that's not possible in most games, regardless of what kind of game.

 

[pemerton]

Chess actually tells you EXACTLY what you can move. You cannot make a move that is not prescribed by the rules, full stop. In play, 100% of your moves are prescribed by the mechanics.

But it doesn't tell you what to move. You can make whatever permitted move you like.

In an RPG, I could say that the Duke gives me his horse, depending on the fiction that has been established in play. It is possible. Although, fair enough, probably unlikely.

And, note, you are changing the example. You are having the player take control of another character in order to have something happen. By and large, that's not possible in most games, regardless of what kind of game.

Huh? In chess there are no characters, so you can neither take control of them nor be prohibited from doing so.

My point is that an RPG also has prohibited moves. I've participated in a lot of ENworld threads, as you know, about player and GM functions. And the most common refrain I here on those threads is that a player cannot make a move along the lines of The Duke of Geoff rides up and gifts me a warhorse. There is all sorts of circumscriptions around the way the players are allowed to change the fiction (in fact some tables don't allow players to make moves at all, and only allow them to make suggestions to the GM, but I'm prepared to treat those as rather extreme cases).

Another example of a limit: in most RPGs, if the established fiction is that my PC is trapped in an oubliette in the desert, then I jump into the ocean and swim for shore is not a permitted move. Because it doesn't engage the established fictional context in which my PC finds him-/herself.

I know people like to say that in a RPG you can do anything but it's not literally true. What they mean is that in a RPG you can declare any action for your PC that engages the established fictional context your PC finds him-/herself in and is the sort of thing that this game permits your sort of PC to do. That's a prescription for how to play the game. It has to be learned, just like any other game's rules.