Failing Forward

[Neonchameleon]

A "role-playing game" is "a game where you primarily play a role"; "role-playing" is defined as "making decisions, from the perspective of the character". A "story-telling game" is "a game where you primarily tell a story"; "story-telling" is defined as "telling a story, as an author would". These definitions are descriptive, based on the meaning of words which are commonly understood. If you don't like them, then substitute in the sentence fragment wherever I've used the specific term, and it gets to the same point.

There might be some ambiguity, in many circumstances, but no sane individual could read the FATE Core rules and come away thinking that it puts immersion and role-playing ahead of telling a story. I could spend hours quoting the rule book on that point, but it would be a waste of time, because this is not in dispute.

The only dispute is whether FATE counts as an RPG, in spite of its obvious focus on story-telling rather than role-playing. That's just semantics, though, and doesn't change any of the underlying facts. FATE and other games with a strong focus on story-telling rather than role-playing are objectively distinct from traditional role-playing games. If meaningful discussion is to be had on the topic, then we need some sort of label to distinguish between them.

OK. So we want to talk about immersion.

Original D&D was played using Pawn Play. Where players didn't try to inhabit their characters - and treated them dying about as seriously as I would losing a game of chess. It was a hacked tabletop wargame. AD&D 1e is not noticably different. And this isn't ambiguous either.

If you want to define Fate as not-a-RPG then we need to continue this conversation by taking into account that D&D is not an RPG either as the focus is on tactics and skill rather than roleplaying and immersion.

Are you prepared to do this? (To me they are both RPGs - and FATE is the more character-immersive of the two).

 

[Umbran]

A "role-playing game" is "a game where you primarily play a role"; "role-playing" is defined as "making decisions, from the perspective of the character". A "story-telling game" is "a game where you primarily tell a story"; "story-telling" is defined as "telling a story, as an author would". These definitions are descriptive, based on the meaning of words which are commonly understood. If you don't like them, then substitute in the sentence fragment wherever I've used the specific term, and it gets to the same point.

The issue is in the "primarily". That's still entirely a subjective thing. You noted above that some things break you out of the role-playing mindset, but that is *you*, not all people. That leads to a bias in perception - people will generally weigh the things that jar them more heavily than other things. The activity that leads you to feel you are "primarily" telling a story may still leave another person feeling they are "primarily" role-playing. So, it is still boxing things by what you like and don't like.

There might be some ambiguity, in many circumstances, but no sane individual could read the FATE Core rules and come away thinking that it puts immersion and role-playing ahead of telling a story.

Statements of the form, "You must have a flaw in mental capacity or character to disagree with me," have no place in this discussion. It is, honestly, a sly form of ad hominem - ascribing a fault to the speaker before they've even spoken so as to dismiss them. It is also hyperbolic, and you have no factual basis for it - if anyone had doubts that this was about passing judgement, you have probably dispelled those doubts with this characterization.

I could spend hours quoting the rule book on that point, but it would be a waste of time, because this is not in dispute.

I dispute it. The rulebook must spend some extra effort on it, because the relevant mechanics are rather different from those of other games. If we measure by page counts, most of the time spent in a D&D game is spent casting spells, specifically, because they take up the bulk of the PHB. But, tell that to the person playing a Fighter! There may be an objective measure of how much attention the rulebooks pays to it, but that's not the same as an objective measure of how much *play* focuses on it. So, it still looks like a subjective issue at the root.

The only dispute is whether FATE counts as an RPG, in spite of its obvious focus on story-telling rather than role-playing.

FATE is a role playing game. The participants adopt the roles of story tellers from various perspectives.

I have to wonder how much time you two have spent reading the rulebooks, as opposed to actually giving the game a fair shake in play. Because, from my experience, you are *VASTLY* overstating the weight of the storytelling and player's author-stance of the game in practice. If the player has defined their Aspects along the lines of their character's experience or abilities (things like, "Championship Boxer") they don't generally have to shift into author-stance to make decisions. The character knows they are a trained boxer, and so will tend to use boxing techniques. When they want to hit someone extra-hard, they spend a Fate point to try to do so. No author-stance needed. No more dissociative than any other game that has resources to spend that aren't in-world resources.

You generally only have to switch to author stance when you've defined your aspects in terms of role in the story, as opposed to role in the fictional world. But, players who don't want to take such a stance generally won't take such Aspects anyway, so this isn't much of an issue.

The player does have a non-character-mind choice when offered a compel. However, unless you're in an adversarial relationship with your GM, there isn't much of a decision - just take the compel, because the Fate point is valuable, and the result is likely interesting. It isn't something one needs to agonize over most of the time.

That's just semantics, though, and doesn't change any of the underlying facts. FATE and other games with a strong focus on story-telling rather than role-playing are objectively distinct from traditional role-playing games.

As previously noted - it seems that what qualifies for one or the other is still subjective, for reasons already stated.

And, let's remember that your "traditional" role playing game icon is... D&D. That came from *wargaming* - where the primary decisions are not made from the individual unit's point of view, but from a commander's and game-player's points of view. D&D, a game in which hordes of people make decisions based not on a character's mindset, but based on game statistics on a sheet that don't exist in-game in any concrete way - still a commander's stance, not an immersed one. So, the "traditional" game does not seem to be an icon of immersion to begin with.

So, I will still accept, "I don't like it." However, I reject the attempt to draw lines of genre between things that *just happen* to be the same as the lines between things you like and don't like. The coincidence seems rather suspicious.

 

[ExploderWizard]

OK. So we want to talk about immersion.

Original D&D was played using Pawn Play. Where players didn't try to inhabit their characters - and treated them dying about as seriously as I would losing a game of chess. It was a hacked tabletop wargame. AD&D 1e is not noticably different. And this isn't ambiguous either.

Heck yeah! There is no requirement to perform as an actor in order to role play. Immersion in this sense is simply reacting to the imagined game space from the POV of the character. Being just a game it doesn't need to be attached to emotional investment. So I roll up a fighter and go into the dungeon in search of gold and glory. The important part of game play is making decisions as that fighter based on the environment. The details of that environment exist independent of my fighter who may or may not get a name before attaining level two. If he dies in a patch of green slime in room 5, oh well time to roll up fighter number two.

I still treat lost characters this way. There is little point in getting too invested in a game construct that could die and be replaced at any time.

 

[Neonchameleon]

The issue is in the "primarily". That's still entirely a subjective thing. You noted above that some things break you out of the role-playing mindset, but that is *you*, not all people. That leads to a bias in perception - people will generally weigh the things that jar them more heavily than other things.

I'm going to expand on that.

To me, based on the evidence I've seen from a range of groups, there is one single barrier to immersion. "Has the player internalised the rules to the point where they no longer need to think about them?" It doesn't matter what the rules are - that is the sole condition required. The player can act within the game without having to think about the mechanical structure of the ruleset. It's possible to be immersed in Fate or D&D (I've done both) - but if you start off with the D&D design assumptions (like the siliness of hit points and the weirdness of vancian casting) internalised and the Fate ones (like aspect use) not then D&D is going to be much easier to immerse in. If on the other hand you start from the other direction the immersion in Fate is going to be much much easier than D&D. (And few start as equals).

One point of Rules Light games is that with few rules to get in the way you can internalise the ruleset more easily (and nothing to me shatters immersion like spending ten minutes flipping through a rulebook to find the exact rule you need).

And one reason I love Vincent Baker's game design (although have no wish to play Poison'd or some of his other games) is that he intentionally designs round the way freeform gamers play, putting the mechanical resolution at the least intrusive points possible for freeform gaming. Which means that his games are designed to be as immersive as possible for people who aren't already tabletop roleplayers, making them excellent bridge games into tabletop RP from the creative side.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

If you want to define Fate as not-a-RPG then we need to continue this conversation by taking into account that D&D is not an RPG either as the focus is on tactics and skill rather than roleplaying and immersion.

I didn't play D&D before 2E, and from what I can tell, you are spot-on about earlier editions being a wargame. The presentation matters, like, a lot. I'm fine if you want to say that FATE is as-much of an RPG as old D&D is.

The difference is that D&D had later editions where they changed their message, where it went from being just a wargame into something that was very character-immersion focused. The late eighties and early nineties were the heyday of the anti-meta-gaming movement.

Given time and sufficient motivation, I could see FATE moving in that same direction. The core mechanic (funny dice + skills) is fairly solid, from a math standpoint. For now, though, it's not really there - it's still very focused on telling a story about a character rather than living as the character.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The rest is simply defining the nature of that role. FATE is a role playing game. The participants adopt the roles of story tellers from various perspectives. It is the nature of the role that defines the type of game since both traditional rpgs and story focused rpgs feature roles for the players.

That is kind of my point, but it's also confusing the terms. Much as you could say that a very Narrative-focused game is a Simulation because you're Simulating a Narrative-based world, you could say that a Story-based game is Role-based because you're playing the Role of a Storyteller. In more common parlance, Simulation means you don't have Narrative influence, and Role-playing means you're playing the character rather than the author.

It's been said before, but the Dresden Files game is a great game if you want to be Jim Butcher, but not so much if you want to be Harry Dresden.

 

[Balesir]

Again, impact mattered in what they were saying. Because if I recall the Ted talks correctly, one of the key points was most of the time, these mental shortcuts work just fine. They didn't put a number on it, but let's say that is 80 or 90 percent. It is was the remaining 10-20 percent of the times that it was an issue.

Well, the incidence of mistakes is quite high, but the more "serious" and important the decision, the more likely "system 2" is to scrutinise and veto dubious answers, so instances of high impact errors are relatively rare (as one would hope!) Instances of low-impact errors are high, however - high enough to affect economic systems (and hence my interest in studying the area).

If you feel you need to refute the model, however, please instead read it through again, because I think it shows also how just the structure you espouse can work, and work well. I'm going to talk about it in the context of this next paragraph, because it caused me to think more deeply - always a good thing, and much more fun than what I should have been doing!

I don't know I feel like sometimes when you tell people that you like the world in a setting to feel real, you immediately get presented with this straw man that holds up the impossibility of a genuine actual simulation. I guess you could throw your hands up at that, or feel like you have to master the field of cognitive bias before getting behind the GM seat. Personally I think it is usually enough to strive for fairness, objectivity and to try to be self aware enough that you don't make decisions on thing like where you want the adventure to go or the story you are interested in emerging. You can tell us it is impossible, but the fact is many of us have experienced exactly the kind of game we describe. We're not lying about it.

Note that system 1, when it uses an availability heuristic to judge an intensity, often looks for easily recalled instances in life or art. In the case of RPGs, often it looks in genre books, movies, TV series and so on. It follows, then, that if you share a common culture and common tastes in genre reading and watching, it would be quite possible to cultivate a group of people who are all using similar bases for their availability heuristics when judging things about the game world, provided that the genre and sources were clear enough. This would give the players and the GM enough of a common notion of the game world to have it feel coherent and "familiar" to play in. In other words, what you describe happening in your games fits well with the theory.

So, what's my beef? Well, thinking about it, I don't have any objection to the "GM makes a world for the players to explore" from the point of view of feeling "real", or permitting exploration. My problem is that it prevents any real bite of the "game" part of "roleplaying games", because the players have no firm base of understanding upon which to make strategic decisions. Or, rather, as my earlier post shows, if they do persist in "gaming" their one avenue is to game the GM, by trying to anchor and frame his decisions.

Now, it occurs to me that, from your perspective, this may very well be no real problem - in fact, it makes perfect sense for it to be a positive advantage. The paragraph I quoted above gives me the impression that exploration and experiencing the game world and situation are more important in your gaming style than either story provokation or strategising. My experience suggests that, if either of these two features are allowed, they rapidly become a primary focus of play. It makes good sense to me, therefore, that you would want to discourage them if you wanted to positively promote the experiencing/exploring aspect of roleplaying.

Both (collaborative) story provokation and gaming/strategising require hard-and-fast rules to work well. Without a solid rule foundation, gamers cannot make sound tactical or strategic plans and decisions and collaborative story-play will devolve into one person dominating the "story"*.

So, if you want to steer clear of either gamist or narrativist play, I think that GM judgement calls could be just the ticket. This will still be susceptible to "disruptive" players who want to play in either "storytelling" or "gaming" mode, but that is an issue of communication. It should be made clear that, while there are (perfectly good) games aimed at promoting just those agendas, those playing this game are interested in avoiding them in order to promote the simple joy of exploring and experiencing the wonders of the game world.

If you want a game with significant strategising or collaborative story provokation, though, GM judgement calls are best avoided. This is because they allow players only a hazy concept of what the "rules" are and, worse, once they realise what the rules really are they are susceptible to abuse, if you game them. GM decisions can be "anchored" and "framed" with a view to either dominating the story or "winning" the game - and neither is good for the health of play.

An interesting insight, I think, into the place of GM judgement calls in roleplaying rules - thanks!

*: Another aside - the existence of firm rules such as FATE point rules is why I think [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] is quite wrong about not being able to explore a world/story you have had a role in authoring. The point of such rules in games designed for collaborative storytelling is to ensure that the story is collaborative - that everyone gets input into the authorship. This can indeed result in stories that surprise everyone who is playing! In FATE, you can do a pretty good job of directing the story just as you want... right up until you run out of FATE points! Then it's someone else's go. If you want a simple and quick way to try this out, try the card game "Once Upon a Time". It does something similar by giving rules for narratorship to move around the table and an objective (play all your cards). It's quite short and very simple, but I challenge anyone to predict the story that will come out of a game!

 

[Balesir]

To me, based on the evidence I've seen from a range of groups, there is one single barrier to immersion. "Has the player internalised the rules to the point where they no longer need to think about them?" It doesn't matter what the rules are - that is the sole condition required. The player can act within the game without having to think about the mechanical structure of the ruleset.

Oooh - this is interesting. So, tying rules to Dan Kahneman's "system 1 thinking" would aid immersion. How did I miss that so far??

Make rules that work on intensities (die sizes?), use no maths (intensities grow or shrink in aliquots) and do not demand additive or probability judgements (for the rules - such judgements about the game world are quite permissible). Link up the intensities to good availability heuristic fodder (books and films, preferably in great number) and you're set. Hmm.

 

[Neonchameleon]

The difference is that D&D had later editions where they changed their message, where it went from being just a wargame into something that was very character-immersion focused. The late eighties and early nineties were the heyday of the anti-meta-gaming movement.

The anti-meta-gaming movement/the roleplaying not rollplaying movement is to me hostile to actual roleplaying. This is because what it says is "You must play characters who know very little about the world they are in and you must use a bit of your brain to metagame to intentionally keep them in the dark."

Now me, I know quite a bit about the world I live in. And I expect my characters to do likewise - and more than can actually be put into mechanics as they can see and even smell details I'd miss, and know the local customs. When I spend a plot point in Fate to create something in a scene I'm not. What I'm doing is saying "This is how I understand the world to work (and possibly why I'm doing what I am) - for the world to work otherwise is something I'd find immensely jarring". And I can of course only do this where there is an established aspect meaning I have to work it with how everyone else understands the scene; what I'm working with/for might be a surprise but it shouldn't jar their immersion. And I find not having a hand in the worldbuilding actually spoils my immersion in any except the most fish-out-of-water scenarios.

That said, Dresden Files makes two major mistakes that have been fixed in Fate Core/Fate Accelerated (and I'm looking forward to Dresden Files Accelerated). The first is too many aspects. Ten is far, far too many. No one can keep ten aspects in their head at a time - and that's before you add in scene aspects (and pity the poor GM). Fate Core/Accelarated/Atomic Robo use five aspects each - with one "High Concept" aspect, one Weakness, and three other aspects. Much easier. And second is to massively streamline the stunts (I miss the old SotC Master of Disguise, but it's still makeable in Fate Core). No trees - and far fewer stunts per character. So a current generation Fate character fits comfortably on an index card and possibly a post-it note.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Oooh - this is interesting. So, tying rules to Dan Kahneman's "system 1 thinking" would aid immersion. How did I miss that so far??

Make rules that work on intensities (die sizes?), use no maths (intensities grow or shrink in aliquots) and do not demand additive or probability judgements (for the rules - such judgements about the game world are quite permissible). Link up the intensities to good availability heuristic fodder (books and films, preferably in great number) and you're set. Hmm.

If you're prepared to compromise slightly on the no maths condition (no maths that's non-additive and no maths that can't be done on your fingers) and you add the condition "Any character sheet must be able to be put neatly onto one side of an index card and not require looking in the manual any non-basic rules" you've just described both Dogs in the Vineyard and two of the four main Cortex+ Games (Marvel Heroic and Leverage) - and probably Firefly as well* although you might need neat handwriting. If you add the condition "6 sided dice only" but because of that you have a small static modifier to the die rolls you've now added in Fate Core/Accelerated and Apocalypse World and most of its derivatives.

And I don't think it's a coincidence I've just named some of my favourite RPGs.

* The new Firefly RPG is not the old Serenity RPG. This can confuse people.