Failing Forward

[dd.stevenson]

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.

Maybe you could elaborate a bit on what you mean by "significant strategising" here? From what I have seen/experienced, it's well possible for players to strategize--in the sense that they can plan to get their foes where they want them, before combat even starts--as long as they are able to bounce their ideas off the DM first to get some notion about how the ruling would go.

Great post, btw.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

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."

I can see how it might be a contributing factor, but it also seems like it could be solved if your GM was better about describing the world, and/or if you spent more time learning the setting.

Part of that is just the reason why fantasy remains popular - because we've all seen enough of it that we can fill in the gaps about how the world works, without having the GM spell everything out all the time. Tropes are super useful here. For anything less standard, you really need to spend more effort to get on the same page as the GM before the game. Letting the player come up with details would certainly lessen the homework load, although it could be difficult to keep the positions separate if you're constantly switching back and forth between character-role and author-role.

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.

Yeah, it really sounds like you just need the GM to do a better job of describing the world, and including all of the sorts of details that you would otherwise want to add. How could it be easier to reconcile your view of the world with that of everyone else at the table, rather than everyone reconciling their own view with just the GM?

I can definitely see the merit in cooperative world-building, but probably as an out-of-game thing that you do before the campaign starts. There's a lot that can go wrong if the GM is trying to have NPCs interact off-screen, but they don't know some of the societal rules that the player introduces at a later point.

And there's definitely an issue with spending Fate points for establishing a detail about the world, especially if that detail is both immensely important to your immersion and irrelevant toward success in whatever your goal happens to be. It really seems like you should just be able to talk over those details, without bringing some sort of meta-game currency into the equation, but I guess they needed some way to keep that in check and that's the only limiter they had.

 

[Maxperson]

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."

It doesn't say that at all. If you want a knowledgeable PC, create one. Also, it's not metagaming to play the PC accurately. Metagaming is bringing knowledge into the game world from outside the game world that the PC would have no way of knowing. It isn't failing to give the PC knowledge it shouldn't have.

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.

You understand as much as you do about the world you live in because you live in the information age. Go back 100 years and people were far, far more ignorant. Go back 200 and it's worse still. The D&D world doesn't have the internet, newspapers, T.V. and cable, radio and so on to spread knowledge. At least not unless the DM creates it.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I can see how it might be a contributing factor, but it also seems like it could be solved if your GM was better about describing the world, and/or if you spent more time learning the setting.

Yes, my GM could read a massive list of details about the world out every time we enter a new area - or I could spend a lot of time playing 20 Questions. On the other hand both of these take a lot of time, and time is a precious resource. Also knowing what the players are going to ask is a challenge.

I know what you are advocating - but it is far from the only way to run things, and is a way I find extremely slow and clunky. Either by burying the players in the GM's wall of text or by asking lots of questions about things the character would be able to see at a glance, massively weakening immersion. As such I find this a vastly inferior way of doing things, one which makes for a less rich world from both sides of the table, and effectively leads to the experience of playing a blindfolded character being lead around by a guide (i.e. the GM) rather than having the PC actually inhabit the world. And I mean that literally - you can never get more description of the world by your way of doing things than a blind person with a guide (shared with multiple other people) would.

For anything less standard, you really need to spend more effort to get on the same page as the GM before the game. Letting the player come up with details would certainly lessen the homework load, although it could be difficult to keep the positions separate if you're constantly switching back and forth between character-role and author-role.

This "Constantly switching back and forth between character-role and author-role" is something I only recall ever hearing from players whose major experience is with 90s RPGs or D&D 3.X. The reason I believe it breaks immersion for you is that you have been trained to believe that the players should not step on the DM's toes by actually trying to understand how the world works and sharing their vision as authoritative.

Yeah, it really sounds like you just need the GM to do a better job of describing the world, and including all of the sorts of details that you would otherwise want to add. How could it be easier to reconcile your view of the world with that of everyone else at the table, rather than everyone reconciling their own view with just the GM?

I'm going to assume from this you've never done improv drama. And don't understand what @pemerton would call the "No Myth" style of worldbuilding. Putting it simply, when the worldbuilding is solely up to the GM it is tightly held - and there is always a lot behind the scenes. Which means it's very easy to cross the lines because they are there but you can't see them. When handling cooperative worldbuilding if it hasn't been declared and someone contradicts it then you re-write it (which doesn't take that much). Even if you're the GM. (And no, this doesn't lead to people subverting the entire premise of the adventure unless you are playing with jerks). It's different rules of ettiquette - but both much easier for the GM and IME more immersive for any players who aren't vastly experienced with either D&D or WoD to the near-exclusion of other games.

It doesn't say that at all. If you want a knowledgeable PC, create one. Also, it's not metagaming to play the PC accurately. Metagaming is bringing knowledge into the game world from outside the game world that the PC would have no way of knowing. It isn't failing to give the PC knowledge it shouldn't have.

It is, however, almost always in my experience, used as a club to beat players who are playing smart characters. Rather than players who are e.g. trying to have their characters make gunpowder (which is, I agree, metagaming). Knowing how badly hurt you are isn't metagaming. Nor is knowing monster behaviour patterns. And any game that says smart and successful play is opposed to the play desired is badly designed.

 

[Maxperson]

It is, however, almost always in my experience, used as a club to beat players who are playing smart characters. Rather than players who are e.g. trying to have their characters make gunpowder (which is, I agree, metagaming). Knowing how badly hurt you are isn't metagaming. Nor is knowing monster behaviour patterns. And any game that says smart and successful play is opposed to the play desired is badly designed.

Knowing monster behavior patters is metagaming if your PC has no in game reason to know them. If you have some sort of in game reason to know it, then more power to you. Also, knowing monster behaviors is not "playing smart", it's metagaming. Playing smart is using strategies and tactics. Taking time in game to research what you might encounter and thereby learn those patterns. That's smart play.

 

[dd.stevenson]

I know what you are advocating - but it is far from the only way to run things

Although you quoted me, I believe you were responding to Saelorn as I'm not advocating, and I sure as heck didn't say anything about only one way to run things.

 

[Bedrockgames]

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 was just talking about the ted talks; I haven't read the book by Kahneman. As I recall in the talks, one of the speakers, can't remember who as I listened to it when it first aired, said that the mental short cuts we use are usually quite effective, they evolved to be. The problem is those times they are not because they are based on making snap judgments, often using superficial information. But I wasn't arguing against applying reason and logic to vet a decision. In my view better GMs have the ability to reflect on their decisions and to evaluate their past choices to help them make better ones in the future. I am all for deliberation and logic being applied to these things.

I just want to be clear here though, I have no interest in reading his book and I am not interested in critiquing the model. It is well outside my expertise and not a subject I have particular interest in incorporating into my gaming. The model may well be sound. I am not refuting or supporting it. As I said before, I am very dubious of this sort of researching being applied to discussions of style and play in roleplaying games. Particularly by people who are not psychologists.

 

[Bedrockgames]

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.

We've discussed this before, but I am not particularly persuaded by GNS theory and you seem to be steering this toward that model. No real desire to get into that discussion again. That said, I don't see any reason why anything I said would prevent someone from engaging strategy or story. The GM can still abide by the rules of the game, and story can still emerge and be part of the experience. It is just that the GM is trying to be fair, objective and truthful to his or her sense of what would happen when making choices and decisions. A GM deciding that an NPC should be angry at the party for stealing his livestock, or that there in fact ought to be 2 haberdashers in town given the population size, won't have any impact on their ability to strategize or experience a story. Personally I find strategizing easier when the GM is careful in presenting a believable world.

In terms of my play style, while experiencing the world is important, I also like a fair amount of strategizing and puzzles. Generally I'd prefer the strategy occur through the lens of the game world (so I am not playing a mini-game or something on top of the RPG). But sometimes you have to break out the miniatures and think in terms of where the pieces are when forces are large enough.

In terms of story provocation, it really depends on what you mean by that. My games have plenty of drama, conflict and excitement. I don't know if any of that equates to story provocation or not, but isn't just about walking around and not having stuff happen.

 

[Umbran]

Yes, my GM could read a massive list of details about the world out every time we enter a new area - or I could spend a lot of time playing 20 Questions. On the other hand both of these take a lot of time, and time is a precious resource. Also knowing what the players are going to ask is a challenge.

Somewhere a couple of days ago, I saw someone mentioning how RPGs are unique in part because of the high level of detail in the game world. I had to laugh.

RPGs are generally limited to verbal communication speeds - you can only give as much detail as you can describe to the players. Since, as you note, time is precious, as a practical matter, we leave *tons* of detail out, and allow convention and genre expectations to fill in most of those details. The GM *can't* do a really full description of all things that might possibly matter to players in reasonable time - players are devious, and may need details down to whether floors and walls are held together with wood pegs or iron nails, and other minutiae. And, to be honest, the players likely wouldn't remember the barrage of all the details you could give them anyway. It'd become useless noise they would ignore.

It is far more efficient to allow many details to be fuzzy, and really determine them only when it is found to matter. We don't need to stipulate what the tabletop is made of until the player is considering setting it on fire. We don't need to be sure if there's a chandelier until someone might want to swing from one. Paying a resource to stipulate a detail is just a way of eliminating a "mother, may I?" loop of GM judgement call of whether they want to allow the player to try something.

Some RPGs (like GUMSHOE) have other mechanics (like the Preparedness ability), that allow the player to make a check to see if they thought to bring along something they didn't stipulate at start. Again, this gets around the waste of stipulating large amounts of detail that turn out not to matter, and instead allow the player to initiate a quick resolution for only the details that do matter to them.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Although you quoted me, I believe you were responding to Saelorn as I'm not advocating, and I sure as heck didn't say anything about only one way to run things.

Sorry. I quoted multiple people in that post - and for some reason didn't respond to your comment. Post edited.

We've discussed this before, but I am not particularly persuaded by GNS theory and you seem to be steering this toward that model.

GNS theory was a useful tool in the early 00s for talking about why games like V:tM and the Storyteller System did not deliver on what people wanted from them. But it's IMO outlived its usefulness by a large margin. About all that should be left from it IMO is "People play RPGs for different goals. And that's cool, and you can design to those people. Some of those goals are G, N, S but there are others."