D&D General "Hot" take: Aesthetically-pleasing rules are highly overvalued

[Thomas Shey]

Most people outside the Forge context use "simulationism" to describe the subset of simulationist play that Ron Edwards labels "purist for system". Whereas "genre simulation" is what Edwards calls "high concept" simulationism.

It also doesn't help that a fair number of people were using "simulationism" in the pre-Forge rec.games.frp.advocacy way for a long time before the GNS came along, and as such it colonized a fair number of vocabularies never exposed to the latter. And RGFA simulation absolutely would not deal with something like genre emulation (which was firmly a dramatism thing).

 

[pemerton]

RGFA simulation absolutely would not deal with something like genre emulation (which was firmly a dramatism thing).

This reflects a theoretical split: is the relevant dimension for analysis and classification exploration of the shared fiction? - which is what Edwards thinks, and labels as "simulationism": whether that is via "system" or via "high concept" is a secondary concern.

Or is the relevant dimension story/genre/narrative? - which is what dramatism as a label picks up, but which Edwards rejects because it groups together "story before" and "story now" whereas experience leads Edwards to think that is a fundamental cleavage in RPG play.

For what it's worth, I take Edwards' side in this theoretical disagreement.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This reflects a theoretical split: is the relevant dimension for analysis and classification exploration of the shared fiction? - which is what Edwards thinks, and labels as "simulationism": whether that is via "system" or via "high concept" is a secondary concern.

Or is the relevant dimension story/genre/narrative? - which is what dramatism as a label picks up, but which Edwards rejects because it groups together "story before" and "story now" whereas experience leads Edwards to think that is a fundamental cleavage in RPG play.

For what it's worth, I take Edwards' side in this theoretical disagreement.

The problem is, this elevates a theoretical concern over practical usage; people who care about simulationist concerns in any other context will find rules to support genre jarring unless they're reified (in which case almost anyone else will find them jarring, since it means that the genre conceits will be visible as such in-game).

On the other hand, the same people who are interested in story based concerns expect the rules to support the narrative conceits, and would likely be a bit put off if they didn't.

So my own view is that when the theoretical models fails to represent the reality, its a bad theory. GDS distinctly had some problems (mostly that it really didn't know what to do with gamism) but at least its dramatism and simulationism seemed to actually sync up to usage (with the caveat that the latter approach was, even back in that period never exactly an extensive approach). GNS just shuffles its problems around by knowing at least vaguely what to do with gamism, but offloading things into simulationism that don't really go together on the same usage in practice because it makes narrativism more tidy.

 

[pemerton]

The problem is, this elevates a theoretical concern over practical usage; people who care about simulationist concerns in any other context will find rules to support genre jarring unless they're reified (in which case almost anyone else will find them jarring, since it means that the genre conceits will be visible as such in-game).

On the other hand, the same people who are interested in story based concerns expect the rules to support the narrative conceits, and would likely be a bit put off if they didn't.

So my own view is that when the theoretical models fails to represent the reality, its a bad theory..

The last sentence is true. But I don't find that Edwards has elevated a theoretical concern over practical usage. His account explains important aspects of my own RPG experience - both my own play and my engagement with others. On the latter, in particular, I think that he explains why there is often relatively little communication breakdown between people who like (say) 3E D&D and people who like (say) the DL modules, whereas fans of both are apt to complain about a character's failing to know something causes ogres to suddenly appear!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

We must be very careful with such statements, as they run the risk of asserting game design does not matter, which is in opposition to the rest of your post.

That is: Are there true game design universals which apply to absolutely 100% of all games that ever have been and ever will be made? Probably not! That's a tall order, and I certainly grant that I'm not qualified to claim that any such thing does exist. If any DO exist, they'd have to be either so generic that they'd be impossible to fail, or so fundamental we've never noticed them before. Either way, I doubt many games are running afoul of them.

But once you start choosing the kind of game you want to design, the style or methods or mechanics, there ARE objective things you can say about that, for exactly the same reason that you can say "if you want to save money, you ought to avoid situations where you will be tempted to spend it." And that's why I keep returning to certain elements inherent to the kind of game D&D is, both from designer intent and at-table play for the vast majority of groups.

Right, and one thing I think should be emphasized is that elements, such as the "choices are supposed to matter" you list below DO NOT APPLY in all games. Examples:
My Life With Master - the fate of the PC(s) is decided from the start, and is unescapable.
Paranoia - The only choice you have is possibly how you die, but usually not even that. The whole POINT of the game is powerlessness.
Toon - There simply are no consequences in this game. There is fiction evolution, but PCs have fixed characteristics and no permanent consequences ever happen.

I would venture that these are slightly out of the mainstream of RPGs, but are well-known games which have been played and reprinted many times.

One example: D&D is a game where choices are supposed to matter for both their immediate effects and their long-term consequences, but to avoid a totally deterministic experience, the game invokes a probabilistic resolution mechanic most of the time in order to create uncertainty. This then means that risk management is a necessary component of the D&D gameplay process, regardless of which version you play. In order for "managing risk" to have real meaning, and actually have consequences that matter, the player must be able to make reasonably informed decisions, and those decisions need to be the fundamental cause of the consequences faced.

If the players cannot truly learn about the world (e.g. if established facts can be changed without the players being able to learn that they changed and how they changed), the players aren't capable of making informed decisions even in principle, and thus the consequences that follow from their actions can't be learned from or adapted to--the players have no real idea why they succeed or fail and will develop false ideas (effectively, superstitions) about why they do. Thus, the game's design truly should discourage rules or referee behaviors which prevent the possibility of becoming informed. (If the players fail to try to become informed, that's their fault, not the system's nor the DM's!)

Note how in DW this concept meshes with the 'Spout Lore' and 'Discern Realities' moves, which REQUIRE the GM to give the player knowledge! The associated check only determines HOW USEFUL that knowledge will be within the specific context of an existing problem.

Likewise, if player actions are not actually the cause of the consequences experienced, there is no link between "what player chose to do" and "what happened after." The player cannot learn to manage risk better, because they are never actually taking the risks they believe they are taking; the whole situation is no longer merely fictional, it is deceptive, with the true results arising from a hidden black box the players are never allowed to see or learn about. Thus, the game's design should discourage rules or referee behaviors that secretly disrupt or supersede the link between player choice and in-game consequences: openly doing so, in whatever way, is fine because the players can learn from that still. (E.g. how many DMs have asked, "Did you really say that?" Or the dreaded, "Are you sure?")

Hence why, here and elsewhere, I emphasize that D&D is "meant to be" (as in, its internal description says it is, and its designers say it is) a cooperative, symmetrical, probabilistic, role-playing game. Each and every word in that description is a game design objective, and thus we can speak with SOME objectivity about what one should seek or avoid along the way to those objectives. There will still be plenty of places where multiple valid approaches exist, and thus perfect objectivity will elude us. But that doesn't mean we can say nothing whatever, nor that literally all possible arrangements of text are equally valid attempts to meet those design parameters.

TL;DR: We must be careful to separate "there are many valid designs to pursue, and few if any universal design rules" from "if you intend to design a game with characteristic X, you should do Y." The former is the denial of prescriptive philosophy applied across all possible games. The latter is the affirmation that once you specify the kind of game you're making, there really are SOME oughts and ought-nots.

I think this is self-evident. Certainly if it isn't true, then we have all been wasting a LOT of time on these forums for the last (in my case) 12 years...

 

[Thomas Shey]

The last sentence is true. But I don't find that Edwards has elevated a theoretical concern over practical usage. His account explains important aspects of my own RPG experience - both my own play and my engagement with others. On the latter, in particular, I think that he explains why there is often relatively little communication breakdown between people who like (say) 3E D&D and people who like (say) the DL modules, whereas fans of both are apt to complain about a character's failing to know something causes ogres to suddenly appear!

Then at best he's described a subset of users better by describing another subset worse (and likely more than one).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Much goodness here, it is hard to decide which things to talk about (this also applies to @EzekielRaiden post you are responding to).

@EzekielRaiden, that's a thoughtful reply.


I have nothing against mechanical rigour, nor consistent fiction. But I'm not persuaded that classic D&D (4e is not an instance of classic D&D, I think almost self-evidently; DW is not an instance of D&D at all) has the relevant rigour.

For instance, classic D&D modules often have encounters with NPCs in "dungeons". Those NPCs are frequently armoured - they have to be, if their combat stats are to be mechanically adequate - in ways and contexts that would be quite incongruous in the real world. So how should they respond to armoured, and/or dirty/shabby, PCs? In my view it's very hard to extrapolate.

Gygax's PHB has a full page worth of equipment lists, including a heading "Clothing", but "finery" or its equivalent appears nowhere on it. (Rather, the list breaks out four categories of footwear.)

The contrast with (to pick two systems I know fairly well) Prince Valiant and Burning Wheel is very marked. Prince Valiant has an explicit category of modifiers for prestige, which are based in part on Fame (in Prince Valiant this is an amalgam of an XP number and a reputation number) and in part on fancy gear. The Burning Wheel equipment lists include a category of "finery", and in the rules commentary in the Adventure Burner/Codex, loss of or damage to finery is expressly flagged as a potentially significant event.

4e's equipment list does include "Fine clothing" (6 lb, 30 gp) but there is no elaboration in the item descriptions. And 4e has the same issue as classic D&D with the ubiquity of armour in order to make the system mechanics work should combat break out.

This is all pretty interesting. In my own 'HoML' game (4e hack sort of) I evolved the system such that there are 'practices' (some are rituals) which have specific substitution effects (you get to use an Arcana Check because you cast this for example instead of an Acrobatics Check). In these cases there are requirements, which can include things like 'finery', as well as 'costs', and 'stakes' (you can pay this to succeed automatically with the check using this practice). This is a way of codifying a purpose for something like this. Of course its impact on fictional positioning and the resulting feedback to success/failure, etc. should be obvious...

In my experience - both in play and in engaging with D&D game texts - it is very rare for issues of faith or conviction to be put into play. Gygax's DMG frames the religious fidelity of clerics in terms of adherence to norms (whether alignment norms or more specific religious norms) and commands/wishes of the deity; and their has been little change. The 4e PHB and DMG give us the precepts of deities, but don't anywhere investigate the notion of faith or conviction.

The contrast here with Burning Wheel is incredibly stark. And even with our Prince Valiant game. In our 4e game there were players who tried to make the resolution of their PCs a thing in the fiction, but it is quite hard (as a GM) to make this actually count because a cleric or paladin gets his/her Nth level limited-use power regardless of conviction. It did come into play from time-to-time, as a component of fictional positioning; but I suspect (based eg on how ENworld posters responded to my accounts of those episodes of play, and on the fact that I've never seen anyone else post about anything similar) that what was happening in our game was quite atypical.

Outside of the 4e context I don't really see how it would be done, because there isn't the same support for looseness of GM interpolation between these various components of fictional positioning and the general mechanical framework. (For instance: in my 4e game the paladin of the Raven Queen's unswerving conviction underpinned his use of a Religion check to determine the consequence - namely, combat advantage - of his speaking of a prayer against a wight with which he was in combat. This move from fictional positioning to mechanical process and outcome is possible because of the consistent action economy and player resource economy. No other version of D&D has these same features.)

Right, and this definitely made 4e a lot more 'story telling game like' than previous editions. It just generally makes a LOT of things easier. I again go on from here and add 'attributes' to PCs which allow them to leverage things. They can spend 'inspiration' to leverage an attribute to change the story. The canonical example is the forgetful thief. The PC decides to gain inspiration by 'forgetting the keys'. This then leads to a consequence (this is a failure in a challenge by definition since ALL conflicts are challenges in HoML) which in the example is a guard comes around while he's trying to figure what to do. Later he expends this same inspiration to leverage his 'never forgets a face' attribute to recognize that the NEXT guard is the brother of the previous one (which he disabled) and he tosses him the brother's monogrammed dagger, warning him that his brother might not be well if he doesn't let the thief go on his way.

Sure, the persuade vs intimidate approach is not never relevant. But far from always - eg the reaction rules in AD&D or B/X, including their incorporation of CHA modifiers, don't draw the distinction between approaches. And this also goes to the issue of player knowledge - the same approach to play which makes acquiring knowledge via mapping highly salient does not lend itself so well to establishing whether it is better to persuade or to terrorise, and what might result from one or the other approach.


Both Investigation (as you describe it here) and knowledge/academic skills are, in my view, an attempt to make a game of the sort you described in your earlier post (ie players acquire knowledge of the shared fiction and make action declarations on the basis of that) compatible with a shared fiction that has richness beyond that of the early dungeons and modules.

They are essentially mechanical devices that oblige the GM to share additional fiction with the players although the players have not put their PCs into a fictional position whereby the GM would share that fiction "organically".

I think this is why they are sources of controversy, because of this way they undercut the importance of fictional positioning.

Right, they undercut both fictional positioning, and the closely related "player reasoning" (IE letting the player solve the mystery). This can be gotten around by treating them as licenses to alter the fiction instead of 'skills' which produce results in a 'cause and effect' (consequentialist) way. Again, this is a technique explicitly developed in HoML.right

There's a lot going on here.

Consider two contrasting real-world scenarios:

(1) A group is using 5e D&D to resolve a murder mystery involving the Duchess and Baron as you describe. This requires interrogating suspects, searching areas (eg rooms in a castle or palace) that are almost infinitely more rich in their contents and context than the dungeon rooms found in Keep on the Borderlands, extrapolating from motives that are revealed only via GM narration, etc. In my view the solving of this mystery, using the 5e mechanics, is overwhelmingly dependent on GM decision-making. When does a suspect break under interrogation, or how long will s/he stonewall? How many red herring letters are there in the same folder as the one containing the revelation, and how salient are those red herrings to the players? How many people might have seen the suspect leaving the scene of the murder, and how might those people be tracked down, and how much did they notice, and how willing are they to share it?

All that is under the GM's control.

(2) A group is playing Apocalypse World, and the GM decides - in making a move as hard and direct as s/he likes - that one of the NPCs present in the situation has turned on (one or more of) the PCs, and so is no longer an ally and is now a traitor. There are various ways this might become known by a player - eg as a result of Reading a Charged Situation, or because of something the GM narrates when everyone looks at him/her to see what happens next.

I think the players in the AW game have more control over the content and direction of play than the players in the D&D game. This is because of the differences of system. My view is that, once the fiction moves beyond some of the canonical examples I mentioned - architecture, maps, etc - D&D generally doesn't have the systems to manage "wider scope" and more dynamic fiction (no Circles checks, nothing analogous to a BW wise check or an AW read a situation check, etc). 4e skill challenges come closer to this but even they have clear limits (eg at least canonically, there's no straightforward way for a check in a skill challenge pertaining to a PC here-and-now can generate a result of a consequence "over there" or "back then").

So, yeah, in 'classic' D&D (which I will lump AD&D, 3e, and 5e into for these purposes) there isn't really any way to deal with this stuff at all! In AD&D it is just not part of the rules in any way shape or fashion, or else the DM has to wade through the questions of how to (mis)apply some subsystem designed for dungeon crawling situations in a way that wasn't intended. 3e/5e at least have checks and a fairly general rule for applying them, but as you point out, no framework within which they apply, just each one is a sort of 'mini challenge' all its own.
Vanilla 4e incorporates mechanical context, and some structure on how it maps to fictional position in that an SC is, presumably a 'scene' or something analogous.
Again this is where in my own game I've simply gone forward from where 4e left off. You can generate a consequence (alter the fictional position) by say invoking an event that takes/took place off screen (I make a check to see if I remembered to bring extra water with me into the desert, yup I have a drink!). This widens the scope and increased the flexibility of the SC mechanism greatly (TBH it can be hard to recognize and comparison with stock DMG1 SCs is strictly at the level of the core mechanical concept, in 'process of play' terms they really are their own animal).

 

[pemerton]

Note how in DW this concept meshes with the 'Spout Lore' and 'Discern Realities' moves, which REQUIRE the GM to give the player knowledge! The associated check only determines HOW USEFUL that knowledge will be within the specific context of an existing problem.

they undercut both fictional positioning, and the closely related "player reasoning" (IE letting the player solve the mystery). This can be gotten around by treating them as licenses to alter the fiction instead of 'skills' which produce results in a 'cause and effect' (consequentialist) way. Again, this is a technique explicitly developed in HoML.right

<snip>

in my own game I've simply gone forward from where 4e left off. You can generate a consequence (alter the fictional position) by say invoking an event that takes/took place off screen (I make a check to see if I remembered to bring extra water with me into the desert, yup I have a drink!). This widens the scope and increased the flexibility of the SC mechanism greatly (TBH it can be hard to recognize and comparison with stock DMG1 SCs is strictly at the level of the core mechanical concept, in 'process of play' terms they really are their own animal).

I think there are two broad approaches that go beyond the limits of "classic" D&D - and both are canvassed in the posts above.

One is a player-side "move" or ability that obliges the GM to establish and share some fiction within parameters that are useful or meaningful for the player given the player's goals for his/her PC. Apocalypse World (eg Read a Charged Situation) and Dungeon World (Discern Realities, Spout Lore) provide canonical examples of this.

These moves don't ignore fictional positioning - both the context which enables their use, and the way the GM establishes responses, have to respect fictional positioning. But if the player makes the check then these moves have the effect of giving the players access, here and now, to highly salient and useful fiction that will enable him/her to drive things forward (via the play of his/her PC).

Having recently re-read some old CoC scenarios (looking for a good murder mystery to run for a kid's birthday party), I'm struck by how weak they are in this respect. All the information is presented with its meaningfulness being GM-sided, and then there are various clumsy devices hinted at to help secure salience to the players - eg the NPC draws the PCs attentions to it or the even worse hopefully the PCs will notice this! It's GM-driven all the way through.

The other approach is the one adopted in @AbdulAlhazred's 4e spin-off HML. It's also prominent in Burning Wheel, and Cortex+ Heroic: a successful check enables the player to directly establish some element of the shared fiction.

Again, this doesn't circumvent fictional positioning. It builds on it.

 

[Campbell]

Here's my personal take : Being a referee or neutral arbiter of the fiction requires very tight scenario design because as a referee the reason we defer to your rulings is that you have expert level knowledge. Once the scope of play expands beyond where you can practically have that expert level knowledge I think you have to take on a different agenda of some sort as a GM.

Regardless of the particulars of that agenda play becomes much more like a sparring match. Since a fair deal of the situation/scenario is going to come from moment to moment framing it behooves you to act like a sensei. Telegraph your punches, provide opportunities, do not cheat and do not go for cheap shots. Your job becomes providing honest yet fair adversity. Also not pulling punches too much when players provide openings.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The problem is, this elevates a theoretical concern over practical usage; people who care about simulationist concerns in any other context will find rules to support genre jarring unless they're reified (in which case almost anyone else will find them jarring, since it means that the genre conceits will be visible as such in-game).

And yet that is something that happens extensively in GDS-speak 'simulationist' games! I understand what you mean, but it is so ironic that the VERY PEOPLE who would say that bothers them think that 'class is a real thing' in classic D&D and PCs go wandering around the world calling themselves 'rangers' and 'clerics'! Nothing could be more reified than that (and they also usually insist that 'hit points are meat', another example of reification of the game rules WRT the fictional milieu).