King Lear is just English words put in order: Expertise, Knowledge, and RPGs

[Fenris-77]

So, so far what we're talking about is propositional format and validity in TTRPGs, as well as various meta rules, spoken or unspoken that affect the above? Cool. That's an interesting place to start IMO because the rules for a given TTRPG usually have at least some material that covers player propositions (I'll include the GM there until we find a reason to separate them). So we're hanging out in that liminal space between the rules and the fully actualized play at a specific table. Things should be more stable across tables the closer to the rules we stay, so that seems like a reasonable place to start.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[prabe]

You don't need to watch a game of football, or all games of football, to have decent conversation about football strategy, about things that happen in a game, and about general concepts. For example, discussions about RPO or elements of line-pass protection are not part of the rules, yet can be had as part of a general discussion about actual play.

Heck, I haven't watched a game of football in almost ten years, and I can follow what you're talking about here. My references/understanding may be out-of-date, but that is (I think) a different point.

 

[Fenris-77]

I think @Fenris-77 has an idea about the liminal space between fully actualized play and the RAW.

I do, but it's still pretty raw (har har). Propositions are the gateways through which players effect changes on the shared diagetic space. If we picture the rules like a keyboard then 'doing things' in an RPG involves pushing a button and saying the magic words. Pushing that button may or may not specify that the randomization mechanic in the rules, if any, need to be engaged. Lets assume for a moment that we are talking about actions with 'real/important/dramatic' consequences, which would in almost every case involve the random element be engaged with the button push. So we push the button, say the words, and hope for the best.

Sometime the words are easy, like I attack the Orc with the sword, and sometimes they are more difficult, like I try to talk my way past the guard by flashing some calf and giving him the bedroom eyes. The use of 'difficult' and 'easy' there indexes systemic differences more than anything else, as most system cover the first quite well, and many fail to cover the second in enough detail to make some people happy.

In both cases a TTRPG has a method or mechanic to explain how that proposition affects the fiction (diagetic frame). Some games are very much up front about this part, like PtbA, regardless of "pillar', while some games excel in some cases and fall flat in others. In both cases though a TTRPG will return a proposition about the nature of the changed diagetic state. At that point the game passes back to the player(s), who now decide what additional proposition or propositions to make based on the changed diagetic state. This is all very PbtA btw, as I'm sure some of you realized quite quickly, but I think it can be applied more broadly.

The propositions themselves can be discussed without falling entirely into the diagetic frame though, because they directly index both rules and player. Hence my description of this space as liminal, or existing between the players, rules, and diagetic frame.

Like I said, it's rough, but I think there's something there.

 

[Umbran]

1. The effort would be well worth it...

Have you not watched how people treat each other around here? How rude they are willing to be to each other over dedication to, say, the existence to a single class that none of us wrote?

It is not at all clear to me that there is any solid expectation that allowing your own "work" to be critiqued here would be a worthwhile proposition for the person being critiqued. If you want to consider me cynical due to how I have to police the stuff, fine, but I think the number of takers for having their detailed execution dissected by randos on the internet is not large.

You might have some luck using things like Critical Role - documented play sessions - as a shared basis.

Almost any discussion of the rules of football is pretty boring since it's all about the play!

Sure. But how many folks have discussions about their backyard games online?

2. You don't need to watch a game of football, or all games of football, to have decent conversation about football strategy, about things that happen in a game, and about general concepts.

Yes, but yet again... things like football have a bit of "proof is in the pudding" of documented play by third parties You are discussing strategy and tactics seen on the professional field already, and not a whole lot about novel ways to approach that play... since none of us are actually playing much football.

And how many times do people online say, "I wanted to bring an element of soccer into my football game".

But.. thinking a bit. I'm kind of dismissing it, and that's not right. But, you guys are claiming it doesn't happen... and I think you're incorrect about that too. I think there's a good deal of such discussion going on around here - it just isn't labelled as such.

 

[prabe]

It is not at all clear to me that there is any solid expectation that allowing your own "work" to be critiqued here would be a worthwhile proposition for the person being critiqued. If you want to consider me cynical due to how I have to police the stuff, fine, but I think the number of takers for having their detailed execution dissected by randos on the internet is not large.

You might have some luck using things like Critical Role - documented play sessions - as a shared basis.

Critical Role wouldn't be a poor choice, for most people, but I'd really rather not see that happen--it'd leave me out, for one. I spent like fifteen years working as an audio engineer for talking books; listening to people talk for fun isn't something I do.

On the other hand, I'd be willing to use my own sessions as examples of the game as played, though they're perforce less detailed than Critical Role--my wife takes excellent notes, but there's simply not the detail of an actual recording.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I really liked your post, and it has great ideas. I wanted to concentrate on this last bit, as the ideas behind it animated the OP I wrote.

I think we avoid giving it attention because it is, for lack of a better term, hard.

Pure rules discussions are easy, even subjective ones. For example:
Should the Wizard in D&D have d4, d6, d8, or d10 for their hit dice?
That's a rule discussion! That's easy! You can look at what the rules are now, you can look at what the rules have been, you can look at what other classes have for comparison, and so on.

But documenting how people actually play at a table? That's hard. From the very basic bits (you're playing an alter ego, it's a constructed imaginary world, etc.) to the idiosyncrasies (when is the player speaking in character and out of character, when can you "recall" an action .... aka, "I didn't mean to say that!" to what level of fourth-wall breaking is there allowed in the game?) to the ways that different rules are interpreted and used to the variances different tables will have in goals and what is "fun"....

These complexities are usually passed over, but often form the core of disagreements. People often argue over system as a proxy for process of play.

Also, when they aren’t passed over, they get heated quickly.

If I say, “Metagaming isn’t bad.”, this statement won’t just get pushback, it will get pushback fueled by every heated argument about metagaming that person has ever had. We operate in patterns so much that nearly all people hear part of an argument, or its general shape, and attribute to it all the qualities of related arguments that they have seen in the past. Thus the constant, “but I didn’t say that” and “don’t put words in my mouth” and the like.

Whereas game mechanics are technical, and thus create a layer of separation from our emotional associations.

 

[Celebrim]

Sometime the words are easy, like I attack the Orc with the sword, and sometimes they are more difficult, like I try to talk my way past the guard by flashing some calf and giving him the bedroom eyes. The use of 'difficult' and 'easy' there indexes systemic differences more than anything else, as most system cover the first quite well, and many fail to cover the second in enough detail to make some people happy.

So while I generally agree with your framework and your description of the framework indicates you are following along, I think you are focusing on a very different issue than I've so far discussed.

Yes, it is true that when the rules leave open to the GM to determine what is an "easy" or what is a "difficult" challenge, that there is a table specific process for determining what actions goes into what categories. And yes, it is true that systems can offer insufficient guidelines to make clear to the table what the designer expected the GM to rule, which can cause a problem of play where different participants have widely different expectations about rules are going to be applied to a proposition.

But while that's all important process of play topics, that wasn't really where I was going with my example. My point was even more basic "I try to talk my way past the guard by flashing some calf and giving him the bedroom eyes." can fall afoul of an unspoken proposition filter that renders it an invalid attempt to push the button.

That is to say, the result of the proposition might not be "Pass" or "Fail" but "Syntax Error". In this case, the proposition actually would generate "Syntax Error" at my table. The player indicated a desire to "talk" but didn't actually put any words in the mouth of his character. So while the player usefully gives me some indication of his character's fictional positioning with respect to body language, this proposition would tend to yield the response, "What do you say to the guard?" And only after the player provided the full fictional positioning, would the proposition be validated and the dice rolled to determine success.

Along these lines, there are also processes of play around non-proposition declarations, or what I call "calls". Are calls allowed and if they are allowed, which ones are legal? For example, different tables might declare all of the following allowable or none of the following allowable, or some combination thereof:

a) Player: "What is the guard wearing?"
b) Player: "Can I use my knowledge of Heraldry to determine who the guard works for."
c) Player: "The guard is wearing the sign of the Sacred Cudgel. As I am an initiate of that Faith, I try give him the secret sign of a fellow initiate in distress."
d) Player: "Earlier in the day, I put itching powder in the guards clothing."

Amazingly, almost all of that can be done as an extra rules process if the table agrees to it. While different systems may explicitly put rules around such calls, or explicitly declare certain sorts of calls invalid, most of them are actually silent on the issue simply because they never considered a call to be a possible part of play. And even those that implicitly assume a call like 'a' asking about the environment are a part of play, they don't really think about them. They just assume everyone knows they can ask the GM for more information or clarification about the setting, even if they aren't declaring an action to do so.

 

[Umbran]

But while that's all important process of play topics, that wasn't really where I was going with my example. My point was even more basic "I try to talk my way past the guard by flashing some calf and giving him the bedroom eyes." can fall afoul of an unspoken proposition filter that renders it an invalid attempt to push the button.

That is to say, the result of the proposition might not be "Pass" or "Fail" but "Syntax Error". In this case, the proposition actually would generate "Syntax Error" at my table. The player indicated a desire to "talk" but didn't actually put any words in the mouth of his character. So while the player usefully gives me some indication of his character's fictional positioning with respect to body language, this proposition would tend to yield the response, "What do you say to the guard?" And only after the player provided the full fictional positioning, would the proposition be validated and the dice rolled to determine success.

And, to raise the point about different filters - Whereas, at my table, I would very likely take it to mean that the player was attempting to do a thing that relies very little on spoken language, and very much on body language, and allow it on that basis.

 

[Fenris-77]

@Celebrim Two quick things. First, I wasn't talking about the difficulty of the actions at all, I was indexing the difficulty that different systems have with those two propositions. The corollary being that different rules systems produce different kinds of propositions, just like different genre conventions produce different propositions, and different player expectations produce different propositions. I wanted to stick to the first item because there's going to be less to disagree about, the rules being more stable from table to table than expectations or actualized play.

Second, I was very much not talking about how the proposition is actualized at the table. The whole idea of fictional positioning IMO lands on the harder to quantify side of this topic and I wasn't going there yet. So yeah, in PtbA you do the thing to make the move and it all works more like you describe (or FATE, etc). In many games of D&D the same proposition gets worded in the 3rd person. I want to ignore the differences there, at least to start, and focus on the similarities. The similarities are what I think could be useful in comparing different sets of rules, and even play styles within the same set of rules. Any discussion would also, eventually, have to account for the differences you're talking about, I just wouldn't start there.