Let's talk about "plot", "story", and "play to find out."

[Hriston]

Yes, I also write a lot of those sorts of actual play reports.

If you look at my Torchbearer 2e reports, you'll see that they have the least detail when it comes to extended conflict resolution. I don't think that's any sort of coincidence - those are the part of TB2e play where the decision-making and game play becomes the most disconnected/disjointed relative to the fiction. And thus is the least remembered (by me), and the least amenable to an interesting write-up.

I was speaking to someone recently about a type of "risk" in TB2e's extended resolution procedures (it can also arise in Burning Wheel's Duel of Wits): while the extended conflict is being resolved, it will work, mechanically, even if no fiction is established. (Actions - which must be chosen from a list, with each action on the list having a particular mechanical significance - can be declared and resolved, "hit points" tallies adjusted, etc, until one side or the other reaches zero.) But then, when it comes time to work out the final resolution, establishing the compromise (which has to be done, unless one side suffered no hit point loss at all) requires drawing on the preceding fiction. Which can be tricky if there wasn't much of it!

Anyway, that previous paragraph is a bit of a tangent, but does identify an example of a RPG procedure which can have the effect of "deferring" the experience of story during play.

Where I think my play reports might lack some detail is in combat. Here's an excerpt from a report of a D&D 5E game in which I tried to include as much detail as I felt was warranted:

When we reconvened, I awarded inspiration to each of the six PCs, explaining it was for relentlessly pursuing the party’s goal of acquiring treasure down into the second level of the dungeon, crossing the river, and thereby putting all their lives in danger. Then, everyone rolled initiative. The orcs rolled high, tying with the party’s wizard, so I let the wizard go first. He took the opportunity to cast sleep on the orcs, causing one orc to fall asleep. The orcs, armed with spears and shields, and one with a glaive, rushed the party in the ten foot wide corridor while an orc in the back of the chamber, armed with a crossbow, stopped to awaken the orc who’d fallen asleep, another glaive wielder. The orcs in front stabbed with their spears at Ham and Ozmir in the front rank while those in back threw axes, but all their attacks missed their targets. Next, Soliana cast sacred flame, calling down radiance on one of the orcs in front, but her target made the saving throw and successfully dodged out of the way. Soliana then decided to move back through the ranks to avoid becoming the orcs’ preferred target. Ham was next and spent his inspiration to gain advantage on attacking and hitting an orc with his longsword. The party’s rogue also spent his inspiration for advantage on shooting the orc engaged with Ham with his shortbow, which he hit, inflicting sneak attack damage and killing the orc. Ozmir spent his inspiration for advantage on an attack on the orc in front of him with his shortsword, which also succeeded. Lastly, the druid cast produce flame and threw the flame at Ozmir’s orc and hit, bringing the orc to below half its hit points.

The second round began with the wizard casting chill touch on Ozmir’s orc, which missed, but because the orc was below half its hit points, one of its friends had been killed, and the orcs hadn’t managed to hurt the party, it was forced to make a DC 17 morale check, which it failed, causing it to flee in panic through a door in the back of the chamber. This should have incurred opportunity attacks from Ham and Ozmir against the fleeing orc, but I think I forgot to remind the players of this at the time. Also, due to the fact that the orcs had missed all their attacks in the first round and had been hit several times, along with the above factors, the rest of the orcs had to make a DC 15 morale check, causing one to also flee and another, named Turge, to drop his spear and offer his surrender. The remaining four orcs moved forward to fill in the gaps and continue the attack. Ham was hit with a spear and Ozmir with a glaive. The formerly sleeping glaive-wielder moved in but was unable to hit, as was the crossbow wielder who tried to fire through the melee but was unsuccessful. Soliana stepped forward to heal Ozmir, casting cure wounds, before returning to the rear of the party. Ham fought back, doing critical damage with his longsword to the spear-wielding orc whom the rogue finished off with another sneak attack with his shortbow. Ozmir used his shortsword to stab the glaive-wielder at whom the druid threw another flame, conjured by produce flame, but missed.

At the top of round three, the wizard once again cast chill touch, dragging Ozmir’s glaive-wielding orc to the grave. A DC 24 morale check was now imposed on the remaining two orcs, the formerly sleeping glaive wielder and the crossbow wielder who had stayed out of the melee, triggered by over half their force being removed from the battle and which was made more difficult by three of their friends having been killed, three having deserted, and being outnumbered, at this point, three to one. The failure result had the glaive wielder surrender to the party and the crossbow wielder flee in panic through the same door through which the other fleeing orcs had gone.

I think the main point of omission in this report is what's happening fictionally on a hit or a miss which I do tend to describe in more detail at the table. For example, a hit might be described as an avoided blow that depletes the target's resolve due to the effort, or it might be described as actually inflicting a wound of some kind. Likewise, a miss might be described as glancing off the target's shield or armor, or as the target dodging out of the way, or as a wild swing on behalf of the attacker, etc. The reason I left these descriptions out is probably because they're mainly "color" having no mechanical effect on the outcome of the combat so weren't noted down or remembered. The only time I felt it was needed to record the effect of a hit, therefore, was when it resulted in the death of the target or the imposition of a morale check.

On another note, I think the gameplay described here is one in which a story is being "told" to all the participants, myself included, which addresses the premise of our game, i.e. will the PCs achieve their goal of acquiring treasure by braving (and surviving) the dangers of the dungeon and the world? For now, the answer to that question is yes.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Yeah idk, the book is widely accepted to have some serious organizational issues which maybe results in people getting a little lost with what it expects? Later FITD games are clearer (the usual upside of building on somebody else's base). But the skills are not vague at all, the game has pages of strong examples and discussions on what Sway and Skulk and Finesse look like, and how "if you're trying to do X, maybe Y would be better."

There are five skills you can use for fighting, three for convincing someone (and weirdly one for doing any athletic stuff and sneaking, that can also used for fighting; prowl is OP.) All this leads to hedging over which skill to use, and it often is not clear whether some skills would be so obviously better that it should mechanically matter. I think the skill section is one of the weakest areas of the book. It would be far more efficient to have clear skills without massive overlap.

Speaking of the book, I just went through and extracted a handful of tidbits where I think that depending on table I can see where y'all might be coming from:



Which is followed a few pages later by:



So maybe if you're not drawing that distinction there between: we all work together to understand the risk and outcome to ensure it makes sense to the table and then: the dice roll and what happens happens? Because like, when I've played OSR games there's tons of the first bit! We talk and plan and try and figure out risks and ask the GM questions about how we understand things and maybe it's not as concrete as BITD does, but the kinda "coming to consensus on a plan of action based on the fiction and then carrying it out" feels similar. A key difference being that in Blades we always turn to the dice and let them speak.

Right. So this switching to author stance is in the rules, so it is no surprise writer's room happens. And in my experience it does not (at least in similar degree) in more trad games. There might be periods of clarifying the facts pertaining the situation, but those come from the GM, not from the players so it is not really author stance on part of the players.

 

[pemerton]

Lol. I knew that was coming. I prep for Cthulhu Dark, and Wuthering Heights has that book by the same name...

More generally, you'll notice how niche those games are? To take the devil's advocate position here, what do you think the chances are that a GM who is unfamiliar with the Cthulhu mythos would choose to run Cthulhu Dark, and what are the chances of that game being any good if they did? Or the chances of someone who isn't already a Bronte fan and familiar with that sort of book running Wuthering Heights, or that game being good if they did?

There is a point here. I don't think you can run an improv Cthulhu game without knowing anything about Cthulhu. You might not need to do specifically RPG style prep to manage it, but all that means is that you've read a lot of the mythos books and have a solid understanding of how the setting and NPC characters fit together at least generally.

I'll accept that the games I mentioned - In A Wicked Age, Wuthering Heights, and Cthulhu Dark - are pretty niche.

But I've never read Wuthering Heights (or any Bronte novel - I'm better read in non-fiction than fiction! And thus am one of those who reads the reviews rather than the works). To run Wuthering Heights, I think it helps to have a general sense of nineteenth or early twentieth century English social norms - otherwise the Problems Table won't quite make sense - but beyond that, a general feel for soap operatic and/or romantic drama will get you through.

In the Cthulhu Dark sessions I've run, the Mythos didn't play much role: I did once use a shoggoth, but mostly the label; I can't recall if my shoggoth behaved much like a HPL shoggoth. Mostly I've relied on a general sense of how horror-oriented mystery/thriller stories work: in particular, that a mundane problem (eg someone or something is missing, or is being unexpectedly concealed) turns out to have a non-mundane explanation (eg the missing person has been turned into a were-hyena and their treating physician is cooperating with their corporate partner or family member to cover this up). This is (I think ) the most basic situation structure for sucking ordinary people (which is how I see Cthulhu Dark characters) into a story of non-mundane horror.

When GMing In A Wicked Age, I've relied on my general sense of fantasy, and especially swords and sorcery/swords and sandals fantasy. That helps make sense of generals and armies and enchanters and desert tribes and the like. But I don't need to have read any particular REH or Roy Thomas Conan story to make the game go.

I wouldn't really consider any of this sort of genre familiarity to be prep. I see it more as going to understanding how the fiction is meant to make sense to all the participants. This has been driven home to me running Classic Traveller for one of my daughters. It was another zero-prep session - she rolled her PC, I rolled a starting world and a patron encounter, and we went from there. I relied on my familiarity with the conspiracy/thriller genre, which was what her PC (a 1977 Other character with streetwise-y/rogue-y skills) and the patron suggested. But her relative lack of familiarity with that genre meant it was hard for her to understand the situation and declare effective actions for her PC.

It seems to me that this genre familiarity that all participants need is different from distinctive GM-side prep.

 

[hawkeyefan]

On average, is Laura or Liam going to be more internally consistent?

Assuming equal skill on the parts of Laura and Liam, it can go either way… but I tend to lean toward Liam as being more likely to portray a consistent world.

What I see when you describe tons of prep is tons of opportunity for inconsistency. What Laura’s doing is predetermining a whole slew of facts. And when it comes to an RPG, each of those facts represent a potential inconsistency if they’re gotten wrong in some way.

To me… as someone who used to run very high prep games… what it’s doing is giving the GM material to lean on. Material that can potentially benefit from time to consider how it fits into the whole. This is not a bad thing… most GMs would benefit from this kind of structure.

But the fact is that, in this case, more is not better. There are things that it may certainly help to know ahead of time… the name and general situation of the city in which play begins, what’s the population like, what are the surrounding areas like, and so on. None of it is absolutely necessary to start play, but it’s all reasonable stuff. And you can likewise swap out geographical facts for more social ones.

But there comes a point where prep is just not enhancing play at the table. It is not helping a world seem consistent and is not benefitting the GM… likely, it could even be hampering her as she pauses to try and remember or look up some minor fact about the world that, for play purposes, will at this point only be color.

Over the years, I’ve come to realize the important fact that play happens at the table. So whatever prep I may do needs to be in service to that. And the best ways to support that is by having a simple structure in place… the term scaffolding was used, and that’s a great metaphor for it. Something that helps me, but which I can build on during play, and which isn’t so complex as to hinder what I’m trying to do at the table.

So you may doubt this take if you like. I understand why you do, and years ago I’d have agreed with you. What I would say is to GM a game that’s designed to be run with little to no prep. Not one that simply can be run that way, like D&D… but one that is meant to be run that way. Do that a few times, with maybe a couple of such games. You may wind up still thinking that prep’s the better way to go for you. But I don’t expect that you will still doubt people who may think otherwise.

 

[hawkeyefan]

There are five skills you can use for fighting, three for convincing someone (and weirdly one for doing any athletic stuff and sneaking, that can also used for fighting; prowl is OP.) All this leads to hedging over which skill to use, and it often is not clear whether some skills would be so obviously better that it should mechanically matter. I think the skill section is one of the weakest areas of the book. It would be far more efficient to have clear skills without massive overlap.

This sounds very off to me. It sounds like players trying to angle to use their best action rating for as much as possible. Yes, players ultimately choose which action to use for a given task… but they’re also told not to be weasels about it. And to embrace danger.

Hemming and hawing and trying to explain why Tinker is the proper action to kill this guard… that’s never been how a game I’ve seen has gone and sounds like a discussion would be in order to go over player best practices.

 

[Neonchameleon]

With respect, I never mentioned a high-prepped module. A collaborative table is a great thing. And by collaboration, I assume you mean that the players share, and then the GM reciprocates, meaning they add things the players shared. That is called an RPG table in my world.

And that table is much more consistent if the GM has done a "boatload of prep" than doing no prep.

In my experience if the GM has done "a boatload of prep" that tends to move it outside the realms of a collaborative table and into the realms of "The GM's table with some other people". The GM should prep and the GM should normally do more prep than any one other player but if the GM is doing more prep than the entire rest of the table combined this IME is harmful as it takes it outside the realms of collaboration and into one and hangers on.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

This sounds very off to me. It sounds like players trying to angle to use their best action rating for as much as possible. Yes, players ultimately choose which action to use for a given task… but they’re also told not to be weasels about it. And to embrace danger.

Hemming and hawing and trying to explain why Tinker is the proper action to kill this guard… that’s never been how a game I’ve seen has gone and sounds like a discussion would be in order to go over player best practices.

So it is not about trying to use tinker in combat (though it certainly could be justified too,) but whether to use hunt, prowl, finesse, skirmish or wreck. They are all combat skills and the difference is mostly flavour. So you just try to describe the thing so that the best skill applies. Same with overlapping social skills. It is pretty obvious to me that overlapping skills with vaguely defined boundaries will lead to this.

 

[zakael19]

(Also deep cuts fixes all this)

 

[zakael19]

So it is not about trying to use tinker in combat (though it certainly could be justified too,) but whether to use hunt, prowl, finesse, skirmish or wreck. They are all combat skills and the difference is mostly flavour. So you just try to describe the thing so that the best skill applies. Same with overlapping social skills. It is pretty obvious to me that overlapping skills with vaguely defined boundaries will lead to this.

the game is pretty darn clear on what is what and where you’re walking the edges. Once in a while there’d be a question of “is this A or B do we think?” and that was quickly resolved by looking at the fiction and we moved on.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

the game is pretty darn clear on what is what and where you’re walking the edges. Once in a while there’d be a question of “is this A or B do we think?” and that was quickly resolved by looking at the fiction and we moved on.

Yeah, I do not agree on this being the case at all.