Not a Conspiracy Theory: Moving Toward Better Criticism in RPGs

[pemerton]

Maybe people could just explain what they mean in plain language rather than try to find jargon to shorten how much they have to type?

But it could happen, and IMO it should.

During the life of this thread I've started two threads actually engaging in discussion of RPG techniques, rather than discussing whether it's OK to discuss RPG techniques: A "theory" thread and Map-and-key RPGing contrasted with alternatives

I've also made one actual play post, in my ongoing Torchbearer actual play thread: Torchbearer 2e - actual play of this AWESOME system! (+)

And another thread I started a little while ago has had some new posts on it: RPGing via Billy Bragg?

All of these are in overwhelmingly plain language: the "theory thread" uses notions of "fiction", "framing" and "resolution" which I would expect to be familiar to most experienced RPGers; the actual play uses the rules language of Torchbearer; and the "Billy Bragg" thread uses the notion of "social realism", which is the topic of the thread. You are welcome to participate in any of them.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I generally liked this post, but I wanted to comment on the problem here: to proponents of that style, it is neither needless, pointless, nor unsatisfying; it evokes the kind of gritty unpredictability they enjoy. Now, I suspect most of them would still be willing to embrace the term (because to them being kind of a meatgrinder is a virtue in most cases) but to someone who didn't, that would be the nature of the problem.

"Gritty unpredictability" means "needless, pointless, and unsatisfying" in a narrative sense. The death serves no greater purpose in the ongoing story, happens randomly and often for no cause other than "dice said so" (that is, not the result of doing a Really Dumb Thing but simply because the DM rolled hot or the like), and leaves lives unfinished and works indefinitely suspended.

It is, in that way, very similar to slice of life. "Conflict," when it occurs in slice of life, is almost always needless (serving no purpose, it simply happens by coincidence e.g. someone develops cancer), pointless (it does not drive any theme or plot or anything), and unsatisfying (the resolution, if there even is one, is almost always mundane and slow, and as like as not the conflict simply meanders and never really ends.)

That doesn't mean the design is needless, pointless, or unsatisfying. I had thought that by explicitly saying I know people enjoy it, that would be clear, seems I was mistaken. But there is no way AFAIK to make a clear separation in the terms between "this is an intentionally unsatisfying narrative because 'realistic' situations aren't narratives, just unstructured events often subject to the whims of time and chance" and "this is just Bad Qualities A, B, C." If there is vocabulary I'm missing or forgetting thst allows one to specify narrative pointlessness/needlessness/unsatifactoriness, please tell me, I would love to be more specific.

Well, the goal doesn't seem to be clarity either, or at least that goal doesn't seem to be on its way to being achieved. The explanation of "map and key" seems reasonable to me now, once you remove the (still pejorative to me) phrase "mostly random guesswork", but I still don't understand why people can't just say what they mean without resorting to found or invented terms. You explain that you aren't extending a value judgement by...actually explaining that, in text most everyone can understand. To do otherwise constrains fruitful discussion to those who already approve of your terms and risks the appearance of elitism.

So. Are you asking us to circumlocute every single time we wish to discuss something? Because, believe it or not, I do actually hope for brevity. But every time I try, it becomes a problem because I've left something out, or I've been vague, or I've (as above) presumed something should be clear from context and it isn't. It's extremely frustrating to me, to be taken to task for a lack of brevity when at every turn my efforts to trim down what I say result in being told that I've fallen short due to lack of comprehensive coverage.

The main issue I've noted around language is that... One side of a discussion, argument, however you want to describe it shouldn't have a monopoly on deciding what language will be used to both characterize themselves as well as everyone else... it creates an automatic imbalance in power dynamics for the entire discussion.

Sure. But when you use terms ready to hand (hence, not "chosen" by either side), that's often inadequate, leading to some party feeling aggrieved and expecting to put their thumb on the scale. Fail to grant that, and you're being unreasonable and intellectually questionable (at best!) But if you grant it, nothing is stopping the aggrieved party from slamming that scale as hard as they can to win now, while they have the advantage; failure to accept is characterized as merely the previous thing with more steps, while criticism is deflected as a refusal to understand and accept the aggrieved party's grievances.

Hence why I have said (and agreed with others saying) that it needs give and take, actual negotiation, not total surrender of terms to the aggrieved party. I don't get to unilaterally declare the acceptable vocabulary to folks who want to use "CaW/CaS," even though I frankly can't stand those terms. Nor, if we are accepting this negotiation process, do they get to unilaterally declare that it doesn't matter what I think, these terms are useful so they're going to use them regardless. It must be actual discussion, sincere willingness to accept alternatives and make modifications on both sides.

 

[Lanefan]

What is at the end of the left hand corridor?

As a player what means could you use in a trad game, besides actually going down that corridor to learn what is there.

Oh, let's see now - I'm sure there's a few options...

--- simple observation; leave a hidden or invisible scout there to watch traffic at the intersection for enough time to see if there's any patterns
--- --- the scout might also hear conversations in passing and learn things of use
--- tracking
--- divination spells or abilities (if available)
--- capture a dungeon occupant and ask it what's down there
--- kill a dungeon occupant and ask via speak-with-dead or similar

Now it's true that many players (and some DMs) don't have the patience for this, but that doesn't make it any less valid.

And yet in the end the whole point of exploring is to learn things you didn't already know; and simply going down the passage is probably the quickest (if not always safest) way of doing so in this instance.

So it’s effectively random. Corridor a or b or c is a coin toss. Sure you might know some of the information about the dungeon. But how many kobolds are down that corridor? You can only learn by going there.

And if there are more branches? Well, it’s more guesswork.

No, it's more exploration. You're falsely equating the two, and thus defining exploration of the unknown as a Bad Thing.

And don’t you use random encounters? How do I know about them? That’s completely guesswork.

OK, let me ask: what are your-as-player's expectations here? That you know everything about the dungeon beore going in, and that anything you don't know falls under the 'guesswork' umbrella? If yes, then in effect the entire campaign boils down to nothing more than guesswork, which is IMO a rather absurd position.

 

[pemerton]

Lack of map-and-key was one part of it, but I think I was most freaked out by success-with-consequence as the most common roll result, even when doing something I thought my character was good at. It felt out of control to me, or like the math was wrong. I hadn't heard of PbtA or storygames of any kind at that point, so the notion that I couldn't optimize every interaction, and that chaos and blowback was basically a given, was horrifying.

In another online space I read a good analysis of this.

In the sort of D&D play that's been fairly common since them mid-1980s, the GM has a large permission to introduce complications more-or-less at will. So unless there is an agreement that the campaign is about to end, it's more or less understood that after each little bit of action is resolved, the GM will announce to the rest of the table some new complication or obstacle that has emerged. Most other "trad" games - RM, RQ, GURPS, HERO etc - work pretty much like this too.

One of the striking features of Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World and BitD is that the GM's permission in this respect is tightly regulated (though in different technical ways across the three systems), and is conditioned at least in part on the outcomes of the players' rolls.

It's interesting to speculate that D&D could have gone down this sort of path circa 1977 if the saving throw rules had been generalised a bit more and been understood to permit a wide range of GM responses than "take this much damage' or "you're dead". But they went down a different, more "simulationist"/task-oriented path - which 3E absolutely consolidated. And so it was not to be.

Classic Traveller, on the other hand, does have hints of this as we've discussed in the past. But again the development of Traveller in the 80s and 90s turned away from this again onto the more "simulationist"/task-oriented path.

 

[Lanefan]

If it is the case that the choices being made are essentially random than at least one of 3 things must be true:

1. The scenario design is terrible. Empty room syndrome is this.
2. The GM is being entirely too coy when they are describing the environment.
3. Players are not doing due diligence.

Map and key play can absolutely be done in a way that requires and reflects skill. GM play and scenario design just has to be on point.

"Empty room syndrome" - by this do you mean the presence of empty rooms or null-space in a dungeon or adventure's design?

 

[Pedantic]

In another online space I read a good analysis of this.

In the sort of D&D play that's been fairly common since them mid-1980s, the GM has a large permission to introduce complications more-or-less at will. So unless there is an agreement that the campaign is about to end, it's more or less understood that after each little bit of action is resolved, the GM will announce to the rest of the table some new complication or obstacle that has emerged. Most other "trad" games - RM, RQ, GURPS, HERO etc - work pretty much like this too.

One of the striking features of Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World and BitD is that the GM's permission in this respect is tightly regulated (though in different technical ways across the three systems), and is conditioned at least in part on the outcomes of the players' rolls.

Definitely this is a problem for me, largely because it means I can't take actions that involve rolling to try and resolve a complication without risking another one, which really undermines the gameplay loop I'm looking for.

That being said, if the trigger was something other than the players doing things, I can see a system with this kind of constraint being interesting. Is there any system that shoots for that? The most obvious thing to use is time, or maybe some kind of GM side accumulating resource, like in original Descent, where the Overlord has an income and cards with specific negative outcomes they spend it to play.

 

[Campbell]

"Empty room syndrome" - by this do you mean the presence of empty rooms or null-space in a dungeon or adventure's design?

The empty room with 2 or more nondescript doors is the most common example, but it can be extended to any situations where players must decide a course of action, but have no means to find information that makes their decision an informed one.

 

[pemerton]

Well, if your own position makes them verboten, it is time to reconsider your position.

I took @Campbell's point to be that other posters tell him that his preferences for RPGing are illegitimate or wrong.

 

[Lanefan]

The empty room with 2 or more nondescript doors is the most common example, but it can be extended to any situations where players must decide a course of action, but have no means to find information that makes their decision an informed one.

This could become its own thread, but I don't have any problem with empty rooms (or null-space, I'll just stick with rooms for now as the go-to example) in an adventure, provided there's a halfway-reasonable explanation in the fiction for their presence.

That they might leave the players/PCs with no discernable option is perhaps a downside; the upside is that the room being empty now might mean it's a safe place to retreat to and use as a campsite or place to rest.

Some adventures might even be mostly comprised of empty rooms, where the mission is to make sure they're in fact still empty - or, as I once ran, the mission is a 1st-level training exercise with the goal being simply to make a decent map of the place while honing your field techniques.

 

[pemerton]

Yup. For people who see there as being no difference, the objection is going to seem utterly nonsensical.

Does anyone not realise that there are both obvious and subtle differences between "just in time" and pre-authored fiction?

I don't think anyone in this thread is confused about the difference between playing Keep on the Borderlands (as presented in module B2) or Tomb of Horror (as presented in module S1) compared to playing a session of Burning Wheel or Blade in the Dark.

One obvious difference is that B2 and S1 both present some pre-authored fiction which is (at the start of play) secret to the GM, and that is intended to serve as a constraint on both framing and resolution in some reasonably familiar ways: it regulates the geographical elements of both framing and resolution ("I move . . ." "I peek around the corner . . ." etc); it provides answers to action declarations like "I look for . . ." or "What do I see when . . ."; it thus creates a framework or structure which the players can explore and come to know by means of action declarations such as the ones I've just outlined.

At least in my experience, this sort of play procedure is not a prominent part of Burning Wheel play. Typically the answer to a question like "What do I see when . . ." is generated "just in time" by drawing on cues and signals (and mood and whim) that are not found in a pre-authored set of notes including a map and its key. (In this way it more closely resembles how a fight between the PCs and some Orcs might be resolved in a typical play through of B2.)

But one thing that isn't different in either case is that the imaginary stuff is imaginary. Which is what I took @hawkeyefan's point to be.