Not a Conspiracy Theory: Moving Toward Better Criticism in RPGs

[FrogReaver]

One could say the party is applying a heuristic to find the path to their goal (following fresh footprints, looking for certain clues, using information gained from prior research, etc). It sounds a bit overly clinical though.

I'd say it's actually more complex.

The players have a number of goals.
1. Survive
2. Find Treasure
3. Defeat the bad guys
4. Etc.

These goals sometimes compete and thus must be prioritized moment to moment in play. Players utilize exploration of the fictional world to either accomplish these goals directly or gain some advantage toward accomplishing them.

I think the difference in 'guessing' and this is that guessing only ever tells you what one wrong answer is, whereas exploration ultimately provides you useful information toward at least 1 of your goals or some resource like a magic item, safe rest location, etc that can be used to help accomplish one or more of your goals.

 

[FrogReaver]

I don't think the pejorative labels have much use. I explained why about each one. Any truth that they have is flawed, or missing something vital that renders the term problematic. Of them all, "pictionary" seemed the most benign, but even that one seems to trivialize the role of the players; it fits the idea of play as "guesswork" which I generally don't agree with.

I explained that if someone leveled a criticism of a kind of game along the lines of these things... meaning they didn't just say "that's mother may I" but instead explained why, and the implications of such and so on... that's one thing. If someone takes the time to explain the criticism, then that's one thing. But as general labels, they all suck.

But we're not really delving into discussion of the styles here. We're just talking about the labels. If you want to expand on why you think one of these labels is accurate beyond a few words, great.... have at it. I'll happily discuss that.

I'm sorry but you called me a hypocrite and then simply dismissed my defense of it by jumping to another point instead of either acknowledging I am not or making an argument for why my defense was insufficient. That's not something I am willing to just move on from without resolution.

 

[Hussar]

I think the difference in 'guessing' and this is that guessing only ever tells you what one wrong answer is, whereas exploration ultimately provides you useful information toward at least 1 of your goals or some resource like a magic item, safe rest location, etc that can be used to help accomplish one or more of your goals.

That's not true, otherwise the game of 20 Questions would never work.

But, yes, @pemerton, I would say that this is generally how D&D is played most of the time. At least, that has always been my experience. Call it exploration, fine. That's groovy. I can work with that term. But, essentially, the players go from a position of almost zero information and, through applying a heuristic, move from zero information to... well... more than zero information because, by the time they actually have enough information to make truly informed decisions, typically everything in the adventure has already been resolved.

 

[pemerton]

I think poor design and/or poor play. If I'm doing nothing but making uninformed decisions in play, I'm likely to be dissatisfied. I expect map and key play to allow for ways to learn things so that I can make informed decisions. For me to be able to make moves that allow me to gain greater understanding of the situation.

As you may have gathered, I'm more sympathetic to @Hussar on this particular point.

Up until a few years ago, I would have told you that I had very little interest in map-and-key play. But I did run a handful of quasi-dungeon crawls in 4e, mostly when the PCs were in Heroic tier, and I did enjoy them, but they were not really about the sort of informed play you mention in your post, and nothing like the sort of dungeon adventuring Gygax advocates for in his PHB. I tried to come up with an interesting series of rooms that would provide fun encounters in a 4e vein. The closest I remember to the sort of informed decision-making you refer to was this: the players entered one room from a downward-sloping corridor, and they conjectured that there might be some sort of slope-or-pit related trap. And so they roped themselves together. And indeed there was a pit in the room, and a Deathlock Wight who made the PCs recoil in horror; and when one of them duly fell down the pit as a result the roping together paid off.

But mostly the maps were just devices for creating spaces for the encounters to occur in, and for creating a type of geographic and resulting "story" logic. The last of these sorts of scenarios I recall running was at lower Paragon tier, which would be around 2011 or 2012. And here's the last one I recall that really used the map to establish the logic of the encounters in any interesting way; in subsequent ones really were spaces for encounters to occur in, at least to the best of my recollection. (And when I later revisited D2 Shrine of the Kua Toa and G2 Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl, they were shorn of their dungeon-crawl elements altogether.)

Between then and 2020 I played a few sessions of AD&D (which is map-and-key down to its bones!) and continued to use some maps in 4e play as framing devices (as well as their fundamental role in combat resolution). But mostly I thought I had left map-and-key behind, as I had adopted other techniques (influenced especially by Burning Wheel) to manage the relationship between encounters, even inside buildings, without relying on a map-and-key.

My first real return to map-and-key as a serious thing was in Classic Traveller. Not at first - for instance, when the PCs assaulted an enemy installation (which was the first Traveller combat I'd GMed in about 30 years), I used the encounter distance rules to generate a sense of geography, and then sketched the installation map around that. But a bit later on I used maps (and adapted the keys) from the classic adventures Annic Nova and Shadows. I did these in a not-very-secret way: the maps were generally in the middle of the table, and the players could see where they were going. And because these are actually rather boring scenarios as written, revealing the information in the key didn't really involve much more than the players having their PCs wander through the places and look around at the obvious stuff.

It's only with Torchbearer, over the past 12 months, that I've been getting into map-and-key play that is remotely like what Gygax had in mind, with a hidden gameboard and the players trying to obtain information about it so as to make informed decisions.

This post ended up a bit more autobiographical than I had in mind starting out. But I think what I'm trying to say is that I can understand that there might be map-and-key play taking place, where the idea of informed player decision-making is not at the forefront.

EDIT: Upthread I talked about a type of play I'd mostly experienced in 2nd ed AD&D, but in some ways the 4e play I've described above resembles it. For me, the difference is that the 4e - influenced by player build decisions, player authored quests, etc - involves a different approach to prep from AD&D 2nd ed, and also the resolution framework is different enough that the way the map and key factors into resolution, as opposed to framing, is different. But if those things are put to one side, it does look pretty similar to what I described and what I think (from post 763) @Hussar has in mind.

 

[kenada]

I'd say it's actually more complex.

The players have a number of goals.
1. Survive
2. Find Treasure
3. Defeat the bad guys
4. Etc.

These goals sometimes compete and thus must be prioritized moment to moment in play. Players utilize exploration of the fictional world to either accomplish these goals directly or gain some advantage toward accomplishing them.

I think the difference in 'guessing' and this is that guessing only ever tells you what one wrong answer is, whereas exploration ultimately provides you useful information toward at least 1 of your goals or some resource like a magic item, safe rest location, etc that can be used to help accomplish one or more of your goals.

They seem complementary. Exploration is how the players go about accomplishing their goals while heuristics are what they use to decide where to explore. I’m not wedded to it though. I was just trying to suggest something that didn’t have “guesswork” in it.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I'm sorry but you called me a hypocrite and then simply dismissed my defense of it by jumping to another point instead of either acknowledging I am not or making an argument for why my defense was insufficient. That's not something I am willing to just move on from without resolution.

I didn’t call you a hypocrite. I pointed out how you were not okay with “map and key” or “mother may I” but felt “schrodinger’s X”was acceptable.

You’ve explained that all the pejorative terms are now acceptable to you? Or that they at least have enough truth that they’re okay? Fine, if that’s what you think, but I disagree and explained why.

You’ve been routinely snipping much of my posts and commenting only on small parts. I feel like the questions I’ve asked would possibly lead to a more fruitful discussion. If you don’t want to engage with them, then fine. But I’d much rather this get to something like a reasonable discussion about something.

 

[hawkeyefan]

As you may have gathered, I'm more sympathetic to @Hussar on this particular point.

Perhaps. I didn’t mean to seem harsh, nor to say that “guesswork” never comes up in play. I just don’t think of it as the central experience captured by the “map and key” descriptor.

That there will be instances of play where that does happen is certain. Personally, I find the less of them, the better. But that is just my preference.

 

[FrogReaver]

I didn’t call you a hypocrite. I pointed out how you were not okay with “map and key” or “mother may I” but felt “schrodinger’s X”was acceptable.

If true doesn't that make me a hypocrite? It does in my mind anyways.

You’ve explained that all the pejorative terms are now acceptable to you?

Yes, and before you even go there, i explained in the very post you referenced above exactly when and how they many of those terms were acceptable to me.
*Caveat being that it's the internet so there's always a possible exception.

Or that they at least have enough truth that they’re okay?

IMO. When being used to convey that smidgen of truth they are acceptable. If going outside that smidgen of truth then using them is not acceptable.

Fine, if that’s what you think, but I disagree and explained why.

And i've explained twice now that I won't go there until we fully deal with the hypocrisy part.

You’ve been routinely snipping much of my posts and commenting only on small parts. I feel like the questions I’ve asked would possibly lead to a more fruitful discussion. If you don’t want to engage with them, then fine. But I’d much rather this get to something like a reasonable discussion about something.

I would as well, you know my requirements.

 

[Thomas Shey]

There are definite differences here and reasons why someone would prefer to have more established up front, but accuracy matters here. The scope and nature of the contrivances being made are different, but we are still dealing with contrivances. Using naturalistic language to describe one sort of play and treating the other as artificial does us no good except to raise the blood pressure of the room and treat nonconforming styles of play as lesser.

I would be more than happy to dig into this elsewhere.

I think that's fair, but there's also an issue of people who would prefer to avoid temporal contrivances at all, but simply accept some are unavoidable. As such ones that, well, aren't will seem in a different class.

(This is over and above people who don't want the kind of interactions that are required for a lot of just-in-time result decisions of course ).

 

[Pedantic]

I thought you were replying to my hypothetical example of play. But you seem to be talking about a different one. Are you going to tell us how you think your action declaration would be resolved in Apocalypse World?

I think we're into the declaration of player intent equivalent of pixelbitching here, but I would also read "don't get caught" as precluding any interaction with a guard. This whole thing seems to be hinging on different definitions of "caught."

Not getting shot or caught feels like sneaking around in vents, spying from rooftops and so on. If the player had said something about blending in and counting the guards, I'd think your resolution made more sense. My perceived sense of what that action would entail doesn't align with the outcome you proposed. I suspect at an actual table we could negotiate that to a satisfactory conclusion.