Not a Conspiracy Theory: Moving Toward Better Criticism in RPGs

[kenada]

These two statements are contradictory. In responding how it was programmed to respond, it is by definition consulting something: its internal data. That is precisely analogous (much moreso than most analogies!) to the secret knowledge the GM has which the players do not. You must observe and then experiment, applying logic and resources to your environment, in order to understand the state of affairs and how it may he favorably changed/addressed. Is that not exactly what I have been describing? It's just that the computer can only accept a narrow and finite range of responses as valid (because computers are bad at abstract reasoning), while a GM can accept a nigh-infinite variety of responses and can adapt the situation to address shortcomings.

I’m distinguishing between the GM’s ability to exercise judgement and the computer’s rote processing of its instructions. The “map and key” is input into the GM’s decision-making, but it is not the limit of the decision making. All the computer can do is follow instructions by rote. While they are both “data”, how they are used and their users’ relationships to them differ.

That’s why I call it a stretch. It’s just a tool. Some implementations are better, and a lot are worse. Trying to construe it as being more than that muddles things and risks saddling the tool with a bunch of extra baggage. (And it’s already bad enough that high quality keys are not as appreciated as they should be.)

 

[hawkeyefan]

Let's take a step back - Do you agree there is an implicit expression of 'guessing game' present in the 'map and key' term?

I never mentioned a guessing game. I don’t think that it must be so. It could be in a given scenario, I suppose, but I don’t think it’s a given.

What about map and key implies guessing?

If so it shouldn't be that hard to understand my objection - D&D is much more than a game about guessing, so using a term that expresses the fundamental nature of the playstyle is that of a guessing game is an at best misleading description of D&D.

I don’t think that’s what map and key says. To me, there’s a map of some kind… the physical space in which the events of play will take place. This can be a dungeon or an isle or a keep or a glacial rift or whatever. And there’s a key… a summary of the features of the place, and the creatures and objects within it.

I don’t know how guesswork comes into it. Do you mean that the players don’t know the entirety of the map and key? I would agree they don’t, but I still don’t see what guesswork has to do with it.

As an analogy that might help explain - it would be the equivalent to me calling story now games, 'Yahtzee RPG's' or 'Casino RPG's' because you only ever achieve success by rolling a dice - with the odds of complete success generally stacked against you.

Not really. Maps and keys are a fundamental element of the hobby. Neither yahtzee nor casinos are.

The take that you can only achieve success by rolling dice in a story game (of the kind you mean) is also flawed, demonstrably so. And the odds of complete success are, compared to D&D, likely no worse, depending on how we view things in D&D. Meaning, a hit that results in loss of hit points but which doesn’t kill a foe… certainly not a complete success by any definition… well of we view it that way, then I’d say the total opposite may be true.

I dunno. I understand that opinions will vary, but "Map and Key" seems far more neutral of a term to me than "Hexcrawl." The whole "crawling" aspect of the latter term sounds laborious and monotonous rather than fun.

I can see that. I personally don’t mind it myself, and I know it’s widely accepted and typically not viewed as a slight. And I think a hexcrawl is just a type of map and key play… a subset of a sort.

Maybe the core problem with the term "map and key" is that @pemerton used it so there is naturally suspicion of nefarious intent.


Doubly so if pemerton used the term.

I think this is a big part of it.

 

[FrogReaver]

Fundamentally what we're talking about is how situation and setting is determined by the play group. How do we acknowledge that in one case it is determined by a GM ahead of time writing some stuff down / defining things / thinking about how it must be while in the other case it is being determined in the moment based on what speaks to the interests of the player characters and the ongoing narrative as experienced so far? How do we acknowledge this difference without treating the second as if it somehow involved more artifice than the first?

I don't think that's the fundamental difference.

For example, blades starts off the game with a built in situation and setting, Setting = Duskovol City with many rival factions and situation = PC's are trying to make it big. It's very predetermined here.

Contrast with D&D - both have predetermined fiction going into the game. Both have fiction determined in the moment. Sometimes fiction may even be determined by the D&D DM based on what speaks to the interests of the player characters and ongiong narratives as experienced so far.

So I think the fundamental difference is elsewhere. For me as the GM the biggest difference was that predetermined fiction couldn't be used to determine success or failure in Blades, whereas in D&D that's something we are constantly asked to do. That said predetermined fiction was still used to determine position and effect, but the difference between using it to determine success vs position and effect does create very different dynamics.

In either case the player characters are moving through a set world and dealing with a set situation. How we construct that / resolve that is different.

Basically, how do I never hear Schrodinger's X ever again?

I'd suggest one common lens of viewing RPG play through is to view it from the perspective of mechanical simulation. That's the lens that begets quantum ogre's and such. I don't think it's a great lens, but its a lens.

 

[FrogReaver]

I never mentioned a guessing game. I don’t think that it must be so. It could be in a given scenario, I suppose, but I don’t think it’s a given.

What about map and key implies guessing?



I don’t think that’s what map and key says. To me, there’s a map of some kind… the physical space in which the events of play will take place. This can be a dungeon or an isle or a keep or a glacial rift or whatever. And there’s a key… a summary of the features of the place, and the creatures and objects within it.

I don’t know how guesswork comes into it. Do you mean that the players don’t know the entirety of the map and key? I would agree they don’t, but I still don’t see what guesswork has to do with it.



Not really. Maps and keys are a fundamental element of the hobby. Neither yahtzee nor casinos are.

The take that you can only achieve success by rolling dice in a story game (of the kind you mean) is also flawed, demonstrably so. And the odds of complete success are, compared to D&D, likely no worse, depending on how we view things in D&D. Meaning, a hit that results in loss of hit points but which doesn’t kill a foe… certainly not a complete success by any definition… well of we view it that way, then I’d say the total opposite may be true.



I can see that. I personally don’t mind it myself, and I know it’s widely accepted and typically not viewed as a slight. And I think a hexcrawl is just a type of map and key play… a subset of a sort.



I think this is a big part of it.

Okay. So we fundamentally disagree on the premise. Of course our conclusions are going to be different. The premise being whether 'guessing game' is implied in 'map and key'.

I can maybe meet you halfway -
If 'guessing game' is not implied or a connotation of 'map and key' then I agree there's no issue with the term.
If it is do you agree that there is an issue with it?

 

[Pedantic]

Fundamentally what we're talking about is how situation and setting is determined by the play group. How do we acknowledge that in one case it is determined by a GM ahead of time writing some stuff down / defining things / thinking about how it must be while in the other case it is being determined in the moment based on what speaks to the interests of the player characters and the ongoing narrative as experienced so far? How do we acknowledge this difference without treating the second as if it somehow involved more artifice than the first?

I meant it would certainly help if we stopped referring to a complete, fictional setting as an illusion that one will eventually learn to see through. That's usually the point in these conversations things break down. It's difficult to empathize when the other party views the basis of the game you're playing as a childish delusion that can and should yield to better technologies.

I’m distinguishing between the GM’s ability to exercise judgement and the computer’s rote processing of its instructions. The “map and key” is input into the GM’s decision-making, but it is not the limit of the decision making. All the computer can do is follow instructions by rote. While they are both “data”, how they are used and their users’ relationships to them differ.

That’s why I call it a stretch. It’s just a tool. Some implementations are better, and a lot are worse. Trying to construe it as being more than that muddles things and risks saddling the tool with a bunch of extra baggage. (And it’s already bad enough that high quality keys are not as appreciated as they should be.)

So this distinction is particularly important, and does suggest that we should find a more specific term if necessary. The primary reason that a GM is a more compelling technology than a computer for this kind of play, is that they can be asked to go back and fill in whatever details they missed earlier. You can ask the GM to step back from adjudicating the game and/or making NPC decisions, and return to the role of worldbuilder to add additional details to the aforementioned map and key if they become relevant, something a computer cannot do outside of tightly controlled circumstances.

The whole reason you'd want to do that, is because it means you can a much broader set of actions to declare than a videogame can handle, and thus a much broader set of interesting decisions to grapple with and optimization cases to sort out.

I was trying to explain something about board games in a different context lately, which I think is relevant to understanding the agreements that this kind of play hinges on. None of my friends that I go and play cutthroat rounds of Indonesia or Pipeline with care about winning. We occasional track scores and what have you, but mostly because we're interested in the differentials between final point values, and how they differ as we play more rounds of the same game, but fundamentally none of us really cares who won at the end of any given round.

We all mutually agree that we will strive to win, because that agreement allows an interest set of board states to unfurl, and decisions to be made for us to chew on, which are the actually enjoyable part of the experience. This means, however, that we spend a lot of time giving each other advice, or discussing two or three options, and so on. Any move that results in an obvious advantage for a competitor is quickly pointed out by that competitor and usually taken back, unless we're playing in a specific kind of game where mistakes are considered essential, like say, Guards of Atlantis. Say, I could have taken 2 different sets of 3 pipe tiles with the same number of blue pipes but one of them has the orange pipes my opponent clearly needs, if I don't take that set, that opponent will likely point to them and say "you should probably take these, that will hurt me worse, unless you're doing something I'm not seeing."

So, the point I'm looking for in my RPG play is to produce that same decision making, ideally on a much broader scale than a board game can accomplish. I have yet to find any better way to do it, than having one person attempt to faithfully simulate a fictional reality that can relied on as a board state to act against.

 

[pemerton]

I don't understand your aversion to "map-and-key" resolution

What aversion?

Here you can read my actual play posts for my current Torchbearer campaign, which uses map-and-key to constrain framing (in the Adventure phrase) and also to constrain aspects of resolution (mostly "We move . . . " and "We look . . .").

It's not an aversion to point out that it is not the only way to do RPGing. Nor to point out that many RPGers who are mostly familiar with D&D can struggle to grasp RPGs that don't rely on map-and-key for framing or resolution.

any system with hardcoded class or career rules for character creation utilizes "map-and-key" principles in the abstract to build your adventurer.

I don't follow this at all. AD&D, 4e D&D, Classic Traveller, Burning Wheel, Torchbearer - all have different sorts of "hardcoded" rules for PC creation. None involves a map or a key. They tend to involve lists, and various rules for how options are chosen from those lists.

Published adventures and campaign settings utilize map-and-key principles as well, though its cleverly disguised through the introductions of these elements in a suggested order. It's clear that you're not opposed to it altogether for the sake of adventures, though you do think it's a lower order concern of the game, if I understand you correctly.

I'm not sure what sort of "clever disguise" you have in mind.

I used a published adventure in Torchbearer: The Tower of Stars from the Cartographer's Compendium. It has a map and a key, which are used in framing and resolution as I described above.

I adapted a Robin Laws Hero Wars scenario to 4e D&D - The Demon of the Red Grove. The published scenario does not include a map or a key. Nor did my 4e adaptation.

The idea of a character having a perfect--if not significant at least--authourity to "frame" the narrative as a default feature of any resolved choice, would broadly fit with the essence of the narrative style that I've termed as "Rationale."

By "character" do you mean "player"?

As I posted upthread, I have no idea what RPG you think you are describing via "Rationale". Are you able to give an example?[/url]

 

[pemerton]

when in Blades when I as GM need to determine the consequences of a failed roll (full failure or partial success), I am looking at the 'map' of all the established fiction and picking a result that makes sense to me within the framework of that established fiction.

What work is the metaphor "map" doing here?

I don't see that it adds anything to the analysis.

 

[pemerton]

I'm not completely sure what it means, actually. It looks like another one of those jargon phrases that someone starts using and everyone goes along with it.

A map is a type of visual diagram, typically as if from an aerial view, used to represent architecture, geography, topography etc. If you have a smartphone, it probably has a map app that will give you some examples of a map.

I think the word "key" is one I picked up from either Gygax or Moldvay. I've just looked in my DMG, and see on p 96 Gygax saying:

Before you [the GM] are three maps: a large-scale map which shows the village and surrounding territory . . . a small-scale (1 square to 10' might be in order) map of the ruined monastery . . . and a numbered key for description and encounters; lastly you have the small scale map of the storage chambers and crypts beneath the upper works of the place . . . likewise keyed by numbers for descriptions and encounters.​

So my recollection seems to be correct.

 

[pemerton]

Sure, but it's apparently being applied to all gaming of a certain style, module or not.

Only by you, FrogReaver and @ClusterFluster.

 

[Campbell]

@FrogReaver

Established fiction in the context of Blades refers to the things that have been said at the table and only those things said at the table. Anything else is what the game refers to as potential fiction.

Be aware of potential fiction vs. established fiction.

Potential fiction is everything in your head that you haven’t put into play yet. It’s a “cloud” of possible things, organized according to the current situation. When the PCs infiltrate the manor house, you might have potential fiction elements in your head like this:

• Courtyard (wide open? filled with statuary?)
• Rooftop (loose tiles?)
• Underground Canal
• Sentries (professionals?)
• Guard Dogs (or other animals?)
• Electric Lights
• Fancy Locks

And then, when they say that they’re crossing the courtyard, you bring up a new cloud of potential in your head, by imagining that element in more detail, with its own features to establish, like deciding if the yard is open or filled with statuary. As the players take action and face obstacles, you grab elements from the potential fiction cloud and establish them in the ongoing scene. Once established, they can be leveraged by the players. They’re a part of the game. Before that, they’re just notional—they don’t have a concrete “place” in the game yet. They can be freely incorporated as needed to address the results of rolls and to paint the picture of the ongoing operation as it hurtles toward its resolution. 7 196 You’re not taking the PCs on a tour of every room of your house. The PCs should be more like viewers watching an edited sequence of shots that carry them forward in the action of the game—into trouble or past it, as the rolls dictate. This is why Blades uses clocks to track progress rather than room-by-room maps. A map can be good as a reference to draw from as part of the “potential fiction cloud,” but in this game it’s a bad idea to treat a map as a checklist of areas that must be moved through in order to get somewhere.

The way I have always seen the game approached (in actual play, actual play series and my reading of the text) the setting elements, particularly the factions are meant to be tailored to your specific game. Take what works, change what doesn't, nothing is binding on play until it is seen in play.

For instance, you are only supposed to pay attention to factions and faction clocks that are directly relevant to play. It's not like wrong to treat the setting in a more traditional way, but my reading of the text is that it should be an input into framing (potential fiction), but not constrain or limit action resolution or framing.

In our own Blades game several of the factions have changed their MOs and their relationship to other factions based on what would make for a more compelling game. The same is true of both the Actual Plays I saw John Harper (the game's author) run.