On completely artificial restrictions

[niklinna]

More or less, yes. Here, the crux of the point is that restricting the available options can emphasize, for the lack of a better term, system mastery. Whether it's "connected" to fiction or not, the way I see it, is secondary here.

The larger theoretical framework is still very much in development, I'm in the process of honing my understanding of my preferences myself, and trying to explain them to other people is a part of that.

As it stands, today, 20.03.2023, there're two largest pieces of the puzzle:

• A) Disconnecting resolution from fiction (as in, it doesn't matter what the character is actually doing as their situation, abilities and whatnot bear no influence on the outcome, and the rules don't try to model the game world in any sense, only being concerned with distributing narrative authority) emphasizes authorial intent of the players, allowing to concentrate on what is "cool" rather than on what is effective
• B) Making the game fun makes the game more fun (duh), and creating completely arbitrary (from the perspective of fiction) rules is an easy way to create an engaging game without making it ludicrously complex

The two are possibly related, but it's still unclear to me how, and in this threat, I'm more concerned with the latter than the former.

Maybe A) isn't actually desirable, and making the resolution mini-game harder or easier depending on fictional circumstances, but still allowing the player to compensate for it by system mastery would lead to the same general outcome, and it's just my frustration with randomness is speaking.

Aside: most games focused on storytelling are rules-light and most rules-light games basically boil everything down to a roll of the dice, so maybe that's why I'm not fully satisfied with them. It needs more pondering.

Emphasizing player skill in the resolution mini-game would allow the player to do hard things as a flex (?), giving suboptimal options more weight than mere chance.

As an example, let's say I've created a cocky wizard Laura, and her character sheet says "Flaw: I can't back down from a challenge". A hostile NPC taunts her, like "You are nothing without your magic tricks, you witch!", and I, as a player who wants to see her cocky wizard being cocky on-screen, am tempted to respond with "Fine, I'm gonna beat you into a bloody pulp with nothing but my bare hands!".

But, as a player playing the damn game, I know that this will just handicap me for no real change in the gameplay. I'll just roll dice with less chance of success, and this scene will also probably drag out longer than it needs to. It's a no-win situation, both bad for my character, and, more importantly, ####ing boring.

If the resolution mini-game instead was, say, a fighting game in the vein of Tekken or Street Fighter, I could flex my skill and win without using the strongest combos, purely relying on my reaction, prediction and knowledge of the game mechanics, earning my right to portray my character the way I see fit and both creating a neat parallel between what the character is doing and what I'm doing and making the NPC's humiliation more "real" in the process.

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The biggest problem with me trying to piece all this together is that... I don't really play tabletop games other than RPGs. When I try to imagine mechanics that would work for my purposes (be short and demand skill), I imagine videogames (and mostly action games, as I don't really play strategy/tactics games either).

I don't really have any other frame of reference. I'll need to expand my knowledge on smaller, faster boardgames that don't take hours, like Twilight Imperium and GoT, which make up the majority of my experience with boardgaming.

This brings to my mind another kind of distinction.

1. Action resolution in any RPG—even most LARP combat—is highly arbitrary and dissociated, and does not resemble the actual actions being emulated in any substantive way. Seems to me the main reason most tabletop games use dice rather than minigames (whether skill-based or not), is quickness and convenience (but see below!). Although even this is arguable for some games; Torg action resolution is much more than a simple d20 roll, involving a table lookup, currency allowing additive rolls, and card play that can further modify the result. In any case, the physical form of action resolution (the "gamey" bit) has nothing to do with the fiction as such, or with immersion (apart from perhaps being resolved quickly and so being less of a distraction from the fiction as such). What the resolution specifically does—whatever form it takes—is to constrain the narrative outcomes allowed/expected, by mutual agreement of the table (hopefully).

2. Other game mechanics, such as movement, may be be less arbitrary and dissociated than action resolution, but even those are arbitrary and dissociated to some degree. All round/turn-based mechanics are already significantly deviating from "reality", so why not tinker with them and see what results? The results may feel more or less "realistic", and they may be more or less fun, or challenging, or engaging (not the same as immersive).

Both aspects of play can involve randomness vs. skill, which leads to the matter of whether a game should allow anyone a fair shake at pretending things they are in fact not good at. If you use some skill-based resolution method instead of chance, anyone not actually good at that method, in real life, is at a disadvantage portraying characters who can do whatever that method represents in the game. Such things may or may not be physical skills, of course. This is the other big reason most games use random resolution of some kind, with in-game mechanics to modify the odds. Even so, skilled play in the broader sense involves much more than action resolution, so unless you are happy playing the RPG equivalent of Candyland (or craps), at some point, in some way, skill will be necessary to achieve satisfying challenging play.

To get back to the topic, I really like the exploration you're doing, popping open the hood of the car, looking at the engine, and examining what really makes it go brrr for you. This is how great things wind up being made! (or experienced)

Edit: Fixed a typo.

 

[pemerton]

Seems to me the main reason most tabletop games use dice rather than minigames (whether skill-based or not), is quickness and convenience (but see below!).

<snip>

If you use some skill-based resolution method instead of chance, anyone not actually good at that method, in real life, is at a disadvantage portraying characters who can do whatever that method represents in the game. Such things may or may not be physical skills, of course. This is the other big reason most games use random resolution of some kind, with in-game mechanics to modify the odds.

Here's an example to ponder.

I think everyone would accept the proposition that Rolemaster is (i) a tabletop RPG, and (ii) a high-"sim" RPG. (In Forge terms, a purist-for-system RPG.)

At the start of each round, a melee combatant in RM has to assign their combat bonus to two pools: attack and defence. When we played, we had included/adapted/built on various optional rules found in various RM books to add the following additional options for allocation of the combat bonus: increase initiative; increase critical result; make multiple attacks vs multiple foes (a "sweep"); make multiple attacks vs a single foe.

There is a lot of interaction here: eg if you go first, and disable or kill your opponent, you don't need to parry. Hence there are trade-offs between raw attack bonus and crit shift and multiple attacks (for trying to disable or kill your opponent; relevant factors here include knowing where you are likely to land on the attack table, so making sure you get a crit roll to buff; and of course multiple attacks gives a chance at multiple crits); and also between increasing initiative and buffing defence (success at the first tending to make the second unnecessary). And these interactions become more complex when the possibility of sweeping multiple foes (which itself interacts with the initiative rules) is taken into account (eg you might want to put enough into initiative to try and make sure that your attack against your third foe in a sweep still comes in ahead of their attack).

In our second long-running RM campaign, one of the warrior players - who in real life is trained in optimisation mathematics, and who works in finance and is pretty good at his job - had modelled the bonus allocations for various possible situations his PC might find himself in, and used Excel to create graphs that showed the optimisation peaks for those situations.

His graphs worked. The PC didn't win all the time, as sometimes the dice just roll poorly again and again. But the PC was a powerful melee combatant, who generally cut down his foes with little mercy (I think one of his fighting styles had the word "reaping" in it).

I am not a martial artist, and so don't know how "realistic" it is to have outcomes in combat depend on making judgements about speed of strike vs placement of strike vs readying for defence etc. I'm pretty sure, though, that expertise in optimisation mathematics has nothing to do with martial prowess! But the "completely artificial restrictions" of Rolemaster mean that it does.

 

[loverdrive]

Thinking about it some more (or, rather, not thinking about anything as trying to P-rank new ULTRAKILL secret boss leaves my brain exactly zero capacity to process anything beyond trying not to die), I have some more thoughts.

First, cooperative nature of most RPGs definitely plays a part: I'm much more comfortable accepting negative consequences as a price for making (rationally) bad decisions, compelled by the character's flaw/code of honour/whatever when I'm the only one who will have to deal with them. Or, rather, when I know the other players don't expect me to "do my part".

Getting into a fight that I know will end badly in the dog-eat-dog Apocalypse World over a largely inconsequential matter of pride? Yeah, sure! Doing the same in Blades in the Dark, where that will compromise the whole crew who actually count on me? Nah, I'll probably let it slide. Multiply this reluctance by a factor of ten if that means devouring spotlight for a complex grid-based combat mini-game.

The same way I'll happily go for style and/or fun over effectiveness in a free-for-all game, content to end up on the bottom of the scoreboard, but will go for meta in a team-based game where other players would have to pick up my slack.

Maybe that's one of the reasons why I like TTRPGs where everyone is out to get each other.

Second, the issue of suboptimal options being boring on top of being suboptimal is surely not endemic to TTRPGs and isn't remedied by a eschewing randomness alone. A wizard beating someone up with her bare fists will be equally sleep-inducing in D&D and, say, Dark Souls. While, yes, fighting 1000+ HP enemies when you only do 1 damage probably requires better Dark Souls skill, it's still sounds like a nightmarish chore.

So I guess suboptimal options shouldn't be a test of endurance? Idk. This seems obvious, and I'm missing something.

There are also some thoughts and observations about immersion, but those are rooted in erotic roleplaying, so I'm not exactly sure how to convey them in an SFW manner.

 

[pemerton]

There are also some thoughts and observations about immersion, but those are rooted in erotic roleplaying, so I'm not exactly sure how to convey them in an SFW manner.

The verb "to root" has a colloquial meaning in Australian English that makes this phrase funnier (in a low brow way) than may have been intended.

 

[niklinna]

Getting into a fight that I know will end badly in the dog-eat-dog Apocalypse World over a largely inconsequential matter of pride? Yeah, sure! Doing the same in Blades in the Dark, where that will compromise the whole crew who actually count on me? Nah, I'll probably let it slide. Multiply this reluctance by a factor of ten if that means devouring spotlight for a complex grid-based combat mini-game.

Interestingly, I'm in a Blades in the Dark campaign with @Manbearcat (and @Campbell, @kenada, and @AbdulAlhazred), in which we often split up to do scores with a subset of the crew, right down to solo. So we've had plenty of opportunity in that specific campaign to do the "non-optimal" thing. It's had knockon effects with tiering up and XP and all that, but even so this campaign feels markedly different from the first one I was in, where the whole crew was always in on the same score together. But even then, since you have XP triggers based on dealing with your vice/trauma, and such, folks leaned into that even when it caused complications.

In a similar vein, in Torchbearer, you have to fail in order to get skill-ups and rest checks and the like. Doing the "sub-optimal" thing is baked into the system. It's really quite brilliant in its way. I've got some quibbles with class feature choices, and the books really needed an editor, but still.

Second, the issue of suboptimal options being boring on top of being suboptimal is surely not endemic to TTRPGs and isn't remedied by a eschewing randomness alone. A wizard beating someone up with her bare fists will be equally sleep-inducing in D&D and, say, Dark Souls. While, yes, fighting 1000+ HP enemies when you only do 1 damage probably requires better Dark Souls skill, it's still sounds like a nightmarish chore.

So I guess suboptimal options shouldn't be a test of endurance? Idk. This seems obvious, and I'm missing something.

This one's always a challenge. I remember back when I played (vanilla) World of Warcraft, the one class I could not stand to play was the paladin. I could survive anything, but combats routinely took 3-5 times as long as with any other class.

There are also some thoughts and observations about immersion, but those are rooted in erotic roleplaying, so I'm not exactly sure how to convey them in an SFW manner.

And now I am reminded of the episode in the tram tunnel where the dwarf stumbled upon a pair of night elves engaged in hanky-panky. Hilarity ensued. At least for the dwarf and for us.

But again, Torchbearer had some pretty darn immersive times, at least for me.

 

[niklinna]

The verb "to root" has a colloquial meaning in Australian English that makes this phrase funnier (in a low brow way) than may have been intended.

Root, rut, it's not far off!

 

[pemerton]

Root, rut, it's not far off!

I dunno if that's where it comes from.

"Root" can also be used as a noun, as in "All he wanted was a good . . .".

Or the joke about the pick-up line: "Did you ever trip over a treee?" "No." "Then how about a root?"

 

[loverdrive]

Or the joke about the pick-up line: "Did you ever trip over a treee?" "No." "Then how about a root?"

Now I have milk running down my nose. Thanks, I hate you.

 

[loverdrive]

I will respond to the serious points and continue discussing them.

I'm having an extended holiday (Nauryz küttı bolsyñdar, everyone!), so my thoughts are a bit scattered.

I may post some vague notes here for latter, if I think something is interesting enough to share even in raw, unprocessed form. Assertions, given without explanation and all those disclaimer-words like "a subset of [X] that I like", "I think", "IMHO", all that. I ask of you to understand that, and not cherry pick those.

I'd be very happy to hear questions, but I'll only be able to answer them latter. It's a dialogue, just with a slight lag.

Think of it as if made my Notion page public. Or if I had Twitter.

 

[loverdrive]

A game, that doesn't have a continuous fiction. It's played in short scenes that have only vague relation to each other, the characters are more or less the same, but nothing necessarily has long-term consequences.

Two lovers can have a bitter break up in one scene, and then be happily in love again in the next scene five (real) minutes after. The setting can change, they can be elves one moment and space cowboys next.

Gameplay? Gentle timer (that is audible, but doesn't draw that much attention to itself), like "each scene is played for 5 minutes"?i Mixing-and-matching durations?

Prescribed scenario? Like, "each scene must be about break up"? More freeform?