Players choose what their PCs do . . .

[Lanefan]

I haven’t commented in a bit, but I’ve been reading along with the current thrust of the conversation, and the above bit jumped out at me because I think it comes up often in these discussions.

The PCs....meaning the players and the characters they play...are what make a RPG a game. Anything in the setting has rules SOLELY for the purpose of interacting with the PCs. A game needs rules, the PCs are what makes it a game, therefore the rules are there for the PCs.

Beyond that, there’s no need for rules.

I think the idea that a game MUST have some internal consistency that could be maintained in the absence of PCs is simply not true. It may be a preference, but even then I’m not quite sure I understand the need. What matters in the fiction without the PCs being involved in some way? Any such detail can simply be narrated, or if random chance is required in some way, then it can be decided with the roll of a die.

It just seems like such a tail wagging the dog kind of situation.

I guess I see a setting as being incomplete if it can't in theory be used for more than just the here-and-now run of play in an RPG. As player or DM, I should be able to take the setting and write a book about some NPC I've met (or run) and have the events in that book come out exactly as if they'd been played at the table, without having to make any changes to the setting's basic parameters.

Also, the players have to be able to trust that the interactions their PCs are having with the setting are - barring any material changes - going to be consistent from one event to the next; and also to be able to trust that their interactions with the setting will be consistent with how anyone else - be it a group of NPCs, another group of PCs, or whatever - would also interact with the same setting were they there in place of the PCs being played.

 

[Lanefan]

This is presupposing a story plot or antagonist that the players are expected and required to team up to defeat. Yes, in that style of play, this can be a problem because this style emphasizes team over individual. But, if there is no prepared story and the game follows the action, then the paladin refusing doesn't derail the game, the game is now about what happens next.

This was the biggest hurdle for me to overcome in my understanding -- you have to throw out the entire D&D conception of how games work and accept a completely new paradigm of play. One where the GM follows the players' moves and not the other way around. There's literally nothing to derail.

I don't see how these two paragraphs relate to each other.

Your first paragraph is pretty much bang on: the Paladin doesn't derail anything but does change the focus...unless the Paladin or another character outright leaves the party due to their disagreements (which is a very possible outcome of playing true to character, believe me).

But the second paragraph regarding a complete playstyle change doesn't necessarily follow, unless you're thinking of the type of GM who can't (or worse, refuse to) hit curveballs thrown by the players - of which this would certainly be one. Put another way, even in a GM-driven situation you can lead a horse (the players) to water (the story) but you can't make it drink (engage) if it doesn't want to.

 

[Lanefan]

I think the notion that mechanics can be a recipe without being a model - as I said in my earlier post, that mechanics can simply be fiction generation devices or fiction confirmation devices - is fundamental to appreciating the workings of most of the RPGs (including 4e D&D) that have been mentioned in this thread. Even Classic Traveller has resolution systems that as far as I can tell aren't meant to be models of anything, like the NPC reaction table.

Except that the mechanics, in this analogy, aren't a recipe at all - they're the operating instructions for the oven!

What you choose to bake or cook in that oven is up to you, the user; but the oven (i.e. the setting and game) is what it is regardless.

 

[hawkeyefan]

And in part he could do that because both he in his mind and the readers in theirs could and did assume that those off-camera parts of the fiction happened in a consistent manner with the parts actually written out in the book. We know how Orcs fight because we're given examples of it at various times in their dealings with the Fellowship's assorted members, and can extrapolate from there.

Sure. And neither Tolkien nor the readers needed stats to understand all this.

This strikes me as the equivalent of standing twenty feet back from a window and saying that the only thing that matters is what you can see through that window right this minute

I think a better analogy is looking at a TV and saying the only thing that matters is the story that you’re watching, not what anyone’s doing in the kitchen.

and further that just because we can see elements x and y through that window we can't extrapolate anything further. This is somewhat ridiculous: we know damn well there's a great big world out there beyond the tiny bit that's shown through that window, and it's only logical to assume it largely functions exactly the same as the little bit we can see.

But why do we care about what’s going on in the fictional world beyond what matters to the PCs? Same as with any story. Beyond the story, none of that really matters.

 

[Tony Vargas]

And in part he could do that because both he in his mind and the readers in theirs could and did assume that those off-camera parts of the fiction happened in a consistent manner with the parts actually written out in the book. We know how Orcs fight because we're given examples of it at various times in their dealings with the Fellowship's assorted members, and can extrapolate from there.

I mean, you can make whatever assumptions or extrapolations you want, about 'off camera' or glossed over sections, because they're not covered - you can also not bother doing so.

It's the whole "if a tree falls in the forest but nobody hears it, does it make a sound" question. (and yes it does, by the way ) Yes, and doing that with any integrity either requires an assumption that off-camera things work the same as on-camera, or a clear statement going in that things work differently off-camera thus implying the setting is not consistent with itself.

Things /do/ work very differently off camera, when you're making a movie. On-camera, you have a set, script, actors, lighting, foley, post-production, OMFG, so much stuff /working/ to make the scene. Off-camera: nothing. That's working pretty differently.

Things also work differently on-camera depending on the nature of the scene. Time compression, for instance. If the self-destruct device is going off in one hour, the first 45 minutes may take 5 minutes on screen, the next 12 twice as long, and the last minute may take 5 or 10 minutes, as /each/ characters last minute of action is examined in minute detail.

The same things happen in RPGs constantly. Minions? Really no different.

However, a TTRPG is not a novel

Obviously. If it were, it wouldn't be 'a model of genre fiction,' it'd just be "genre fiction."*

Sometimes in a TTRPG you do end up fighting the same foes over and over - if you're in a war zone, for example, and keep encountering patrols of enemy soldiers.

Often you do in fiction, too. Sometimes prettymuch exclusively. Ripley, for instance, fought an Alien for a whole movie, then, next movie, a bunch of aliens, that were just like it, yet died a whole lot faster, then a big-bad Alien Queen that was at least as hard to finish as the original.

What you say is correct here, but the solution lies in a different direction

It's not unfair to note that an alternate solution could go in a different direction, but the 4e solution of secondary roles /is/ a perfectly valid solution - and, a powerful one, in that it allows greater ranges of levels /and/ competence, to be 'modeled' (or 'generated,' pem) by functional play.

flatten the power curve and reduce the overall power gain as characters advance.

That'd be modeling an entirely different story arc. What's more, it'd be making the fiction being modeled a slave to the mechanics doing the modeling, which is the exact opposite of the point of modeling, in the first place.
Really, looking at it that way, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] 's idea of 'generating' rather than 'modeling' fiction makes more sense.

From all I can tell, 5e has done a pretty good job at this and thus a given monster can be and remain a viable opponent over a wider range of character levels without having to massage its numbers to suit the situation.

It's a less effective solution to the same issue, which is why I brought it up. 5e manages to cover 20 levels, ~8 of them (4-11) , over which, most character don't get any better, at all, at most things, and only a little better - +4 - at things they're trained in. Is that 'zero to hero?' Does it really make sense alongside having 10 times the hps? 4 times the attacks? 5 times the damage dice? 11 times the slots? 40 times the spell points? But only 20 or 40% (depending how you like to talk %s) better at a skill?

It's not, well, /internally consistent/. ;P

Yes, along with all its other numbers. A comparable-but-different creature might - well, very likely would - have different numbers e.g. better AC, lower potential damage output, etc., that ended up giving about the same XP value (and from all I've seen 4e is pretty non-granular with its XP values in the modules, usually rounding to the nearest 100).

There's no rounding. All 4e monsters of the same level & secondary role have the same xp value. No fiddliness. When buiding encounters you can largely skip adding up xp, and just go by levels & secondary role.

Not to an audience, but I do see the setting as - to use a metaphor perhaps - a product of which the players are the end consumers. What they do with it and-or how they consume it is up to them, but the product - the setting - is what it is.

Audience? Consumers? Whatever. If the point is the setting, not the PCs, the PCs are just the spoons the players eat up whatever you serve them with, and the player role is ultimately passive.

The point of the game, then, is for the players to use that setting as a backdrop and milieu in which to play their characters; and for all involved to then generate some sort of story as that play rolls along.

That's back to the point of the game being the PCs, because only the setting they /actually interact with/ matters.












* - no matter how intentionally or not, nor how disjointed or not.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I guess I see a setting as being incomplete if it can't in theory be used for more than just the here-and-now run of play in an RPG. As player or DM, I should be able to take the setting and write a book about some NPC I've met (or run) and have the events in that book come out exactly as if they'd been played at the table, without having to make any changes to the setting's basic parameters.

Maybe I’m not fully understanding what you’re saying....but this is why I describe it as a tail wagging the dog situation. Game stats are meant to reflect story elements, not define them.

Stories can be told and can be logical or internally consistent without everything having some kind of codified metric.

Also, the players have to be able to trust that the interactions their PCs are having with the setting are - barring any material changes - going to be consistent from one event to the next; and also to be able to trust that their interactions with the setting will be consistent with how anyone else - be it a group of NPCs, another group of PCs, or whatever - would also interact with the same setting were they there in place of the PCs being played.

I don’t think consistency in this regard is a bad thing. I don’t think that stats are necessary to maintain such consistency. But I agree with you about this at it’s most basic.

I just don’t know if it will matter all that much.

 

[pemerton]

there's a spectrum between competitive games and cooperative games

A RPG might be fully non-competitive and hence at the cooperative end of your spectrum, and yet not involve party play in the sense that D&D and Traveller traditionally do.

In my Cortex+/MHRP games, sometimes the PCs are working cooperatively like a D&D party or a superhero team. And sometimes they are working separately but connected (in the fiction, and mechanically) to the same situation. Once or twice they've even been at cross-purposes.

But the game isn't competitive.

Likewise in the session I ran of The Dying Earth earlier this year: the PCs were mostly not interacting directly in the fiction, but what they were doing had implications for one another.

But that wasn't competitive either. It was a pretty light-hearted romp.

I would think of this as radically non-caller RPGing. Early D&D had a notion of the caller as an intermediary between the players and the GM (and possibly corresponding to the group leader in the fiction) intended to help manage the interaction between one GM and many players. When the PCs aren't in a group, and aren't necessarily cooperating, and perhaps are acting at cross-purposes, then the inverse principle applies: you don't want too many of them or else it becomes too hard as GM to manage the interweavings and as players it may be too long between goes.

For instance, my Dying Earth game had two players. I think three would also be fine, but five - my standard 4e group size - would be too many. I've done BW with four and I think even that is a bit crowded.

 

[pemerton]

the solution lies in a different direction: flatten the power curve and reduce the overall power gain as characters advance. From all I can tell, 5e has done a pretty good job at this and thus a given monster can be and remain a viable opponent over a wider range of character levels without having to massage its numbers to suit the situation.

This is about aesthetic preference, and has nothing to do with consistency or coherence. And there are some of us who love 4e but have no interest in 5e precisely because they don't like the sort of gameplay experience its "solution" leads to.

a TTRPG is not a novel, and in theory isn't limited by page count; and thus it can take the time that a novel can't and play through all the encounters.

A RPG actually does have an analogue of a page count, namely, the time available to the participants. In my case at least that is not endless, either in the short term or the long term.

But in any event, the fact that one can doesn't mean that one should. These are - to reiterate - aesthetic preferences. They certainly don't go to the issue of consistency of the fiction. The ficiton doesn't become inconsistent just because (for instance) some episodes are purely narrated, some are resolved expeditiously, and some are resolved in loving detail. (I'm thinking here of how, in BW, one fight might simply be narrated as having occurred during a period of employment as a hired sword - in mechanical terms this would be part of upkeep resolution; another fight might be resolved using the Bloody Versus mechanic, which is a form of structrued opposed checks; and a crucial or capstone fight might be resolved using the Fight! mechanic, which is a melee resolution system comparable in intricacy to Runequest, Rolemaster or DrgonQuest.)

Burning Wheel is primarily a game about finding out who the PCs are as people. Detailed maps and prepared encounters are not a feature of play. What matters is that we can continue to press PCs to fight for their beliefs.

Another important detail is that generally the more audacious the intent the more difficult the check will be and the more room the GM has to establish consequences of failure.

So imagine we have a PC, Vertigan the Bold. He has the belief I will claim my rightful place on the throne by vanquishing my brother, the usurper. Vertigan has been thrown in his brother's dungeons after a failed coup attempt. He attempts to escape the dungeons by using a secret passage. His player's intent is return safely to my brothers in arms who are hiding inside the citadel. If he succeeds at what should be a fairly difficult check he will rejoin his comrades in the city. However on a failure he might end up deeper in the dungeon in a crypt where his father's remains are laying and be confronted by his father's ghost who thinks Vertigan killed him.

Your example plays into the point I was trying to make: sure in this case it's a difficult check, but a hot-rolling player who makes a series of these successful checks is going to bypass all the interesting stuff, regardless of whether it's pre-authored or made up as a failure consequence, and quickly end up on the throne. That really cool idea about the father's ghost in the crypt will never enter play, which is kind of sad.

Well, your reference to "the interesting stuff" as if that were somehow distinct from the actual experience of play is what led me, earlier, to identify your position as a type of story advocacy.

In BW play the interesting stuff is what actually happens at the table. As Campbell said, the GM's main job is to continue to press the PCs to fight for their beliefs. If no one can think of any compelling way to do that then that particular campaign is over; but there's no particular reason to think that that would happen because the PC escapes the dungeon and hooks up with his brothers in arms; or more generally that that is going to be a function of a few "hot rolls".

 

[Campbell]

I don't see how these two paragraphs relate to each other.

Your first paragraph is pretty much bang on: the Paladin doesn't derail anything but does change the focus...unless the Paladin or another character outright leaves the party due to their disagreements (which is a very possible outcome of playing true to character, believe me).

But the second paragraph regarding a complete playstyle change doesn't necessarily follow, unless you're thinking of the type of GM who can't (or worse, refuse to) hit curveballs thrown by the players - of which this would certainly be one. Put another way, even in a GM-driven situation you can lead a horse (the players) to water (the story) but you can't make it drink (engage) if it doesn't want to.

In the play style I'm talking about we generally establish just enough setting to create characters and the things that drive them. The setting is generated as needed to provide context for these characters and meaningful antagonism between them and their goals. The point of play is to explore these characters and who they are as people. The setting is just a backdrop.

 

[Campbell]

Looking at a game like Apocalypse World or Masks through the prism of competition vs. cooperation is not quite right. It is neither of those. It's deeply collaborative. If I'm in a conflict with another player's character that might get violent as players we both like each other's characters and would probably like nothing more than for them to resolve their differences, but as fans of these characters that would not do them or the established fiction justice and we would rob the rest of the audience from seeing these characters in their most authentic form so we play with integrity and see what happens. We owe it to them.

This passage from Play Passionately covers it pretty well. Although it is addressing antagonism from the GM it works just as well if it comes from another player character. Less work for the GM.

That means that something within the game must be representing the fictional interests of the characters in conflict. That representation is what I call Character Advocacy. In simplest terms when Protagonist meets Antagonist something within the game must be fighting for each side, either outcome must be within the realm of possibility and no one player should be able to guarantee an outcome either way. In the classic Player/GM setup, by default the Player is the advocate for his character and the GM is the advocate for any adversity that character encounters.


This is not the same as playing to win. Winning and losing is a wholly real world social thing. Winning is about the real player demonstrating that they are a superior games-man to another real player. Character advocacy is purely a fictional concern. Indeed the player and GM may have very well colluded heavily to bring the fiction to this point. The player and GM may even be rooting for the same side. But without legitimate representation for either side, the conflict is a straw-man and no system at all might as well have been deployed.

What @pemerton says about being decidedly non-caller is exactly true. Even in games like Masks, Dungeon World, and Blades in the Dark that are decidedly about a group of characters with what should be in the fiction a strong united purpose we address the players individually. We ask what their character does and not what the group does even if that answer is to turn to the group. I expect them and only them to answer. I'll also ask questions to that character like "Can you believe he just did that?" or "Do you think that was the right call?" to help players think about what their characters think and because I'm really curious. We want to know who these characters are as individuals.