Players establishing facts about the world impromptu during play

[pemerton]

Being fair it's not true of vast swathes of 90s-style metaplot where plot was what the NPCs did and so far as I can tell the PCs were there often merely to observe.

Fair enough. I wasn't thinking of degenerate cases!

 

[Fenris-77]

Fair enough. I wasn't thinking of degenerate cases!

This is EN World....

 

[pemerton]

@Emerikol, I think Ron Edwards described your approach to RPGing pretty well in an essay he wrote back in 2003: The Forge :: Gamism: Step On Up

He describes the practitioner of your style as "bitter" because of the likelihood of the play goals being disrupted by RPGers with other agendas. But if we put that label to one side, I think this is a pretty accurate description (based on our own posts about how you play):

A few paragraphs back, I promised a definition for Gamism and here it is. It operates at two levels: the real, social people and the imaginative, in-game situation.

1. The players, armed with their understanding of the game and their strategic acumen, have to Step On Up. Step On Up requires strategizing, guts, and performance from the real people in the real world. . . .
   
2. The in-game characters, armed with their skills, priorities, and so on, have to face a Challenge, which is to say, a specific Situation in the imaginary game-world. Challenge is about the strategizing, guts, and performance of the characters in this imaginary game-world. . . .

Gamist play and design is very diverse, partly due to the relative emphases of these two layers . . .

If person A's performance is only maximized by driving down another's performance, then competition is present. In Gamist play, this is not required - but it is very often part of the picture. Competition gives both Step On Up and Challenge a whole new feel - a bite. . . .

Think of each level [ie the Step on Up real world level, and the Challenge in-game level] having a little red dial, from 1 to 11 - and those dials can be twisted independently. . . .

The Hard Core occurs when Gamist play transmogrifies into pure metagame: Exploration becomes minimal or absent, such that System and Social Contract contact one another directly, and, essentially, all the mechanics become metagame mechanics. It's usually, although not always, the result of high competitive actions at the Step On Up level, which then "eats" the Challenge level such that it is literally and nakedly an extension of Step On Up and nothing else. Role-playing in the Hard Core is very much like playing competitive video games . . .

Meet the low-Step On Up, high-Challenge Gamist, with both "little red competition" dials spun down to their lowest settings.

This person prefers a role-playing game that combines Gamist potential with Simulationist hybrid support, such that a highly Explorative Situation can evolve, in-game and without effort, into a Challenge Situation. In other words, the social-level Step On Up "emerges" from the events in-play. . . .

His preferred venue for the Gamist moments of play is a small-scale scene or crisis embedded in a larger-scale Exploration that focuses on Setting and Character. In these scenes, he's all about the Crunch: Fortune systems should be easy to estimate, such that each instance of its use may be chosen and embedded in a matrix of strategizing. Point-character construction and menus of independent feats or powers built to resist Powergaming are ideal.

As for playing the character, it's Author Stance all the way. He likes to imagine what "his guy" thinks, but to direct "his guy" actions from a cool and clear Step On Up perspective. The degree of Author Stance is confined to in-game imaginative events alone and doesn't bleed over into Balance of Power issues regarding resolution at all.

Related to the Stance issue, he is vehemently opposed to the Hard Core, even to any hints of it or any exploitable concepts that it seizes upon most easily. For instance, reward system that functions at the metagame level is anathema: not only should solid aesthetics should be primary, but he is rightly leery of the Hard Core eye for such reward systems. "Balance" for him consists of the purity of the Resource system and unbroken Currency. It's consistent with the Simulationist Purist for System values and represents further defenses against the Hard Core.​

That's very much the picture of your RPGing that I feel you've painted.

 

[Fenris-77]

I am going to engage in some prophecy. @Emerikol will have issues with that reading of his game, as accurate as it might be.

 

[pemerton]

I am going to engage in some prophecy. @Emerikol will have issues with that reading of his game, as accurate as it might be.

Maybe. I know some people object to Edwards' description of purist-for-system simulationism, though when I first read it having played RM and BRP/RQ-type games near-exclusively for nearly 15 years I thought it was revelationary.

 

[Fenris-77]

Maybe. I know some people object to Edwards' description of purist-for-system simulationism, though when I first read it having played RM and BRP/RQ-type games near-exclusively for nearly 15 years I thought it was revelationary.

I think it's accurate, but there's a lot of negative sounding verbiage to navigate around. We'll see.

 

[kenada]

In the situation you describe there is a possibility of a move from "story now" to GM-determined "story before". In a typical D&D game (I'm thinking especially AD&D, 3E or 5e), I think this possibility is more likely to arise not from a lack of principles but a lack of resolution procedures that can work independently of a GM's prior conception of outcomes. (I don't know PF2 at all well enough to comment on it in this respect.)

I originally mentioned mechanics (before editing it out), though I was thinking of something like faction clocks to keep the GM from accidentally keying in on a particular situation of interest and turning it into a plot. PF2 itself is a bit all over the place. The system’s default orientation is very trad, but it has stuff like the VP subsystem, which is essentially progress clocks. It’s not the default way of doing things though. The default is a bunch of 3e gunk ported to PF2’s action economy and integrated deeply with character customization.

Just as likely, though, and maybe more likely - again I don't know the details of PF2 in this respect compared to those other versions of D&D - is that the resolution procedures, which include a lot of map-and-key resolution, equipment lists and gold piece totals and the like, push play away from "story now" to a procedural focus and a more "wargamey" feel. This possibility is also present if the system being used is something like RM, RQ, Classic Traveller or similar.

In either case I think the table would, or at least could, notice - so It would be ending up playing something different from what we set out to play. The opposite can happen, too - drifting from what was intended as "procedural" play to a more "story now" approach. I've done this using RM. And then you notice how all that procedural stuff starts to get in the way, or require particular "tricks" for working around it. Even Prince Valiant, a classic system for story now RPGing, has gold piece totals that occasionally rear their ugly heads!

Can you elaborate on what you mean by “procedural play”? I’m struggling with the distinction and how it would make something more or less “Story Now”. I think my issue stems from the problems Edwards cites with “sandbox” as term that’s so broad it’s effectively meaningless (i.e., it can include Story Before, Now, or After, and from barely-any to all-encompassing setting). Note that I’m not disagreeing with his assessment. I think it’s fair.

Let’s suppose that I have a “sandbox” set up as described previously (with some situations and a setting, but no plot). That sounds Story Now. However, if I understand you correctly, certain elements can push you away from that towards a more “procedural focus” and a “wargamey” feel. Is “wargamey” just a euphamism for Gamism? That is, the equipment list pushes them towards viewing their gear as a tool for overcoming challenges, and a challenge-focused mindset is antithetical to Story Now?

 

[Fenris-77]

I'll take a stab at procedural play for in this context, and @pemerton can correct me at need. Procedural Play refers to the mechanical loops and decision points baked into a rules set. In a story now game the 'story now' part is baked right into the rules. The mechanics of the game as written facilitate Story Now play. Pathfinder doesn't have those mechanics or decision points.

 

[Campbell]

Generally Story Now games will encode the characters' emotional struggles directly into the game in some way. This is important because it lets you really push hard and play your character in a more full throated way. You can absolutely play with a Story Now agenda in more traditional games. I really like using Exalted Third Edition and Legend of the Five Rings for that purpose. I have also used Pathfinder Second Edition and D&D 4e for this sort of play although they are a little less suited for it. It's just more potentially fraught because there is an element of vulnerability that can potentially lead to social or emotional bullying if there's no underlying way to resolve more personal stakes.

 

[pemerton]

I think it's accurate, but there's a lot of negative sounding verbiage to navigate around. We'll see.

I deliberately elided all that - the stuff about being "bitter" etc - because that is empirical conjecture around the approach itself. And presumably is not true in Emerikol's case.