Playing in the Blank Spaces of the System

[MichaelSomething]

The ultimate example of the empowered DM! When will the rest of the TTRPG world catch up and realize they should purge the rules from their game? They only serve as shackles to the nirvana that is DM judgment!

 

[Reynard]

I tend to like rules. Once I understand and internalize them, I can improvise much better and still stay within the system expectations. this, I believe, aids with player agency (which, as I have stated many times, the main advantage of TTRPG play). If players can trust that i understand the rules and how the probabilities work and so on, I can go wild coming up with custom content (monsters, spells, environments, etc) and they can still rely on their characters' abilities.

All that said, I kind of get where Brennan is coming from re: white space in the system. I don't totally buy it, but I kind of get it.

 

[Wolfpack48]

I stumbled upon this video recently, and that way of thinking hit home for me. It's not that I can handle social encounters super well that puts me off mechanics for them, it is that those mechanics often kill the verisimilitude for me, making it obvious that it's a game mechanic. For combat that's not the case, strange enough.
Maybe because the social stuff is something I encounter daily in the real world, while combat thankfully is unknown to me. Or maybe it's that with combat, I can lose myself in the visuals of stuff, whereas with social encounters, there generally is not much going on, visually.

This is basically the reason I 100% agree with Brennan on this (in my own games). Rules or mechanics that adjudicate roleplay ironically get in the way of the free-flowing nature of roleplay. I don't want to talk about buttons or levers I am using for a conversation, I just want to have the conversation.

 

[hawkeyefan]

This is basically the reason I 100% agree with Brennan on this (in my own games). Rules or mechanics that adjudicate roleplay ironically get in the way of the free-flowing nature of roleplay. I don't want to talk about buttons or levers I am using for a conversation, I just want to have the conversation.

But if those things matter… if they are important to play… shouldn’t there be some kind of risk involved with them?

Like in D&D combat, there’s risk involved. I don’t get to just say “I’m the best warrior and no one can beat me”. We have to roll the dice to see if that’s how it goes.

So why do I get to say as a player “no one ever gets to convince me of anything”? I can’t be persuaded or intimidated or tricked or seduced unless I choose to be.

I think that keeping any kind of rules away from this sphere of the game leaves it as almost entirely performative.

Which given the nature of Brennan’s game actually makes a lot of sense.

 

[Wolfpack48]

But if those things matter… if they are important to play… shouldn’t there be some kind of risk involved with them?

Like in D&D combat, there’s risk involved. I don’t get to just say “I’m the best warrior and no one can beat me”. We have to roll the dice to see if that’s how it goes.

So why do I get to say as a player “no one ever gets to convince me of anything”? I can’t be persuaded or intimidated or tricked or seduced unless I choose to be.

I think that keeping any kind of rules away from this sphere of the game leaves it as almost entirely performative.

Which given the nature of Brennan’s game actually makes a lot of sense.

Communication skills are a thing. Language, Oratory, Fast Talk, Deception, Bargain, Act, Charm, Sing, Intimidate. After roleplaying the scene, roll an opposed test with possible bonuses for good roleplaying on the appropriate skill(s) and then freeform roleplay the result.

What's NOT fun is saying "I Fast Talk the guard" without any roleplaying and then rolling some dice. Or talking for 10 minutes about the "appropriate' skills involved, rolling a bunch of custom dice then reading the tea leaves of the results for another 10 minutes to interpret what happened. Or rules for interactions that remove player agency.

For me, the roleplaying must be prioritized, and mechanical outcome of that roleplay needs to be so low profile as to practically disappear, giving way to, yep, you guessed it, more freeform roleplay with players fully in charge of their own characters.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

What do you think about this?

It’s not without merit.

BUT…

I’ve gamed with several people over the past 45 years who were in some way differently abled. For one I remember, a system that ditched social interaction mechanisms would have prevented him from playing the raconteur he wanted to run. Another had to metaphorically have her hand held every combat.

So, I would say that- like with everything else- the GM would have to take into account the kind of game being run and the players at the table.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Communication skills are a thing. Language, Oratory, Fast Talk, Deception, Bargain, Act, Charm, Sing, Intimidate. After roleplaying the scene, roll an opposed test with possible bonuses for good roleplaying on the appropriate skill(s) and then freeform roleplay the result.

What's NOT fun is saying "I Fast Talk the guard" without any roleplaying and then rolling some dice. Or talking for 10 minutes about the "appropriate' skills involved, rolling a bunch of custom dice then reading the tea leaves of the results for another 10 minutes to interpret what happened. Or rules for interactions that remove player agency.

For me, the roleplaying must be prioritized, and mechanical outcome of that roleplay needs to be so low profile as to practically disappear, giving way to, yep, you guessed it, more freeform roleplay with players fully in charge of their own characters.

I’m not saying that it should just be a skill check and that’s it. In the Mothership game, we talked it out. But then at the end, we rolled. You’re saying the talking part should be paramount… but doesn’t that seem like focusing on the window dressing?

Like, how in depth does the description of an action need to be?

 

[overgeeked]

This didn’t take me a long time to come up with, but I don’t feel like I did anything that couldn’t be accomplished with set mechanics of some kind.

That’s really the point. But you have it flipped around. You, as an experience referee, can come up with ways to handle things on the fly that are just as good as the mechanics in the book. Likely better because what you come up with will naturally more closely match your perspective, preferences, and style as well as the expectations of your table…and be better suited to the actual situation in your game in that moment.

And I also wonder how anyone would have fairly determined the outcome without relying on mechanics. Like, if the player declares some ridiculously obvious hiding spot, sure you can feel pretty comfortable saying they fail to hide. Likewise if they come up with some super great way to hide, you might feel fine allowing them to succeed.

As you say, the fairness comes from the fiction. I don’t see why that changes for edge cases or less obvious calls. If the outcome is not obvious from the fiction, make a call on the likelihood and roll.

But what about the rest of the time? I don’t think I’d find it satisfactory as a player or as a GM to just always leave it up to the GM.

That’s the part I don’t get. As a player you’re always leaving it up to the referee anyway. They can declare it auto success or failure. They can decide to adjudicate the situation via conversation or mechanics. They can call for rolls and set the DC/TN, assign modifiers, give dis/advantage, etc. As a referee you always have to make these calls anyway. So all a system gets you is agreement on the dice to use and at best some guidance on setting DCs/TNs…but, ultimately, the decision is still yours.

 

[Wolfpack48]

I’m not saying that it should just be a skill check and that’s it. In the Mothership game, we talked it out. But then at the end, we rolled. You’re saying the talking part should be paramount… but doesn’t that seem like focusing on the window dressing?

Like, how in depth does the description of an action need to be?

Roleplaying for me is not “window dressing.” You’re playing your character after all. Good God, why do people love to live in MechanicsWorldTM? I’m playing in Ravenloft as a thief or in a Gloranthan cult or as an Arthurian knight or an occult investigator. Not the D&D or FATE or CoC or PbtA SystemWorld. The goal is to imagine the fictional world and my character in it, not the buttons and levers on my character sheet. I use those buttons and levers briefly and in passing to determine outcomes when a test needs to be made to determine which way an uncertain thing may go.

As to the hiding scenario, yeah most likely I would go through the exercise of asking where the person is hiding, what they are doing, and then ending it all suspensefully with a roll (modified by their actions) to determine the final outcome.

 

[Atomoctba]

Mileage and taste vary. Lots. Using my own as example and my group as an extention, if a game presents something like "social combat resolution" is a big indicative of "we will not play or touch that".