"Prescription" and RPGing procedures

[Bedrockgames]

Exploration OTOH is very vague. The overall structure is described by nothing more than the play loop, which is the most general rule in all of 5e. Sure, there are potentially many resources that can be applied, and subsystems invoked, but it is CERTAINLY the least well-defined sort of play in 5e, and doesn't even specifically invoke the idea of a scene, or any sort of resolution at all (it is not only standard for the GM to handle this entirely on his side, it is COMMON for that to happen). Contrast this with the exploration rules of 1e, which specifically break time down into turns, describe the types of decisions the party is likely to need to make, provides specific rules for resource usage, etc.

This is kind of an interesting subtopic as I think exploration (particularly wilderness exploration) is a challenging aspect of play, especially when people are first starting. I find that no matter what tools and procedures a book lays out, people tend to do what they think works best. AD&D has some very good options, but those options can also be constraining if your players have difficulty fitting easily into that turn based structure (works great if your players take well to it). With D&D specifically, I like having a variety of tools and procedures that I can draw from. Sometimes, I find thinking in terms of AD&D turns very useful, but there are places in play where that might break down and things need to open up.

How I handle survival in my own games is there is a Survival Skill. It is grouped into subskills for different environments, like Cities, Mountains, Forests, etc (obviously there is sometimes cross over and you just have to pick one that fits best). You roll Survival to successfully navigate but also to successfully navigate around any encounters or challenges. And the 'turns' scale depending on the environment and situation. So traveling one 30 mile hex on the map might be a single roll for a day of travel. But in a city I might ask for the players to roll whenever they move between wards or city quarters. And if they are inside a persons house or slipping into the king's castle, they may have to roll survival every ten minutes (like a turn in an AD&D dungeon crawl) or they may have to roll in each room or every couple of rooms depending on how the place is set up. I find a sliding scale of granularity works best for me in terms of time. Generally the more zoomed in the location the tighter the timing on the rolls. Also some places might require multiple rolls due to challenges inherent to them.

All that said, I also quite liked the approach that the 5E Middle Earth took to overland travel and exploration (a very different approach). I also am fine in a group where things are much more open and the GM is just kind of responding to what the players do.

When it comes to exploration, as a player I am pretty much open to different methods. The only time I get annoyed is if it starts to feel like we are playing a complex computer game or a board game. I still want to feel like I am there, in the action, not like I am a piece on the board.

 

[Umbran]

All RPGing includes basic units of fictional happenings in which the PCs participate, whether or not the rulebook and the participants self-consciously use the terminology of "scenes".

I think not using that terminology is important. Or, specifically, other games using the terminology, while D&D (and other games) do not, is an indication of intentional design goal differences.

D&D can't be played without these sorts of fictional happenings or states of affairs being established and agreed among the participants.

Yes, but... there's always a but...

In a narrative-focused game, a scene is an intentionally arranged segment with a beginning, middle, and an end. There is an expectation that narratively relevant things will come up, and be resolved one way or another, during the scene. And there is discontinuity when one scene ends, and the next begins with the next framing.

If we look at much traditional D&D play, while the GM may describe some elements to the players, this is not setup of an atomic "scene". The GM may make many descriptions of new elements in the narrative before clear conflicts develop, or anything resolves, with no notable discontinuity - in principle, the characters may wander from one described area to another, and back again, without resolving anything as they go. Much of the description of new elements may turn out to have no relevance whatsoever to the resulting narrative. Or, entire conflicts may resolve, but later be found to have no significant narrative relevance.

Which is to say, what we'd call a "scene" or "narrative segment" in D&D is traditionally an emergent property of play, not an intentional one. The segments of what we call the "story" are seen in retrospect, not beforehand. The GM does not have to worry about framing the next scene, because the group has not, in general, identified when a scene has ended. The GM merely describes new elements as they appear, without concern for whether there is a new scene.

This all because D&D, and many other traditional games, are not specifically concerned with the narrative. Maybe it will develop, but maybe it won't - narrative isn't the primary goal of the design.

 

[pemerton]

Here's my question: Does the later approach, 'not outlining an approach' (by approach I mean a process of play more elaborate than "the GM tells you what happens."), work unless the game actually rests on 'received wisdom'?

I do not think it makes a good deal of sense to confuse leaning on cultural practices learned over years of play to organic or natural. It undervalues the discipline and work involved in the process. At the same time it treats other sorts of practice as unnatural and inorganic.

Just to build a bit on these responses to @Bedrockgames:

Apocalypse World (to pick an example) doesn't use a formalised "scene" structure in the way that (say) Marvel Heroic RP does, or the way that 4e D&D does. But the rulebook still addresses many of the matters I mentioned in post 7 upthread: how and when to elide, or to home in on, time and movement; when and how the players get to contribute information about the immediate situation (including but not limited to buildings and environs); and how players and GMs can go about contributing to the aesthetic logic. It also talks about how functional logic is established, although what counts as "functional logic" in AW can be quite different from (say) D&D or Torchbearer.

AW is certainly based around the idea of a fluid gameplay process, and its answers to these questions are all in support of that fluidity.

I don't think that a rulebook not addressing these matters makes fluidity or "naturalness" more likely. I think it makes a particular approach - the one I called out in the OP - more likely. Participants may of course impose a different approach, but that can equally happen when a rulebook is clear. For instance, it seems obvious from posts and threads on these boards that some people play Dungeon World using processes quite different from the ones the book itself sets out (and closer to what I describe in the OP); and I was not the only person to use Gygax's AD&D rulebooks to play a game that did not stick especially closely to the play processes that he sets out in his PHB and DMG.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I do not think it makes a good deal of sense to confuse leaning on cultural practices learned over years of play to organic or natural. It undervalues the discipline and work involved in the process. At the same time it treats other sorts of practice as unnatural and inorganic.

Keep in mind I was addressing two things in that post: Umbran's distinction when it comes to the word scenes (and I was more or less agreeing with Umbran, and I will address that more in my response to Pemerton's post below; and I was addressing the issue of having a prescriptive method for handling things like scenes . By natural, I just meant intuitive and by feel, that it comes about naturally within the group. That isn't a traditional approach versus newer school. Both new school and old school have prescriptive methods for aspects of play. This is about prescriptive versus non-prescriptive. I wasn't saying, for example, that having a formal initiative system, versus no rules on initiative, is outside of nature. It is just informal and allows the process to unfold naturally among the people participating. And I wasn't saying prescriptive is bad. I was saying this is not one size fits all. Some games need to be perscriptive in certain areas, some don't. Some GM advice needs to be prescriptive, some doesn't, and if there is a book covering a range of approaches in a descriptive way, it probably ought to include descriptions of the prescriptive approaches but also talk about less prescriptive and non-prescriptive approaches. I think all that is reasonably fair, and I think it is definitely a genuine contrast to the position pemerton outlined.

I can tell you that the common cultural practices of this hobby often feel unnatural to me. I can embrace them, but it requires active effort to play a traditional game where running/playing other sorts of roleplaying games feels pretty natural, almost second nature. That's due to years of practice. Just like stepping onto a wrestling mat still feels natural, but jiujitsu requires more active effort and attention to detail for me.

I never said there was one natural culture of play. Just that there were cultures of play. And I am not downplaying cultivating a style (I wouldn't compare non-prescriptive approaches though to systems of fighting like Jiujitsu and wrestling, because those are systems you learn and apply, and a lot of what I am talking about is more like having people meet on a mat with no system in mind and figure it out among themselves not expecting that they will come away from that doing jujitsu holds. But I think we could get pretty lost in the weeds talking about fighting systems (though again, I have to observe, there does pretty consistently seem to be a divide on these topics between grapplers and strikers in how they approach RPGs: just coming from a striking background myself).

 

[Bedrockgames]

Just to build a bit on these responses to @Bedrockgames:

Apocalypse World (to pick an example) doesn't use a formalised "scene" structure in the way that (say) Marvel Heroic RP does, or the way that 4e D&D does. But the rulebook still addresses many of the matters I mentioned in post 7 upthread: how and when to elide, or to home in on, time and movement; when and how the players get to contribute information about the immediate situation (including but not limited to buildings and environs); and how players and GMs can go about contributing to the aesthetic logic. It also talks about how functional logic is established, although what counts as "functional logic" in AW can be quite different from (say) D&D or Torchbearer.

AW is certainly based around the idea of a fluid gameplay process, and its answers to these questions are all in support of that fluidity.

I'm not sure if we are still debating about scene distinctions or not, but I would say in some games it is more about when you transition from one state to the next, rather than conceiving of the game in terms of formal scenes. The less formalized this process is, the less I see it as thinking in terms of scenes. Esoterorists for instance very much conceives of play as going from one scene to the next (and not as much in terms of going from place to place for example). For Esoterrorists that works well. But it isn't going to work in every type of game or be the way every game or every GM conceives of these moments and transitions.

I am not well versed in AW, so I can't really speak to its fluidity. But by fluid I meant arising naturally in the conversation, not having a set way of doing things, but working them out however the group does, due to its particular dynamic if that makes sense. Also, not having any particular way of doing it in mind, at least not at a conscious level.

I don't think that a rulebook not addressing these matters makes fluidity or "naturalness" more likely. I think it makes a particular approach - the one I called out in the OP - more likely. Participants may of course impose a different approach, but that can equally happen when a rulebook is clear. For instance, it seems obvious from posts and threads on these boards that some people play Dungeon World using processes quite different from the ones the book itself sets out (and closer to what I describe in the OP); and I was not the only person to use Gygax's AD&D rulebooks to play a game that did not stick especially closely to the play processes that he sets out in his PHB and DMG.

I think it depends on what aspect of play we are talking about. But I think when the rulebook doesn't speak to it, it basically leaves it to the table to negotiate and figure out on its own. I don't know that it leads to one style over another (that is largely going to boil down to what the styles of the people playing are). And again all I am saying is there is room for games that leave those spaces open. I am not saying every game, or even most games, should.

On drift, that is always something that happens. There does seem to be a difference between how the book is written and how it tends to get used in practice (and sometimes you end up with a few variations that predominate). You saw this with social skills in 3E. As written they were not that powerful if I remember (and it is possible I am confusing this with another system as it has been quite bit). But my memory is if you use stuff like Bluff and Diplomacy as written, they are actually pretty constrained mechanics. But almost no one used them as written so they tended to have a lot more oomph at the table. I think there is a lot of reasons for why this happens.

And again, I not saying a prescriptive approach is bad (I think it can be quite good). There are some areas I find prescriptive causes me to freeze up a little (for example managing the flow of a 'scene' is an area that I generally feel more comfortable allowing to unfold intuitively----but that is just my taste, I'm not saying its a better preference). But there are also places I want more clarity around this stuff.

 

[niklinna]

I have to observe, there does pretty consistently seem to be a divide on these topics between grapplers and strikers in how they approach RPGs: just coming from a striking background myself).

You left out throwers and kickers! Now you've got e wondering what aikidokas and judokas and taekwondo practitioners think of RPGs.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You left out throwers and kickers! Now you've got e wondering what aikidokas and judokas and taekwondo practitioners think of RPGs.

Lol. I think throwing is still grappling, though a grappling style many strikers like myself enjoy (the one grappling system I had fun doing was Judo, and it was because of throw and sweeps). Taekwondo and kicking styles are striking. I fold kicks and punches together into striking. Generally speaking, again someone from a striking background (boxing, taekwondo and muay thai largely), strikers seem more impulsive and aggressive and grapplers seem more cerebral and patient. In gaming theory I get the sense that whatever personality traits drive these preferences, also line up a bit with where we fall in terms of style, RPG theory, etc. Obviously everyone is different, but even my particular take here is in error, there seems to be a pattern of some kind I am picking up on.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I don't think that a rulebook not addressing these matters makes fluidity or "naturalness" more likely. I think it makes a particular approach - the one I called out in the OP - more likely.

I guess my point was if the system or Gm advice is prescriptive, by the nature of being prescriptive, unless the advice is ignored which it certainly could be, there is not going to be room for the matter to be resolved in an organic way by the group: presumably there is a procedure or way meant to be followed or, at least, guided by. Now that isn’t a bad thing. I rather like having prescriptive rules and advice for certain things. I just think it’s fair for some games to create more open spaces in some areas.