D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Faolyn]

The context of this question was about how I handle it in games where the GM makes no rolls for NPCs. Games like Blades in the Dark, Stonetop, and Spire.

It was a question about specific games and how it is handled in those games.

A big part of how you handle that is you largely ditch the idea of metagaming as it’s often conceived for D&D and similar games.

I'm not sure that you have to ditch the idea of metagaming. You just have to be a bit more generous in your descriptions so there's less hidden info. Let the PCs hear noises through the door without a perception-type check--which narrative-type games usually don't have anyway. That there's a cook in the kitchen probably shouldn't be hidden info anyway.

Unless that's what you meant by metagaming in this context.

 

[zakael19]

But that doesn’t mean risks can’t be mitigated. Players can try and position their characters for success. Even if it’s as basic as advocating for the application of a more favorable stat to address a situation or obstacle.

"Optimizing the fiction" to shape the outcome range is definitely part of what I see as fiction-first gameplay, for the games that bring that sort of thing in. Blades codifies this well in the Position conversation.

But I dont think you ever intentionally and consistently hit the sort of "ok, with how you've set up the problem set no rolls are necessary here" of like OSR dungeon play. The rules and procedures and player guidance of most narrativist games are about injecting the unwanted and seeing what happens to build complex and compelling situations.

 

[zakael19]

I'm not sure that you have to ditch the idea of metagaming. You just have to be a bit more generous in your descriptions so there's less hidden info. Let the PCs hear noises through the door without a perception-type check--which narrative-type games usually don't have anyway. That there's a cook in the kitchen probably shouldn't be hidden info anyway.

Unless that's what you meant by metagaming in this context.

PBTAs, FITD, Daggerheart, etc all advise the creation and maintenance of a "metachannel" at all times during play - rising and falling in and out of character to discuss procedures, check in on each other, validate the fiction, talk through framing, before falling back down into character view.

Most of these games also just dont have any of the classic "I'm using genre design conventions to guess at stuff" problems IMO.

The only bit of like, intentional "metagaming" I see people taking steps to avoid at my tables is when we have separate scenes going and somebody is in urgent danger and other characters can't know that.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

At least for myself, that's why I don't talk about "process" at all. I talk about purposes, that is, teleology: the thing for which a game was designed. Games, by being designed things, are made for some function. Like laws, rules are inherently teleological, they exist for some purpose. Hence, for any rule or set of rules, we can ask three important questions:

• What is this rule(set) for?
• Does this rule(set) do that?
• Does this rule(set) get players to want to do that?

My "game-(design-)purposes" are all about examining the primary high-level categories which answer that first question in the context of TTRPGing. When you choose to design a game, you declare an answer to the first question. You then iteratively test (alpha testing) until the answer to the second question is "yes". You then test (beta testing) until the answer to the third question is also "yes". Failure to choose good answers for the first question--which is a matter of discernment, individual preference, audience interests, and many other very complex factors--generally results in problems at both of the other two phases. Failure to do sufficient alpha testing almost guarantees the answer to the second question will end up being "no" even if the designers think it should be "yes". Failure to do sufficient beta testing means that the underlying rules will "work", but will be used in ways that break or subvert the purpose of the rules, which...makes them bad rules.

Ok, but 'process of play' is the thing you are designing! By explicitly focusing, like a laser on that as the base level of game design gets you to the masterpiece of clarity and effectiveness that is something like Apocalypse World. This is a huge point of the whole 'onion diagram' thing. Start with the central core of process, explicate it, make it work, add additional layers to it in steps, etc. It's this detailed focus on all the details at each layer that brings success.

Like, I don't disagree with you, but execution is everything in the end. You won't get there without going beyond teleology. Just like laws are hollow if the administration of justice is not operated well.

 

[Yaarel]

Simulationist =/= sandbox. You can in fact have a sandbox game that doesn't attempt to be simulationist and is gamist or narrativist. And you can have a non-sandbox game that attempts to simulate things to a great degree.

Importantly, notice the point of my post. The meaning of the term "mechanics" is clearer and more useful than "gamism".

Also notice the equivalence sign was in my post, not the equal sign. In D&D, the term "gamism" roughly corresponds to "mechanics".

There's wrong stuff here.

Gamist =/= mechanics. Gamist = treating the game as a game. For example, the player knowing and using weaknesses, AC, etc. for monsters the PC would have no way of knowing about.

Gamism relates to rules for "success" versus "failure".

Your example, was incorrect. Any character knowledge of stats describes "meta", not gamism per se. Whether player characters have transparent access to "knowing and using [mechanical] weaknesses, [mechanical] AC, etc.", or not, depends not the rules of the game. If there is a narrative explanation for this transparency, it transparency might be more narrativist or less narrativist. But either way, is equally gamist.

Mechanics exist in games of all types, not just gamist ones.

Sure, but the purpose of the "mechanics" can differ. D&D mechanics are gamist, to define the parameters of conflict and to determine "successes".

All games have "rules". Helpfully, D&D distinguishes between math "mechanics" and linguistic "flavor". That said. When narrative adjudication applies flavor to determine the nature of the conflict, even the flavor is a kind of "gamist" mechanics that determines success or failure, when relying on the DM interpreting the context.

"Simulationism" when describing D&D mostly refers to 3e, with its plethora of complex and convoluted mechanics to express independently existing phenomena, plus the sandbox style where encounters are preexisting with predetermined responses, which players may or may not interact with.


In any case, the native D&D terms like "mechanics", "flavor", "sandbox", "adventure", and so on, are more helpful than the vague and self-conflictive terms like "gamism", "narrrativism", and "simulationism".

 

[AlViking]

No… again, I don’t care if you like it or not. But the way in which you describe it… the reasons you give for not liking it, contain errors or misconceptions.

This is what I was reaponding to:


Fail forward isn’t like what you called OTAs. They don’t happen just because nothing’s happened in a while and you need to shake things up. They also don’t just come out of nowhere like your “ninjas attack” scenario. Comparing it to this implies a lack of understanding.

Your closing line in the above that “consequences are directly related to the action” is what people have been telling you should be the case with fail forward.



So you site three examples, two of which you readily admit are clearly include a connection between action and consequence. Then you offer a third and claim it does not… but in the link to the example, the connection is obviously stated.

I accept you don’t like fail forward. But the claims you’re making… that the consequences are unrelated to the action… are inaccurate.

You are either misinterpreting what I mean or deliberately misrepresenting. There can be game rules causation without there being in-world-fiction causation. If a thief is picking a lock and they are spied by a guard it's the difference between the guard was scheduled to show up at the exact moment the thief is pick a lock then it's just correlation. The action of picking the lock had nothing do do with the guard showing up. If the guard shows up because the thief failed their lock picking then there is game rules causation but no in-world causation. There was no in-world causation for the guard showing up in Pemerton's example of their song. For that matter there was no in-world causation for the failed perception check in AnotherGuy's example either as he corrected D&D General - [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting., the perception check was not in any way linked to finding the trap.

So the only example that followed in-world causation was a rumor of a knife wielding assailant be their character had indeed assailed a woman while wielding a knife. The other complications were only added because the rules of the game being played said to add a complication, there was no logical cause-and-effect in the fiction of the world.

 

[hawkeyefan]

It's a matter of perspective, and definition. Some people determine the relation of action and consequence differently than you do. Contrary to your claim, that does not make them wrong. It means they looked at it differently and came to different conclusions.

I don’t know. “Unconnected” seems pretty clear. And I would say all the consequences are clearly connected to the actions.

As I said in the post to which you responded, you did not present your statement as opinion. If you meant it to be, then of course that's just fine.

Well, maybe if you follow the discussion along from previous posts the context is clearer? I don’t know how you'd read my comment and not see that it was about games where the GM never rolls if you’d been following the context of the conversation.

 

[Enrahim]

Deleted as I realise it is irrelevant.

 

[hawkeyefan]

There was no in-world causation for the guard showing up in Pemerton's example of their song.

It’s very clearly stated that the guard heard the singing and came to see what was going on,

 

[Pedantic]

<shrug> If you were paying attention to 3.5 era changes and the development of SW Saga edition, nothing in 4e was that surprising. Smuggling in some fail-forward and some fortune-in-the-middle mechanics is still just evolution, not revolution.

I was absolutely paying attention to those changes, and I don't at all agree. An alternative development path that worked to address 3e's problems without giving up on PC/NPC transparency seemed totally viable, even at the time. My relative youth might have been a factor (I technically played some 2e, but realistically 3e was when I got invested), in that I took 3e's unified rule structure as just a normal D&D thing, but that felt like a sea change. That simply was outside the solution space I'd conceptualized for trying to deal with the design problems.