It seems like the game might be more interesting if the fiction actually included the stuff that you're saying it doesn't.
D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.
- Thread starter Reynard
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Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
In every game, including yours, the fiction includes a lot of stuff that never makes it to the table. There's no way we can do, see or narrate everything that would be going on in the fiction, so we each focus on the parts we enjoy the most.
I'm confident that my game is really interesting to myself and those I DM for. Feel free to steal that to include in yours, though, since you find that part to be interesting.
I don't know what sort of lottery you have in mind. I didn't specify any particular sort, but if we want to get very particular about it I can do so: a lottery in which the prize is specified, the number of tickets is limited, and I can purchase as many as I wish.
Raffles at community events are often like this too - I may not know exactly how many tickets will be sold, but if I look around the room and see about 50 people, and I buy 20 tickets, I know that I probably have something like 10% of the tickets.
Yes. I think I've been saying this for some time.
No you haven't. I mean, I was there when it happened: the player was playing his PC - who was lost in the dungeon, and wanted to find his way out. And from the perspective of his PC, and having seen strange runes on the dungeon wall, he decided to read them to see if they would reveal a way out. That is actor stance: "a person determines a character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have."
I don't see any evidence for this in my own RPGing.
It does seem worth noting that whereas actor stance and author stance are mutually exclusive - because the latter is defined in terms of having regard to considerations that the former excludes - director stance ("a person determines aspects of the environment relative to the character in some fashion, entirely separately from the character's knowledge or ability to influence events") is compatible with both, as well as having the possibility of being independent.
My runes example is actor stance + director stance. If the player had done it because he thought the roll would generate some Doom Pool-related side effect that he was looking for (players manipulating the Doom Pool can be a thing in MHRP), then it would be author stance + director stance. And a rule which permitted the player to just stipulate the content of a piece of text that their PC encounters (say, by spending a resource) would be unadulterated director stance. The closest MHRP gets to this is Resources, but these are not normally entirely separate from the character's knowledge or ability to influence events.
What permits the simultaneity of actor stance + director stance is a resolution framework that treats what the character hopes for as a factor in the resolution process.
X created Y and X controls Y are not the only relations that can obtain between things, or that matter.
Right. I posted something about this not too far upthread.
I dunno, I'm a little bit surprised that it is the posters who profess to favour "simulationist" play that are making all these posts about the importance of eliding, at the table, what is actually happening in the gameworld.
In Burning Wheel and Torchbearer, we don't have to guess or handwave where new spells come from. The fiction of spell acquisition is part of play.
The Firebird
Commoner
You're missing my point here...it isn't about your odds of winning. It's about the bold statement--the prize is specified in advance. This isn't the case in the rune example. Your player has specified what the prize is.
I disagree. When the player says "my character examines the runes looking for a way out", they know that this declaration sets the stakes--they know that it causes the runes to have a possibility of leading to a way out. This is not information the character has access to. From the character's perspective, their desires have no bearing on what the runes say. But the player does, and this is affecting their decision making.
And I disagree with this. I think the use of director stance here eliminates the possibility of actor stance. The character does not know there is a director; they cannot make decisions in character if they know that the director is present and the world is malleable to their hopes and desires.
Enrahim
Adventurer
Ok, I think I now might have a way to express the concept I am getting at.
For a given part of a game mechanic there are at least 3 things that can be interesting to look at: What the game claim the mechanic represents in the fiction, what the mechanics actually does and what functions the mechanic has in the game. The first and second of these are what we typically find in the game text. The designer usually has a pretty good idea what function these are supposed to serve, but relatively rarely write that out except for certain key mechanics. We can generally make a good guess on the function based on what the rule does, but actual play is sometimes needed (a lot of the purpose of testing is to check if a mechanic is actually serving the function the designer expect it to)
Take strength in D&D5ed for instance. It is claimed to represent "measuring physical power". What it does is providing a modifier on checks the humans involved associate with the representation, affecting the probability of succeeding at a tasks.
If I were to guess at the functions of this mechanics I would suggest at least these 3:
1) A persistent characteristic of a character, informing the success rate of certain tasks over time (Informs the "simulation")
2) A player motivator to have the player in with high strength character engage in more strength related tasks/challenges. (Individual behavior priming)
3) A in-group role differentiator, giving the player with high strength character increased spotlight in situations where strength is beneficial. (Group behavior priming)
One thing to note is that these match up quite well with the fiction. We would expect a strong person to succeed more in strength related tasks, be more willing to engage in them, and step up to the task if the group need strength.
Now imagine a fictional game that is exactly like D&D5ed except the following: When declaring an action, both task and intent must be specified. If you roll equal or over dc, task succeed and intent happen. If you roll less than DC the GM has to narrate something really dramatic that brings the story forward. GM are in this case free to decide if the task succeed or not, but the intent at least isn't fully acheived.
If we now look at the mechanic of strength, we still have the same claim regarding what it represents. But what it does has changed. It no longer (purely) affect task success probability. Indeed it more strongly correlates with intent achievement. It also strongly affects the probability of dramatic stuff happening in situations where strength is involved.
How does this affect the functions? Depending on the motivations of the group 2 and 3 might still be relevant, but for groups that really seek mayhem and drama it could have the oposite effect! And the first function is almost completely obliterated, as a weak character that inspires the GM to think of good succeed with complications might very well succeed more often in strength tasks than a high strength character that inspires the GM to think of more failure with twist scenarios.
This is where my claim about FF/intent on success games come from. The most likely function I can see for strength in this scenario (also informed by how people talk about how these games play) is as:
1) A narrative marker indicating what the player want the perceived value of the characters attempts to use strength should have in the fiction (Informs the narrative)
I think this still is still reasonably associated with the given in-fiction representation, especially when genre conventions is taken into account. However a trad player is used to the representation of physical strength to be used for a different set of game purposes.
This is why I think it can be instructive at least in a transition period to not think of the skill/strength in terms of inate ability (due to the associations with "wrong" game functions), and rather think of them in terms of the function itself.
I think this analysis while not perfectly matching any existing games, nonetheless is instructive in where actual differences lie.
So what? I mean, in theory, anything a player does in a session of play may serve an unlimited number of different player-goals at the same time.
But, let us back up a bit. Why do we play games qua games? Like, why do we play Catan, or Go? While there's a stack of reasons, several of them kind of compact to, "The act of using rules to manage the complexity generated by those rules is often fun for humans."
I'd submit that our RPG "gamism" is, if not centered on that, has it as a strong component. The most "gamist" RPG systems have central subsystems that are engaging games in their own right. D&D 3e combat is a good example here - you can use D&D combat as a quite satisfying squad-level tactical combat wargame, even absent any outside larger narrative.
While the "metacurrencies" we are talking about are technically "in the rules", they tend to sit outside other game subsystems, or violate the design patterns of those subsystems, or reduce or eliminate complexity rather than manage it. F'rex, in D&D combat, there are specified ways to get advantage on rolls. Inspiration sits outside the combat minigame, and invoking it isn't a clever, subtle or interesting use of combat rules.
Or, the systems in question are using metacurrencies *instead of" subsystems that are good games qua games - Fate Accelerated is a poster child here.
Thus, often metacurrencies aren't really "gamist", in that they aren't in line with the fun of playing a game. They are in line with other goals players and GMs have.
(Edit to add: I personally have no issues with meta-currencies! Someone asked about them, and I gave an answer as I have gleaned it over time. I typically turn to other types of games when I want to scratch my gamist itch, so non-gamist elements of RPGs are cool by me!)
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Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
Do you honestly expect us to get the detail anywhere near 100%? There isn't enough time in a day to go over everything that's happening in the game world, let alone a 4 hour session.
Once again, shocking that other games work differently. D&D chose different things to abstract out, I guarantee other games abstract different things. Abstraction does not make the game any less of a simulation. If a particular group cares they can always add details or buy one of the zillion third party books that provide more details
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