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

[Enrahim]

I really don't think that's necessary, especially once you add some expected genre/structure constraints and zoom out the abstraction a little. More structurally though, I think you could absolutely have an RPG with very constrained actions as long as you have unbounded play time, player set goals, emergent victory/failure conditions and ongoing failure/victory evaluation.

I just realised: If you take Talisman, and remove the inner circle+gate. Would that pass your test for being an RPG? Play time is unbounded, as the normal victory condition is gone, and rules state a new character is drafted on death. In such a context players can still set goals (hoard gold, beat up a different player, obtain a particular magic item, become the first player to reach 20 craft etc). There are as such clearly emergent victory/failure conditions and ongoing failure/victory evaluation.

Am I missing something? This doesn't feel like a TTRPG to me, but I really cannot see which of your criteria it don't fulfill? And it certanly feels more RPG-like than Mao

 

[Enrahim]

Exactly. Which is why I generally don't look for that sort of gameplay in the TTRPG space, and scratch that itch with boardgames and computer games instead. Negotiation-heavy story generation play is much more strongly suited to TTRPG play, on the other hand, and boardgames and computer games can only produce a crude facsimile.

I would say exactly the same for sim play with highly dynamic content

 

[hawkeyefan]

Yeah, this is my experience as well, there is not much of it going on in my D&D game. On the other hand in the Blades in the Dark game I play in, negotiation is almost constant. Part of it of course might be due different approaches of different GMs, but I doubt it is just that.

No, it’s likely more to the fact that Blades puts players closer to the GM when it comes to contributing to the fiction and to the direction of play.

The GM doesn’t have the near absolute authority that they have in D&D.

Player: Decision to attempt to author the fiction into providing the way out. PC: Hopes the runes provide the way out. A decision to try and author is a different decision than to hope.

I don’t think this is accurate. In both cases, player and character, they hoped to discover that the runes were a clue to find a way out. The player and character are aligned in that sense.

 

[Pedantic]

I just realised: If you take Talisman, and remove the inner circle+gate. Would that pass your test for being an RPG? Play time is unbounded, as the normal victory condition is gone, and rules state a new character is drafted on death. In such a context players can still set goals (hoard gold, beat up a different player, obtain a particular magic item, become the first player to reach 20 craft etc). There are as such clearly emergent victory/failure conditions and ongoing failure/victory evaluation.

Am I missing something? This doesn't feel like a TTRPG to me, but I really cannot see which of your criteria it don't fulfill? And it certanly feels more RPG-like than Mao

Oh god, I played a lot of Talisman back in my youth and heartily hope never to play any more ever again.

That being said, I don't see a problem with this. I don't think the roleplaying would be especially good, but I mostly see it as the tool we use to get to those victory conditions. If someone wants to explain why getting every item in the shop would be satisfying for their Elf, I don't see a problem here. That's definitely pushing toward minimum viable RPG. A more provocative example might be something like a Europa Universalis, which I think definitely qualifies; I'm not especially convinced "play a single character" is a necessary component, so much as a normative one.

 

[Lanefan]

Personally I think it's the opposite.

If climbs were rated like spell levels, such that a PC with a given STR (Athletics) bonus or climb skill or whatever could succeed at them, but one with an insufficient bonus couldn't, then to me that would seem to provide some answer of the sort @Hussar is talking about. This is how 5e D&D handles jumping, and when a PC jumps and falls - because the distance in feet was greater than their STR stat - we know that it was because they weren't strong enough.

But introducing the d20 roll makes this completely different. Suppose the PC's bonus is +4, and the DC is 15. Then we know there is a 50% chance the PC can make the climb, but a 50% chance they will not. Why not? What explains those chances? What happens on a roll of 1, such that they fall? What happens on a roll of 11, such that they make it? I agree with @Hussar that the rules don't tell us that.

Oftentimes the rules don't need to tell us that because their writers can safely assume we already know it: it's simple variance in human performance from one hour-day-week-etc. to the next that we've all seen and experienced countless times.

The climbing example here - if it's 50-50 that you'll make it, that tells us the climb is pretty close to the edge of your ability. If you're "on" today, you'll make it; while if you're having an off day you won't. The rules don't have to tell us this (though I suppose one could argue that for completeness, they could anyway) because it's obvious.

Falling rules don't go into explanations of gravity for the same reason: we already know it well enough for game purposes.

 

[Lanefan]

Really?

I don't think @Lanefan gets that the episode of play, involving the runes, was not from map-and-key based, puzzle-solving play.

Because there are lots of RPGs that don't work out whether or not the PC falls down the pit or triggers the pressure plate by (i) tracking the PC's movement on a map, based on (ii) the player's description of where their PC. And many of the RPGs I've talked about in this thread - including MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy - are among them.

If the PCs are in a dungeon and you-as-GM don't know where they are within it, how on earth can you tell them what they see as they explore (and, if they're wise, map their progress) without risk of messing it up?

Or are you saying these games don't involve exploration either?

 

[Lanefan]

As I have posted, I understand your assertion. I disagree with it. The fact that the player's action establishes backstory elements that are, in the fiction, not caused by the PC, doesn't make the decision spaces different

I'd say it does, in that the player is being pulled from Actor stance into Author stance whether he wants to be or not.

- beyond any general differences of the sort that I have been pointing to that attend all RPG play (ie the player knows that everything is fiction, that things are being made up, etc).

In Actor stance, while the player might know that everything is fiction, he's doing whatever he can to pretend it's real as viewed through the senses of his character. As the runes are already in place when his character first sees them, he-as-character has no control over what they might say and thus (to maintain Actor stance) neither does the player at the table.

In this way it's simulating either of us in reality walking into a room with strange runes on the wall whose meaning we don't know.

 

[Enrahim]

Oh god, I played a lot of Talisman back in my youth and heartily hope never to play any more ever again.

That being said, I don't see a problem with this. I don't think the roleplaying would be especially good, but I mostly see it as the tool we use to get to those victory conditions. If someone wants to explain why getting every item in the shop would be satisfying for their Elf, I don't see a problem here. That's definitely pushing toward minimum viable RPG. A more provocative example might be something like a Europa Universalis, which I think definitely qualifies; I'm not especially convinced "play a single character" is a necessary component, so much as a normative one.

Then it seem like the design space you are looking at has been quite heavily explored in computer games. Elite, Minecraft, terrarria, no man sky, stardew valley, animal crossing all seem to fit the overall requirements? Indeed computer RPGs generally do not fulfill this at all..

So are you sure you are not grappling with a concept that is not well described as "RPG", and that there might be a more communicative term for it? I don't have a good one in mind myself right now. (Edit: open-ended game?)

 

[Rainbow Scissors]

Then it seem like the design space you are looking at has been quite heavily explored in computer games. Elite, Minecraft, terrarria, no man sky, stardew valley, animal crossing all seem to fit the overall requirements? Indeed computer RPGs generally do not fulfill this at all..

So are you sure you are not grappling with a concept that is not well described as "RPG", and that there might be a more communicative term for it? I don't have a good one in mind myself right now. (Edit: open-ended game?)

To some extent, aren't all tabletop rpgs open-ended?

 

[Pedantic]

Then it seem like the design space you are looking at has been quite heavily explored in computer games. Elite, Minecraft, terrarria, no man sky, stardew valley, animal crossing all seem to fit the overall requirements? Indeed computer RPGs generally do not fulfill this at all..

So are you sure you are not grappling with a concept that is not well described as "RPG", and that there might be a more communicative term for it? I don't have a good one in mind myself right now. (Edit: open-ended game?)

I'm more a modern roguelike guy, but sure. I just think tabletop environments with my friends and a dedicated person for content generation are better at it.