Realistic Consequences vs Gameplay

[Maxperson]

@Maxperson I don’t feel we can meaningfully discuss this topic, and I’d rather not continue the back and forth. I’m clearly not explaining my view properly, or you are somehow unable to understand it, so I’ll stop.

Sure. But I'll say that I understand and I just don't agree, which should be apparent from my responses.

 

[pemerton]

The PCs are experiencing the fiction. The players are experiencing a game. Game mechanics are meant to be an expression of the fiction. I don’t have any problem sharing the mechanics with the players. In fact, I think it’s my responsibility to do so. This way the players are as informed as the PCs.

Does this mean that I always share every single score or value? No, not necessarily....there may be times when it makes sense to not share. But there are plenty of times where sharing those details does the work of making the players as informed as their characters.

It's different from moment-to-moment and system to system.

Eg in 4e D&D there are PC abilities (ie skill bonuses to Monster Knowledge checks) that allow players to learn mechanical information about NPCs and creatures. So I tend not to share that information too freely outside the context of such checks, because there is one PC which has been deliberately built so as to have excellent bonuses to Monster Knowledge checks. This isn't a decision about pacing or suspense; it's about respecting player build choices.

In Prince Valiant there is no comparable mechanical framework to Monster Knowledge checks, and the system for building dice pools for opposed checks is very straightforward, so I will count it out to the players as I pick up the dice: Your opponent has such-and-such Brawn <pick up B dice>, such-and-such Arms <add A dcie), is wearing heavy armour <now I've got A+B+3 dice> and is riding a fine steed <and now I've got A+B+4 dice>.

This does not spoil suspense. That resides in seeing how the two pools look as the dice hit the table (the shaking of the dice corresponds to the thunder of hooves down the lists).

 

[FrogReaver]

What is an example you have in mind of "lack of that correspndence"?

EG in Traveller, if your PC fails a morale check you either surrender or flee. That's because your PC has lost control of him-/herself.

I think most any metagame style mechanic would qualify as an example but I don't know most of your style of games to offer a good example. The specific example from Traveler above isn't such an example. It is an example where a character losing his fictional agency corresponds to a player losing his agency over their actions.

5e has a similar mechanic of fear that some particularly dangerous monsters have. The implementation is a bit different but same notion I suppose. Such a fear effect in D&D is generally viewed as being magical. That's important IMO. Magic in D&D is essentially a trump card that allows any other design sensibilities to be bypassed. As such it always has a heavy enough fictional weight to provide an in-fiction justification for removing any kind of agency. As such I think for D&D play it's good to look at the kinds of agency that are strongly recognized in it before magic gets involved.

D&D strongly supported types of player agency:
1. Agency over your characters thoughts
2. Agency over your characters actions
3. Agency over the fiction (via in fiction elements)
***It should be noted that magic is supreme over all types of player agency.

The issue someone coming from D&D to Traveler might have with the above mechanic is that it takes away agency over their characters thoughts and actions (without using the unifying trump card of magic). That is, it's not just about agency, but also of how and why it gets reduced.

 

[pemerton]

First, my second quoted bit isn't about wanting complete autonomy (as I understand that term). It's about wanting opposition in the fiction to feel as though it's in the fiction. The GM applying a rule to cause my character to do something doesn't feel as though it's coming from the fiction.

<snip>

How is having a decision imposed on you from outside the fiction immersive? It's not arising naturally from the fiction or the GM wouldn't need to Compel you to put it there. The GM is putting it there because they want to shape the scene or the story that way.

<snip>

I have seen--and played--characters who would do essentially what you have at the end of this paragraph, in games like D&D or COC or Savage Worlds (which IIRC also doesn't have the kinds of metagame incentives you're talking about here). I personally don't see those mechanics as helpful to roleplay, or necessary.

I agree that it is possible to be motivated--possibly even compelled--by forces inside and outside the character, and that that motivation or compulsion isn't strictly a matter of choice.

<snip>

I don't think I believe that in order to project oneself into a character, to understand that character, to behave in-fiction as they would, it's necessary to have those compulsions applied from outside the game. Any writer of fiction who has been surprised by the behavior of a character whose story he was writing seems likely to understand my point of view, here: I've recently been surprised by the decisions of at least one character I was playing, who ended up behaving in arguably suboptimal ways that made some sense looking back.

Even if compulsion from outside the fiction was a good way to model the forces you're talking about, I'm not sure it would make for good game play, and it might not make for verisimilitude

There's stuff in here that, it seems to me, would benefit from unpacking.

(1) Why is a compel not arising naturally from the fiction? The examples I'm familiar with from the rulebook seem to. For instance, p 14 of Fate Core has Landon's player accepting a compel on the aspect The Manners of a Goat, so that when he dances with a refined guest at the ball, he offends her. This seems very close to a CHA check in 5e D&D to determine the NPC's reaction, except instead of rolling a die and applying a CHA mod, the player elects to auto-fail and takes a Fate point. The example goes on to say that "Amanda [the GM] and Lenny [the player] play a bit to figure out how Landon puts his foot in his mouth". Now I think there's room in both the Fate and the D&D example to talk about when the best time is to invoke the mechanics - when the PC or NPC meet, or somewhere into that roleplay? That will be very dependent on context, but I think there's a case to be made that the Fate GM has gone a couple of sentences too early.

But I don't see any issue about it not following from the fiction.

(2) You seem to be equating compulsion from outside the character's rational choices with compulsion from outside the fiction. I don't think this is a warranted equation. Landon does not say something offensive to the ball guest because of a compulsion that comes from outside the fiction. (The only RPG I know of that embraces something like that is Over the Edge.) It is because, despite his best efforts and perhaps his best judgement, Landon says rude or offensive things. The GM is playing Landon's inability to help himself. The player is playing Landon's rational agency. And the player - within the game's incentive structures which include the Fate point economy - decides which wins.

(3) I'm not sure what you mean when yuou say that your character ended up behaving in arguably suboptimal ways. Are you talking about suboptimal within the fiction ie the character sabotaged his/her own goals? This is what Landon does if Landon's player takes the Fate point; the Fate point economy is intended to make this a richer and more intense aspect of game play. Eg and as@Manbearcat has posted, it makes it costly (ie paying a Fate point) for rational will to triumph over irrational or self-defeating habit or inclination or personality trait. This is a real-world experience of what, in the fiction, is the making of an effort by the character.

If you mean suboptimal in the real world, as in, in making those decisions you undermined you own goals as a RPGer, then that seems curious and I don't quite follow.

 

[prabe]

If the goal is to collectively contribute to a shared fiction with dramatic trajectory, then I think it is tending towards a degenerate form of play.

If the GM says that player agency will have a big impact on the game, then I think it is tending towards bad faith.

If the goal is for the players to learn how the GM imagines the fictional world, and to put pieces of that together to come up with solutions to in-fiction questions and problems, then puzzle-orinted RPGing is just what the doctor ordered. I think a lot of RPGIng seems to have something like this as its goal (some examples: most Ravenloft modules I've read; the 3E module Speaker in Dreams; the 3E Demonweb Pits hardback; most Planescape modules I've read).

If the GMing is vibrant and evocative, then I can enjoy this in modest doses (eg a convention one-off). But I would like the GM to be upfront. Don't tell me that I can have a big impact on the shared fiction, and then set me these sorts of puzzles to solve.

It sounds as though you would describe the campaigns I DM as tending toward both bad-faith GMing and degenerate play, which at least means you very probably wouldn't enjoy them. No wonder we sometimes seem to have such a hard time communicating.

 

[pemerton]

Means matter. @prabe prefers that the fictional attempt at control be established first, then resolved, then the loss of agency being applied to the next fictional state. Things like FATE Compels start with the resolution, then establishes all of the fiction. The order of these things matters to @prabe.

I have no trouble seeing this. Ron Edwards wrote good stuff about it The Forge :: Simulationism: The Right to Dream - my main lens for engaging with Edwards on time sequence in simulationist play is 20-odd years of Rolemaster play.

In my post just upthread I actually picked up on the issue of timing in the Fate Core p 14 example.

In that post I also noted that the same thing can routinely happen in D&D play - first the reaction or CHA check is rolled, and then the appropriate fiction is established. And when it comes to D&D combat, with hp ablation as the principal mechanic, the same time sequnce is practically mandatory. We don't know what has happened in the fiction until the resolution is well and truly done.

EDITed to fix the hyperlink.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I've never played or GMed Fate. Is it considered good GMing practice to compel someone when they have no Fate point? My gut feel is that the more conventional thing would be to compel them to tempt them into spending their last point.

From memory, Compelling a player who has no Fate points is good GMing, not bad. Following the Compel, the player receives the Fate point and is therefore able to continue to participate in the Fate economy: failing to fo so simply shuts the Player out.

 

[hawkeyefan]

It's different from moment-to-moment and system to system.

For sure. I had been talking primarily about D&D 5E. Generally speaking, I think it’s good to share mechanics unless there’s a compelling reason not to do so. Which there certainly can be. My feeling is those instances should probably be less frequent than many others might think.

Other games will vary for sure. My recent experiences GMing games other than 5E D&D have all been pretty transparent mechanically. Blades in the Dark and the Alien RPG being the two that most immediately spring to mind.

 

[FrogReaver]

In that post I also noted that the same thing can routinely happen in D&D play - first the reaction or CHA check is rolled, and then the appropriate fiction is established. And when it comes to D&D combat, with hp ablation as the principal mechanic, the same time sequnce is practically mandatory. We don't know what has happened in the fiction until the resolution is well and truly done.

I think you are going to have to be more specific here. An example would help tremendously.

 

[prabe]

(1) Why is a compel not arising naturally from the fiction? The examples I'm familiar with from the rulebook seem to. For instance, p 14 of Fate Core has Landon's player accepting a compel on the aspect The Manners of a Goat, so that when he dances with a refined guest at the ball, he offends her. This seems very close to a CHA check in 5e D&D to determine the NPC's reaction, except instead of rolling a die and applying a CHA mod, the player elects to auto-fail and takes a Fate point. The example goes on to say that "Amanda [the GM] and Lenny [the player] play a bit to figure out how Landon puts his foot in his mouth". Now I think there's room in both the Fate and the D&D example to talk about when the best time is to invoke the mechanics - when the PC or NPC meet, or somewhere into that roleplay? That will be very dependent on context, but I think there's a case to be made that the Fate GM has gone a couple of sentences too early.

To paraphrase what @Ovinomancer said upthread, I strongly prefer things that cause my character to behave against their will (or at least against their better judgment) to start from inside the fiction, not from outside the fiction/around the table. I'd argue that a low-CHA character making a check would have a better chance than a Fate character whose player accepts a Compel.

(2) You seem to be equating compulsion from outside the character's rational choices with compulsion from outside the fiction. I don't think this is a warranted equation. Landon does not say something offensive to the ball guest because of a compulsion that comes from outside the fiction. (The only RPG I know of that embraces something like that is Over the Edge.) It is because, despite his best efforts and perhaps his best judgement, Landon says rude or offensive things. The GM is playing Landon's inability to help himself. The player is playing Landon's rational agency. And the player - within the game's incentive structures which include the Fate point economy - decides which wins.

No, Landon says something offensive because Lenny accepted a Fate Point, and then the fiction is shaped around that. As you point out, the scene hasn't yet gotten to a point where it's clear what's going to happen. The game's incentive structures make it difficult-to-unwise for a player to refuse Compels, which don't need to derive from previous events.

(3) I'm not sure what you mean when yuou say that your character ended up behaving in arguably suboptimal ways. Are you talking about suboptimal within the fiction ie the character sabotaged his/her own goals? This is what Landon does if Landon's player takes the Fate point; the Fate point economy is intended to make this a richer and more intense aspect of game play. Eg and as@Manbearcat has posted, it makes it costly (ie paying a Fate point) for rational will to triumph over irrational or self-defeating habit or inclination or personality trait. This is a real-world experience of what, in the fiction, is the making of an effort by the character.

If you mean suboptimal in the real world, as in, in making those decisions you undermined you own goals as a RPGer, then that seems curious and I don't quite follow.

Specifically, the character refused to kill sleeping enemies, and refused to allow other party members to do so, in an adventure that's kinda written for PCs to be murderhobos, then started negotiating with opponents so she didn't have to kill them. (I'm pretty sure the player whose wizard cast the sleep spell thought it was suboptimal, and I wouldn't argue.) There are things in her backstory that arguably explain it, but that's ... emphatically not my usual play style, and it wasn't how I would have expected to play the character. And this is in D&D 5E, which offers no mechanical rewards for playing this way.