RPG Theory- The Limits of My Language are the Limits of My World

[Thomas Shey]

So, since this keeps coming up, phrased in one form or another, from more than one preson...

Has anyone here ever heard or read, "People like what they like" and thought, Yes, yes, this is very valuable insight.

How about pointing out that something is inherently immune to critique and pointless to analyze because it's wildly popular?

I can't for the life of me understand what value either of those have. The only goal or result for either would seem to be to try to end the discussion. They certainly never advance it.

That's sometimes how I read it, but to give people the benefit of the doubt, what I suspect most of them are intending is to suggest there's a fundamental taste based element at the root of people's enjoyment of RPGs that trumps everything else, and as such makes any attempt to engage with it on a critical level, basically pointless. So arguably they are trying to end the discussion, because they see it as serving no purpose but as an exercise in harshing someone's buzz (and possibly don't trust at least the motivations of some of the people doing it for that reason).

While I don't agree with them there is a problem in such discussion that's hard to engage with: there are usually one or more premises that people doing a critique take as a given, and often they're unwilling or unable to unpack those, and without doing so its hard to move forward. At least occasionally (there's a poster on here about PF2e that does this) they also take it as a given that their premise is so self-evident that anyone not accepting it is a blind fanboy.

I don't necessarily think any of this means such discussion is fruitless, but it can all be a contributor toward it being tedious and annoying for pretty much everyone involved.

 

[Thomas Shey]

And now, when I GM, I have a set of conceptual and practical tools for thinking about how I use prepped backstory, and how I prep for situation, and how I adjudicate actions. For instance: I can now see clearly that if (i) I treat prepped backstory as fluid, non-binding suggestions and (ii) I adjudicate declared actions as automatic failures on the basis of unrevealed backstory then (iii) I'm basically just fiatting failure or the possibility of success. No AD&D or RM book ever explained this to me. I also now have a clear way of thinking about how to bring backstory into framing, so it becomes part of the established fictional positioning. I also understand much better than I use to how to incorporate player suggestions about backstory into framing and adjudication.

All these things have made my RPGing better.

I want to use Pemerton a little bit here to illustrate a bit from my prior post.

The above paragraph and most of the rest of the post leading to it has an unstated but (I think) pretty clear assumption: that the purpose of backstory is overwhelmingly to engage the PCs' interests. Given the time and mode of the books he's talking about, this is not an assumption I'd guess those books were making; that the purpose of the backstory was to set up a dynamic setting, and that it was not necessary for the PCs to interact with all of it for that to be a virtue.

The significance of this is that for a person who thinks the latter is true, a critique based on the former is going to evoke, to one degree or another, a response of "And?" That's likely even to be true if they understand the difference between the two positions, as they presumably consider the latter as a virtue that someone with priorities toward the first won't, so it may be hard for them to sympathize with the aims of the first.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

View attachment 146198

My misspent youth

My misspent, um, not youth.

 

[payn]

My misspent, um, not youth.

View attachment 146201

Are you sure this wasn't your jam?...

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Are you sure this wasn't your jam?...

How did I not know about this before? My life was incomplete.

It’s like no one ever told me about sunshine. Or rainbows. Or The film oeuvre of the world’s greatest thespian, Nicolas Cage.

 

[FrogReaver]

Seeing as those phrases are my coinage, I thought I might reply.

To begin with: many, many RPG texts are very unclear about how the game is actually to be played. The first RPG that I, personally, read that I could see was just coming out and telling me how it was to be played was Burning Wheel. Since then I've discovered older texts that do this too (eg Maelstrom Storytelling, Over the Edge). I've also come to realise that Gygax's AD&D and Moldvay Basic do this to a large extent, though they have some misleading trappings (about heroic fantasy etc) in their introductory material.

But when playing a system like AD&D OA (which clearly is not meant to be played in the Gygax/Moldvay style) or Rolemaster, In my experience you're basically on your own.

I read a lot of stuff - both official stuff for both systems, and other commentary - which told me that I should create a rich gameworld, lots of interacting factions, etc (ie a "living sandbox"), or strongly implied that I should to that by presenting it as a model. Relatedly, both OA and various RM books have lots of tables for determining (perhaps by rolling, perhaps by choice) arcs of events in the campaign world, clearly intended to provide both a backdrop to play and material for play.

I also read a lot of stuff that talked about how to design and adjudicate action in locations, which clearly took for granted eg that movement would be adjudicated by tracking distance moved on a map vs movement rates.

And then one gets to the actual moment of play and of adjudication, and the question arises, what to do with all this prepped material? Eg, if one of my background events is the assassination of the emperor, and my maps and movement rates tell me that if, at this moment, I reveal a rumour to the players, then even if they travel to the capital at their fastest they can't arrive in time to stop the assassination as per my prepared timelines, what am I to do? Stick to all my prep, and have this dramatic event happen offstage? Or adjust my timeline?

At the same time, it's becoming clear in play that the players are into some stuff - eg the scheming of the Scarlet Brotherhood - but not other stuff - eg the border wars in Furyondy. Do I still focus on both in my prep and management of the sandbox? What if my random rolls for event generation reveal that all the exciting stuff is going to involve Furyondy and not the Scarlet Brotherhood. What if the players decide to try and infiltrate a Scarlet Brotherhood stronghold and I don't have it prepped - or haven't even thought about whether and where it might be?

My ability to deal with these questions in my own play was helped a great deal by having someone else - mostly Ron Edwards - explain what was giving rise to them, namely, a certain set of assumptions about how prepped backstory, framing of situations, and resolution of declared actions, would all fit together. Encountering systems like BW - with its Circles and Wises checks - made it clear, by showing how rather than just asserting that, that other approaches are possible. I was able to realise that the relationship between successful moments of play, and various techniques I'd used without necessarily noticing that I was using them, was not accidental but causal. And so I was able to become more systematic.

My take from this is that your framework and methodology is deeply personal to you. That you find it extremely useful and think others can too - even to the point that the same relationships between specific successful moments of play and various techniques that you discovered will be broadly applicable to others.

I've had alot of success modifying death rules in 5e to make falling to 0 hp more consequential. But every time I bring up the relationship of the success I have had with such techniques I find to my dismay that hardly anyone is interested in modifying their game that way. What I find is that relationships I initially think are universal and that others would benefit from usually aren't really that universal but particular to my tastes and possibly a small segment of other players tastes. There's never the broad appeal there that I expect.

And now, when I GM, I have a set of conceptual and practical tools for thinking about how I use prepped backstory, and how I prep for situation, and how I adjudicate actions. For instance: I can now see clearly that if (i) I treat prepped backstory as fluid, non-binding suggestions and (ii) I adjudicate declared actions as automatic failures on the basis of unrevealed backstory then (iii) I'm basically just fiatting failure or the possibility of success. No AD&D or RM book ever explained this to me. I also now have a clear way of thinking about how to bring backstory into framing, so it becomes part of the established fictional positioning. I also understand much better than I use to how to incorporate player suggestions about backstory into framing and adjudication.

I think there's alot of unstated assumptions in this example. For example, one can treat some areas of backstory as fluid, non-binding while adjucating actions on the non-fluid backstory elements without causing fiat. And then there's the question, even if you do make an adjucation on a fluid, non-binding piece of backstory - was fiat in that situation actually 'bad' or 'negative' in anyway - especially if such fiat based adjucations come up rarely?

Which to me reveals that what your analysis is teaching you is more about personal insight than universal principles that we call can use.

 

[pemerton]

Well ... eh, that's not really it from my P.O.V. From my P.O.V., no matter what topic I post, no matter how it's framed, and no matter what tags I used (like "5e") in an attempt to get the "disconnected, curious individuals" out there to contribute to the discussion because I'd like to hear what they have to say, it feels like the exact same people come in and dominate the conversations with the same points, leaving no air for the curious and disconnected.

Because I didn't want to disrupt your FKR thread, I started a thread in General about FK (not FKR) and RPGing.

You posted in that thread and (implicitly, but not very implicitly) directed me to yours, suggesting that mine was wrong-headed and based on an inadequate evidence base.

As a result, I made some posts in your thread. I thought that's what you were inviting me to do.

 

[pemerton]

I want to use Pemerton a little bit here to illustrate a bit from my prior post.

Three thoughts in response:

(1) Do you think I kept the premise you identify hidden, or am incapable of discussing it? I thought I stated it or strongly implied it pretty clearly. (Except that I would refer to players' interests or player-authored PC priorities; not PCs' interests.)

(2) I don't fully agree with your characterisation of RM texts. I posted some quotes from Campaign Law (1984) recently in another thread and won't repeat them here, but they make it clear that the GM is supposed to be engaging the players via the backstory. The same book also encourages prepping a detailed backstory. It doesn't explain how to reconcile the tension between that can arise, in play, between these two instructions.

(3) I posted in reply to a question from @FrogReaver about how drawing a certain contrast - backstory-first and situation-first - might help someone improve their RPGing. I think I answered the question. Now if your response is that someone who is following backstory-first advice and isn't worried by the outcomes of that may not gain anything from noting that distinction, fair enough. But I didn't assert that everyone will improve their play by drawing such a distinction.

On another recent thread, I made a post that I think 5e can be played situation-first, because I have played situation-first AD&D and 5e doesn't seem wildly different from AD&D in the relevant respects. FrogReaver asked me to elaborate, and I did. As part of the elaboration I explained what I take to be the contrast between prioritising backstory in framing and adjudication, and subordinating backstory to situation in play. Now if someone doesn't want to play situation-first AD&D or 5e, that's obviously their prerogative. But having been asked to provide the elaboration, I'm not sure why it's objectionable to do so.

EDIT:

Which to me reveals that what your analysis is teaching you is more about personal insight than universal principles that we call can use.

When you ask questions, and people answer, it seems odd to attack them for their answers.

I've never asserted that any set of preferences is universal. Or that any set of principles should be universally adopted.

I think the analysis of backstory vs situation is highly applicable, though. Clearly beyond just my own case, given that there are a very large numbers of RPGs built more-or-less deliberately to exploit the various ways these can be related.

It also lets me understand others' play. Eg I can infer from your posts that you prefer backstory-first play. That comes through in many of your posts, particularly one in the last week or so where you talked about the sorts of spontaneous backstory-introduction that you could or could not accept. Also in your discussion of how to establish and adjudicate a living sandbox.

 

[pemerton]

The ask is not that anyone be "deferential," but just that they try to be polite and helpful...or else not reply at all, which is always an option. Further, I've said in this thread and other threads that I respect everyone's depth of rpg knowledge (including to you, directly), and that I'm here to learn; that's not, I don't think, treating anyone "poorly." (In one instance I made a facetious post that came off poorly; I deleted it and apologized).

You make many posts about what sorts of mechanics "we need". I've explained why I think the use of "we" in these sorts of discussions is not all that helpful, nor "need": because different people want different things from RPGing, and sometimes the same person can want different things from RPGing on different occasions. So it seems to me that there is no we and there is no need.

If people want to free roleplay fantasy shopping, that's their prerogative. That doesn't to my mind show or suggest or even kind-of hint that others who resolve shopping differently are doing it wrong, or have made a mistake about what RPGing is about. Nor vice versa, obviously.

I think the context of 5e play can make the differences more fraught, because expressions of preference often get bundled into discussions of what sort of material WotC should publish. In my experience this association of what techniques do I and/or my table prefer and what ought the commercial publishers of D&D to publish really seems to date from the 3E era. Perhaps I was out of touch in the AD&D era, but I don't remember that particular line of discussion coming up so often.

I think this is a function of the market position, and subsequent customer relation to the product, of D&D compared to (say) Rolemaster or Apocalypse World.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Three thoughts in response:

Before I do, I just want to make it clear I was just using your post as a springboard; I don't think you've been exceptionally muddy in this area, but I thought the post in absence of any prior reading of your posts could be an example of the issue.

(1) Do you think I kept the premise you identify hidden, or am incapable of discussing it? I thought I stated it or strongly implied it pretty clearly. (Except that I would refer to players' interests or player-authored PC priorities; not PCs' interests.)

The latter I'm utterly incapable of assessing; I endeavor not to engage in what I refer to as "Internet Telepathy" and I haven't read enough of your posts to develop an opinion outside of that.

I don't think you stated it, but did indeed imply it; but that doesn't actually help with the situation as much as you'd think.

(2) I don't fully agree with your characterisation of RM texts. I posted some quotes from Campaign Law (1984) recently in another thread and won't repeat them here, but they make it clear that the GM is supposed to be engaging the players via the backstory. The same book also encourages prepping a detailed backstory. It doesn't explain how to reconcile the tension between that can arise, in play, between these two instructions.

I don't think this is contrary, per se; after all, if you have four elements, and one of those engages the players, you're still doing it. The other three simply are establishing background context (and of course may engage the players at some other point). The question still ends up coming down to whether the extra material is worth the additional effort, and that still turns on whether it provides value in and of itself.

(3) I posted in reply to a question from @FrogReaver about how drawing a certain contrast - backstory-first and situation-first - might help someone improve their RPGing. I think I answered the question. Now if your response is that someone who is following backstory-first advice and isn't worried by the outcomes of that may not gain anything from noting that distinction, fair enough. But I didn't assert that everyone will improve their play by drawing such a distinction.

This is where it gets complicated: to what degree does presenting such a thing default to assuming it is of value to the reader? There's obviously a difference between people who take someone to task for not using a technique or assert that everyone should do it and someone who simply presents it without an obvious value judgment, but the difference can be extremely muddy in some cases, and to some degree depends on the observer. So while I'm not sure there's an obligation to be affirmative in stating that a critique or a technique suggestion comes from a given posture and does not apply to those not sharing it, not doing so almost inevitably will end up producing some results from people who read the opposite into it (possibly from past experiences with those who did assume it as a given) along with, of course, some percentage of people who approach the discussion assuming bad intent or bring it themselves.

The net effect is that there's always going to be some problems with this kind of formulation, some the poster has some influence over (but that can require more heavy lifting than they're willing to do), some less so.

On another recent thread, I made a post that I think 5e can be played situation-first, because I have played situation-first AD&D and 5e doesn't seem wildly different from AD&D in the relevant respects. FrogReaver asked me to elaborate, and I did. As part of the elaboration I explained what I take to be the contrast between prioritising backstory in framing and adjudication, and subordinating backstory to situation in play. Now if someone doesn't want to play situation-first AD&D or 5e, that's obviously their prerogative. But having been asked to provide the elaboration, I'm not sure why it's objectionable to do so.

EDIT:

When you ask questions, and people answer, it seems odd to attack them for their answers.

It isn't so odd when you understand that the answers can be read as critical of the extent way they're playing and think they should play. Its arguably very unproductive, but its common enough its not useful to act like it isn't the case.

Its also a good idea to remember that often responses to you are, whether the poster is conscious of it or not, often directed to not only you but every past individual they've seen discussion on the same subject with. Again, you can argue it shouldn't be that way, but it clearly is that way in many, many cases.