RPGing and imagination: a fundamental point

[clearstream]

I like your notion of "well-formed" here (my bolding). Contrary to some of my earlier posts, suppse task resolution is defined like this

It's task resolution if it can be resolved and have a meaningful effect on the game state ignoring intent​

The theoretical move is to detach intent and see if it can still be resolved. I believe all agree that you cannot do that with conflict resolution. That gets around my firm intuitions that players express intention in their choice of performance, and that we never resolve performances for their own sake. @AbdulAlhazred @FrogReaver WDYT?

I mean "ignoring" here in the strongest sense - "while disregarding" or "deliberately detached from" - so that it's meaning to play can be found somewhere other than in the acting player's intent.

This comes to a reframing of the definition I proposed earlier. The meaning of player performances is grounded not in what they aim to do, but in some other playful purpose. One they accept and enjoy but do not control. (Perhaps their enjoyment is to some extent sustained by that objectivity.)

To say that the meaning of an act is found in some purpose wider than the act is a normal observation about meaningfulness. It applies as much to resolving player aims as resolving effects of their acts detached from their aims. Thus, it is the chosen wider purpose that must ultimately distinguish conflict from task resolution. Perhaps it is the matter of who controls the wider purpose that counts?

 

[pemerton]

That's not very clear - you've used the term 'disputing the difference in detail between'...

That's ambiguous.

If you are implying that I dispute any of the cold hard facts that are provided me about the game - then I don't dispute those. What I dispute is how theory terms intersect those cold hard facts and how how to best define/talk about the substantive differences between the games revealed through those cold hard facts.


Mostly the cold hard facts you provide, along with definitions and logic. That's a sound basis, no?

It's no basis at all. By your own account you are not familiar with these games, and have neither read their rules nor played them.

And then - as @hawkeyefan has already noted upthread - when someone presents "cold hard facts" about them, you dispute and disagree. All on no foundation.

While you're abstracting away from the reality of RPG play and design, Vincent Baker and John Harper and others have actually designed some of the most influential RPGs of the past 20 years. All using the "theory terms" that you dispute on the basis of nothing but your own imaginings about what is possible in RPGing.

 

[Aldarc]

It's no basis at all. By your own account you are not familiar with these games, and have neither read their rules nor played them.

And then - as @hawkeyefan has already noted upthread - when someone presents "cold hard facts" about them, you dispute and disagree. All on no foundation.

While you're abstracting away from the reality of RPG play and design, Vincent Baker and John Harper and others have actually designed some of the most influential RPGs of the past 20 years. All using the "theory terms" that you dispute on the basis of nothing but your own imaginings about what is possible in RPGing.

I grow curiouser and curioser. We know that this is nothing new. This is a trend and cycle that has repeated itself for years now with many of the same faces. So what is the point of coming into these threads time and time again to dispute the functionality of games that one hasn't played or dispute game concepts that one hasn't read first hand?

I genuinely do respect those who put in the effort to do these things - i.e., to play and read about other games and roleplaying concepts - and still disagree. However, when people year after year say that they haven't played or read these games but then continue to dispute them just as persistently as if they had firsthand knowledge, experience, and facts while demanding their arguments be taken seriously as someone who has done their due diligence? That is absurd to me. Have people not been given ample opportunities to perform their due diligence by playing these games and/or reading these sources across the span of eight plus years?

I can't help but wonder, what is the gain, purpose, or drive for this sort of behavior? Is it to somehow protect D&D from the big, bad Boogie Man of non-traditional and/or indie gaming? Is it to erase or obfuscate the differences between tabletop games, including their various strengths and weaknesses? Is it to perpetuate this mythic idea that D&D-style d20 gaming can do everything just as well if not better than other games out there?

Because, yes, I personally find this pattern of behavior perplexing and frustrating because I feel that it is often done for the sake of disparaging and marginalizing other games I enjoy playing that don't follow the mold of D&D as well as the unique play experiences that I get from them.

 

[pemerton]

Upthread, @Citizen Mane pointed to Baker's advice on Practical Conflict Resolution Advice:

My friend anonyfan asks: "Do you have any ideas on how to effectively and meaningfully implement 'what's at stake' in a non-narrativist game?"

I sure do.

You won't have any trouble at all, and in fact your group will wonder how you got along before, if you find the magic words. I don't know what your group's magic words are but here are some I've used:
"The danger is that..."
"What's at stake is..."
"What you're risking is..."
"So what you hope to accomplish is..."

Say the magic words every single time, when the dice are in their hands but before they roll 'em.

At first, you'll need to finish the sentence every time yourself, with a period, like:
"The danger is that you'll set off the trap instead of disarming it."
"What's at stake is, do you make it to the ferry in time or do you have to go the long way around?"
"What you're risking is being overheard by the goblins on the rooftop."
"So what you hope to accomplish is to get through the doorway, whether this ogre lives or dies."

But after you've said it three or four or ten times, you'll be able to trail off with a question mark when you want their input:
"What you're risking is...?"

And then, once the dice are on the table, always always always make it like this:

• If they succeed, they win what's at stake. They accomplish their accomplishment or they avoid the danger.
• If they fail, they lose what's at stake - and you IMMEDIATELY introduce something new at stake. It might be another chance, it might be a consequence, but what matters is that it's more serious than the former. . . .

In combat, you'll probably want to have an overall what's at stake for the fight, and little tactical what's at stakes for each exchange. When you describe the setup, mention two or three features of the environment, like hanging tapestries or a swaying bridge or broken cobblestones, plus an apparent weakness of the foe, like worn armor straps or a pus-filled left eye, and then when you say what's at stake for an exchange, incorporate one of those: "the danger is that he'll push you back onto the broken cobblestones" or "so what you're hoping to do is to further strain his armor straps." This is on top of hitting and damage and whatever, just add it straight in.

It's especially effective if you always give a small bonus or penalty for the exchange before.​

One thing we can see from this is that the minimum that is required for conflict resolution includes:

*Some bit of the fiction that constitutes, or establishes, what's at stake (eg a trap; swarming Goblins, weakened armour);

That fiction *being known to the player so they can incorporate it into their action declaration or their response to a GM-announced action declaration (eg they know the risk is that they'll be pushed onto the cobblestones)'

*That fiction being incorporated into the narration of consequences, by reference both to (i) the success or failure of the roll, and (ii) the intent of the action vis-a-vis that bit of fiction.​

This gives us further insight into the point I made in post 976: classic D&D, and the many other RPGs that are broadly similar in their procedures of play, don't need these things; and in these RPGs, the consequences of declared actions can be things that the player had no knowledge of and did not incorporate into their action declaration, and that are not related to anything the player did know of and incorporate.

It also helps us understand the relationship, in DitV, between the GM actively revealing the town in play, driving towards conflict, and working with the players to establish what is at stake in a given conflict.

 

[pemerton]

I grow curiouser and curioser. We know that this is nothing new. This is a trend and cycle that has repeated itself for years now with many of the same faces. So what is the point of coming into these threads time and time again to dispute the functionality of games that one hasn't played or dispute game concepts that one hasn't read first hand?

I genuinely do respect those who put in the effort to do these things - i.e., to play and read about other games and roleplaying concepts - and still disagree. However, when people year after year say that they haven't played or read these games but then continue to dispute them just as persistently as if they had firsthand knowledge, experience, and facts while demanding their arguments be taken seriously as someone who has done their due diligence? That is absurd to me. Have people not been given ample opportunities to perform their due diligence by playing these games and/or reading these sources across the span of eight plus years?

I can't help but wonder, what is the gain, purpose, or drive for this sort of behavior? Is it to somehow protect D&D from the big, bad Boogie Man of non-traditional and/or indie gaming? Is it to erase or obfuscate the differences between tabletop games, including their various strengths and weaknesses? Is it to perpetuate this mythic idea that D&D-style d20 gaming can do everything just as well if not better than other games out there?

Because, yes, I personally find this pattern of behavior perplexing and frustrating because I feel that it is often done for the sake of disparaging and marginalizing other games I enjoy playing that don't follow the mold of D&D as well as the unique play experiences that I get from them.

When it comes to disparaging other games, my fondest memory is of a poster who mocked me for not only referring to the play of Cthulhu Dark, but to referring to the play of the 4-page free version. A few years later, that same poster was lauding the "free kriegsspiel revolution" with Cthulhu Dark as an exemplar, and lecturing me (and others) on our need to recognise the FKR, which (it was alleged) couldn't be encompassed within our conceptions of RPGing.

I don't know what motivates posters who have no familiarity with a range of RPGing principles and techniques to nevertheless try and construct abstract description and criticism. In this thread, it seems to be (at least in part) a desire to obfuscate the differences between action resolution in which the player knows what is at stake, and resolves that via the roll of the dice and action resolution in which the significant consequences are determined by the GM independently of the players' knowledge of, and intent in respect of, the fiction.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I have been responding to the idea of "saying 'no'" expressed in this post, by reference to declaring an action declaration a failure in virtue of hidden fiction:

@FrogReaver posted something similar here:
Both of you were asking, in effect, how there can be secret backstory and yet conflict resolution.

And the answer I've given, is that the GM manages this in virtue of actively revealing their backstory in play. And part of that, as per the quote from DitV about the GM encouraging the players to de-escalate stakes, is by pacing.

That is not blocking an action declaration. It is scaling back what is at stake in it, as part of the discussion of framing.

Yes it is. You can argue all you want that red is blue, but it doesn't make it so. If the GM can reject the stake the player is suggesting, that is a form of saying no.

I mean, you don't even seem to have asked yourself - how it is established in the first place that there is a safe to search? In DitV, there can only be a safe in the town if the GM declares as much. And so how the GM reveals the existence of that safe, is intimately connected to how it is then established, as a possible action declaration, that I look in the safe to find the title deeds.

What's one reason that the GM might declare that there is a safe in town? If the players have their PCs question a NPC, to get them to tell why it is that they are refusing to talk to the young innocent about the latter's inheritance. So what is at stake is, will the NPC reveal the truth about the inheritance? And if the GM (playing their NPC) loses that conflict, and if the GM has - in their prep - noted that the title deeds are in the safe, then the GM might have the NPC say The mayor keeps all them documents in his safe! I done seen him put them in there.

This would also be an illustration, of what I posted in the abstract above, that there is no conflict between prep/myth and conflict resolution, provided that no contradiction obtains between the prep, and the stakes the player puts into play in their action declaration.

I mean, think about it: how do you, and @FrogReaver, envisage the safe even becomes part of the fiction? You haven't posted about that. Neither has he. As far as I can tell, neither of you has even given it any thought.

Yes, it is likely that the safe exists for some narrative purpose. This being a possibility is obvious. That being said, it could also be just part of 'set dressing' in certain situations. (Now what probably doesn't exist for some specific narrative purpose is doors.) Furthermore, unless the game is really railroady it is perfectly possible the choices of the players create a situation where they encounter the safe before talking to the NPC who has info on its contents.

Yet you make confident assertions about what must be possible, in a game in which the contents of the safe might be part of GM prep, and in which I look in the safe is a legitimate thing for a player to say in the play of their PC.

In a sense that there are certain things that logically follow from these axioms, yes.

To close this thread, let me reiterate this: in classic D&D play, there is nothing degenerate about an action declaration to listen at a door, or to search for a secret door, even though the GM knows there is nothing to be discovered by doing so. In DitV that is a degenerate situation: it would be a sign that the GM has made some sort of error in their play of the game.

Then it must be a hella error prone game! This is game where characters frequently visit towns, which I presume also contain buildings with doors. And I also assume that this is a game where players can decide what their characters do. Well, that's an accident waiting to happen!

You started this thread by talking about imagination. It is weird game of imagination if it falls apart when perfectly easily imaginable action is attempted. To me that seems more like some sort of computer game where you are only allowed to click specific things. Not that I think that DitV is like that at all, I think you're just making overly broad normative claims about how it ought to be played which probably do not align with the reality.

These differences in principles, procedures, technical modes of resolution - they are real things.

Yes, they are. Well, they are somewhat vague social constructs, so "realish."

 

[FrogReaver]

It's no basis at all. By your own account you are not familiar with these games, and have neither read their rules nor played them.

And then - as @hawkeyefan has already noted upthread - when someone presents "cold hard facts" about them, you dispute and disagree. All on no foundation.

While you're abstracting away from the reality of RPG play and design, Vincent Baker and John Harper and others have actually designed some of the most influential RPGs of the past 20 years. All using the "theory terms" that you dispute on the basis of nothing but your own imaginings about what is possible in RPGing.

I didn’t, but this back and forth is going to go nowhere.

Instead, a suggestion - if you don't want to talk to me about such games, then simply don't bring them up. Any point you want to make involving one of them can be made in the abstract as well. I'd much rather engage with the abstract point.

 

[FrogReaver]

In a sense that there are certain things that logically follow from these axioms, yes.

Exactly this!

 

[pemerton]

In a sense that there are certain things that logically follow from these axioms, yes.

They're not "axioms". They're characterisations of RPG techniques and approaches.

Yes it is. You can argue all you want that red is blue, but it doesn't make it so. If the GM can reject the stake the player is suggesting, that is a form of saying no.

What is being said "no" to? What does this actually look like in play? Can you give us an actual play example?

Yes, it is likely that the safe exists for some narrative purpose. This being a possibility is obvious. That being said, it could also be just part of 'set dressing' in certain situations. (Now what probably doesn't exist for some specific narrative purpose is doors.) Furthermore, unless the game is really railroady it is perfectly possible the choices of the players create a situation where they encounter the safe before talking to the NPC who has info on its contents.

Can you illustrate this with reference to DitV? Or HeroWars? Which are the two RPGs I mentioned as contradicting your claim that conflict resolution requires a no myth approach.

Then it must be a hella error prone game! This is game where characters frequently visit towns, which I presume also contain buildings with doors. And I also assume that this is a game where players can decide what their characters do. Well, that's an accident waiting to happen!

You started this thread by talking about imagination. It is weird game of imagination if it falls apart when perfectly easily imaginable action is attempted. To me that seems more like some sort of computer game where you are only allowed to click specific things. Not that I think that DitV is like that at all, I think you're just making overly broad normative claims about how it ought to be played which probably do not align with the reality.

You seem to be envisaging the play of DitV as analogous to a dungeon crawl, only with the doors being in houses rather than rooms.

What do you think the canonical approach is to mapping, in DitV?

Also, do you think it's relevant that the poster in this thread who (as best I know) has the most play experience with DitV - @Manbearcat - has consistently agreed with my characterisation of it, while disagreeing with yours?

 

[pemerton]

if you don't want to talk to me about such games, then simply don't bring them up. Any point you want to make involving one of them can be made in the abstract as well. I'd much rather engage with the abstract point.

This claim is, in my view, false. There is no use in abstract points that are not connected to actual RPGs with actual techniques.

For instance, how can we have a serious conversation about conflict resolution, without considering the difference between how a game like Burning Wheel establishes consequences in the course of resolution, and how a game like Apocalypse World does the same thing?

Until we consider the actual instances, abstractions are pointless. No one, thinking about vehicles purely abstractly, conceived the difference between a wagon, a steam engine, an internal combustion engine-driven car, and (now) an electric car. These possibilities, and the differences between them, were conceived of by actual familiarity with the relevant bodies of knowledge and technique that lies behind them.

Unless you're Vincent Baker, you're probably not even going to conceive of trying to combine conflict resolution with if you do it, you do it. Baker conceived of it because (i) he's an RPG design genius, and (ii) he had been working through the relevant ideas over years, with reference both to his own designs and other RPGs.

Abstract speculation reveals nothing except the limits of the imagination of the speculator.