RPGing and imagination: a fundamental point

[pemerton]

You need not look far, Traveller has ZERO mechanical advancement!

Book 2 has the rules for sabbatical - spend money, spend time, gain a skill at Level 2. The extent to which this is supposed to be embedded within the fiction is a bit unclear.

But anyway, I agree with your broader point. In a single session of Traveller, or CoC, or even D&D played tournament-style, there will be no PC advancement but the game will still be a RPG. The core of the RPG is not "playstyle reinforcement" by dint of XP or some other PC-improvement mechanism. Is that participants moves are all about the content of a shared fiction: players have their characters do things in that fiction, and the GM has a complex responsibility for curating the other bits of the fiction within which the characters are acting.

(Of course there can be nuances and variations. "Director stance" is a thing. I'm trying to get to the core.)

 

[pemerton]

Suggesting that its impossible to play DND without a player describing an action is to suggest GMs aren't players too.

Of course GMs are participants who play the game. But there can be no play of D&D (or any other RPG) if no one occupies the player role and declares actions for the character that they are "in charge of".

 

[darjr]

Original DND is a mini's based wargame. That changed over time as the wargame elements were emphasized less and less in favor of emphasizing playstyle. The Thief was the first instance of the pattern being used and it only exploded from there.

Edit: it actually explicitly calls itself a wargame. The conflation of that wargame with roleplaying (the implicit improv game I was referencing) came later.

Another thing that’s not quite right here. Dave Arnesons games used miniatures more as props than game pieces. David Wesely told me about it when I first met him, I’ve talked to him a couple times about Dave Arnesons old games.

It was far more theater of the mind than anything else.

I believe most of Gary’s games were as well.

Edit: wrong Dave.

 

[kenada]

Because there's more, a lot more, to what improv is than just having an imagination.

That’s the part that’s delegated to the play culture (just like with newer editions where those practices are something one has to learn as part of acquiring the skills of DMing).

And I'd agree, but that culture didn't really exist until after the game was released. I don't consider Arnesons game to constitute a play culture.

The culture in question is the miniature wargaming culture that existed prior to the release of OD&D and informed how it presented itself and was received. I think @thomas Shey’s comment in post #33 is interesting because it is illustrative how someone from a different wargaming play culture would interpret OD&D differently.

I don't consider that to be the case unless one is trying to gatekeep the term RPG.

As ive related between this topic and the other, I believe most if not all TTRPGs are actually hybrids between an RPG and Improv game, and in many cases also with other game types like story games, tactics games, wargames, etc. As such, I also believe what you and others are consistently referencing as being the base layer of these games to be the improv game.

I’m not following the other one very closely, so I may have missed something. You’ve described games as being hybrids between X and an RPG. I’m not trying to gatekeep. What I’m trying to do is determine what is is constitutive of being “and an RPG”. There has to be something, or it’s just a meaningless label.

As far as the “improv” part goes, I’m not particularly concerned with that. Outside of our discussion of OD&D, I’ve been intentionally not using tabletop RPG examples to try to maintain clarity (since the “improv” element seems to be a pretty common trait to tabletop RPGs).

Frankly, at least between you and me I think the only disagreement is in the words we're using. We're not actually describing the relationship between these elements any differently, only their names.

I'm personally not attached to calling the improv game the RPG, and that follows from my thoughts on most these games, not even just DND, either poorly teaching Improv or not even bothering. Id rather be explicit about the improv game so it can be taught and contextualized specifically.

To use my game as an example, of the 4 Core Mechanics, Improvisation is the 4th. I intend to explicitly call Improv a resolution mechanic and will teach it and integrate it into the rules as such.

I agree about explicitness. It’s an important aspect of how resolution works in my homebrew system. Who gets to say what is system-defined. There’s not a place for discretion. If the player says they want something, the referee must foreground consequences. If they do, then the uncertainty is resolved by rolling, and the referee is obligated to honor the result (meaning success must not be sabotaged with “well actually” hidden information). If the referee cannot articulate consequences, then the player gets what they want. Note also that I’m concerned with outcomes not tasks. The skill used supplies the method you use to get what you want.

The system is meant to be OSR-adjacent (in that monsters should convert easily-ish and adventures definitely), though I’m going a different direction regarding rulings and the extent of the referee’s authority. I see the idea of having a neutral referee who is also obligated to play all the other characters (monsters, NPCs, etc) as having an inherit conflict of interest. I want to explore systematic approaches as an alternative to other ones.

That falls under playstyle reinforcement. So here's something I think could bear some clarification. The images I posted earlier are only just examples of how the overall pattern can be implemented, and are certainly not representative of an entire game.

The one in the example, how experience points feed skills/abilities, is just one mechanic. An actual RPG, whether its DND or Skyrim, has dozens of these, if not more, all running concurrently as part of a far larger game diagram.

But more than that, the narrative of a given character is a means of "building up" a character. Presumably over a narrative the point is for the character to end up in a different state than they were when they started, right? Their personal abilities don't have to matter to that, but that doesn't not make whats happening not playstyle reinforcement.

If you're playing a character, the actions you choose reflect a preferred playstyle, and the game is structured to respond to this and reinforce it, whether it be positive or negative, so that by the end of the game, whatever thats defined as, the character has become more or less permanently changed.

I’m a bit disappointed the Undertale example was dropped. Would I be correct in saying that playing-style reinforcement is happening when Undertale changes in response to your actions even though your abilities do not?

What makes playstyle reinforcement indicative of RPG's is that they are commonly the most repeated pattern in those genres (as in, a given RPG uses many concurrent forms of PR simultaneously), and that becomes more and more true the more the game enables freeform play, with of course the eventual epitome being the improv game at the heart of most TTRPGs.

Unless I misunderstood your reply in post #11, that’s not a universal trait of RPGs, right? This is why I keep bringing up the concept of some base RPG traits that all RPGs share (tabletop, computer, etc).

And in fact, to get more specific, lets use the games that we're all kinda sorta talking about. Take AW and its heritage. I don't have time to illustrate it (though I can later if interest is there), but the actual diagram for the game would start with its core, which I'd identify as what it would call the fiction first gameplay loop.

What this would look like is as a contiguous vertical line with effectively infinite "Actions" all occuring in sequence. This is the player simply doing things, or the "Fiction" if we prefer. To the left of this line, I'd place the intra-player constraints on the Fiction. The Actions trigger feedback from both the GM and other Players, and they respond back to the center line, modifying the overall state of the Fiction.

This is the basic gameplay loop of Improv games, to be clear, just sans the direct representation of additional feedback loops (yes, and and so on) that are typical to them. But even without them, the GM and (Other)Players in this system are implied to resolve their feedback somehow, but the how can be as arbitrary as we like, so its not necessarily important to model them directly. (that's where I actually disagree pretty vehemently, these should be explicitly integrated parts of the game)

PBTA et al actually do use this space though, for GM Moves (I'm not certain if any of these games have Player Moves that trigger off other Players, but you could easily fill that space there too)

Now, this loop also has a "right" side, which is where the individual Player, the one currently engaging the Fiction, interacts with whatever Moves they trigger.

And from there, the Moves are relatively simple. Random Input > Change in Game State XYZ > Fiction. A simple, but ultimately negative feedback loop where most of the Game State changes either negatively impact the game state (IE, taking Harm) or introduces a "Wash" (basically any sort of "weak hit" or success at a cost). Over time, this changes as stats change, as Successes start to become more common.

This is also where we run into an aesthetic issue. While the math is sound, many players don't perceive it this way. IIRC, I remember for AW at maximum that the rough chance of a success is around 50%? May be higher closer to 60. While that's fine if one starts at that level, until you get there you're at the mercy of a dramatically lower chance of unambigious success.

In AW this may not be a perceptible issue, as AW isn't exactly about being consistently competant heroes. But then shift over to something like Ironsworn (much as I love it) or Dungeon World, where that issue becomes very easy to run into if you're not buying into a premise that isn't actually reinforced anywhere mechanically. (You either buy the premise or you don't)

But ultimately, by engaging this gameplay loop, the specific Actions chosen reflect a preferred playstyle, the GM, Players, and the Moves all provide different forms of feedback. If your Actions overall present a positive change to the Fiction line, GM and Player will generally respond posititively. Ergo, reinforced. Same goes the other way.

The Moves meanwhile are meant to be designed to reinforce genre emulation. Ergo, if you act in accordance for that, the Moves overall trend towards a positive game state (or rather, what the game considers to be positive)

So yeah, as said I can illustrate this later if desired so it can be looked at more clearly, but the overall idea isn't wrong.

Thanks for the explanation and offer, but I’m not sure it would be fully appreciated without a better understanding of the diagrams and what they are supposed to communicate.

If that were true though, most good GMing practices wouldn't allow for players to come up with their own actions. In fact, its generally considered bad form to be so stingy about what you allow that players are forced to read your mind to get anywhere.

That's the pitfall of not embracing the improv game properly, and an inverse problem can be identified in mother may I issues over in 5e. Both can be solved very readily by embracing the Improv game, and this is what the oral tradition for DMing eventually teaches people to do.

I think what is considered “good GMing practices” can be variable and highly politicized. There have been some considerably lengthy threads here over that. For example, should and to what extent is the DM obligated to honor the Rustic Hospitality feature of a character’s Folk Hero background? I should also note that even phrases like “mother may I” are not without controversy (with some considering them a slur for legitimate playing styles).

Improvised means the same thing whether we're talking Improv theater, improv games, or improvised gameplay in video games. You don't have explicit buttons to push, you've got to actually figure out wtf to do with whatever tools you have.

I was assuming you were using “improv play” with a specific connotation when it came to game design. Treating it as the plain meaning seems less useful because it groups a lot of different things together.

This is what the OSR considers as the peak of their experience, by the by.

However, I think they would refer to that as “skilled play” rather than as improvisation.

 

[Emberashh]

It seemed dismissive of D&D as an rpg

Ive said more than couple times now that this isn't about making value judgements. I'm sure theres some unintended idiosyncrasy in how I talk thats leading you (and others) to believe otherwise, but after Ive explicitly said I'm not making judgements more than once, one has to either accept it and move past whatever the issue is, or stop engaging, because continuing down this path, not acknowledging what Im saying my intentions are, is just going to spill over into an argument and eventually Red Text.

I can grant that I don't always communicate as well as Id like (consequence of just not having the energy to better emulate how I speak in person or write in a more formal setting), but I'm being pretty forthright about what Im trying to say, so picking apart my statements to find ways to disagree is just uncalled for.

It absolutely was a role playing game. They called it a war game because lots of games like it were called war games and they didn’t have another useful term.

At this point I don't particularly care to keep going down this rabbit hole, as I don't see continuing to fight imagined value judgements to be worthwhile.

The moves made by a participant in the GM role are very different from those made by a participant in the player role, because they include the presentation of adversity (both in framing situations and in narrating consequences).

Sure, but I'm speaking from a perspective of what counts qualitatively as a player, which if we go by the Merriam Webster definition is defined as "a person who plays", with play in turn being defined as "a particular act or maneuver in a game".

A GM by definition is a player (in addition to the referee roll), and ergo they can and should be able to drive the game through their own agency.

A key question, in RPG design and in RPG play, is under what circumstances and in what ways the GM is entitled to unilaterally establish the content of the shared fiction. In fact, I think it's fair to say that this is the cause of more social conflict and of game/group breakdown than anything else in RPGing.

Which is why I keep bringing up the improv game. The improv game is literally what you're talking about. Improv games break if the players cannot or will not agree on the shared reality.

The overall split on who says what doesn't actually matter, whether its writers room, the classic GM/Player split, or some other mixture; that comes down to taste which is preferred. What matters is that improv games break if one player is able to monopolize the spotlight. (Never mind all the other possible breaking points like blocking)

In older DND, this was actually less of a problem because the Exploration/Dungeon turn structure reinforced a shared spotlight when it came to whatever improv was invoked. As those things disappeared, right around the 90s, not so coincidentally, its hardly surprising more and more tables started running into these issues.

If any DND had ever made an effort to be explicit about incorporating the improv game properly, all of those problems could have been avoided, including the perennial issue of GM railroading.

Of course GMs are participants who play the game. But there can be no play of D&D (or any other RPG) if no one occupies the player role and declares actions for the character that they are "in charge of".

GMs have more than a few characters they're in charge of, and I'd actually argue its very easy to play an RPG without actually having any PCs. Hell, I do it all the time in fact because Ive taken quite a shine to just running my gameworlds on their own, and I've come up with some pretty clever ways to do it too.

Course, I also controversially don't consider GMPCs to be a fundamentally bad thing to begin with, so that does influence my thoughts on this particular train of thought. Since around 2018ish nearly every major villain I've ever used in any game has been a solo character I introduce and run no differently from any other PC.

And thats before you get into something like Dialect or Microscope, where whatever "PCs" that exist are no more substantive than the common NPC a trad GM would be using.

What I’m trying to do is determine what is is constitutive of being “and an RPG”. There has to be something, or it’s just a meaningless label.

As related by the examination of a PBTA gameloop, I still believe it to be playstyle reinforcement, and there isn't an RPG I've examined that doesn't utilize it in some form as, at least one, core of the gameplay.

Would I be correct in saying that playing-style reinforcement is happening when Undertale changes in response to your actions even though your abilities do not?

Exactly, if we want to use some other language, the crux of what we're talking about is choices and consequences. An RPG will give you X probability space to perform actions in, and it will provide Y feedback in response, which reinforces you to follow Z playstyle. If you kill, people hate you, you either kill more because they hate you or you stop killing because thats not the style you intended.

To use a video game example, take Mass Effect. This is recognized as an RPG, and it uses much of the classical elements like Classes, XP, etc.

But what Mass Effect is known for in particular is its Paragon/Renegade system, which is a playstyle reinforcement mechanic thats specifically tuned to make the player, acting as Shephard, still come out in the end as more or less a pulpy Sci-fi action hero. While the beginnings and end are mostly prescribed, you're given a wide probability space in the middle to play with as you work your way through the narrative, and thats where the bulk of Mass Effect's fun is. You're allowed to be as much of an ass or boy scout as you prefer, and the game responds in kind.

Now, Mass Effect does go wrong individually in terms of following through on its consequences, and thats how the franchise drifted into Mass Effect 2, where it mattered for a lot more, and how we eventually got to the travesty of 3's ending. While Bioware always seemed to have issues sticking the landing, the middle was always consistently fun.

Now I pointed to that example because its a progression game; it follows a fixed, linear narrative that tightly converges towards a prescribed ending. While most TTRPG types would expressly reject this style of RPG (and they did, hence the Forge), Mass Effect is still an RPG at the end of the day.

That in of itself speaks to what elements are core to the RPG as a genre, and while there's a clear split between Progression RPGs (like Mass Effect and most cRPGs) and Emergent RPGs (see most TTRPGs and arguably sandbox RPGs☆), the common thread is playstyle reinforcement, which in turn has many different flavors depending on intent. Classes and Playbooks for example serve similar functions, but diverge in intent. Playbooks reinforce genre emulation, while Classes traditionally reinforce combat rolls(☆☆)

☆I'd argue that a game like Bannerlord is actually an example of a truly emergent cRPG, when played in Sandbox mode. While the medium fundamentally restricts the probability space to a real number, as does the game's focus as a mildly arcadey medieval warfare sim, the probability space for that specific kind of story is gigantic.

☆☆I certainly know Im not going to be continuing that tradition.

Im going to post the diagram separately.

 

[darjr]

Maybe dismissive isn’t the right word. It seems you were trying to say D&D wasn’t an rpg. It is. Right up to release zero. Is my point. Not a value judgment.

I often see people say “it’s a wargame” and like you said, people say it’s in the name. But I think using that to set D&D aside as from RPGs, fundamentally misunderstands the history of D&D and RPGs.

 

[Emberashh]

Thanks for the explanation and offer, but I’m not sure it would be fully appreciated without a better understanding of the diagrams and what they are supposed to communicate.

Righto, so caveats. First, this was quick and dirty just to illustrate what I related previously, so if anyone should happen be familiar with what these symbols actually mean, lets just pretend they mean what Im going to define them as, as I just can't be bothered to model it more accurately or to a sufficient level of depth.

And second, this just focuses on abstracting the basic gameplay loop. There is naturally quite a lot missing, and I took shortcuts because its late and Im starving, so lets not read into that.

Anywaya:

So what everything means:

The 9999 Circles: These represent the overall possibilities as the player engages with the Fiction. These are effectively infinite in a vaccuum, and each copy represents some arbitrary snapshot of the gamestate. (A turn, for example)

When the second Circle is approached, something the player does triggers a feedback response. "I wave my stick and cast Wish!"

The Action is effectively filtered through the GM and fellow players, whose respective feedback may impact each other, and eventually the loop resolves and the Feedback generated creates a new game state within the Fiction. "You wave your stick and poke yourself in the face"

In this new state, the player now chooses to do something that triggers a Move. Dice are rolled, and three possible feedback responses are generated, which then feedback into the new game state as the Fiction advances.

The Loop repeats.

 

[Shardstone]

It doesn't feel like the seperation between improv game and RPG is really worth making. If you are playing a role, even if that role is dictated by things like Actions or Checks or Dice etc etc, you have to make the script -- the sequence of events to come -- as you play. In otherwords, there is some level of improv already in the game. And even if you're playing pawn-style, you are still fulfilling the role of the character, and since that role isn't scripted, you are improving what happens next.

Furthermore, there is no proof that early D&D games involved an absence of what some members call improv games. The moment they started doing things outside the realms of historical wargames, they were entering into the realm of improv. Dave had to come up with rules, and those rules expanded the more people got into the game. And since referees for historical war games would often make improvisional rulings, you can easily argue that roleplaying games and improv games have been married at the hilt since before there were roleplaying games at all.

And there isn't anything to be gained from making this separation either. You cannot talk about any TTRPG without talking about the idea of the TTRPG. This goes deeper than genre and moves into what is the game's pitch. Roleplaying games are about you being a character and having freedom to make certain decisions. Not every decision, but certain decisions. And these decisions are responded to not by the game system itself but by another person who is interpreting both your inputs and the game system. Even if it is just a solo game, you have to respond to yourself by inputting actions, interpreting the game system, and figuring out what that results in next. This interpretation is key to TTRPGs and it also includes the overall game state too. So the GM isn't just thinking about what happens and how the game system responds, they are also thinking about how the overall game state is changing, and their interpretation of that game state changing is required for the game to continue.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yea, but the thing here is you are using a more modern idea of what wargame means. One that isn’t completely congruent with what they meant. For instance Braunstiens were “war” games.

Though, again, I do have to note that "wargames" in the sense they're using were hardly lacking in 1975. Ask an old SPI game collector.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You need not look far, Traveller has ZERO mechanical advancement! You do your lifepath and that's it. There's a system for studying psionics, and I think sort of a note that logically if a PC studies something they could acquire skill in it, but no actual formal advancement exists in CT. Later games and many houserules addressed this, but it was never a focus of play.

There was a general note on training, but it was extremely slow and there was no learning-by-doing (something that only makes sense given how chunky the skill ranks are, and I'm not sure entirely even then).