Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 9209653" data-attributes="member: 71699">I was thinking of Baker's observation as I wrote, although what I am interested in above is the vague, unassigned or general nature of our core mechanic. What I am looking at is that at the heart of most TTRPG is a stochastic mechanic that is unspecific enough to apply to nearly anything.[imagine] --> [roll] --> [imagine]I've described this in the past as selecting between worlds. [Roll] becomes heroic only when we're prepared to list things we don't want to happen among the outcomes. So that the world we arrive in is one that can only be reached by those willing to risk outcomes they don't want. [USER=6795602]@FrogReaver[/USER] I agree with Baker on differentiating general roll from mechanics that model stuff, and about its easing and constraining of the negotiation, but I do not agree that it is its "sole and crucial function." As [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] intimated, Baker later wrote if all your formal rules do is structure your group's ongoing agreement about what happens in the game, they are a) interchangeable with any other rpg rules out there, and b) probably a waste of your attention. Live negotiation and honest collaboration are almost certainly better. . . . As far as I'm concerned, the purpose of an rpg's rules is to create the unwelcome and the unwanted in the game's fiction.This isn't in direct contradiction, although rolling and following the result is surely a rule. It develops the earlier idea to go on to answer just why agreement might be problematic to reach (or more accurately, why we might like to reach agreement on that which we do not wish to agree to.) I recast that in a slightly different light, to suggest that when we wish to feel heroic (fraught, or tested) while performing a decidedly unheroic, non-testing activity (gathered around a table, rolling dice) it is essential that among the outcomes are things we don't want. [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER] often speaks of taking creative risks, which puts at stake real psychological, emotional or social investments: [roll] is palpably enlisted in that process.So, again, my interest above is that [roll] itself is mechanically uncommitted. It's not shaped to model some detail of the game world. It's the generic nature of the mechanic that makes it work. I can [roll] to perform brain surgery just as well as I can [roll] to land a space shuttle, stove in a door, or cast out a vengeful ghost. One can consider the now vast number of PbtA moves in this light... all able to take a 2d6 roll indexing just three (or sometimes four) outcomes.</blockquote>

Verification