RPGing via Billy Bragg?

[Blue Orange]

I seriously think you should try to organize the medieval peasants into a collective and displace the parasitic feudal overclass. The socialist revolution's coming 500 years early!

Your PCs need to use persuasion and perhaps even solve a few minor quests (rescuing the village chieftain's daughter from a hag, etc.) to make friends in the historically divided portions of the land to knit them together into a force that can take on the king's knights.

I mean, the enemy has armor and horses and better training, and in a D&D world, supernatural aid, so there's your escalating difficulty of battles. You've got the king as the final boss. Then you can plunder the untoiled millions he never toiled to earn...and redistribute it to your peasant supporters, of course.

 

[gorice]

Something like this.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well obviously this is contests, but in a social realist framing notions like ideology (in the pejorative sense), solidarity, and so on can't be ignored. Thinking of interpersonal relationships only in terms of individual mental states like fear, trust, ritual, etc would itself be succumbing to ideology (as per my remark upthread about my own lack of imagination in the climax of Battleship Potemkin).

'solidarity' is clearly a derived characteristic, a measure of a quality of a group which is itself the result of the operation of individual states/traits. In any case, I didn't specifically propose, nor intend to propose, that the states I was listing could only be attributed on an individual basis. In practice they would probably apply to groups, certainly NPC social groupings. Whether they were applied directly to the PCs is a different matter. I mean, BitD ranks each organization's relations with the crew by a number, as well as their influence/power by a tier and hold rating. Individual characters may also possess a tier, but mostly in association with the group they are part of (NPCs are also rated on the type of threat they represent, sort of how 4e NPCs are minions, standard, elite, or solo). PCs lack these traits, having an assumed tier rating of their crew, but otherwise entirely different rules.

So, I could imagine a system where the esteem that other groups have for you, what they owe you, how their beliefs/rituals/structures relate to you (IE social standing), etc. all factor into how they treat you, and also what sorts of implications are inherent in your actions (IE if you disavow an ancient princely ritual obligation that might help you with some people and hurt your standing with others). That would seem to me to be a system that is OVERTLY social, though there are other dimensions to sociality that could also be explored.

 

[pemerton]

'solidarity' is clearly a derived characteristic, a measure of a quality of a group which is itself the result of the operation of individual states/traits.

This is contentious.

To give a less contentious example, it's not at all clear that one can explain what a pandemic is if one uses as the only, or primary, units of explanation individual states and traits. Of course individuals are infected and transmit the disease, but what makes it a pandemic is not those individual facts. Certain relational facts and "totality" facts figure crucially in the explanation.

Neither Marx nor Durkheim believes in magic, but neither accepts that solidarity can be explained simply by reference to facts about individuals. Both also emphasise how economic life is shaped by received understandings and practices (what Marx but not Durkheim calls "relations of production"); and both see this as importantly related to solidarity. And explaining that sort of inheritance at a minimum requires relational facts, but also facts of "totality" or similar so as to explain the difference between what is "received" and what is "deviant".

I could imagine a system where the esteem that other groups have for you, what they owe you, how their beliefs/rituals/structures relate to you (IE social standing), etc. all factor into how they treat you, and also what sorts of implications are inherent in your actions (IE if you disavow an ancient princely ritual obligation that might help you with some people and hurt your standing with others). That would seem to me to be a system that is OVERTLY social

I continue to think that, from the social realist perspective, the most obvious way of implementing that sort of system embodies ideology (in the pejorative sense).

For interest, what explains the outcome of Battleship Potemkin is not a subjective mental state like esteem or understood obligation but an objective social state of affairs ("class interest" is one way of beginning to describe it) - the actions of the revolutionaries on the Potemkin causes the other sailors to recognise their interest and thus to radically change their subjective mental states.

This is why I say that the technical challenge for social realist RPGing is to find a way of making social structures and social relations into components of action resolution - where the social here is not the same as any particular individual's subjective mental states.

Off the top of my head, the only system I know that comes into this vicinity is HeroWars/Quest, though I've never mastered the details of its rules for the relationship between individuals and communities. But @chaochou did mention them upthread I think.

Oddly enough Torchbearer has rules for social transformation based on PC actions but not depending upon the intent of the PCs or anyone else. They're quite interesting! But the sort of social realism they express is a bit more pessimistic than Billy Bragg's!

 

[gorice]

My feeling is that this sort of approach also presupposes an (implicit) social theory, just as the approaches you dislike might.

Just to get back to this briefly: I think what you're saying can be true, but there's also an aesthetic or maybe a design question about how we decide what a game is 'about'. Like: if I want to create a game which is an allegory of the German Peasants' War, does that mean that I create mechanics for religious unrest and the steady erosion of peasants' rights by feudal magnates, and give players the task of reversing these things; or does it mean that I try to generate characters who embody these things, set them loose on the world, and see what happens?

I don't necessarily have an answer to this, except to say that I think games that are too 'programmed' can feel a little hollow and self-congratulatory.

 

[pemerton]

Just to get back to this briefly: I think what you're saying can be true, but there's also an aesthetic or maybe a design question about how we decide what a game is 'about'. Like: if I want to create a game which is an allegory of the German Peasants' War, does that mean that I create mechanics for religious unrest and the steady erosion of peasants' rights by feudal magnates, and give players the task of reversing these things; or does it mean that I try to generate characters who embody these things, set them loose on the world, and see what happens?

I don't necessarily have an answer to this, except to say that I think games that are too 'programmed' can feel a little hollow and self-congratulatory.

I don't have an answer either.

Where I'm pushing a bit in this thread is simply that resolution that treats social interaction as an "attitudes/belief" problem may not produce social realist RPGing. Likewise simply establishing a scenario that involves oppressed peasants.

If it's to be genuinely social realist, somehow social relations have to figure in framing and resolution. One way to do that is via GM mediation, but I think Torchbearer and HeroWars/Quest show that that needn't be the only way.

 

[chaochou]

This is why I say that the technical challenge for social realist RPGing is to find a way of making social structures and social relations into components of action resolution - where the social here is not the same as any particular individual's subjective mental states.


Off the top of my head, the only system I know that comes into this vicinity is HeroWars/Quest, though I've never mastered the details of its rules for the relationship between individuals and communities. But @chaochou did mention them upthread I think.

HeroWars has a sophisticated framework. One mechanic, not frequently discussed, is that community support (or opposition) for a magical ritual provides a modifier. And why would anyone be performing a magic ritual? Usually to empower a quest or goal.

For example, a character that decided they were going to confront the broo shaman plagueing the outlying farmlands could call on the community for help - maybe they want an arming ritual, or a hunting ritual, or a warding from disease ritual. The character's rune affiliations and scores, their relationship scores with the townsfolk and communities, and their own personal strengths and weaknesses would drive what they might want and what level of support they could get.

The number of people supporting a ritual changes its power. Get 16 people supporting your ritual, you maybe get a +6, get 10,000 offering extraordinary support for your ritual, you get a +50.

So there's an interaction here between player-driven goals, clear player-facing mechanics to describe your relationships with individuals and communities, and clear player-facing mechanics describing the impact of community support on your ability to act and succeed.

The result is that characters in HeroWars can reliably describe how they want to lead, change, and be empowered by their community while the players get a clear mechanical process for how that is resolved. Heroism becomes an extension of communities - hence the HeroWars - rather than a seperate endeavour for Mary Sue, murder hobo loners.

 

[Manbearcat]

'solidarity' is clearly a derived characteristic, a measure of a quality of a group which is itself the result of the operation of individual states/traits. In any case, I didn't specifically propose, nor intend to propose, that the states I was listing could only be attributed on an individual basis. In practice they would probably apply to groups, certainly NPC social groupings. Whether they were applied directly to the PCs is a different matter. I mean, BitD ranks each organization's relations with the crew by a number, as well as their influence/power by a tier and hold rating. Individual characters may also possess a tier, but mostly in association with the group they are part of (NPCs are also rated on the type of threat they represent, sort of how 4e NPCs are minions, standard, elite, or solo). PCs lack these traits, having an assumed tier rating of their crew, but otherwise entirely different rules.

So, I could imagine a system where the esteem that other groups have for you, what they owe you, how their beliefs/rituals/structures relate to you (IE social standing), etc. all factor into how they treat you, and also what sorts of implications are inherent in your actions (IE if you disavow an ancient princely ritual obligation that might help you with some people and hurt your standing with others). That would seem to me to be a system that is OVERTLY social, though there are other dimensions to sociality that could also be explored.

Cool thread @pemerton !

I just skimmed it and I saw this post and (given that I'm GMing this game) I thought I'd post a few comments about when should someone (both a player in a TTRPG and the PC embroiled in the conflicts and paradigm of the play) suspend their personal sovereignty for the collective and when should they put their foot down and express their own dramatic needs (to some extent; large or small) at the expense of the collective?

So where Blades in the Dark does have "personal Tier" is very interesting with respect to this question. Let us consider Takeo ( @AbdulAlhazred 's character in this Blades game) and how the rules of the game give expression to this "personal Tier."

Stash is one very important one. It is sort of a "personal score" number in Blades. It expresses lifestyle. Stash goes up by 1d at 11/21/40 dots (eg at 21 you have 2d worth of lifestyle). This is personal. You can (a) use this value as a means to make an Action Roll or a Fortune Roll during play when lifestyle is the important part of the test. Again, its also "your score." However, what players are perpetually tempted to do is liquidate Stash for Coin (at the cost of 2 : 1) in order to do various things in game; help out with a Crew Longterm Project, buy-up an Action Roll result (where that makes sense in the fiction), pay someone off outright and obviate an obstacle (where that makes sense in the fiction), or (personally) Train for xp, or buy-up an Acquire an Asset or Recover result.

The decision to liquidate or horde (for "score" or to increase lifestyle dice pool) is a personal one. The decision on what to spend that liquidated Coin from Stash is a personal one. But both the weight of the collective's needs is a persistent one (particularly when there are many threats in play...as there are now for this discussed game) and the downward social pressure of players upon other players (whether intentional or incidental).

The same thing happens with PC build where you have all manner of individual choices on "individual expression of Tier:"

* Should I put a Dot in x Action vs y Action? The inputs for this question are many and multifaceted. Going from a 0 to a 1 in an Action Roll is a huge deal in this game and it also increases your Resistance for that bin of stuff (either Insight, Prowess, or Resolve). But what about having a huge dice pool in Skirmish (like Takeo) and spreading myself thin on Prowess Resistance (signifying a very capable offensive character, but less so defensively...or at least a much more "living dangerously" character when on the defense)? There are many reasons why one might make this personal choice, some of them are expressions of sovereignty and some are downward social pressure of the group (in terms of removing liabilities or amplifying synergies).

* Should I push for an alternative to Weapons Quality Upgrade as a Crew Upgrade because I'm already personally very high in quality? Takeo has +1 Tier with his default suite of weapons due to his chosen playbook already. He also has Potency vs Supernatural due to PC build choice. When Assessing Factors vs supernatural, this puts him at +2 for Effect already (on top of the +2 for Crew). The Weapons Quality Upgrade suddenly puts him at +3 so now Takeo is walking around at +5 when Assessing Factors vs Supernatural (even mundane its +4)! In a great many cases, that is extreme overkill...but there are cases where it would absolutely help. An alternative Crew Upgrade would help Takeo in most situations while Weapons Quality Upgrade will only help in some (due to his already large number of factors).

* Consider the push for a Score to vanquish your own Vice Purveyor (the Demon embedded in your sword)! This "cost" a Score but it also cost you a Downtime Activity as now you have to establish a new Vice Purveyor! This was very personal. In the meta of play it was also a consideration however, as your demonic Vice Purveyor was starting to cause problems.

* Consider the NPC (shortly thereafter Friend and then quickly Cohort) Hajime who just entered play a bit ago due to a Devil's Bargain (due to the dramatic needs of the character expressed at PC build and during play). There are many decisions about her (and some still to come) that interact with personal sovereignty vs collective. Accepting that Devil's Bargain (that gave "life" to her) at all is one. Pushing for and then executing a Score (at the expense of the myriad other things a Score could have been spent upon...particularly considering all of the threats pressing in upon the Crew) to liberate her from her conditions is another. The decision to move her from Friend (which only bears out personal benefit) vs Cohort (which can/will bear out Crew benefit) is another. What about decisions to use her in a Score or an Action (Group or individual) when the risk is not insignificant that harm might come to her? What about you having Takeo take Leader (giving her +1 Effect and 1 Armor) vs another (perhaps more consistently useful or more powerful) Ability? What about your decision to begin a Longterm Project to uncover the shared past of your homeland (as it pertains to "how you got here" and The Unity War) vs spending Coin or default allowed DTAs or Stash on an alternative Downtime Action that gives expression to the collective's needs?

---

We could continue this exercise for you and your own character (there is more) and we could do this exact same exercise for each player in the Crew. There are many tensions around "personal Tier" (retention, growth, diminishment) vs "group Tier" and individual dramatic needs vs collective and assets spent or horded (and on what) in this game. We didn't even touch on The Faction Game here (who to try to seduce, who to try to destroy, what terrible entity to bring into this world and which one to foil)!

 

[niklinna]

The decision to liquidate or horde (for "score" or to increase lifestyle dice pool) is a personal one. The decision on what to spend that liquidated Coin from Stash is a personal one. But both the weight of the collective's needs is a persistent one (particularly when there are many threats in play...as there are now for this discussed game) and the downward social pressure of players upon other players (whether intentional or incidental).

This goes both ways too. We've been rather liberally spending crew coin and rep for personal training and other downtime activities! What helps us be better, helps us serve the crew better.

Blades in the Dark is probably my favorite RPG; it's chock-full of consequential decisions and tradeoffs, tying into other members of the crew, NPCs, other factions, society at large, and more, in grippy ways I just haven't exprienced in other games. I'm still in the habit of making lists of things I'd like to pick, planning for the future, but unlike in so many other games, it isn't just a matter of adding a thing, and then you have it. The very fact of picking one thing over another has immediate impact, and events in the game have cascading effects that have me continually revising my lists, instead of having that one set build plan for my character. The best I've seen in other games is character build options that fill in niches/roles that basically don't change.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is contentious.

To give a less contentious example, it's not at all clear that one can explain what a pandemic is if one uses as the only, or primary, units of explanation individual states and traits. Of course individuals are infected and transmit the disease, but what makes it a pandemic is not those individual facts. Certain relational facts and "totality" facts figure crucially in the explanation.

Neither Marx nor Durkheim believes in magic, but neither accepts that solidarity can be explained simply by reference to facts about individuals. Both also emphasise how economic life is shaped by received understandings and practices (what Marx but not Durkheim calls "relations of production"); and both see this as importantly related to solidarity. And explaining that sort of inheritance at a minimum requires relational facts, but also facts of "totality" or similar so as to explain the difference between what is "received" and what is "deviant".

I respond with something akin to (I say akin as I have no formal training in Buddhist doctrine) the Buddhist view, which is essentially "God is in the details". There is NOTHING BUT the individual situation. There is no overall state, there is only the states of each of the component parts. Any generalization is a process of human cognition. A physicist would state in the sense of "There are only fundamental particles, and planets, stars, people, and dogs, are merely convenient abstractions upon which we can reason."

So, I agree with you that collective states are USEFUL and I am not arguing that we shouldn't use them as ways to model things. All I am actually arguing is for a specific set of such measures, nothing else. I proposed some, and I am happy to dig into whether or not they are useful, or to what degree. Thus, ultimately I don't think we are having a substantive disagreement here. I'm perfectly willing to agree to measure the gravitational force between dogs and planets, even though neither exists, and thus cannot have properties, in some fundamental sense.

I continue to think that, from the social realist perspective, the most obvious way of implementing that sort of system embodies ideology (in the pejorative sense).

For interest, what explains the outcome of Battleship Potemkin is not a subjective mental state like esteem or understood obligation but an objective social state of affairs ("class interest" is one way of beginning to describe it) - the actions of the revolutionaries on the Potemkin causes the other sailors to recognise their interest and thus to radically change their subjective mental states.

Well, I don't want to crash into the restrictions on debates about current events or politics, but I don't think 'class interest' is a very useful measure in terms of what, say, is happening right now in the politics of the Western world, nor do I recognize its presence in the course of world events! Not to say it couldn't be a factor, but I think you would first have to represent how people view class and interest, and what information they have, and why they act on some things and not others. Clearly there are factors like the formation of in-groups and out-groups, and the perceived relations between them, group signalling, and group identity, which can include things like ritual, obligation, perceptions of allegiance and hostility, repression, etc. I don't think games need to go too deep into these things, its more likely and feasible that they are simply postulated, as in something like BitDs faction relations.

This is why I say that the technical challenge for social realist RPGing is to find a way of making social structures and social relations into components of action resolution - where the social here is not the same as any particular individual's subjective mental states.

I think individual mental states CAN become important at times. For example they seem to factor into the coalescence and disintegration of social groups. Like, people leave 'cults' when their individual mental models of how things are become so conflicted with what they can see around them that it breaks the hold of indoctrination and personality fixation. I mean, in a game sense that could simply come up in terms of some kind of parameter that can represent a point at which a group will decohere or where some of its membership will defect, etc.

Off the top of my head, the only system I know that comes into this vicinity is HeroWars/Quest, though I've never mastered the details of its rules for the relationship between individuals and communities. But @chaochou did mention them upthread I think.

I don't know about it. I mean, there are SOME bits of this in even AD&D where you have loyalty, morale, and reaction, which all rest on quite a number of factors, potentially. A character can construct quite a large organization, or be part of such, and those factors would presumably, in a canonical rules sense, be applied. I don't know that too many people really did that, or extrapolated it beyond "what happens if I command my hirelings to charge?" but the implication is there.

Oddly enough Torchbearer has rules for social transformation based on PC actions but not depending upon the intent of the PCs or anyone else. They're quite interesting! But the sort of social realism they express is a bit more pessimistic than Billy Bragg's!

Yeah, I don't think I've read any of that part of the rules, to be honest. We played a number of sessions, and did have a small social impact at one point, but I'm not sure the rules beyond conflict resolution really got much involved. @Manbearcat could say more on that (I was thinking of when we recruited people to help clean out the cave full of cultist/cannibals up on the mountain). Maybe the GM was keying off some of those rules, maybe not...