RandomUsernamehmimo71
Explorer
In dealing with a player problem in one of the games I'm running, I started thinking about the evolution of RPG games such as D&D, and from what tradition that arose. I realized that there are two pedigrees which modern games can claim, yet in some ways they are completely incompatible.
The first is the familiar evolution from Wargaming- Chainmail to OD&D, to the present.. Each step was along a path that presented new and more interesting rules to play with, new ways of resolving problems and new encounters, as well as new ways of dealing with them, and balancing them..
Or Gaming as an interactive story- The second path to modern RPG games that we have is that of inter-active story telling. As one RPG once put it (I believe), RPGs can be thought of as the Cops and Robbers games that kids used to play, with a few rules thrown in to solve the "I got you!" "No you didn't!" problem. Parents have been telling their children interactive stories ("I want to be a princess tonight!") for generations, and in many ways RPG games owe a great deal to this tradition.
The hard part is expectations. If your players are looking for one sort of game, and you are delivering the second. Neither method is "Good" or "Bad", but that are fundamentally different.
With a Wargame-derived mindset, a board game mindset, the player looks at the game, and asks, "What can I do?", what does this game allow my character to work on, what does it allow him to pull off? D&D is almost like a grown-up version of Heroquest, where there are unlimited boards, because they exist in the mind of the GM. Each player knows what he can do, and what each other player can do, including the GM. While the GM may have flexibility, he is, essentially, another player in the game. His monsters need to follow consistent rules, which are mapped out in the Rules packet (or PHB).
In the story-teller mindset, the GM is trying to tell a story with the players. Not just recite his own ideas, or his own novel, but craft something together that everyone can enjoy as a story they can share. He may look at the game mechanics as a "best mapping" from what's in their collective heads, to what's what's on the table, as a way of trying to add some rules and fun to the story-telling.
This is one of the places that the appeal of "Rules-lite" games derives from, and the argument that 2nd edition is more fun than 3rd.
Rules-lite games allow the GM and the players to concentrate on the story. They don't want to feel constrained by the game mechanics, to have them get in the way. They don't want the story to be forced in a direction by what's written in a player's book.
I've been quoted as saying that I never want the rules to get in the way of the story- What I mean by that is that if I want the story to go a certain way, and the rules won't allow it, then it's the rules that should change or be ignored, not the story.
I'm not a mean GM, and I hope I'm not a bad GM. But I think that the story, and all of the player's interpretations of it, are what's crucial. It's not me trying to recite a novel, but trying to build something together, an experience that we can all take part in, and built upon that is greater than any of us.
This would not go over well with players who are of the Wargaming tradition. They look at the story as something important and crucial, sure, as long as it doesn't get int he way of the rules. Stories that work entirely within these rules.. Perhaps one outgrowth of this is Eberron- What sort of world would grow up as a consequence of these rules? While this still requires creativity, the creativity is often placed differently.. The GM might look and say "How will changing this rule affect my continent", rather than "How do I want my continent to change."
Again, I must assert that I feel both ways of looking at the rules are valid, but more different than I had originally understood.
I've seen great arguments about this, from people who perhaps were looking at their arguments from too concrete a level. "I hate 3rd edition" they would say, or "3rd edition feels like Magic:The Gathering". I believe that this is, inherently, because 3rd edition tends to be more popular with a more modern game style, with gamers who are used to board games, and so gravitate toward the D&D as a board-game model... Give each group a carefully balanced number of encounters, according to ECL so that they can level every 12 enounters, and get treasure according to the DMG, etc. They look at it as a "beat the monster, go to the next" style of game, almost like a video-game, rather than an interactive story. While that's a valid game style, and fun for some people, there's nothing in 3.x preventing it, it's just that some people get caught up on expectations.
In the end, I think expectations are exactly what it comes down to. What do your players expect out of the game. If they want to play Players-versus-GM, or runt hrough monsters like in a game, if they want to craft a story, that they can all take part in, occasionally taking a glance at the rules, or if they want to try to do both.
I've played numerous games of both traditions- In extream case, we had players in one game using 3 different systems, for different characters, in the same game. No one cared, we barely touched our sheets in 5 years of playing. But we had fun. Buckets of fun.
In another, we used a hex map, and tried to make sure we had a feat or rule for everything that occurred. We, the players, knew that we had a great deal more control.. We could easily predict what would happen. If something got thrown at us, we could feel survivable, because we could could count that it's 4 squares away, and large, so it can't hit us from there, so The Fighter, who has more HP that it can do each round, can attack, etc...
We knew what we were up against, we knew the rules, and we also had fun. But in a different way. It felt more like a complex board game, than an interactive story.
One more anecdote, before I close. At the last Boston Game Day, I played in two games, which I found reflected the two styles perfectly, while both using D20 rules.
The first was Piratecat's pulpy-action game. We played the game on couches, with no battle map, and rolled a few dice occasionally. We were excited, cheering eachother on, and getting into the characters and the story. We really got a chance to Grin and have fun with the game, while Pkitty worked to keep the mechanics from slowing anything down. He kept the pace light and fast, and I loved it. Best game I'd played in months. Kemrain, whom I was there with, thought it was too unpredictable.
Downstairs, we played a Ravenloft game. While it was still a fun game, and we eventually won, we had two self-avowed "crunchkins" in the game, who were power-gaming every single attack. Lining up each figure for flanking, lining up every shot for a perfect strike.. We played with a battle-map, we played with every rule, and we got about half as much done. While we did eventually finish the game, it wasn't nearly as enjoyable for me.. I felt like we were doing well mathematically, but the game lost it's flavor, and it's fun. It became a game about the numbers, more than the characters. Kemrain loved it. Kemrain thought it was a great game, because we did an amazing job in defeating the bad-guys perfectly, used meta-tactics to their strongest, and (ab)using the system.
Kemrain and I enjoy different styles of play
While I know that all games have story (even 'simple' dungeon delves), and all games have rules (even freeform games have implied rules), I truly believe players come down on one side of this division or the other. The simple version of the question comes to, Do you look at the Rules, and see how story can be done within them, or do you imagine a story, and see how the rules can best support it?
I'd like to hear from the gamers at ENworld, and see which way you tend to view the game, and to hear responses to this analysis of lineage and playstyle. While I know that everyone is going to want to say "It's in the middle!", try to see which side you come down on more.. It's far too easy to discount the difference by claiming everything is both No and Yes.
The first is the familiar evolution from Wargaming- Chainmail to OD&D, to the present.. Each step was along a path that presented new and more interesting rules to play with, new ways of resolving problems and new encounters, as well as new ways of dealing with them, and balancing them..
Or Gaming as an interactive story- The second path to modern RPG games that we have is that of inter-active story telling. As one RPG once put it (I believe), RPGs can be thought of as the Cops and Robbers games that kids used to play, with a few rules thrown in to solve the "I got you!" "No you didn't!" problem. Parents have been telling their children interactive stories ("I want to be a princess tonight!") for generations, and in many ways RPG games owe a great deal to this tradition.
The hard part is expectations. If your players are looking for one sort of game, and you are delivering the second. Neither method is "Good" or "Bad", but that are fundamentally different.
With a Wargame-derived mindset, a board game mindset, the player looks at the game, and asks, "What can I do?", what does this game allow my character to work on, what does it allow him to pull off? D&D is almost like a grown-up version of Heroquest, where there are unlimited boards, because they exist in the mind of the GM. Each player knows what he can do, and what each other player can do, including the GM. While the GM may have flexibility, he is, essentially, another player in the game. His monsters need to follow consistent rules, which are mapped out in the Rules packet (or PHB).
In the story-teller mindset, the GM is trying to tell a story with the players. Not just recite his own ideas, or his own novel, but craft something together that everyone can enjoy as a story they can share. He may look at the game mechanics as a "best mapping" from what's in their collective heads, to what's what's on the table, as a way of trying to add some rules and fun to the story-telling.
This is one of the places that the appeal of "Rules-lite" games derives from, and the argument that 2nd edition is more fun than 3rd.
Rules-lite games allow the GM and the players to concentrate on the story. They don't want to feel constrained by the game mechanics, to have them get in the way. They don't want the story to be forced in a direction by what's written in a player's book.
I've been quoted as saying that I never want the rules to get in the way of the story- What I mean by that is that if I want the story to go a certain way, and the rules won't allow it, then it's the rules that should change or be ignored, not the story.
I'm not a mean GM, and I hope I'm not a bad GM. But I think that the story, and all of the player's interpretations of it, are what's crucial. It's not me trying to recite a novel, but trying to build something together, an experience that we can all take part in, and built upon that is greater than any of us.
This would not go over well with players who are of the Wargaming tradition. They look at the story as something important and crucial, sure, as long as it doesn't get int he way of the rules. Stories that work entirely within these rules.. Perhaps one outgrowth of this is Eberron- What sort of world would grow up as a consequence of these rules? While this still requires creativity, the creativity is often placed differently.. The GM might look and say "How will changing this rule affect my continent", rather than "How do I want my continent to change."
Again, I must assert that I feel both ways of looking at the rules are valid, but more different than I had originally understood.
I've seen great arguments about this, from people who perhaps were looking at their arguments from too concrete a level. "I hate 3rd edition" they would say, or "3rd edition feels like Magic:The Gathering". I believe that this is, inherently, because 3rd edition tends to be more popular with a more modern game style, with gamers who are used to board games, and so gravitate toward the D&D as a board-game model... Give each group a carefully balanced number of encounters, according to ECL so that they can level every 12 enounters, and get treasure according to the DMG, etc. They look at it as a "beat the monster, go to the next" style of game, almost like a video-game, rather than an interactive story. While that's a valid game style, and fun for some people, there's nothing in 3.x preventing it, it's just that some people get caught up on expectations.
In the end, I think expectations are exactly what it comes down to. What do your players expect out of the game. If they want to play Players-versus-GM, or runt hrough monsters like in a game, if they want to craft a story, that they can all take part in, occasionally taking a glance at the rules, or if they want to try to do both.
I've played numerous games of both traditions- In extream case, we had players in one game using 3 different systems, for different characters, in the same game. No one cared, we barely touched our sheets in 5 years of playing. But we had fun. Buckets of fun.
In another, we used a hex map, and tried to make sure we had a feat or rule for everything that occurred. We, the players, knew that we had a great deal more control.. We could easily predict what would happen. If something got thrown at us, we could feel survivable, because we could could count that it's 4 squares away, and large, so it can't hit us from there, so The Fighter, who has more HP that it can do each round, can attack, etc...
We knew what we were up against, we knew the rules, and we also had fun. But in a different way. It felt more like a complex board game, than an interactive story.
One more anecdote, before I close. At the last Boston Game Day, I played in two games, which I found reflected the two styles perfectly, while both using D20 rules.
The first was Piratecat's pulpy-action game. We played the game on couches, with no battle map, and rolled a few dice occasionally. We were excited, cheering eachother on, and getting into the characters and the story. We really got a chance to Grin and have fun with the game, while Pkitty worked to keep the mechanics from slowing anything down. He kept the pace light and fast, and I loved it. Best game I'd played in months. Kemrain, whom I was there with, thought it was too unpredictable.
Downstairs, we played a Ravenloft game. While it was still a fun game, and we eventually won, we had two self-avowed "crunchkins" in the game, who were power-gaming every single attack. Lining up each figure for flanking, lining up every shot for a perfect strike.. We played with a battle-map, we played with every rule, and we got about half as much done. While we did eventually finish the game, it wasn't nearly as enjoyable for me.. I felt like we were doing well mathematically, but the game lost it's flavor, and it's fun. It became a game about the numbers, more than the characters. Kemrain loved it. Kemrain thought it was a great game, because we did an amazing job in defeating the bad-guys perfectly, used meta-tactics to their strongest, and (ab)using the system.
Kemrain and I enjoy different styles of play
While I know that all games have story (even 'simple' dungeon delves), and all games have rules (even freeform games have implied rules), I truly believe players come down on one side of this division or the other. The simple version of the question comes to, Do you look at the Rules, and see how story can be done within them, or do you imagine a story, and see how the rules can best support it?
I'd like to hear from the gamers at ENworld, and see which way you tend to view the game, and to hear responses to this analysis of lineage and playstyle. While I know that everyone is going to want to say "It's in the middle!", try to see which side you come down on more.. It's far too easy to discount the difference by claiming everything is both No and Yes.
Last edited:
