Space and time in RPG setting and situation

[Manbearcat]

The situation still has primacy in a way it does not when it's derived from a fixed setting. Because the situation is constrained intrinsically by the setting, you can use those fixed points to reframe a different situation before you start spending resources to resolve it.

Things get "nailed down" in the course of play (prior play and current play) such that situation is constrained intrinsically by the setting all the time in BitD. Players develop multiple lines of play to reframe situation routinely. Last game for example:

* The assassination target was having an affair. The players had his love letters as (high Magnitude) Documents that could be used to inflame his wife to do the killing.

* His armored carriage was due for maintenance and the Crew is +3 Faction with the Cabbies and Duskvol garage. This could be used to affix a high Magnitude bomb w/ timer to either kill the target outright if you could get him out of his fortified estate or perhaps smuggle said massive Magnitude bomb to blow up the rear of the home for calamity, security personnel devastation, and ingress (while covering or assaulting the front).

* The exterior, load-bearing, masonry wall had an ancient dumbwaiter shaft, accessible via the undercity canals, that was long ago bricked over. This could be accessed via jaunt through the (dangerous) undercity canals, demoed, climbed, quietly demoed attic framing for ingress, assassinate via Master Suite plaster and lathe ceiling, egress. Or use it to affix a high Magnitude bomb with a timer in the attic-space.

* The manor is the NW quadrant of Brightstone with the Bowmore Bridge leading over to Whitecrown Island (where his lover is). Could wait out the next scheduled rendezvous, or force one via assaulting the manor's front (creating the target's egress via armored carriage through the back), and either assault on the bridge or plant the massive Magnitude bomb on the bridge and BOOM.

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All of these were either established via prior fiction/Score(s) or Info Gathering. Blades is a game whereby you are constantly building out setting outright (procedurally or establishing what is provisional) or building out setting via situation and the resolution of situation, which in turn establishes new lines of play/situations, which in turn establishes new setting (rinse and repeat).

 

[Tonguez]

You’ve largely discussed the rational for FATEs use of Zones to break up space/time during a contest. Primarily used as combat space Zones dont have a defined size but instead defined by the difficulty (aspect) to get through them.

eg a character in a Saloon might want to get from the Balcony to Outside - the DM determines that the Zones are Balcony, public room, Bar, back room, Saloon Doors and Outside with the the balcony having “upset patrons” as an aspect, the public room having a “crowded with tables and chairs (difficult terrain 2)” aspect and the saloon doors having “blocked by Mcduff the Gunslinger” aspect. The size doesnt matter, only the difficulty to negotiate each zone (defined by an aspect). Indeed FATE even advises adding more zones is possible in order to create more tension for the players

Zones can also be set up for social conflicts even if they’re just the spectrum from Ally-Friendly-Neutral-Unfriendly-Hostile with players doing things to move position

 

[clearstream]

Hmmmm, well, another way to handle the secret door thing is simply to accept that, once a fact about the world is established it simply remains true. It is ALWAYS true that fictional position is a thing (well, except in Toon perhaps) and this is where challenge originates from. Characters cannot be put under pressure unless something in the environment constrains them. Here I admit a bit of a question as to what separates 'setting' and 'situation', the line might not be completely clear. Still, some things are certainly coming out of the setting, like "there is a mountain over to the East you simply cannot climb" which probably contribute to putting pressure on the character at times.

In other words, SOME of this situation vs setting may be a matter of perspective. Not that I am outright abandoning the idea of 2 distinct categories there, but when I think about it, it almost feels like situations can often be simply a part of the setting that becomes tied up with the story. Cortex has scene distinctions, right? So it seems like the designers are almost asking you to draw that line rather explicitly.

I'm with you on this. I feel that on the same grounds that a truth can be established by virtue of a player noting something on their character sheet (making that true) it may equally well be established by virtue of the group noting something about the world. One catch-phrase I use to describe this is participants putting one another (and themselves) on the spot to say what's true.

I would concur with the OP that one might resist this instinct, but on the other hand I'm not sure I see the use in doing so? I believe there will certainly be participants uncomfortable with shifting sands, and the harm done to Character => Situation => Setting is oblique (only arises in theorycrafting.) Setting truths have most likely already been established prior to character creation, in the forms already discussed elsewhere.

 

[clearstream]

Potentially, the concern is simply an artifact of semantics. When I write out Character => Situation => Setting I seem committed to a linear hierarchy or sequence. One might redraw that in another way to confirm the centrality of character without committing to setting coming before or after.

It seems to me that it is that character as catalyst for setting and situation that is of interest, without need to commit to situation always preceding setting, or setting always postdating character. What is in the setting matters because it matters or mattered to the characters.

It seems then hard to envision that situation wouldn't arise out of predominantly character but also in cases preestablished truths about setting. Notwithstanding that I think it's reasonable to have a purer form as the purpose one has in mind for one's play or game design.

 

[pemerton]

The issue that I have, which I think is just an accepted cost of doing business in such a system, is that players have very little control over difficulty. That is, a large portion of exploration based gameplay is about finding ways to alter the difficulty of a challenge by changing one's approach or by making reference to some other established rule.

Once you've determined the chasm is so wide, that number becomes an object to be manipulated by other rules, but you can't change the nature of a "difficult" chasm. There is no to layer above the situation you can manipulate to change it, it's a given you will always be reacting to.

All of those are negotiations in solving a challenge, not in determining the nature of the challenge. The analogy to D&D is casting guidance, taking the Help action and so on*. There is no way to modify the need to roll or what the challenge is precisely, once a challenge exists at all. That is, a chasm can be jumped, circumnavigated, a rope thrown over, etc. The PC has both the agency to determine what resources they will bring to bear against the task, and what precisely the task is to begin with. Once you're in a position where you must roll, you open yourself up to future consequences.

Similar to some other replies you've had - from @niklinna, @Manbearcat and @AbdulAlhazred - I think you are understating the capacity of the players to affect difficulty.

Those other posters have talked about BitD.

In Marvel Heroic/Cortex+ Heroic players can establish Assets and Resources, choose whether and how to use SFX, etc. And it is in fact possible to change the nature of a "difficult" chasm, in so far as that is a Scene Distinction that is amenable to being targeted (eg Colossus could grab something long and strong - say a steel beam, assuming the fiction makes such a thing available - and lay it across the chasm).

In 4e D&D players can deploy powers, sourced from character abilities or items or whatever, which make it easier to cross a chasm (Mighty Sprint is a favourite in my group's play). In Torchbearer or Burning Wheel a player can deploy a piece of gear and thereby gain an advantage die. Prince Valiant is fairly similar in this respect.

Choices about how to tackle a situation also affect difficulty in many systems, as a character will have different ratings in different abilities. Of course this is also likely to affect consequences, because pushing the fiction in a different direction.

What is true is that, in these games, there is no path which has no need to make checks as it is taken. The point of play is to find out what happens at certain moments of "crisis", where whatever it is that matters is at stake. There is no such thing as negating, or overwhelming, situation by first winning in the exploration element of play. That's an approach that I associate, most canonically, with Tomb of Horrors, and perhaps with some CoC scenarios if one ignores the occasional interpolation of Library Use and combat rolls.

 

[Lanefan]

While confessing to not reading every word of that rather lengthy OP, the impression I got from a quick scan is a general opposition to granularity, be it involving space/distance, time, or setting.

I'll push back on this a bit, in that IMO granularity of these things forces both the players and GM to pay (at least some) attention to them; and that attention can't help but produce a more consistent play experience at the table.

Distance: if something immobile (e.g. a village) is x-distance away from something else immobile (say, a dungeon site), that distance becomes a fixed feature of the setting and can henceforth be used by all involved when planning their actions. Or if a chasm is described as "difficult" rather than "about 15 feet across", that description tells me nothing about whether this sturdy 20' plank I've found will span it or not (and if you don't tell me it's a 20' plank but merely say it's "long", that's equally as useless).

Time: if it takes 10 hours to walk from the village to the dungeon in good conditions (with the weather etc. conditions being a setting element) once, that serves as a pretty good guideline as to how long it'll take every time; again useful in terms of planning. Consider the difference if, say, the village and dungeon were four days' walk apart instead of 10 hours; the added time investment caused by the greater distance/travel time would probably make returns to town less frequent.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm with you on this. I feel that on the same grounds that a truth can be established by virtue of a player noting something on their character sheet (making that true) it may equally well be established by virtue of the group noting something about the world. One catch-phrase I use to describe this is participants putting one another (and themselves) on the spot to say what's true.

I would concur with the OP that one might resist this instinct, but on the other hand I'm not sure I see the use in doing so? I believe there will certainly be participants uncomfortable with shifting sands, and the harm done to Character => Situation => Setting is oblique (only arises in theorycrafting.) Setting truths have most likely already been established prior to character creation, in the forms already discussed elsewhere.

Depending somewhat on the game, yes. Blades is an example (Stonetop also) where there's a setting which probably acts as kind of a 'filter'. For example you ARE a crew of scofflaws in BitD, and the power structure is mostly against you (though you can play them to your advantage). So, you won't, for example, 'go legit' as a BitD crew, or if you did that would probably be an end state for the game. Once a certain group is your enemy, you won't suddenly get help from them.

OTOH Dungeon World has a genre, and tone, but given that no setting elements exist by default there's not a ton of 'setting truths' to lean on. In fact here we see the heaviest dependence on pure character, as class, alignment, and bonds, plus any other backstory established in session zero, will be 100% of what comes into play in the first scene of the game. The only other constraints will be the genre and agenda of DW itself. I'd even venture to say that exactly what fits in the genre, and what the limits of agenda actually are can be a bit malleable in that game. So, for instance, dropping some fantastical sciency things into a DW game won't break it. Also maybe being anti-heroes or just bad dudes might also work, perhaps with a little bit of playbook tinkering. My guess is someone has playbooks for "lets be evil" sort of play in DW, lol.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

While confessing to not reading every word of that rather lengthy OP, the impression I got from a quick scan is a general opposition to granularity, be it involving space/distance, time, or setting.

I'll push back on this a bit, in that IMO granularity of these things forces both the players and GM to pay (at least some) attention to them; and that attention can't help but produce a more consistent play experience at the table.

Distance: if something immobile (e.g. a village) is x-distance away from something else immobile (say, a dungeon site), that distance becomes a fixed feature of the setting and can henceforth be used by all involved when planning their actions. Or if a chasm is described as "difficult" rather than "about 15 feet across", that description tells me nothing about whether this sturdy 20' plank I've found will span it or not (and if you don't tell me it's a 20' plank but merely say it's "long", that's equally as useless).

Time: if it takes 10 hours to walk from the village to the dungeon in good conditions (with the weather etc. conditions being a setting element) once, that serves as a pretty good guideline as to how long it'll take every time; again useful in terms of planning. Consider the difference if, say, the village and dungeon were four days' walk apart instead of 10 hours; the added time investment caused by the greater distance/travel time would probably make returns to town less frequent.

I think we all generally agree (unless its some unusual game like my goto example of Toon, or my weird way of envisaging the 4e Feywild) that things once established, by whatever means, are then established and don't suddenly alter simply because it would be narratively convenient. This is one reason we have things like 'zoom factor' that come more into play in narrative games, were time and distance are not focused on. This DOES happen in more trad or old school play too, mostly as a way of simply making the game more playable (IE once you have cleared a path to the dungeon you are unlikely to play out the journey back and forth to town dozens of times over). However, nobody would dispute that old school Gygax was very into time and space as hard resource/setting constraints. I think this comes straight out of TT Wargaming! Back then we really didn't envisage the concept of narrative, or character literally driving play, those ideas are much more modern, and arose gradually.

I don't see any reason why one game MUST be more or less consistent than the other though. Blades in the Dark is perfectly consistent in its depiction of Doskvol, and you can indeed base position and effect on things like "the street is quite wide here by the bridge" and that is derived straight from a map. Again, you MIGHT not have that kind of information in Dungeon World, although it DOES task the GM with making (partial) maps... So, I think there's a pretty broad middle ground. Its just if you go too far in the direction of pushing setting onto situation in, say, DW, you will potentially lose the character focus.

So, we might see the treatment of time and space as being an outgrowth of the needs of the specific focus of the game in question, but that is hardly a revelation to anyone here I'm guessing!

 

[Umbran]

I'll push back on this a bit, in that IMO granularity of these things forces both the players and GM to pay (at least some) attention to them; and that attention can't help but produce a more consistent play experience at the table.

Quite possibly.

But, if you had people make lists of the most important things they want out of an RPG experience, is "consistency" going to be #1 for many of them?

Consistency may be an aid to other things. But it may get in the way of other things that are higher priority, too. So maybe risking the occasional inconsistency might be worth it if it gets something the players value more.

 

[Lanefan]

I think we all generally agree (unless its some unusual game like my goto example of Toon, or my weird way of envisaging the 4e Feywild) that things once established, by whatever means, are then established and don't suddenly alter simply because it would be narratively convenient. This is one reason we have things like 'zoom factor' that come more into play in narrative games, were time and distance are not focused on. This DOES happen in more trad or old school play too, mostly as a way of simply making the game more playable (IE once you have cleared a path to the dungeon you are unlikely to play out the journey back and forth to town dozens of times over).

Agreed. The granularity of, say, that journey to/from the dungeon is played through in detail the first time it occurs, and then only revisited if-when relevant thereafter e.g. if the party are overloaded or if bad weather strikes, etc.

However, nobody would dispute that old school Gygax was very into time and space as hard resource/setting constraints. I think this comes straight out of TT Wargaming! Back then we really didn't envisage the concept of narrative, or character literally driving play, those ideas are much more modern, and arose gradually.

I don't see these as being all that opposed to each other; or, put another way, I see no reason why narrative and character-driven play can't take place within those Gygaxian constraints. All it would seem to require is that the players pay as close attention to time and space constraints as the GM.

I don't see any reason why one game MUST be more or less consistent than the other though. Blades in the Dark is perfectly consistent in its depiction of Doskvol, and you can indeed base position and effect on things like "the street is quite wide here by the bridge" and that is derived straight from a map. Again, you MIGHT not have that kind of information in Dungeon World, although it DOES task the GM with making (partial) maps... So, I think there's a pretty broad middle ground. Its just if you go too far in the direction of pushing setting onto situation in, say, DW, you will potentially lose the character focus.

Can Blades be played in a setting other than Doskvol? If no, then it's easy to be consistent as you're kinda locked in to using the established setting and that consistency has, one hopes, already been taken care of for you by the designers. But if yes (which seems far more likely!), then if using something else e.g. a homebrew setting then all the stuff around being consistent in presenting that setting rears its head.