D&D General Story Now, Skilled Play, and Elephants

[Aldarc]

Given the hundreds of pages of rules disputes, and exchanges on the meaning and application of principles, designers must be much worse at their job than I had formerly supposed

Some people are better designers than they are writers. Some people are better writers than they are designers. Then there are the happy few who are both.

And some designers really think that you will care about the subpar fiction they wrote for their RPG and clearly want to be fantasy novelists, but we both know that you skip over it to so you can read the character creation rules.

It's not exactly a secret among designers that a lot of games are pretty bad at explaining how they should be played. It's likely that a fair number of designers see their game as self-evident and clear, but that is generally because they are immersed in its play, design, and head-space.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think early D&D leaned heavily upon tropes/conventions/stereotypes along with fairly basic NPC motivations. That helped make it playable from a gygaxian skilled play perspective.

That said I find D&D in the social pillar is often played very differently today. The social pillar tends to be more about roleplaying your character and seeing what comes than trying to skillfully engage in conversation to achieve a goal. I'm not saying there's never a place to engage in skillful conversation, just that such isn't typically the primary method being used in play anymore.

This style of social interaction makes for an almost Story Now approach (without mechanical underpinnings) - where the players express what kind of game they want via their PC actions and the DM accommodates by providing NPCs that interact with the PC's as they are.

Well, I think it is true that when you start out and build a 'dungeon crawl' with a 'town' home base and the game is 'delving for treasure', then it is quite simple to make puzzle type NPCs which present as problems to overcome. One trait defines them. The 'overlord' is greedy, he wants his palms greased. The 'priest' wants tithes, but he'll also deal back and forth in religious favors and sell you heals. The 'barkeep' just acts like a plot hook factory, he wants to sell beer and accept coin for info. The town guards are just beat cops that don't want trouble. Maybe things go a level deeper so Joe the Market Watchman has the hots for Alice the Apple Seller's daughter. If you can make him look good, he'll forget that he saw Charlie the Thief lifting that magic light stick the other day.

So, at that level, you don't need, or even want, a lot of social skills kind of play. You could dice for some things perhaps, but simple cardboard NPCs with one or two easily stated motivations and stock personality don't push things. They can be treated like doors, pit traps, and greedy kobolds basically. Since they aren't the focus of play, it is better not to demand that they require resource expenditure, beyond the customary 'treasure soak'.

There was definitely a change that is exemplified by 2e, and you are exactly right that 2e-style 'story play' is incoherent. There are not rules and process and agenda that are spelled out to describe a working model of play. That is exactly what PbtA/FitD/FATE/Cortex/SoC/BW/etc. is mostly about is ways to establish that. IMHO this is why OSR in its basic form is uninteresting, because it doesn't address anything new. The much more fruitful approach would be to remake it using new tools, which I guess you could say Torch Bearer seems to be aimed at (I am pretty ignorant of the details of that game). I guess there are a few other games that have nibbled at it from the other side, too.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

There is also the matter of what is being attempted, and of what is known at the time it is being attempted. DW built upon AW, B/X, and whatever cultural and academic exploration of RPG that the authors were aware of in between. We have seen that with each wave of innovation, the earliest generations are working often in pockets, with scanty technical, academic or cultural support. Subsequent generations eventually reach a point where they have lived with the innovation for their entire lives, and they enjoy wide support and powerful cross-pollination.

Chances are those born with RPG will have had far greater opportunity to develop skill with it. So if we made the comparison equitable by birthing K/L way back then, I don't believe we can predict that they would have fared better than Moldvay. They might not have published a single line.

It makes me wonder what the next innovations in RPG will be? I am going with - AI designer-DMs, who will build the game-system and world on the fly, while they are DMing you. They will be more expert than all of us.

Right, B/X was written at a time when it was not yet understood how to structure an RPG in such a way as to cover process of play in generating a story vs procedural adjudication of game world events as a focus. You started to have a few inklings around this time, but it is interesting that TSR designers mostly never made that jump. Mentzer, Moldvay, Holmes, etc. None of them seem to have ever gone on to produce a game that lead in the direction of Story Now for example. Not that TSR entirely missed that boat, Top Secret and MHRPG both have concepts of meta-currency and something beyond simply adjudicating situations mechanically. However, those threads seem to have never touched D&D, and generally weren't more fruitful within the company. Paradigms are strong, and hard to change.

 

[FrogReaver]

Well, I think it is true that when you start out and build a 'dungeon crawl' with a 'town' home base and the game is 'delving for treasure', then it is quite simple to make puzzle type NPCs which present as problems to overcome. One trait defines them. The 'overlord' is greedy, he wants his palms greased. The 'priest' wants tithes, but he'll also deal back and forth in religious favors and sell you heals. The 'barkeep' just acts like a plot hook factory, he wants to sell beer and accept coin for info. The town guards are just beat cops that don't want trouble. Maybe things go a level deeper so Joe the Market Watchman has the hots for Alice the Apple Seller's daughter. If you can make him look good, he'll forget that he saw Charlie the Thief lifting that magic light stick the other day.

exactly

So, at that level, you don't need, or even want, a lot of social skills kind of play. You could dice for some things perhaps, but simple cardboard NPCs with one or two easily stated motivations and stock personality don't push things. They can be treated like doors, pit traps, and greedy kobolds basically. Since they aren't the focus of play, it is better not to demand that they require resource expenditure, beyond the customary 'treasure soak'.

Exactlt

There was definitely a change that is exemplified by 2e, and you are exactly right that 2e-style 'story play' is incoherent. There are not rules and process and agenda that are spelled out to describe a working model of play. That is exactly what PbtA/FitD/FATE/Cortex/SoC/BW/etc. is mostly about is ways to establish that.

I think the play I described is coherent though. One doesn’t need rules processes and agendas spelled out for it to work. And to some degree codifying processes, rules, etc around this kind of play actually detracts from the experience. A good DM for this style can come up with better fiction than what filtering through a dice provides IMO. Though a bad DM can do the opposite

IMHO this is why OSR in its basic form is uninteresting, because it doesn't address anything new. The much more fruitful approach would be to remake it using new tools, which I guess you could say Torch Bearer seems to be aimed at (I am pretty ignorant of the details of that game). I guess there are a few other games that have nibbled at it from the other side, too.

I think the simple classes of OSR and the easier to die in combat work much better for me. That’s a huge selling point for me. But yea a lot of stuff there isn’t necessarily to my liking.

 

[clearstream]

I think the play I described is coherent though. One doesn’t need rules processes and agendas spelled out for it to work. And to some degree codifying processes, rules, etc around this kind of play actually detracts from the experience. A good DM for this style can come up with better fiction than what filtering through a dice provides IMO. Though a bad DM can do the opposite

For me, your point here highlights a significant caveat on the theoretical underpinnings of a coherent game: so much is down to DM and group! IIRC we've touched on these limitations before in this thread.

That doesn't diminish the value of those underpinnings, especially for groups that are still finding their way toward gameplay they would enjoy. More perhaps to consider what additional skills a DM might be employing?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Definitely. I wonder if posters who feel it does encourage an adversarial stance are thinking of the DM "winning", or maybe just offering an uncompromising challenge?

Well, let's be honest: it's no less common an error of GM procedure than the Lawful Stupid "death to arsonists, murderers, and jaywalkers" Paladin error is (unless one is very specifically playing that archetype to watch it crash and burn, I suppose). Plenty of people have at least one horror story from a GM they know, or from a friend who suffered under a GM like that.

Uncompromising challenge is the goal IMO, while the other bit is a load of bollocks.

It is. But the unfortunate truth is that a lot of people get it in their heads to pursue a load of bollocks rather than mutually-enjoyable play. To turn the example around in a different way than my previous one: Isn't this exactly what so many GMs fear from their players? The powergamer is the player trying to "win." If GM fears of powergamers corroding the experience are valid, it's hard to see why player fears of tyrant GMs wouldn't be.

I'm not saying there is no such thing, at some level, as impartiality. I AM saying that it is not possible to run an ongoing game for any period of time in a completely impartial way, yes.

I'll go a step further: whether or not it is possible, I'd argue it's not desirable to run a game in a "completely impartial way." Because the whole point of running a game for folks is for everyone to have a good time. Being completely impartial means ignoring player concerns and continuing on with play even if one or more players are having a Bad Time.

The plus side of this is that every game is different and special. The downside is that humans sometimes make bad calls and play can suffer as a result. One measure of a good GM is that s/he rolls with those bad calls and cleans up the mess fairly quickly!

This seems to imply a follow-up question: Would one measure of a good system be that it supports the good GM in doing so?

I should also add, it's not just impartiality that admits of reasonable differences of opinion over what counts. Think again of the the DW example: the boundary between soft and hard moves is not itself clearcut (is smoke on the horizon always a soft move, or can it be hard if we know, from the established fiction, that it will bring the raiders on a sweeping, pillaging raid through the valley?).

While I might grant that there's a little vagueness on that one, I think the line between the two remains reasonably clear: a soft move is something you can try to prevent, a hard move is something you can only address after. So, let's say we grant that the fiction has established that smoke on the horizon means a bandit raid is already on the move. Can the characters prevent it from actually doing any damage, if they're successful enough later? If yes, it's a soft move--a very strong soft move, I admit, one I would be reluctant to deploy unless it was warranted, but a soft move nonetheless. If no--if at least SOME damage WILL happen, no matter how superlative the party's mitigation efforts--then it's a hard move.

In fact, I would call this merely a more elaborate, nuanced version of the extremely simple "the monster swipes at you." If, for some reason, the PC targeted by the monster's attack definitely cannot prevent bad things, only being able to partially weaken them or address them later, then that's a hard move. It is, at that point, just equivalent to declaring that the PC has taken damage or a debility outright, and then giving them a chance to bounce back. If instead the PC can actually STOP the attack entirely, such that there is even a slim hope of getting away unscathed, then you have merely presented a threat and not actually dealt a blow.

All that said, I do at least grant that there can be some cases where the line between soft and hard move is fuzzy--though I would probably focus that more in the area of simple facts (rather than evidence of future events). Frex: "No, I am your father!" is a "weakly hard" move against Luke because it conclusively establishes a hard fact about the past, but this doesn't have any clear and direct impact other than being upsetting--Luke hasn't suffered a clear "loss" in anything but morale. By comparison, "there is another" Skywalker is a "severely soft" move, because it establishes something important, another hard fact, but only in the most minimal and restrained way possible. Luke has to go on and investigate more before he learns who the other is, and gets significant control over where things proceed from there.

Or, if you prefer a slightly pithier phrasing: Vader's revelation to Luke is Vader taking control, albeit in a way very difficult to define mechanically. Yoda's revelation to Luke is Yoda giving control to Luke in both a (DW-)mechanical and narrative way, by equipping him with knowledge that he can decide how to act on.

Luke's subsequent conversation with Obi-Wan is an almost perfect example of using Discern Realities to investigate deeper, with either "what here is useful or valuable to me?" or "what here is not what it appears to be?" giving him the intuition that Leia is his sister, and later on when Vader senses from Luke that he has a twin sister (but fails to realize who she is) is a perfect partial success on a Defy Danger roll. (I'm honestly kind of surprised how well this analogy is working...)

A further thought: the classic skilled play of Gygax, Moldvay etc purges all sentiment from play - even the sparing of innocents is handled not through sentiment, but by feeding into the alignment mechanics. This helps narrow the parameters both for player decision-making and for GM adjudication of what's fair or not.

Enrich the fiction, and enrich the sorts of things the players are invited to care about in their decision-making, and you better be prepared to change your methodology for adjudication if you don't want your games to be pretty short-lived! (Which even the DL authors realised, however weak their actual revised methodology may look.)

See above. I'm not sure this is even a good idea in the grand scheme, simply because our sentiments for our fellow players are exactly what enable us to make an enjoyable, compelling game--no matter what style we play in. Those sentiments need to not blind us to when we are being too soft (or to hard!), but I do not see any way that a successful, long-running campaign can happen when the DM is a completely sentiment-less adjudication machine. That's what a calculating device is for, not a living, creative mind.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think the play I described is coherent though. One doesn’t need rules processes and agendas spelled out for it to work. And to some degree codifying processes, rules, etc around this kind of play actually detracts from the experience. A good DM for this style can come up with better fiction than what filtering through a dice provides IMO. Though a bad DM can do the opposite

I'm not so sure... Look at 2e. The rules are BASICALLY the same as 1e (sans a few fairly superficial tweaks). The only real addition to the mechanics is NWPs, but they are thoroughly optional (admittedly less so if you start folding in supplements and using a lot of kits). Really the main thing that 2e does is remove most of the exploration rules! Instead they replaced XP for GP with XP for 'doing something in character' (but the amounts are likely MUCH less than what GP got you in 1e). The other main rule is they did away with GP value of magic items, and wrote a long and complicated novella about how to create a magic item as a PC which amounts to "whatever the GM says, and make it basically impossible." Beyond that there's just advice to 'fudge things as needed to make a story work' and that's it!

This does NOT lead to the kind of coherency I'm talking about. It is simply a recipe that says 'railroad the PCs with GM force to stick to your defined plot'. I guess that could be considered a process! The actual mechanics of 2e don't easily PRODUCE story though. They are fraught with the sorts of things that were invented for GSP. Poisons instantly kill you, unless you save. Low level characters are unlikely to survive even one hit from a monster in combat. Treasure and magic items are largely relegated to being random 'treasure drops' and random wandering monsters are a common occurrence. Nothing, except the awkward alignment rules, really provides any guidance on characterization, and those rules are only a stick, and one that is entirely both ambiguous and the complete purview of the GM!

I do not believe anyone designed 2e with an overall vision of what they were building in terms of a play process. They were told to make a game that would be 1e rules-compatible at the module and PC character sheet level (which 2e largely is) and presumably would "add that newfangled story game thing that White Wolf is doing" or something like that! It is pea soup.

We also certainly differ on the "better off free of restrictions", because I don't think that interpreting something DW as a set of 'restrictions' even makes sense. I pushed back against that characterization up thread, and there was a reason! You can run any sort of narrative in DW, it will just pick up the PC's and their interests and character traits and make them a central aspect of the story. Believe me, you can run a dungeon delve in DW, it works great! You can run a court intrigue game too, and it is 900% better at that than 2e. The dungeon delve will focus on things like the hard choices the PCs need to make in order to grab the treasure (or maybe they don't, maybe they save their friends instead). The intrigue will force the PCs to make hard moral choices or something too. I admit, 2e might not do that, but I hardly call that 'freedom'. It is more 'put the burden on the players to figure out how to make that happen'. Even at a 'beer and pretzels' level they want SOME sort of fun character engagement.

I think the simple classes of OSR and the easier to die in combat work much better for me. That’s a huge selling point for me. But yea a lot of stuff there isn’t necessarily to my liking.

Right, a lot of B/X (or other classic D&D) works pretty well as a package. It does a fairly niche sort of game really well, and then if you expand beyond that, hey that's your business! Mostly other stuff should wait to 6th or 7th level at least. I think that was sort of the GSP pattern. Players came in, they went through the wringer, eventually they came out the other side, and now they got to do the more wide-open heroic fantasy sort of stuff, if the GM was capable of running that in a non-hamfisted way.

 

[Manbearcat]

I'm not saying there is no such thing, at some level, as impartiality. I AM saying that it is not possible to run an ongoing game for any period of time in a completely impartial way, yes.

I'll go a step further: whether or not it is possible, I'd argue it's not desirable to run a game in a "completely impartial way." Because the whole point of running a game for folks is for everyone to have a good time. Being completely impartial means ignoring player concerns and continuing on with play even if one or more players are having a Bad Time.

I’d like to interject here if that’s alright.

Can we sub “disconnected” for “impartial?”

I feel like the information attempting to be conveyed is more the former than the latter.

Here is the thing, I KNOW for a fact I GM “impartially” but I’m NEVER “disconnected” as a GM. I would doubt any of my players (and at this point I’ve run several games for folks on here) would feel like I’m putting my thumb on the scales for or against them. “Competitive integrity” is always an apex priority for me.

However, I’m always connected to my cognitive workload (even if sometimes I don’t feel like “I’m” piloting the ship…but rather I’m captive to the moment and watching “the other me” run the show) to keep thematically provocative material front and center, connected to listening to my players answer my questions, connected to how my players poke/prod for further information, to the general vibe of the scene, to the trajectory of play.

So, personally, I don’t like impartial here and I wonder if disconnected (eg “not having your finger on the pulse of play”) is what is being invoked.

 

[pemerton]

Would one measure of a good system be that it supports the good GM in doing so?

What it means to roll with a bad call and clean up the mess can be pretty varied, can't it? And so the ways a system might support this also seem pretty varied. Even Gygax tackled this within the limits of AD&D, when he suggested alternatives to PC death if a skilled player nevertheless, through sheer bad luck, has his/her PC suffer fatal hp loss.

Vincent Baker discusses "take backs" in the AW rules. The more intricate a system, sometimes the harder it can be to allow take backs because by the time the mistake comes to light the mechanical egg might be too badly scrambled. But there might be other avenues possible.

Do you have in mind a particular example of a system that makes this hard?

While I might grant that there's a little vagueness on that one, I think the line between the two remains reasonably clear: a soft move is something you can try to prevent, a hard move is something you can only address after.

I agree, but I don't think that makes the boundary a solid one.

John Harper has given the following as examples of soft vs hard moves:

She stares at you coldly. 'Leave me alone,' she says. What do you do?

'Don't come back here again.' She slams the door in your face and you hear the locks click home.​

He then goes on:

See how that works? The regular move sets up the hard move. The hard move follows through on the threat established by the regular move.​

Those are clear examples, and the sequencing in particular is clear. But of course if she slams the door and locks it, that's not the end of things: we've all seen this in rom coms, and the next step is to jump the fence and plead at the back door or kitchen window or whatever! Or in an action flick, instead of a promise of companionship - which has failed to elicit any sympathetic response - perhaps what is offered is a truckload of cash.

Context is everything: and in a system without emotional harm as a mechanical consequence, some hardness is not as hard as some other.

I'm not sure this is even a good idea in the grand scheme, simply because our sentiments for our fellow players are exactly what enable us to make an enjoyable, compelling game--no matter what style we play in. Those sentiments need to not blind us to when we are being too soft (or to hard!), but I do not see any way that a successful, long-running campaign can happen when the DM is a completely sentiment-less adjudication machine. That's what a calculating device is for, not a living, creative mind.

I'm not talking about a lack of sentiment among/between the participants at the table. I'm talking about a lack of sentiment as a consideration in declaring moves. Especially on the player side, but equally on the GM side - a Moldvay GM is meant to be indifferent both to the death of one of his/her NPCs or monsters, and to the death of one of the PCs. But should also take the view that "there's always a chance" (p B60) - but that's a principle whereby required rolls are set. If the dice are unlucky, the GM oughtn't to lose his/her nerve; and at least as written there's no scope in Moldvay Basic for the GM just feeling generous and granting a way out.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, let's be honest: it's no less common an error of GM procedure than the Lawful Stupid "death to arsonists, murderers, and jaywalkers" Paladin error is (unless one is very specifically playing that archetype to watch it crash and burn, I suppose). Plenty of people have at least one horror story from a GM they know, or from a friend who suffered under a GM like that.


It is. But the unfortunate truth is that a lot of people get it in their heads to pursue a load of bollocks rather than mutually-enjoyable play. To turn the example around in a different way than my previous one: Isn't this exactly what so many GMs fear from their players? The powergamer is the player trying to "win." If GM fears of powergamers corroding the experience are valid, it's hard to see why player fears of tyrant GMs wouldn't be.


I'll go a step further: whether or not it is possible, I'd argue it's not desirable to run a game in a "completely impartial way." Because the whole point of running a game for folks is for everyone to have a good time. Being completely impartial means ignoring player concerns and continuing on with play even if one or more players are having a Bad Time.


This seems to imply a follow-up question: Would one measure of a good system be that it supports the good GM in doing so?


While I might grant that there's a little vagueness on that one, I think the line between the two remains reasonably clear: a soft move is something you can try to prevent, a hard move is something you can only address after. So, let's say we grant that the fiction has established that smoke on the horizon means a bandit raid is already on the move. Can the characters prevent it from actually doing any damage, if they're successful enough later? If yes, it's a soft move--a very strong soft move, I admit, one I would be reluctant to deploy unless it was warranted, but a soft move nonetheless. If no--if at least SOME damage WILL happen, no matter how superlative the party's mitigation efforts--then it's a hard move.

In fact, I would call this merely a more elaborate, nuanced version of the extremely simple "the monster swipes at you." If, for some reason, the PC targeted by the monster's attack definitely cannot prevent bad things, only being able to partially weaken them or address them later, then that's a hard move. It is, at that point, just equivalent to declaring that the PC has taken damage or a debility outright, and then giving them a chance to bounce back. If instead the PC can actually STOP the attack entirely, such that there is even a slim hope of getting away unscathed, then you have merely presented a threat and not actually dealt a blow.

All that said, I do at least grant that there can be some cases where the line between soft and hard move is fuzzy--though I would probably focus that more in the area of simple facts (rather than evidence of future events). Frex: "No, I am your father!" is a "weakly hard" move against Luke because it conclusively establishes a hard fact about the past, but this doesn't have any clear and direct impact other than being upsetting--Luke hasn't suffered a clear "loss" in anything but morale. By comparison, "there is another" Skywalker is a "severely soft" move, because it establishes something important, another hard fact, but only in the most minimal and restrained way possible. Luke has to go on and investigate more before he learns who the other is, and gets significant control over where things proceed from there.

Or, if you prefer a slightly pithier phrasing: Vader's revelation to Luke is Vader taking control, albeit in a way very difficult to define mechanically. Yoda's revelation to Luke is Yoda giving control to Luke in both a (DW-)mechanical and narrative way, by equipping him with knowledge that he can decide how to act on.

Luke's subsequent conversation with Obi-Wan is an almost perfect example of using Discern Realities to investigate deeper, with either "what here is useful or valuable to me?" or "what here is not what it appears to be?" giving him the intuition that Leia is his sister, and later on when Vader senses from Luke that he has a twin sister (but fails to realize who she is) is a perfect partial success on a Defy Danger roll. (I'm honestly kind of surprised how well this analogy is working...)


See above. I'm not sure this is even a good idea in the grand scheme, simply because our sentiments for our fellow players are exactly what enable us to make an enjoyable, compelling game--no matter what style we play in. Those sentiments need to not blind us to when we are being too soft (or to hard!), but I do not see any way that a successful, long-running campaign can happen when the DM is a completely sentiment-less adjudication machine. That's what a calculating device is for, not a living, creative mind.

Eh, I think the overall conclusion I come to from this and what @pemerton said on the subject is it is pretty fuzzy and arbitrary. For example, "You see a wall of flames approaching your (wooden) castle! If you don't do something it looks grim." Is this a hard move? Well, maybe. I mean, you could consider it to be "an unpleasant truth." The PCs must act NOW in order to fix it, but they have not taken a loss yet. If they just stand and watch, their castle will burn down, and THAT would be a hard move, no doubt about it! If they DO act, well, they will certainly be subjected to hard danger before its over, but the move itself isn't "Defy Danger or else, right now."

The question is really kind of technical. If I tell you 'an orc is charging you' is that a hard move? Certainly if the next sentence is 'and you take 4 damage as he spits you with his spear!' that is very hard. What if the player gets to respond with Defy Danger? I'd say this is a pretty hard move, but it could arise as a GM soft move, nobody has actually been harmed. Still, I think if you are asking the player to DD or H&S right now or else take damage, that is pretty hard, it is appropriate as a hard move, though possibly one where you are giving the players a bit of room to shape things. In any case, even in the first case, if one of the players jumped in right there and interrupted the GM to interpose her PC (Defend Another) I think she gets a chance to do so. So it is hard to say that the existence of a player move response definitely makes a move soft.

I don't think it is all that critical a distinction anyway. GMs should really think about pacing. I mean DW literally states that the GM moves are basically "what a GM would be doing anyway." The distinction is USEFUL, but it should not be dominating your thinking in play. If you have been making a bunch of quite soft moves, hinting at danger, building tension, then at some point you will make a harder move. The tension will suddenly condense as the shadowy hidden threat materializes into an attack! (or something).