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

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, I know people seem to feel that there is some thematic magic in disparate subsystems too. I've always been a bit skeptical on that, as it seems to, oddly, be a position that you don't see much in discussions of any game but D&D, generally.

With no insult intended, you need to get out more. I've seen it in the BRP community and others.

And I think the word "disparate" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this sentence; I'm not talking about things that are radically different; I'm talking about things that adopt a common framework to the specific. To give an example, most games with cyberpunk style hacking usually set it up to parallel physical intrusion and combat; the basic mechanics don't vary radically. But they tune up the differences to make it still not feel like the same thing with a different coat of paint.

I mean, it isn't entirely unique in having at least some diversity of subsystems, but few other modern games seem to go quite so far.

Well, to make it clear, I'm not defending the completely exception based design of D&D here. I just think its possible to swing too much the other way for me.

 

[clearstream]

CoC Sanity is still run exactly like a skill check. There are additional/different rules around it in terms of the 'sanity subsystem', yes, but it still utilizes a good bit of the %-based BRP mechanical framework. OTOH, weirdly it might have been better built around the ability score part of BRP, since there are few cases where you would make a check against it. My feeling was always that BRP/CoC missed a march effectively by not using %-based ability scores too! That model worked fairly well in Boot Hill, amongst a few other early games which used it (though Boot Hill itself does NOT follow it up with a %-based skill system, which is the next logical step).

Bushido is as crazy as early D&D, and frankly a much worse design overall. It WAS a very thematically focused game, in terms of its outcomes, but I'm not in any way convinced that it was good design. We played quite a bit of it back in the 70's with a guy who was rather an "all things Japanese" freak. He did a good job of GMing it, but the rules were so abysmally complex that we all just took his word for it on all mechanical questions. Having reread it a few years ago I was rather astounded at how completely wacky the rules are... Honestly I doubt anyone who wasn't deeply enthusiastic about the source material could make it work.

I'm not sure what 5e auto fail on a 1 accomplishes exactly. It hardly seems amazingly thematic though. I mean IMHO it gives anyone a small chance of surviving some sure doom (the dragon COULD technically miss you) or of conversely forcing you to account for some slight odds of failure in all cases (you will slip and fall 1 in 20 times, so be ready if you pull enough cat burglaries). I am not really seeing where that is either A) a disparate subsystem (it is just a technical rule of adjudication of checks) nor B) particularly thematic in 5e play.

I have directly observed each of those rules producing emotive responses from players. Thus, they meet my test of methods delivering feel. I'm assuming we don't need to debate whether they are each game mechanics, processes or methods? Right? The 5e system where 20 auto-hits and crits, and 1 auto-fails, that is a process for deciding if I get to apply or not apply a randomised decrement.

OK, but how do you apply an effect over the whole space? Suppose I drink a 'potion of speed'? What is the implication within all these different subsystems? They need some common inputs in order to process that, or it needs to act as a 'wrapper' on each and every one of them, accepting their outputs and altering them on accord of this additional factor. If I move, the movement subsystem has to deal with my increased tempo of movement. The combat system needs to account for it too. The healing and initiate systems, etc. (assuming they exist).

I was mulling that. I think it is handled in the data model(s). For interfacing to be meaningful, there must be data that has meaning in more than one process-space. So for a potion of speed - assuming potions were handled by one process, I am passing meaningful data into another. Even so, not everything about potions needs to be known to that other process.

Since PbtA is very flat, it has no issue here. You can simply apply something like hold or forward, or even pick X of Y, whichever seems thematically most appropriate to a 'potion of speed'. Perhaps all it does is alter the valence of various elements of fictional positioning (IE the GM will take into account that I move twice as fast as everyone else when adjudicating what moves are made, when, and how). PbtA though is a particular type of system, which I would call 'loosely connected' in that process and principles of play are sort of the 'pudding' and the mechanics are sort of like raisins that float in it. When you invoke a move, the process is very fixed and regularized, but there's a lot that happens 'in the middle' that is subject to a less rigid, though equally principled, process.

In DW by intent (it's spelled out in the guidance on developing moves) the contents of a move are not limited. Many moves contain micro-processes within them, but there is nothing to say the process must be micro... it could be expansive. It could have equal or higher complexity to all other moves in aggregate. I don't see this as necessarily problematic - in some ways I very much like it. I just see it as a fact about DW's design as an abstraction: anything can be inside a move.

The interface between moves is the moving fiction, that they address in common. Roughly, it looks like each move applies a delta to the fiction, which triggers other moves.

4e would, in some respects, be a better guinea pig (one reason I chose it to base my game on, the other just being I like a lot of its flavor). A 'potion of speed' in 4e is pretty darn simple. It gives a +2 power bonus to speed. Speed can feed into movement and possibly a few other things. It could extend that power bonus to other things as well, like initiative, DEX based checks and attacks, etc. (I assume this is not done in 4e because of a concern over the potency of those bonuses vs the availability of the potion). I think this is actually showing how many factors can interact in ways that can be hard to predict. One might consider the possibility that the PbtA style of 'raisins in a cookie' might actually be the most robust, noting that it requires a very simple core design too!

Did you play 3.5 with Book of Nine Swords at all - the earlier instantiation of some of the core 4e concepts? It makes a great deal of good sense to me, to base a game on that design arc. Speculatively, one envisions further refinements!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I was mulling that. I think it is handled in the data model(s). For interfacing to be meaningful, there must be data that has meaning in more than one process-space. So for a potion of speed - assuming potions were handled by one process, I am passing meaningful data into another. Even so, not everything about potions needs to be known to that other process.

Right, but let me give an example "+1 Luck Stone" Now, we have an element, and it has a magnitude, and its Intent is to apply that magnitude to "elements of the system where luck is an input." One way to do that, which HoML uses, is to have certain types of bonuses, and said stone might manifest a property of "grants a +1 permanent bonus to all checks" and this then flows through the common system where that magnitude and type are understood throughout because they are hooked into the common 'check system' that underlies all resolution where anything is at stake. It could possibly input into some other area, like say if a ritual specified a cost of 'a luck stone' as an ingredient or something like that, so there are potentially multiple pathways, a tag (keyword) would be another route.

Now, in a system with disparate implementations of mechanics, how is that magnitude actualized? In classic D&D for instance '+1' doesn't have any real meaning as a magnitude, unless it has been attached to something, and then its effective magnitude varies wildly (IE +1 to a 1d6 where you want to roll high is big, but it is a lot smaller to a 1d20 roll high, and NEGATIVE to a 1d20 roll low).

I have to assume your solution has all these commonalities as well, or else it must present a 'translator rule' for each type of facet of information that it could potentially need (IE an explanation of how magnitudes are incorporated into its resolution mechanic). I would assume that it also needs something like my 'permanent bonus' attribution process in order to assign things in a generic way to these inputs.

So, we may be essentially describing the same thing (though I am definitely saying I would prefer a common range for each facet of input, like 'magnitude of check benefit' vs some potentially large set of translator rules). Obviously there are also other bits and pieces, like the actual rules for how 'permanent bonus' works (IE how things might stack or not, etc.). In the case of HoML (the current version anyway) this is part of the rules for checks, which are pretty much the first thing the game sets forth, mechanically.

In DW by intent (it's spelled out in the guidance on developing moves) the contents of a move are not limited. Many moves contain micro-processes within them, but there is nothing to say the process must be micro... it could be expansive. It could have equal or higher complexity to all other moves in aggregate. I don't see this as necessarily problematic - in some ways I very much like it. I just see it as a fact about DW's design as an abstraction: anything can be inside a move.

The interface between moves is the moving fiction, that they address in common. Roughly, it looks like each move applies a delta to the fiction, which triggers other moves.

Right, I think that is pretty much true. Most DW moves are pretty clearly 'in the moment', but there are some which are more of an 'episode', like Death's Door, or the downtime moves like Carouse where almost anything could happen and you could fight a whole battle inside the bar or whatever, if that is what the players feel like doing.

Did you play 3.5 with Book of Nine Swords at all - the earlier instantiation of some of the core 4e concepts? It makes a great deal of good sense to me, to base a game on that design arc. Speculatively, one envisions further refinements!

No, I have played some 3.5e with friends. Didn't really delve much into the material, though I have heard quite a few mentions of that book. I know it has been stated to be a bit of a prototype for 4e power system design. IMHO I would say 4e IS the further refinement, no?

I just see a really robust design has having that mechanical universality, which DW does, and then some sort of process which gives resolution or 'progress' mechanisms and player decisions some 'teeth' by fixing the valence of whatever the mechanical process is that instantiates them. 4e is only complete in that later part WRT SCs, DW does it inherently as long as you GM according to the game's GM rules, and other editions of D&D really don't do it at all, with the exception of combat or 'classic' D&D dungeon/wilderness crawling.

 

[Don Durito]

Yeah, I get why the multipurpose tool doesn't have those. That still means from my point of view all its really good for is a pacing mechanism.

There's a few tactical trade-offs. As support can be significant, you may be better off sometimes choosing to support another PC than attempt to progress the task forward. If you have two skills that are relevant but the support one if more likely to succeed well in this situation, then that may be the better option. The complications feed into this as well.

But what I found with skill challenges as well, is that if you need them to carry weight they need some time to tweak and complicate them. This isn't really all that different to spending the time to choose enemies for a combat and prep the environmental effects. (Although what Dramatic Tasks or Skill challenges might beneft from is a set of sort or plug in functions that can be used that way).

 

[clearstream]

Right, but let me give an example "+1 Luck Stone" Now, we have an element, and it has a magnitude, and its Intent is to apply that magnitude to "elements of the system where luck is an input." One way to do that, which HoML uses, is to have certain types of bonuses, and said stone might manifest a property of "grants a +1 permanent bonus to all checks" and this then flows through the common system where that magnitude and type are understood throughout because they are hooked into the common 'check system' that underlies all resolution where anything is at stake. It could possibly input into some other area, like say if a ritual specified a cost of 'a luck stone' as an ingredient or something like that, so there are potentially multiple pathways, a tag (keyword) would be another route.

Now, in a system with disparate implementations of mechanics, how is that magnitude actualized? In classic D&D for instance '+1' doesn't have any real meaning as a magnitude, unless it has been attached to something, and then its effective magnitude varies wildly (IE +1 to a 1d6 where you want to roll high is big, but it is a lot smaller to a 1d20 roll high, and NEGATIVE to a 1d20 roll low).

I think bonuses have magnitude and are typed, and a luckstone bears multiple types, but not all types. For instance, the luckstone doesn't add to the roll of a damage die. In order to apply to some rolls and not others, the implication is that each type has a translating rule. It could be that in your case that is a general handler, while in mine it is broken into the process-spaces. Intuitively, the complexity is identical (seeing as a general handler needs the same number of rules).

However, I think your model will better facilitate super-types - such as 'all rolls' - so the sacrifice I make for the sake of diversity is to increase the cost of super-types (or more probably, to not have them). I might justify that by saying I didn't want luckstones to bonus damage dice rolls anyway.

I have to assume your solution has all these commonalities as well, or else it must present a 'translator rule' for each type of facet of information that it could potentially need (IE an explanation of how magnitudes are incorporated into its resolution mechanic). I would assume that it also needs something like my 'permanent bonus' attribution process in order to assign things in a generic way to these inputs.

There have to be translator rules, whichever model we use. A wonderful example of that is for the 5th edition luckstone. It bonuses ability checks and saving throws. Initiative is an ability check, but not every player realises that. So luckstone is supposed to bonus initiative checks but at some tables it doesn't... their translator is broken. (Which in a neat way proves that there is such a translator.)

I can't recall the text of the 4th luckstone. I gave up my books when we moved

Right, I think that is pretty much true. Most DW moves are pretty clearly 'in the moment', but there are some which are more of an 'episode', like Death's Door, or the downtime moves like Carouse where almost anything could happen and you could fight a whole battle inside the bar or whatever, if that is what the players feel like doing.

It reminds me of Shahrazad in MtG. It triggers a sub-game of Magic, but in principle could have triggered any sub-game. As a design exercise, last year I designed a simple game that had subsystems that were isolated from the rest of the game, and subsystems that in principle wrote themselves into (and out of) other games. I was curious about the idea of entities in a game that were not part of that game.

Thinking more on DW, it seems the move outputs include

• delta to the fiction (e.g. X happens or say what happens)
• query the fiction (e.g. ask or tell me)
• create a resource token (e.g. 1 hold)
• create a bonus (e.g. +1 forward)
• delta to the data model (e.g. hard move dealing damage)
• launch a mini-game

It sort of surprises me that DW wasn't published as an LCG

No, I have played some 3.5e with friends. Didn't really delve much into the material, though I have heard quite a few mentions of that book. I know it has been stated to be a bit of a prototype for 4e power system design. IMHO I would say 4e IS the further refinement, no?

4e is definitely a refinement. Principally in the meta-rules - how you gained and used the powers - rather than in the power design philosophy itself. Also 4e radically addressed the 'adventuring day' (which was a 3rd thing, not a Nine Swords thing, of course).

I just see a really robust design has having that mechanical universality, which DW does, and then some sort of process which gives resolution or 'progress' mechanisms and player decisions some 'teeth' by fixing the valence of whatever the mechanical process is that instantiates them. 4e is only complete in that later part WRT SCs, DW does it inherently as long as you GM according to the game's GM rules, and other editions of D&D really don't do it at all, with the exception of combat or 'classic' D&D dungeon/wilderness crawling.

We often feel drawn to mechanical universality. My philosophy is that as we do what we like with games, we ought to indulge both efficient and less efficient means. A kind of broader and more fundamental application of Suit's philosophy (that we adopt inefficient means just so that we can play the game).

Here's a question, say we are in possession of a dozen DW moves selected at random from the book. Eleven are revealed to us, and one is concealed. Can we know what the contents of that concealed move must be? That is, can we predict its contents from the other eleven we possess? Can we say what its contents cannot be?

 

[Campbell]

I think us engineer types have a tendency to overvalue consistency of process. One of the great parts of a game like Apocalypse World is there is no set way that moves work. Some moves utilize rolls. Others just do things. Some tell you what happens. Some provide choices. It's all dependent on what they should feel like and how they should function. It's individualized design.

Saves versus attacks is an area I have dramatically changed my thinking around on. As long as the math is consistent I think there's some value in keeping saving throws around. Saves place the focus of the drama around the resisting character whereas attacks place it on the character performing the action. There's a different feel that's quite a useful design tool. Making multiple attack rolls for something like a fireball that represents one singular effort feels weird to me. It's one big fireball. You are not going to direct it more effectively to 2 of the 4 goblins. It makes a lot more sense to me to place the focus on the goblins trying to get away from it in that moment.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think bonuses have magnitude and are typed, and a luckstone bears multiple types, but not all types. For instance, the luckstone doesn't add to the roll of a damage die. In order to apply to some rolls and not others, the implication is that each type has a translating rule. It could be that in your case that is a general handler, while in mine it is broken into the process-spaces. Intuitively, the complexity is identical (seeing as a general handler needs the same number of rules).

However, I think your model will better facilitate super-types - such as 'all rolls' - so the sacrifice I make for the sake of diversity is to increase the cost of super-types (or more probably, to not have them). I might justify that by saying I didn't want luckstones to bonus damage dice rolls anyway.

Yeah, in HoML that has to be specified as part of the attribute, or part of the tag if there is one. So in my example the luckstone might read something like "Luckstone: Luck (tag) - gives the possessor a +1 permanent bonus to all checks." That would exclude damage, which isn't a 'check'. If you wanted damage included you could say "all rolls" instead. I agree that we're pretty much just moving interface elements and type information around in our models. You do need a pretty restricted set of underlying mechanics for this to work though. So HoML just pretty much has, as 'things you can do mechanically' declare an action and make a roll, all rolls will stem from some sort of action. So really it is action and check mechanics, and they pick up from powers, attributes, and a few 'data elements' like your permanent bonus.

There have to be translator rules, whichever model we use. A wonderful example of that is for the 5th edition luckstone. It bonuses ability checks and saving throws. Initiative is an ability check, but not every player realises that. So luckstone is supposed to bonus initiative checks but at some tables it doesn't... their translator is broken. (Which in a neat way proves that there is such a translator.)

I can't recall the text of the 4th luckstone. I gave up my books when we moved

I don't recall either, I think it might give you CA when you invoke it, or something like that. Actually I think it is a reroll mechanism, you can invoke it once a day to roll a failed check over again.

We often feel drawn to mechanical universality. My philosophy is that as we do what we like with games, we ought to indulge both efficient and less efficient means. A kind of broader and more fundamental application of Suit's philosophy (that we adopt inefficient means just so that we can play the game).

Well, I feel there is a 'complexity budget' that we need to pay attention to. If you are going to burn it on lots of diverse subsystems, you will probably have to do without something else, but the modularity is still a compelling argument for something like 4e. ANY PC in 4e can cast a Wizard spell. Literally any of them (mechanically speaking) without there being any sort of extra mechanism put in place. ANY PC can have (almost) any Feat, etc. I mean, the universe of stuff that you would WANT to add to your PC is somewhat smaller (IE I have an INT of 8, I am not going to want an INT based attack power). That expressiveness simply doesn't exist in 5e. If you want to be able to cast a spell, you probably cannot, because you don't have a save value to use (admittedly some spells don't need one) and there are no universal spell acquisition and usage rate rules. AT BEST you have to add 2 rules to your PC to make it work. There is a whole complex MC rule which does all that for you, but in HoML you just 'get the boon' and presto you are set. You may want to acquire an implement which keys off a good stat so you can effectively use your new power, but everything 'just works' because every power is just another instance of powers. If you need wide variety, you can get that WITHIN powers, maybe wizard ones and fighter ones work totally differently, but they are interchangeable at a system level.

Here's a question, say we are in possession of a dozen DW moves selected at random from the book. Eleven are revealed to us, and one is concealed. Can we know what the contents of that concealed move must be? That is, can we predict its contents from the other eleven we possess? Can we say what its contents cannot be?

Well, I don't think so. I mean we might reason that if the 12 form a complete set that we can play with and some obvious element is missing from the game, then number 12 must relate to that, but we can't really predict how it will work, what is called, or its thematic/fictional basis.

 

[pemerton]

I think us engineer types have a tendency to overvalue consistency of process. One of the great parts of a game like Apocalypse World is there is no set way that moves work. Some moves utilize rolls. Others just do things. Some tell you what happens. Some provide choices. It's all dependent on what they should feel like and how they should function. It's individualized design.

Saves versus attacks is an area I have dramatically changed my thinking around on. As long as the math is consistent I think there's some value in keeping saving throws around. Saves place the focus of the drama around the resisting character whereas attacks place it on the character performing the action. There's a different feel that's quite a useful design tool. Making multiple attack rolls for something like a fireball that represents one singular effort feels weird to me. It's one big fireball. You are not going to direct it more effectively to 2 of the 4 goblins. It makes a lot more sense to me to place the focus on the goblins trying to get away from it in that moment.

Moves in AW tend to be either roll-based, or stat-manipulation-based (use Hard to Act Under Fire; gain +1 armour; etc), or a piece of gear. There are a couple of exceptions in the core playbooks: workspaces, and an arresting skinner, are the two I noticed on a quick skim through the book. So while they are not strictly uniform, there is a degree of consistency.

On the attacks vs saves issue, I'm with @AbdulAlhazred - I think that the saving throw mechanic doesn't achieve enough in feel to justify the huge spanner it throws in the works of needing every attack ability enhancer to have multiple versions. Maybe I was warmed up to this by Rolemaster, which used attack rolls vs each target of a fireball way back in the 80s.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

On the attacks vs saves issue, I'm with @AbdulAlhazred - I think that the saving throw mechanic doesn't achieve enough in feel to justify the huge spanner it throws in the works of needing every attack ability enhancer to have multiple versions. Maybe I was warmed up to this by Rolemaster, which used attack rolls vs each target of a fireball way back in the 80s.

I just see it as needlessly taxing. I've memorized the rules to 30 different RPGs, and now I'm well past 50 and I have to memorize whether or not each of 100 spells is a save or an attack, for what? If it achieved some tremendous thing, I'd wonder if it was the best choice, but at least it would be buying something. I don't even agree that it is a good mechanic from a feel perspective. In fact, HoML2's design follows with PbtA, GM never rolls. If you attack, you attack, if you are PC and someone attacks you, you pick a defense, justify it fictionally, and invoke it to make a defensive check. (actually, being 4e-esque there needs to be some sort of mechanics here, I haven't quite figured that part out, defensive powers? Every power has a defensive function? Dunno...).

 

[clearstream]

In fact, HoML2's design follows with PbtA, GM never rolls. If you attack, you attack, if you are PC and someone attacks you, you pick a defense, justify it fictionally, and invoke it to make a defensive check. (actually, being 4e-esque there needs to be some sort of mechanics here, I haven't quite figured that part out, defensive powers? Every power has a defensive function? Dunno...).

Ironically, "GM never rolls" is a feel choice though, right? The system doesn't care who rolls. Another way to think about feel is to understand what feel we're trying for, and then work our mechanic toward that. For me, saves is something about resistance to fate or anchoring: individual qualities that mean the same fireball impacts different creatures differently, or that a creature can be quick on its feet while vulnerable to mind control. Attacks could be done as saves, and then with my immersionist preferences for me that would need to be symmetrical.

A possible benefit from giving each power a defensive function is that then perhaps the defense of the last power I triggered rides until the next one. Creating a mechanical game of - this is a great attacking power, but leaves me weak to X versus this is a not so great attacking power, but I'm set to withstand Y. And of course, you can give each character a default defense based on their race or class/level, and mix it up with some powers that override others for a time once triggered. I might predict some pain in balancing due to the coupling, and on the other hand, the coupling creates design space for expression.

Moves in AW tend to be either roll-based, or stat-manipulation-based (use Hard to Act Under Fire; gain +1 armour; etc), or a piece of gear. There are a couple of exceptions in the core playbooks: workspaces, and an arresting skinner, are the two I noticed on a quick skim through the book. So while they are not strictly uniform, there is a degree of consistency.

In this case I was thinking of the kind of limiting or definition relevant to implementation in a CRPG. You have what I might dub "magical" game systems, versus what might be dubbed "systematic". The magical elements are those that in a CRPG will result in numerous special cases. The systematic elements are all predicted from the system. Seeing as swathes of moves can't be predicted from any system, they are magical. The more magical they are, the more special cases. When others speak about efficiency and expressiveness, I think they are touching on desirable systematic qualities. Once we have a sufficiently expressive system, it is cheap to create instances of powers (just so long as you are happy with their limits). One of the more powerful and efficient drivers of expressiveness are combinatorial effects: meaning that you want sufficient diversity that those will layer up.

In my OP, that is what I was driving at. CRPGs are powerfully systematic, and then contain some number of special cases e.g. in their spell "systems" (funnily enough, and you can probably see how DW moves and 5e spells have a fundamental similarity). CRPGs struggle to go very far with magical game elements, whereas humans are wonderful at extrapolating with sufficient consistency from the barest clues. The trick is to work out what those barest clues are, and how to engineer some systematic facets onto them. In DW, there is a straight-up meta-system for how moves are obtained, plus a number of light-touch mechanics like those you noted, that can be appealed to in moves as desired by their prototypers.

Just-enough-consistency, is very far from consistency, when it comes to engineering it. That's easy to overlook. In fact, humans so naturally work with just-enough-consistency that we barely notice the difference until we try to engineer it. A CRPG has no choice but be consistent, even in its special cases. A CRPG move Q can't one day do X and another Y... it must always do X and only X. We can maximise its expressiveness by being very complete about X's meaning to all other parts of the system. A human can easily do X from Q one day, X and Y another, just Z a third, while keeping X, Y and Z sufficiently consistent that other humans will grasp what is going on and see the threads.

Tying back to my OP, I speculate that 6e might keep 5e's combat system (with just a few refinements that have come out of extensive use), and where great work could be done is to on the explore and social pillars. To produce a sufficiently consistent magical game system, with good meta-rules and a cadre of mechanics to appeal to (like hold, forward etc). Paying attention to the interfacing of that system with combat. Spells versus skills needs to be looked at and choices made about their distinct jobs. I might imagine spells continuing to be narrower-but-stronger than skills... a set of special cases with their own meta-rules and cadre of mechanics. I think there is a lot of scope for spells to do more work as buffs and riders on skill and combat moves, maybe that is the space they should own?