Suggestions for a "what are RPGs"/"how to play RPGs" resources

[pemerton]

I'd say I pick stakes, the GM picks consequences is a decent first cut here.

Well, yet in a game like AW, consequences can be causally unrelated to stakes, and/or thematically unrelated.

I'm talking in more story terms I guess. Like, if all that happens is you lose your stakes, then what really drives things forward? Consequences are where Narrativist play plugs in new stuff.

I think the middle of this quote identifies at least one key issue: how tightly connected are consequences expected/required to be, to what the player has put at stake via their action declaration for their PC?

In Burning Wheel, pretty tightly connected. In AW, much looser - though not utterly disconnected, given that notions like "badness" and "opportunity" and "in a spot" are in some way relative to stuff that a player, through the play of their PC, has shown that they care about.

So, to come back to this:

I always tell people that we roll dice when all three of these things are true:

1. What you do is possible but not certain.
2. There are consequences involved in failure.
3. There are stakes involved so we care about the result.

Having regard to @clearstream's posts, and @AbdulAlhazred's response, I might restate it as:

Roll the dice when a player's action declaration for their PC puts at stake something that the player cares about as part of their PC's fictional position.

When dice are rolled according to this precept, the following things will therefore be true:

*The outcome will be uncertain;
*If the roll fails, there will be consequences.​

I think I've just restated say 'yes' or roll the dice, though more loosely than the particular statement of it found in Burning Wheel. Obviously it's not the only way. The Apocalypse World approach is different, and relies on a different design methodology to ensure that if the dice are rolled, it matters.

 

[aramis erak]

I'm talking in more story terms I guess. Like, if all that happens is you lose your stakes, then what really drives things forward? Consequences are where Narrativist play plugs in new stuff.

Not always. Sometimes, losing the stakes can be a HUGE driver of plot.

Especially when the stakes are to rule out some particular beloved of the party NPC's involvement, and they fail, and cannot rule them out...

Or, worse, it's an attempt to rule them out, and they botch the evidence, being able to know the beloved NPC didn't do it, but none of the evidence is in any way admissible... Good luck convincing the jury when you botched the evidence collection.

 

[clearstream]

Let's see... Stakes, I wager $20 on this poker hand. Consequences, I lose the $20 I promised to pay The Greek, and I wake up in the alley in the morning short half a pinky. The Greek still undoubtedly wants his money, and I dimly remember him mentioning the next finger would be Sally's, just before Rocko punched my lights out.

Those are different, though clearly in this case related things. I'd say I pick stakes, the GM picks consequences is a decent first cut here.

I like your thought here. The way I was defining stakes is that they are

consequences we care about that we agree to involve in success and failure (per my #38)​

leaning into the voluntary nature of play. I didn't mean to limit that by who proposed them, but I can see that I moved away from use of the term in other games, which I took as justified by the context (i.e. TTRPG rather than Poker.)

Accepted - in relation to your example at top - that games can have outcomes that are not playful. Joining play is itself not always voluntary (is it then "play"). Seeing as I'm only addressing voluntary play with playful outcomes, I will set this aside. We can return to it if it proves to matter to the sort of play under discussion.

Well, yet in a game like AW, consequences can be causally unrelated to stakes, and/or thematically unrelated.

AW's use of "stakes" has influenced my adoption of the word. Referring to Trollbabe, which is where Baker picked up the term from

The Stakes of an adventure are the GM’s big decision during preparation. The key to good Stakes is that they must be interesting to players, not just to characters. The GM’s job is not to enforce “hooks" into an adventure, but to engage players’ interest in the issues it represents.​

​

Such things involve passions – overwhelming drives, ambitions, and interpersonal conflicts, which have escalated to the level of community threats. People get all bent out of shape over many things, but they boil down into various permutations of property, family, and romance – which in practice become community issues of theft, fraud, feud, andmurder. Stakes that include conflicts about these things among several NPCs are quickly understood and quickly judged by players.​

​

(Emphasis mine.) Baker wrote that

Write a question or two about the fate of the threat, if you’re interested enough in it to wonder how it will turn out.​

​

These are based very closely on stakes in Ron Edwards’ game Trollbabe​

You can see that "stakes" in these uses is not a wager put forward by players, although it must be interesting to them.

I'm talking in more story terms I guess. Like, if all that happens is you lose your stakes, then what really drives things forward? Consequences are where Narrativist play plugs in new stuff.

So I've defined "stakes" as consequences players care about that they agree to, which I mean to chime with the use in Trollbabe and AW. In the context of discussion with @SteveC I focused on the part stakes could play in calling for a roll, but generally

Stakes may be picked by GM​

​

They might not be fully defined up front​

​

They might be consequences for someone or something other than a player character​

​

They might something unwelcome to everyone at the table​

​

They might not be something we are rolling for.​

​

I'm proposing that "stakes" are always accepted by players: perhaps because they are of interest to them, and perhaps too due to their agreement to put the rules in force for themselves at the outset and their continuation of that agreement moment by moment. I seem to diverge from Trollbabe and AW, in that I suggest that there are instances in play when players pick stakes as well as opt into them.

The general direction of my argument is to propose that stakes are a ludic concept of particular meaning and importance to TTRPG. They playfully elevate the relationship of the people at the table with what is going on in their fiction.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Not always. Sometimes, losing the stakes can be a HUGE driver of plot.

Especially when the stakes are to rule out some particular beloved of the party NPC's involvement, and they fail, and cannot rule them out...

Or, worse, it's an attempt to rule them out, and they botch the evidence, being able to know the beloved NPC didn't do it, but none of the evidence is in any way admissible... Good luck convincing the jury when you botched the evidence collection.

Oh, I agree that the two things can be closely related, possibly even identical in some cases. I would generally see those as less interesting. I'd also point out they're more 'trad'. In an AW game it would be perfectly OK for a PC to wager her car, and the consequences of losing a race are getting stuck and having to abandon your vehicle because a horde of carnivorous locusts just swarmed from the east. A consequence entirely causally disconnected from a bad roll to drive.

Most trad GMs would never go for that disconnect IME. They'd want to fiddle around and try to explain everything in terms of something else. So, yeah, crashing your car will only ever produce a crashed car. Now the GM has to have some kind of key or something to get the next story going. This is why I say that it's this consequence loop that is so key to narr vs trad.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I like your thought here. The way I was defining stakes is that they are

consequences we care about that we agree to involve in success and failure (per my #38)​

leaning into the voluntary nature of play. I didn't mean to limit that by who proposed them, but I can see that I moved away from use of the term in other games, which I took as justified by the context (i.e. TTRPG rather than Poker.)

Accepted - in relation to your example at top - that games can have outcomes that are not playful. Joining play is itself not always voluntary (is it then "play"). Seeing as I'm only addressing voluntary play with playful outcomes, I will set this aside. We can return to it if it proves to matter to the sort of play under discussion.


AW's use of "stakes" has influenced my adoption of the word. Referring to Trollbabe, which is where Baker picked up the term from

The Stakes of an adventure are the GM’s big decision during preparation. The key to good Stakes is that they must be interesting to players, not just to characters. The GM’s job is not to enforce “hooks" into an adventure, but to engage players’ interest in the issues it represents.​

​

Such things involve passions – overwhelming drives, ambitions, and interpersonal conflicts, which have escalated to the level of community threats. People get all bent out of shape over many things, but they boil down into various permutations of property, family, and romance – which in practice become community issues of theft, fraud, feud, andmurder. Stakes that include conflicts about these things among several NPCs are quickly understood and quickly judged by players.​

​

(Emphasis mine.) Baker wrote that

Write a question or two about the fate of the threat, if you’re interested enough in it to wonder how it will turn out.​

​

These are based very closely on stakes in Ron Edwards’ game Trollbabe​

You can see that "stakes" in these uses is not a wager put forward by players, although it must be interesting to them.


So I've defined "stakes" as consequences players care about that they agree to, which I mean to chime with the use in Trollbabe and AW. In the context of discussion with @SteveC I focused on the part stakes could play in calling for a roll, but generally

Stakes may be picked by GM​

​

They might not be fully defined up front​

​

They might be consequences for someone or something other than a player character​

​

They might something unwelcome to everyone at the table​

​

They might not be something we are rolling for.​

​

I'm proposing that "stakes" are always accepted by players: perhaps because they are of interest to them, and perhaps too due to their agreement to put the rules in force for themselves at the outset and their continuation of that agreement moment by moment. I seem to diverge from Trollbabe and AW, in that I suggest that there are instances in play when players pick stakes as well as opt into them.

The general direction of my argument is to propose that stakes are a ludic concept of particular meaning and importance to TTRPG. They playfully elevate the relationship of the people at the table with what is going on in their fiction.

Yeah, I think we just failed to be consistent in our terminology. I've clearly diverged in my usage from RE at least. I think we're also talking to slightly different things in that I didn't scope my definitions beyond basically a single obstacle/situation. RE is discussing a campaign, or at least a story arc of some kind I think.

His stakes make sense in that context I guess, although my narrativist play experience has always involved a lot of that stuff being in the hands of players. Stonetop, for example, the GM may provide some input, but the players themselves map out all the conflicts and largely decide what the game is about.

 

[clearstream]

Oh, I agree that the two things can be closely related, possibly even identical in some cases. I would generally see those as less interesting. I'd also point out they're more 'trad'. In an AW game it would be perfectly OK for a PC to wager her car, and the consequences of losing a race are getting stuck and having to abandon your vehicle because a horde of carnivorous locusts just swarmed from the east. A consequence entirely causally disconnected from a bad roll to drive.

To check my understanding, I assume that you are not picturing any non-sequiturs, but rather that the standards for what will count as a sequitur differ. So breaking down the moves in the fiction from a starting point to a conclusion

P wagers her car on a roll to drive​

P's roll to drive means she loses her car​

Losing her car means P cannot escape the locusts - this is what matters​

​

What P is staking on her drive roll is whether she will/will-not escape the locusts, or to break that down in terms of consequences

P puts at stake on her roll to drive whether she will escape the locusts - this is what matters​

P's roll to drive means that she cannot escape the locusts - she loses what she put at stake​

Here is another illustrative example

P wagers whether she can make progress up a wall on a roll to climb​

P's roll means she doesn't make progress up the wall​

Failing to make progress up the wall means the guards catch her - this is what matters​

What P is staking on her climb roll is whether she will/will-not escape the guards, or to break that down in terms of consequences

P puts at stake on her roll to climb whether she will escape the guards - this is what matters​

P's roll to climb means that she cannot escape the guards - she loses what she put at stake​

Neither reveals any causal disconnect: both lay out a chain of fictional causality where the result of the roll updated the players fictional position in a way that justified what was said next (about locusts and guards). The distinction may lie more in how consciously the game fiction is managed as a dramatic story.

Most trad GMs would never go for that disconnect IME. They'd want to fiddle around and try to explain everything in terms of something else. So, yeah, crashing your car will only ever produce a crashed car. Now the GM has to have some kind of key or something to get the next story going. This is why I say that it's this consequence loop that is so key to narr vs trad.

What reasoning is permissible from a starting point to a conclusion in fiction was touched on in a previous conversation

Fiction, like counterfactuals, involves disciplined/non-arbitrary reasoning despite denying truths and asserting falsehoods.​

​

The reasoning involves inferring from an asserted (but not doxastically asserted) starting point, to the conclusion, by drawing upon permissible background assumptions that are not themselves excluded by the entertaining of the initial falsehood. (This is a version of Nelson Goodman's co-tenability requirement for counterfactual reasoning.)​

​

The key question, in RPGing (and perhaps fiction more generally) is, what background assumptions are permissible.​

​

The reason I cite this here is that I hopefully accurately take a related key question to be, what moves from starting point to conclusion are permissible. I am not aware of any common modes of play in which the move from starting point to conclusion can be a non-sequitur. P's succumbing to locusts was, as it turns out, explained by P's losing her car when she lost the race.

Resolution in TTRPGs has evolved, and quite possibly methodical "consequences resolution" was overtly evidenced first in game texts associated with "narrativism". To show something of the adoption arc, it appeared in the 2014 DMG and now in the 2024 PHB, marking a shift from what could be characterised as an "advanced" rule, to a basic rule. Consequences resolution doesn't set aside norms for justifying moves in fiction from a starting point to a conclusion.

I'd agree that some cultures of play, in being more intentional about the fictional fabric, are more willing to experiment with where and how the focus is inserted into or travels along the chain. If labels like "narr" and "trad" are useful, then I believe that the latter has evolved: texts continuing its traditions are better labelled "neotrad"... and consequences resolution is as key to them as to "narr".

 

[Joshua Randall]

WHAT are RPGs

• The intro of the 2e AD&D Players Handbook. Google it.
• Apocalypse World intro. Strip out the F-bombs if they will upset people.

HOW TO PLAY

• Trail of Cthulhu (or probably any Gumshoe game) “Advice to Players”. You’ll need to edit this to be less specific to the particular game / genre / time period, but the overall advice is great.
• Hillfolk advice on granter / petitioner and spotlight sharing.
• The Golden Rule.

 

[aramis erak]

Oh, I agree that the two things can be closely related, possibly even identical in some cases. I would generally see those as less interesting. I'd also point out they're more 'trad'. In an AW game it would be perfectly OK for a PC to wager her car, and the consequences of losing a race are getting stuck and having to abandon your vehicle because a horde of carnivorous locusts just swarmed from the east. A consequence entirely causally disconnected from a bad roll to drive.

Most trad GMs would never go for that disconnect IME. They'd want to fiddle around and try to explain everything in terms of something else. So, yeah, crashing your car will only ever produce a crashed car. Now the GM has to have some kind of key or something to get the next story going. This is why I say that it's this consequence loop that is so key to narr vs trad.

Non-sequiteuer stakes/conditions are a real problem for many. Triggered a player revolt a couple weeks ago in Star Wars...

 

[clearstream]

Non-sequiteuer stakes/conditions are a real problem for many. Triggered a player revolt a couple weeks ago in Star Wars...

Can you say more about that example? There's feasibly some semantic ambiguity in the application of the term "non-sequitur".

Frex, where we've agreed to badness on a failure; some play cultures limit that badness to what's in sight before the roll, while others allow broader extemporising to come after the result. Some folk might call the latter a "non-sequitur". I wouldn't, because that badness still seems to have to fit group norms for saying something that follows from what has been said so far.

One might want to argue that those norms (for what counts as a sequitur) diverge along a modes of play divide, which remains to be shown.

EDITED To make my meaning clearer.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

To check my understanding, I assume that you are not picturing any non-sequiturs, but rather that the standards for what will count as a sequitur differ. So breaking down the moves in the fiction from a starting point to a conclusion

P wagers her car on a roll to drive​

P's roll to drive means she loses her car​

Losing her car means P cannot escape the locusts - this is what matters​

​

What P is staking on her drive roll is whether she will/will-not escape the locusts, or to break that down in terms of consequences

P puts at stake on her roll to drive whether she will escape the locusts - this is what matters​

P's roll to drive means that she cannot escape the locusts - she loses what she put at stake​

Here is another illustrative example

P wagers whether she can make progress up a wall on a roll to climb​

P's roll means she doesn't make progress up the wall​

Failing to make progress up the wall means the guards catch her - this is what matters​

What P is staking on her climb roll is whether she will/will-not escape the guards, or to break that down in terms of consequences

P puts at stake on her roll to climb whether she will escape the guards - this is what matters​

P's roll to climb means that she cannot escape the guards - she loses what she put at stake​

Neither reveals any causal disconnect: both lay out a chain of fictional causality where the result of the roll updated the players fictional position in a way that justified what was said next (about locusts and guards). The distinction may lie more in how consciously the game fiction is managed as a dramatic story.


What reasoning is permissible from a starting point to a conclusion in fiction was touched on in a previous conversation

Fiction, like counterfactuals, involves disciplined/non-arbitrary reasoning despite denying truths and asserting falsehoods.​

​

The reasoning involves inferring from an asserted (but not doxastically asserted) starting point, to the conclusion, by drawing upon permissible background assumptions that are not themselves excluded by the entertaining of the initial falsehood. (This is a version of Nelson Goodman's co-tenability requirement for counterfactual reasoning.)​

​

The key question, in RPGing (and perhaps fiction more generally) is, what background assumptions are permissible.​

​

The reason I cite this here is that I hopefully accurately take a related key question to be, what moves from starting point to conclusion are permissible. I am not aware of any common modes of play in which the move from starting point to conclusion can be a non-sequitur. P's succumbing to locusts was, as it turns out, explained by P's losing her car when she lost the race.

Resolution in TTRPGs has evolved, and quite possibly methodical "consequences resolution" was overtly evidenced first in game texts associated with "narrativism". To show something of the adoption arc, it appeared in the 2014 DMG and now in the 2024 PHB, marking a shift from what could be characterised as an "advanced" rule, to a basic rule. Consequences resolution doesn't set aside norms for justifying moves in fiction from a starting point to a conclusion.

I'd agree that some cultures of play, in being more intentional about the fictional fabric, are more willing to experiment with where and how the focus is inserted into or travels along the chain. If labels like "narr" and "trad" are useful, then I believe that the latter has evolved: texts continuing its traditions are better labelled "neotrad"... and consequences resolution is as key to them as to "narr".

I'm not sure I completely agree, though my example plainly can be construed as a chain of cause and effect. I was really going for " the GM introduced the locusts without justification rooted in the specifics of the failed check" So, getting more into the weeds of what can follow. As I said, I think different types of play have different rules/conventions around that as a major distinguishing point.