"The term 'GNS' is moronic and annoying" – well this should be an interesting interview

[kenada]

No, we cannot. Unless, of course, we can be honest that we're just embracing the death of the author and own that we're disregarding any notion that they had a reason for designing in the way they did.



...why are you repeating my point back to me?



Thats not what I'm reading. This is what I mean about why reinterpreting just isn't appropriate.

The statement "the purpose of an rpg's rules is to create the unwelcome and the unwanted in the game's fiction." is not communicating the same thing as "RPG rules should be X". And this a direct quote, not something we're trying to infer from a game.

If its come to a point where we have to make up explanations for why this isn't the kind of statement it is, then I cannot consider anything being said to that end to be in good faith.

Its okay to may be just say thats a bad quote rather than trying to rationalize it.



See above.

And yes, its one line. But its the one I take issue with, because its a loaded premise and one that goes on to contribute to why rpg theory becomes this esoteric, wishy washy thing that doesn't actually do anything helpful other than keep internet arguments going.

“As far as I'm concerned, the purpose of X …” and “(I think) X should be …” seem to be saying the same thing to me. Baker’s phrasing is provocative, but I don’t think it’s hard to discern his meaning (so not esoteric). I also want to note that he’s drawing a contrast with live negotiation and honest collaboration, which he views as better if rules are not generating distinguishable outcomes. That seems similar to the “improv game” stuff you’ve mentioned (though based on prior conversations, I may not understand it or what you mean, so I could be wrong or very wrong about that).

This is still disregarding why the actual humans made their decisions. If one wants to own death of the author then so be it, but one has to acknowledge thats what one is doing.

And to make another analogy, imagine if I go back and start insisting something you wrote actually means this, and I disregarded any attempt for you to correct me on what you meant.

As far as reinterpretation goes, I think that’s fair in light of new developments, but I wouldn’t go so far as to use that to attack what past designers were doing. If that puts me more in the Death of the Author camp, then okay.

When comes to disagreement with an author, that invites further examination. It may be the author was doing something unconsciously (like they knew intuitively rules needed to be doing something), or the reinterpreted lens is flawed or not applicable. I don’t see how we find out either without having that discussion.

Gygax and co don't have the ability to come tell us all directly why X decision was made, but that doesn't make it okay to act they just cobbled the game together like monkeys with typewriters. They didn't, no more than you did if I started reinterpreting something you said.

And just to cut to the point, remember that theres a whole idea in the theory about why those decisions were made. Its literally in the topic title.

GNS is bunk, but the idea of a game being built around simulating a world to some degree isn't, and that is why those mechanics exist. Random encounters don't exist because of this idea about the unwelcome; they exist because of course theres random monsters running around the dungeon.

A phrase I liked from one of the posts I read was "Gygaxian Naturalism", which as I'm finding out right now, apparently is an actual thing coined to describe Gygax's methodology for worldbuilding, so go figure, there's the proof in the pudding.

I like Gygaxian Naturalism as a design aesthetic. How the rules and game feels in play is important (which I think is in agreement with your own views), and I want my game to feel like things are grounded and plausible and have a place. However, I would not describe my homebrew system as a simulation game even though I want that mechanical aesthetic because the intended goal of play is something else (a low-prep hexcrawl).

Are you familiar with Grognardia? James talks about this stuff from time to time (e.g., “Gygaxian” Naturalism). Incidentally, I’m pretty sure post #252 is referring to James’s House of Worms campaign. It’s a shame he doesn’t post recaps anymore because I really enjoyed them.

At this point I think most everyone here has their own idea of what that phrase even means.

From my perspective, and the perspective that I observe when I leave this discussion and go look at any random example of the phrase coming up when somebody describes these games, is that the writers room as a phrase refers literally to when the game has to stop to sit and negotiate over how to proceed. Its about authoring characters lives rather than living them.

Its never been about coming up with plots. Never. I honestly have no idea where that is even coming from or why.

And just for the fun of it, I went and found some reddit posts that explicitly make it clear thats whats being referenced:

1 2 3 4

This ones on the BITD subreddit; not a single person there tried to say the game wasn't doing this. Most who spoke to it made it clear it was intentional.

And heres a tangentially related one I feel compelled to share because this poster is my spirit animal.

Haven't found a single one yet that talks like its about plotting, so I still don't know where its coming from.

I don’t want to get pulled into the writers’ room discussion, but I am interested in a clarification: is there a difference between stopping to clarify for the purpose of resolution or intent, and stopping to negotiate over how to proceed.

For example, suppose I’m running D&D 3e and a player declares he wants to make a Search check. I then ask: okay, how are you doing that? What are you doing? Is that a writers’ room?

Or suppose we’re playing my homebrew system, and a player wants to leave a letter for an NPC to influence his actions, and I foreground consequences as part of the resolution process (such as how the NPC might find the letter suspicious and react certain ways, or possibly not even notice it if the player wants to stick it in a stack of papers). The purpose of this is to make sure the player understands fully what their character would and to prevent misplays (i.e., avoid Mad Libs). Would you view that as writers’ room (in spite of my intention that there should be done as described in post #296)?

Would a contrasting situation be a Blades in the Dark game where I’m scaling a building, but I suck at it. I then say to the GM I want to take a Devil’s Bargain (for another die) and suggest Heat as a consequence. The GM accepts, I get my die, and he describes how I’m drawing more attention to our score.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

I don't think this is true. This is a rule of law question. The law should treat everyone equally. To pull an example entirely out of thin air, if someone appears to have committed certain crimes, they should face trial and sentencing like everyone else, even if (hypothetically) they were a past and/or future leader of that country.

I don't disagree about the rule of law or the idea that the law should treat everyone equally. My only contention is that

(1) Lawmakers shouldn't be creating laws to complicate the lives of the citizenry and the operations of their organizations in ways that force the citizens etc to show who they are because the citizens can't (because of desire or questions of fairness) do it themselves. It may be that laws have this result (people on trial surely find being on trial, imprisonment, and paying fines unwelcome) or that it's somehow desirable in terms of deterring behaviors, but I don't think the unwelcome is an end here and it shouldn't be -- the laws don't exist to send people to prison or fine them; they exist to encourage or require certain behaviors that are desirable to the lawmakers (and hopefully society); and

(2) Game designers might be, and it's okay for them to be doing so.

EtA -- TLDR: It's bad for lawmakers to write laws to screw with the citizens because the citizens just won't screw themselves. Game designers can write rules to screw with players for that reason, and it's okay.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You are imagining a much more grandiose writers room than I. Take some BitD move that rolled a consequence, BitD specifically says to get ideas from your players if you struggle to think of a consequence as they often have better ideas than you (I don’t think I need to cite the page to you?).

That collaboration on deciding what happens next in the fiction is ‘writers room’. All the rest of your ‘requirements for writers room’ arent necessary and isn’t what anyone using the term actually means.

*Now I actually think BitD advice on going to the players when being stuck on deciding the consequence is good advice as long as it’s used sparingly.

Other than the different definition of writers room you use - I don’t see how this should be a contentious observation at all. It flows almost directly from your comment:



You agree that negotiation and collaboration can play very much like writers room.

You agree BitD encourages collaboration at specific moments in determining the fiction. Right?

So why the pushback on calling those moments ‘writers room’?

First of all because that's not how we use that term, a "writer's room" as ordinarily defined is a room in which the writers of a TV show or similar develop the plot, narrative, and dialog of a story by discussing motives, possible scenarios, etc. with an eye to producing a certain specific outcome, right? Sure, you may use it differently, but then we're into the whole 'jargon debate' where we all get bashed continuously up 'side the head (forgive my Vermonterisms) for using words in way that is not quite plain English. Worse, it invokes all the plain English implications and smuggles them into the discussion when they are not at all appropriate.

As @Manbearcat said, there is a drastic difference, almost the opposite, between what is happening in a PbtA or FitD game and a writers' room. In the writers' room almost everything is sorted out and determined BEFORE THE PERFORMANCE HAPPENS. This is the essence of Story Before. In Story Now play there's no predetermining anything that is going to happen. There may sometimes be questions from one player/GM to another about how the character perceives something, or what they believe, etc. but NOTHING IS DECIDED ABOUT THE NARRATIVE THIS WAY, PERIOD. Story Now narrative is invented BY PLAYING and nothing else.

Furthermore, many Story Now games actually have processes and even mechanics which actively work against any sort of predefinition or 'locker room talk' kind of procedure. In Dungeon World the GM CANNOT TALK DIRECTLY TO THE PLAYER, they are constrained, as long as they follow the rules, to refer only to the characters and situations within the fiction, and to address the PCs directly, not the players. There's a reason for this, it keeps the game moving along as a narrative entity. Even when the GM asks questions, which is a non-diegetic thing to a degree, the GM addresses those questions AT THE CHARACTER. While not all Story Now games insist on this technique, the spirit of play it represents is always present.

FINALLY, if the examples you give are "writers' room" then all of D&D and pretty much every other RPG is RIFE with this horrible sin. I guarantee if you actually recorded all the table talk at ANY GAME you will find that much, probably even most, of it involves players and GMs discussing all sorts of stuff, non-diegetically. So, is that what you are proposing? If so, why are you then singling out one type of play, which doesn't do this or at worst cannot be said to do it more than others, and bashing it for this?

I'm mystified, well and truly.

 

[Emberashh]

But random encounters (and many other things) are still unwelcome, regardless of why they were originally created. Both things can be true.

Theres a difference between saying something serves a similar function, and saying it was designed to do that. If the former was what was said there wouldn't have been a dispute.

is there a difference between stopping to clarify for the purpose of resolution or intent, and stopping to to negotiation over how to proceed.

For example, suppose I’m running D&D 3e and a player declares he wants to make a Search check. I then ask: okay, how are you doing that? What are you doing? Is that a writers’ room?

Nope. The difference is that one is consolidating the necessary information to resolve the action when a DM would ask questions like that; a Search check doesn't assume anything about how you search a given area, it only governs how difficult it is to find what might be there and a general radius and time limit.

It isn't a writers room because theres no collaboration or discussion of narrative or anything like that. You're just filling in what you're actually doing. Search isn't a button, you have to engage with the gameworld beyond just calling out a mechanic.

And I'll note in previous discussions that I realized this seems to be part of the appeal of narrativist games. You can just call out Go Aggro and the game takes all the effort out of what the character actually does.

Or suppose we’re playing my homebrew system, and a player wants to leave a letter for an NPC to influence his actions, and I foreground consequences as part of the resolution process (such as how the NPC might find the letter suspicious and react certain ways, or possibly not even notice it if the player wants to stick it in a stack of papers). The purpose of this is to make sure the player understands fully what their character would and to prevent misplays (i.e., avoid Mad Libs). Would you view that as writers’ room (in spite of my intention that there should be done as described in post #296)?

This is a very apropos series of blogs on just that subject.

This is the key to player agency, since it informs their choice. Without information, they cannot make a choice with intent.

As the gameworld is not something we can always see physically, information is vital and its on both the DM and the Players to ensure that information is being clarified and tangible, so to speak.

That difference, really, goes to the heart of why there's a disconnect and an, if unfortunate, often vitriolic disdain going back and forth between these two sides.

If one doesn't value immersion, you're not only unlike to take to a trad game, but also won't really be able to see why the narrativist take isn't satisfactory, if not abrasive and unwelcome, to those that do value it.

Not that I'm calling people out, but I think its worth noting more than a few people on the other side of this conversation have said they don't value nor see the point in immersion, so I think if we wanted to identify a root issue here, that's a pretty strong candidate.

Especially because historically there are and were genuinely a lot of bad DMs and GMs out there that did not know to do this, or actively worked against it, and that just exacerbates the problem if you don't naturally see the value in it. The blog I linked speaks directly to that problem and how to address it.

 

[FrogReaver]

First of all because that's not how we use that term, a "writer's room" as ordinarily defined is a room in which the writers of a TV show or similar develop the plot, narrative, and dialog of a story by discussing motives, possible scenarios, etc. with an eye to producing a certain specific outcome, right?

As I’ve said before, you are way over specifying the term. Writers room is when writers get together to decide anything about what’s going to happen in the show. It often includes all the things you listed but it need not do so, which is analogous to what happens in BitD when players and DM collaborate over consequences.

Sure, you may use it differently, but then we're into the whole 'jargon debate' where we all get bashed continuously up 'side the head (forgive my Vermonterisms) for using words in way that is not quite plain English. Worse, it invokes all the plain English implications and smuggles them into the discussion when they are not at all appropriate.

I’ve been pretty clear that I’m not married to the term. Don’t really care about the jargon just the concept. But it seems you are trying to focus on the jargon to not talk about the concept.

As @Manbearcat said, there is a drastic difference, almost the opposite, between what is happening in a PbtA or FitD game and a writers' room. In the writers' room almost everything is sorted out and determined BEFORE THE PERFORMANCE HAPPENS. This is the essence of Story Before. In Story Now play there's no predetermining anything that is going to happen. There may sometimes be questions from one player/GM to another about how the character perceives something, or what they believe, etc. but NOTHING IS DECIDED ABOUT THE NARRATIVE THIS WAY, PERIOD. Story Now narrative is invented BY PLAYING and nothing else.

You tell me things as if I disagree. The suggestion isn’t that the whole narrative in BitD is being preplanned in a writers room. That would be absurd!

Furthermore, many Story Now games actually have processes and even mechanics which actively work against any sort of predefinition or 'locker room talk' kind of procedure. In Dungeon World the GM CANNOT TALK DIRECTLY TO THE PLAYER, they are constrained, as long as they follow the rules, to refer only to the characters and situations within the fiction, and to address the PCs directly, not the players. There's a reason for this, it keeps the game moving along as a narrative entity. Even when the GM asks questions, which is a non-diegetic thing to a degree, the GM addresses those questions AT THE CHARACTER. While not all Story Now games insist on this technique, the spirit of play it represents is always present.

Not going to talk dungeon world. Been down that path before and it goes nowhere.

FINALLY, if the examples you give are "writers' room" then all of D&D and pretty much every other RPG is RIFE with this horrible sin. I guarantee if you actually recorded all the table talk at ANY GAME you will find that much, probably even most, of it involves players and GMs discussing all sorts of stuff, non-diegetically. So, is that what you are proposing? If so, why are you then singling out one type of play, which doesn't do this or at worst cannot be said to do it more than others, and bashing it for this?

I'm mystified, well and truly.

1. As I noted I’m not against using writers room sparingly.

2. I think d&d has moments that sometimes trend that direction, but the game doesn’t mandate this or even recommend and it comes up in my experience much less frequently.

 

[FrogReaver]

Theres a difference between saying something serves a similar function, and saying it was designed to do that. If the former was what was said there wouldn't have been a dispute.

Good because that’s what I said. Maybe I didn’t say it well, or maybe you didn’t understand me well but that’s exactly what I was talking about when I first responded to you on this.

Well, I might go one tiny step further. Sometimes a design is implicit in another.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

A rose by any other name is still a rose. I don’t think rpg designers way back when had any clue what welcoming the unwelcome was, but you can still see elements of it in their games. One reason i suppose is that games at their fundamental level (at least most games) are all about welcoming the unwelcome to some degree. To win one must risk losing after all.

OK, so I wasn't present with Gygax in Lake Geneva, Arneson at his table, or anything like that, so I don't speak for the literal designers pre-1974. I CAN speak to what the first generation of RPG players thought. D&D was ALL ABOUT the unwelcome! Every corner, every door, every room, everything was FILLED with the unwelcome, filled with death that was just 'tother side of a roll of some dice (and heck, sometimes the DM just said "nope, you're dead" and that's that). But ALL the rules, like 100% of everything that wasn't player-facing constitutive "this is the workings of the game and the characters" was ENTIRELY all about whether or not something bad would be inflicted on the PCs, or on what they would acquire if they managed to not be inflicted with dead.

If you think Dave and Gary wrote an entire game, and didn't know EXACTLY what it was about and why those rules were required, you are drastically, tragically, underestimating them.

 

[FrogReaver]

OK, so I wasn't present with Gygax in Lake Geneva, Arneson at his table, or anything like that, so I don't speak for the literal designers pre-1974. I CAN speak to what the first generation of RPG players thought. D&D was ALL ABOUT the unwelcome! Every corner, every door, every room, everything was FILLED with the unwelcome, filled with death that was just 'tother side of a roll of some dice (and heck, sometimes the DM just said "nope, you're dead" and that's that). But ALL the rules, like 100% of everything that wasn't player-facing constitutive "this is the workings of the game and the characters" was ENTIRELY all about whether or not something bad would be inflicted on the PCs, or on what they would acquire if they managed to not be inflicted with dead.

If you think Dave and Gary wrote an entire game, and didn't know EXACTLY what it was about and why those rules were required, you are drastically, tragically, underestimating them.

I’d push back here. I think they were out to make a realistic and dangerous world. I don’t think it has anything directly to do with the unwelcome. What i would say that in making a dangerous world there is implicitly the concept of the unwelcome present in that.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think it makes sense for the kind of conflict Baker was incorporating in the games he was developing at the time, but it’s possible his thinking has evolved. He posted an article a couple of days ago about conflict and task resolution that went on to discuss other types of resolution (that are neither). I don’t think the ideas in that article invalidate or negatively affect what he did in Apocalypse World. It’s just something new and different to consider.

He didn't elaborate on those ideas, and I'm not familiar with the couple of games he called out, so it's hard to evaluate. Still, I think we could probably see in what Baker is saying there that even non-conflict-resolving rules are still 'disclaiming' in some fashion. In other words they allow participants to defer to the rules of the game itself to arbitrate or dictate where outcomes could result which are outside the bounds of what the interested parties would decide for themselves, or where neither party wants to 'own' a certain outcome. Often it is exactly to avoid this sort of 'Decision point precedes action' sort of situation that is anathema to Story Now. So, while it is possible that you can have rules that are not about conflict, they are probably still about this 'putting things off onto system/dice/future/whatever' that is a vital part of this kind of play.

 

[Wolfpack48]

It isn't a writers room because theres no collaboration or discussion of narrative or anything like that. You're just filling in what you're actually doing. Search isn't a button, you have to engage with the gameworld beyond just calling out a mechanic.

And I'll note in previous discussions that I realized this seems to be part of the appeal of narrativist games. You can just call out Go Aggro and the game takes all the effort out of what the character actually does.

Sorry for the real-world analogy, but you just reminded me why our Senate in the U.S. is broken. You don't actually have to read the phone book anymore; you just push the Filibuster Button.