Torchbearer 2nd ed: first impressions

[pemerton]

I didn't say many people don't find it influential, but if it's immune to analysis of whether it accurately reflects RPGs, then it fails as a theory. It will always remain conjecture.

I don't see how it's "immune to analysis" - for instance, in this active thread, discussion is taking place of the relationship between "step on up"/gamist play and "story now"/narrativist play.

Edwards also accurately predicted the main flashpoints around 4e D&D. As I posted nearly a decade ago:

Of course from the process simulation perspective 4e is not very attractive. But that's no great surprise. The key points of criticism of 4e by those who prefer process simulation mechanics were identified by Ron Edwards in an essay written in 2003, more than 5 years before 4e was released:

if Simulationist-facilitating design is not involved, then the whole picture changes. Step On Up is actually quite similar, in social and interactive terms, to Story Now. Gamist and Narrativist play often share the following things:

* Common use of player Author Stance (Pawn or non-Pawn) to set up the arena for conflict. This isn't an issue of whether Author (or any) Stance is employed at all, but rather when and for what.

* Fortune-in-the-middle during resolution, to whatever degree - the point is that Exploration as such [ie explanation by reference to ingame causal processes] can be deferred, rather than established at every point during play in a linear fashion.

* More generally, Exploration overall is negotiated in a casual fashion through ongoing dialogue, using system for input (which may be constraining), rather than explicitly delivered by system per se.

* Reward systems that reflect player choices (strategy, aesthetics, whatever) rather than on in-game character logic or on conformity to a pre-stated plan of play.​

Every contentious feature of 4e lives in one or more of Edwards' dot points. Which is to say, the contention was entirely forseeable. The only reason I assume that WotC didn't worry about is that they (wrongly, as it turned out) assumed that no one playing D&D would have such strong simulationist preferences, given how non-simulationist it is in its design. (Even 3E, the most simulationist version of D&D, doesn't hold a candle to a game like Rolemaster or Runequest, or even a narrativist game like Burning Wheel that nevertheless has a highly simulationist basic underlying chassis.)

I think that's a theory (or analysis, or account - not much is at stake in this choice of terminology) with a significant degree of power. At the very least, it strongly suggests that he successfully identified some important features of approaches to RPGing.

You understand that this is an argument from personal experience? If you share the same preferences and biases as the authors do, for example, you should expect to find it convincing.

Nearly everything I understand, these days, about RPGing I owe to Edwards, Vincent Baker, Paul Czege, Robin Laws and Luke Crane.

But I don't think I share all, or even many, of their preferences. Edwards grew up on Champions; I've never played it. If you look at Baker's and Czege's RPGs, they have a type of thematic seriousness or sophistication or "edginess" that is not part of my RPGing, which mostly involves pretty standard fantasy and adventure tropes.

I didn't find Edwards's essays convincing. I found them illuminating. They explained RPGs - like T&T and HeroWars - that up to that point I had found incomprehensible (for different reasons in those two particular cases). They explained, what up until that point had been mysterious to me, why I found RM more enjoyable than RQ even though both are, on their surface, hardcore process-simulations RPGs. The same thing also explained why archery builds were the least interesting sort of RM PC. (The explanation is that RM melee and spellcasting - but not archery - contains a distinctive site of player decision-making that allows the player to inject their own conception of how much is at stake into the resolution process. It somewhat resembles the decision-making, in HeroWars, about how many action points to bid.)

By laying out different sorts of techniques and orientations, they allowed me to take self-conscious control of my RPGing in a way that I never had before. I'm a better GM, better player, and have had far richer RPG experiences, as a result.

 

[pemerton]

And yet, here we are successfully analyzing TB2 in light of it! I'd point out that TB2 was designed in light of it as well, as Vince Baker is most certainly well aware of, and has participated in, these kinds of discussions many times as a matter of record. Now, I won't pretend to be so close a follower of all this, and where it has led in the almost 20 years since this essay was written, to say EXACTLY what the opinions of the TB2 authors are on GNS or how they would apply it to analyzing TB2 themselves. Still, surely their work bears the marks of being in the wake of RE's writing.

I think you might mean Luke Crane (and Thor Olavsrud) rather than Vincent Baker.

But yes, Luke and Thor know Edwards's work. Edwards (and also Baker) is thanked in Burning Wheel, and games by both appear in the list of influences/further reading. RPGs by Edwards also appear in that list in the Torchbearer Scholar's Guide.

Vincent Baker states, in the acknowledgements for Apocalypse World, that "The entire game design follows from “Narrativism: Story Now”
by Ron Edwards."

Paul Czege, in My Life With Master, thanks "Ron Edwards, who showed me what was holding me back. My Life With Master can trace its existence to conversations with Ron that gave dramatic renewal to my appreciation for this hobby."

What has driven these games, it seems to me, is the attention to the relationship between (i) mechanical design, (ii) non-mechanical principles and allocations of authority, (iii) orientations of play, and (iv) aesthetics of presentation, which were the subject-matter of discussion at the The Forge among Edwards et al circa 20 years ago. It seems to have been a pretty fruitful set of discussions!

And as you allude to in your post, it's almost inconceivable that 5e D&D would exist in the way that it does but for those discussions.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Same question then, do you concur that fateful F properly arises?

Yes, it clearly did, at least that is the case IF the GM doesn't fall for letting it be relitigated later! This is really a huge problem for task-based systems, you're really never clearly done litigating any given situation! Of course they are also SIMPLER in that the GM has one less worry, its just that 'fortune' can't really 'be in the middle' in a task system, not REALLY. It can APPEAR to be, but at least until the GM decisively puts the scenario to bed there's always some additional task someone can attempt.

So, yeah, the Fortune (the F you are presumably referring to here) seems 'fateful' to me when applied to an intent-based system (which TB2 certainly is). Now, interestingly I also explicitly stated in the HoML rules that the player states the action AND the intent, so that explicitly handles the "there's a kernel of fiction that comes before the Fortune" thing. Fortune still mediates achieving intent, but the player has also described at least some of how it is happening, and THAT PART is surely based entirely on fiction (though it will certainly involve a mechanic as well). Then comes fortune, and then some fairly TB2-like combination of triggering additional mechanics and describing the final arbitration of the intent.

Of course, the other thing to consider is that the scope of intent is still regulated by something in the process of play. Dro cannot say he's dicing to see if the entire gnoll tribe is defeated by this one action. TB2 has conflicts, ala BW, and HoML has 'challenges' and 'action sequences', which generally bound a resolution to the scale of a single scene, but its less clear when simply dealing with a basic obstacle, or say in PbtA when a move is made, could it resolve some global intent in a single throw of the dice? That doesn't seem to happen in actual play, probably mostly because the game is present in such a way as for that not to be done, but its one of those areas where a lot of systems don't really technically spell things out.

 

[pemerton]

Do you agree on fateful F?

As I understand it, "fateful F" is an assertion, or perhaps a posit, that the use of a Fate point to apply Deeper Understanding so as to reroll a wyrm/traitor is a component of, or a contributor to, fictional positioning. I'm not sure what the capital "F" adds to the underscore in your notation system.

As I see it, rerolling a wyrm by spending a Fate point to use Deeper Understanding is no different from using a Trait to buff. @AbdulAlhazred has posted a very detailed parsing, not far upthread, of one instance of what the fiction looks like at the moment when all these decisions are made. The question of whether the character's Wise bears upon the situation at stake is no different, in how it is posed and answered, from the question of whether the character's Trait bears upon the situation. The player says "Ah hah!" but it can hardly be the character saying that, or at least not at that moment within the fiction - when Dro rolls the dice for Fighter that means that, in the fiction, Harguld is shooting his crossbow, and Harguld can hardly wait to see whether or not the shot lands true and, if it doesn't, retrospectively apply some deeper insight!

As AbdulAlhazred has spelled out in detail, it's FitM resolution and Dro is reasoning about boxes - what sorts of resources does he want to spend to improve his fictional position (eg by rerolling wyrms, or open-ending sixes, in pursuit of success) and/or what sorts of burden on his fictional position is he willing to endure now (eg by spending a trait to break a tie in the gnolls' favour) in order to get resources that will be helpful down the track (checks that can be spent in camp phase or at the start of town phase)? Once that decision about cues/boxes has been made, he then introduces some fiction (about how his Wise helped his shot; about how his tendency towards Cunning tripped him up on this occasion) which adds colour, but has no consequences for resolution - all those consequences follow from the mechanical choices. If Dro can't think of any such fiction, then he's not allowed to do his stuff with the boxes - thus we could say that creativity and imagination act as a constraint on mechanical exploitation of resources, which seems a reasonable enough way to design a RPG; but that doesn't change the fact that it is boxes to boxes, followed by boxes to clouds (just as Vincent's example of answering and then narrating in In A Wicked Age, as per my post to which you replied).

************************************

It's interesting to compare this with the decision to FoRK a skill in Burning Wheel. The following example is given on p 40 of Revised:

Rich's Orc Great One is laying waste to his inferiors with his Axe skill. Rich wants to fight dirty, so he adds in a die from his Brawling skill - he describes his Orc throwing elbows and knees and generally being a bastard.​

When I first read this, I was puzzled - why wouldn't a player FoRK every plausible skill every time? The answer, I later worked out, lies in the advancement rules.

The same thing - puzzlement and realisation - occurred when I read (p 30) that "A player may lobby for one +1D advantage per test. In order to gain this advantage, he must state how and why he deserves such a boon in one clear sentence". Why does a player not want every advantage die they can get? Because advancement requires that some tests be against an obstacle that is larger than the dice pool!

So players have a mechanical incentive to toggle these bonus dice - from FoRKS, from lobbying for advantage - based on their preferences around succeeding on tests (and thus improving their immediate fictional position) versus earning the tests (Routine, Difficult and Challenging) that they need to advance their PCs' skills and attributes. And the result is the same FitM structure as in Torchbearer - the GM narrates a situation, the player decides their basic intent and approach, additional colour is introduced in the course of lobbying for advantage and FoRKing in skills (there's a nice worked example in the Adventure Builder, pp 245-7; in the Codex it's at pp 109-11).

The difference between BW and Torchbearer is that the colour used to support FoRKing and advantage dice in BW can be drawn on by the GM in the narration of consequences. This is part of "intent and task", and it helps give that colour "life" in the fiction.

Torchbearer doesn't use "intent and task", and I don't think that the colour that is introduced during the FitM process is as apt to take on life in this way. Admittedly, though, my experience with Torchbearer is less than with Burning Wheel.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think you might mean Luke Crane (and Thor Olavsrud) rather than Vincent Baker.

But yes, Luke and Thor know Edwards's work. Edwards (and also Baker) is thanked in Burning Wheel, and games by both appear in the list of influences/further reading. RPGs by Edwards also appear in that list in the Torchbearer Scholar's Guide.

Vincent Baker states, in the acknowledgements for Apocalypse World, that "The entire game design follows from “Narrativism: Story Now”
by Ron Edwards."

Paul Czege, in My Life With Master, thanks "Ron Edwards, who showed me what was holding me back. My Life With Master can trace its existence to conversations with Ron that gave dramatic renewal to my appreciation for this hobby."

What has driven these games, it seems to me, is the attention to the relationship between (i) mechanical design, (ii) non-mechanical principles and allocations of authority, (iii) orientations of play, and (iv) aesthetics of presentation, which were the subject-matter of discussion at the The Forge among Edwards et al circa 20 years ago. It seems to have been a pretty fruitful set of discussions!

And as you allude to in your post, it's almost inconceivable that 5e D&D would exist in the way that it does but for those discussions.

Yes, Luke Crane (I am sure Thor can be put in there too, I just know nothing about them, lol). And yeah, I didn't mention 5e in my post, I kind of left off at 4e, but 5e, and IMHO Numenera and all the stuff since then (Cypher System) not to mention games like Strike! and 13th Age, these are all either reactions to, or part of, or a mix of both, the whole Ron Edwards 'thing', GNS, the Forge, etc. But certainly 5e and Cypher seem to be actually consciously designed to push back, or at least steer strongly in a certain direction WRT indy games. I mean, 5e is SO consciously a Simulationist "play like a D&D genre game" thing. Why else is the only thing it doesn't actually do well is anything close to what was unique about 4e! lol. I can perfectly describe that contrast using GNS or similar kinds of analysis.

 

[clearstream]

As I understand it, "fateful F" is an assertion, or perhaps a posit, that the use of a Fate point to apply Deeper Understanding so as to reroll a wyrm/traitor is a component of, or a contributor to, fictional positioning. I'm not sure what the capital "F" adds to the underscore in your notation system.

As I see it, rerolling a wyrm by spending a Fate point to use Deeper Understanding is no different from using a Trait to buff. @AbdulAlhazred has posted a very detailed parsing, not far upthread, of one instance of what the fiction looks like at the moment when all these decisions are made. The question of whether the character's Wise bears upon the situation at stake is no different, in how it is posed and answered, from the question of whether the character's Trait bears upon the situation. The player says "Ah hah!" but it can hardly be the character saying that, or at least not at that moment within the fiction - when Dro rolls the dice for Fighter that means that, in the fiction, Harguld is shooting his crossbow, and Harguld can hardly wait to see whether or not the shot lands true and, if it doesn't, retrospectively apply some deeper insight!

As AbdulAlhazred has spelled out in detail, it's FitM resolution and Dro is reasoning about boxes - what sorts of resources does he want to spend to improve his fictional position (eg by rerolling wyrms, or open-ending sixes, in pursuit of success) and/or what sorts of burden on his fictional position is he willing to endure now (eg by spending a trait to break a tie in the gnolls' favour) in order to get resources that will be helpful down the track (checks that can be spent in camp phase or at the start of town phase)? Once that decision about cues/boxes has been made, he then introduces some fiction (about how his Wise helped his shot; about how his tendency towards Cunning tripped him up on this occasion) which adds colour, but has no consequences for resolution - all those consequences follow from the mechanical choices. If Dro can't think of any such fiction, then he's not allowed to do his stuff with the boxes - thus we could say that creativity and imagination act as a constraint on mechanical exploitation of resources, which seems a reasonable enough way to design a RPG; but that doesn't change the fact that it is boxes to boxes, followed by boxes to clouds (just as Vincent's example of answering and then narrating in In A Wicked Age, as per my post to which you replied).

************************************

It's interesting to compare this with the decision to FoRK a skill in Burning Wheel. The following example is given on p 40 of Revised:

Rich's Orc Great One is laying waste to his inferiors with his Axe skill. Rich wants to fight dirty, so he adds in a die from his Brawling skill - he describes his Orc throwing elbows and knees and generally being a bastard.​

When I first read this, I was puzzled - why wouldn't a player FoRK every plausible skill every time? The answer, I later worked out, lies in the advancement rules.

The same thing - puzzlement and realisation - occurred when I read (p 30) that "A player may lobby for one +1D advantage per test. In order to gain this advantage, he must state how and why he deserves such a boon in one clear sentence". Why does a player not want every advantage die they can get? Because advancement requires that some tests be against an obstacle that is larger than the dice pool!

So players have a mechanical incentive to toggle these bonus dice - from FoRKS, from lobbying for advantage - based on their preferences around succeeding on tests (and thus improving their immediate fictional position) versus earning the tests (Routine, Difficult and Challenging) that they need to advance their PCs' skills and attributes. And the result is the same FitM structure as in Torchbearer - the GM narrates a situation, the player decides their basic intent and approach, additional colour is introduced in the course of lobbying for advantage and FoRKing in skills (there's a nice worked example in the Adventure Builder, pp 245-7; in the Codex it's at pp 109-11).

The difference between BW and Torchbearer is that the colour used to support FoRKing and advantage dice in BW can be drawn on by the GM in the narration of consequences. This is part of "intent and task", and it helps give that colour "life" in the fiction.

Torchbearer doesn't use "intent and task", and I don't think that the colour that is introduced during the FitM process is as apt to take on life in this way. Admittedly, though, my experience with Torchbearer is less than with Burning Wheel.

That's a good discussion. For you then, is there anywhere in the example that the initial fictional positioning (that I denoted pursuit F) is changed?

Perhaps at the outcome? When the tie is broken?

 

[pemerton]

For you then, is there anywhere in the example that the initial fictional positioning (that I denoted pursuit F) is changed?

Perhaps at the outcome? When the tie is broken?

Here is the example of play on pp 33-34 of the SG:

Dro tells Thor, “I’ll hold off the Gnolls while the rest escape.”

Thor inquires for more info, “What does Harguld do exactly?”

Dro says, “ I position myself inside the mouth of this cave, so I can see down the tunnel. Then I load my crossbow and take aim.”

Thor nods, “A Gnoll scout emerges from the shadows down the tunnel…”

“I put a bolt in his face!”

“Right. Fighter skill test versus its Ambushing Nature 5.”

Dro announces, “I rolled three successes: 6, 4, 4”

Thor intones, “Three successes here…It’s a tie. What will you do, little dwarf?”

Dro could use his health 5 to make a tiebreaker roll against the Gnoll. But he rolled one 6, so first he opts to spend a Fate point to reroll that die hoping for another success. It comes up a 2. So now he has to choose to go to a tiebreaker roll or to use his trait against himself and break the tie in Thor’s favor.

After some consideration, he opts to break the tie in Thor’s favor. Dro declares, “I am so cunning! I wait for way too long trying to lure him in.” He used his Cunning trait to get in his own way and earns two checks for his trouble.​

Here is the fiction at the start - we don't know who exactly is responsible for it, or what play processes led to it being narrated:

There is a group of PCs. They are in a cave. They are leaving the cave via some exit (unspecified in the example). There is another way into the cave - a tunnel. There are Gnolls in that tunnel, and they are bearing down on the PCs.​

One of the players, Dro, declares an action for his PC, Harguld. The action declaration is elaborated in part in response to a question from the GM:

I’ll hold off the Gnolls while the rest escape: I position myself inside the mouth of this cave, so I can see down the tunnel. Then I load my crossbow and take aim.​

Obviously there is some established fiction that underlies this action declaration: Harguld is a Dwarf armed with a crossbow, etc. And this action declaration establishes some new fiction: Harguld is at the cave-mouth aiming his crossbow down the tunnel, ready to hold off the Gnolls if they advance. This new fiction also, to me at least, implies that Harguld has his back to the other PCs, the ones who are escaping. I mention this because it is the sort of thing that could be relevant to the narration of a twist.

In addition it seems worth noting, at least in passing, that the GM doesn't call for a test to see if Dro's action declaration is successful. This is consistent with the GMing advice on SG pp 216-7:

Use the good idea rule to set up big moments. Bypass the minutiae; focus on what’s important. Highlight exciting actions. . . .

If you focus too closely on the fine-grained details, you’ll crush the players.

In general, good ideas move the action along, but they do not grant special benefits like +1D bonuses, advancement or rewards.​

Notice the contrast with Burning Wheel, where taking position in itself might be worth testing (eg if Harguld has a Belief like "I will always defend my friends"), say a Speed test or even a Stealth test with Observation FoRKed in, serving as a linked test for any subsequent shot of the crossbow.

Having resolved Dro's action declaration as a Good Idea, the GM then introduces some more framing:

A Gnoll scout emerges from the shadows down the tunnel.​

To use PbtA parlance, this is a soft move. It establishes that Harguld, having taken position at the cave mouth, sees a Gnoll advancing towards him. Unsurprisingly, it prompts another action declaration from Dro:

I put a bolt in his face!'​

At this point, it is established in the fiction that Harguld is shooting. It's not established, though, what happens as a result of that shot. And the GM, recognising that this is an exciting action, calls for a test. Everyone at the table knows that this test will determine what that result is - the fiction is "suspended" while the dice are rolled and their implications worked through. In storytelling terms, this would be like the director and editor giving us (the audience) a close up on Harguld, about to pull the trigger of the crossbow, and then cutting away, leaving us in suspense for a brief moment. Of course, in the Torchbearer case the moment of suspense is less brief!

The dice are rolled and the tie noted. We are still in suspense - what has happened to Harguld's shot? Dro spends a Fate point to open-end his six, but gets another wyrm. We are still in suspense - in our minds, we see that bolt has left Harguld's crossbow but it still hangs in the air, it's final destination unrevealed. And we still don’t know exactly what was happening when he shot.

Finally, Dro decides to break the tie against him with a trait. And now we see what has happened, in the fiction.

So first, we get something like a retcon. In cinematic terms, we could imagine that the cut from the Harguld about to shoot moves our perspective: we are now looking from behind and over the shoulder of the advancing Gnoll scout:

The Gnoll advances cautiously, wary of this tunnel mouth and the danger it poses.​

We don't know whether the fiction includes the Gnoll seeing Harguld or not. In my mind's eye, we cut back to Harguld:

Harguld, hand on the crossbow trigger, waits for the Gnoll to close, luring it in to get a good shot.​

And then the climax.

The Gnoll suddenly rushes the tunnel mouth. Harguld has waited too long to take his shot: as the Gnoll looms before him, Harguld looks into its face and pulls the trigger.​

But what happens to the bolt, to Harguld, to the Gnoll? Notice that we can’t know what it is that follows, in the fiction, from the declaring of the shot and then the triggering of the trait and Harguld's failed cunning, without also hearing the GM's consequence narration and building that in.

Page 36 of the SG tells us that the GM responds to the failed check with success plus a condition:

Thor declares that Dro's Dwarf Harguld drives off the Gnoll scout with his cunning shot. "But Harguld knows there are more out there and he's running out of options. For the first time, he feels fear in his heart. Mark the Afraid condition!"​

In that case, here's the fiction I envisage:

The Gnoll suddenly rushes the tunnel mouth. Harguld has waited too long to take his shot: as the Gnoll looms before him, Harguld looks into its face and pulls the trigger. The bolt goes wide but the Gnoll, startled by the shot, fall back into the shadows. Harguld's heart pounds and his hands sweat in fear!​

An alternative, from a more generous or a more bloody-minded GM, would have been killing rather than driving off

The Gnoll suddenly rushes the tunnel mouth. Harguld has waited too long to take his shot: as the Gnoll looms before him, Harguld looks into its face and pulls the trigger. The Gnoll collapses in front of him, dead, as his heart pounds and his hands sweat in fear!​

Here another alternative, that assumes that the GM narrates a twist rather than success with a condition:

The Gnoll suddenly rushes the tunnel mouth. Harguld has waited too long to take his shot: as the Gnoll looms before him, Harguld looks into its face and pulls the trigger. The bolt goes wide and the Gnoll is upon him!​

The twist I'm envisaging here is a conflict, either a Kill or a Capture conflict, depending on where the GM is going with the Gnoll's Devouring and Worshipping Nature.

Upthread, AbdulAlhazred posted a different idea for the twist:

In this case Dro fails the check, so he knows some sort of narration is coming which nullifies his intent, in this case it means CLEARLY that the gnolls are not going to be delayed

<snip>

There are some interesting questions here about how things should proceed from that point, but I don't think they're germane to your argument. They are more in terms of following framing options and how the GM should respond to any additional action declarations by Dro which appear to essentially relitigate the situation (IE what if he takes up another choke point further on and again attempts to delay the gnolls?).

<snip>

I would probably frame the next scene something like "Dro sees the whole pack bearing down on him swiftly! Can he turn and flee before they are upon him?" At this point I might simply apply a twist to the previous failure, saying that he's dropped his crossbow and he's now fleeing, with the gnolls literally nipping at his heels! I suppose, alternately, if the player wants to acquire the dead condition, maybe I'd let him have a "good idea" and be eaten, surely the gnolls will be slowed by THAT! lol. Even that might deserve another check though, they could just run past and leave him for the gnoll cubs... lol.

In effect, what is being posited here is framing the PCs into a Flee conflict - perhaps with Harguld also having dropped his bow, and with the additional possibility that Dro might offer the death of Harguld as a trade-off for the other PCs escaping automatically.

Ignoring the "good idea" of Harguld being eaten, here's my sense of the fiction looks with AbdulAlhazred's twist:

The Gnoll suddenly rushes the tunnel mouth. Harguld has waited too long to take his shot: as the Gnoll looms before him, Harguld looks into its face and pulls the trigger. The bolt goes wide and the Gnoll is almost upon him! Harguld drops his crossbow, turns and runs!​

The changes are subtle - mostly turning on the introduction of an "almost" - but they support the framing into a Flee rather than a Kill or Capture conflict.

So, to summarise, I see 5 points in the fiction:

* The initial framing - the party in the cave, trying to escape;

* Action declaration - Harguld takes up his defensive position - this is resolved as a "good idea" and thus is clouds-to-clouds;

* More framing - a Gnoll scout emerges - this is more clouds-to-clouds;

* The crucial action declaration - Harguld shoots. This is clouds-to-boxes, but we don't know the exact fictional circumstances of Haguld’s shot until the mechanical resolution, including consequence narration, is complete - this is the practical effect of FitM resolution, and involves plenty of boxes-to-boxes before we get some boxes-to-clouds;

* Something happens next, which includes the Gnoll getting closer than Harguld wanted. I’ve sketched four possibilities above, all consistent with the fiction up to the point of the dice being rolled, and all consistent with Dro’s use of his trait break the tie in the Gnoll’s favour. These are the clouds that flow from the FitM boxes, and also from a fair bit of decision-making by the GM within the rather wide parameters for consequence narration that Torchbearer permits.​

Hopefully that’s all clear enough!

 

[clearstream]

@pemerton @AbdulAlhazred I can see two ways that how we interpret and what we experience differs.

First, my idea of fictional positioning includes intentionality. Words I find useful to describe that include effectiveness and motivation. A model should be predictive, and it's not possible for fictional positioning to be predictive unless something about intention is tacitly or expressly incorporated. Differences in our model mean we interpret examples in different lights.

Second, your feelings about entailment mean only - sufficiently well entailed to satisfy you. I don't require prescriptive snippets written by game designers to produce my fiction. So for me, the tie, spent-fate and trait-against-self each sufficiently well entail to satisfy me. There's no objective standard for sufficiently entailed in these cases (only normative ones.) Suppose another character has a signet that can give +1s to a creature they can see that is tied in an ambush. I think that character can use that signet to help H, but how do they know H is tied in an ambush. You might want to say that such a signet isn't a valid design.

I have an intuition toward interpreting the majority of mechanics in RPG as our way of seeing what is in the game world. I could use the words simulationist or immersionist to describe that impulse. So I don't think in terms of purely abstract triggers as you do. Hence I don't see the fictional positioning blip* forward from gnoll_pursuit_positioning to ambush_test_outcome positioning, but rather it updates continuously as we find things out. There's less retconning, although I suspect there is some super-positioning.

The way we experience the play leading to a given written example can differ. Edwards expressed a similar skepticism: saying that one couldn't tell from a written example of play - a story - whether it had been produced by story-now principles. The implication is that a like example can be produced in unlike ways.


*The blip is from (gnoll_pursuit_positioning(test(tie(fate, trait)))) to (ambush_test_outcome_positioning(etc)).It feels unnatural to me.

 

[pemerton]

my idea of fictional positioning includes intentionality. Words I find useful to describe that include effectiveness and motivation. A model should be predictive, and it's not possible for fictional positioning to be predictive unless something about intention is tacitly or expressly incorporated.

I don't understand this.

Fictional positioning is normally used to refer to one of two (related) things:

(1) A player's position, in the game, that results from what everyone agrees about their PC and their PC's potential for action in the shared fiction. (I take this from here.)

(2) What everyone agrees about a character and that character's potential for action in the shared fiction.​

When used the second way, the term refers to the underpinning (in the shared fiction) of what is referred to when it is used the first way. The first usage is cognate with the general notion of a player's position in a game, but particularised having regard to the significance of the shared fiction in RPGing. The second usage is cognate with a person's position or circumstance in the world, but applied to an imagined person's position or circumstances in an imagined world.

My reason for spelling all this out is that I don't see how either (1) or (2) is a model: both usages are references to reasonably straightforward states of affairs. Thus I don't see how the notion of prediction comes in: talking about a player's, or a character's, fictional position is a way of describing some current aspect of the play of a game, not a way of predicting or modelling anything.

And I don't see how the notion of intention or motivation comes in either. To explain by way of example: used the first way, Dro's fictional position at step 2 (as per the last bit of my post just upthread) includes that Harguld is at the cave mouth with a loaded crossbow ready to shoot Gnolls. This is not a statement about Dro's intention or motivation. Used the second way, Harguld's fiction position at step 2 includes that he is at the cave mouth with a loaded crossbow ready to shoot Gnolls. This is a statement about (inter alia) Harguld's intention or motivation, but not about Dro's. When we get to step 3, and the GM introduces the emergence of a Gnoll scout into the tunnel not to far from Harguld, fictional position changes - Harguld is at the cave mouth with a loaded crossbow ready to shoot Gnolls and a Gnoll scout has just emerged from the shadows - but nothing has changed about Harguld's (imagined) intention or motivation, nor about Dro's (actual, real world) intention or motivation.

I'm spelling all this out to explain why I don't understand what you mean by your idea of fictional positioning.

your feelings about entailment mean only - sufficiently well entailed to satisfy you. I don't require prescriptive snippets written by game designers to produce my fiction. So for me, the tie, spent-fate and trait-against-self each sufficiently well entail to satisfy me. There's no objective standard for sufficiently entailed in these cases (only normative ones.) Suppose another character has a signet that can give +1s to a creature they can see that is tied in an ambush. I think that character can use that signet to help H, but how do they know H is tied in an ambush. You might want to say that such a signet isn't a valid design.

I don't understand this either.

First, here are my thoughts on your posited magic item (the signet of fostering quickness and bloodiness or something along those lines): I don't think it's an ideal design for Torchbearer, because it lets one player interfere in another's action resolution in a way that is at odds with the general design of the game. But I don't think this has anything to do with entailment. It's an item that gives one player a Call-On with respect to another player's test. That's a metagame effect, in the sense that, in the fiction, no one can "see" the tie; but in the fiction the item (presumably) fosters quick reactions in those who are caught in ambush situations, be that ambusher or ambushed depending on which way the player who is declaring the Call-On chooses to deploy it.

Second, my comments upthread about entailment were not about feelings. I was referring to inferential relationships between things. In one case I was referring to inferential relationships between components of the fiction: if someone wearing a space suit on the surface of Pluto has their space helmet shattered, they are exposed to freezing vacuum and hence (all else being equal) begin to freeze, suffocate and decompress. The inference here rests upon a shared understanding of the fiction. (It's notorious that if that understanding is not shared - eg because not everyone regards all else as being equal - then disputes at the table can break out. See all the debates, in the history of RPGing, about whether a PC was standing in the right place or touching the right thing to trigger a trap.)

In another case the inferential relationship was between a cue and a fiction: taking the high ground grants a +2 to hit. This inference rests upon the rules of the game - whether a specific rule about high ground (in AD&D, both OA and WSG state such a rule, though I think the bonus is +1 rather than +2), or a general rule about advantage (analogous to the advantage die rule in Burning Wheel).

I don't see what the existence, or absence, of these inferential relationships has to do with a magic item - in game play terms, a cue that is a component of a player's position - that permits a player to activate an other-regarding Call-On in particular mechanical circumstances (ie when a certain sort of dice roll is tied).

The way we experience the play leading to a given written example can differ. Edwards expressed a similar skepticism: saying that one couldn't tell from a written example of play - a story - whether it had been produced by story-now principles. The implication is that a like example can be produced in unlike ways.

The written examples Edwards was referring to were stories. Not detailed, analytic accounts of the actual process of play.

Of course, from the analytic account of Thor and Dro's play that I set out above there are things we can't tell: we can't tell whether or not Dro was enjoying himself, or whether or not Thor was bored or frustrated or sitting on the edge of his seat. Nor can we tell exactly what each was picturing in their mind's eye at various points - I've set out my picturing in general terms, and would imagine most people's to be similar, but similarity is not identity. Just to give one example: what people imagine when Thor describes the Gnoll scout emerging from the shadows is likely to vary quite a bit.

All that said, I've done my best in my post upthread to explain what I take the actual process of making gameplay decisions looked like, and what the resulting fiction was.

I have an intuition toward interpreting the majority of mechanics in RPG as our way of seeing what is in the game world.

<snip>

we find things out

OK. The words "seeing" and "finding" seem, to me, to introduce obscurity. I mean, when Dro decides to spend a trait, he is not discovering something. He is choosing it. Hence why Baker says

Roleplaying is negotiated imagination. . . . Mechanics . . . exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table.​

Likewise when Thor decides that the crossbow shot drives off the Gnoll, but that Harguld feels fear. That's a choice, not a discovery.

Describing what is negotiation, and decision-making, using the language of "seeing" and "finding", seems to me apt to introduce confusion.

I could use the words simulationist or immersionist to describe that impulse.

Again, OK. I still don't see the rationale for labelling processes of decision-making as if they were processes of discovery.

I don't think in terms of purely abstract triggers as you do.

I haven't made any reference to "abstract triggers", so I'm not sure what you're referring to. When Dro chooses to use a Fate point, the "trigger" is not abstract, it's concrete: there is a die sitting on the table showing a 6. And when Dro chooses to use his Cunning trait, the "trigger" is not abstract, it is concrete: there are two pools of dice, and in each pool the number of dice showing a 4, 5 or 6 is the same. Hence the tie.

These are the cues (boxes) that I have referred to in my posts. They are real things that we produce through our game play, and that we use - in accordance with the rules of the game - to establish a shared fiction.

Hence I don't see the fictional positioning blip* forward from gnoll_pursuit_positioning to ambush_test_outcome positioning, but rather it updates continuously

<snip>

There's less retconning, although I suspect there is some super-positioning.

*The blip is from (gnoll_pursuit_positioning(test(tie(fate, trait)))) to (ambush_test_outcome_positioning(etc)).It feels unnatural to me.

I don't know what you mean by this. There is an actual moment, in the real world of gameplay, when Dro has declared that Harguld shoots, but the dice have not landed on the table. At that point in time, in the real world, no one knows what is happening to Harguld's bolt, no one knows how close the Gnoll is to Harguld, no one knows whether it is a hard or easy shot.

The dice land, and are tied. Still no one knows those things, because everyone knows that there is stuff that Dro can do to mechanically manipulate the result. And in the example, he does those things. First, he spends a resource to reroll a die. But fails the roll. That decision does not represent anything new happening in the fiction. Perhaps it tells us how desperate Harguld is, how much he hopes the shot will land: but if so, that was a fact about Harguld that was already true at the moment the action declaration was made.

Then Dro uses his trait. This makes it true that the Gnoll is close ("I wait for way too long trying to lure him in"). But that must have been true when the shooting of the crossbow was declared, as the waiting takes place, in the fiction, before the shooting. Hence why I describe it as a retcon. If you want to call that "updating continuously" that's your prerogative, but the "updating" in the real world does not correspond to the time sequence in the fiction: in the fiction the time sequence was gnoll comes close, Harguld shoots but in the real world the time sequence is Dro decides that Harguld shoots, Dro decides that the gnoll comes close. That's not ambiguous: it's crystal clear.

Hence my point that there is a time, in play, when we know what Harguld has done - he's shot his crossbow - but we don't know what the circumstances were in which he did this - we don't know how close the Gnoll was. Given that we didn't know that, it wasn't part of Harguld's (or Dro's) fictional position - the Gnolls's proximity to Harguld was not something on which everyone was agreed, that was an element of Harguld's potential for action. It is something that everyone comes to agree upon after Harguld's action - shooting his crossbow - has already been introduced as a component of the shared fiction.

I don't see what it adds to the analysis of RPGing to try and elide the roll of cues, to try and elide the roll of decision-making, and to speak as if elements of the fiction that get made up after actions are declared are constituent elements in the possibility of declaring those actions. It seems obscurantist to me.

 

[Manbearcat]

I’m not really participating in the thread as I haven’t the time nor initiative to digest the various takes and respond.

But can I ask to clarify the following @clearstream ?

After only a skim (I admit), it looks like your series of posts bear all the hallmarks of the 4e take of “Immediate Interrupts are destructive to play because they retcon established fiction.”

That take is premised upon the idea that all conversation of play and every dice throw is immediately and irrevocably enfolded into the shared imagined space without exception or procedural exemption.

That premise is both (a) not a truism about TTRPGs and (b) therefore an “opt-in.”

Finally, If that is your position, then you’re going to have a pretty entangled time resolving the relationship of shared imagined space every time you (i) reroll dice and (ii) deal with the constrained negotiation phase that is the post-Conflict Compromise (which is this interesting “Story After becomes Story Now” procedure because you’re in-filling a lot of abstracted intraConflict detail which you’re required to leave open-ended in order to functionally facilitate the Conflict procedures - particularly the Regrouping aspect of them).