Trying to Describe "Narrative-Style Gameplay" to a Current Player in Real-World Terms

[Pedantic]

If a given game presents people the open ended question of "what do you do", its fundamentally integrated an improv game. There isn't a single game in the RPG space that doesn't do this.



Which is what I'm talking about when I say there's a problem with the space not recognizing that RPGs are fundamentally improv games. Blocking isn't a good thing, and its the root cause of every single issue in the hobby that people keep inventing new jargon for.



Blocking isn't the same thing as failing at something you wanted to do.

The big thing about why blocking is such a perverse problem is that RPGs are three way improv experience. The GM, the Players, and the Rules are participants in it. You have to Yes,and the Rules and they, in turn, have to Yes,And you.

The possibility of failure is a part of that. Where it goes wrong is when the Rules completely prevent you from taking a reasonable action to begin with because they don't integrate the abilty to improvise properly, and if/when you end up with no organic way to move forward when that occurs. And most often, its usually the GM that begets failure as blocking, because they set an unreasonable requirement to force a specific outcome. (Eg, its all Railroading all the way down)

Failing forward is a generally good idea that goes towards addressing that, to be clear, but it goes wrong in what its called and how its implemented. The thematic railroad of indie games isn't any better, and the notion that its "failing" often is counterproductive in that it produces a really questionable gamefeel when people internalize that that occurence is them failing. Its not that fundamentally different, in effect, from people in traditional games who end up feeling like a moron because of what the dice say, and this is yet another example of why the failure to recognize is so perverse.

Blocking is at the heart of every common issue with these games.



Not at all. Blocking is easily understood from the perspective of disruption. In a traditional improv game, we can observe how awkward a scene gets when a player inadvertently (or purposefully, as it were) blocks their fellow participants, and especially so if none of them have the skill to smooth over it as it happens and recover the momentum of the scene.

This manifests in RPGs as all those things I've pointed to before. Railroading, plot or thematic, the Failure/Moron effect, the "Writer's Room" of indie games, and so on. And indeed, from a game's perspective, Rule Zero is blocking, and one only needs to look at DND5E for an example of what happens when a game actually manages to block itself by being poorly designed. The Martial/Caster disparity and the Adventuring Day are such examples.

These all disrupt the gameplay and kill the momentum of the experience. Sometimes participants may just suffer these ill effects in silence, and naturally the game has no way to speak for itself unless the blocking was so egregious it just straight up breaks (ala 5e), but that doesn't mean blocking isn't bad or just part of the game.



It's not clicking for you because the example is bad and isn't what blocking is. Person 2's response could be interpreted as a prompt for the speaker to explain more about themselves, establish rapport, or give a reason for why they should be listened to. It’s more of a conversational obstacle rather than an outright block, leaving room for further negotiation or engagement in the conversation.

The key distinction is that blocking implies an intentional barrier to interaction, whereas this situation is more about setting a condition or acknowledging a lack of familiarity that could lead to further conversation if addressed.

What would actually be blocking in this case is if the GM, at every attempt to interact with somebody, contrived a reason to deny it outright no matter how you approached it.

I'm inclined to point towards this particular amusing little video:


The DM's meltdown at the end was a great example of what blocking actually is, but given the intended nature of most DND Campaigns (ie, the expectation that there is a specific if open-ended plot to be pursued), the Players were actually blocking the DM in turn by never engaging the obvious plot hook (nevermind the things they did that isn't in the purview of their role as Players to begin with) and by not allowing to him to participate, and the game being what it is, doesn't give the DM any substantial means to account for all their improvised nonsense anyway, which inevitably leads to the meltdown.

People often watch that and see it as an indictment of huge tables, but really that wasn't the issue. It was a failure to respect the input of the three Participants in the improv game, and it doesn't really matter how many actual people occupy to the two human roles.

===

Another thing that should be pointed out here, about the fact that RPGs are fundamentally improv games, is that they are not only improv games. Bespoke mechanical systems have been endemic to these games since the beginning, and this is why the Rules are a participant, and what I'm ultimately talking about when I refer to games not integrating improv and systems together properly.

If a game isn't designed with this integration in mind, it puts an undue burden on GMs and/or Players to have the improvisational skill to smooth over and work past blocking.

A better way forward, as I've argued, is just not doing this. Integrate the two properly, and prevent blocking from manifesting at all, at least on part of the Rules. Even in my game, a GM or a Player could still do it, but I make it a point that playgroups need to establish a specific Game Tone for themselves, so that there's an established boundary to where they can take the game through improv, and the game itself is designed to yes,and that choice whatever it may be.

Whether you go looney tunes wacky or game of thrones gritty grimdark or anything inbetween, the game isn't going to block you. Course, the caveat is that if you block the game, the game will break. No silently suffering game here, as its been designed with heavy integration between all of its elements.

====

That all said, it does prove prudent to point out that at this point I don't actually call my games RPGs anymore anyway, given just how deeply entrenched all this baggage is (can't count how many times I've had people elsewhere straight up tell me I'm not making an RPG, so I just embraced it).

I call them Immersive Improv, which better describes what my games do and has been designed to provide for, which has been nice if only because I no longer have to concern myself with saddling the game with said baggage, but also because I've observed that change actually making the game click better for people coming from RPGs.

(Which all then just begets people who question why I bother coming into RPG spaces, which is just sad, rude, and incredibly gatekeepy. Yet more reason I generally consider these spaces worthless unless I just feel like getting into it or want eyes on the things Im doing)

I've found your points insightful in the past, but I don't think you're doing your best work here. You're trying to make a call to "Improv" and "Yes, and" as established, clear rules we all understand and that's just not the case. Improv games are a diverse field taught in a grand variety of different ways, by individuals directly, through media and through experience and are not universally understood to have consistent codification. The way you're using the terms seems even more idiosyncratic, with your use of "yes, and" above serving to encompass "no, but" for example.

I think you're skipping some steps. If you want to use the understanding you're working from as the basis for argument, you have to write it down somewhere other people can read it, including your definitions. You're essentially arguing for a different understanding of what RPGs fundamentally are and what rules are for, and that requires rhetorical work to support; you need to go start the Impro-Forge or equivalent and lay out all of your ideas from the ground up to use them in a space like this. Right now, it's very hard to engage with anything you're saying, because we all lack shared context that only seems to live in your brain.

A lot of your posts are "I've solved this problem like Y in my game" which isn't something anyone can really interact without the game itself and associated context to analyze. I'm frankly down for a fair amount of your ideas as I've seen them in isolation (bring on the strict time records), but they just aren't persuasive in their current form.

tl;dr: I'd read your manifesto, but until it exists separately from you, we're working from a commentary on the text without the text itself, which makes engaging with your points feel like a motte & bailey we can't move past.

 

[kenada]

Not at all. Blocking is easily understood from the perspective of disruption. In a traditional improv game, we can observe how awkward a scene gets when a player inadvertently (or purposefully, as it were) blocks their fellow participants, and especially so if none of them have the skill to smooth over it as it happens and recover the momentum of the scene.

This manifests in RPGs as all those things I've pointed to before. Railroading, plot or thematic, the Failure/Moron effect, the "Writer's Room" of indie games, and so on. And indeed, from a game's perspective, Rule Zero is blocking, and one only needs to look at DND5E for an example of what happens when a game actually manages to block itself by being poorly designed. The Martial/Caster disparity and the Adventuring Day are such examples.

These all disrupt the gameplay and kill the momentum of the experience. Sometimes participants may just suffer these ill effects in silence, and naturally the game has no way to speak for itself unless the blocking was so egregious it just straight up breaks (ala 5e), but that doesn't mean blocking isn't bad or just part of the game.

Based on the subsequent discussion, I think I have a better understanding of what you mean. Thanks.

As an aside, I don’t have a negative perception of “railroading”. I prefer to assess games for what they offer and decide based on whether that sounds fun. Sometimes that would in fact (and has been) a “railroad”. There’s maximalist take on play in RPG discourse that I find a little frustrating. Sometimes I don’t actually need a lot of “player agency” as long as there are interesting decisions to be made or things to do.

It's not clicking for you because the example is bad and isn't what blocking is. Person 2's response could be interpreted as a prompt for the speaker to explain more about themselves, establish rapport, or give a reason for why they should be listened to. It’s more of a conversational obstacle rather than an outright block, leaving room for further negotiation or engagement in the conversation.

I adapted the example from the improv wiki article on blocking. Assume that without invoking game mechanics, the answer is some form of “no”. My intent is to work through an example to establish similarities and differences between these definitions.

The key distinction is that blocking implies an intentional barrier to interaction, whereas this situation is more about setting a condition or acknowledging a lack of familiarity that could lead to further conversation if addressed.

What would actually be blocking in this case is if the GM, at every attempt to interact with somebody, contrived a reason to deny it outright no matter how you approached it.

Do game mechanics matter for this distinction? If I always say “no” unless one engages with the game (e.g., to make a check, action roll, start a conflict, etc), is that different than if I decide the answer is always “no” no matter what mechanics you invoke? Like if you cast detect thoughts, and the NPC just happens to be wearing a ring of mind-shielding.

I’m pretty sure I’ve referred to preventing actions from succeeding no matter what as “blocking” before, though I usually don’t tie it back to improv. I’d liken it more to blocking in sports (e.g., you attempt to take a shot, but the guy in front of you swats it away).

I'm inclined to point towards this particular amusing little video:


The DM's meltdown at the end was a great example of what blocking actually is, but given the intended nature of most DND Campaigns (ie, the expectation that there is a specific if open-ended plot to be pursued), the Players were actually blocking the DM in turn by never engaging the obvious plot hook (nevermind the things they did that isn't in the purview of their role as Players to begin with) and by not allowing to him to participate, and the game being what it is, doesn't give the DM any substantial means to account for all their improvised nonsense anyway, which inevitably leads to the meltdown.

People often watch that and see it as an indictment of huge tables, but really that wasn't the issue. It was a failure to respect the input of the three Participants in the improv game, and it doesn't really matter how many actual people occupy to the two human roles.

It seems to me, based on the above definition, that “blocking” is referring to preventing people from playing the game. The DM is trying to fulfill his role in this example, but the players aren’t engaging. This is blocking the DM from doing that. Devising various ways of ensuring that players fail no matter what (e.g., having “consequences” in “success with consequences” negate the success, ensuring failure) is also blocking.

Another thing that should be pointed out here, about the fact that RPGs are fundamentally improv games, is that they are not only improv games. Bespoke mechanical systems have been endemic to these games since the beginning, and this is why the Rules are a participant, and what I'm ultimately talking about when I refer to games not integrating improv and systems together properly.

If a game isn't designed with this integration in mind, it puts an undue burden on GMs and/or Players to have the improvisational skill to smooth over and work past blocking.

A better way forward, as I've argued, is just not doing this. Integrate the two properly, and prevent blocking from manifesting at all, at least on part of the Rules. Even in my game, a GM or a Player could still do it, but I make it a point that playgroups need to establish a specific Game Tone for themselves, so that there's an established boundary to where they can take the game through improv, and the game itself is designed to yes,and that choice whatever it may be.

Whether you go looney tunes wacky or game of thrones gritty grimdark or anything inbetween, the game isn't going to block you. Course, the caveat is that if you block the game, the game will break. No silently suffering game here, as its been designed with heavy integration between all of its elements.

If I’m understanding your definition of “blocking” correctly, it’s not possible in the game I’m designing. By rule, success is success. A check is instigated by the players when they want to change the status quo, and the GM must either accept it or suggest consequences, which starts the check resolution procedure.

If the result of a check is a success, it must be respected. Checks can also include consequences in their results. If there are any, they cannot negate the success. Doing so is a misplay by the GM, and players would be correct to call it out.

Obviously, there is nothing I can do to stop people from playing the game wrong, so I don’t worry about trying to enforce that. Anything I tried could likewise also be ignored.

That all said, it does prove prudent to point out that at this point I don't actually call my games RPGs anymore anyway, given just how deeply entrenched all this baggage is (can't count how many times I've had people elsewhere straight up tell me I'm not making an RPG, so I just embraced it).

I call them Immersive Improv, which better describes what my games do and has been designed to provide for, which has been nice if only because I no longer have to concern myself with saddling the game with said baggage, but also because I've observed that change actually making the game click better for people coming from RPGs.

(Which all then just begets people who question why I bother coming into RPG spaces, which is just sad, rude, and incredibly gatekeepy. Yet more reason I generally consider these spaces worthless unless I just feel like getting into it or want eyes on the things Im doing)

I use “RPG” in the title of my game¹ (though I also subtitle it as a “fantasy adventure game”) and will probably mention in the introduction that it’s a “role-playing game”, but I don’t plan to spend much time waxing poetic about it. I’d rather just tell people how to play the game and what it’s about.

---

[1]: I’ve so far refrained from announcing it publicly and plan to continue doing so for now. While I’ve gotten over referring to it as my “homebrew system”, it’s still just several piles of notes. It feels weird to talk about it by name when it’s not even organized enough that I could give someone a PDF of the core rules (and yet my players refer to our sessions by its name, which means it’s probably a “me” thing).

 

[Emberashh]

You're trying to make a call to "Improv" and "Yes, and" as established, clear rules we all understand and that's just not the case

Just the opposite. The failure to recognize also means people are most often unaware of these elements and how to approach them.

Just hop over to the DND forum here and try talking about Improvise Action; you'll be met with cries of "GM Fiat" even though improvisation, and yes,and along with it, is explicitly a part of the rules. Some of that is on the person being unreasonable, but that in of itself is rooted in poor, unintegrated design.

The way you're using the terms seems even more idiosyncratic, with your use of "yes, and" above serving to encompass "no, but" for example.

No, I don't think so. Yes,and is what it is, and it has a specific definition which I'm adhering to. No,But isn't actually distinct from it, fyi, just a different side of the same principle.

And besides that, if one really wants to dig into the question of how improv ought to be approached, I actually take more to "Follow the Follower" as the rule over Yes,And, but understanding that is harder on a purely textual basis, which is the advantage Yes,And has over it, and it can be very easy to misapply that approach in the narrative improv thats core to RPGs.

Constant escalation isn't necessarily whats called for in a narrative, so its on the other participants understanding that they can organically deescalate without having to block the other participants. Its much harder to teach that purely through explaining it via text than Yes,And is, where you just need to understand how to accept what the other participants are doing, rather than paying attention to the ebb and flow of the game itself in addition.

This is where integration becomes key and why I harp on about it so much, as the game itself is well suited to bear the need for deescalation. Easiest example I can point to there is the issue of HP bloat; all other things being well designed, HP bloat means things drag on unnecessarily and begets more and more extreme escalations to overcome. With carefully curated HP values, you can avoid this problem to keep things snappy.

HP bloat generally isn't blocking, but it is a problem that manifests in and impacts the experience in a very similiar way.

I think you're skipping some steps.

More like I just have virtually no interest in starting another Forge, and for whatever reason people seem very averse to asking questions and having a dialogue, and responses often come from a place of "I disagree" rather than "help me understand your meaning, and here's what I've done to try and understand you".

I don't mind explaining myself more thoroughly, but that has to come with actual engagement, and its been my experience that when I give such an explanation, nobody reads it because its a lot to read and internalize.

I have a design post on the front page that's received zero responses, despite putting the effort into clearly communicating how I defined the design problem, what I wanted out of it, and how I arrived at my solution, as well as the necessary context to understand how the system works.

And thats just for a concept of a combat system adapted from my current one, not an entire design philosophy embedded into every aspect of of a large scope game like Labyrinthian. Hence my focus being on the game itself more so than trying to create a movement or whatever.

And of course now the academic brain in me wants to do it anyway, so I guess we'll see.

All that said, the core question here isn't really that complex. As I noted, if a game presents an open ended possibility space (What do you do?), its an improv game.

Given that, if you understand the dynamics of blocking in improv, there's a clear throughline from blocking to the various issues I've pointed to, because they cause the same kind of problems in the play experience.

Blocking of course isn't the only problem that can manifest in Improv games, but most often, if an issue doesn't qualify it probably still can be expressed through something already identified in Improv. HP bloat mirroring the issue of constant escalation in narrative improv is such an example. No one is being blocked, but the experience is still disrupted because an unwelcome extreme has been introduced.

As an aside, I don’t have a negative perception of “railroading”. I prefer to assess games for what they offer and decide based on whether that sounds fun. Sometimes that would in fact (and has been) a “railroad”. There’s maximalist take on play in RPG discourse that I find a little frustrating. Sometimes I don’t actually need a lot of “player agency” as long as there are interesting decisions to be made or things to do.

Oh for sure, it isn't necessarily bad, but it comes down to consent. Even after taking to and internalizing my ideas about improv, I don't find any issues integrating with more railroaded experiences, whether thats plotwise or thematic, because I'm doing so with informed consent. That's ultimately the idea behind Yes,And, after all. Narrative Improv experiences hinge on the idea that certain things are fixed (at least initially) in the experience, and its on participants to accept those ideas.

The importance of Session Zeroes and setting expectations is how that need for informed consent manifests in RPGs. I would hope one can see why I keep coming to the conclusions I do.

I adapted the example from the improv wiki article on blocking. Assume that without invoking game mechanics, the answer is some form of “no”. My intent is to work through an example to establish similarities and differences between these definitions.

I see. The issue was you changed the context of the example. In theirs, Person 1 isn't a stranger to Person 2, but a spouse or significant other, which they established in what they said. Person 2 then rejects that idea directly.

But, even then, its still a bit of a bad example even on their part, as whether or not thats blocking actually depends on the context of the interaction and the nature of the experience itself.

If we're talking Improv Comedy, this could very easily be the basis of a bit, and the players can bounce off each other trying to reconcile their two conflicting ideas of who they are as characters.

But if this was supposed to be a serious, grounded narrative improv experience, Person 2 would be in the wrong, but only if it goes against the idea of the narrative. Person 2 could easily be portraying a character whose literally losing their mind, and the pair can follow each other down that route, and this would be perfectly inline if the narrative was intended to be a psychological drama.

We don't ultimately know if this was truly a block because we have no context for what the purpose of the scene was and what happened after person 2's response.

I mentioned earlier the importance of establishing Game Tone in my game; this is why. A narrative experience doesn't have to be one note (ie, only one thematic premise), but the group needs to understand the tone they want to maintain as they approach a variety of possible narratives, including for that matter, things less serious or even comedic, even if their chosen Tone is more to the grim and gritty.

Note: After going back to the linked page, I did see they noted that the context of the scene was explicitly the beginning of one where nothing else has been previously established.

This is where the nature of narrative improv comes in, because a lot of things are established ahead of time; in the instance of an RPG, the rules and the gameworld are preestablished with the general understanding that people will behave as you'd intuitively expect.

Accosting random people in a bar about nefarious activities just makes you come off as a narc; of course they're not going to talk to you, even if they don't have anything to disclose anyway.

Do game mechanics matter for this distinction?

Thats where we get into the weeds of specific implementations and integrations. In the instance you're pointing to here, it comes down to how the procedure to interact with a person is mechanically designed. The common wisdom to not call for a roll if there's not a chance of failure is a common way to approach that in a system-generic way. Indie game style roll-if-the-system-acknowledges-it is another way.

My personal preference is to just recontextualize what dice mechanics are for and what results mean; that's manifested in quite a few ways throughout my system but the first instance was me realizing that letting modifiers eclipse the die (eg up to +30 on a d20 roll) actually makes for both a simpler game to run over time, and makes the swinginess of 1d20 very desirable and exciting, particularly when combined with Interpretative Difficulty rather than hard target numbers.

If I’m understanding your definition of “blocking” correctly, it’s not possible in the game I’m designing. By rule, success is success. A check is instigated by the players when they want to change the status quo, and the GM must either accept it or suggest consequences, which starts the check resolution procedure.

If the result of a check is a success, it must be respected. Checks can also include consequences in their results. If there are any, they cannot negate the success. Doing so is a misplay by the GM, and players would be correct to call it out.

Obviously, there is nothing I can do to stop people from playing the game wrong, so I don’t worry about trying to enforce that. Anything I tried could likewise also be ignored.

I certainly don't see any issues just based on this. There's a clear collaboration going on between the three participants in that procedure, and the only way to disrupt it, as you noted, is if people just play it incorrectly.

The only stickling point Id say is the nature of possible consequences and how thats determined, but without more context its hard to say. How it works could still avoid it, or it could push towards something like Writers Rooms, where how consequences are suggested, too often (or at all) necessitates stepping out of the game to hash them out.

 

[pemerton]

If I’m understanding your definition of “blocking” correctly, it’s not possible in the game I’m designing. By rule, success is success. A check is instigated by the players when they want to change the status quo, and the GM must either accept it or suggest consequences, which starts the check resolution procedure.

If the result of a check is a success, it must be respected. Checks can also include consequences in their results. If there are any, they cannot negate the success. Doing so is a misplay by the GM, and players would be correct to call it out.

Obviously, there is nothing I can do to stop people from playing the game wrong, so I don’t worry about trying to enforce that. Anything I tried could likewise also be ignored.

My thought in response to this is both yes and no.

The Lumpley principle is no doubt correct: social aspects of play, including shared uptake of procedures and mechanics for determining what to imagine together, are prior to any written text or normative vision.

But procedures themselves can be different in the way that they encourage (or don't) people to play together in the hoped-for way. In saying this, I'm thinking of these two Vincent Baker blogs:

anyway: Lazy Play vs IIEE with Teeth

I've s-blocked the actual text for length:

Spoiler

Here's my personal rephrasing of IIEE. For this thread you can take it as definitional:

In the game's fiction, what must you establish before you roll, and what must you leave unestablished until you've rolled?

In other words, what fictional stuff do you need to know in order to roll at all, and what fictional stuff should you let the roll decide?

Look familiar? It's what I've been talking about for the last 2 months. Fictional causes, fictional effects.

Here's a quick resolution mechanism.

1. We each say what our characters are trying to accomplish. For instance: "My character's trying to get away." "My character's trying to shoot yours."


2. We roll dice or draw cards against one another to see which character or characters accomplish what they're trying to accomplish. For instance: "Oh no! My character doesn't get away." "Hooray! My character shoots yours."

What must we establish before we roll? What our characters intend to accomplish.

What does the roll decide? Whether our characters indeed accomplish what they intend.

What do the rules never, ever, ever require us to say? The details of our characters' actual actions. It's like one minute both our characters are poised to act, and the next minute my character's stuck in the room and your character's shot her, but we never see my character scrambling to open the window and we never hear your character's gun go off.

Maybe we CAN say what our characters do. Maybe the way the dice or cards work, there's a little space where we can pause and just say it. Maybe that's even what we're supposed to do. "Always say what your characters do," the rules say, maybe. "No exceptions and I mean it." It remains, though, that we don't HAVE to, and if we don't, the game just chugs along without it. We play it lazy, and we get the reading-too-fast effect that Frank describes.

Contrast Dogs in the Vineyard, where if you don't say in detail what your character does, the other player asks you and waits patiently for you to answer, because she needs to know. She can't decide what to do with her dice without knowing. Dogs in the Vineyard's IIEE has teeth, it's self-enforcing.

In a Wicked Age has a similar problem to the example's. Maybe a worse problem. The rules say "say what your character does. Does somebody else's character act to stop yours? Then roll dice." That's what the rules say. But if, instead, you say what your character intends to accomplish, and somebody else says that their character hopes she doesn't accomplish it, and you roll dice then - the game chugs along, not noticing that you're playing it wrong, until suddenly, later, it grinds to a confusing and unsatisfying standstill and it's not really clear what broke it. If you play In a Wicked Age lazy, the game doesn't correct you; but instead of the reading-too-fast effect, you crash and burn.

So now, if you're sitting down to design a game, think hard. Most players are pretty lazy, and telling them to do something isn't the same as designing mechanisms that require them to do it. Telling them won't make them. Some X-percent of your players will come to you like, "yeah, we didn't really see why we'd do that, so we didn't bother. Totally unrelated: the game wasn't that fun," and you're slapping yourself in the forehead. Do you really want to depend on your players' discipline, their will and ability to do what you tell them to just because you told them to? Will lazy players play the game right, because you've given your IIEE self-enforcement, or might they play it wrong, because the game doesn't correct them? Inevitably, the people who play your game, they'll come to it with habits they've learned from other games. If their habits suit your design, all's well, but if they don't, and your game doesn't reach into their play and correct them, they'll play your game wrong without realizing it. How well will your game do under those circumstances? Is that okay with you?

Take Dogs in the Vineyard again: not everybody likes the game. (Duh.) But most of the people who've tried it have played it correctly, because it's self-enforcing, and so if they don't like it, cool, they legitimately don't like it. I'm not at all confident that's true of In a Wicked Age.

You could blame the players, for being lazy and for bringing bad habits. (As though they might not!) You could blame the text, for not being clear or emphatic enough. (As though it could be! No text can overcome laziness and bad habits.) Me, I blame the design, for not being self-enforcing.

The second one is here anyway: That Reminds Me:

The real cause and effect in a roleplaying game isn't in the fictional game world, it's at the table, in what the players and GM say and do.

If you want awesome stuff to happen in your game, you don't need rules to model the characters doing awesome things, you need rules to provoke the players to say awesome things. That's the real cause and effect at work: things happen because someone says they do. If you want cool things to happen, get someone to say something cool. . . .

If your rules model a character's doing cool things, and in so doing they get the players to say cool things, that's great. I have nothing against modeling the cool things characters do as such.

Just, if your rules model a character's doing cool things, but the player using them still says dull things, that's not so great.

You want your rules to actually GET them to say cool things. Turning to them like "okay say something cool. Well? Well?" is a crappy way to go about that, it doesn't work.

No, what you have to do as designer is organize the game behind the scenes, like, so that what the players say without really thinking, what they say just naturally, are cool things.​

Luke Crane's much more summary version of the point is to describe game design as mind control.

 

[pemerton]

An example of a system that doesn't meet the standards that Baker sets for design is Duel of Wits in Burning Wheel.

The rules say that you need to speak your PC's part as you declare and resolve your actions. But you don't have to - you can just script (say) Point, Rebut, Dismiss and then resolve those actions mechanically. And then only at the end, when it comes to negotiating the compromise, will you discover a "gap" and have things come apart a bit - because without those parts having been spoken, the stakes of the argument haven't become clear, and hence no compromise naturally suggests itself.

When we play BW, and Torchbearer which has the similar issue, it is our "habits" that we bring that overcome the problem. The game isn't self-enforcing.

 

[FrogReaver]

Just the opposite. The failure to recognize also means people are most often unaware of these elements and how to approach them.

Just hop over to the DND forum here and try talking about Improvise Action; you'll be met with cries of "GM Fiat" even though improvisation, and yes,and along with it, is explicitly a part of the rules. Some of that is on the person being unreasonable, but that in of itself is rooted in poor, unintegrated design.



No, I don't think so. Yes,and is what it is, and it has a specific definition which I'm adhering to. No,But isn't actually distinct from it, fyi, just a different side of the same principle.

And besides that, if one really wants to dig into the question of how improv ought to be approached, I actually take more to "Follow the Follower" as the rule over Yes,And, but understanding that is harder on a purely textual basis, which is the advantage Yes,And has over it, and it can be very easy to misapply that approach in the narrative improv thats core to RPGs.

Constant escalation isn't necessarily whats called for in a narrative, so its on the other participants understanding that they can organically deescalate without having to block the other participants. Its much harder to teach that purely through explaining it via text than Yes,And is, where you just need to understand how to accept what the other participants are doing, rather than paying attention to the ebb and flow of the game itself in addition.

This is where integration becomes key and why I harp on about it so much, as the game itself is well suited to bear the need for deescalation. Easiest example I can point to there is the issue of HP bloat; all other things being well designed, HP bloat means things drag on unnecessarily and begets more and more extreme escalations to overcome. With carefully curated HP values, you can avoid this problem to keep things snappy.

HP bloat generally isn't blocking, but it is a problem that manifests in and impacts the experience in a very similiar way.



More like I just have virtually no interest in starting another Forge, and for whatever reason people seem very averse to asking questions and having a dialogue, and responses often come from a place of "I disagree" rather than "help me understand your meaning, and here's what I've done to try and understand you".

I don't mind explaining myself more thoroughly, but that has to come with actual engagement, and its been my experience that when I give such an explanation, nobody reads it because its a lot to read and internalize.

I have a design post on the front page that's received zero responses, despite putting the effort into clearly communicating how I defined the design problem, what I wanted out of it, and how I arrived at my solution, as well as the necessary context to understand how the system works.

And thats just for a concept of a combat system adapted from my current one, not an entire design philosophy embedded into every aspect of of a large scope game like Labyrinthian. Hence my focus being on the game itself more so than trying to create a movement or whatever.

And of course now the academic brain in me wants to do it anyway, so I guess we'll see.

All that said, the core question here isn't really that complex. As I noted, if a game presents an open ended possibility space (What do you do?), its an improv game.

Given that, if you understand the dynamics of blocking in improv, there's a clear throughline from blocking to the various issues I've pointed to, because they cause the same kind of problems in the play experience.

Blocking of course isn't the only problem that can manifest in Improv games, but most often, if an issue doesn't qualify it probably still can be expressed through something already identified in Improv. HP bloat mirroring the issue of constant escalation in narrative improv is such an example. No one is being blocked, but the experience is still disrupted because an unwelcome extreme has been introduced.



Oh for sure, it isn't necessarily bad, but it comes down to consent. Even after taking to and internalizing my ideas about improv, I don't find any issues integrating with more railroaded experiences, whether thats plotwise or thematic, because I'm doing so with informed consent. That's ultimately the idea behind Yes,And, after all. Narrative Improv experiences hinge on the idea that certain things are fixed (at least initially) in the experience, and its on participants to accept those ideas.

The importance of Session Zeroes and setting expectations is how that need for informed consent manifests in RPGs. I would hope one can see why I keep coming to the conclusions I do.



I see. The issue was you changed the context of the example. In theirs, Person 1 isn't a stranger to Person 2, but a spouse or significant other, which they established in what they said. Person 2 then rejects that idea directly.

But, even then, its still a bit of a bad example even on their part, as whether or not thats blocking actually depends on the context of the interaction and the nature of the experience itself.

If we're talking Improv Comedy, this could very easily be the basis of a bit, and the players can bounce off each other trying to reconcile their two conflicting ideas of who they are as characters.

But if this was supposed to be a serious, grounded narrative improv experience, Person 2 would be in the wrong, but only if it goes against the idea of the narrative. Person 2 could easily be portraying a character whose literally losing their mind, and the pair can follow each other down that route, and this would be perfectly inline if the narrative was intended to be a psychological drama.

We don't ultimately know if this was truly a block because we have no context for what the purpose of the scene was and what happened after person 2's response.

I mentioned earlier the importance of establishing Game Tone in my game; this is why. A narrative experience doesn't have to be one note (ie, only one thematic premise), but the group needs to understand the tone they want to maintain as they approach a variety of possible narratives, including for that matter, things less serious or even comedic, even if their chosen Tone is more to the grim and gritty.

Note: After going back to the linked page, I did see they noted that the context of the scene was explicitly the beginning of one where nothing else has been previously established.

This is where the nature of narrative improv comes in, because a lot of things are established ahead of time; in the instance of an RPG, the rules and the gameworld are preestablished with the general understanding that people will behave as you'd intuitively expect.

Accosting random people in a bar about nefarious activities just makes you come off as a narc; of course they're not going to talk to you, even if they don't have anything to disclose anyway.



Thats where we get into the weeds of specific implementations and integrations. In the instance you're pointing to here, it comes down to how the procedure to interact with a person is mechanically designed. The common wisdom to not call for a roll if there's not a chance of failure is a common way to approach that in a system-generic way. Indie game style roll-if-the-system-acknowledges-it is another way.

My personal preference is to just recontextualize what dice mechanics are for and what results mean; that's manifested in quite a few ways throughout my system but the first instance was me realizing that letting modifiers eclipse the die (eg up to +30 on a d20 roll) actually makes for both a simpler game to run over time, and makes the swinginess of 1d20 very desirable and exciting, particularly when combined with Interpretative Difficulty rather than hard target numbers.



I certainly don't see any issues just based on this. There's a clear collaboration going on between the three participants in that procedure, and the only way to disrupt it, as you noted, is if people just play it incorrectly.

The only stickling point Id say is the nature of possible consequences and how thats determined, but without more context its hard to say. How it works could still avoid it, or it could push towards something like Writers Rooms, where how consequences are suggested, too often (or at all) necessitates stepping out of the game to hash them out.

IMO. Improv is blocking and railroading. ‘If I improv that you are quacking like a duck then you can’t not be quacking like a duck…’

 

[kenada]

I see. The issue was you changed the context of the example. In theirs, Person 1 isn't a stranger to Person 2, but a spouse or significant other, which they established in what they said. Person 2 then rejects that idea directly.

But, even then, its still a bit of a bad example even on their part, as whether or not thats blocking actually depends on the context of the interaction and the nature of the experience itself.

If we're talking Improv Comedy, this could very easily be the basis of a bit, and the players can bounce off each other trying to reconcile their two conflicting ideas of who they are as characters.

But if this was supposed to be a serious, grounded narrative improv experience, Person 2 would be in the wrong, but only if it goes against the idea of the narrative. Person 2 could easily be portraying a character whose literally losing their mind, and the pair can follow each other down that route, and this would be perfectly inline if the narrative was intended to be a psychological drama.

We don't ultimately know if this was truly a block because we have no context for what the purpose of the scene was and what happened after person 2's response.

I mentioned earlier the importance of establishing Game Tone in my game; this is why. A narrative experience doesn't have to be one note (ie, only one thematic premise), but the group needs to understand the tone they want to maintain as they approach a variety of possible narratives, including for that matter, things less serious or even comedic, even if their chosen Tone is more to the grim and gritty.

Note: After going back to the linked page, I did see they noted that the context of the scene was explicitly the beginning of one where nothing else has been previously established.

This is where the nature of narrative improv comes in, because a lot of things are established ahead of time; in the instance of an RPG, the rules and the gameworld are preestablished with the general understanding that people will behave as you'd intuitively expect.

Accosting random people in a bar about nefarious activities just makes you come off as a narc; of course they're not going to talk to you, even if they don't have anything to disclose anyway.

My primary concern is blocking in the context of tabletop RPGs, so I’m not sure I’m getting much out of the comparisons to various forms of improv.

Would it be fair to say that blocking constitutes play that causes the forward momentum of the scene to stop? That could be a DM’s abusing the rules force certain outcomes, doing things in-character to mess with other players, etc. For example, a player who creates a loner PC that never participates and gets the party killed when he doesn’t come to help.

(Out of curiosity, how does this work with PvP? Is it possible for players to oppose each other? While it’s unusual and typically unwanted in D&D, it’s not in other games.)

Thats where we get into the weeds of specific implementations and integrations. In the instance you're pointing to here, it comes down to how the procedure to interact with a person is mechanically designed. The common wisdom to not call for a roll if there's not a chance of failure is a common way to approach that in a system-generic way. Indie game style roll-if-the-system-acknowledges-it is another way.

My personal preference is to just recontextualize what dice mechanics are for and what results mean; that's manifested in quite a few ways throughout my system but the first instance was me realizing that letting modifiers eclipse the die (eg up to +30 on a d20 roll) actually makes for both a simpler game to run over time, and makes the swinginess of 1d20 very desirable and exciting, particularly when combined with Interpretative Difficulty rather than hard target numbers.

I would assume that the mechanics are actually effective in practice. I would assume that some games that put too much discretion in the hands of the GM could result in blocking even when the mechanics should allow an attempt by the players.

The only stickling point Id say is the nature of possible consequences and how thats determined, but without more context its hard to say. How it works could still avoid it, or it could push towards something like Writers Rooms, where how consequences are suggested, too often (or at all) necessitates stepping out of the game to hash them out.

The overall dynamic between the various participants is meant to be open and collaborative, but discussing the best move for “narrative purposes” or excitement or whatever isn’t appropriate. That kind of “Writers’ Room” is a misplay (that I have had to address, which fortunately hasn’t happened again).

Procedurally, the GM is responsible for foregrounding consequences as part of the procedure for initiating a check. Obvious consequences can be unstated, but there should be some that are foregrounded. Consequences themselves can be big or small with what that means defined by the system. Big consequences only happen on a failure or after being foreshadowed by a small consequence.

The basic structure a check works is as part of a conflict. For a “simple” check, a level 1 conflict is always used. The result of the check marks progress on the conflict. If it is not cleared, consequences happen. Conflicts continue until they are cleared or their loss condition occurs (e.g., you are trying to escape, but you are caught). As an exception, level 1 conflicts always end after one roll. If they are not cleared, there are consequences.

One of my reasons for incorporating conflicts this way is to allow for large values in the result. Instead of having degrees of success, consequences happen as the conflicts proceeds. Otherwise, someone with a good enough modifier would always succeed, effectively breaking the conflict engine. You can see an example of my game in action in my last post in the commentary thread (plus other sessions, albeit with older versions).

Mechanically, a check is 2d6 + method + approach. The result is compared to a target number, generating a margin. The margin is modified by the target’s mitigation. If the result is negative, the dice used to generate damage (or progress on a tracker) are reduced (by 1d per negative to 1 from 0d6 to 0 from 1).

• Method can be a skill, a proficiency, or a defense. It can also be a specialty in some cases. Specialities are one of the ways you customize your character.
• Approach is usually one of your attributes, but it can be defense type in combat (dodge, block, or parry).
• Mitigation for attacks is obvious: ballistic, bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing; plus the elemental types (earth, fire, water, ice, light, death, air, lightning).
• Mitigation for non-attacks can be situational. Like if you piss off someone, they may have mitigation against a certain line of argument.

Damage/progress is based on your weapon, Wisdom, or some other factor. For example, someone offered a large and high quality gift, which gave them +3d6 on that particular Negotiation check’s progress. When Deirdre was looking for information, she had +0d6 on her progress to find information on town based on her +0d6 warrior Wisdom (knowing which kind of haunts they’d hang out). If someone hit something with a 2-handed sword, that would deal +2d6 damage (plus margin after mitigation, for all of these).

 

[pemerton]

The overall dynamic between the various participants is meant to be open and collaborative, but discussing the best move for “narrative purposes” or excitement or whatever isn’t appropriate. That kind of “Writers’ Room” is a misplay

<snip>

Procedurally, the GM is responsible for foregrounding consequences as part of the procedure for initiating a check. Obvious consequences can be unstated, but there should be some that are foregrounded.

This has me thinking more about compromises in Torchbearer 2e and in BW Duel of Wits.

These are, literally, negotiated - and so to that extent there is what might be called a "writers' room" dynamic. The severity/significance is dependent on the degree of mechanical set-back suffered by the winning side of the conflict (in DoW that is loss to the body of argument; in TB it is hp loss). And so to that extent, there is an element to the negotiation that is not just thinking about the fiction.

But the fiction should still be the preponderant consideration: what makes sense given what has been happening, and what has just happened. It shouldn't be about "What would make for a cool story?" - the "coolness" should already be implicit, because the trajectory of the fiction should already be cool (as per Baker's injunction that the game should prompt the participants to say cool things).

 

[Emberashh]

IMO. Improv is blocking and railroading. ‘If I improv that you are quacking like a duck then you can’t not be quacking like a duck…’

That's contextual as to whether or not imposing that on somebody is blocking or not. In a comedic skit, all that strictly matters is that its funny and you're not doing it to be a dweeb. In something more on the serious side of things, which includes most RPGs, that specific example very quickly becomes inappropriate.

But! The idea of a participant imposing something on the others isn't. Thats how Narrative Improv, and thus RPGs as well, typically operate with regards to the Rules being imposed. For example changing your race if its really important to the player is something relatively innocuous that can be smoothed over with the right tact, even though its technically blocking. But randomly deciding you're no longer an Orc is a different story.

And I've already covered how Rule Zero in of itself is also blocking, and theres no shortage of examples of how that can spiral into a host of other issues depending on the game.

My primary concern is blocking in the context of tabletop RPGs, so I’m not sure I’m getting much out of the comparisons to various forms of improv.

Narrative improv is important in particular because thats the specific kind of Improv thats fundamental to RPGs, but my reference to other types was to illustrate that blocking is contextual. Whats blocking in a comedy skit isn't necessarily the same thing as blocking in a narrative experience or vice versa.

Would it be fair to say that blocking constitutes play that causes the forward momentum of the scene to stop? That could be a DM’s abusing the rules force certain outcomes, doing things in-character to mess with other players, etc. For example, a player who creates a loner PC that never participates and gets the party killed when he doesn’t come to help.

Exactly correct, yes. Its not always strictly a bad thing, to be clear. If one ever gets around to watching Dimension 20, Emily Axford in particular is known for the absolutely bizarre, scene killing choices she makes through her characters.

But, because this is pretty much always hilarious, and very much in-line with the comedic tone of the games where she does this, it doesn't become an issue. Critical Role in comparison is much more melodramatic, but even they embrace absurdities and comedy and it doesn't become disruptive as a result, because the group is collectively maintaining the tone of their game. (Ie, they eventually focus back on the game without having to be herded by Matt)

Naturally of course these are both tables with skilled actors and comedians, but they illustrate why game tone matters and why its important to focus on even if you don't have the wit to match these folks, because if everyone's on the same page then a lot of issues just don't manifest.

This is already common advice, after all. The point of contextualizing it through its conceptual ancestor in improv is to more precisely identify where problems come from, and thus from a design perspective, how we can cut them off from occurring in the first place.

(Out of curiosity, how does this work with PvP? Is it possible for players to oppose each other? While it’s unusual and typically unwanted in D&D, it’s not in other games.)

The big thing about it always goes back to consent. If you're engaging in PVP you have to accept the possibility of fully losing, and embrace all that entails. I didn't end up going into it in my last post, but it was on my mind to point out that over in video game land, improv actually has some influence still, particularly when it comes to multiplayer games.

To not get too in the weeds of exploring that, I'll just note that, related to the question of PVP, there's a reason the idea of the angry competitive gamer became a thing, and its not strictly because of immaturity or sportsmanship, though those are certainly big factors.

Its that a lot of those people aren't actually consenting to the idea that they could lose.

I would assume that the mechanics are actually effective in practice. I would assume that some games that put too much discretion in the hands of the GM could result in blocking even when the mechanics should allow an attempt by the players.

Oh they are, for sure. The idea behind what I call Interpretative Difficulty is that the cost of rolling low is Time, not failure, and that failure itself is generated through a separate mechanic that opens the possibility space to much more than just hard failure, but also supports its own opposite for rewarding especially high rolls.

In otherwords, the whole thing revolves around a greatly iterated upon Tension Pool, where the Pool can generate not just Complications, but Encounters and Boons, which if one remembers, also forms the basis of my Living World system and is how Time is tracked.

Meanwhile, the question of GM discretion is pretty core to why I've been talking about Game Tone, and having to adhere to Yes,And as the GM. The only reason the GM should be outright denying is in the egregious disregard of the groups chosen tone, but even then theres flexibility there.

I've talked before about my Events system for travel/exploration, where players receive prompts that they're free to interpret however, and inclined players could use them to substantially alter the gameworld, such as conjuring a huge pile of gold into a forest.

The GM in such cases has a lot of ways to handle something like that, it just depends on the context. If the player is just being a cynical dweeb who isn't respecting the spirit of the game, blocking is probably necessary to maintain the game tone, and this becomes a matter of addressing bad player behavior.

But, it might not be like that. The player might be earnestly interpreting their Event, and the game tone might not restrict such nonsensical things just happening, and this conjured pile of gold can be approached in a lot of fun ways through how the Events system is resolved. The GM could straight up say the gold has disappeared when the players go to investigate, but the ground clearly shows a huge indent where it sat. They could also say the gold morphs and shifts into a huge Mimic or a sleeping Dragon. The gold could carry a terrible curse. The gold might just be straight up fake and it was dumped in the forest.

If other players have Events, they could be combined. The gold may well be real, but when the party returns they stumble on the small but elite military outfit another player saw running through the forest loading it up, because their job was to recover it. Thats when they realize the bandits a third player overheard are hanging from the trees by the neck.

And so on. The idea behind Events is that the group is collaborating on the things they experience as they travel or explore, and the GM is explicitly a participant in that collaboration (as they are in all aspects of the game). Its everyones responsibility to maintain their Game Tone, so especially egregious abuses shouldn't be happening to begin with, but edge cases can be embraced, and the momentum of play can continue.

Those examples all open up to a variety of new adventures or events, which is the precise point of the system.

The overall dynamic between the various participants is meant to be open and collaborative, but discussing the best move for “narrative purposes” or excitement or whatever isn’t appropriate. That kind of “Writers’ Room” is a misplay (that I have had to address, which fortunately hasn’t happened again).

Procedurally, the GM is responsible for foregrounding consequences as part of the procedure for initiating a check. Obvious consequences can be unstated, but there should be some that are foregrounded. Consequences themselves can be big or small with what that means defined by the system. Big consequences only happen on a failure or after being foreshadowed by a small consequence.

The basic structure a check works is as part of a conflict. For a “simple” check, a level 1 conflict is always used. The result of the check marks progress on the conflict. If it is not cleared, consequences happen. Conflicts continue until they are cleared or their loss condition occurs (e.g., you are trying to escape, but you are caught). As an exception, level 1 conflicts always end after one roll. If they are not cleared, there are consequences.

One of my reasons for incorporating conflicts this way is to allow for large values in the result. Instead of having degrees of success, consequences happen as the conflicts proceeds. Otherwise, someone with a good enough modifier would always succeed, effectively breaking the conflict engine. You can see an example of my game in action in my last post in the commentary thread (plus other sessions, albeit with older versions).

Mechanically, a check is 2d6 + method + approach. The result is compared to a target number, generating a margin. The margin is modified by the target’s mitigation. If the result is negative, the dice used to generate damage (or progress on a tracker) are reduced (by 1d per negative to 1 from 0d6 to 0 from 1).

• Method can be a skill, a proficiency, or a defense. It can also be a specialty in some cases. Specialities are one of the ways you customize your character.
• Approach is usually one of your attributes, but it can be defense type in combat (dodge, block, or parry).
• Mitigation for attacks is obvious: ballistic, bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing; plus the elemental types (earth, fire, water, ice, light, death, air, lightning).
• Mitigation for non-attacks can be situational. Like if you piss off someone, they may have mitigation against a certain line of argument.

Damage/progress is based on your weapon, Wisdom, or some other factor. For example, someone offered a large and high quality gift, which gave them +3d6 on that particular Negotiation check’s progress. When Deirdre was looking for information, she had +0d6 on her progress to find information on town based on her +0d6 warrior Wisdom (knowing which kind of haunts they’d hang out). If someone hit something with a 2-handed sword, that would deal +2d6 damage (plus margin after mitigation, for all of these).

I see no issues here, other than its just being weird to my virgin eyes to your system, but thats not an actual issue with it lol. There's a clear throughline from player input to GM input to the game's input and back and, barring misplay, there's nothing I can see where there'd be a conflict.

 

[niklinna]

IMO. Improv is blocking and railroading. ‘If I improv that you are quacking like a duck then you can’t not be quacking like a duck…’

That makes no sense to me. You can behave as if somebody else is doing a thing, but that doesn't mean they are doing the thing.

See Vince Baker's story about the smelly chamberlain.