Vincent Baker on mechanics, system and fiction in RPGs

[Shardstone]

Issue is, is that what you're calling "game design" is a much broader topic than what I'm calling game design. What I'm specifically talking about is mechanics and how they feed into an overall game.

What I am not talking about, is anything to do with a specific game medium, whether that's a video game, a tabletop game, a board game, a card game, or whatever.

(Discrete) Mechanics are universal, and thats a premise one has to accept if you're going to understand where I, and the book I'm referencing, are coming from.

And just to pick on the given example, you actually could save scum in a tabletop game. There's nothing stopping a save mechanic being implemented into one, and its actually arguable that one technically exists in any game that doesn't put some sort mechanical constraints (either in the rules or through procedure) on just reattempting any sort of chance-based mechanism.

That's a shortcoming of tabletop games that can't rely on continnous mechanics (IE, real time physics simulations, the types of mechanics unique to computer based games) to enforce that state naturally.

I agree very heavily with this post and your previous one about how video game design is applicable to tabletop. To be frank, ignoring the countless innovations we see in video games when it comes to TTRPGs is something I'll never think is sensible. I learned more about how to design a TTRPG from Elden Ring then I did any other single RPG. I learned more about how to make combat feel good from games like Sekiro and Armored Core 6 then I did any other TTRPG. Games like Cuphead, Mario Oddessy, Breath of the Wild, and God of the War -- these games all showed me all kinds of ways to go about making a game feel fun, unique, focused-yet-open.

Now, none of these taught me some core things I needed to know. TTRPGs like Mythic Bastionland taught me how to do a new kind of combat that I enjoy; games like Hollows (not yet released) showed me new ways of handling battlemaps and weapons; games like Ryuutama showed me new ways of portraying the GM, etc etc. But to ignore how many lessons video game design has for TTRPG design is purposefully holding back TTRPG design.

That being said, it requires a real desire to want to deconstruct things to make other things, and I think a lot of people are looking more for axioms or procedures to follow instead of approaching each thing from a lens of "What can I learn about this?"

 

[Emberashh]

games like Hollows (not yet released) showed me new ways of handling battlemaps

You might just recognize where my games mapping system came from.

But yeah, the desire for a methodology is why I hopped on the game pattern train and why I basically call GM:AGD my Bible.

While it takes some studying to be able to pick up, once you've got it you basically start to seeing through the Matrix.

As an aside, do you know whats going on with Hollows? I haven't been able to ascertains whats going on with it or where any updates are being posted.

 

[Shardstone]

You might just recognize where my games mapping system came from.

But yeah, the desire for a methodology is why I hopped on the game pattern train and why I basically call GM:AGD my Bible.

While it takes some studying to be able to pick up, once you've got it you basically start to seeing through the Matrix.

As an aside, do you know whats going on with Hollows? I haven't been able to ascertains whats going on with it or where any updates are being posted.

Since the Eat the Reich Kickstarter happened, he basically took a break on working on it. If you join his discord via his patreon, you can see where Howitt's been updating the ideas at.

I think how Hollows does boss battles is one of the great innovations in TTRPGs the last couple of decades. It really solved so many problems I had with boss-focused TTRPG combat.

 

[FrogReaver]

1) I don't know why you keep going back to "best practices" and implying that they have anything to do with my preferences (about anything). I can only assume this is a total misread of my earlier post on the subject? The concept of "best practices" has nothing to do with my preferences and is specific to a given game.

A particular game will tell you what its "best practices" are:

* Don't build an archer using a character with Dex as a dump stat and who isn't proficient in bows.

* Don't turtle when the game explicitly says "go boldly into danger" while (a) rewarding you for doing so and (b) giving you tools to manage it.

* Don't play a slow midrange deck when you're facing off against an aggro deck.

* Don't expose your neck against someone who specializes in chokes.

Etc.

2) My contention is that that discord and dysfunction tend to follow games that don't say what they do and/or don't do what they say. If its a parlor game/boardgame/TTRPG then people get confused and frustrated and either gracefully quit-out or opt-in and express their confusion and frustration with their voice/negative demeanor (either passive-aggressively or overtly) and with their play (which is some combination of game-stalling inefficient or game-wrecking awkward filled with qualitative or quantitative, unintentional misplays). If its a ball sport game or otherwise physical (like grappling or climbing), then play will tend toward being outright dangerous for the participants.

---

If we stick to TTRPGs alone, the only solve for this that I know of is a very narrow brand of heavily GM-led games where GMs control all substantive content introduction, mediate all aspects of play, and, through that, effectively own all gamestate/fiction trajectory (maintaining that via overt or covert manipulation of the gamestate/fiction as necessary). Because of this, player contribution/responsibility is mostly affectation and color while the GM moves the Ouija planchette around the board.

That is one particular solve of the kind of discord and dysfunction I'm pointing at and its for one particular brand of play.

Which is fine. Its a solve. And its a playstyle. But it would be nice if it was transparent about what it is if for no other reason than the participants involved (a) know what their commitment level entails, what their overhead and responsibilities to play are and (b) to sharpen their skills at what they're contributing while not wasting time on superfluous things. So in the above mentioned style of play, players should be working on their social confidence/subverting shyness to achieve some level of equality of performative contribution, being vigilant for GM cues, being wary and respectful of/deferential to other player contributions of color and affectation, honing their own affectation and color contribution capabilities, and having a passable knowledge of system so that you're not a liability when you do system-ey stuff (which the GM is apt to covertly manipulate if things go awry so the burden here is not too great); these would constitute "best practices".

Maybe the takeaway is that your example of character sheets only should have content central to the game was a contentious example that has ended up detracting from what you really want to talk about.

I think there’s some good stuff in your posts but I’m really struggling to get past the character sheet part - and also the reaction that calling it a preference is anything but kind.

Heck, even the pushback you give above about best practices is something I don’t really get - like you do think it’s a best practice to for character sheets to only have content on them central to the game, right? **I really hope I’m not that far off in my reading comprehension!

 

[FrogReaver]

I think part of @Manbearcat's point, following from the Vincent Baker blog linked to in the OP, is that if that "fluff" - what Baker calls position - is an important element of play, then it should be on the character sheet. As it is a component of the character.

A couple of thoughts - perhaps it would help to define what it means to be an important element of play. For example: Is a character background in d&d I created to help ground and drive my roleplay decisions but isn’t used any other way an important element of play? I’d think your answer would be no - but maybe I’m mistaken. In either case I think that’s a perfectly valid thing to list on a character sheet.

2. Fluff = position to VB is further evidence for the critique that he often invented needless and confusing jargon to explain his thoughts. It’s easy to do so i get it, but it’s also a big part of the reason people bounce off him IMO.

 

[clearstream]

@Emberashh you (and others) have said many interesting/insightful things, which I may have time and motive to respond to in due course. Here, however, I want to focus on two notions with a view to developing further ideas.

I said

One plays chess in the real world, as it were.

And you responded that...

Stories still happen in the real world, however, so if a story is what one is after, Chess is a possible avenue. The implicit value judgement here is that the stories Chess generates aren't the same as a genre emulating story, and thus they're lesser.

While it is true that the stories are not the same, whether or not one is better than the other is subjective. And moreover, that value judgement also speaks to intention. Baker et al were not exactly coy about pushing genre emulation (ie, storygaming) specifically, and no matter what people may percieve, that is its own game type.

This mistakes the point I am making. No value judgement or even comparison between stories generated by Chess and those from a TTRPG is being made. Rather I am pointing to a categorical distinction between the relationship of play and story. I'm not especially good with examples, but I'll give it a try

Suppose Jo and Addy are playing Chess, and as they make moves each narrates that move. It doesn't bother me how eloquently or elaborately, how realistically or fantastically they narrate. The playing of Chess is the grasping and upholding of its rules, and making legal moves in turn, where given board positions dictate outcomes - such as an end to the game. Their narration is not expected to have any effect on that, nor do the Chess mechanics have the job of driving their narration (compelling and constraining its contents and structure.)

I think you can see that isn't the case with say Blades in the Dark. The mechanics are about compelling and constraining the contents and structure of the narrative. There are overt linkages between fiction and system. (You can see in a game like Dread the possibility of using Chess as a resolution mechanic in an RPG, but then it would become a tool, like dice, and - as in Dread, or as with dice - there would be rules for translating between system state and fiction.)

Turning then to another notion, I said

At a TTRPG table, players can imagine and continue to imagine things in the yard, so long as they like.

And you responded that...

I think it should be considered that this is just as possible in a video game. The use of a rendered, physical/digital gamespace doesn't preclude the capability to percieve the overall "scene" as something more than its parts.

Continuing to reference Blades in the Dark, one general mechanic is called "progress clocks". These can represent anything in fiction where participants want to "track ongoing effort against an obstacle or the approach of impending trouble." Cases - even within the spooky heist fiction of Duskvol - are limitless. Another detailed mechanic is Vice, which characters use to shed stress. It has linkages to fiction in the consequences of "overindulgence". This mechanic is expected to cause change in the fiction, which the player will go on to narrate according to the constraints of those changes, such as by imagining in accord with the rules for Entanglements.

The designer of BitD, John Harper, drew a diagram of what he expected to see in play, in which the core play loop drives via uniform currencies (rep, turf, heat and coin) which are output from improv play (compelled and constrained by various core mechanics + specifics on player-owned character sheets) progression for the players shared "character" i.e. their crew. @pemerton I believe this provides an even more satisfactory example for the character sheets - currencies - fiction discussion in your OP. Looking at both character sheet and crew sheet, and their ledgers of very-obviously-currencies that translate fictional positions into system states (and back).

The words "compel" and "constrain" describe very well what Harper's mechanics are doing in relation to the fiction. If it becomes interesting to do so, down the line I think I can connect my thinking here with arguments tackling your notion of aesthetics from MDA.

I would agree that the diagram you linked offers a practical tool for general game design, while adding that it does not answer the distinct problems found in TTRPG. It doesn't address solving those as acutely as Baker's work. As implied in the example of Chess-as-dice above, we have to design something additional to address them. Games are in a family, but they are not identical in every respect - resulting in incompletely-overlapping sets of problems.

As you go on to say

The difference comes in making those additional imagined elements a new and integrated part of the gameworld, which is where the improv game comes in.

Which I think captures quite well some of the non-overlaps, but we must go further, and understand that what those additional elements can be, and the improv game itself, is in TTRPG expected to be compelled and constrained according to shared norms overlaid by adopted rules.

 

[Umbran]

What I am not talking about, is anything to do with a specific game medium, whether that's a video game, a tabletop game, a board game, a card game, or whatever.

(Discrete) Mechanics are universal, and thats a premise one has to accept if you're going to understand where I, and the book I'm referencing, are coming from.

Mechanics are not universal. The medium matters.

This becomes obvious when you consider games that are not played sitting in place - larps and sports games, for example.

 

[Emberashh]

Suppose Jo and Addy are playing Chess, and as they make moves each narrates that move. It doesn't bother me how eloquently or elaborately, how realistically or fantastically they narrate. The playing of Chess is the grasping and upholding of its rules, and making legal moves in turn, where given board positions dictate outcomes - such as an end to the game. Their narration is not expected to have any effect on that, nor do the Chess mechanics have the job of driving their narration (compelling and constraining its contents and structure.)

I think you can see that isn't the case with say Blades in the Dark. The mechanics are about compelling and constraining the contents and structure of the narrative. There are overt linkages between fiction and system. (You can see in a game like Dread the possibility of using Chess as a resolution mechanic in an RPG, but then it would become a tool, like dice, and - as in Dread, or as with dice - there would be rules for translating between system state and fiction.)

What you're pointing to is genre emulation. Thats one kind of storytelling. The story of a Chess game and how its generated is another.

You may not be intending to, but you are making a value judgement here by not recognizing that the storytelling techniques here are equals.

It doesn't address solving those as acutely as Baker's work

So I posted this in the other topic. The point of these Machination diagrams is to abstract gameplay in a given game in such way that one can examine the individual mechanics that generate gameplay.

There is no game that can't be abstracted in this way, and I'm actually going to walk back that this can't model aesthetic issues. It absolutely can.

For example, in the above example (which is deliberately simplified and incomplete, so don't expect it to be exhaustive) I utilized Ironsworns result model for its Moves. Just looking at it, one can identify an aesthetic issue: 2/3 possibilities are not unambiguous successes, so the overall possibility space of engaging Moves provides a negative feedback loop, and it intuits that this becomes more pronounced the more the Moves are engaged. This is in line with the design intent that holds that the drama that results is a desirable game state.

PBTA games typically address the issue of rolling to much through the Trigger mechanic. Ie, Moves aren't supposed to be engaged unless the Fiction triggers them.

This is fine in theory, but as playtesting reveals, this isn't a very good constraint, and one can find endless examples of people ruining their own experience with any given PBTA game by rolling too much. Nothing is actually stopping them from rolling too much; the methods used are effectively too weak for some players.

So, if we want to fix this, while retaining the overall design intent, there's no strict method we need to follow. My personal idea is a more rigid turn structure for the Fiction, and a roll economy of some sort that gates how often Moves can be triggered. That'd solve the aesthetic issues.

Which I think captures quite well some of the non-overlaps, but we must go further, and understand that what those additional elements can be, and the improv game itself, is in TTRPG expected to be compelled and constrained according to shared norms overlaid by adopted rules.

Well this may well explain why some are so uncomfortable with what Im saying, as it appears you and others think I'm being reductive in saying the phrase "improv game", as though Im just scoffing at the idea.

That of course isn't the intent. Im just being literal in describing the game type; any implication that that means an RPG is any less complex than they are is entirely unintended.

RPGs do have a more complex shared reality than improv theater or party games. That doesn't mean that all three aren't still improv games, and indeed, it doesn't mean they don't all share the same fundamental issues.

Monopolizing the Spotlight and Blocking for example are some of the biggest pitfalls people run into with playing improv games. Thats the same if you're doing a Try Not To Laugh thing or if you're going for a gritty drama of teenaged angst set against superheroes.

As is, for that matter, ignoring, denying, or refusing to collaborate on the shared reality.

We can solve all these problems, and it'll be a lot easier from the perspective of them as an improv problem. There's no need to reinvent the wheel with esoteric jargon.

 

[Emberashh]

Mechanics are not universal. The medium matters.

This becomes obvious when you consider games that are not played sitting in place - larps and sports games, for example.

Thats where the distinction of Discrete Mechanics comes in, vs Continuous which is what video games tend to have.

Live Action mechanics could be a wholly separate type from either one.

Its Discrete Mechanics that are universal.

 

[clearstream]

RPGs are naturally more complex than Chess is mechanically, but the throughline that says something is fundamentally changing by a change in medium isn't being supported by your contentions.

(But it is when you recognize the implicit improv game that's lost as a result of digitization, hence the importance of identifying whats actually in these games)

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We can solve all these problems, and it'll be a lot easier from the perspective of them as an improv problem. There's no need to reinvent the wheel with esoteric jargon.

The diagram makes sense for videogames and other cases where game state is explicit, such as system-to-system linkages, but is silent on "improv problems" like "given we could say anything, how do we know what we should say?" How do we know that the word on a character sheet successfully bedded itself in (arrowed to) the kinds of things we wanted to say distinctive to this TTRPG, and will successfully return a well-connected system position?

For instance, in considering moves in a videogame, one generally is working with a very limited and explicit language. Say the QWER + pings + emotes + mouse position and press of League of Legends. Those are the moves. The rules they bind to are expressly defined. If the move E is given for the character Morgana, the Black Shield casts with explicit effect. Even where videogames are using stochastic methods, the interpretation of results is similary explicit. One does not have to solve for the "legal problem" of when to invoke a rule that is for instance at the heart of DMG237 and PHB174. And that is just one of the distinct problems of TTRPG versus videogames.

I am, equally, a fan of videogames, boardgames, and roleplaying games, both their play, their study, and their standing as artifacts of our cultures. I could say that there are zoomed-out descriptions that can overlie them all. For example, I can take the diagram to be such a zoomed-out description. Is that what you are getting at?