What Do You Think Of As "Modern TTRPG Mechanics"?

[Agamon]

I think a good example of stinky ancient mechanic vs shiny modern mechanic is Divine Smite in 5e vs Divine Smite in 5.5e

The former is a bespoke mechanic that is working similarly, but differently from all others -- it works mostly like a spell, but not quite. The latter is just a spell, fully integrated into the larger system. The mechanical difference between the two is negligible, it's mostly a question of presentation.

That's interesting, because the latter looks more like something one could have pulled from the 1e PHB, the former from 3e or later.

 

[loverdrive]

That's interesting, because the latter looks more like something one could have pulled from the 1e PHB, the former from 3e or later.

I'm not terribly familiar with AD&D, so, yeah, sure! Quite often good ideas are old, and then get replaced by bad ideas, and return back might feel like a breath of fresh air.

Although, as a whole, isn't AD&D famous for having a lot of barely connected subsystems that all function differently?

 

[Agamon]

I'm not terribly familiar with AD&D, so, yeah, sure! Quite often good ideas are old, and then get replaced by bad ideas, and return back might feel like a breath of fresh air.

Although, as a whole, isn't AD&D famous for having a lot of barely connected subsystems that all function differently?

For sure. I wasn't really making an agreement either way, just pointing out something interesting.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Honestly, this kind of thing just tells me that people discussing "specific intentions" vs "creating aimlessly" are incredibly pretentious.

Of course it does.

Well, it's easy to say that you should have a goal when you're designing a mechanic. I tend to say something along these lines frequently on reddit when people ask open-ended questions like, "How do I make initiative interesting in my game?" The first step isn't to come up with a cool gimmick, it's to work out what initiative is actually meant to do in the wider context of the system.

But I also think its very fair to ask if anyone who is actually releasing professionally presented games is doing so without any real cohesive goal, because I, too, struggle to think of anyone who is. I can think of people who have released games that I consider mechanically or conceptually flawed or of no interest to me, but not games that are aimless and just a random assortment of unrelated and purposeless mechanics. Without any specific examples, it sounds like a strawman to me.

I mentioned the Palladium system earlier in the thread. I don’t feel a whole lot of intentional design went into its many components. I feel like Kevin Siembada kind of riffed on things with D&D in mind, and how certain things could be done differently than D&D, and that was about it. I don’t expect there was a lot of consideration about the best ways to do things or how the different subsystems would fit together and interact. It certainly seems like he just thought some mechanics up and then slapped them all together.

Another example I would mention is actually D&D. I’ll mention two editions, for different reasons. First, I’ll mention 1e AD&D for some of its subsystems and how dependent they are on wargaming rules. Some of them just make no real sense. Like, the saving throw categories… they’re random as hell. However… where 1e did have intentionality was in the overall experience. That had a pretty specific expectation (exploring an adventure site) and many of the rules were designed to deliver that experience.

This is something that 5e lacks. Many of the components from 1e are present, but they don’t fit together in any meaningful way. The pressures that the mechanics created are no longer present. The decision points are very different. So much is lost. I think this is largely because if there was an intention for 5e’s design, it was to appeal to as many fans of the various editions as possible rather than on delivering an intended experience in play. I’ll add the caveat that it’s possible the 2024 revision has addressed some of this… I haven’t really checked it out that much.

 

[Aldarc]

Hmm. Separate thoughts, first on designers I’d expect any reasonably fair observer to acknowledge as important trailblazers whether or not the observer happens to personally like the results. At the top of the list, Greg Stafford, whose name here should be set in large type, blood, italic, and blink. After him, people like Jonathan Tweet and Robin Laws, and colleagues like Rob Heinsoo, Chris Pramas & Nicole Lindroos, and the aspirational Erick Wujick and Jenna Moran.

These last two inspire a lot of folks to go fight on whatever direction one may be going, without many efforts to go in directions they seem to have been to been going themselves. As George R.R. Martin said of Howard Walrop, not so much “damn, I wish I’d that idea” as “what the hell was that?”

Sub-thought: anyone who’s been a senior designer on an edition of D&D is a significant influence on the field, whatever else they do or don’t do.

I tend to think of “modern” rpg design as a funnel with its mouth in the ‘70s, widening some in the ‘80s, a lot more on the ‘90s, and encompassing much of the field after that. Yes, this explicitly puts the general milieu of modernity before the Forge. I always saw Thor best things as pulling existing elements together in new blends and then interacting on the results.

Like others, if I had to pick one diagnostic feature, it’d be intentionality. Specific, not just knowing what they intend to happen during play and a result of it, but TELLING PLAYERS ABOUT IT. The second part is where earlier games tending toward modernity are most likely to fall down. After that, I’d put traits thought through for their purpose in this particular game, and player-customizable as much as is suitable (within specific limits like cultural keywords in HeroQuest/QuestWorlds, templates in Star Wars et seq, et very cetera).

Agreed. I like to think about design in terms of evolution. (Usual disclaimer here about "no perfect analogies" for the people who get their petty joy from picking illustrative analogies apart.)

Mammals first appear in the fossil record in the Triassic. However, there are traits that we recognize in mammals that have their origins in pre-mammalian synapsids (and earlier). But when mammals do arrive, mammals are mostly doing their thing in the background throughout the Mesozoic period. They are mammals but not mammals as we really know them. They are small. They are laying eggs. They haven't really diversified into the mammals we know. They're there but not really in the forefront. It's the age of dinosaurs! The first marsupials appear in the early Cretaceous. Placental mammals don't appear until the late Cretaceous period. Other lines of mammals rise and fall into extinction. Although mammals start booming and diversifying after the Cretaceous period in the Paleogene, it still takes awhile before we really start recognizing creatures that begin looking more like the sort of mammals we know. Then we start seeing things that vaguely look like horses, sloths, leopards, deer, primates, elephants, etc. of today.

IMHO, it's similar with design. (Though a key difference being that game design has intent whereas evolution does not.) You're going to see traits/mechanics expressed in earlier games. But what matters are how those mechanics are expressed in the game, their frequency, their other mechanical traits that comprise the game, as well as their surrounding environment. Are they flourishing or perishing with these mechanics in their present environment? So with "modern" games, it's a question of what sort of mechanics, features, and expressions of game mechanics, play styles, and game families are we seeing in the market?

 

[SableWyvern]

I mentioned the Palladium system earlier in the thread. I don’t feel a whole lot of intentional design went into its many components. I feel like Kevin Siembada kind of riffed on things with D&D in mind, and how certain things could be done differently than D&D, and that was about it. I don’t expect there was a lot of consideration about the best ways to do things or how the different subsystems would fit together and interact. It certainly seems like he just thought some mechanics up and then slapped them all together.

I can't really speak to Palladium, as I have little experience with it. TMNT seemed reasonably coherent to me, but I'm not going to rely on my teenage memories to make any kind of hard statement.

Another example I would mention is actually D&D. I’ll mention two editions, for different reasons. First, I’ll mention 1e AD&D for some of its subsystems and how dependent they are on wargaming rules. Some of them just make no real sense. Like, the saving throw categories… they’re random as hell. However… where 1e did have intentionality was in the overall experience. That had a pretty specific expectation (exploring an adventure site) and many of the rules were designed to deliver that experience.

I'll take pre-3e saving throws over anything that came later, but this isn't the place for the argument, so I'll concede the fact that the original saving throw system clearly does feel arbitrary and nonsensical to many people.

That said, I don't believe they were the result of random and arbitrary decisions -- the underlying system makes sense, even if you don't like the categories, and I see plenty of clear intentionality there (eg: high level characters, especially fighters, should be highly resistant to magical and potentially lethal effects, such that those effects are not reliable means of defeating them). The categories cover the gamut of lethal and near-lethal effects one might expect to encounter, with slipping/falling being the one that appears to have been left out.

In any event, you're welcome to continue to disagree with me on that, as it seems that even if we might quibble on some details that have been controversial for a long time, we do both agree there is still plenty of intent to be found.

This is something that 5e lacks. Many of the components from 1e are present, but they don’t fit together in any meaningful way. The pressures that the mechanics created are no longer present. The decision points are very different. So much is lost. I think this is largely because if there was an intention for 5e’s design, it was to appeal to as many fans of the various editions as possible rather than on delivering an intended experience in play. I’ll add the caveat that it’s possible the 2024 revision has addressed some of this… I haven’t really checked it out that much.

I'll mostly stay out of this one as well, as my understanding of 5e is extremely shallow. I will say, though, that this position does seem to fit will with my general impression of 5e, which is that I would probably find it adequate for some sorts of games but, for any type I've game I might think of using it, there will absolutely be something else far more than merely adequate.

Edit to add: Both the AD&D and Palladium comments seem to imply discrete subsystems are a sign of a lack of intent. I think I've seen others imply this as well. While these types of subsystems may signify a lack of intent to utilise a unified resolution system, that is not at all the same as a lack of intent in general. It doesn't matter how two subsystems "interact" unless they are meant to interact. While I would certainly agree with anyone claiming unified resolution systems should be part of the paradigm of Modern RPG Design as it's being defined in this thread, that tells us nothing about whether someone is designing with intent.

 

[pemerton]

But that's not a specific intention. That describes every halfway complete game ever. The question is what kind of experience it was supposed to produce, and it didn't have much focus there.

I don't think D&D or Traveller were aimless at all.

I’ll mention 1e AD&D for some of its subsystems and how dependent they are on wargaming rules. Some of them just make no real sense. Like, the saving throw categories… they’re random as hell. However… where 1e did have intentionality was in the overall experience. That had a pretty specific expectation (exploring an adventure site) and many of the rules were designed to deliver that experience.

I'm on the side that thinks that OD&D (and Gygax's AD&D, at least up until the end of the PHB and for good chunks of the DMG) had a clear focus and associated intention: namely, skilled-play dungeon-crawling, with map-and-key as the core method for establishing what scenes the GM presents to the participants, and for resolving exploratory actions. What seems not to have been originally anticipated is the degree to which this game infrastructure would be taken up and repurposed for other goals of play.

The extent to which that "taking up and repurposing" of D&D continued, and continues, helps explain some of the other comments the quoted posters have made:

I do think most 90s era design was. L5R (before 5th edition), Shadowrun, Vampire, Witchcraft, Earthdawn, Cyberpunk, etc. People basically did a bunch of world building (and not even with an eye towards its suitability for gaming) and basically treating the game as an afterthought with many rules carried over from other games without consideration of it served their game well. No real instructions on how to structure play, character creation that did not establish purpose or why characters should give a damn about each other. No real thought put into reward cycles.

This is something that 5e lacks. Many of the components from 1e are present, but they don’t fit together in any meaningful way. The pressures that the mechanics created are no longer present. The decision points are very different. So much is lost. I think this is largely because if there was an intention for 5e’s design, it was to appeal to as many fans of the various editions as possible rather than on delivering an intended experience in play.

There's a lot that could be said in elaboration of these points. Here's one thing, that relates directly to the thread topic: what will make a game seem non-modern to me is if, as its method of establishing what scenes and stakes the GM presents to the players, it relies either on map-and-key, or the sort of GM-control-over-story that the DL modules exemplify (but that seems to have become almost a norm since).

 

[Neonchameleon]

Another example I would mention is actually D&D. I’ll mention two editions, for different reasons. First, I’ll mention 1e AD&D for some of its subsystems and how dependent they are on wargaming rules. Some of them just make no real sense. Like, the saving throw categories… they’re random as hell. However… where 1e did have intentionality was in the overall experience. That had a pretty specific expectation (exploring an adventure site) and many of the rules were designed to deliver that experience.

oD&D through B/X and 1e did have intentionality; Gygax was just very bad at explaining what he was trying to do and the saving throws are a good example of this. To explain them you started at the left and used the first appropriate one.

• Death, Paralysation, or Poison was the first category and was always the easiest to save against. Because death saving throws kill and Paralysation just lead to coup de grace. Save or Die should be hard to land.
• Petrification or Polymorph was save or lose; the character may survive but was out of the fight. In oD&D IIRC it was petrification, paralysis, or polymorph but paralysis proved too lethal in play.
• Rod, Staff, or Wand was "spell in a can" and always a point easier to save against than save vs spell. Oddly it included wands of polymorph, making them better. No I don't know why a 5% chance required an entire extra column but I get the idea of making spell in a can easier to save against.
• Breath Weapon a.k.a. "Get out of the way" was one of the two default saving throws when things were especially bad - save vs physical
• Spell was the other default; a catch-all for magic and saves vs spell included the use of counter-charms and magic resistance

This is something that 5e lacks. Many of the components from 1e are present, but they don’t fit together in any meaningful way. The pressures that the mechanics created are no longer present. The decision points are very different. So much is lost. I think this is largely because if there was an intention for 5e’s design, it was to appeal to as many fans of the various editions as possible rather than on delivering an intended experience in play. I’ll add the caveat that it’s possible the 2024 revision has addressed some of this… I haven’t really checked it out that much.

This is something I entirely agree with; I think oD&D and its variants (1e, B/X and the Rules Cyclopaedia) were designed with intentionality even if with a lack of clarity of communication - but there's a strong cargo cult design element to subsequent non-4e editions.

 

[aramis erak]

Which is why no one in arts or history uses the term to define distinctive periods in time that - oh, wait, yes they do. All the time.

History, when I took my bachelor's in it, defined modern as "1965 to present" - that was in 1993 to 1996. We're definitely post-modern on so many areas...

 

[Neonchameleon]

Which is why no one in arts or history uses the term to define distinctive periods in time that - oh, wait, yes they do. All the time.

And we should learn from their silly mistakes and not end up where the musicians are with "modernism" being about a century out of date.

Authorities typically regard musical modernism as a historical period or era extending from about 1890 to 1930, and apply the term "postmodernism" to the period or era after 1930. For the musicologist Carl Dahlhaus the purest form was over by 1910, but other historians consider modernism to end with one or the other of the two world wars.​

- from the Wikipedia page on Modernism in music​