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

[Pedantic]

I'm honestly not sure what people mean when they say 'play to find out what happens', I've seen it used in a load of different ways. Same with Sandbox really, two people can say they run a sandbox but recoil in horror when they learn what the other one means.

I've taken to reading it as an admonition, instructing players not to care about making a specific state come to pass.

 

[RenleyRenfield]

I've taken to reading it as an admonition, instructing players not to care about making a specific state come to pass.

This is incorrect, see my previous post

 

[Pedantic]

This is incorrect, see my previous post

I don't actually see a contradiction. All of your examples turn over agency to chance; the player does not know and cannot force an outcome, and the enjoyment is presumably in learning which outcome does occur, not in making choices to achieve a specific outcome.

I think the phrase is trying to explain where the "fun" is, what kind of enjoyment you're supposed to receive by interacting with the game.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

Ok, so none of what you described is "play to find out what happens"

What it means is "The GM ALSO has no idea what will occur next in ANYTHING - especially the plot and scenes and events." This goes back to my earlier posts about Modern Mechanics are limiting the GM, rules to tell the GM "No, the players runs this part, and you get no ruling in it".

What PBTA does is what GURPS could never do, by design - let the engine make the events and plots for you.

Examples:
- In Monster Hearts you can roll to interact with someone, and even attack them - only for the rules to tell you that your character is now infatuated or aroused by the enemy, and you are expected to run with that.

- In Passion de las Pasiones, a move allows a player to state that someone is lying (anyone, PC, NPC, etc) about anything, even plots and events in front of them, and they can state the 'actual truth'. If they make their roll, they are right and everyone else was lying (wrong). So plots must adjust and go from this new truth.

- In Apocalypse World there are several moves that add to the fiction, the rules state that this NPC will now betray you, and its only up to the MC as to where and when. Sure they may be an ally or a lover, but they will betray you!

- In most any PBTA game, the moves describe what happens as a result of your drama. They are interpreted by the players, but they can add all kinds of things to a game - including enemies that were not there before, locations that were never placed by the GM, and even plots that take on a life of their own as a myriad of Moves alter and change and update the truths of the plot - even unto retconning previous truths!

GURPS is "task resolution". The GM presents things to do, has some idea of the threats or risks involved, and when you roll, it only tells you one thing = you did the task or you failed the task. That's it, full stop. The Gm may choose what happens next, but the roll didn't tell them what to do, only that the player did or didn't do the task that was already in front of them. Nothing was found out or discovered, it was just "resolved".

PBTA is a "Drama engine". The game moves introduce new features in the game, and add plots when there were none. PBTA has no skills, and considers nothing a 'task'. You are making dice roll in terms of 'overall goal' or 'interacting with a plot.' There is nothing to pass or fail. Instead it is all about "and here is extra stuff to create the story and where it goes next."

I think this is too proscriptive and would seem to suggest that narrativist play isn't possible outside of games specifically built for it. In Apoc World 2e, under Agenda (p 80), Baker says nothing about mechanics or a drama engine; instead it's an admonition against pre-planning the game or situations and being open and responsive to the actions of the characters and "[committing] yourself [as MC] to the game's fiction's own internal logic and causality." I think we can do this in games with task resolution -- I have done it in games with task resolution. It's nice to have tech and structures that support it explicitly, but it's not at all mandatory.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

To be honest, I've never really believed him on that. I'm not sure he did either.

I think he believed it- but it has to be adjusted for the time period. Given his wargaming roots, he was intimately familiar with all the old battles over "realism/simulationism" within the wargaming community, and Gygax decidedly was in favor of using abstraction, genre trappings, and "fun" (gamist approaches) instead of demanding fidelity to reality.

You can see him specifically adopting it in all sorts of places- hit points, saving throws, his original recalcitrance to variable weapon damage, and so on. Not to mention the whole zero-to-hero level approach (and reward loop).

I think that's why we often mis-use terms like "simulationism" at this point. OD&D and AD&D had plenty of abstraction and narrative aspects. But that's not to say that they had "narratvism" (at least, not in the mainstream versions of the game) in the same way that people talk about it today.

It's just ... I think a lot of people talk past each other when we have terms that have specialized meanings for some but different general connotations.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think he believed it- but it has to be adjusted for the time period. Given his wargaming roots, he was intimately familiar with all the old battles over "realism/simulationism" within the wargaming community, and Gygax decidedly was in favor of using abstraction, genre trappings, and "fun" (gamist approaches) instead of demanding fidelity to reality.

You can see him specifically adopting it in all sorts of places- hit points, saving throws, his original recalcitrance to variable weapon damage, and so on. Not to mention the whole zero-to-hero level approach (and reward loop).

I think that's why we often mis-use terms like "simulationism" at this point. OD&D and AD&D had plenty of abstraction and narrative aspects. But that's not to say that they had "narratvism" (at least, not in the mainstream versions of the game) in the same way that people talk about it today.

It's just ... I think a lot of people talk past each other when we have terms that have specialized meanings for some but different general connotations.

I don't know...a lot of stuff in TSR D&D was designed to represent a thing in the world, not just to facilitate "fun" for the players. Why bother to discuss history and setting logic at all otherwise? The 1e DMG is full of sim mechanics. And abstraction is a necessary component of any RPG. It's how much abstraction where that has forever been the subject of debate.

 

[soviet]

I don't actually see a contradiction. All of your examples turn over agency to chance; the player does not know and cannot force an outcome, and the enjoyment is presumably in learning which outcome does occur, not in making choices to achieve a specific outcome.

That is completely false. A player in such a 'modern' game has at least the same type of agency to 'force an outcome' as a player in a more traditional game does - through making choices and declaring appropriate actions for their character.

The difference is that in a trad game the resolution of conflicts is determined by either a GM's decision, potentially having reference to (and being bound by) detailed pre-existing notes, or a dice roll that is also subject to a GM's potential veto or manipulation, and then also subject to further GM framing/contextualisation of what that means.

In a 'modern' game with transparent and immutable conflict rules, that may or may not include negotiated stake setting, and may or may not include further player capacity to add elements directly into the fiction, when we roll to resolve a conflict the GM has no ability to veto or reframe the outcome, and may not even have authored all the elements being brought to bear on it, and so all parties can be surprised by the outcome. We are spinning the roulette wheel and agreeing to stick to the outcome we can all see on the table.

 

[soviet]

I think this is too proscriptive and would seem to suggest that narrativist play isn't possible outside of games specifically built for it. In Apoc World 2e, under Agenda (p 80), Baker says nothing about mechanics or a drama engine; instead it's an admonition against pre-planning the game or situations and being open and responsive to the actions of the characters and "[committing] yourself [as MC] to the game's fiction's own internal logic and causality." I think we can do this in games with task resolution -- I have done it in games with task resolution. It's nice to have tech and structures that support it explicitly, but it's not at all mandatory.

Would you say though that it's mandatory to have the GM of such a system take a 'no fudging, no thumb on the scale' position? I don't think narrativist play is possible in a game with a GM who has fudge and veto power over resolution.

EDIT: that is to say, a GM that uses such power, or reserves the right to. Words in a book are words in a book.

 

[thefutilist]

GURPS is "task resolution". The GM presents things to do, has some idea of the threats or risks involved, and when you roll, it only tells you one thing = you did the task or you failed the task. That's it, full stop. The Gm may choose what happens next, but the roll didn't tell them what to do, only that the player did or didn't do the task that was already in front of them. Nothing was found out or discovered, it was just "resolved".

Good post although I think it somewhat confirms my point that there are loads of different interpretations of what play to find out means. In the bit I snipped you talk of nothing being found out or discovered, only resolved. To me that's the platonic ideal of playing to find out, play to find out how this resolves. Adding stuff and retconning stuff, I'm not massively keen on except in so much as it leads to ways to see how things resolve.

Creating a bunch of characters in conflicts and seeing how the conflicts resolve is one way of creating a story. Particularly good if you're not that interested in twists or reveals, which your version of play to find out seems to have in abundance.

 

[soviet]

Good post although I think it somewhat confirms my point that there are loads of different interpretations of what play to find out means. In the bit I snipped you talk of nothing being found out or discovered, only resolved. To me that's the platonic ideal of playing to find out, play to find out how this resolves. Adding stuff and retconning stuff, I'm not massively keen on except in so much as it leads to ways to see how things resolve.

Creating a bunch of characters in conflicts and seeing how the conflicts resolve is one way of creating a story. Particularly good if you're not that interested in twists or reveals, which your version of play to find out seems to have in abundance.

Is the GM also playing to find out, or do they already know?