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

[Autumnal]

Maybe I purged the memory.. Ironwood, was it?

Watchmen.

 

[Agamon]

I wasn't paying attention to the cause.

Yeesh, rough crowd. Do I need to capitalize the LOL? Or is everything here on this site about gaming very very serious?

 

[hawkeyefan]

The participants drive play via the decisions they make. They use the mechanisms as required to resolve uncertainty, and then make more decisions based on the outcomes. The key difference being that the game mechanics themselves aren't intentionally being built to generate complications, challenges, dilemmas, demand action or what-have-you.

I don’t know if I entirely agree. I think you’re onto something with how the mechanics drive play in some modern games (AW and its more faithful derivatives) but I also think that the binary pass/fail does similar work in a more traditional approach.

The mechanics still dictate the type of outcome. The rules may also say what actually happens on a success or failure, or may call on the GM to do so.

Like if an NPC attacks me and the rules say they score a hit, then the rules may also say that my character takes damage, and the rules may also say that damage is sufficient to kill my character or otherwise take them out of play.

Is that not the mechanics driving play?

Note that, the participants' decisions actually drive play in both situations -- I'm not saying this responsibility is completely offloaded to the mechanics. It would be slightly more accurate to say that in the modern version, the mechanics mandate that play is always driven in the direction of the theme, instead of leaving it up to the players to ensure that happens.

Would you say that most of the offloading your talking about comes from the players or the GM?

...Yeah. I do that with every game I like. Finances, allowing, why wouldn't I?

Well, personally, I’d like a game I don’t need to spend more and more money on. I’d prefer that the game itself be complete and any additional material be purely supplemental, not essential.

For me, play is driven by the player's actions through their PCs, moderated through the settings qualities and events.

No role for the rules or the GM?

 

[Micah Sweet]

The question at that point, especially back in the OD&D days, was why not just do it from the ground up.

Can't tell you wasn't playing in the '70s. I'm telling why I do it now.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don’t know if I entirely agree. I think you’re onto something with how the mechanics drive play in some modern games (AW and its more faithful derivatives) but I also think that the binary pass/fail does similar work in a more traditional approach.

The mechanics still dictate the type of outcome. The rules may also say what actually happens on a success or failure, or may call on the GM to do so.

Like if an NPC attacks me and the rules say they score a hit, then the rules may also say that my character takes damage, and the rules may also say that damage is sufficient to kill my character or otherwise take them out of play.

Is that not the mechanics driving play?



Would you say that most of the offloading your talking about comes from the players or the GM?



Well, personally, I’d like a game I don’t need to spend more and more money on. I’d prefer that the game itself be complete and any additional material be purely supplemental, not essential.



No role for the rules or the GM?

The GM has a hand in narration of events, creation and depiction of NPCs, and the results of actions, and of course they build the setting. The rules model the setting and how the PCs interact with it mechanically.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The GM has a hand in narration of events, creation and depiction of NPCs, and the results of actions, and of course they build the setting. The rules model the setting and how the PCs interact with it mechanically.

You don’t think that your description of what the GM does is helping to drive the game?

And do you not agree that the rules may do so, too? See my example about attack and damage rules and how they can shape what happens.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Can't tell you wasn't playing in the '70s. I'm telling why I do it now.

And I wasn't talking about what people would do now with decades more of accumulate, but my attitude toward it back then. So here we are.

 

[hawkeyefan]

For anything but a full-on railroad in which the GM decides what the players will do and how the dice will roll, then the GM is pretty much also playing to find out something. That's the ambiguity of the "play to find out" slogan. A GM may have sketched out events that will happen in the future, potential encounters that will be on the PCs' path, but every encounter with the PCs is an encounter with chaos agents because who knows for sure what they'll do when they're in the encounter or whether or not the dice will comply with any particular expectation.

If I’m running players through Tomb of Annihilation, I’m not really playing to find out what happens. Sure, there are some areas of uncertainty… but I’m gonna largely know what’s going to happen. The PCs are gonna navigate through the jungles of Chult until they find the tomb, then they’re going to enter the tomb and deal with its dangers, and likely have some climactic encounter with Acererak.

I mean… it’s been written to deliver that experience.

OK, I see what you're saying. Thank you for elaborating. As I understand you you're talking about the difference between (broadly) filling a situation with drama fuel and watching (without particular preference as a player) to see how it explodes, versus a kind of skilled play approach where we have a particular expected/desired outcome (in terms of gam or sim considerations) and we are actively trying to get there. That's an interesting distinction.

I think it is an interesting distinction, too… but I don’t know if I see these two things as being mutually exclusive. I feel I can be making decisions for play based on my character’s motivations and goals, and yet as a player being totally open to whatever the outcomes of play may be.

 

[SableWyvern]

I don’t know if I entirely agree. I think you’re onto something with how the mechanics drive play in some modern games (AW and its more faithful derivatives) but I also think that the binary pass/fail does similar work in a more traditional approach.

The mechanics still dictate the type of outcome. The rules may also say what actually happens on a success or failure, or may call on the GM to do so.

Like if an NPC attacks me and the rules say they score a hit, then the rules may also say that my character takes damage, and the rules may also say that damage is sufficient to kill my character or otherwise take them out of play.

Is that not the mechanics driving play?

Are you arguing that both types of system work essentially the same way, or just arguing about the choice of wording?

If the latter, feel free to pitch a better phrase. I'm not attached to any particular verbiage; I took the "drive play" phrasing from people who want modern mechanics explaining what they want and like about them. It seems to fit for me, but if you want to consider any instance of the rules telling you what happened as driving play, that's certainly your prerogative. It just seems like pointlessly muddying the waters of the discussion, though, given that everyone else -- both those who want modern mechanics and those who don't -- seems to be on the same page with this.

Would you say that most of the offloading your talking about comes from the players or the GM?

I'd think that would be table specific (my use of the word "participant" rather than "player" was entirely intentional). In my own games, I generally fall into the "GM sets up situations, players deal with and interact with them in play as they see fit" philosophy. But I'm not interested in rehashing a couple-thousand pages of arguments from the conservatism in gaming thread about what constitutes a player-driven game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You don’t think that your description of what the GM does is helping to drive the game?

And do you not agree that the rules may do so, too? See my example about attack and damage rules and how they can shape what happens.

The GM is not mechanics. And the actual mechanics serve to model the world. It's that world, and the PCs interactions with it, that drive the game, not the mechanics themselves.