D&D 5E Whatever "lore" is, it isn't "rules."

[billd91]

Is there any way we can unpack and really examine this dichotomy between change vs addition from a design perspective? What particular value does it bring? Why should we care about the distinction?

From my perspective, when we're discussing additions here, we're talking about adding something without changing the essence or details of what came before. So earlier in AD&D we had demons and devils. When they added the Blood War, nothing significantly changed about the earlier demon and devil lore, another dimension was added. It's possible the addition could have sparked individual DMs and players to reimagine aspects of the creatures and new roles, but it remained fully backward compatible with the earlier information. The new info can often be ignored by campaigns already in play if they don't want to incorporate it with no extra cost in DM/player effort.

Change, in the context of this discussion, is a change in the essence or significant details of the original information. Think of it as disrupting backward compatibility. 4e provides quite a few examples of this change because the design team set out to, as they described it, "reconcept" lots of aspects of the game, including monsters. For example, archons went from lawful good denizens of the upper plains to chaotic evil beings of elemental chaos. That's in no way, shape, or form backward compatible. It's not an addition - it's a change.

As for why anyone should care about the distinction, that's mostly a question for publishers responsible for the intellectual property. Additions are probably going to gain customer acceptance more easily and quicker, which may translate into being a more successful product in terms of sales and/or customer satisfaction. Changes are probably going to have a harder time achieving the same level of success unless they're particularly good or linked to some other widely regarded improvements (like the changed necessitated by rule changes in 3e D&D). Publishers deciding on whether or not they should add to canonical information or change it should weigh those considerations when deciding what projects to work on and bring to market.
The issue is a consideration for those of us in the customer base because it helps us understand how people may approach published sources for incorporation into their own games or rejection.

 

[seebs]

At least one major component of "lore" isn't really rules, because it's backstory. And backstory isn't happening, and it's not a mechanic, so it's nothing like a rule, because rules are what govern how the game plays.

History isn't law.

 

[Imaro]

At least one major component of "lore" isn't really rules, because it's backstory. And backstory isn't happening, and it's not a mechanic, so it's nothing like a rule, because rules are what govern how the game plays.

History isn't law.

How would you say 5e's Backgrounds (or Primeval Thule's narratives) with their benefits fit into this? They are based in backstory but have effects that take place in game....

 

[Campbell]

What elements of the fiction a designer chooses to reflect in the rules of the game is important, but what elements they choose to exclude is just as important. Sometimes it is excluded because it is not important, but sometimes we don't have rules for something because it is too important to leave to the rules. Ron Edwards in one of his better observation calls this the Fruitful Void.

Hi there,

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the topic, but what I'm seeing is a little different from the points of discussion so far. Callan, let me know whether I'm throwing a monkey into the pool. I hope it's a duck, but I could be wrong.

Let's consider all the named, explicit stuff in a given rules-set. Then let's consider all sorts of stuff which, given the named stuff, is not named but is going to be important in the SIS.

In The Riddle of Steel, the specific interactions among types of weapons and types of armor are explicit.

In Sorcerer (the game I'm going to focus on), they are not, although they are mentioned and a blanket mechanic is provided for that purpose. In Sorcerer, however, there are multiple tactical, risky decisions to be made during a complex combat situation, and many of them depend on immediate opportunities and constraints. In practice, types of armor often play a big role.

1. The absence of the detailed rules for armor makes the role of armor in the game very important, sometimes ...

2. ... but only in Sorcerer, because the presence of certain rules (specifically, the important of a small and fleeting advantage) makes armor type a fruitful subject of play.

#1 and #2 have to go together to achieve the effect I'm talking about. If you only have #1 , then the thing is both absent and unimportant ... which is fine, if it has nothing to do with the goals or topic of play, but absolutely crappy if it is otherwise relevant (i.e. to setting, or something similar).

I made this point recently in [Musha Shugyo] Honor mechanics, in which I talked about how My Life with Master has no "Defiance" score. It doesn't have to. The interactions of all the existing scores, puts "defiance of the Master" into a premium focus during play, as a kind of unnamed score.

Without such "fruitful voids," perhaps envisioned as what you get when you show a person seven of the eight corners of a cube, a rules-set is no fun. It's just a full cube; you can look at it, pick it up, mess with it, and nothing happens except it stays a cube.

My point is absolutely independent of what the rules in question are about. We could be talking about social interactions among characters, physical combat, interactions of the characters with the physical environment around them, rules for the players interacting as people, or whatever.

My point is also independent of the scale and scope of the rules. We could be talking about tactical details of combat options, or we could be talking about some universal mechanic for morality.

Again, Callan, am I totally missing what you wanted to talk about? Or bringing the discussion closer to it?

Best,
Ron

I'm not claiming that Ron came up with this concept - He's only the one Vincent Baker credits which is where I learned it from. Another example is from Dogs in the Vineyard - Dogs has no faith mechanic even though it is ostensibly about how far you are willing to go for your faith. The thing is the fiction, procedures, and reward mechanisms all point you directly at it. Here's Vincent's diagram:

It's what play is really about, but we want to leave it as an open question to be resolved through play.

Here's another way to look at things. When we play a role playing game and something is in doubt we can do one of 3 things:

1. We can resolve it through consensus. We have a conversation and collectivelly determine what is up with what is in doubt..
2. We can defer the question for later and leave it up in the air.
3. We can go to the rules and let them decide for us. In this case we don't want to leave it up in the air, and either do not want it left to consensus because we all want to be surprised by what happens or can't reach consensus and appeal to the rules to decide for us.

John Harper explains why we might not want to utilize consensus in a far better way than I ever could:

Why We Do This

What’s the point of this shift into a mechanic, anyway? Why not just talk it out? The main reason is this: when we just talk things out, we tend to build consensus. This is usually a good thing. It helps the group bond, get on the same page, set expectations, all that stuff. But when it comes to action-adventure stories like Blades in the Dark, we don’t want consensus when the characters go into danger.

We want to be surprised, or thwarted, or driven to bigger risks, or inspired to create a twist or complication. We want to raise our hands over our heads and ride the roller coaster over the drop.

When the mechanic is triggered, the group first dips into being authors for a moment as they suss out the position, the threats, and the details of the action. Then, author mode switches off and everyone becomes the audience. What will happen next? We hold our breath, lean forward in our seats, and let the dice fall.

 

[ProgBard]

The rules are not just "numbers and dice," though.

Agreed! But -

Rules also include things like the DM describing what happens in the world as a result of the PC's actions, or the hair color of drow elves.

If a setting has "tropes" that one should use when creating a character in that setting, that's also a rule. In D&D, these tropes are typically telegraphed through character creation options like race, class, background, etc.

- I think the disconnect here is that we're using the word "rules" here to mean different things. And that's okay! (I remain, after all, a descriptivist.) But some of the things you're talking about here fall outside that circle for me; I'm just not at ease with my usage of rules having to do that much work.

1. Like I said, it's easy to allow anyone else to use the defiling rules, but outside of the other rules for playing a Dark Sun character, you'd be having a distinct experience from a "real" defiler.

Of course you would. That would be the point of twiddling the "lore" knob, after all.

2. Different mechanics create different experiences.

For instance, the 4e defiling mechanic created a "temptation of power" experience - you always had the option to defile, each time you cast, but you never had to take it. The 2e defiling mechanic served the experience of defining your entire character by whether or not they defiled. Once you decided what kind of character you wanted to play, you were largely defined by that for the reset of that character's existence. This meant that the experience of playing a defiler in 4e was largely one of a recurring question about violating nature (and your allies) or not, while the experience of playing a defiler in 2e was largely one of defining yourself as a defiler and creating a character who would ruin nature who might nonetheless be a heroic character in Dark Sun, thus emphasizing themes of dark and flawed heroes in a dark and flawed world.

The main question there is "does this mechanic deliver the experience the player should have?" If you want your player to have the experience of actually killing the land to cast their magic, the 2e mechanic will give you that more and more often than the 4e mechanic (where the player is likely to rarely - if ever - actually defile). But, if you want to emphasize the evil of the sorcerer-kings, the 4e mechanic might do a bit better in delivering that experience, since it is such a rarely-used option: the sorcerer-kings must be truly wicked, since they clearly disregarded the safety of their own companions!

When designing any other mechanic to represent defiling, this is how you evaluate if it's "good" or not: you evaluate how well the experience your mechanic creates lines up with the experience you want to create. So while many mechanics could hypothetically represent defiling, not all of those mechanics are equal in producing the experience of being a defiler - only those rules that get you to the lore are actually good rules for that lore.

No disagreement. I'm only saying there isn't One True Way to model defiling or, indeed, anything else; the category of "actually good rules for that lore" contains more than one possible thing. Maybe for varying values of good, but still.

 

[seebs]

How would you say 5e's Backgrounds (or Primeval Thule's narratives) with their benefits fit into this? They are based in backstory but have effects that take place in game....

I'd call backgrounds "rules" for the most part, with a bit of flavor text.

 

[ProgBard]

Sure drawing on life energy is an old trope but if you want to just drop it into any setting then you have to look at what it would cause. In the Forgotten Realms how could you have a land of Wizards in Thay for example if they are constantly drawing life from their surroundings? Zhentil Keep would be a wateland and Myth Drannor would not be lost in a forest it would be in the middle of a desert.

Sure (and that might be a fascinating AU take on the Realms), but there's no reason it has to be a wholesale replacement, either. There's a lot of narrative room between "all wizards are now defilers" and "this one wizard figured out defilement."

What about say African Lions? Where would I expect to find African Lions? The most obvious place would be Africa of course but say I was watching the Madagascar movie in which I discover that they could also be found in New York or even Madagascar. That does not change the fact that finding an African Lion in New York is so tiny that it would only be likely to happen if I was in a movie or rpg where someone thought it would be fun for my character to fight an African Lion. And if it did happen then you can be absolutely sure that I would be telling everyone about the time I fought an African Lion in the middle of New York.

I don't disagree, but, to channel Paarfi of Roundwood again, I think I fail to understand the point you do me the honor of making.

I think that exceptions to the rule are best used in moderation, unless you have a reason that everything is everywhere then most the time the best place to find Trolls is the Troll Moors and unless you are looking for Lava Trolls then Fire Mountain is not going to be the best place to look for them. On the other hand not every monster fits neatly into nice environmental boxes and also typical fantasy maps often have Fire Mountain running right up against the Troll Moors and not to mention that sometimes it was a Wizard that did it, so surprise Trolls are always an option.

No argument. But, again, there's a lot of room between "everything is everywhere" and understanding that the lore of a creature decribes common and general patterns, not absolutes.

It's also worth considering, maybe, that the "rulings not rules" philosophy of 5e in particular, with its plain-language rulebook text, introduces some probably intentional ambiguities when it comes to the flavor text of creatures. When we're told that green dragons live in "ancient forests," are we to understand that's the only place to find them, or just the most likely place? There's a lot of leeway for the DM to interpret that sort of thing, and I strongly suspect it's presented that way on purpose.

What if I was playing the son of a Cormyrean Noble though? I would expect some kind of mechanic to support that bit of background lore and that is what we find in 5e.

But you are right that we dont have to have mechanics for everything. I have not seen anything for eye colour yet, although I have not read everything in the DMs guild!

True! But the game doesn't give you a rule that says if you're the son of a Cormyrean noble, this is the background you should take. Certainly both Noble and its Knight variant both obviously work, but so could Inheritor from the SCAG. If you're a second or third son, or your family is landless, you very well might be an Acolyte, Sage, or Soldier. If your house is in exile, you could well be a Folk Hero or a Hermit! There's a lot of ways you could spin that backstory, and the rules don't prescribe a path for you; they give you the lore on one hand and the chargen options on the other and let you figure out for yourself what works. And choose your own eye color too while you're at it.

 

[ProgBard]

We're talking about language, culture, and community here. Language shapes the way we think and informs the broader cultural zeitgeist. I choose to talk about Greyhawk, Dungeons and Dragons, and role playing games in an inclusive way because I believe we should be celebrating the diversity of this wonderful hobby. I also believe that when we rely on strict definitions we often lose sight of cultural similarities and discourage taking creative risks. Taking creative risks is something that I want to encourage, even if it does not always work out because I feel it ultimately enriches the hobby. I'm not strictly speaking of game designers here, but also about GMs and players. I want people to try new things and embrace the creative imperative of our hobby. If you're a player I want you to try your hand at running a game, and I don't want the barriers to be too high. If you're a GM I want you to feel motivated to learn about game design, work with your players to hack your current game and possibly design a game of your own. We're better for it.

I personally don't see much value in encourage a very specific and more homogenous culture. I mean I get that there is a certain value in transferability of skills and knowledge from one game to another, particularly in the context of organized play. Context matters. Still, I would like to see organized play help to develop new GMs and encourage them to start home games, online games, etc. What distinguishes our hobby from other sorts of gaming is a sense of play.

This, all of this. Yes, yes, thunderously yes.

 

[Imaro]

I'd call backgrounds "rules" for the most part, with a bit of flavor text.

But would you say those rules are based around the particular backstory selected for the character? And if so that means backstory and rules are intertwined in this case.

 

[Campbell]

From my perspective, when we're discussing additions here, we're talking about adding something without changing the essence or details of what came before. So earlier in AD&D we had demons and devils. When they added the Blood War, nothing significantly changed about the earlier demon and devil lore, another dimension was added. It's possible the addition could have sparked individual DMs and players to reimagine aspects of the creatures and new roles, but it remained fully backward compatible with the earlier information. The new info can often be ignored by campaigns already in play if they don't want to incorporate it with no extra cost in DM/player effort.

Change, in the context of this discussion, is a change in the essence or significant details of the original information. Think of it as disrupting backward compatibility. 4e provides quite a few examples of this change because the design team set out to, as they described it, "reconcept" lots of aspects of the game, including monsters. For example, archons went from lawful good denizens of the upper plains to chaotic evil beings of elemental chaos. That's in no way, shape, or form backward compatible. It's not an addition - it's a change.

As for why anyone should care about the distinction, that's mostly a question for publishers responsible for the intellectual property. Additions are probably going to gain customer acceptance more easily and quicker, which may translate into being a more successful product in terms of sales and/or customer satisfaction. Changes are probably going to have a harder time achieving the same level of success unless they're particularly good or linked to some other widely regarded improvements (like the changed necessitated by rule changes in 3e D&D). Publishers deciding on whether or not they should add to canonical information or change it should weigh those considerations when deciding what projects to work on and bring to market.
The issue is a consideration for those of us in the customer base because it helps us understand how people may approach published sources for incorporation into their own games or rejection.

This is valuable. Still, one of the things I wanted to get at is the value of additional lore from a design perspective. What do you feel it adds to the game? What are its costs in relation to reflecting what the game is about?

For context I'm largely considering this from the perspective 2 sets of 3 questions. I'm mostly concerned with game design from an auteur's perspective. I am interested in the marketing and branding perspective as a secondary concern, but not as the primary concern.

Goethe's Questions For Art Criticism

1. What is the artist trying to do?
2. How well was it done?
3. Was it worth doing?

Jared Sorensen's Questions For Game Designers

1. What is my game about?
2. How does my game do that?
3. What behaviors does my game reward and punish?

I'm interested in carving out design spaces. Imagine I'm designing either a new edition of Dungeons and Dragons or a more focused game meant to be set in the D&D meta-setting. I decide that I will not contradict established fiction. Is vigorous editing an alright thing to do? Can I purposefully omit details that I do not want to stress? What if for the purposes of my game I want to leave certain facets of lore open to question that were previously decided? What if I have a sidebar explaining my approach and point to resources you can use if you disagree? Can I mess around with traditional lore formatting - stressing thematic elements, relationships and how to use a monster in play over details like ecology? Are Else Worlds style sidebars like What If Demons and Devils Were Allies or What If There Were No Blood War or possibly What If There Was No Multiverse something that I can include? If I as a designer believe that previous lore was a mistake can I use my authorial voice to provide an alternative as long as I present the original lore as well? Does it matter if I originated it or not?