Yeah, I generally agree there. But I think there are different levels of focus we can give here and loverdrive is clearly angling for one a bit closer than the 10,000 foot view.
That's what I was going for with my reply, at the very least. We can do better than just "did you have fun y/n," and avoid the necessary vagaries and vacillation induced by being focused on the "boots on the ground" perspective. A general model can still be extremely useful, especially if it inherently accounts for games having different purposes.
The system is working when it gets out of the way, is handled so seamlessly it fades into the background, and focuses the players on the fiction and the world.
Doesn't that mean that a system working is primarily a function of
familiarity on the part of the players and DM? That would seem to indicate that it's impossible for a new system to EVER be "working." That seems like a metric without much utility.
I sense a lot of vague, general ideas being thrown around but not a whole lot of specifics.
Is the question "When does the system work?" or "When does the system work for you?" Because an answer like "fun" doesn't mean diddly to someone who doesn't share the exact same ideas of fun as someone else. So what "works" for one person doesn't necessarily work for anybody else.
I mean, I tried to go for something as specific as I could without going overboard into "this model only works for X subtype of game."
We’re individuals living a subjective existence with our own thoughts and ideas and are, generally speaking, incapable of a truly objective view of anything. So every question has an implicit or explicit “for you” or “in your opinion” just as every statement has an implicit or explicit “to me” or “in my opinion” attached.
I disagree. As noted in my previous post, we can set well-defined goals (
which goals is a matter of personal taste, of course) and acceptable ranges of results (
which ranges are acceptable is, again, a matter of taste), and then test to make sure that those goals are met within the defined ranges of acceptability.
Whether players agree with those goals or ranges is up to them. Part of being a gamer is finding games that suit you and your tastes.
I think 5e's chase rules (in the DMG) are a good example where the system doesn't work.
What's interesting is that the chase rules show three ways the system can fail, all in one part of the game, so it's a great example to study.
1. The chase rules devote a couple pages to all these obstacles and sprinting sub-systems, but fail to consider the greater ecology of the rules of D&D in which they operate. There is no guideline for how to transition into a chase scene (is it simply "the DM says so"?) and hold person (and similar effects) can stop a quarry dead in their tracks before the chase begins.
2. The chase rules are focused on providing a resolution rather than supporting an experience during play. The experience they should be supporting is one of a tense thrilling scene with lots of close calls. YMMV as this whole topic is subjective, but that has not been my experience with them at all.
3. The chase rules rely on self-defeating mechanics. You can sprint by risking exhaustion, thus improving your odds of winning the chase. However, the first level of exhaustion imposes disadvantage on checks (which you need to overcome obstacles during the chase) and the second level halves your speed (which is exactly the thing you need during a chase).
Well said. This is exactly the kind of analysis I'm looking for. It identifies ways in which the specific mechanical expression falls short of the goal or acceptable range of results,
in a way that can be tested and improved.
That looks to me like an example of how the system actually works because its effect comes down to judicious use of finite resources. A participant who can safely deploy more dashes should be more likely to win the chase. Blowing through your dashes and hitting a level or two of exhaustion before the competing participant(s) should be considerably hampering.
I find the "3+CON" thing leans rather too much into the worst aspects of its various elements, being neither super intuitive nor particularly well-grounded (e.g. I would expect a low-Con Wizard with Athletics or Acrobatics training to be better at this task than a high-CON Warlock without said training, because endurance is
heavily skill-based IRL.) It further doesn't really add much in the way of drama: either the hunters have more Dashes than the quarry does, and thus catches them, or the hunters don't, and thus the quarry escapes. The purpose of these rules, from a plain reading of the text, is to add a heightened sense of urgency and the thrill of the chase (aesthetic values, but expressed via testable mechanics). I don't think these rules achieve that goal well, and in fact are likely to get in the way of that goal.
Were they fleeing or pursuing? If they were pursuing and not willing to risk exhaustion, that's great. The system is working as intended. If they were the ones fleeing, what were the stakes of failure? One chase session I ran involved the PCs fleeing like hell in a Ravenloft scenario and the consequences of failing were... not good. They were quite willing to risk exhaustion to get away.
I....don't quite get how that's supposed to be "the system working as intended." The chase rules are meant to...y'know, be more
active than just "are you running away fast enough?" But I consider the entire Exhaustion mechanic to be fundamentally badly designed, which then infects every other system it gets invoked into. The
idea of exhaustion as a mechanic is great. The
application in 5e is terrible.
Well, I haven't exhaustively playtested the chase rules
I see what you did there.
A system works when it is not disruptive.
Which is about as useful as "an antihero is a hero with villainous qualities or lacking in heroic qualities." Passing the buck to a new definition. That said...
The system doesn't work and is disruptive when the system doesn't meet the expectations of the players nor DM and clarification or adjudication takes enough time of of the game that you noticeably exit said game for a period
By saying "doesn't work and is disruptive," does that mean the two are not totally synonymous?
More importantly, does this imply that sometimes, the issue is not "the game is incorrectly designed," and instead "the group is playing a game which does not do what they want it to do"? IOW, would an appropriate response to "X system doesn't work [for me]!" sometimes be a suggestion to play a different system that
does meet the expectations of players and DM without needing (excessive) time spent on clarification and adjudication?
That's a good descriptor of an important part of the answer.
I'd add another perspective. A game system works when the rules it contains produce experiences desired by each of the participants most of the time.
I recognize that these desired experiences can and do differ from one session to the next (or one minute to the next).
My retort, here, would be that that is not something a game designer can handle. It is not possible to design a game such that
every possible participant gets the experiences they desire most of the time. Instead, as noted above, it is on each potential participant to examine the game and determine whether that game offers experiences they're looking for. One would not (and, I argue,
could not) say that rap music "doesn't work" if it fails to provide a pleasurable listening experience, whereas one very easily
could say that a particular rap song is badly-executed because it fails to achieve the goals rap music is made to achieve (e.g., the rhyming is bad or forced, the beat is meandering or unfocused, excessive auto-tuning weakens the singer's vocal distinctiveness, etc.)
Instead of someone saying, "This song doesn't work because it isn't giving me the kind of experience I want," they
should say, "I would rather listen to something else that I find more enjoyable." It has nothing to do with the
functionality of the song, and everything to do with having preferences that don't match it. If a particular game does not give you the kind of experience you're looking for, or features particular experiences you vehemently oppose, it may be in your interest to play some other game better adapted to your interests, rather than trying to force a game to do what you want it to do. Just as trying to wrangle with rap music until it resembles classical music is just going to end in frustration.
Or, to put it more simply, at
some point a game designer must decide what her game is
for. Anyone who wants it to have some purpose
other than that is, pretty much by definition, going to end up at least a little disappointed. This is an unavoidable fact of game design, and should therefore be embraced. That doesn't mean that it is impossible to design a game that can cater to
more than one purpose, but it does mean that trying to be all things to all people is a fool's errand that simply ends up frustrating fans (and, as like as not, designers too).
