D&D General When does the system "work"?

[Hussar]

I'm curious: how would you feel about a system which tells you, "There shouldn't be any need for an <X>. If you really want one, you know what you want it for better than we do."* That is, a system which says, "This is where our rules stop (in this area). If you want a thing which steps beyond this rule, it would not be helpful for us to tell you how to do that. Only you can figure out what that thing is or means." So, the system is neither giving a resolution to an action without oversight (since it is not giving a resolution at all), nor demanding on-the-spot resolution of its mechanics (because, at least in this instance, there are no mechanics to resolve).

It is instead saying that there is no rule for a theoretically-possible option, because whatever you wish to achieve will be better implemented by you doing it yourself than by them giving you a fixed result.

*This is an actual quote from the 13A corebook, specifically where X is an epic-tier Linguist feat, if you're curious.

To be fair, like all things, there are limits. Obviously the heavy lifting in my statement was the "frequent" part. No system will ever cover 100% of all eventualities. That's just not possible. But, OTOH, for me, a working system will cover common actions most of the time.

And, yes, that's vague, because, well, there's no real hard line here. "Well, it must work X% of the time before we consider it working" just isn't all that useful. OTOH, lots of systems have a sort of default mechanic to baseline actions. For example, Savage World's Rule of 4 where a 4 always succeeds. The only thing in question is what modifiers and what size of die are you rolling.

If the rules simply wash their hands of a situation, that could be the sign of a system not working. Sure, if it's a really corner case issue, then fine, no problem. But, take early versions of D&D. You had no rules at all for jumping. The system simply did not give you any baseline at all for how and how far a character could jump. So, you had fifteen different ad hoc systems for covering a very basic thing that comes up a lot in game. This is a system not working.

5e, generally, works. There aren't too many times the game comes to a crashing halt because no one at the table, including the mechanics, has any idea about how to adjudicate something. It does come up, and that's why we have a DM. For example, today the question of, "Can I stuff a corpse into a Bag of Holding using a Telekinesis spell" was an actual question during the session. The rules are largely silent on this. I don't think there's any really applicable rules for if you can stuff a corpse in a bag of holding, so, it's pretty much 100% DM's call.

But, I'm also going to say that this is not a question that comes up so often that it requires mechanics.

 

[Minigiant]

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...

Well it's a clarification...

By saying "doesn't work and is disruptive," does that mean the two are not totally synonymous?

Yes. And No.

The system fails when it says it's one thing but outputs another.

And RPGs this causes a disruption as the group attempt to understand and fixed the dissonance of sorts.

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?

Eh. Sometimes. Sometimes the group is playing the game in a way that it isn't designed to. That's not the system being disruptive. That's the group causing disruption.

The key issue is the system corrected describing itself. One it does that, one can attribute disruption to the deserving party: system or group.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

There are a fair number of responses claiming that the system works when the rules get out of the way. This viewpoint suggests to me that the rules or system are mostly viewed as an annoyance or nuisance to roleplay gaming. Almost like the horrible adage that "children should be seen but not heard," albeit with 'rules' instead of 'children,' with some gamers taking even the more extreme version from the Milford School in Arrested Development: i.e., "children should neither be seen nor heard." I do recognize here, however, the importance of negative space design and I don't want to discount that. But on the whole, there seems to be something of an "out of sight, out of mind" viewpoint when it comes to how systems should utilize rules and what makes systems work.

However, similarly to @Grendel_Khan, I think that I am of a different persuasion, likely as a result of the "system matters" debate, even if only as a counter-balance to the above approach. To me, a system works when rules get in the way as an intentional part of facilitating a meaningful game experience in the fiction and the participants are glad that the system does. I think that meaningful rules interactions are an important aspect of games and why we like playing them.

The rules getting out of the way language has been bugging me, too, but I wasn't sure how to articulate why. You've put it perfectly.

But I'd also wager that some people might be conflating "rules getting out of the way" with "I know these rules really well."

To stake my bet, I propose that if it was really about rules not interfering with play, everyone talking about that as the main system requirement would be playing story games, or at the very least one of the many incredibly rules-lite systems out there.

I also think when you have to dig through a spell list to double-check the specific effects of a spell cast at a specific level against a specific target with a given set of resistances or saving throw opportunities, play halts, pages are flipped or scrolled through, etc. The rules are waddling out of the dark and plopping right down in everyone's path, fully in the way. They're just rules--and a process of checking them--you've grown accustomed to.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

Well, that can get into the whole issue of what degree you want to manage small increment effects or rare effects. People have broken their necks falling off stools, but it doesn't happen often. People often take some bruises taking a fall or are briefly stunned, but the former is usually below the resolution threshold of most systems, and a lot of systems either accidentally or deliberately (because it can produce some undesirable side effects) avoid stun effects as a routine result.

(But yeah, I'm at an age where I can routinely expect solid bruising from an uncontrolled fall, and depending on the surface, some lovely skin removal from my forearms).

Stun effects seem like a great way to get at the immediate impact of taking a spill. And you're right, a lot of systems definitely shy away from stun effects.

I think one of the reasons so many games skimp out on stunning is because most combat in trad games is incredibly slow to resolve, and the action is often so zoomed in and precise. When I'm a player in something like 5e I absolutely dread losing my action, and would almost always rather take more damage, since now I don't get to play the game for a surprisingly long amount of time, and also the enemy can instantly press their advantage. And it doesn't "feel" like I've been sent reeling, just like I don't exist for the next 10 or 20 minutes.

The only trad game I've played where getting stunned isn't like that is the new edition of Twilight 2000. There, both PCs and NPCs are getting stunned (not the term used in the game, but that's ok) constantly--you have to roll every time you take a hit or near-hit (a bullet hits cover you're behind, or automatic fire rips past). And if you fail that roll, you drop prone, take a point of Stress (which you don't have many of, maybe 5 points total) and lose your next action.

There are a lot of great things about that mechanic, including the fact that it's the only time I've ever seen suppression fire play and feel right in an RPG. But getting stunned like that in T2K doesn't feel overly punishing or boring because:

-Combat is resolved very quickly. It's an elegant, focused system.
-You're often stunning the enemy, too, including suppressing ones you have no real chance to hit, to keep their heads down as you reposition or retreat.
-When you lose your action this way, you also take some damage from it (that point of Stress), so it feels like you took a hit, not just like you've been sent to the penalty box for a while with birds spinning around your head.

So enemies and friendlies are losing actions left and right, accumulating damage as it goes, and not just getting stunned as some occasional special case. But maybe more importantly, play will swing back around to you fast, because it's not a game where you're constantly checking feats and spell effects and whether area effect cones touch three enemies. That game cooks.

I'm yapping about all this because I think it's an example of how some systems accidentally create their own problems without realizing it, especially by just being slow at combat. If it takes a long time to resolve a single action of combat, stuff like stunning is worse, but also players are more likely to always attack, since who wants to do some terribly crucial-to-the-fiction but non-combat activity if it means it'll take four actions, and now you're watching your friends do stuff for an hour while you quietly mutter that it's extremely important that someone open this locked door you can all escape through.

 

[Irlo]

I had viewed your reply as...well, more or less an, "Okay, but what about X?" If it was simply meant as a "that's cool, X is also relevant," then...alright. Not much to say on that front.

It is only by identifying the goals of the game, how well it meets those goals, and whether those goals match the interests of the player(s) that we can actually provide any constructive feedback to either the player or the designer.

Makes sense. I certainly meant what I said:

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.

Looking at design intentions and implementation is important. And it's not everything. Games are played by groups of people, and I think the experience of those people is as important as a game designer's intentions.

A very substantial number of people, based on how people advocate for certain things regarding game design. D&D has to be for them. (Note that this is not one single faction--it is vocal people from numerous distinct groups.) If it is not for them then it is a bad game. These folks are usually the ones most vehemently opposed to any kind of analysis of game design as a technology, despite the fact that that analysis would be incredibly useful for helping them find a game that actually does suit them.

I haven't seen vehement opposition to analysis, but I haven't looked for it. I'll take your word for it.

Groups of gamers don't have a unified or consistent desired game experience. Game #1 might work very well to provide Experience A, and Game #2 might work very well to provide Experience B, while Game #3 works moderately well with some patches to provide both Experiences A & B at the same time to the same group. So one might say that #3 doesn't work as well or that it doesn't suit the players, when it actually does suit the group.

I suppose that we have to consider that the designer's intention might be to provide an adequate balance of experiences to appeal to a wider-range of players and thus better facilitate group play, and that we determine if a game works by finding if that intention is met. But I don't think you'll find that answer in an analysis of game technology in the absence of an analysis of group dynamics and play.

Thanks for your thoughtful response.

 

[Irlo]

The rules getting out of the way language has been bugging me, too, but I wasn't sure how to articulate why. You've put it perfectly.

I figured out why it bothers me. My group doesn't play that way. Sometimes they like to engage in the fiction, and sometimes they like to engage in the mechanics and work through the tactical aspects of D&D combat. They do these to different degrees on different days, and some enjoy the mechanics more than others, but if those rules weren't front-and-center, I'm not sure they'd be playing this game.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The rules getting out of the way language has been bugging me, too, but I wasn't sure how to articulate why. You've put it perfectly.

But I'd also wager that some people might be conflating "rules getting out of the way" with "I know these rules really well."

To stake my bet, I propose that if it was really about rules not interfering with play, everyone talking about that as the main system requirement would be playing story games, or at the very least one of the many incredibly rules-lite systems out there.

I also think when you have to dig through a spell list to double-check the specific effects of a spell cast at a specific level against a specific target with a given set of resistances or saving throw opportunities, play halts, pages are flipped or scrolled through, etc. The rules are waddling out of the dark and plopping right down in everyone's path, fully in the way. They're just rules--and a process of checking them--you've grown accustomed to.

It also can super-privilege certain styles of play over others, but when talking about one's own preferences, that's kind of inevitable.

As I've noted, if I wanted to focus most heavily on roleplaying, I probably wouldn't use a game system; I'd use some sort of mostly free-form roleplaying, maybe with a bit of structure. I more or less did that years ago when MUSHing, and under the right circumstances, it can be quite enjoyable.

But when I'm RPGing, the G is not just a facilitator. Its part of the experience. I want that game with my roleplaying. The chocolate with the peanut butter is not a mistake, its part of the overall effect.

I don't want the rules "out of the way"; I want them as part of what the experience is, just to not be at odds with the roleplaying and what kind of outputs you expect.

(Some of the worst problems in game design is when the fiction avowedly has things going on that the game system won't produce, not in terms of detail level, but in terms of the mechanics not being able to or being very unlikely to produce the outcomes of the fiction. That means there's a mismatch between system and setting usually).

 

[Lanefan]

Seamlessness with a game requires familiarity. Doesn't matter if that familiarity means the specific letter of the rules or just the overall process of play, but familiarity of some kind is still required.

So maybe part of the definition of a "working system" involves how easily or quickly most new players can arrive at such familiarity?

 

[Thomas Shey]

So maybe part of the definition of a "working system" involves how easily or quickly most new players can arrive at such familiarity?

Or how much they find the effort worthwhile.

 

[Lanefan]

There are a fair number of responses claiming that the system works when the rules get out of the way. This viewpoint suggests to me that the rules or system are mostly viewed as an annoyance or nuisance to roleplay gaming. Almost like the horrible adage that "children should be seen but not heard," albeit with 'rules' instead of 'children,'

Exactly.

A good analogy is team sports, in which the referees/umpires are usually seen as doing a great job if nobody notices their presence and yet the game doesn't descend into mayhem.