Why Jargon is Bad, and Some Modern Resources for RPG Theory

[pemerton]

Physically moving into room 3 is encountering room 3. You may not interact with it in any way but you still encountered it.

I'm not quite sure what it means to "encounter" a room. But what I said in the post that you quoted is that no "encounter" happens in room 3 if a Halfling walks through it. I am using "encounter" as a shorthand for this fairly traditional idea, from Gygax's PHB p 103:

TRAPS, TRICKS, AND ENCOUNTERS
During the course of an adventure, you will undoubtedly come across various forms of traps and tricks, as well as encounter monsters of one sort or another.​

A Halfling who walks through room 3 (and doesn't search for traps, drop rocks from a height, jump hard, etc) will not come across any trap or trick, nor encounter monsters of any sort. They will make it to room 4, where an encounter (with the Bugbear boss and friends) will take place.

The cannot omes from two things.

1. The adventure may explicit say it is outright impossible to go back the way you came..

2. If where you want to go isn't written in the adventure then it effectively doesn't exist. Perhaps the adventure has a river running through a chamber in a dungeon meant to be an obstacle. If a player decided to ignore the dungeon rooms and just swim "off the map" in some underground river they effectively chose to stop playing that published adventure.

• For (i), the players must agree to striving for the scripted objective—and attain it. If they don't, no/failed adventure). This can include not knowing or not discovering what the objective even is, a rather severe failure.
• For (ii) , the particular actions may or may not be specified by the script (this would be a lower level of granularity than situation/objective). Torg dramatic skill resolutions, for example, script 4 skill tests that must be performed in order on successive rounds (amongst other details). In that sense, dramatic skill resolutions are linear.
• For (iii), very much so, the GM must agree not to go off-script and allow options the script does not provide for. If the GM does go off-script, the adventure may become branched or nonlinear in some way. Or, as with the Torg dramatic skill resolution, the options available to the players become much broader. And as I noted, I've played in several published Torg adventures where, for example, no matter what we players did, we could not escape capture, or capture the villain—even if we tried mightily! Since the GM didn't want to waste time, he got the point of just letting us know the script so we could move right on to the next scene.

<snip>

They are dependent on the GM to tell them. Published Torg Eternity adventures often begin with the scene courageously framed as a briefing at secret headquarters, or at the dropoff point for the mission, or whatever, and the GM fills the players in on the situation. Likewise, typically when the players satisfy the termination conditions for the scene, Torg Eternity adventures courageously move on to frame the next scene.


The GM imposes the cannot. If they don't, the adventure might become nonlinear. As long as the GM is ready to handle that, of course, it isn't a problem! but doing so might involve a lot of work.


Linearity is a form of restriction, so yes, the cannot is the crux of the matter. It comes from whoever scripted/architected the situations, with the GM enforcing the restrictions. Those may be the same person, of course.

niklinna's answers are the clearer ones to me. To paraphrase them back: the "cannot" is coming from a certain way of scripting instructions, and then implementing them. The players implement some of those instructions (eg striving for the scripted objective) and the GM implements some too (eg deciding that certain action declarations will fizzle, or reinterpreting the tasks or intents of certain action declarations so as to make them apposite to the scripted objective).

 

[pemerton]

SPOILER ALERT
This post contains spoilers for the adventure in The Green Knight RPG. (Which I heartily recommend, by the way. My group played it and enjoyed it.)

HERE COME THE SPOILERS:

This adventure consists of 5 scenes. One is labelled "The Adventure Begins". The other four are labelled as "encounters": a meeting with some ruffians terrorising a farmer; a meeting with a hungry hunter trying to catch and eat a magical fox; a haunted cabin where the PCs spend the night; and the meeting with the Green Knight at his Green Chapel.

The scenes are intended to be run in sequence: the Adventure Begins asks each player to introduce their PC - they have met at a tavern and all are travelling to meet the Green Knight at his Green Chapel, having promised about a year ago that they would do so. It is free roleplaying among the players, and concludes with the GM announcing that "You agree to go on this quest to the Green Chapel together . . . You will face your destinies together."

Of the four encounters, the first is simpler than the second and third; the fourth is the climax.

Each of the non-bookend scenes is fully self-contained (except that changes to Dishonour are carried forward, and that valuable items that are collected can be taken forward). Other than the fact that the first of them is simpler, I don't think it would affect anything to change their sequence; for this very reason there seems to be little at stake in who gets to choose that sequence. Each of them poses a series of "challenges" or "tests" which the players have to grapple with, having to manage their Dishonour scores. (If Dishonour gets to 20, that character's adventure is over.) The players are the ones who get to declare the scene done. When they do so, the GM awards (or removes) Dishonour based on the choices the players made for their PCs, and the overall outcome of the scene.

Once the fifth scene (which is the fourth encounter) resolves, the scenario/quest/adventure is done: depending on how the meeting with the Green Knight played out for a given PC, they experience one of three different resolutions that are provided by the adventure authors. There's no real point in trying to run this scene in advance of the three other encounters: in terms of tactical game play, the point of those other encounters is for the players to ready their PCs for the climax, and to be challenged in that respect (the players ready their PCs by lowering their Dishonour; they are challenged in this respect by various ways that their Dishonour can step up). If you were playing under time constraints you might drop one (perhaps the fox?) - I don't have a good sense of how tightly the whole thing is balanced, mathematically, and hence of how much harder this might make the final scene.

Does this count as a "linear adventure"? Or is "linear adventure" only a concept for adventures aimed at supporting exploratory play?

 

[Lanefan]

SPOILER ALERT
This post contains spoilers for the adventure in The Green Knight RPG. (Which I heartily recommend, by the way. My group played it and enjoyed it.)

HERE COME THE SPOILERS:

This adventure consists of 5 scenes. One is labelled "The Adventure Begins". The other four are labelled as "encounters": a meeting with some ruffians terrorising a farmer; a meeting with a hungry hunter trying to catch and eat a magical fox; a haunted cabin where the PCs spend the night; and the meeting with the Green Knight at his Green Chapel.

The scenes are intended to be run in sequence: the Adventure Begins asks each player to introduce their PC - they have met at a tavern and all are travelling to meet the Green Knight at his Green Chapel, having promised about a year ago that they would do so. It is free roleplaying among the players, and concludes with the GM announcing that "You agree to go on this quest to the Green Chapel together . . . You will face your destinies together."

Of the four encounters, the first is simpler than the second and third; the fourth is the climax.

Each of the non-bookend scenes is fully self-contained (except that changes to Dishonour are carried forward, and that valuable items that are collected can be taken forward). Other than the fact that the first of them is simpler, I don't think it would affect anything to change their sequence; for this very reason there seems to be little at stake in who gets to choose that sequence. Each of them poses a series of "challenges" or "tests" which the players have to grapple with, having to manage their Dishonour scores. (If Dishonour gets to 20, that character's adventure is over.) The players are the ones who get to declare the scene done. When they do so, the GM awards (or removes) Dishonour based on the choices the players made for their PCs, and the overall outcome of the scene.

Once the fifth scene (which is the fourth encounter) resolves, the scenario/quest/adventure is done: depending on how the meeting with the Green Knight played out for a given PC, they experience one of three different resolutions that are provided by the adventure authors. There's no real point in trying to run this scene in advance of the three other encounters: in terms of tactical game play, the point of those other encounters is for the players to ready their PCs for the climax, and to be challenged in that respect (the players ready their PCs by lowering their Dishonour; they are challenged in this respect by various ways that their Dishonour can step up). If you were playing under time constraints you might drop one (perhaps the fox?) - I don't have a good sense of how tightly the whole thing is balanced, mathematically, and hence of how much harder this might make the final scene.

Does this count as a "linear adventure"? Or is "linear adventure" only a concept for adventures aimed at supporting exploratory play?

IMO if the PCs/players have the ability to choose their path (knowingly or not) as 1-2-3-4-5 or 1-3-4-2-5 or 1-4-3-2-5 then it's not completely linear. It wouldn't be linear at all if 1 and 5 could also move around within the sequence.

The difference, to me, is that if the different scenes here are analagous to rooms in a dungeon then the middle three scenes can be approached from either "direction" - you might get to scene 4 with the knowledge etc. gained in scenes 2 and-or 3, or you might not. Just like in a looping dungeon (though 5 rooms is a bit too small as an example of such) you could end up first-entering any of the middle three rooms from different directions, depending which path/sequence you (intentionally or not) chose.

 

[Lanefan]

I'll point out once again that "linear" needn't apply to an entire adventure, from beginning to end, any portion of an adventure could be linear. But the longer a linear sequence is, the more noticeable the linearity will be.

Indeed.

Each branch of a branching or dendritic dungeon or adventure is going to be linear between the branching points (intersections) and ultimately each new branch can only lead either to another branching point or to a dead end.

In a looping dungeon, parts of (some or all of) the loops will be linear between the points where they intersect, but here each new branch has more options as to what it might ultimately lead to: a) a dead end, b) another branching point, c) back to previously-explored ground, or d) out of the dungeon/adventure via a previously-unknown exit.

 

[Lanefan]

Reference is made to places/rooms being able to be visited only in order. I live in a house where that is largely true, but that doesn't mean every day of my life in my house is the same! Because different things happen, occasionally different people are in one or the other room, etc. It seemed to me that two different groups could play the little 6 room dungeon and have different experiences, depending on choices made, whether or not they have a Halfling who sneaks ahead, etc.

You can have different experiences in a series of rooms but at the same time have to go through the kitchen to get to the dining room every single time.

That said, rare indeed is the house with only one door to the outside; and if your house* has both a front door and a back door (fairly common) then it's not truly linear in that one could go around the outside from one door to the other to complete a loop. Put another way, were I to visit I wouldn't necessarily have to leave via the exact same route I came in by; and the choice of door through which I enter will determine both the sequencing of the rooms I encounter between said doors and my entry direction to each of those rooms.

Contrast this with ye olde 6-room dungeon posted upthread. There's no way to complete any sort of loop here, no branches to take, nothing. Your only options are straight in [outdoors-1-2-3-4-5-6] and then straight out again by the same route reversed [6-5-4-3-2-1-outdoors].

* - if the house is freestanding; this would not be possible with a row house or townhouse where there is no direct outside connection between the backyard and the front.

This is causing me confusion. How do the players find, or engage with, the path of the adventure? How does it manifest itself, given that typically the players aren't reading the adventure book?

The players engage with the path simply by playing the adventure; and it manifests itself either as the party go along and realize they have choices (or don't) and then follow up on such choices as they make, or in hindsight when they look at their map and see how everything fits together.

 

[pemerton]

IMO if the PCs/players have the ability to choose their path (knowingly or not) as 1-2-3-4-5 or 1-3-4-2-5 or 1-4-3-2-5 then it's not completely linear. It wouldn't be linear at all if 1 and 5 could also move around within the sequence.

As I posted, the scenes are independent of one another. So what difference does it make if the players rather than the GM chooses the sequence?

And suppose that it was linear, why would that matter? What interesting property of the scenario would that be pointing me to?

 

[JiffyPopTart]

I'm not quite sure what it means to "encounter" a room. But what I said in the post that you quoted is that no "encounter" happens in room 3 if a Halfling walks through it. I am using "encounter" as a shorthand for this fairly traditional idea, from Gygax's PHB p 103:

TRAPS, TRICKS, AND ENCOUNTERS​

During the course of an adventure, you will undoubtedly come across various forms of traps and tricks, as well as encounter monsters of one sort or another.​

A Halfling who walks through room 3 (and doesn't search for traps, drop rocks from a height, jump hard, etc) will not come across any trap or trick, nor encounter monsters of any sort. They will make it to room 4, where an encounter (with the Bugbear boss and friends) will take place.


niklinna's answers are the clearer ones to me. To paraphrase them back: the "cannot" is coming from a certain way of scripting instructions, and then implementing them. The players implement some of those instructions (eg striving for the scripted objective) and the GM implements some too (eg deciding that certain action declarations will fizzle, or reinterpreting the tasks or intents of certain action declarations so as to make them apposite to the scripted objective).

We're just wrestling with verbiage.

In a game it is possible to encounter something and not engage with it. If the monster in a dungeon room were a small turtle that when flipped over turned into a giant dragon the encounter rmay be as simple as...

GM: You enter the door marked Room 3. Inside you see a nealy empty brick chamber roughly 20' by 20' square. Across the room you see another door with "Door 4" written on it. In the middle of the room you see a small turtle on it's back struggling to flip itself over.

Player: Sorry bud (to turtle), no time to help. I move through the next door.

GM: You enter the door marked Door 4....

Above was a (boring) encounter.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So, it's been a while, ... HAWT TAEK THURSDAY!

This is a fork of the "+" thread created by @overgeeked here. I am also using the suggestion in the thread to explicitly title this thread with (GNS) so people will know ahead of time that they can come here and discuss (or argue) about GNS Theory as much as they want.

That said, there are three parts to this post-

First, the statement that motivated me, and a brief description as to why typologies (putting people into little baskets) is a bad thing.

Second, a general overview of why jargon is considered bad.

Third, some resources for RPG theory that are helpful and aren't just all of us blabbering.


A. Buzzfeed told me my play agenda is Golden Retriever!

The primary motivation for starting this thread (other than people using the "+" thread to argue with the premise) was a post that described GNS theory and summed it up with this:

Are there more or less motivations than the three outlined? It's possible, but no one has really bothered expanding the categories.

I strongly disagree with that statement. Look, there's two types of people in this world-
1. Those who put people into arbitrary categories.
2. Those who don't put people into arbitrary categories.
3. The innumerate.

Ahem. Here's the thing- typologies .... putting things into groups ... classifying people as one thing as another ... it's immensely satisfying! We all understand it! Heck, that is the principle on which Buzzfeed was built. And before the internet (yes, there was a "before the internet"), that was the principle on which popular magazines, from People to Cosmopolitan, built all their magazine covers.
What Friend are you?
Which Avatar: Airbender character?
There's only four romantic types ... which one are you?
There are only three motivations for roleplaying- can you guess what letter perfectly describes what you want out of your roleplaying game?

It's all BS pop psychology, all the way down. But this isn't specific to GNS- it has always been this way, and will always be this way, in the hobbyist community. In fact, in academic research on RPG theory, this is pretty well-known! Evan Torner (among others) has documented this amateur theorizing, as it always follows the same path. First, the person provides their RPG theory in a semi-professional form ('zine, on-line BBS, personal blog, forum, wiki, etc.). Second, the theory continues the same debates we are all familiar with (e.g., realism versus playability; task resolution; game design and play advice etc.). The theory will almost always do so through the utilization of player and system typologies (what players enjoy about different games and how different games accommodate those preferences). Third, the author will claim to be a "big tent" and unbiased observer of the typologies seeking only to end the prior debates, while actually the author of the theory is looking to continue the debate and, more often than not, delegitimatize other methods of play through the seemingly-neutral goal of helping people design and play 'better.' Fourth, and finally, the author will inevitably make the act same points that were made years or decades ago.

So you can see this with Slimak in 1975. Glenn Blacow's Fourfold Way. ....in 1980. Don Miller in 1981. There are so many that it's not worth listing (Allston, Laws, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.). And this continued ... in the 80s (in smaller zines and more mainstream periodicals such as Dragon). In the 90s (usenet). The 00s (forums such as this one and the Forge, the internet in general), and continues today. But it's always the same-

"Players and their preferences/motivations fall into these categories. Therefore, game design must speak to these." And every time we see this, it's always to privilege one (or some) style(s) of play and to disparage other styles. And like most pop psychology typologies (and unlike consumer studies in CRPGs), there is never any empirical evidence.

But from a factual basis, people haven't stopped using typologies once the Forge went dark. To use the most obvious - there have been numerous typologies provided since then, many of which have been discussed here! However, despite the existence of these numerous different proposed amateur typologies, we still have the same debate.

This is the debate that we keep seeing:
A. "You can only be a Ross, Rachel, Joey, Chandler, Monica, or Phoebe."
B. "Well, I think that's wrong. No one is that! Every person is either a Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, Archer, Burnham, or Pike."

This is the better debate:
A. "You can only be a Ross, Rachel, Joey, Chandler, Monica, or Phoebe."
B. "I'm not a Friends character. That's not helpful."

Now, with all of that out of the way (which I know will be uncontroversial) I will say that places and discussions can be incredibly helpful as a specific tool for game design. To the extent that a community forms to discuss better designs, task resolution, and indie games- that's a great thing! That is genuinely good. But that doesn't mean that the underlying typology provides any useful information about TTRPGs in general.

Finally, characterizing these design typologies as the only possible RPG theories does a great disservice to the people who want to talk about RPG theory when it comes to social issues- issues related to gender, race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, and other important factors that influence how people play and how design and norms affect inclusivity and openness within the community.


B. We have to backburner your annual until we've leveraged the pivot-to-video into actionable engagement with our disruptive client-centered approach.

A brief aside about jargon- which I've discussed before so I'm largely quoting myself.

Jargon (or any kind of specialized language... you can put in Thieves' Cant if you want) is both helpful and unhelpful. If you think of any specialized field- medicine, law, banking, computer science, and so on, it will have jargon. Jargon can serve a very useful purpose- it can allow people with a shared interest in something technical or specialized to describe something quickly without having to use regular language each time and "re-invent" the wheel. At its best, jargon is a linguistic shortcut used by people with a shared interest.

Of course, there are other instances of jargon as well, outside of technical fields. Think about almost any area- when there is a shared group, there is often a shared vocabulary. This gets down to the smallest groups- I am sure that all of us have friend groups, and in those groups we have verbal shortcuts from shared events or people we have known! If everyone remembers that terrible night in Toledo, then it would be normal for someone in the group to say, "We don't want another Toledo" and for everyone to nod in agreement. (I am sure that someone is getting ready to start typing, Shakra, when the walls fell.)

The trouble with jargon, however, is that while it can help in-groups communicate more effectively, it is also incredibly off-putting to other people; in fact, it is can be considered both a feature and a bug. If you've ever spoken to a professional (a doctor, a lawyer, a banker) who can't be bothered to explain things and "dumb it down" for a "mere layman" or dealt with a close group of friends that talks entirely in "in-jokes" and doesn't explain them, you understand what this means. When you have invented terms, people will use them as a weapon to exclude others- "Oh, you don't understand what I mean by XXXXXX? Well, obviously you just don't get it."

Given that the people here are not using agreed-upon academic terms, but are using terms invented by hobbyists for other hobbyists, many disagreements about RPG theory are just arguments over what jargon is being used. "Oh, that's not a railroad. That's player agency!" Or, "That's not skilled play, because other types of play have skill." Or "My game has a strong story component, so it's Story Now, right?" And so on.

As you probably notice, this problem is most acute because most of these terms are borrowing and appropriating from actual language for slightly different purposes; to use less-loaded examples, a lot of people get confused by legal terms like "actual malice" (which has nothing to do with malice) or medical terms (like then the doctor says your test result is positive, and the patient replies, 'Positive, that's great!").

So to go back to the main point- yes, jargon does have its place, but people who are used to the jargon usually do not realize that it can be incredibly off-putting. As a general rule, when people are saying that they don't want to engage in the jargon, that's not an attack on everything you hold dear- it means that they usually can't get an entry point to the conversation because the terms are obfuscating what is being discussed. At that point, you can either argue about using jargon, or try and explain the concepts.


C. Momma Snarf always told me, "Snarf, if you can't be a part of the solution, become a part of the problem."

Following are some resources for people that would like to learn more about RPG theory. These are from a prior post I did, as well as some posted in the prior "+" thread. I will start with weblinks, and then include some books.

Web resources:

1. Great roundup of web-based resources at Black & Green Games. I highly recommend this collection.
2. Role-playing Game Studies. This is an academic book, but it is interesting and has the majority of chapters available to the public on-line at the link.
3. Playground Worlds. Some ideas, with a strong emphasis from the Nordic community, available on-line.
4. The Forge :: Articles (start here: The Forge :: GNS and Other Matters of Role-playing Theory if you're looking for specific discussions on GNS)
5. Six Cultures of Play (It's another typology attempt)
7. Ants, Spiders, and Bees. An interesting look at RPG theory ... best of all, it references Dworkin and Hart, which I can always get behind!



Books:
1. The Elusive Shift. Jon Peterson's book. Available at amazon and others.
2. Tabletop RPG Design in Theory and Practice at the Forge, 2001–2012. William J. White. Available at amazon and others (expensive). Best academic work on the Forge, for those interested.
3. Designers & Dragons. Shannon Applecline. (I think some of this has been superseded by newer material from Peterson, but sill good). Available with a free TSR section of 100 pages at evilhat.
4. Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media. Pat Harrigan. Available at amazon and others.

I hope you understand that all this really comes across as is, "I don't like your theory so I want to outlaw talking about it." lol. Peterson, White, Harrigan, etc. all have their own 'terms of art' which they use. If you don't like the GNS ones that's fine, but CRITICIZE THEM, and stop with the "terms of art are bad", because they serve a very useful purpose! I mean, its great to criticize them, actually, but it isn't worthwhile unless it is substantive (not to say that nothing substantive is being said here, BTW). The point is, when you come into it with "Theory X uses terminology, its BAD!" and then talk about theory A, B, and/or C and use THEIR terminology, well...

That all being said, your heart is in the right place, I guess? I mean, I don't think anyone in these threads is interested in arguing about terminology. However, I think the thread might be misnamed, lol.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

RPGs are also highly subjective. If we both play a video game we know that we are having an extremely similar experience. An RPG is filtered through our imaginations to such an extent that even the person sat next to us in the same session is likely having an appreciably different experience. Describing how we each play RPGs is like describing how we think or what different colours look like - that is to say, fraught with difficulty.

Well, as many are quick to point out when someone describes their lack of love for their particular game, play takes many forms, even when using a specific game. A lot of what people DO is kind of outside the purview of rules, process, principles, etc. entirely. I mean, if the people playing are eating slices and drinking beers and going into the other room when it isn't their turn to watch the game, that's going to be a different sort of experience than some die hard nerds (yeah, I was just watching Stranger Things...) sitting in the basement with the music and the whole bit. These may favor different sorts of design. I think D&D kind of cherry-picked the sweet spot in terms of being a middle ground that a lot of people could manage, and its conceptual framework has really dominated thinking about RPGs. Jargon is one thing, but I think the real reason there's such a reaction to ideas centered on things like Story Now is just that it represents a break with that thinking. You REALLY DO have to build a new model of what an RPG is and how it works, but not everyone wants to (or should) do that.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I also think the actual jargon used to describe games like Sorcerer was not well chosen. Using narrative and story in the descriptors for a sort of play that is fundamentally a rejection of storytelling (whether GM led or collaborative) was a pretty massive blunder.

I think it is worth considering exactly where this terminology came from. It was merely some mutually agreed upon words that were being used in a very small and restricted community of posters. It would be like saying we in this thread hash around for a while and hit upon a few words we use in a certain way. Now, TWENTY FIVE YEARS LATER this thread is being referenced by some totally other people, talking about some games that didn't even exist back then, and someone is exercised about how they used a word back there and then. Now, admittedly, FROM THERE, some people took those terms and ran with them, because they were talking about the same issues. Are we really going to spend endless hours debating how those other people (maybe us) are unwise fools because we used terms that already existed and someone else doesn't like that usage and finds it confusing? I mean, nobody in any of all this discussion has ever, to my knowledge, stated that they were hostile to the existence of/use of different terminology, if it was more effective. I mean, the final observation is, if you were to talk to, say, Ron Edwards, right now and start throwing Forge Speak at the guy, I highly suspect he'd just roll his eyes and tell you to pack off. The people that invented these terms ABANDONED THEM at least a decade, often 2 decades, ago. What more can you ask?