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

[Thomas Shey]

Sure, I said dice pool systems can be more involved, and that can certainly cloud things (Vampire would be an example of a game where I found it rather difficult to have a sense before rolling how good my chances are).

You and everyone else.

What I men by can't figure out the probabilities, is the player is gauging more by the situation itself than by the numbers, and so they aren't sitting there tallying them to arrive at a clear probability. This is just a matter of preference. Personally I find it a better play experience when a player doesn't know they have a 10% chance, but rather have a sense that the chance is rather low. To me that matches more how I experience life in general.

The issue I always have with this is people's sense of "what rather low" is can vary too much.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yeah, obviously IRL we don't know what the probabilities are, but we have a fairly good handle on RELATIVE risk, which is harder to gauge.

To me that is what certain dice pools capture. I have a sense of what my actual long jump max might be, but a physics with a tape measure probably could set a number to it. If I am in a root chase in a relatively realistic game and encounter a gap between buildings that is 32 feet, I wouldn't probably know the exact distance by looking and I probably wouldn't know that exceeds the max record for a human long jump. It is about how doable it looks to me, and I might be overconfident and make that leap not realizing it is a doomed effort

Also one area these things with probability really break down in RPGS is it is really hard to capture real world physics in a game system. I've played some heavy realism games and they mostly achieve a good degree of plausibly (probably good enough for most people). But I don't think you'd be able to take real world situations and match probabilities to what they are in the game itself. But for me I am not even looking for that. Most of my campaigns are closer to movie logic. When they are realistic, they are realistic in the way Goodfellas is.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The issue I always have with this is people's sense of "what rather low" is can vary too much.

Again, if you like dealing in concrete numbers and everyone having a shared sense of objective probability, this approach might not be a fit for you. For me it is how I prefer to game. I find over time, as a group gets to know one another, they start to understand what 'rather low' means for one person. But the sense of what is 'rather low', because it is language and not numbers, going vary from person to person to a degree.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You and everyone else.

When I first played Vampire, I was mainly a Ravenloft GM. But we played every game, and some of the games at the time, had wild ways of figuring out success or strange subsystems. This didn't tend to phase me and most people I think. Something about the way vampire dealt with successes, just didn't connect with me, but part of that was I was coming at it as a player, not a GM or someone who had all the books (I read Vampire the Masquerade when it came out, thought it was refreshing and interesting, but I wasn't going to run it, and I wasn't huge into the modern vampire genre, so I didn't invest the time with the mechanics that I might have if it were more in my wheelhouse). However someone in my group loved it, ran it all the time, so I was in a number of regular vampire campaigns. He clearly got the way success worked, as did a number of other people at the table who were more invested in the game. Part of it was I didn't really expend the mental energy on it that I did for other systems. Add to that, I was a Ravenloft GM, and there was a degree of competition between those two settings and fandoms

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You're not alone, its a trend I've seen in other places but it seriously puts me off. I don't insist on everything stacking indefinitely (the Shadow of the Demon Lord boon/bane approach is okay to me) but the "Once you've gotten this much benefit or problem nothing else matters" is a nonstarter to me.

Yeah, I just like the way it cuts against the whole 'process sim' kind of mentality of game design. It really doesn't bring a lot to the table in a more narrative focus to have a bazillion different factors that reflect fiction vs "how much tension should their be in this scene?" So, obviously these sorts of system design things wrap back into the whole agenda and theory thing. I certainly would think that a game intended to simulate something, say mountain climbing expeditions, would have to have a long list of factors that could be relevant at various points.

 

[Garthanos]

The issue I always have with this is people's sense of "what rather low" is can vary too much.

Interestingly I believe there have been game design studies to determine how frequent of failure is frustrating and they came back with the old adage 2 out of 3 aint bad. I would not be surprised if they didnt investigate other perceptual parameters.

 

[overgeeked]

Interestingly I believe there have been game design studies to determine how frequent of failure is frustrating and they came back with the old adage 2 out of 3 aint bad. I would not be surprised if they didnt investigate other perceptual parameters.

And then there are people who play Souls games.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

To me that is what certain dice pools capture. I have a sense of what my actual long jump max might be, but a physics with a tape measure probably could set a number to it. If I am in a root chase in a relatively realistic game and encounter a gap between buildings that is 32 feet, I wouldn't probably know the exact distance by looking and I probably wouldn't know that exceeds the max record for a human long jump. It is about how doable it looks to me, and I might be overconfident and make that leap not realizing it is a doomed effort

Also one area these things with probability really break down in RPGS is it is really hard to capture real world physics in a game system. I've played some heavy realism games and they mostly achieve a good degree of plausibly (probably good enough for most people). But I don't think you'd be able to take real world situations and match probabilities to what they are in the game itself. But for me I am not even looking for that. Most of my campaigns are closer to movie logic. When they are realistic, they are realistic in the way Goodfellas is.

Right, so as I mentioned to @Thomas Shey I think this gets back into the agenda thing. So, for the most part, I like playing games that are more 'movie physics' and probably don't generally include situations that read as "you must jump the 32 foot gap" but more "this is a dangerous looking gap, jumping it is going to be HARD!" If you fail, the answer in fiction might be "well, it was more than hard, it was impossible!" This is one of those areas where things can get funny, like with 4e and battlemaps, you have a grid, you have this objective measure. This means actually that 4e combats weirdly interpret things a bit differently than an SC likely would. Games are quirky though, and it still manages to work.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, I just like the way it cuts against the whole 'process sim' kind of mentality of game design. It really doesn't bring a lot to the table in a more narrative focus to have a bazillion different factors that reflect fiction vs "how much tension should their be in this scene?" So, obviously these sorts of system design things wrap back into the whole agenda and theory thing. I certainly would think that a game intended to simulate something, say mountain climbing expeditions, would have to have a long list of factors that could be relevant at various points.

I don't think its even virtuous in a game sort of fashion, as it leads to degenerate processes.

 

[Garthanos]

And then there are people who play Souls games.

Including my son... there is a problem with the question though and that includes how much and what exactly counts as a success and can you have lesser successes that build up. Beating my old score in many games is a success for instance.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, see, I don't personally consider "Spectacular because it randomly happens 1 time in 500." to be useful game design. The probability that said thing will happen at a really interesting moment in the game is not even 1 in 500, it is probably more like 1 in 1 million. Even if the odds are much better than that, its not really all that special when it is just luck of the dice. I want to DO something that is spectacular, not just witness it randomly happening. I'd much rather go with a design like 4e (or 5e for that matter) where if you want spectacular, you plan it out, work on it, set it up, and make it happen.

For me, if it's that planned out it becomes far less spectacular and far more a quasi-foregone conclusion. Fun to pull off, sure, but also much less exciting.

The spectacular comes when you're down to your last hit point and pull off that 1-in-200* critical hit that takes down the far-superior foe one segment before you'd have almost certainly met your end. (I've DMed this very situation, by the way, and it was truly awesome!)

The spectacular comes when you're fleeing a terrifying foe and have one chance of escape, that being to leap (against considerable odds) across a wide gap to a suspended cage above a large pit and hope the pursuer fails the same leap and falls. (I've DMed this one too, also awesome; though safely getting him back from the cage to solid ground later proved to be a challenge )

* - odds approximate, but 1/d20 followed by 1/d10 is, I think, 1 in 200.

Meh, well, I mean, if we're talking about tables to randomly generate stuff, that comes with its own different set of considerations. I don't have a big objection to a huge list of obscure possibilities. I'm of the opinion that most of the effort is wasted with resolvers of that type, but whatever. I'd note that nobody, not even Gygax, really used random treasure tables except as a kind of fill-in. You got Razor by actually going through the dungeon and finding it, there wasn't anything random about it. I expect the 'big name' magic items like high end staves, rods, holy swords, stuff like that were not generally earned by lucky dice rolls.

I use random magic item tables All. The. Time. as that's how I determine what's for sale in any given place at any given time the PCs happen to visit there and ask.

Excel (and a friend with good Excel-fu) for the win, baby!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't think its even virtuous in a game sort of fashion, as it leads to degenerate processes.

I think there are reasons you would do it. One of the functions of a GM in that kind of game would be to squelch problems of that sort. It also assumes reasonably virtuous play. I'm thinking of a game, for example, that would let you model trying to climb Mt Everest for the first time. Make it very realistic! It should be workable and the challenges will be relevant and contextual simply by virtue of the narrow scope and subject matter. Obviously if you want to study the psychological factors in the team and how they might lead to disaster, then maybe THAT is a bit different game of course, but "can we get to the top by solving various logistical and climbing problems?" seems like a viable RPG. Its actually fairly close to the original model in D&D dungeon crawls. I'd note that the AH Survival game is of this nature, and it was how you were intended to play out overland expeditions in OD&D. It actually makes sense, it is just a detailed set of realistic rules for that environment (though you would add monsters to the mix of course).

 

[pemerton]

That's something of a change, given that I'm fairly sure you're the person who first introduced me to the term.

I'd doubt that.

EDIT: I did a search. I used "agency" in this post from 2018: What is *worldbuilding* for?

I seem to have been picking up on @AbdulAlhazred use of the term in the same thread.

I did another search. You were engaging in debates about "agency" back in 2014: D&D 5E - Simulation vs Game - Where should D&D 5e aim?

 

[Garthanos]

Including my son... there is a problem with the question though and that includes how much and what exactly counts as a success and can you have lesser successes that build up. Beating my old score in many games is a success for instance.

Lesser successes building up ->Say my goal is killing the monster if it takes 6 attacks without any intermediate success ie ->miss miss miss miss miss kill... that would rarely fulfill the 2 out of 3 aint bad. But if 2 out of 3 attacks provide success feedback, such as depleting hit points and knocking the enemy around or other noticeable effects then it doesn't matter if it takes even 6 attacks to kill. *assuming those lesser wins are sufficiently felt as wins.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think there are reasons you would do it. One of the functions of a GM in that kind of game would be to squelch problems of that sort. It also assumes reasonably virtuous play. I'm thinking of a game, for example, that would let you model trying to climb Mt Everest for the first time. Make it very realistic! It should be workable and the challenges will be relevant and contextual simply by virtue of the narrow scope and subject matter. Obviously if you want to study the psychological factors in the team and how they might lead to disaster, then maybe THAT is a bit different game of course, but "can we get to the top by solving various logistical and climbing problems?" seems like a viable RPG. Its actually fairly close to the original model in D&D dungeon crawls. I'd note that the AH Survival game is of this nature, and it was how you were intended to play out overland expeditions in OD&D. It actually makes sense, it is just a detailed set of realistic rules for that environment (though you would add monsters to the mix of course).

I was unclear in what I was saying; what I was suggesting that from a game point of view, I don't think the all-or-nothing of advantage/disadvantage produces good results; it encourages you to find the minimal way to get advantage and then not bother, because the rests is effort with no reward.

 

[loverdrive]

And then there are people who play Souls games.

Failure is almost meaningless in Souls games, though.

I see "YOU DIED" screen in Dark Souls much more often then I reload my save in Silent Hill 2, but the former is like "oh, okay, I'll try something different then" and the latter makes me want to punch a hole through my screen.

 

[Lanefan]

I'd doubt that.

EDIT: I did a search. I used "agency" in this post from 2018: What is worldbuilding for?

I seem to have been picking up on @AbdulAlhazred use of the term in the same thread.

I did another search. You were engaging in debates about "agency" back in 2014: D&D 5E - Simulation vs Game - Where should D&D 5e aim?

I'm thinking it was more like 2010 or so, but not a biggie either way.

 

[Aldarc]

Failure is almost meaningless in Souls games, though.

I see "YOU DIED" screen in Dark Souls much more often then I reload my save in Silent Hill 2, but the former is like "oh, okay, I'll try something different then" and the latter makes me want to punch a hole through my screen.

Though not a Souls game, I love how Hades makes failure an integral part of the gameplay, including the narrative. It makes dying and failing kind of fun.

 

[Garthanos]

I was unclear in what I was saying; what I was suggesting that from a game point of view, I don't think the all-or-nothing of advantage/disadvantage produces good results; it encourages you to find the minimal way to get advantage and then not bother, because the rests is effort with no reward.

Yes I call it lacking nuance...

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yes I call it lacking nuance...

Same. Like I said, I can see why they want to discourage hunting for every bonus imaginable, but there's better ways to do that.