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

[pemerton]

He means exactly what he said. There is a vast ocean of ink on this site that has been spent asserting that these issues of coherence in D&D are simply "the way RPGs are." I mean, sure such posters assert some nostrums in terms of 'fixing' individual instances of them. Often various parties at the table are vilified for being stubborn, disruptive, too rigid, whatever. The factors in game design and organization/process of play that actually lead to them? Those are literally assumed to be gospel of RPGs. I cannot tell you how many times I've read posts that LITERALLY state "This is how RPGs are, the GM has to do XYZ, and the player must do ABC, that's how it is!" in response to some suggestion that this is not all there is to RPGs. Usually, but not always, its some variation of common play of D&D, with trad GM/Player roles, etc. I will literally put money on we can go to the D&D threads and find one where virtually exactly this was posted TODAY, because it happens every single day. Its common as rain.

So I went to the D&D board and found this one: D&D 5E - Best way to deal with greedy players and magic items in a fun game.

There's also this one, which seems like it is laying the groundwork for the sort of thing you describe: D&D 5E - Tomb of Annihilation - Valindra's role (spoilers)

 

[Thomas Shey]

Oh man this brings back memories. In the one VTM game I played in long long ago I was the only PC without celerity. When combats started I would just leave the table for awhile and declare myself to be cowering in the background.

Bad game design, that bit.

It was one of those attempts to represent superhuman speed (early Shadowrun did another) that while it absolutely showed the advantage it presents, had knock-on effects in game play that made it, honestly a really bad way to do it.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

LARPs and TTRPGs are very different beasts. When participating in a LARP there is necessarily a type of total immersion, you literally ARE your character, physically. There may be conventions related to resolving things that people cannot obviously risk doing, like lethal combat and whatnot, but the WHOLE IDEA is to play out the action as closely as possible to reality, any other action is simply a 'kludge' that is required because we're in the real world still.

And I don't really think tabletop games are significantly different. Or at least they don't need to be. To a lot of people immersing to and inhabiting the character is the point in both. And my tabletop games have always been rather LARPy. People talking in character a lot and emoting for their characters. Look at Critical Role. A lot of it is LARPy, they do not dress up, but the players immerse in their characters and act as their characters the best they can.

The situation in a TTRPG is entirely different. It is quite possible, and IMHO often quite desirable to have uniform resolution processes. It really IS quite odd when they don't exist. I mean, odd in the sense that social situations, for example, in D&D aught to be as potentially lucrative and also dangerous as anything else, but yet we just say what happened, no hard adjudication at all. Its actually pretty weird when you think about it. I mean, why not just resolve combat that way too? lol.

Rules are tools. You use them when you need them, but they don't have to define what the game is about, and there are many situations for which you don't need the rules for.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It was one of those attempts to represent superhuman speed (early Shadowrun did another) that while it absolutely showed the advantage it presents, had knock-on effects in game play that made it, honestly a really bad way to do it.

The basic problem is, in any even vaguely realistic sense, the guy who can move and react 2-10x faster than everyone else is so utterly out of their league in every respect that they cannot reasonably be engaged with on a meaningful basis (though there might be some tricks you could employ to negate this advantage). So, as soon as your game espouses any sort of simulationist agenda in which even a vague sense of things corresponding to reality coupled with such an ability is part of the game, you will run into this. Either it needs to be a trope "all vampires are blindingly fast and thus normal humans are as sheep to them." or this sort of combat ability needs to be super limited or mostly unavailable for some other reasons, etc. The problem of course is that players will always try to find a way to take something really powerful and get around its limitations in game systems that are at all gamist, and/or where other aspects of the game make such correspond with an agenda.

So it was bad in the sense that it undermined game play. Now, if how well you fight wasn't really that important, and the game focused on something else entirely, or every PC did the same thing, then it wouldn't really be a problem. This is pretty well explicated by considering it a gamist/HCS agenda mismatch.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

The basic problem is, in any even vaguely realistic sense, the guy who can move and react 2-10x faster than everyone else is so utterly out of their league in every respect that they cannot reasonably be engaged with on a meaningful basis (though there might be some tricks you could employ to negate this advantage). So, as soon as your game espouses any sort of simulationist agenda in which even a vague sense of things corresponding to reality coupled with such an ability is part of the game, you will run into this. Either it needs to be a trope "all vampires are blindingly fast and thus normal humans are as sheep to them." or this sort of combat ability needs to be super limited or mostly unavailable for some other reasons, etc. The problem of course is that players will always try to find a way to take something really powerful and get around its limitations in game systems that are at all gamist, and/or where other aspects of the game make such correspond with an agenda.

So it was bad in the sense that it undermined game play. Now, if how well you fight wasn't really that important, and the game focused on something else entirely, or every PC did the same thing, then it wouldn't really be a problem. This is pretty well explicated by considering it a gamist/HCS agenda mismatch.

Or it's as simple as saying one player getting 4 turns while another gets 1 isn't fun for the another.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And I don't really think tabletop games are significantly different. Or at least they don't need to be. To a lot of people immersing to and inhabiting the character is the point in both. And my tabletop games have always been rather LARPy. People talking in character a lot and emoting for their characters. Look at Critical Role. A lot of it is LARPy, they do not dress up, but the players immerse in their characters and act as their characters the best they can.

Sure, you can run a LARP in a way that is as close as possible to a TTRPG and it COULD be similar to the way some people play. I don't think this means we have to assume that this is either typical or that it constrains TTRPGs. I'd wonder why people would bother with a LARP like that, it is a little odd, but people do all sorts of stuff. The LARPs I've been exposed to were rather different, but its not like I'm deep in that!

The point to me is it is downright odd to think that it wouldn't make sense to have uniform mechanics. Again, why if you don't want to use rules in one area of the game, do you want to use them in another? Its all 'resolving conflict' in the final analysis (and even more ultimately, deciding how things progress).

Rules are tools. You use them when you need them, but they don't have to define what the game is about, and there are many situations for which you don't need the rules for.

Sure, TO ME, it is like a carpenter who only uses power screw drivers indoors and drives all screws outdoors by hand. Its a bit odd...

 

[hawkeyefan]

And I don't really think tabletop games are significantly different. Or at least they don't need to be. To a lot of people immersing to and inhabiting the character is the point in both. And my tabletop games have always been rather LARPy. People talking in character a lot and emoting for their characters. Look at Critical Role. A lot of it is LARPy, they do not dress up, but the players immerse in their characters and act as their characters the best they can.

None of this is changed by the use of mechanics or not. Using dice to determine outcomes to actions in no way inhibits anyone from inhabiting or portraying their character.

Rules are tools. You use them when you need them, but they don't have to define what the game is about, and there are many situations for which you don't need the rules for.

Sure, this is true. But as @AbdulAlhazred said, you could do the same with combat. What determines where rules are "needed" and "not needed"? It's all subjective, of course, depending on the game in question and the desires and expectations of the participants. But this is either a design choice or a playstyle choice that has implications.

Removing some kind of resolution mechanic for social actions essentially means that the GM is deciding the outcome of such actions. If the GM is deciding the outcome, then the GM is determining the way the game goes. This may or may not be a problem for any given group, but we should not ignore it as a fact.

What I find hard to reconcile is how often this approach is coupled with the idea of the GM as a neutral arbiter. That the GM should set aside their personal biases and opinions about the events of play, and then render some reasonable and fair judgment free of their own concerns.

I mean, isn't that what dice (or any similar randomizing element) do?

To me, when I see this approach suggested, I just don't quite get it. If the GM's ultimate aspiration is to behave as dice do, then why not just use dice? Why require a person to behave in a way that people tend to not behave? What is gained by having a person decide instead of dice? What more is there to the matter?

The exception is folks who don't want the GM to be a neutral arbiter, but instead acknowledge that they want the GM to actively steer the direction of the game to deliver the "most fun". That's an approach that I think is clear and understandable.

 

[Xetheral]

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition:
coherent

1. Sticking together; cohering
2. Marked by an orderly, logical, and aesthetically consistent relation of parts.

incoherent
1. Lacking cohesion, connection, or harmony; not coherent.
2. Unable to think or express one's thoughts in a clear or orderly manner.

The reviewers of White object to 'incoherent' by stating it has ONLY meaning 2 above, and are oblivious to meaning 1. As to "multiple principles, relationships, or interests" I'm not sure what you mean by that. I think coherent definition #2 above talks about "aesthetically consistent relation of parts." It isn't a question of multiplicity, it is a question of aesthetic consistency and thus things 'sticking together' and possessing 'cohesion, connection, or harmony' (or the lack thereof). So I think what RE means by 'incoherent' is literally that, but the reviewers took the meaning #2 of incoherent and assumed that was the only possible reading he could have meant, and thus objected to the term on the basis of claiming it implies that a lack of adherence to a single GNS agenda literally implies that the game participants will be unable to express themselves clearly.

It simply appeared to be a rather narrow and ill-considered criticism by the podcasters. Lets give them the benefit of the doubt, you often stumble a bit when speaking live.

See above... this was simply the first dictionary definition that popped up for each word in a DuckDuckGo search. It is a commonly used and perfectly cromulent dictionary AFAIK (not being some great expert on such).

Yeah, I'd be interested to know if there is some great degree of divergence of opinion on these words. I mean, I certainly agree that people use 'incoherent' to mean "someone said something to me and it was impossible to understand." but that seems at best a specific variation of a secondary meaning of the word.

Well, hmmmmmm. I think games could legitimately 'just happen to be coherent' and that's fine. In fact the original D&D game is pretty darn coherent! Especially in its more realized B/X form, where it is QUITE clear what the object of the game is, and AFAICT all of its mechanics and advice are pretty focused on that. However, lets give the authors some credit, while they may not have thought in terms of specific ends WRT agenda, they were certainly conscious designers with specific goals.

I think it is fair to say that most games which are designed fairly naively will most likely exhibit some lack of coherence of design. Even when substantial intent exists, without a framework which can describe play in a way which allows a thorough analysis of agenda it is hard to 'get it right'. I mean, 2e is a beautiful example of a game that is VERY incoherent. OTOH in terms of how it was actually played by most people it probably worked fine, 90% of the time. I know it failed spectacularly for me in one instance (after which I never ran it again) but I think most people just ran modules or whatnot and assumed that the rough parts were just the cost of playing RPGs generally.

To clarify, the original sense you presented for "coherent" was: "having a single unified purpose and direction." (Emphasis added.) I questioned if there was a source for that usage, since I wasn't familiar with a usage of "coherent" that was restricted to unitary purposes or directions.

Your response, however, cites an American Heritage definition that doesn't support the idea that coherence is a question of quantity, and you also say: "[incoherence] isn't a question of multiplicity". I'm thinking that means I misread your original definition of coherent as placing too much emphasis on the word "single". Based on your expanded discussion above (which I greatly appreciate) am I correct in now understanding that you think something can be "coherent" even if it has multiple purposes and directions, as long as those purposes and directions have sufficient "aesthetic consistency"?

If so I completely agree that that would be a standard usage! I'm just not confident that it's the same usage Edwards had in mind, as it would mean that "coherence" is an entirely subjective question of aesthetic consistency. I was under the impression that Edwards instead approached "coherence" as something that could be determined objectively by counting agendas, but I could be mistaken on that point.

Do you happen to know whether Edwards considered hybrid games to be coherent despite having multiple agendas, or whether he considered them not dysfunctional despite being incoherent? I think resolution of that question would go a long way towards determing whether Edwards use of "incoherent" was a standard usage as your describe above, or was instead jargon based on non-standard usages of "coherent" and "incoherent".

 

[niklinna]

Sure, you can run a LARP in a way that is as close as possible to a TTRPG and it COULD be similar to the way some people play. I don't think this means we have to assume that this is either typical or that it constrains TTRPGs. I'd wonder why people would bother with a LARP like that, it is a little odd, but people do all sorts of stuff. The LARPs I've been exposed to were rather different, but its not like I'm deep in that!

The point to me is it is downright odd to think that it wouldn't make sense to have uniform mechanics. Again, why if you don't want to use rules in one area of the game, do you want to use them in another? Its all 'resolving conflict' in the final analysis (and even more ultimately, deciding how things progress).

Sure, TO ME, it is like a carpenter who only uses power screw drivers indoors and drives all screws outdoors by hand. Its a bit odd...

No weirder than using boffer weapons to hit people in combat, and talking to them when having a conversation.

 

[hawkeyefan]

No weirder than using boffer weapons to hit people in combat, and talking to them when having a conversation.

But there's a consistency there, no? No randomizing element in either case. Or at least, not from your basic description. Again, I know next to nothing about LARP.