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

[pemerton]

What's at stake during a skill challenge can change, as the situation evolves via play.

How do you set the level and complexity of the challenge if you don't even know the stakes?

I'm not sure how the stakes can change entails don't even know the stakes.

Do you mean don't even know the final stakes?

Anyway, the way I set the level and complexity is by deciding how big a deal I think it should be, in play. That's part of the job of a 4e GM: to make those sorts of decisions about pacing. It's the out-of-combat analogue of deciding whether a given creature/NPC should be represented as a minion or not.

How the players know what to do if they don't know what they try to achieve?

I don't follow this at all. I posted two examples of play. In both the players decided what they wanted to achieve, and that was what led into a skill challenge. How are you imagining that players, having decided what they want to achieve, don't know what they want to achieved?

Your examples imply you pretty tightly control what sort of checks the players can attempt and when.

Can you elaborate on that? In the examples posted, a player decides to make a Nature check to calm a bear using Ghost Sounds to soothe it; a player decides to make a point by using a (concealed) Bedevilling Burst to upset some desserts; a player decides to try and pressure (bully?) a NPC into revealing himself, by his PC addressing him by his Goblin rather than Common name, and another player decides to double down on that; a player decides to remove a point of pressure (the socially weak Derrik) by (in character) suggesting that they go take a leak; etc.

What control do you see the GM exercising?

 

[pemerton]

I was merely articulating what actually putting the fiction first would entail. But yes, I know it is a Forge buzzword, so it doesn't actually mean what it intuitively sounds like.

As far as I know, "fiction first" isn't a "Forge buzzword" or anything to do with the Forge at all. Do you have a reference in mind?

My understanding of "fiction first" is that it refers to declaring actions by reference to the fiction, and the resolution of them being a change in the fiction.

The contrast to "fiction first" is resolution by reference to mechanical states of affairs: action economies, resource expenditure, etc.

You're the first person I've encountered who is using "fiction first" to refer to the method of resolution and suggest that it must be mechanically unmediated extrapolation from the fiction (maybe you also permit mechanical mediation where that is some sort of model of the in-fiction process that is taking place?).

 

[Charlaquin]

The focus here seems to be on geography: there's a single tunnel with things spread along it.

So the linearity is the geography.
But there seems to be some other premise at work that I'm not quite getting. Still looking at the dungeon scenario that @Malmuria linked to, I don't see how each of the dungeon rooms is a scene. Different scenes could happen in the same room: for instance, a Halfling could sneak forward from room 2 to room 4, get spotted by the boss, call for help, and then when their bigger friends come running the pressure plate triggers. Now we've had too different scenes in room 3.

I'm still not really getting it. On top of the example I just gave, one group might read all the stuff in room 2 first time through, whereas another group - in a hurry to avoid being ambushed by Goblins - keeps going, but then has to backtrack to try and solve the riddle.

This seems to be all about geography. And also seems to equate adventure (as in "linear adventure" with exploration of the imagined geography. And for the reasons I've give above, I don't really see how geography and scenes are being correlated.

Ah. I think I see the disconnect here.

Adventure structure, in this context, concerns the design and planning of an adventure, not moment to moment gameplay. I think earlier someone said it was about what a published adventure instructs the GM to do, but that’s because a published adventure is essentially instructions for how to run an adventure someone else has designed. The designer has already made the plans and they’re instructing the DM on how to execute them. The reason this looks like a matter of geography is because, in the case of a dungeon, the geography is very closely linked with the structure of the adventure. There’s a quote from some game designer or other that goes something along the lines of “a dungeon is a place where the structure of the adventure directly corresponds to a physical structure.”

So, the fact that any given group of players may enact different scenes than any other given group isn’t really relevant here. We’re not concerned with how the gameplay shakes out, we’re discussing how the person planning it is designing it. If you lay out a flowchart of the encounters you have planned and how the players can move from one to the other, and those encounters all take place in a dungeon, you could overlay that flowchart with the map of the dungeon and they would line up pretty much 1:1. What makes the linked dungeon a linear adventure is that there’s really only one order in which the planned encounters can occur. There could of course be unplanned encounters, but that doesn’t really play into the design, as an unplanned encounter is by definition not something the design can account for, apart from I guess knowing that they will happen.

This, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have anything to do with maps or geography at all. It seems to be about GMing techniques.

This seems like a consensual variation of what you've called "illusionism". (I'm not sure if you're meaning to use illusionism in the Forge sense or not. If you are, then they had a corresponding bit of jargon for consensual illusionism: participationism. But maybe you're using "illusionism" in some other sense? I'm not sure.)

I don’t know, maybe I’m using illusionism wrong, or maybe participationism does describe what I’m talking about. I think my lack of intimate familiarity with GNS is pretty well-established at this point. Anyway, point is, yes, these are GMing techniques which can be used to insure that the planned encounters occur in the order they were planned, just as dungeon walls can be used to insure that the planned encounters occur in the order they were planned.

Anyway, as I said I don't really get what people mean by linear adventures and I'm still pretty unclear, as it seems to rest on some distinctions I'm not sensitive to, or some premise I don't get, around the relationship between maps and geography, GM techniques, and exploratory play.

Hopefully framing it as concerning the planning and design of an adventure, and a dungeon as a physical structure that corresponds to a design structure has helped?

 

[pemerton]

Adventure structure, in this context, concerns the design and planning of an adventure, not moment to moment gameplay. I think earlier someone said it was about what a published adventure instructs the GM to do, but that’s because a published adventure is essentially instructions for how to run an adventure someone else has designed. The designer has already made the plans and they’re instructing the DM on how to execute them. The reason this looks like a matter of geography is because, in the case of a dungeon, the geography is very closely linked with the structure of the adventure. There’s a quote from some game designer or other that goes something along the lines of “a dungeon is a place where the structure of the adventure directly corresponds to a physical structure.”

So, the fact that any given group of players may enact different scenes than any other given group isn’t really relevant here. We’re not concerned with how the gameplay shakes out, we’re discussing how the person planning it is designing it.

<snip>

Hopefully framing it as concerning the planning and design of an adventure, and a dungeon as a physical structure that corresponds to a design structure has helped?

In that case I don't see how the dungeon that @Malmuria linked to is linear. It doesn't have any express instructions for how a GM should run the adventure: it just describes a location and the behaviour of some of the things to be found there.

But when I look at it and imagine running it, I don't see a single adventure structure at all. I see multiple possibilities, along the lines I've posted upthread.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I'm not sure how the stakes can change entails don't even know the stakes.

Do you mean don't even know the final stakes?

Yes. Also, if the stakes change, it is unclear to me why the success and fails towards the old stakes would count towards the new ones. For example if in the midway of the bear scene the characters would have decided to scare away the bear instead of taming it.

Anyway, the way I set the level and complexity is by deciding how big a deal I think it should be, in play. That's part of the job of a 4e GM: to make those sorts of decisions about pacing. It's the out-of-combat analogue of deciding whether a given creature/NPC should be represented as a minion or not.

How big deal what should be? If the final stakes can change, how do you know how big deal it will be?

I don't follow this at all. I posted two examples of play. In both the players decided what they wanted to achieve, and that was what led into a skill challenge. How are you imagining that players, having decided what they want to achieve, don't know what they want to achieved?

Yet the stakes can change?

Can you elaborate on that? In the examples posted, a player decides to make a Nature check to calm a bear using Ghost Sounds to soothe it; a player decides to make a point by using a (concealed) Bedevilling Burst to upset some desserts; a player decides to try and pressure (bully?) a NPC into revealing himself, by his PC addressing him by his Goblin rather than Common name, and another player decides to double down on that; a player decides to remove a point of pressure (the socially weak Derrik) by (in character) suggesting that they go take a leak; etc.

What control do you see the GM exercising?

It seems you control the pace in which the checks are being made. You talked about putting pressure on the characters to force them to react, that's part of it. Also, who decides what action constitutes a rollable check? For example, was Derrik's last conversation with the baron any sort of check?

In any case, I'm not even sure how relevant this is to to my overall point of skill challenges being fiction layered on predetermined and inflexible mechanical frame which guides how the fiction is formed, and this doesn't sound very fiction first to me.

And unrelated to the actual debate, I want to say that I really liked your dinner party scene, and it is impressive use of skill challenge, and not something I would have imagined based on how they were described in the rulebooks. They certainly could have used examples like that!

 

[Charlaquin]

In that case I don't see how the dungeon that @Malmuria linked to is linear. It doesn't have any express instructions for how a GM should run the adventure: it just describes a location and the behaviour of some of the things to be found there.

But when I look at it and imagine running it, I don't see a single adventure structure at all. I see multiple possibilities, along the lines I've posted upthread.

It doesn’t particularly need express instructions. It has 6 keyed encounters and no way for them to happen in any order than 1, then 2, then 3, then 4, then 5, then 6. Might the players have in-character interactions between those keyed encounters? Sure. Might they backtrack into a room after clearing the encounter keyed to it? Sure. Might they have a random encounter in there at some point? Sure. But there’s no way for the keyed encounters to occur in any order other than 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Short of, like, digging their own tunnels, I guess, but I don’t think that’s something most dungeon adventure designs tend to account for.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

As far as I know, "fiction first" isn't a "Forge buzzword" or anything to do with the Forge at all. Do you have a reference in mind?

Ah, I was just mistaken about the origin then.

My understanding of "fiction first" is that it refers to declaring actions by reference to the fiction, and the resolution of them being a change in the fiction.

The contrast to "fiction first" is resolution by reference to mechanical states of affairs: action economies, resource expenditure, etc.

You're the first person I've encountered who is using "fiction first" to refer to the method of resolution and suggest that it must be mechanically unmediated extrapolation from the fiction (maybe you also permit mechanical mediation where that is some sort of model of the in-fiction process that is taking place?).

But certainly it must be about more than just 'referencing' fiction? Otherwise it is simply about how we phrase things. And it doesn't need to be "mechanically unmediated" but the mechanics should be chosen to conform to the fiction rather than the other way around. In skill challenges the situation is resolved after fixed number of fails or passes because that's the mechanic, and we need to weave fiction to conform to that. The challenge doesn't end with five successes because that makes sense in the fiction, instead it ends with five success because that's the rules, and we (hopefully) can come up with fiction to explain why those five checks were made and why those specific deeds would resolve the situation.

 

[pemerton]

Ah, I was just mistaken about the origin then.

Fair enough.

And it doesn't need to be "mechanically unmediated" but the mechanics should be chosen to conform to the fiction rather than the other way around.

I tried to get this in my parantheses.

But certainly it must be about more than just 'referencing' fiction? Otherwise it is simply about how we phrase things.

I'm not sure what you mean by "'referencing' fiction", so don't know what the answer is.

Here's an example of non-fiction first resolution:

Each Burning Wheel character has an attribute called Reflex. It is derived from three stats (Agility, Speed and Perception). It will rarely be lower than 2, and if it gets to 8+ that's superlative. 3 or 4 is a typical number.

Reflex specifies how many actions a character can take in an exchange during Fight! Each exchange in Fight! consists of three volleys. Actions must be allocated to volleys such that, as near as possible (given there are no fractional actions), each volley has the same number of actions. Thus, the typical allocation of actions is 1 in each volley, but the possibility of a second in one or more volleys.

The allocation of actions to volleys - when they are taken, and what they are - is done at the start of each exchange, in secret. Thus we have blind declaration of actions, with uncertainty as to where they will land (unless someone has Reflex 3, 6 or 9 in which case we know there will be 1, 2 or 3 actions per volley). Part of the skill of scripting is to land your uncertain actions at a point where they are unopposed by the opponent. (Eg you Strike as your second action in the second volley, and with their Reflex 4 they have only one second action for the exchange and they've put that into their third volley - so your Strike will not be opposed by a Block or Avoid or Counterstrike.)

I can report from experience that scripting is tense, and the resulting play rather visceral. But it's not fiction first. It is nothing about the fiction that divides the back-and-forth of melee combat into a sequence of exchanges and volleys and actions; or that deems the spread of actions to be as flat as possible but with little peaks of uncertainty; or that deems one person (the one with Reflex 6) to act with a metronomic regularity that others don't display.

Those features of the action declaration framework are all external to the fiction. They're designed to support engaging gameplay.

A skill challenge does not have an action economy, does not use initiative (some early iterations toyed with this, but it was quickly abandoned - I can't remember, but maybe even the 4e DMG flags this as optional), begins all action with the fiction - what is the situation - and ends all action with the fiction - here is how the situation has changed. The fullest discussion of this is found in the DMG2, but it is also set out in the DMG.

In skill challenges the situation is resolved after fixed number of fails or passes because that's the mechanic, and we need to weave fiction to conform to that. The challenge doesn't end with five successes because that makes sense in the fiction, instead it ends with five success because that's the rules, and we (hopefully) can come up with fiction to explain why those five checks were made and why those specific deeds would resolve the situation.

In Apocalypse World, if I succeed on my attempt to Seize something By Force then we have to weave fiction to conform to that outcome. We don't independently consult the fiction to work out whether or not it "makes sense" that I have seized the thing by force.

But it would be an odd result if one of the games best known for "beginning and ending with the fiction" turned out not to count as "fiction first".

This is why, as I've already posted, you seem to be using the phrase in some fashion different from the way I have generally understood it.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

In Apocalypse World, if I succeed on my attempt to Seize something By Force then we have to weave fiction to conform to that outcome. We don't independently consult the fiction to work out whether or not it "makes sense" that I have seized the thing by force.

I don't think this is really analogous to the skill challenge. The fiction is consulted at the point it is determined that this is even a possible move in the situation in the first place. Then the mechanic merely helps to whether the move is successful and in what way.

This is why, as I've already posted, you seem to be using the phrase in some fashion different from the way I have generally understood it.

That is certainly perfectly possible. I think I already said I was talking about what I feel actually putting the fiction first would entail.

 

[pemerton]

if the stakes change, it is unclear to me why the success and fails towards the old stakes would count towards the new ones. For example if in the midway of the bear scene the characters would have decided to scare away the bear instead of taming it.

This is a question of technical design.

In every version of D&D I'm aware of, if the players decide, midway through a combat, to have their PCs run away, we don't reset the hit point totals.

In HeroWars, Robin Laws makes it clear that action point totals aren't reset even if the approach of the character to the situation changes.

The technical question is something like this: to what extent should the legacy of past efforts be carried forward into new ones? At least in resolution systems that use closed-scene resolution, like a skill challenge or HeroWars, it's closely related to the question of when a scene is deemed to be resolved. In resource-oriented systems - and 4e D&D has a bit of this, and it's a factor in skill challenges though less prominent than in combat - it's also related to the question of when you get to refresh your resources.

My own experience is that the 4e D&D approach produces compelling gameplay. I think the fact that you have to carry some of that legacy with you is part of how it does that.

How big deal what should be? If the final stakes can change, how do you know how big deal it will be?

It's a judgement call. Burning Wheel, in its Duel of Wits rules, similarly requires the GM to make a call about how big a deal it is, though we can never be quite certain until the things is already happening.

If you make the wrong call, play can fall flat: make it too quick, and it seems like premature resolution; make it too slow relative to what turns out to be at stake, and it becomes drawn out. These are the pitfalls of "story now" GMing. Experience helps to avoid them.

Yet the stakes can change?

Yes. In the dinner party, the players initially wanted to get through the evening without inciting conflict with Paldemar/Golthar, because they didn't want to upset the Baron. But as things came to a crunch, they shifted goals - Derrik, in particular, having established a rapport with the Baron, decided instead that he would goad Paldemar/Golthar into revealing himself.

It seems you control the pace in which the checks are being made. You talked about putting pressure on the characters to force them to react, that's part of it. Also, who decides what action constitutes a rollable check? For example, was Derrik's last conversation with the baron any sort of check?

I can't remember the answer to the last question.

Putting pressure on the players (via their PCs) is probably the most fundamental move for "story now" GMing. It relates back to the "two structures" that @Campbell set out upthread. And in 4e D&D, deciding when to call for a check and when to "say 'yes'" is important too. I see these as pretty fundamental to making 4e non-combat playable.

And unrelated to the actual debate, I want to say that I really liked your dinner party scene, and it is impressive use of skill challenge, and not something I would have imagined based on how they were described in the rulebooks. They certainly could have used examples like that!

That's generous of you. Thank you!

(Also an aside: I didn't learn how to do that just from reading the 4e books. Reading Robin Laws's HeroWars and HeroQuest revised, and Maelstrom Storytelling, and Luke Crane, and Ron Edwards, was crucial. And also engaging with @LostSoul on these boards.)