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

[Bedrockgames]

Take PBtA social conflict resolution. When you seduce/parley/persuade (etc) you need some kind of leverage or you need to exert force. Now you can do the latter, but you’re assuming the liability that comes with the threat of violence and you’re going to be held accountable for it. So not putting the looming escalation of violence on the table means that you’re engaging with the NPC in a protracted exchange to identify the NPC’s dramatic need (Instinct in PBtA parlance) for leverage. That will mean lots of conversation + moves triggered and made (Defying Danger, Reading a Person etc). The conversation can take lots of twists and turns as a result and the gamestate and situation (and possibly setting) will dynamically change as a result.

Same thing goes with Dogs in the Vineyard. Your dice put down as your Traits/Belongings/Relationships employed in the effort of “Just Talking” aren’t just those dice (and how you manage your dice pool with your subsequent See/Raise/Reverse the Blow etc) but also what you say. And they all plays out back and forth until the matter is settled and someone can’t go on (so they have to Fold or Escalate to Violence or Mortal…and assume that liability and be held accountable for it).

And there’s lots of other different but distantly kindred schemes.

That stuff “feels” like a vital, dynamic social exchange with things being said and attached moves being made and dice beig thrown and the gamestate responding until all matters are settled.

And I am pretty open about playing games that do things that either fall outside my preferences or handle things in a mechanical way I wouldn't normally do. The PBtA games haven't really appealed to me when I have read through them (maybe if I played them I would have a different reaction, but I haven't done so yet). Just something about them doesn't land for me and I don't know what it is (and I wouldn't say it is even their social mechanics).

I haven't played Dogs in the Vineyard so I don't know how I would react to that system

I can say what I tend to dislike is when social mechanics are: rolls, interfere with how I like to RP, or are a whole mini game unto themselves. I want what the characters say, what their motives are, etc to be the focus. Again this is why a system like Hillfolk worked for me. That is narrative. It has mechanics for handling certain aspects of exchange. But overall the mechanics are not obtrusive into the dialogue: the dialogue, character motives, and relationships seem to be given a lot of primacy.

I just prefer it to be organic and not mechanically drive.

That said I am not always opposed to this stuff. The Doctor Who RPG had a great initiative system that let "talkers" go first and that kind of gets at the bit you point to about not jumping straight into combat (it also felt organic in play). I used something like that myself in the wuxia RPG I did where there is a Talking and Analysis phase in the initiative system that occurs before combat begins (to help build up that feeling of swords about to be drawn as duelists assess one another, try to psych one another out, etc).

But at the end of the day, for me, I tend to place priority in play on the things I expressed before: handling social exchanges organically, with motivations, what is actually said and done and such being the factors that drive a lot of decision making (without having to resort to a mechanical system on top of that as well: except in maybe minor or very intuitive ways for me like asking a player to make a roll to detect a sudden change of facial expression or a person reaching for their gun: but all that is pretty ad hoc for me).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The argument is, without context and a lot of factors you can't bring to the table, the social interaction isn't really any more like its real equivalent than the fight would be.

Hard disagree on that. Resolving talking via talking definitely has a far higher correspondence than resolving fighting via talking.

I'll note that you can absolutely narrate a fight sequence as long as you have some idea of how they work at least in a fictional sense and come to a collective conclusion. I did it MUSHing any number of times. All it requires is participant players of good will who want to see how the fight comes out rather than want to "win".

Yes. Absolutely. I've done it too. It can be done just fine.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Not having to try to mentally model, and make decisions regarding, very complicated physical processes the players likely are not experts of.

The problem is you're making the assumption that a lot of social interactions are not, effectively, very complicated psychological processes the players are not experts in. Just because you do some social interactions doesn't make the latter not true. It honestly, means you likely think your emulation of the ones you aren't familiar with are closer to reality than they actually are. Someone who has never seduced someone or roused a crowd likely doesn't meaningfully understand how to do it any more than someone who hasn't been in a sword fight how to do it.

In addition, in both cases there are variables well below the level anyone is going to simulate in a game that can have significant impact on the outcome. Dice are a rough and tumble emulation of that in every other area; I get that people don't want them to be here, but its just that--not wanting them to be.

I'm generally sympathetic to the view that there's a look-and-feel difference to physical actions and social actions that some people find matters strongly to them in how they're resolved; but I don't think attempts to show their really different in how well people understand them holds water.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Hard disagree on that. Resolving talking via talking definitely has a far higher correspondence than resolving fighting via talking.

Outside of social areas you're familiar with, I'd argue it has, if anything, a worse one. Its just one people think they understand better than they do.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The argument is, without context and a lot of factors you can't bring to the table, the social interaction isn't really any more like its real equivalent than the fight would be.

I'll note that you can absolutely narrate a fight sequence as long as you have some idea of how they work at least in a fictional sense and come to a collective conclusion. I did it MUSHing any number of times. All it requires is participant players of good will who want to see how the fight comes out rather than want to "win".

I would love a game where that is possible (maybe there is one that achieves it I just don't know about). What I have found in practice is, for whatever reason, people are much more okay with social interactions being handled through talking and negotiating without a system or without random elements, but with fighting they really seem to want random and mechanical elements. I'd love to play a game where the GM decides based on either what is plausible or what works dramatically (not both mixed together but two possible 'legal schools of thought' for the GM to follow). Because so often in games you do things that would work in real life or in a movie, but don't work because you have to roll, characters have HP (or whatever the game's equivalent of HP is), HP aren't realistic, etc. I think a small random element would always be a bit helpful here, but largely keeping it to what is going on in game is something I'd love to have (I haven't tried too many diceless games, perhaps some of those do things like this). There is always a chance a bullet misses there is always the punchers chance in close quarter combat. An example of what I am talking about is the players arranging the perfect assassination, and it failing utterly because the system says so, when everyone at the table is left feeling that outcome doesn't align with all the prep that was going on the part of the players and all the things they said they did. Some systems this is less of a problem than others, but it is a real issue.

I think lets RP combat is always a tough sell.

One observation as a possible reason here is we all have experience with social interaction just by virtue of being human. That is how we do things. But we don't all have experience with combat (and even if we do have experience fighting, we might only have experience with one type of fighting: someone may have been in brawls but never been military combat for example, or been in military combat but never a sword fight).

 

[hawkeyefan]

Right. And this is common way to handle this and how I usually do it in games like D&D. And it is fine, but it is not the only way to do it. These are things that are really easy to do freeform, and many games do just that. Also, the important part why I'm fine with this in some tabletop games is that it is used only "against" NPCs. The GM has a different role, their intuitive understanding of the NPCs probably isn't as deep as the players have of their characters, and advocating for the NPCs isn't their only job anyway. But I absolutely wouldn't want PC decisions to resolved via a dice roll. My role as a player is to make decisions for my character, so if we outsource that to the rules or the dice, I no longer need to be there.

Oh, sure. I am not challenging that there are multiple ways to do it. But remember, this part of the conversation came about when someone said (paraphrasing) "mechanics should get out of the way when it comes to social interaction- the game doesn't fall apart when you don't use rules". So some of us pointed out why some folks actually feel the game does fall apart when the rules aren't used, and why we like social mechanics. So here we are. I am not saying that the most popular and what appears to be the default approach of the majority of games is somehow not valid. I'm saying why it isn't the only way to do things.

As for PC v PC type of situations, I think it depends. I can understand people being hesitant to yield any control on their PC, especially in a more traditional game where that's often their sole point of input into the game world. But I think that people often behave in unexpected and irrational ways, and I think that often these kinds of things happen as a result of peer or social pressure, or the perception there of. So I don't really mind if there are some mechanics that may allow this.

I know some games handle it by first asking "is this something your character could possibly be convinced?" and if the player says yes, then we go to the dice. If the player says no, then that's the answer. I don't find this approach to be jarring to my sense of character or my control of the character.

So as you say, there are multiple ways it can be handled, and not all of them need to trample on a player's control of their character.

Sure. But this is about problem solving or "winning" aspect of the characterisation. And, yes, rule structures help there, though they might not necessarily be terribly immersive. But that's really is not the core of characterisation, at least not to me. Holmes is sort of manic depressive emotionally stunted unconventional genius. You only need the rules to help with the genius part.

Not so much about winning, but about engaging in the game. If we're playing a game where one of the PCs is Sherlock Holmes, I think it's safe to assume that there's a mystery afoot. So engaging with that mystery is a big part of play. How the character does so is vital. The portrayal of Holmes's other traits... the emotional stuff, the social awkwardness.... they are most important in how they impact his ability to do what he does. Having rules for this...penalties of some kind, or at least deficiencies in stats absolutely can help portray character.

Without there being rules, then there's not really a game going on, and what we'd be doing is little more than cosplay.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Outside of social areas you're familiar with, I'd argue it has, if anything, a worse one. Its just one people think they understand better than they do.

I don't agree that this is true, but even if it was, it really doesn't matter. If people feel that that the freeform social interaction is very close to the real one then that's good enough, even if it objectively wouldn't be terribly realistic.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The problem is you're making the assumption that a lot of social interactions are not, effectively, very complicated psychological processes the players are not experts in. Just because you do some social interactions doesn't make the latter not true. It honestly, means you likely think your emulation of the ones you aren't familiar with are closer to reality than they actually are. Someone who has never seduced someone or roused a crowd likely doesn't meaningfully understand how to do it any more than someone who hasn't been in a sword fight how to do it.

I think if your goal is perfect realism, sure. I don't know what it is like to be a secret agent in another country trying to persuade an asset to sell their country's secrets. And if you put me in that situation, I'd probably just end up bungling it because I have no experience with it, I don't understand the complexities. But I do have a lot of film and book analogies I can draw on for the purposes of play. And I have a lot of non-spy experience in my life that I can draw on as an approximation. I think for those of us interested in live RP at the table, this is where that is fun. But at least for me the goal isn't to achieve any kind of realism.

Still, I don't think any RPG can really capture the complex psychological processes and other details going on in a real social interaction either. I mean we are still working on software in computers that can pass as human, and I've never encountered a video game that gave me a believable social interaction as part of play, so I don't even think computer systems could do it either at this stage (we probably still don't know enough about the brain to truly know that process and build a system that emulates it). So I think if the bar is capturing the 'very complicated psychological processes', it is doubtful anything will fulfill that.

Also just because this free form RP, it doesn't mean you can't stop to look things up or ask someone at the table who knows about a subject that comes up. I do that a lot and don't find it disruptive. For instance if a player knows a lot about firearms, and the players go to a gunstore, I would probably ask that player for help answering questions that come up.

 

[overgeeked]

Also, if you don't want to immerse and roleplay situations like this and just rather roll the dice to move on, then what is even the point? This is the good stuff, why would you want to roll the dice to skip it?

Your good stuff is someone else's allergy. The "everyone's preferences are different" truism cuts all ways.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I don't agree that this is true, but even if it was, it really doesn't matter. If people feel that that the freeform social interaction is very close to the real one then that's good enough, even if it objectively wouldn't be terribly realistic.

This came up in the adventure believability thread but I call this knowing what franchise you are in. For me what matters is knowing what kind of logic the GM is applying to these sorts of situations (Are we in a Tarantino movie, in something more like game of thrones, a documentary, a grounded political film, a realistic war movie, or something crazy like Evil Dead). If I know we are in a zany action adventure campaign, my expectations of what outcomes to see from certain exchanges will be different than if we are playing something closer to A Few Good Men.