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Max_Killjoy
2016-12-27, 04:20 PM
Pulling the derail / tangent out of another thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?510025-Which-Star-Wars-RPG-system).



Like, pc's weapon fail to give villain chance to escape? That's extremely common




I think every group I've been in would consider that an utter screwjob by the GM -- unless the game happened to have fumble/critical failure rules built in and the weapon failure was being used as an explanation/consequence of the PLAYER rolling a critical failure.

A GM manually invoking a weapon failure out of the blue to let his villain escape would have caused a serious loss of player-GM trust.




Let's look at how this would work in Fate. Because I like Fate.

First we need a reason for this to happen. Maybe the PC is neglectful, as stated or implied by one of his aspects. Maybe the fight is happening in a zone with a muddy field Aspect that could mess up your gun's fitting mechanism. Maybe the bad guy uses his turn to give you a jammed gun Aspect.

Now, this could just be a case of you lose your permission to shoot the bad guy, especially in the case of a jammed gun Aspect, but it's more likely to be a Compel. This means that a player has two options: he can accept the Compel and gain a Fate Point, or he can refuse it and spend a Fate Point.

Now we were playing GURPS and I hadn't rolled high enough to malfunction, I'd agree with you. But Fate is built on a different set of assumptions that says 'if it makes sense in the narrative make it a Compel and let the player decide to accept or refuse it', which is a valid way to play.



OK -- in this instance, what did The Bad Guy do, presumably from some distance away, to cause the gun to jam? What power does he have to affect the weapon remotely in this manner?


I suspect I know what the answer will be -- he doesn't have any such power. Rather, the "reality" inside the game is retroactively warping itself around the narrative "need".


Frankly, I don't want to to game or write in a world in which causality is narrative. As soon as a work of fiction loses the illusion of objective causality and the course of events becomes overtly narrative, I rapidly lose interest. Too many conveniences, too many contrivances, too many adherences to well-worn tropes... and the fact that this is just a constructed fiction becomes unavoidably part of my perception of the work. Riffing on the subject of the thread this is branding off of, this was a good deal of why I found The Force Awakens so flat and pointless -- it was clearly, openly, continuous trying to replicate moments, literal or emotional, from the original trilogy. It was just one trite appeal to nostalgia after another after another. They were going for "cheap pops". Things didn't happen as a natural outgrowth of what came before, they happened because they were there to make the nostalgia happen, to serve a "narrative" purpose.


This is a good deal of what underlies my signature.

veti
2016-12-27, 04:37 PM
Frankly, I don't want to to game or write in a world in which causality is narrative. As soon as a work of fiction loses the illusion of objective causality and the course of events becomes overtly narrative, I rapidly lose interest.

The name of the game AnonymousWizard is talking about is 'Fate'.

Putting all else aside, forgetting for a moment that there's any such thing as "game mechanics" - what do you normally understand "fate" to mean? I type "fate definition" into Google, the first answer it gives me is:

the development of events outside a person's control, regarded as predetermined by a supernatural power.

So there you have it. The bad guy may not have that power, but something does - a "supernatural power". If you don't like that, then I suggest not playing Fate.

The Glyphstone
2016-12-27, 04:46 PM
Most gamers are trained from the very start to abhor the concept of 'metagaming'. It's the cardinal sin of RPGs, the unforgivable crime, to have OOC and IC motivations intersect or overlap.

In games like FATE, or M&M, or FFG Star Wars, it's an integral part of the game itself. The goal isn't to win or lose, but to collectively tell a story. Players are willing to accept bad things, or even deliberately ask for bad things, happening to their characters because it adds to the narrative by providing a setback for their heroes to overcome. Mechanically, they are encouraged to do so with a Fate Point/Hero Point/Destiny Point as a currency for them to spend later on when they see an opportunity to dictate a narrative shift in their favor.

If you come at such systems from an anti-meta background, or from one where you've been trained to assume a degree of GM-player antagonism, the entire concept will fall apart. Either in this case because it destroys the immersion you're dependent upon to enjoy your gaming, or because a player/GM relationship that isn't founded on the trust that neither side will abuse their temporary narrative dominance will poison the well.

Grod_The_Giant
2016-12-27, 05:06 PM
OK -- in this instance, what did The Bad Guy do, presumably from some distance away, to cause the gun to jam? What power does he have to affect the weapon remotely in this manner?
The NPC did nothing. The GM did, by virtue of invoking an existing element of the narrative-- that the player is careless with his weapons, or that the environment is muddy. This exchange remains "fair" because it's all regulated by the rules of the game. That's what keeps it from being a he-said-she-said sort of argument.

And retconning the gameworld is, at its core, a roleplaying aid-- a way for players like me who aren't paranoid contingency-masters play characters who are. Again, it's "fair" because there are rules governing it-- there's a skill check and a once/session limit, or I have to spend a Fate point to invoke an Aspect, or I cast my Retcon spell an hour ago and set aside X time, which I could have used in Y fashion...

Hawkstar
2016-12-27, 05:21 PM
Frankly, I don't want to to game or write in a world in which causality is narrative. As soon as a work of fiction loses the illusion of objective causality and the course of events becomes overtly narrative, I rapidly lose interest.
Never play FATE, then, because that's entirely what the system's about.

Beleriphon
2016-12-27, 05:46 PM
OK -- in this instance, what did The Bad Guy do, presumably from some distance away, to cause the gun to jam? What power does he have to affect the weapon remotely in this manner?

FATE runs on action movie logic. There are rules to make sure that logic functions. Just like the Joker always gets away, or Lex Luthor never really gets put in prison for long. Or the John McClane's gun jams at an inopportune time, because it makes for an exciting story, rather than just plugging Hans Gruber the first time he sees him.

Thrudd
2016-12-27, 05:52 PM
This just comes down to game preference. Story games, which intend for the players to collaboratively tell a story following certain narrative conventions, are a thing that exists. Not to be confused with other types of role playing games that might focus on players facing challenges in a simulated fictional world with a defined set of tools.

Lord Raziere
2016-12-27, 05:55 PM
Most gamers are trained from the very start to abhor the concept of 'metagaming'. It's the cardinal sin of RPGs, the unforgivable crime, to have OOC and IC motivations intersect or overlap.

In games like FATE, or M&M, or FFG Star Wars, it's an integral part of the game itself. The goal isn't to win or lose, but to collectively tell a story. Players are willing to accept bad things, or even deliberately ask for bad things, happening to their characters because it adds to the narrative by providing a setback for their heroes to overcome. Mechanically, they are encouraged to do so with a Fate Point/Hero Point/Destiny Point as a currency for them to spend later on when they see an opportunity to dictate a narrative shift in their favor.

If you come at such systems from an anti-meta background, or from one where you've been trained to assume a degree of GM-player antagonism, the entire concept will fall apart. Either in this case because it destroys the immersion you're dependent upon to enjoy your gaming, or because a player/GM relationship that isn't founded on the trust that neither side will abuse their temporary narrative dominance will poison the well.

I don't really understand that. Maybe I had weird origins, but the collective story and encountering setbacks and such is what I came here for, to emulate the stories, y'know? so that I can do awesome things within the story. If I'm too pragmatic and treat too much like the real world, be too smart and super-competent, I lose interest because where is the challenge or excitement in being so great and powerful that you defeat everything in one blow? I don't want to be One Punch Man, thats just stroking my own ego pointlessly if the enemies are taken out like that, it isn't satisfying. To feel like a hero, it has to be challenging and push you in some way. with Fate you can make sure the situation is less easy so that there is something you can't just cakewalk through.

But then again, most of my successful roleplaying has been freeform, so I might be coming from somewhere very different than most.

Beneath
2016-12-27, 07:24 PM
The rule in D&D, the governing principle by which players interact with the game world, is that you have absolute control over your character and control over nothing else, and that NPCs are expected to work similarly; the GM is expected to shift between playing an NPC (who has absolute self-control, barring morale rules and mind control) and arbitrating the world, and bending world-arbitration to favor an NPC is rightfully seen as cheating.

A lot of people who've only ever played D&D see this as the only way an RPG can work, and they're wrong. Microscope takes things pretty far to the other extreme; on your turn as a player, you can write something into the world provided it has to do with the theme you're doing this pass (everyone gets at least one turn setting the theme, depending on how long a game you're playing) and is consistent with everything else already established. It's important to note that even with this, things don't just happen in the world purely because someone wrote them in. Everything in-world still has an in-world cause (which you might not know about until someone writes it in), but the player's power is on a narrative level.

Most games that aren't D&D or GURPS are somewhere between these two extremes; it is a different mindset, though, that you as a player are not your character and the things you're allowed to write into the narrative aren't just things your character can know or do (which doesn't mean causality doesn't work in-world, since all the things you write in still have to be plausible results of in-world causes).

What did the villain do to make the hero's gun jam? nothing, 'cause you're asking the wrong question. On the GM's turn to write something into the narrative that favors the villain, the hero's gun jammed for in-world reasons.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-27, 08:07 PM
Thing is, I don't have an adversarial background (as in GM-player) as a player or a GM -- and when I have run into adversarial (or the potentially worse "If every little thing isn't a true challenge to your character, then what's the point?") sorts of GMs, I've always just lost my enthusiasm for the campaign and gone through the motions until the game petered out.

If anything, my background is in character-driven, character-centric campaigns, and that's what the group I gamed with for the better part of 20 years was all about. There were three of us who did most of the GMing, and our campaigns were centered around the PCs, and were full of interesting and proactive NPCs that (we were told at least) the players loved.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-27, 08:29 PM
The rule in D&D, the governing principle by which players interact with the game world, is that you have absolute control over your character and control over nothing else, and that NPCs are expected to work similarly; the GM is expected to shift between playing an NPC (who has absolute self-control, barring morale rules and mind control) and arbitrating the world, and bending world-arbitration to favor an NPC is rightfully seen as cheating.

A lot of people who've only ever played D&D see this as the only way an RPG can work, and they're wrong. Microscope takes things pretty far to the other extreme; on your turn as a player, you can write something into the world provided it has to do with the theme you're doing this pass (everyone gets at least one turn setting the theme, depending on how long a game you're playing) and is consistent with everything else already established. It's important to note that even with this, things don't just happen in the world purely because someone wrote them in. Everything in-world still has an in-world cause (which you might not know about until someone writes it in), but the player's power is on a narrative level.

Most games that aren't D&D or GURPS are somewhere between these two extremes; it is a different mindset, though, that you as a player are not your character and the things you're allowed to write into the narrative aren't just things your character can know or do (which doesn't mean causality doesn't work in-world, since all the things you write in still have to be plausible results of in-world causes).

What did the villain do to make the hero's gun jam? nothing, 'cause you're asking the wrong question. On the GM's turn to write something into the narrative that favors the villain, the hero's gun jammed for in-world reasons.

Well, as far as I'm concerned, that is precisely the right question.


One thing that really frustrates me about these discussions is that inevitably, and usually quite early, there's that post, where someone says "oh well you've only played D&D".

No, in fact, I gave up completely on D&D as soon as I found other games -- there are a lot of things I just don't like about that system. What I have played a lot of is WEG d6 Star Wars, and Champions, and Star Wars using HERO system, and a ton of oWoD campaigns (Vampire, Warewolf, mixed), and multiple home-brew systems, and so on. I have a collection of books behind me here from games I haven't ever had a chance to play, but that I've read in detail, too... L5R, some Cubicle 7 stuff, etc, etc, etc.

All these games that aren't D&D also don't have the sort of disassociated "shared storytelling" / "director stance" (ugh) rules that you're describing... and frankly, I'm glad they don't. Nothing that I enjoy about playing in an RPG would be at all enhanced by those sorts of rules, and in some ways they'd be damaging to my enjoyment.

Friv
2016-12-27, 08:36 PM
Okay, so... look, this may be a stupid question, so I apologize in advance, but what are you hoping to gain from this discussion?

We've established that you don't like narrative mechanics. We've established that we do. Are you hoping for us to persuade you as to why narrative mechanics are so popular? Are you hoping to understand what it is about them that we enjoy? Are you hoping to persuade us that there's some absolute reason that they are not good? Do you just want a chance to vent about a style that's reducing the number of games that you're able to enjoy playing?

CharonsHelper
2016-12-27, 08:45 PM
Okay, so... look, this may be a stupid question, so I apologize in advance, but what are you hoping to gain from this discussion?

We've established that you don't like narrative mechanics. We've established that we do. Are you hoping for us to persuade you as to why narrative mechanics are so popular? Are you hoping to understand what it is about them that we enjoy? Are you hoping to persuade us that there's some absolute reason that they are not good? Do you just want a chance to vent about a style that's reducing the number of games that you're able to enjoy playing?

Max_Killjoy seems to enjoy telling everyone that the mechanics that they like are all wrong. He's actually said in the past that he doesn't like any RPGs (other than an old edition of some game which he dislikes the current version of), so take everything he says with a grain of salt.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-27, 08:53 PM
Okay, so... look, this may be a stupid question, so I apologize in advance, but what are you hoping to gain from this discussion?

We've established that you don't like narrative mechanics. We've established that we do. Are you hoping for us to persuade you as to why narrative mechanics are so popular? Are you hoping to understand what it is about them that we enjoy? Are you hoping to persuade us that there's some absolute reason that they are not good? Do you just want a chance to vent about a style that's reducing the number of games that you're able to enjoy playing?

It's not a stupid question.

Honestly, I caught myself potentially threadcrapping someone else's thread with the topic, so I created this thread to let that other thread move on with the original question/topic.

Other than "people like different stuff", I just don't get it. What I see is other players relishing and trying to emulate the various contrivances that I loath in so much of the fiction I come across.

"Oh hey, the hero's weapon/vehicle/confidence failed at the most dramatic moment possible, what a giant effing surprise, no one ever saw that coming the last 6,851,947 times it happened either..." :smallconfused:

"Oh hey, that random stranger the hero helped in Act 1 turned out to be the Secret Master in Act 2! I'm so stunned!" :smallyuk:

The Glyphstone
2016-12-27, 08:56 PM
So the answer is just 'other people like different things than you'?:smallconfused: That seems like a pretty easy question - it's not that you don't understand why we like that sort of game style, it's just not something you enjoy in turn. I have no idea why people like tofu.

Friv
2016-12-27, 09:00 PM
It's not a stupid question.

Honestly, I caught myself potentially threadcrapping someone else's thread with the topic, so I created this thread to let that other thread move on with the original question/topic.

Got it, thank you. :)


Other than "people like different stuff", I just don't get it. What I see is other players relishing and trying to emulate the various contrivances that I loath in so much of the fiction I come across.

"Oh hey, the hero's weapon/vehicle/confidence failed at the most dramatic moment possible, what a giant effing surprise, no one ever saw that coming the last 6,851,947 times it happened either..." :smallconfused:

"Oh hey, that random stranger the hero helped in Act 1 turned out to be the Secret Master in Act 2! I'm so stunned!" :smallyuk:

That's fair. I think if you want to try and see it from our perspective, the key is that we're not just declaring contrivances. We're playing a game of narrative resource management in place of or alongside physical resource management.

The key to most of the games that use this kind of mechanic is that it's limited. Usually, it's limited in a way that you give up temporary narrative control in one situation to gain additional narrative control in another situation. Sometimes, that means replicating contrivances that most of the people at the table enjoy - if people like dramatic gunfights, it's easier to use the narrative mechanics to make dramatic gunfights the reasonable thing to have happen, rather than forcing everyone to behave kind of dumb and ignore strategic advantages.

At other times, that means replicating the sorts of coincidences that happen in real life, but don't happen in most RPGs because they just can't be grainy enough. Sometimes you turn the corner and just straight-up bump into the guy you're looking for, but usually, you don't. It's easier to have this happen at a time that's interesting to play out, instead of rolling d10,000 every five minutes, right? (Which is why obviously I don't think there's a system that rolls d10,000 for anything.)

It definitely can pull you out of versimilitude, because it's moving the players part-way from being audience members towards being in the writer's room. Or, I guess, further in that direction, since players are already a little bit in the writer's room in even the most simulationist games.

It's fair if it's not your cup of tea. I personally hate bean-counting in games; I absolute loathe having to track every piece of gear, and hate even more the feeling of being useless because I, the player, forgot some minor item that I, the character, would absolutely have remembered, but we've been away from a supply area for two days of game time so I can't claim I picked it up then. It shatters immersion for me harder than any narrative management does, but it's also pretty common in a lot of games which are very popular.

*EDIT* Because I was ninja'd:


So the answer is just 'other people like different things than you'?:smallconfused: That seems like a pretty easy question - it's not that you don't understand why we like that sort of game style, it's just not something you enjoy in turn. I have no idea why people like tofu.

At the risk of putting words into Max Killjoy's mouth, I think they're trying to parse what it is about narrative games that people find interesting. Like, I could explain why people like tofu without saying that you have to like it. ;)

Yuki Akuma
2016-12-27, 09:06 PM
(Which is why obviously I don't think there's a system that rolls d10,000 for anything.)

There actually is, but sane people don't talk about it.

Beneath
2016-12-27, 09:27 PM
It's a different kind of game. The GM's power and responsibility are more widely dispersed. Apocalypse World, for instance, specifically tells the GM to turn world-building questions around back on the players (so if a player asks you what the next holding over is like, you're encouraged to turn it around and ask them or another player what they know about it)

As a GM, this means less is riding on me (not nothing, but a lot less; when I'm running D&D I can be a lot more passive than when I'm in the moment running AW/DW because the GM's job); as a player, that means I don't have to give up everything a GM has to sit on the other side of the screen.

A good example of this is that there's a see-the-future ability in AW that lets you describe what you see (when you go into battle, roll. on a success name an NPC who will live and/or one who will die; your vision will happen if it is at all plausible. on a failure you see your own death and things go badly for you). Your character is just having a vision when this happens, but you as a player are also providing what they see, and there you have complete freedom to put whatever you think would be interesting into the world.

Narrative mechanics make sense when engaged on their own terms, but not when you assume that every time a player affects the world it's through a distinct action their character takes. Sometimes, they're more akin to spending luck points in games that have them than anything else.

TripleD
2016-12-27, 09:27 PM
There actually is, but sane people don't talk about it.

You're talking about Hackmaster right? Or are there two systems crazy enough to implement this?

Yuki Akuma
2016-12-27, 09:31 PM
You're talking about Hackmaster right? Or are there two systems crazy enough to implement this?

I was actually referring to FATAL.

(Fair warning: everything about it is horribly Not Safe For Work. Or Sanity. I advise against Googling it.)

Fri
2016-12-27, 09:47 PM
As one of the person who derailed the original thread, I just want to add. Eventhough I mostly play Fate nowadays, one of the campaign memory I most fond was the super lethal semi-sandbox 3.5 campaign, where it's set in the border of civilized lands and one of the premise is that there's no punches pulled and everyone can die (and should just reroll a new adventurer coming to the guild if they like). It's tense, and have surprisingly memorable characters eventhough their lives are short (mostly about their interesting life story that got cut short).

So in other word, variety is the spice of life after all.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-27, 09:50 PM
That's fair. I think if you want to try and see it from our perspective, the key is that we're not just declaring contrivances. We're playing a game of narrative resource management in place of or alongside physical resource management.

The key to most of the games that use this kind of mechanic is that it's limited. Usually, it's limited in a way that you give up temporary narrative control in one situation to gain additional narrative control in another situation. Sometimes, that means replicating contrivances that most of the people at the table enjoy - if people like dramatic gunfights, it's easier to use the narrative mechanics to make dramatic gunfights the reasonable thing to have happen, rather than forcing everyone to behave kind of dumb and ignore strategic advantages.

At other times, that means replicating the sorts of coincidences that happen in real life, but don't happen in most RPGs because they just can't be grainy enough. Sometimes you turn the corner and just straight-up bump into the guy you're looking for, but usually, you don't. It's easier to have this happen at a time that's interesting to play out, instead of rolling d10,000 every five minutes, right? (Which is why obviously I don't think there's a system that rolls d10,000 for anything.)


And in fiction, that sort of "coincidence" has to walk a very fine line with me, because if it's not done just right, it knocks me completely out of the story and I'm sitting there thinking "of course he just happened to run into him, right, of course". In part because it's the sort of 1 in 10000 thing that happens far more often than that in fiction, orders of magnitude more often than the actual odds would suggest.




It definitely can pull you out of versimilitude, because it's moving the players part-way from being audience members towards being in the writer's room. Or, I guess, further in that direction, since players are already a little bit in the writer's room in even the most simulationist games.


I don't consider "sim" or "character-centric" games to be "player as audience", because to me "audience" implies a passive role, and that's not at all my experience of playing in those sorts of campaigns. A player can be super-proactive and deeply involved even if they don't get to "invoke narrative control".




It's fair if it's not your cup of tea. I personally hate bean-counting in games; I absolute loathe having to track every piece of gear, and hate even more the feeling of being useless because I, the player, forgot some minor item that I, the character, would absolutely have remembered, but we've been away from a supply area for two days of game time so I can't claim I picked it up then. It shatters immersion for me harder than any narrative management does, but it's also pretty common in a lot of games which are very popular.


Some of my trepidation on this topic comes from the sense that there's this excluded middle, with the hard-core gear-sticker resource-management advocates on one side, and the narrative advocates on the other, arguing against each other as if the only two choices are those two choices, and that there's no way to avoid "the drawbacks" of one side without adopting all the good and bad of the other side. For example, your last paragraph there can be read as "without narrative rules to allow for what my character would have remembered but I didn't, I'm stuck with having to track every last little piece of gear".

None of the three of us who GMed most of the campaigns in that long-term group were utter sticklers for gear lists in that way -- we'd always allow a player to make their (quick) case for why their character would have any piece of portable, mundane equipment that fit that character, and if we weren't sure we pretty much erred on the side of "don't ruin the moment".

As an example, in the long-running Star Wars campaign, my sneak-infiltrator/counter-intelligence/"professional paranoid" character was just assumed to have any tool he needed to pick locks, access computer ports, cut wires, open access panels, etc. His equipment list said "tool kit", "adapters", "computer stuff", etc. The only things specifically detailed were his weapons and his armor.

And yet, none of us back then had even considered the sorts of rules we're talking about in this thread. We were just more interested in the characters, and the setting/NPCs, and the story that grew itself out of the interactions, than we were in strict enforcement.

Friv
2016-12-27, 09:58 PM
Some of my trepidation on this topic comes from the sense that there's this excluded middle, with the hard-core gear-sticker resource-management advocates on one side, and the narrative advocates on the other, arguing against each other as if the only two choices are those two choices, and that there's no way to avoid "the drawbacks" of one side without adopting all the good and bad of the other side. For example, your last paragraph there can be read as "without narrative rules to allow for what my character would have remembered but I didn't, I'm stuck with having to track every last little piece of gear".

I actually didn't mean for that to be the case; I was just pulling up an example of a thing I don't like in games, not intending to contrast it with narrative mechanics. There are a few narrative-based games out there that are extremely bean-county.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-27, 10:03 PM
I actually didn't mean for that to be the case; I was just pulling up an example of a thing I don't like in games, not intending to contrast it with narrative mechanics. There are a few narrative-based games out there that are extremely bean-county.

Fair enough.

The rest of that section stands, however.

Darth Ultron
2016-12-27, 10:42 PM
Other than "people like different stuff", I just don't get it. What I see is other players relishing and trying to emulate the various contrivances that I loath in so much of the fiction I come across.


Well, you can't have complex, interesting, exciting, emotional stories without the ''contrivances''. There is a reason all fiction from the dawn of man kind has used them...they work. If fiction does not use them it is boring, and it won't be popular.

Assuming you like any fiction....there is a good chance it has ''contrivances'' in it, unless you only like extreme Independent films and documentaries. But it really does come down to what you will ''give a pass to''. It comes down to being ''just right''.

Can you even name any fiction that does not use ''causality is narrative'' and keeps the ''illusion'' going? Or can you just name the ones you like and ''give a pass too''?

RazorChain
2016-12-28, 12:05 AM
Some of my trepidation on this topic comes from the sense that there's this excluded middle, with the hard-core gear-sticker resource-management advocates on one side, and the narrative advocates on the other, arguing against each other as if the only two choices are those two choices, and that there's no way to avoid "the drawbacks" of one side without adopting all the good and bad of the other side. For example, your last paragraph there can be read as "without narrative rules to allow for what my character would have remembered but I didn't, I'm stuck with having to track every last little piece of gear".

None of the three of us who GMed most of the campaigns in that long-term group were utter sticklers for gear lists in that way -- we'd always allow a player to make their (quick) case for why their character would have any piece of portable, mundane equipment that fit that character, and if we weren't sure we pretty much erred on the side of "don't ruin the moment".

As an example, in the long-running Star Wars campaign, my sneak-infiltrator/counter-intelligence/"professional paranoid" character was just assumed to have any tool he needed to pick locks, access computer ports, cut wires, open access panels, etc. His equipment list said "tool kit", "adapters", "computer stuff", etc. The only things specifically detailed were his weapons and his armor.

And yet, none of us back then had even considered the sorts of rules we're talking about in this thread. We were just more interested in the characters, and the setting/NPCs, and the story that grew itself out of the interactions, than we were in strict enforcement.

Usually the GM has the narrative control but narrative causality isnt dependent who has narrative control.

In fact it has nothing to do with who has narrative control.

Narrative causality happens all the time in RPGs and most of the time we accept it while it is plausible.

It is when it goes into the realm of implausible when most people start to complain or when it invalidates agency.

Fiery Diamond
2016-12-28, 03:47 AM
Well, you can't have complex, interesting, exciting, emotional stories without the ''contrivances''. There is a reason all fiction from the dawn of man kind has used them...they work. If fiction does not use them it is boring, and it won't be popular.

Assuming you like any fiction....there is a good chance it has ''contrivances'' in it, unless you only like extreme Independent films and documentaries. But it really does come down to what you will ''give a pass to''. It comes down to being ''just right''.

Can you even name any fiction that does not use ''causality is narrative'' and keeps the ''illusion'' going? Or can you just name the ones you like and ''give a pass too''?

I don't usually find myself agreeing with Darth Ultron, but I've gotta say, he really hit the nail on the head here. This post really is accurate. All fiction has contrivances, it's the nature of the thing. It just comes down to what contrivances you find palatable and what contrivances you don't.

Actana
2016-12-28, 04:04 AM
Not sure if it came up yet, but in Fate at least, you can't compel (ie introduce narrative contrivances, as it were) just like that. You need to have a suitable Aspect to compel first. The gun aiming at the bad guy doesn't go off just because it'd make for a better story, it goes off because it makes for a better story and the gun has the "Unreliable" aspect, or it has been "Poorly Maintained", or simply because the wielder is "Perpetually Unlucky". Requiring an Aspect to be compelled gives the narrative a better in-universe justification, and not simply because of the GM or players' whims.

Also equally important is the fact that players can refuse compels by spending a Fate point instead of gaining one of an accept. It gives control to the player as well: if they feel really cheated by the compel they can always just flat out say no to the contrivance. Of course, if they're lacking Fate points that's an entirely different issue, but it's also one the player has got themselves into: the GM can't take the Fate points away without the player's approval first.

Anonymouswizard
2016-12-28, 05:10 AM
Not sure if it came up yet, but in Fate at least, you can't compel (ie introduce narrative contrivances, as it were) just like that. You need to have a suitable Aspect to compel first. The gun aiming at the bad guy doesn't go off just because it'd make for a better story, it goes off because it makes for a better story and the gun has the "Unreliable" aspect, or it has been "Poorly Maintained", or simply because the wielder is "Perpetually Unlucky". Requiring an Aspect to be compelled gives the narrative a better in-universe justification, and not simply because of the GM or players' whims.

Also equally important is the fact that players can refuse compels by spending a Fate point instead of gaining one of an accept. It gives control to the player as well: if they feel really cheated by the compel they can always just flat out say no to the contrivance. Of course, if they're lacking Fate points that's an entirely different issue, but it's also one the player has got themselves into: the GM can't take the Fate points away without the player's approval first.

A really good summary of what I was trying to get at in my post quoted in the OP.

Remember, Fate also recommends hoping the number of compels when the players are low on Fate Points or at the opening of a session to give the players narrative control.

Also I'd like to point that in Fate Core at least, the players are assumed to be included at some stage of game creation. It's fine to do it as the GM, but it can be useful have an entire session dedicated to PC and game creation, using the discussions work the the games Issues, locations, and faces (important NPCs).

Frozen_Feet
2016-12-28, 06:51 AM
I don't really understand that. Maybe I had weird origins, but the collective story and encountering setbacks and such is what I came here for, to emulate the stories, y'know? so that I can do awesome things within the story. If I'm too pragmatic and treat too much like the real world, be too smart and super-competent, I lose interest because where is the challenge or excitement in being so great and powerful that you defeat everything in one blow? I don't want to be One Punch Man, thats just stroking my own ego pointlessly if the enemies are taken out like that, it isn't satisfying. To feel like a hero, it has to be challenging and push you in some way. with Fate you can make sure the situation is less easy so that there is something you can't just cakewalk through.

But then again, most of my successful roleplaying has been freeform, so I might be coming from somewhere very different than most.

The bolded part is pretty important.

In tabletop games, random chance is traditionally a big component. In addition, game rules by default constrain how powerful characters can be. This means that in a tabletop game, you as a player have to be smarter and more competent than your GM, and it might still fail to trivialize in-game problems.

In a freeform game, you as a player can just state your character is smart and competent, and if every other player respects that, they are, with no real effort on your part.

That difference - between acting and stating things - is at the root of many different arguments about roleplaying games, including this one.

Some systems, like FATE and Apocalypse World, give either the player or GM the right to state how things are, in order to emulate narrative conventions which are recognized as being unrealistic or unlikely to happen otherwise. Other systems, like (IIRC) Exalted have a lesser form of this in Stunts (etc.) to allow genre-appropriate actions which otherwise couldn't be modeled, or wouldn't normally emerge from, the game mechanics.

Older and more traditional systems typically rely on dice rolls or more complex mechanics to model such things - which, in practice, makes them not very good at emulating any particular genre convention.

Let's examine the original example - fight with an escaping villain - in more detail:

The villain is escaping. The player character is firing a weapon at them.

In a traditional game, there are no special rules governing this. It is solved as any other attack would be. Which means the results are typically open. The weapon could fire. The weapon could hit the villain. The hit could prevent them from escaping. Neither the players nor the GM know which it is going to be before the dice are rolled.

In a storytelling game, this moment is recognized as special. This is either the climax (meaning the villain should die) or the anti-climax (the villain should go free, building up for the next confrontation). And the game gives special tools for ensuring or making likelier that option which would be genre-appropriate.

In a freeform game, there are no rules dictating which it should be. In practice, the players involved have to come to an agreement before the scene is over. This importantly means that no element of surprise can be involved in what is going to happen, unless one player leaves the decision completely to another.

Which model is preferred for conflict resolution is influenced by what players think should happen. Some players see the randomness and unpredictability of traditional gaming as flaws, and indeed some of the genre-emulating rules have been invented because of that.

This is hilarious, because originally random chance was added to RPGs to make them less predictable - but the reason was so that player characters would have a chance to succeed in things which would otherwise be impossible or unrealistic, because such occasional unrealism was deemed genre-approriate. (1st Edition AD&D goes in-depth about this.)

Max_Kiiljoy's big problem with the newer type of rules is that they serve to make games more predictable, but this time because they adhere too well to established genre conventions.

Darth Ultron
2016-12-28, 07:35 AM
Max_Kiiljoy's big problem with the newer type of rules is that they serve to make games more predictable, but this time because they adhere too well to established genre conventions.

There is also the metagame part too. No matter the rules the GM...or players want something to happen/not happen. You can't just let things happen at random, say things happen the way you want but your ''not doing anything'' or improvise things.....there has to be direct control.

Take even the ''confront the bad guy''......that is artificial. Almost everything in a game is, and really has to be.

And take the escaping villain.....it is fun to have a reoccurring villain(for some)....but that can only happen if they can escape. And after all if the player would say ''every villain must stop and fight to the death the second we encounter them'', I'd point out that is them wanting something to happen...

Earthwalker
2016-12-28, 07:47 AM
Max_Kiiljoy's big problem with the newer type of rules is that they serve to make games more predictable, but this time because they adhere too well to established genre conventions.

I cant say if this is what Max_Killjoy dislikes but I can say I find games of FATE far more unpredictable than the games of Pathfinder I run.

Pathfinder I plan out a session and then the players play it and it more often than not ends up where I think.

Fate I plan one scene and from there I have no idea where it will do.

This is why I like FATE over Pathfinder (And shadowrun and others)
Not that I am saying I don't like Pathfinder and Shadowrun, just they have different results uses.

Frozen_Feet
2016-12-28, 07:52 AM
@Darth_Ultron: As usual, you have nothing of worth to say on the front of randomness, improvizing, or even control.

Also, I can name a lot of fiction that's based on randomness and not "narrative causality" as you understand it: Dwarf Fortress. Unreal World. Nethack. Angband. You may notice these are all games. That's not a coincidence.

One also could, as many players who dabble in writing have done, take the events of a single run of any such game and turn it into prose.

Just as well, one could take a string of events in real life and turn them into prose but file the names off. One of the most popular Finnish novel of all time, Tuntematon Sotilas, was arguably written in this manner.

The idea that fiction lacking in genre conventions or traditional dramatic arcs is condemned to be "boring" or unpopular is highly questionable. Yes, some have persisted from the dawn of storytelling, but others have come and gone just like other whims of fashion. The "rules of drama" that pervade Western storytelling were invented at a specific place and time which is known, and aren't actually universal. Rules of drama also weren't meant to apply to games. That's a conceit of roleplaying games, and only a specific subset at that.

Klara Meison
2016-12-28, 07:53 AM
Well, you can't have complex, interesting, exciting, emotional stories without the ''contrivances''. There is a reason all fiction from the dawn of man kind has used them...they work. If fiction does not use them it is boring, and it won't be popular.

Assuming you like any fiction....there is a good chance it has ''contrivances'' in it, unless you only like extreme Independent films and documentaries. But it really does come down to what you will ''give a pass to''. It comes down to being ''just right''.

Can you even name any fiction that does not use ''causality is narrative'' and keeps the ''illusion'' going? Or can you just name the ones you like and ''give a pass too''?

There is a whole genre of fiction that doesn't use that trope, actually, where nothing happens just because "the plot demands it". It's not boring.

As for why people like narrative causality games like FATE, one of the reasons may be simplicity. Rules of FATE can be fully explained in less than half an hour, and you could reasonably start playing after a minute of explanations. That is incredible when you compare it to something like Pathfinder, where even veterans with years of experience won't know every rule or exception every class brings to the table. This means that if you want to play, say, a Swordsman Like No Other who can stand up to an army of demons with his incredible swordfightning skills, in Pathfinder you would need to know the perfect class for the job, optimise the abilities, and so on and so forth, while in FATE all you would need to know is "I want to play a Swordsman who is good at stabbing things". Literally, High Concept and Best Skill are the only two things absolutely required to start playing a character. You don't even need a name, you can use your High Concept to refer to yourself until you come up with one.


As an example, in the long-running Star Wars campaign, my sneak-infiltrator/counter-intelligence/"professional paranoid" character was just assumed to have any tool he needed to pick locks, access computer ports, cut wires, open access panels, etc. His equipment list said "tool kit", "adapters", "computer stuff", etc. The only things specifically detailed were his weapons and his armor.

But that's narrative causality. Special pleading much?

Frozen_Feet
2016-12-28, 07:57 AM
Pathfinder I plan out a session and then the players play it and it more often than not ends up where I think.

I'd bet money on that being your knowledge of the rules affecting both your expectations and how a scenario you made can even be solved.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-28, 08:05 AM
Some of my trepidation on this topic comes from the sense that there's this excluded middle, with the hard-core gear-sticker resource-management advocates on one side, and the narrative advocates on the other, arguing against each other as if the only two choices are those two choices, and that there's no way to avoid "the drawbacks" of one side without adopting all the good and bad of the other side. For example, your last paragraph there can be read as "without narrative rules to allow for what my character would have remembered but I didn't, I'm stuck with having to track every last little piece of gear".

None of the three of us who GMed most of the campaigns in that long-term group were utter sticklers for gear lists in that way -- we'd always allow a player to make their (quick) case for why their character would have any piece of portable, mundane equipment that fit that character, and if we weren't sure we pretty much erred on the side of "don't ruin the moment".

As an example, in the long-running Star Wars campaign, my sneak-infiltrator/counter-intelligence/"professional paranoid" character was just assumed to have any tool he needed to pick locks, access computer ports, cut wires, open access panels, etc. His equipment list said "tool kit", "adapters", "computer stuff", etc. The only things specifically detailed were his weapons and his armor.

And yet, none of us back then had even considered the sorts of rules we're talking about in this thread. We were just more interested in the characters, and the setting/NPCs, and the story that grew itself out of the interactions, than we were in strict enforcement.



But that's narrative causality. Special pleading much?


It's only "narrative causality" if you're trying to expand the definition of narrative causality to include anything that's ever done to keep the game moving and not ruin the fun.

Which really goes to illustrate the aforementioned false dichotomy that some try to establish, with the only possible games being either the "bean counter, gear stickler, gotcha-driven" games run by the stereotypical adversarial GM, and "narrative-driven rules". Try as some might, there's a vast gulf between the two, and at least some gamers who refuse to be caught up in the middle.


But since a certain other poster has decided to drop by and crap the thread in service of his personal crusade, expanding and twisting definitions to the point of uselessness must be the order of the day.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-28, 08:15 AM
The bolded part is pretty important.

In tabletop games, random chance is traditionally a big component. In addition, game rules by default constrain how powerful characters can be. This means that in a tabletop game, you as a player have to be smarter and more competent than your GM, and it might still fail to trivialize in-game problems.

In a freeform game, you as a player can just state your character is smart and competent, and if every other player respects that, they are, with no real effort on your part.

That difference - between acting and stating things - is at the root of many different arguments about roleplaying games, including this one.

Some systems, like FATE and Apocalypse World, give either the player or GM the right to state how things are, in order to emulate narrative conventions which are recognized as being unrealistic or unlikely to happen otherwise. Other systems, like (IIRC) Exalted have a lesser form of this in Stunts (etc.) to allow genre-appropriate actions which otherwise couldn't be modeled, or wouldn't normally emerge from, the game mechanics.

Older and more traditional systems typically rely on dice rolls or more complex mechanics to model such things - which, in practice, makes them not very good at emulating any particular genre convention.

Let's examine the original example - fight with an escaping villain - in more detail:

The villain is escaping. The player character is firing a weapon at them.

In a traditional game, there are no special rules governing this. It is solved as any other attack would be. Which means the results are typically open. The weapon could fire. The weapon could hit the villain. The hit could prevent them from escaping. Neither the players nor the GM know which it is going to be before the dice are rolled.

In a storytelling game, this moment is recognized as special. This is either the climax (meaning the villain should die) or the anti-climax (the villain should go free, building up for the next confrontation). And the game gives special tools for ensuring or making likelier that option which would be genre-appropriate.

In a freeform game, there are no rules dictating which it should be. In practice, the players involved have to come to an agreement before the scene is over. This importantly means that no element of surprise can be involved in what is going to happen, unless one player leaves the decision completely to another.

Which model is preferred for conflict resolution is influenced by what players think should happen. Some players see the randomness and unpredictability of traditional gaming as flaws, and indeed some of the genre-emulating rules have been invented because of that.

This is hilarious, because originally random chance was added to RPGs to make them less predictable - but the reason was so that player characters would have a chance to succeed in things which would otherwise be impossible or unrealistic, because such occasional unrealism was deemed genre-approriate. (1st Edition AD&D goes in-depth about this.)

Max_Kiiljoy's big problem with the newer type of rules is that they serve to make games more predictable, but this time because they adhere too well to established genre conventions.

Correct, at least in that I have little to no interest in emulating genre convention.

When the PC fires their weapon at the fleeing villain, there are factors which influence that. The character's skill with the weapon, the environmental conditions, the villain's actions, etc. "What should happen" is where genre convention and narrative causality come into play, and I don't have much use for that. Physically, objectively, the moment isn't special. It's just another moment, with things happening.

Other people are interested in making the moment special, it seems, because they want to tell stories just like the stories they like.

Klara Meison
2016-12-28, 08:17 AM
It's only "narrative causality" if you're trying to expand the definition of narrative causality to include anything that's ever done to keep the game moving and not ruin the fun.

Which really goes to illustrate the aforementioned false dichotomy that some try to establish, with the only possible games being either the "bean counter, gear stickler, gotcha-driven" games run by the stereotypical adversarial GM, and "narrative-driven rules". Try as some might, there's a vast gulf between the two, and at least some gamers who refuse to be caught up in the middle.


But since a certain other poster has decided to drop by and crap the thread in service of his personal crusade, expanding and twisting definitions to the point of uselessness must be the order of the day.

So far you have been the only one to talk about such a dichotomy. You also happen to be the one who uses narrative causality "to keep the game moving" without admitting to yourself that you do. Coincidence?

CharonsHelper
2016-12-28, 08:20 AM
I cant say if this is what Max_Killjoy dislikes but I can say I find games of FATE far more unpredictable than the games of Pathfinder I run.

Pathfinder I plan out a session and then the players play it and it more often than not ends up where I think.

Fate I plan one scene and from there I have no idea where it will do.

The reference wasn't as to how predictable it was to the GM. Since Fate has more player control of the game-world, it's obviously going to be less predictable to the GM, who in most games controls the entire world.

But if the Fate gameplay follows tropes etc., the general shape of the story is invariably going to be semi-predictable to the players.

Earthwalker
2016-12-28, 08:23 AM
I'd bet money on that being your knowledge of the rules affecting both your expectations and how a scenario you made can even be solved.

Too true.

Of course that's not to say that I come up with only one solution or that I wont expect new solutions.

The rules of the system have a massive impact.
I did similar starts between a pathfinder game and a FATE game. (Same players in both)

Simple setup. There was a murder and if the players want they can work out who done it.

Pathfinder setup work for me was planning out the murder, then what clues could be found within the rules and then setting DCs for skill checks. Planning out all the details of who was where. What skills NPCs had (whats their bluff if they need to lie) and so on....

FATE was a brief description and then the players basically provided the detail as they investigated.

Was fun in both systems just a tonne more work in Pathfinder.

Earthwalker
2016-12-28, 08:31 AM
The reference wasn't as to how predictable it was to the GM. Since Fate has more player control of the game-world, it's obviously going to be less predictable to the GM, who in most games controls the entire world.

But if the Fate gameplay follows tropes etc., the general shape of the story is invariably going to be semi-predictable to the players.

Yeah I can see that. I view it from the GMs side as that's where I usually sit.

Its also worth noting that my Pathfinder games use tropes as much as my FATE games so from that point of view it must work out about the same.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-28, 08:40 AM
Also, I can name a lot of fiction that's based on randomness and not "narrative causality" as you understand it: Dwarf Fortress. Unreal World. Nethack. Angband. You may notice these are all games. That's not a coincidence.

One also could, as many players who dabble in writing have done, take the events of a single run of any such game and turn it into prose.

Just as well, one could take a string of events in real life and turn them into prose but file the names off. One of the most popular Finnish novel of all time, Tuntematon Sotilas, was arguably written in this manner.

The idea that fiction lacking in genre conventions or traditional dramatic arcs is condemned to be "boring" or unpopular is highly questionable. Yes, some have persisted from the dawn of storytelling, but others have come and gone just like other whims of fashion. The "rules of drama" that pervade Western storytelling were invented at a specific place and time which is known, and aren't actually universal. Rules of drama also weren't meant to apply to games. That's a conceit of roleplaying games, and only a specific subset at that.


I think some people (not necessarily you) are taking "narrative causality" to mean "a writer deliberately had this happen in the story". That's a definition so broad as to be useless. Of course everything happens deliberately when viewed in that manner, for a large share of stories told.

For non-games, for fiction, perhaps a couple examples of the line I'm drawing.

* If I'm watching a murder mystery, and I can spot the culprit based on clues and behavior and so on, that's fine, that's even fun. If I'm watching a murder mystery and culprit is obvious based on "storytelling conventions" or "dramatic need" or the established pattern of the show, that's a serious letdown for me. I've become very very good at spotting the culprit based on the latter factors, and it's made many of these shows a rather sad experience for me personally.

* If the "intrepid amateur investigator" is a member of the same club as the murder victim, and later happens to run into someone with key information who is also a member of the same club, that's fine -- it's not contrived, it makes sense. If the investigator happens to be the one to come across the victim's body randomly, and then later runs into a key witness randomly, and so on... it gets silly fast.


Or, as another example. When Campbell's work is taken as descriptive, that's fine, nothing wrong with analyzing stories for patterns. However, when it's taken as prescriptive, and writing advice starts to boil down to "How does this story fit into the Hero's Journey? Your protagonist starts off too worldly, and there's no transformative moment, and..." it makes me want to bang my head on something in frustration.
"Where is the act structure, you're missing all of act 2."
"Why is it raining in this scene? The symbolism doesn't fit."
"You're missing your character of X archetype."

:furious:

It's bad enough when actual fiction has to struggle against that nonsense.

When it starts to bleed over into games... no, sorry, I have no use for "narrative convention" in my games. I'd rather not play at all.

Klara Meison
2016-12-28, 08:46 AM
Could you define "narrative causality" then, since you seem to know what it is?

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-28, 08:51 AM
So far you have been the only one to talk about such a dichotomy. You also happen to be the one who uses narrative causality "to keep the game moving" without admitting to yourself that you do. Coincidence?

The people trying (consciously or not) to establish a false dichotomy rarely say "here are the only two choices". They just repeatedly and strongly imply that there there are two distinct and mutually exclusive choices, with the one they wouldn't take being painted in far worse a light.

So far, all you've "contributed" to this discussion is an attempt to define "narrative causality" so broadly that it would only serve an agenda of "laying claim" -- and that's what you've done again in your post here. It's very much like that other guy who keeps trying to define "railroading" so broadly that it "lays claim" to all of gaming other than "total randomness" (his words, not mine).

You can pretend all you like that anything that isn't ruled by blindly impartial dice rolls and strictly-enforced equipment lists is "narrative causality", but that won't make it true.

What's next, are you going to go full Ron Edwards and tell us that "badwrong" games cause brain damage?

Frozen_Feet
2016-12-28, 08:51 AM
[Max_Killjoy] also [happens] to be the one who uses narrative causality "to keep the game moving" without admitting to [themselves] that [they] do. Coincidence?

This apparent hypocrisy only exists to you because you don't take into account levels of granularity which I'm fairly sure Max acknowledges / sees as existing.

When a tool kit is, say, assumed to have pliers, there can be several different motives for doing so.

Example One: the kit assumed to have pliers, because a tool kit is made to store small tools like that, and an example tool set in the game world would likely have one. The foundation for the existence of the pliers is in-world logic and likelihood. No assumption is made of what those pliers would be used for.

Example two: a tool kit is assumed to have pliers, because the character having the kit has the narrative role of a thief, and they needs pliers for breaking through a door, because that's what thiefs do. The foundation for the existence of the pliers is a character's role in the story and their narrative need to get through a door.

Now, these viewpoints are not strictly mutually exclusive. You can have a game where one player thinks the first way, and a second the other way. But which one underlies a game system creates the difference between, say, Twilight 2013 and FATE.

Max objects to the second kind of thinking. It does not follow he would also object to first kind of thinking. Just because two mindsets occasionally lead to similar results is not a sign of equivalency, nor is observing this proof of hypocrisy.

Frozen_Feet
2016-12-28, 08:59 AM
Could you define "narrative causality" then, since you seem to know what it is?

Things happen because the plot says they should. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheoryOfNarrativeCausality)

Emphasis on "should", because, as you might have noticed, that's what Max_Killjoy has no interest in:


"What should happen" is where genre convention and narrative causality come into play, and I don't have much use for that.

Earthwalker
2016-12-28, 09:39 AM
Things happen because the plot says they should. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheoryOfNarrativeCausality)

Emphasis on "should", because, as you might have noticed, that's what Max_Killjoy has no interest in:

My question following this, is a game like FATE (I use it as an example as its one I know) designed to work by forcing what should happen as part of the system.

I don't think it is.

From the original post where the gun fails and the bad guy gets away, done because that's what should happen. That seems against the rules as presented in FATE, it is not about what should happen and more about what can happen (and also heavy doses of what is interesting)

Someone else has posted in FATE the original scenario does not happen. The gun can't misfire because the GM says so. Their needs to be an aspect in play for this to happen. Then the GM can offer a compel (which can be ignored)

Saying that the attacked missed as your gun jammed is more out of place in FATE than it is in say DnD, at least in DnD there is a rule saying the GM can just make things up on the spot.

Klara Meison
2016-12-28, 09:40 AM
This apparent hypocrisy only exists to you because you don't take into account levels of granularity which I'm fairly sure Max acknowledges / sees as existing.

When a tool kit is, say, assumed to have pliers, there can be several different motives for doing so.

Example One: the kit assumed to have pliers, because a tool kit is made to store small tools like that, and an example tool set in the game world would likely have one. The foundation for the existence of the pliers is in-world logic and likelihood. No assumption is made of what those pliers would be used for.

Example two: a tool kit is assumed to have pliers, because the character having the kit has the narrative role of a thief, and they needs pliers for breaking through a door, because that's what thiefs do. The foundation for the existence of the pliers is a character's role in the story and their narrative need to get through a door.

Now, these viewpoints are not strictly mutually exclusive. You can have a game where one player thinks the first way, and a second the other way. But which one underlies a game system creates the difference between, say, Twilight 2013 and FATE.

Max objects to the second kind of thinking. It does not follow he would also object to first kind of thinking. Just because two mindsets occasionally lead to similar results is not a sign of equivalency, nor is observing this proof of hypocrisy.

You seem to have missed the whole thread. First, Friv said:


I personally hate bean-counting in games; I absolute loathe having to track every piece of gear, and hate even more the feeling of being useless because I, the player, forgot some minor item that I, the character, would absolutely have remembered, but we've been away from a supply area for two days of game time so I can't claim I picked it up then. It shatters immersion for me harder than any narrative management does, but it's also pretty common in a lot of games which are very popular.

Then, Killjoy replied:


Some of my trepidation on this topic comes from the sense that there's this excluded middle, with the hard-core gear-sticker resource-management advocates on one side, and the narrative advocates on the other, arguing against each other as if the only two choices are those two choices, and that there's no way to avoid "the drawbacks" of one side without adopting all the good and bad of the other side. For example, your last paragraph there can be read as "without narrative rules to allow for what my character would have remembered but I didn't, I'm stuck with having to track every last little piece of gear".

None of the three of us who GMed most of the campaigns in that long-term group were utter sticklers for gear lists in that way -- we'd always allow a player to make their (quick) case for why their character would have any piece of portable, mundane equipment that fit that character, and if we weren't sure we pretty much erred on the side of "don't ruin the moment".

As an example, in the long-running Star Wars campaign, my sneak-infiltrator/counter-intelligence/"professional paranoid" character was just assumed to have any tool he needed to pick locks, access computer ports, cut wires, open access panels, etc. His equipment list said "tool kit", "adapters", "computer stuff", etc. The only things specifically detailed were his weapons and his armor.

To which I in turn replied that that's narrative causality, because it absolutely is. Take this, for example:

>we'd always allow a player to make their (quick) case for why their character would have any piece of portable, mundane equipment that fit that character, and if we weren't sure we pretty much erred on the side of "don't ruin the moment".

"Why does the character have that piece of equipment?"->"Because if he didn't, it would ruin the moment". "The foundation for the existence of the item" in this case is absolutely "the character's role in the story", and not ordinary causality.

For whatever reason, you seem to confuse "narrative causality" with "badwrongfun", when it's not. If you want to only have a little bit of it in your games, that is fine, but you still have to be honest to yourself about it. Same if you want only narrative (plot says X should happen therefore X happens) or only ordinary (laws of physics say X should happen therefore X happens) causality in your game. It's your game, do whatever, just don't lie to yourself about the kind of causality you actually employ.

DoomHat
2016-12-28, 09:45 AM
Based on the content of the Original Post, I'd say Max Killjoys core issue is misdiagnosed.

I share his listed frustrations, but they frustrate me for a wholly different reason. I've come to realize that the thing I hate most in RPGs is a loss of Agancy.

I hate having no meaningful choices. If I take a crack shot at the fleeing BBEG, and I'm told, "sorry, nope, your gun jams and missfires for, uh, reasons", my input in the events of the story is, for that moment at least, rendered irrelevant.

Maybe it's not so bad every so often but if it turns out the GM has a tight, immutable, script, well I've got better things to do with my time. If they want me to experience their campaign they can just fuggin email it to me and it'll have the same effect in a fraction of the time and energy expent.

The whole core appeal of games as a medium is that you interact with them. An RPG is, in any form or system, just a story told in the second person, and it's difficult to enjoy such a tale if the foremost thought in your mind is, "but I'd never dooo that!".

obryn
2016-12-28, 09:48 AM
I saw an example a few years back that stuck with me, so I think I'll share real quick. It's about the various ways in which game systems model Alcoholism.

In D&D and similar systems - You don't. There's no mechanical hooks in it. This is fine; the game is about plundering Dungeons full of Dragons, and if you want to say Gutboy Barrelhouse spends his off-hours in a tavern, that's fine.

In broader advantage/disadvantage sorts of systems, it's a negative you take for your character in order to get build points elsewhere.
* In Savage Worlds, you get penalties if you don't indulge over a span of about 24 hours, but nothing really negative for drinking. It only causes problems in its absence, not its presence.
* In GURPS (4e is what I'm looking at), any time you're in the presence of alcohol you need to roll to resist. If you fail, you go on a huge binge with awful consequences.

So how do you roleplay an alcoholic in GURPS? You spend all your time avoiding alcohol. You play like a teetotaler, not an addict. In Savage Worlds, you may roleplay closer to it, but it's not like it causes any other problems with your life.

In a narrative game like Fate Core though, you get much-needed Fate points whenever your addiction causes your character problems. You might go on a bender and miss an important meeting. You might end up in the hospital after a brawl. You might start suffering from withdrawal. Really, the sky's the limit and your character's addiction becomes a major source of dramatic events every time it complicates their life in the presence or absence of alcohol.


Based on the content of the Original Post, I'd say Max Killjoys core issue is misdiagnosed.

I share his listed frustrations, but they frustrate me for a wholly different reason. I've come to realize that the thing I hate most in RPGs is a loss of Agancy.

I hate having no meaningful choices. If I take a crack shot at the fleeing BBEG, and I'm told, "sorry, nope, your gun jams and missfires for, uh, reasons", my input in the events of the story is, for that moment at least, rendered irrelevant.

Maybe it's not so bad every so often but if it turns out the GM has a tight, immutable, script, well I've got better things to do with my time. If they want me to experience their campaign they can just fuggin email it to me and it'll have the same effect in a fraction of the time and energy expent.
That's ... not how it works in a properly-run narrative game.

What you're describing is a railroad, which is a degenerate form of plot-centric gaming that both traditional and narrative games can devolve into, under the guidance of a poorly-trained or power-hungry GM.

CharonsHelper
2016-12-28, 09:55 AM
I hate having no meaningful choices. If I take a crack shot at the fleeing BBEG, and I'm told, "sorry, nope, your gun jams and missfires for, uh, reasons", my input in the events of the story is, for that moment at least, rendered irrelevant.

I'm definitely with you. As GM, I've had an NPC become recurring villains who surprised me, showing up again and again as a lieutenant for various BBEGs out for revenge against the PCs, and when the players do finally finished him off there were high-fives all around. Another villain who was the puppet-master of a major plotline I expected to get away (2-3 levels above the party & fast/nimble with escape routes planned and mooks to slow them down) but as she jumped from roof to roof being chased by one PC (only one nimble enough to keep up), another PC on the ground readied an action and hit her with a bola - causing her to fall several stories to the ground after which she was quickly dispatched. No recurring villain there.

I will say though - if the villain has a specific mechanical rule allowing them a cause a gun to jam 1/day or some such, your example above wouldn't bother me. No more than hero points in a 40k game saving a PC's life do. They're inherent to the mechanics of the system. But it would annoy me if it was just the GM doing it so that they could become a recurring villain and fit their story.

Klara Meison
2016-12-28, 10:05 AM
In a narrative game like Fate Core though, you get much-needed Fate points whenever your addiction causes your character problems. You might go on a bender and miss an important meeting. You might end up in the hospital after a brawl. You might start suffering from withdrawal. Really, the sky's the limit and your character's addiction becomes a major source of dramatic events every time it complicates their life in the presence or absence of alcohol.

I think it's also important to point out that in FATE addiction, as any other Aspect, is also a hidden benefit. First of all, every time you suffer because of it, you get fate points (i.e. mana), so you are encouraged to roleplay it (whereas in more classic role-playing systems it's usually strictly better to be a non-alcoholic than an alcoholic). Second, you can use it to your benefit directly, by invoking it in a situation where it would make sense-e.g. it might be easier for you to Gather Information in a bar, or to influence someone by inviting them for a drink.

Beleriphon
2016-12-28, 10:06 AM
Based on the content of the Original Post, I'd say Max Killjoys core issue is misdiagnosed.

I share his listed frustrations, but they frustrate me for a wholly different reason. I've come to realize that the thing I hate most in RPGs is a loss of Agancy.

I hate having no meaningful choices. If I take a crack shot at the fleeing BBEG, and I'm told, "sorry, nope, your gun jams and missfires for, uh, reasons", my input in the events of the story is, for that moment at least, rendered irrelevant.

Which is why FATE is great for that. The GM now can offer the player something to accept that scenario. If the player doesn't accept then guess what, the shot goes off and what happens, happens.

Remember with a game like FATE generally speaking it isn't another character causing environmental compels (smoky air, muddy ground, The Building is on Fire), it a player or GM inflicting it on a character to push the scene one way or another. That means the GM or the player can accept or decline the compel, and must use a resource to do so. The game is very different then games like D&D, since FATE specifically tries to emulate both the story telling conventions and genre conventions of fiction.

The Dresden Files game for example is a FATE game, and it works very well with the idea of stress tracks, and building up a ton of FATE points by your protagonists get dumped on the whole time, only to bust it out at the climactic end of the story. Essentially the reason stuff happens in FATE is because the audience either wants, or doesn't want, a specific outcome. That audience is the players and the GM, who are also playing the role of director, actor and author.

Lets say a group of elderly, and slightly over weight action heroes The Expandables (Sil Stallion, Rolph Dungren, Jay Station and Jong Lee) are chasing the villain Bryce Searstower through a burning warehouse. They've managed to corner him. In the badguy's turn the GM invokes the Burning Building aspect and impedes our rotund heroes by having part of the building collapse in front of them just long enough for Bryce or taunt them and escape.

Frozen_Feet
2016-12-28, 10:10 AM
For whatever reason, you seem to confuse "narrative causality" with "badwrongfun", when it's not.

Show me where I'm doing that.


If you want to only have a little bit of it in your games, that is fine, but you still have to be honest to yourself about it. Same if you want only narrative (plot says X should happen therefore X happens) or only ordinary (laws of physics say X should happen therefore X happens) causality in your game. It's your game, do whatever, just don't lie to yourself about the kind of causality you actually employ.

You're missing my point. Even if you revise Max_Killjoy's gripe from "I don't like Narrative causality" to "I only like small amounts of Narrative Causality", it doesn't cancel or even meaningfully address his reasons for not wanting a lot of Narrative Causality. Hence, the hypocrisy you accuse him of is apparent, not actual.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-28, 10:29 AM
To which I in turn replied that that's narrative causality, because it absolutely is. Take this, for example:

>we'd always allow a player to make their (quick) case for why their character would have any piece of portable, mundane equipment that fit that character, and if we weren't sure we pretty much erred on the side of "don't ruin the moment".

"Why does the character have that piece of equipment?"->"Because if he didn't, it would ruin the moment". "The foundation for the existence of the item" in this case is absolutely "the character's role in the story", and not ordinary causality.

For whatever reason, you seem to confuse "narrative causality" with "badwrongfun", when it's not. If you want to only have a little bit of it in your games, that is fine, but you still have to be honest to yourself about it. Same if you want only narrative (plot says X should happen therefore X happens) or only ordinary (laws of physics say X should happen therefore X happens) causality in your game. It's your game, do whatever, just don't lie to yourself about the kind of causality you actually employ.


First, do you really expect to get anywhere calling someone a self-deceiving hypocrit?

Second, the "foundation of the existence of the item" in that example is NOT the character's "role" or archetype. The foundation is "does it make sense for this character as an individual" and "does this make sense within the context of the setting and the nature of the item". That nonsense that a character is defined by a "role" in the story, rather than as an individual, is one of the things that makes me pull my hair out for both fiction and gaming... I never want to hear "he's the thief" or "she's the smart one" or any of that garbage. My dislike of cardboard archetypes is one of the reasons I avoid RPG systems with character classes like I'd avoid the plague. Almost inevitably, characters are introduced as, or the banner on their description reads, "7th level half-half fighter/mage" or whatever. Which tells me almost nothing about the character, yet is taken as a defining set of qualities.

Third, the reason we got in the habit of "player makes a quick case, GM errs on the side of keeping the moment going" is because were gaming to have fun, and we didn't want to waste an hour of game time and risk acrimony for the sake of something as mundane as a screwdriver. It didn't have anything to with "a character's role in the story" OR "maintaining balance at all costs". That's what I mean when I say "ruin the moment" -- the game ceases to move, it ceases to be fun, and it becomes a potentially acrimonious debate session.


The character has the tool because it makes sense for that specific individual character to have. Or, the took kit includes it because it makes sense for that took kit to include it. It's a matter of whether it's coherent and consistent for that character and and that setting -- not a matter of "plot convenience" or "role in the story".

The manner of resolving the question came down to quick and approximate because it's a game -- not a work of fiction -- and the enjoyment of the people playing the game took precedence.

obryn
2016-12-28, 10:30 AM
I think it's also important to point out that in FATE addiction, as any other Aspect, is also a hidden benefit. First of all, every time you suffer because of it, you get fate points (i.e. mana), so you are encouraged to roleplay it (whereas in more classic role-playing systems it's usually strictly better to be a non-alcoholic than an alcoholic). Second, you can use it to your benefit directly, by invoking it in a situation where it would make sense-e.g. it might be easier for you to Gather Information in a bar, or to influence someone by inviting them for a drink.
This is also true. It's Fate's major design innovation, as far as I'm concerned.


I will say though - if the villain has a specific mechanical rule allowing them a cause a gun to jam 1/day or some such, your example above wouldn't bother me. No more than hero points in a 40k game saving a PC's life do. They're inherent to the mechanics of the system. But it would annoy me if it was just the GM doing it so that they could become a recurring villain and fit their story.
IMO, it's about expectations. For a cinematic game like Feng Shui, Marvel Heroic, or Star Wars, 'mysterious deaths', lucky escapes, etc., are just part of the appropriate genre elements as far as I'm concerned. You kinda sign on for them when you sit down at the table.

This is kinda what I don't get why this is even an argument. Different games should engender different expectations from the players.

Friv
2016-12-28, 10:48 AM
"Why does the character have that piece of equipment?"->"Because if he didn't, it would ruin the moment". "The foundation for the existence of the item" in this case is absolutely "the character's role in the story", and not ordinary causality.

I think you're getting hung up on the exact phrasing of narrative causality for the purposes of this discussion.

Character-driven causality isn't the same thing as player-driven causality. It's totally fine to say, "I recognize that games can't cover every note, so we've included some wobbly bits for "things that character would totally have or be able to do, but which the rules don't quite cover". That's where quantum equipment tracking comes in, or even the sort of hero points that let players make extreme effort occasionally (say, Willpower in a World of Darkness game). If the NPCs have those abilities too, they're still driven by the individual characters. Your thief doesn't have the right thief tools because it's right for the story, she has them because it's reasonable to assume that a thief would be carrying that.

I mean, I'm coming from a place of extreme narrative causality. My favorite game right now is Chuubo's, which is literally nothing but narrative mechanics; there isn't a single non-narrative aspect to it. It's obviously not in the same place as Fate, which is not in the same place as Adventure!, which is not in the same place as Champions. There's a scale, which Max Killjoy recognizes and you seem to want to deny.

Frozen_Feet
2016-12-28, 10:55 AM
I think it's also important to point out that in FATE addiction, as any other Aspect, is also a hidden benefit.

This is also true. It's Fate's major design innovation, as far as I'm concerned.


These kind of phrases make my head hurt.

First, it canot be a hidden benefit when the system explicitly gives you points for it.

Second, it's not innovative in the slightest. As far back as 1st Edition AD&D at least, GMs have been encouraged to reward role-accurate "sub-optimal" play by awarding extra experience, or lessening the time required to ascend in level. (In AD&D's case, "role-appropriate" means "appropriate to character class and aligment".)

The real "hidden benefits" of flaws are those which have no explicit game mechanics rewarding them whatsoever. A real example of a "hidden benefit" would be the fun a player like me has when playing an alcoholic character in Lamentations of the Flame Princess, where drinking alcohol is strictly a demerit, or any other example of self-imposed handicap in gaming, such as playing an Iron Man run in Angband.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-28, 10:57 AM
This apparent hypocrisy only exists to you because you don't take into account levels of granularity which I'm fairly sure Max acknowledges / sees as existing.

When a tool kit is, say, assumed to have pliers, there can be several different motives for doing so.

Example One: the kit assumed to have pliers, because a tool kit is made to store small tools like that, and an example tool set in the game world would likely have one. The foundation for the existence of the pliers is in-world logic and likelihood. No assumption is made of what those pliers would be used for.

Example two: a tool kit is assumed to have pliers, because the character having the kit has the narrative role of a thief, and they needs pliers for breaking through a door, because that's what thiefs do. The foundation for the existence of the pliers is a character's role in the story and their narrative need to get through a door.

Now, these viewpoints are not strictly mutually exclusive. You can have a game where one player thinks the first way, and a second the other way. But which one underlies a game system creates the difference between, say, Twilight 2013 and FATE.

Max objects to the second kind of thinking. It does not follow he would also object to first kind of thinking. Just because two mindsets occasionally lead to similar results is not a sign of equivalency, nor is observing this proof of hypocrisy.


I think you're getting hung up on the exact phrasing of narrative causality for the purposes of this discussion.

Character-driven causality isn't the same thing as player-driven causality. It's totally fine to say, "I recognize that games can't cover every note, so we've included some wobbly bits for "things that character would totally have or be able to do, but which the rules don't quite cover". That's where quantum equipment tracking comes in, or even the sort of hero points that let players make extreme effort occasionally (say, Willpower in a World of Darkness game). If the NPCs have those abilities too, they're still driven by the individual characters. Your thief doesn't have the right thief tools because it's right for the story, she has them because it's reasonable to assume that a thief would be carrying that.

I mean, I'm coming from a place of extreme narrative causality. My favorite game right now is Chuubo's, which is literally nothing but narrative mechanics; there isn't a single non-narrative aspect to it. It's obviously not in the same place as Fate, which is not in the same place as Adventure!, which is not in the same place as Champions. There's a scale, which Max Killjoy recognizes and you seem to want to deny.

Thank you both.

It makes it much easier to discuss these things amiably and "come down off the ledge" when it's apparent that people who don't necessarily agree with you understand or are trying to understand your position, and give you the benefit of the doubt.

obryn
2016-12-28, 11:25 AM
Second, it's not innovative in the slightest. As far back as 1st Edition AD&D at least, GMs have been encouraged to reward role-accurate "sub-optimal" play by awarding extra experience, or lessening the time required to ascend in level. (In AD&D's case, "role-appropriate" means "appropriate to character class and aligment".)
No, there's a substantial and significant difference between how Fate uses its metagame currency to drive play, and how AD&D uses experience points and levels. There's also a huge gap in how much control a player has over these rewards. I see what you're getting at, but the similarities are superficial.

See above, where I detailed the various ways in which games handle negative traits such as alcoholism. Fate rewards and encourages players to embrace their characters' negative traits in a way that basically upends the traditional advantage/disadvantage system.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-28, 11:32 AM
No, there's a substantial and significant difference between how Fate uses its metagame currency to drive play, and how AD&D uses experience points and levels. There's also a huge gap in how much control a player has over these rewards. I see what you're getting at, but the similarities are superficial.

See above, where I detailed the various ways in which games handle negative traits such as alcoholism. Fate rewards and encourages players to embrace their characters' negative traits in a way that basically upends the traditional advantage/disadvantage system.


Was FATE actually the first game to do this mechanically?

Yuki Akuma
2016-12-28, 11:36 AM
So how do you roleplay an alcoholic in GURPS? You spend all your time avoiding alcohol. You play like a teetotaler, not an addict.

That's how a lot of actual alcoholics act, though.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-28, 11:40 AM
IMO, it's about expectations. For a cinematic game like Feng Shui, Marvel Heroic, or Star Wars, 'mysterious deaths', lucky escapes, etc., are just part of the appropriate genre elements as far as I'm concerned. You kinda sign on for them when you sit down at the table.

This is kinda what I don't get why this is even an argument. Different games should engender different expectations from the players.


For me, at least, I see the fictional stories that inspire those sorts of games, and I think "Geez, this would be a better work of fiction with some of the genre silliness and Hollywood nonsense weeded out." So when games try to emulate that stuff, for me, they're going in the wrong direction.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that I absolutely loved the Mythbusters episodes that tore down Hollywood action tropes and special effects. I can't get enough of the Youtube videos from the HEMA folks that absolutely destroy the way Hollywood depicts weapons and armor.

I'd love to see an action movie in which gunfire doesn't send people tumbling backwards, grenades don't launch people into the air flailing their arms, and explosions aren't 90% fuel oil fireballs. I'd love more fantasy and period pieces where armor functions realistically instead of being "period costume" that weapons ignore entirely.

CharonsHelper
2016-12-28, 11:50 AM
So how do you roleplay an alcoholic in GURPS? You spend all your time avoiding alcohol. You play like a teetotaler, not an addict.


That's how a lot of actual alcoholics act, though.

Yeah - that was my thought too. It 100% makes sense for a recovering alcoholic. (I've heard tell that they're all still really alcoholics.)

obryn
2016-12-28, 11:52 AM
Was FATE actually the first game to do this mechanically?
As far as I'm aware. Earlier games generally used the Advantage/Disadvantage systems you'll find in Champions/GURPS/etc.

Fate is a game that's also particularly driven by the regular exchange of its metagame currency, which adds more weight.


That's how a lot of actual alcoholics act, though.

Yeah - that was my thought too. It 100% makes sense for a recovering alcoholic. (I've heard tell that they're all still really alcoholics.)
And in Fate, "recovering alcoholic" might be your Aspect, instead. It will drive different behaviors than a character who regularly goes on binges. It has its own set of compels and invokes that kind of overlap.

This doesn't invalidate the point. GURPS's rules specifically drive this teetotaling behavior. If you're playing an Alcoholic as opposed to a Recovering one, you'd probably expect it to create narrative problems beyond "shouldn't get too close to a bar." The way Fate rewards the player for adding complications to their character's life is substantially different than how GURPS front-loads the advantage with build points and then mechanically punishes the player whenever it comes up in play.


For me, at least, I see the fictional stories that inspire those sorts of games, and I think "Geez, this would be a better work of fiction with some of the genre silliness and Hollywood nonsense weeded out." So when games try to emulate that stuff, for me, they're going in the wrong direction.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that I absolutely loved the Mythbusters episodes that tore down Hollywood action tropes and special effects. I can't get enough of the Youtube videos from the HEMA folks that absolutely destroy the way Hollywood depicts weapons and armor.

I'd love to see an action movie in which gunfire doesn't send people tumbling backwards, grenades don't launch people into the air flailing their arms, and explosions aren't 90% fuel oil fireballs. I'd love more fantasy and period pieces where armor functions realistically instead of being "period costume" that weapons ignore entirely.
And that's just fine, but like I said, this is more a matter of expectations than anything else.

My own expectations for genre conventions vary wildly depending on which RPG I'm currently playing or running. Like, if I'm running Feng Shui, gunfights should be a lot more John Woo and a lot less Saving Private Ryan.

Frozen_Feet
2016-12-28, 11:55 AM
Was FATE actually the first game to do this mechanically?

As a response to both you and Obryn, I doubt it. I'd have to go on a library to dig up evidence, though. I know explicitly awarding experience for vague "roleplaying your character" goes at least as far back as MERP and Rolemaster (in addition to and different to the AD&D example before), but I don't have the books before me to check how that was intended to interact with character flaws, specifically.

As an additional comment to Obryn, I've seen that explanation many times before, and while FATE does have that quality in contrast to many other wide-spread disadvantage systems, I still don't see it as innovative compared to earlier rewards-for-RP. It's continuation of the ol' same.

obryn
2016-12-28, 12:06 PM
As a response to both you and Obryn, I doubt it. I'd have to go on a library to dig up evidence, though. I know explicitly awarding experience for vague "roleplaying your character" goes at least as far back as MERP and Rolemaster (in addition to and different to the AD&D example before), but I don't have the books before me to check how that was intended to interact with character flaws, specifically.

As an additional comment to Obryn, I've seen that explanation many times before, and while FATE does have that quality in contrast to many other wide-spread disadvantage systems, I still don't see it as innovative compared to earlier rewards-for-RP. It's continuation of the ol' same.
Then let's zero in on what is going on during gameplay.

Fate specifically encourages a player to add complexity and conflict to their character's life, and immediately rewards that behavior with the metagame currency that quite literally drives play.

XP rewards indeed go back to at least the 80's. They are DM-driven, based on how well the DM believes the player roleplayed (based on ... something?), and need not rely on getting into trouble. The rewards are back-loaded into the same generalized pool of advancement that they get for killing monsters and bringing treasure home, and have no immediate in-play value or use.

So, the distinctions are (a) its immediate play-use, (b) its focus on creating complexity and adversity, and (c) the player's specific input and ability to suggest, accept, or deny the complication - and even seeking it out during play. Fate rewards are also quite a good deal more flexible, since Aspects by their very nature are much more descriptive than alignments and classes.

Steel Mirror
2016-12-28, 12:12 PM
Then let's zero in on what is going on during gameplay.

Fate specifically encourages a player to add complexity and conflict to their character's life, and immediately rewards that behavior with the metagame currency that quite literally drives play.

XP rewards indeed go back to at least the 80's. They are DM-driven, based on how well the DM believes the player roleplayed (based on ... something?), and need not rely on getting into trouble. The rewards are back-loaded into the same generalized pool of advancement that they get for killing monsters and bringing treasure home, and have no immediate in-play value or use.

So, the distinctions are (a) its immediate play-use, (b) its focus on creating complexity and adversity, and (c) the player's specific input and ability to suggest, accept, or deny the complication - and even seeking it out during play. Fate rewards are also quite a good deal more flexible, since Aspects by their very nature are much more descriptive than alignments and classes.
As someone who has played years of both types of systems, I can at least put my own anecdotal 2 cp in and say that switching from the old xp awarded from on high for nebulous 'RP' and the far tighter and more transactional FATE system was probably the biggest eureka moment in my entire gaming career, and that goes for the group I was playing with at the time as well.

Part of it is also that Fate Points are a currency which are 100% fungible. You get FP for compelling your own aspects and introducing obstacles to your character, but you can then use those FP to trigger an opponent's aspects in the same way, or to resist future compels on your aspects when you want your character's willpower or skill or luck to finally be turning the corner. That's completely different from another small pile of XP to tack onto the large XP number on the corner of your character sheet.

Klara Meison
2016-12-28, 12:15 PM
First, do you really expect to get anywhere calling someone a self-deceiving hypocrit?

...no? That's why I didn't do anything like it?


Second, the "foundation of the existence of the item" in that example is NOT the character's "role" or archetype. The foundation is "does it make sense for this character as an individual" and "does this make sense within the context of the setting and the nature of the item". That nonsense that a character is defined by a "role" in the story, rather than as an individual, is one of the things that makes me pull my hair out for both fiction and gaming... I never want to hear "he's the thief" or "she's the smart one" or any of that garbage. My dislike of cardboard archetypes is one of the reasons I avoid RPG systems with character classes like I'd avoid the plague. Almost inevitably, characters are introduced as, or the banner on their description reads, "7th level half-half fighter/mage" or whatever. Which tells me almost nothing about the character, yet is taken as a defining set of qualities.

Third, the reason we got in the habit of "player makes a quick case, GM errs on the side of keeping the moment going" is because were gaming to have fun, and we didn't want to waste an hour of game time and risk acrimony for the sake of something as mundane as a screwdriver. It didn't have anything to with "a character's role in the story" OR "maintaining balance at all costs". That's what I mean when I say "ruin the moment" -- the game ceases to move, it ceases to be fun, and it becomes a potentially acrimonious debate session.

The character has the tool because it makes sense for that specific individual character to have. Or, the took kit includes it because it makes sense for that took kit to include it. It's a matter of whether it's coherent and consistent for that character and and that setting -- not a matter of "plot convenience" or "role in the story".

The manner of resolving the question came down to quick and approximate because it's a game -- not a work of fiction -- and the enjoyment of the people playing the game took precedence.

You act as if I am accusing you of doing something bad, when I am not. Obryn did a pretty good job of explaining the rest of it.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-28, 12:30 PM
Things happen because the plot says they should. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheoryOfNarrativeCausality)

Emphasis on "should", because, as you might have noticed, that's what Max_Killjoy has no interest in:


See also, The Plot Demanded This (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThePlotDemandedThisIndex).

There's an entire list of what I mean by "narrative causality".

Steel Mirror
2016-12-28, 12:31 PM
Speaking on the specific example of XP rewards, another important difference that they had when compared to something like the FP metagame currency is that XP rewards are permanent, and they can lead to permanent power disparities between characters who receive a lot of them and those who receive few. Paradoxically, this led (in our group at least) to XP rewards being less powerful in actual practice, because our GMs would be too concerned about leaving some characters in the dust while other characters (usually played by players who naturally dominate the table due to strength of RP and personality in the first place) raced ahead in XP. So while we used RP XP rewards extensively, sometimes passing entire levels with only token XP awarded from fights and such, the GMs would almost always grade on a curve, throwing large XP rewards to players who, honestly, probably didn't deserve them. But we all agreed that was the best thing to do, since nobody wanted the party to be permanently unbalanced, even though we adored RP rewards.

After trying out Fate, we quickly noticed 2 things. First, those players who had always been great at RPing were now unchained, and could accrue FP at a very different rate if that's what a session called for with no fear that this would lead to a permanent shift in power; by the next session, those FP would be spent and gone and everyone would have a fresh chance to play anew. Even more interesting though, was the fact that, with a clear incentive structure in place for players to RP their own character's foibles and flaws, the players who previously would sit back during RP scenes and pass the time until the next fight were now engaged in coming up with ways that their flaws could be relevant to the game. All of a sudden, powergaming your character was the same as roleplaying it. And it led to a very different experience at the table.

To be clear, I'm not at all saying that Fate's way of doing things is superior. I am saying that it has value, though, and is substantially different from any other game I've played (D&D, Shadowrun, L5R, various SW, GURPS, M&M, Dark Heresy, Savage Worlds, Star Trek, PF, a handful of homebrewed and small time systems). I'd never say that one is 'correct' and the other 'incorrect', but the structures of the games lead to large differences in play, and when I'm planning a new campaign I keep that in mind as I'm deciding on a system with which to run it.

Friv
2016-12-28, 12:53 PM
Was FATE actually the first game to do this mechanically?

As far as I'm aware. Earlier games generally used the Advantage/Disadvantage systems you'll find in Champions/GURPS/etc.

FATE definitely wasn't the first game to introduce narrative currencies that you gain from playing out flaws, and then spend to succeed on particular events. I don't know what the first one was, but the Babylon Project (1997) included Fortune Points that you gained by playing your character in ways that were drawbacks, and spent to boost rolls or to survive unlikely events. It also had the premise that buying a character flaw that would give you Fortune Points was equally valuable to buying a character trait that would give you advantages. I remember, because I got that game not long after it came out, and Fortune Points were a really weird idea to me at the time.

There was also Adventure!, released in 2001, which gave players Inspiration that they could spend to dramatically edit a scene, and White Wolf games in general tended to give people Willpower for playing up their vices or character traits starting in the mid-90s.

Fate was released in 2003, so the idea of narrative currency had definitely been floating around for a few years, at least. What Fate did was streamline and design it in a way that really worked.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-28, 12:58 PM
...no? That's why I didn't do anything like it?


... :smallconfused:



But that's narrative causality. Special pleading much?



So far you have been the only one to talk about such a dichotomy. You also happen to be the one who uses narrative causality "to keep the game moving" without admitting to yourself that you do. Coincidence?



It's your game, do whatever, just don't lie to yourself about the kind of causality you actually employ.



There are other ways to end up at the same place that you end up at with narrative causality, that aren't narrative causality.

The same end result does not mean the same motive, process, and methods -- any more than two people who end up in the same city had to take the same flight, or even the same mode of transportation.

obryn
2016-12-28, 01:11 PM
FATE definitely wasn't the first game to introduce narrative currencies that you gain from playing out flaws, and then spend to succeed on particular events. I don't know what the first one was, but the Babylon Project (1997) included Fortune Points that you gained by playing your character in ways that were drawbacks, and spent to boost rolls or to survive unlikely events. It also had the premise that buying a character flaw that would give you Fortune Points was equally valuable to buying a character trait that would give you advantages. I remember, because I got that game not long after it came out, and Fortune Points were a really weird idea to me at the time.

There was also Adventure!, released in 2001, which gave players Inspiration that they could spend to dramatically edit a scene, and White Wolf games in general tended to give people Willpower for playing up their vices or character traits starting in the mid-90s.

Fate was released in 2003, so the idea of narrative currency had definitely been floating around for a few years, at least. What Fate did was streamline and design it in a way that really worked.
Cool deal - thanks for digging into that. :smallsmile:

I am unfamiliar with The Babylon Project and will have to look that up. That sounds like a very clear predecessor.

Also, early 2003 Fate was really weird. It used Aspects differently than current Fate Core does. IIRC, they were completely separate from Fate Points, but worked towards similar ends. You could also have multiple ranks in Aspects, which all had to be invoked separately from their individual pools.

Frozen_Feet
2016-12-28, 01:23 PM
All of a sudden, powergaming your character was the same as roleplaying it.

Cookie for admitting it.

However, this antithetical to any gaming philosophy where flaws are meant to be actual flaws and their point is to anti-powergame. (So is awarding extra feats/character creation points/etc., mind you.)

To use a videogame analogy, people who do Iron Man runs for Angband or low-item runs for Metroid games seldom do that for extra points during the game. They don't do it expecting a game mechanic to compensate for their self-imposed handicap, indeed, that would usually be besides the point, when the desire is for greater challenge.

So there are at least three dimensions for a player's motives to play their character and/or game to base its causality on.

1): There's doing things because it would make sense for the character/world.
2): There's doing things because it would make for a good plot/story.
3): There's doing things because the game rewards it.

A game may be engineered to reward a thing either because of 1) or 2), but that doesn't mean the player is acting because of 1) or 2). Trading Narrative Causality for Pavlovian Incentives is not necessarily a solution to anything.

obryn
2016-12-28, 01:35 PM
However, this antithetical to any gaming philosophy where flaws are meant to be actual flaws and their point is to anti-powergame. (So is awarding extra feats/character creation points/etc., mind you.)
I don't think this matters. Clearly, a game such as Fate intends 'negative aspects' to drive dramatic situations. And it's clearly not an invitation to any kind of 'ironman mode' because that's obviously not the sort of game it sets out to be.


So there are at least three dimensions for a player's motives to play their character and/or game to base its causality on.

1): There's doing things because it would make sense for the character/world.
2): There's doing things because it would make for a good plot/story.
3): There's doing things because the game rewards it.

A game may be engineered to reward a thing either because of 1) or 2), but that doesn't mean the player is acting because of 1) or 2). Trading Narrative Causality for Pavlovian Incentives is not necessarily a solution to anything.
But the proof is in the play, isn't it? It works if the reward system is driving the kinds of behaviors the game purports to be about. It doesn't work if it doesn't.

OD&D is a game about plundering loot from dungeons. Its reward systems encourage this kind of play by giving XP for GP.

Fate Core encourages dramatic escalation by giving players direct & immediate incentives for engaging their characters and the narrative in interesting and plausible ways.

If Fate Core purported to be a game about looting dungeons, it would be a failed design. But in fact it's a game about character-driven dramatic stories, and its reward structures encourage this style of gameplay.

Steel Mirror
2016-12-28, 01:39 PM
Cookie for admitting it.

However, this antithetical to any gaming philosophy where flaws are meant to be actual flaws and their point is to anti-powergame. (So is awarding extra feats/character creation points/etc., mind you.)To the extent that you're defining this gaming philosophy specifically so that powergaming by definition is bad, then I suppose this statement is true, but it's rather begging the question. I'd say that harnessing power-gaming instincts in order to serve the purpose of RP is actually a good thing, that both can coexist, and that this feat of social engineering via game mechanics is what makes Fate so special.


So there are at least three dimensions for a player's motives to play their character and/or game to base its causality on.

1): There's doing things because it would make sense for the character/world.
2): There's doing things because it would make for a good plot/story.
3): There's doing things because the game rewards it.

A game may be engineered to reward a thing either because of 1) or 2), but that doesn't mean the player is acting because of 1) or 2). Trading Narrative Causality for Pavlovian Incentives is not necessarily a solution to anything.I'm not sure I follow you here. Fate, when it's running well, uses 3 to harness player behavior in the service of both 1 and 2. Why does it matter what a player's motives are, if the desired goal is attained? Plus, in practice, there aren't really players who are motivated purely by 3 and don't care at all for 1 and 2, and even those motivated strongly by 3 end up appreciating a system that reinforces their fun instead of quashing it, and so end up getting a lot more invested in 1 and 2.

In other words, I do think this is an elegant solution to the issue, and my experiences have upheld that impression. Other people don't like the system for a variety of reasons, and that's fine, it would be a strange world if we were all the same, after all. But assuming that this thread is about explaining how narrative systems appeal to those of us who like them (and more specifically, to champion Fate which is my particular flavor of those narrative games), it really is a qualitatively different experience using Aspects, Fate Points, and compels than it is using XP or other less integrated mechanics for representing character flaws and narrative stakes.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-28, 01:43 PM
After trying out Fate, we quickly noticed 2 things. First, those players who had always been great at RPing were now unchained, and could accrue FP at a very different rate if that's what a session called for with no fear that this would lead to a permanent shift in power; by the next session, those FP would be spent and gone and everyone would have a fresh chance to play anew. Even more interesting though, was the fact that, with a clear incentive structure in place for players to RP their own character's foibles and flaws, the players who previously would sit back during RP scenes and pass the time until the next fight were now engaged in coming up with ways that their flaws could be relevant to the game. All of a sudden, powergaming your character was the same as roleplaying it. And it led to a very different experience at the table.


I'm not sure that just changing which mechanical rewards people play for really addresses the actual core issue.

Steel Mirror
2016-12-28, 01:46 PM
I'm not sure that just changing which mechanical rewards people play for really addresses the actual core issue.
Which core issue is that?

obryn
2016-12-28, 01:51 PM
I'm not sure that just changing which mechanical rewards people play for really addresses the actual core issue.
I'll go one further and argue that there is in fact no core issue, and that different games (if well-designed) intentionally produce different play experiences through their reward systems. And that this, in fact, is one of the main pillars of good design.

You don't like games that allow for players or DMs to take on author-stance in-game. That's fine. I sometimes do and sometimes don't, and it's all about what I'm hoping to get out of the game.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-28, 02:15 PM
Which core issue is that?

As I said elsewhere:

...that some players will take full advantage of the rules the same way they take advantage of other existing rules, simply for the sake of gaining another advantage ("my character is going out carousing because I want to store up some "drama points" for the big fight tomorrow"), and while the external result may be more satisfying for those who want to encourage "character appropriate actions", it wouldn't be roleplaying (at least as I understand roleplaying).

And some players will continue to engage in the same roleplaying they were already engaging in, and if it conflicts with the "what your character should be doing in these circumstances at this moment" of the mechanics, then they'll say mechanics be damned.

Frozen_Feet
2016-12-28, 02:18 PM
To the extent that you're defining this gaming philosophy specifically so that powergaming by definition is bad.

What I'm saying is quite different from saying powergaming is good or bad; it applies just when you're trying to make a point that anti-powergaming is allowed or even possible.


Why does it matter what a player's motives are, if the desired goal is attained?

From a pedagogical perspective, whether motivation is internal or external makes a world of difference on both how satisfying the experience is, how much a person learns of it, and how likely they are to put anything they learn into actual use.

In this particular case, an example of internal motivation would be because a player finds playing the role of a flawed character interesting in itself. Such a player is likely to do so even when there's no game reward for it, and like an Iron Man run, may do it for the challenge or joy of doing that specific thing.

An external motivation is playing a flawed character because the system or GM rewards it, or because not playing is penalized, or both. (Carrot & Stick.) Such a player isn't likely to do so in absence of game mechanics.

If you have no goals beyond having a game, there is "no core issue", as obryn said.

If your goal is to have a "fun game" or perhaps a "good story" for yourself, then having players act in accordance with those principles for duration of the game is sufficient, and the issue with player motivations is slight.

If your goal is to teach roleplaying, or any other lesson meant to be generalized or carry over beyong the bounds of a single game, then you need to trigger a transition from external to internal motivation in your players.

A generous reading of your argument would be that FATE and systems like it are particularly good at creating such transition. This is a good claim, in the sense that it would be testable. It can't be resolved within this thread, but it's not merely a matter of "fun" or "taste", which is good.

The Glyphstone
2016-12-28, 02:27 PM
As I said elsewhere:

...that some players will take full advantage of the rules the same way they take advantage of other existing rules, simply for the sake of gaining another advantage ("my character is going out carousing because I want to store up some "drama points" for the big fight tomorrow"), and while the external result may be more satisfying for those who want to encourage "character appropriate actions", it wouldn't be roleplaying (at least as I understand roleplaying).

And some players will continue to engage in the same roleplaying they were already engaging in, and if it conflicts with the "what your character should be doing in these circumstances at this moment" of the mechanics, then they'll say mechanics be damned.

I think the difference is that in a narrative system, the situation you're describing probably wouldn't be worth 'drama points' because it's not narratively significant if it lacks consequences. The analogy in an XP-based system would be a high-level warrior trying to level up by killing a hundred rats; there's no significance to the act, so no reward is earned. If that narrative character carouses so hard that they gain a temporary 'Severely Hung Over' trait that penalizes them during the big fight, that would be an appropriate trade for their bonus drama points. Just hammering down a few pints to satisfy their 'Drinks Too Much' trait for free bonus points isn't going to cut it.

It ties back into something I said earlier, from a different angle. If you try to play a narrative-centric system with a powergamer-esque perspective of squeezing advantage from the mechanics, it's going to cause conflicts exactly like the one you're describing, because the two systems are founded on very different expectations.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-28, 02:31 PM
What I'm saying is quite different from saying powergaming is good or bad; it applies just when you're trying to make a point that anti-powergaming is allowed or even possible.



From a pedagogical perspective, whether motivation is internal or external makes a world of difference on both how satisfying the experience is, how much a person learns of it, and how likely they are to put anything they learn into actual use.

In this particular case, an example of internal motivation would be because a player finds playing the role of a flawed character interesting in itself. Such a player is likely to do so even when there's no game reward for it, and like an Iron Man run, may do it for the challenge or joy of doing that specific thing.

An external motivation is playing a flawed character because the system or GM rewards it, or because not playing is penalized, or both. (Carrot & Stick.) Such a player isn't likely to do so in absence of game mechanics.

If you have no goals beyond having a game, there is "no core issue", as obryn said.

If your goal is to have a "fun game" or perhaps a "good story" for yourself, then having players act in accordance with those principles for duration of the game is sufficient, and the issue with player motivations is slight.

If your goal is to teach roleplaying, or any other lesson meant to be generalized or carry over beyong the bounds of a single game, then you need to trigger a transition from external to internal motivation in your players.

A generous reading of your argument would be that FATE and systems like it are particularly good at creating such transition. This is a good claim, in the sense that it would be testable. It can't be resolved within this thread, but it's not merely a matter of "fun" or "taste", which is good.


Internal vs external motivation -- probably a more elegant way of saying what I was trying to say.

If the player's motivation doesn't matter and (as game designer or as GM or as fellow gamer) one only cares about the outcome -- that is, the actions a player has their characters take -- then one "for the mechanical reward" and "for its own sake" probably isn't a core issue at all.

If the player's motivation DOES matter, if for no other reason than their enjoyment of the game, then there is an issue of "why"?" involved here, that does make a difference.

Steel Mirror
2016-12-28, 02:41 PM
As I said elsewhere:

...that some players will take full advantage of the rules the same way they take advantage of other existing rules, simply for the sake of gaining another advantage ("my character is going out carousing because I want to store up some "drama points" for the big fight tomorrow"), and while the external result may be more satisfying for those who want to encourage "character appropriate actions", it wouldn't be roleplaying (at least as I understand roleplaying).

And some players will continue to engage in the same roleplaying they were already engaging in, and if it conflicts with the "what your character should be doing in these circumstances at this moment" of the mechanics, then they'll say mechanics be damned.
The Glyphstone had a good answer, and I'll extend his argument one step further. Say you do go out carousing to generate more "drama points". Presumably, this matches up with an aspect pre-existing on your sheet, so that this is an in-character thing for your character to decide. If nothing of particular significance happens while you are out carousing, then all you've done is the equivalent of, as Glyphstone offered, killing a hundred rats as a 20th level fighter, and you won't get anything out of it.

But what if instead something of interest does result from this scene? Say you are gearing up for the final battle, and you want to milk those drama points for all they are worth, so your character ends up in the bar and runs into his on-again-off-again love interest, and the two of you have a heartfelt talk about what will happen to the two of you if you both survive this epic battle. The scene advances this subplot and maybe leads to some character growth for both of you. But you realize at the end of the conversation that your character has the aspect "Protect my Loved Ones-At Any Cost", so in true melodrama-generating fashion you tell your love interest that it's over, to forget about you and move on, because you don't want him to be hurt if you perish in the fight. Your GM nods approvingly and gives you what you really wanted all along, another juicy drama point which you can use to kill space zombies later.

What happened here? The powergaming character saw a mechanical reward and went for it like the cheesemonger he is, but in the process he generated an interesting scene which required that he think like his character and introduce interesting developments which are a natural outgrowth of the game so far and his character's own personality. This is what Fate is designed to do, and it does it well. And if there is some semantic distinction you want to make which says that this isn't "true" roleplaying, that's fine for you, but I'll offer that if it walks like a roleplayer, talks like a roleplayer, and leads to exciting and memorable stories like a roleplayer, then I'm fine if buried underneath somewhere there is also the soul of a powergamer.

Beleriphon
2016-12-28, 02:44 PM
No, there's a substantial and significant difference between how Fate uses its metagame currency to drive play, and how AD&D uses experience points and levels. There's also a huge gap in how much control a player has over these rewards. I see what you're getting at, but the similarities are superficial.

See above, where I detailed the various ways in which games handle negative traits such as alcoholism. Fate rewards and encourages players to embrace their characters' negative traits in a way that basically upends the traditional advantage/disadvantage system.

I think the difference that's is getting missed is that in FATE, and any game that works on similar logic, is that not only does playing to type reward the player it actively moves the game forward by virtue of the rules in place. GURPS which has an Alcoholic drawback doesn't actively move the game forward by playing to type, in fact all being an Alcoholic does give you some points at character creation and then actively punishes the player for playing to type because when it is played the Drawback makes it harder to get the game moving forward.

There in I think is the big difference. Narrative games operate on the basis that the game is an ongoing story, one that all of the people involved with can help control to varying degrees, and provides rules that move that story forward without hindering its ability to move.

The Glyphstone
2016-12-28, 02:53 PM
The Glyphstone had a good answer, and I'll extend his argument one step further. Say you do go out carousing to generate more "drama points". Presumably, this matches up with an aspect pre-existing on your sheet, so that this is an in-character thing for your character to decide. If nothing of particular significance happens while you are out carousing, then all you've done is the equivalent of, as Glyphstone offered, killing a hundred rats as a 20th level fighter, and you won't get anything out of it.

But what if instead something of interest does result from this scene? Say you are gearing up for the final battle, and you want to milk those drama points for all they are worth, so your character ends up in the bar and runs into his on-again-off-again love interest, and the two of you have a heartfelt talk about what will happen to the two of you if you both survive this epic battle. The scene advances this subplot and maybe leads to some character growth for both of you. But you realize at the end of the conversation that your character has the aspect "Protect my Loved Ones-At Any Cost", so in true melodrama-generating fashion you tell your love interest that it's over, to forget about you and move on, because you don't want him to be hurt if you perish in the fight. Your GM nods approvingly and gives you what you really wanted all along, another juicy drama point which you can use to kill space zombies later.

What happened here? The powergaming character saw a mechanical reward and went for it like the cheesemonger he is, but in the process he generated an interesting scene which required that he think like his character and introduce interesting developments which are a natural outgrowth of the game so far and his character's own personality. This is what Fate is designed to do, and it does it well. And if there is some semantic distinction you want to make which says that this isn't "true" roleplaying, that's fine for you, but I'll offer that if it walks like a roleplayer, talks like a roleplayer, and leads to exciting and memorable stories like a roleplayer, then I'm fine if buried underneath somewhere there is also the soul of a powergamer.

Actually, reviewing what Max said, I think the issue is on a different plane, so I want to provide my own addendum.

In one situation, the mechanics-focused player has his character go out carousing to earn drama points for the big fight the next day. He willingly accepts the temporary trait 'Severely Hung Over' as the mechanical cost to get a bonus when he attacks the bad guy later. This is mechanically viable and legal, but since it's done purely for the sake of mechanical advantage, it's completely missing the intent of the rule system and suffering for it.

In the other situation, the narrative-focused player also has his character go out carousing, because his character has suffered with alcoholism for years, and the stress of knowing the big fight is coming up tomorrow has driven him to seek out some liquid courage. He'll be Severely Hung Over tomorrow, and quite ashamed of himself for that moment of weakness, but vowing to himself that last night was the last time he'd slip up gives a burst of heroic resolve during the fight when he really needs it. This is exactly the same, mechanically, as the other situation, but the player has deliberately woven the actions of his character into propelling that character's narrative forward. The Drama Point earned is not the reward in and of itself, but rather it is a bonus for doing something the player wanted to do anyways.

Lord Raziere
2016-12-28, 03:08 PM
I think the difference that's is getting missed is that in FATE, and any game that works on similar logic, is that not only does playing to type reward the player it actively moves the game forward by virtue of the rules in place. GURPS which has an Alcoholic drawback doesn't actively move the game forward by playing to type, in fact all being an Alcoholic does give you some points at character creation and then actively punishes the player for playing to type because when it is played the Drawback makes it harder to get the game moving forward.

There in I think is the big difference. Narrative games operate on the basis that the game is an ongoing story, one that all of the people involved with can help control to varying degrees.

Yup. In some ways, you can enforce the narrative using Fate mechanics to conform to realistic events and happenings, and benefit from it. Its perfectly possible to have the aspect "Completely Realistic" and use that as both a flaw and a strength in situations you want. In other games you just take a flaw and it doesn't help much aside from just being there.

But wait, how would the aspect "Completely Realistic" help in a non-realistic game? a hypothetical person might ask me. Sure, it provides a penalty for any physical action that would unrealistic, but it adds a +2 to any behavior that smart, intelligent or believably reasonable for the situation. So while everyone else is being a crazy action hero, your the sane guy who is taking all the reasonable actions that someone would actually do to solve the problem. and of course, the aspect can be compelled to make the character react negatively to another character doing something unrealistic, which can lead to a dramatic scene where a sane man and a crazy action hero argue about how he can do the things he can do and that none of this is sane, thus earning a fate point and allowing for the sane man to move on in his arc and start learning to accept the strangeness of his fellow crazy action hero, even if he personally prefers to be reasonable and undramatic in how he does things.

Or you can have the Aspect "Completely Realistic" for the entire game and enforce it by compelling everyone with it whenever you want to enforce the lack of genre, by providing a penalty to actions that are too unrealistic and over the top, and thus giving them fate points to use them to solve things in a practical manner.

obryn
2016-12-28, 03:19 PM
As I said elsewhere:

...that some players will take full advantage of the rules the same way they take advantage of other existing rules, simply for the sake of gaining another advantage ("my character is going out carousing because I want to store up some "drama points" for the big fight tomorrow"), and while the external result may be more satisfying for those who want to encourage "character appropriate actions", it wouldn't be roleplaying (at least as I understand roleplaying).

And some players will continue to engage in the same roleplaying they were already engaging in, and if it conflicts with the "what your character should be doing in these circumstances at this moment" of the mechanics, then they'll say mechanics be damned.
I think The Glyphstone and Steel Mirror covered this part more than adequately. Definitely better than what I was working up.

I'll add that Fate does require a player to take on Author Stance at some points, just like OD&D/AD&D expect players to take Player Stance sometimes*. So you move from, "It would be interesting and in character for me to do this..." and then switch into the actual roleplaying of the scene in Actor Stance.


What I'm saying is quite different from saying powergaming is good or bad; it applies just when you're trying to make a point that anti-powergaming is allowed or even possible.

From a pedagogical perspective, whether motivation is internal or external makes a world of difference on both how satisfying the experience is, how much a person learns of it, and how likely they are to put anything they learn into actual use.

In this particular case, an example of internal motivation would be because a player finds playing the role of a flawed character interesting in itself. Such a player is likely to do so even when there's no game reward for it, and like an Iron Man run, may do it for the challenge or joy of doing that specific thing.

An external motivation is playing a flawed character because the system or GM rewards it, or because not playing is penalized, or both. (Carrot & Stick.) Such a player isn't likely to do so in absence of game mechanics.

If you have no goals beyond having a game, there is "no core issue", as obryn said.

If your goal is to have a "fun game" or perhaps a "good story" for yourself, then having players act in accordance with those principles for duration of the game is sufficient, and the issue with player motivations is slight.

If your goal is to teach roleplaying, or any other lesson meant to be generalized or carry over beyong the bounds of a single game, then you need to trigger a transition from external to internal motivation in your players.

A generous reading of your argument would be that FATE and systems like it are particularly good at creating such transition. This is a good claim, in the sense that it would be testable. It can't be resolved within this thread, but it's not merely a matter of "fun" or "taste", which is good.
It looks like you're inventing problems, here.

I'd say that 'playing a character' is inherently rewarding, much as 'looting dungeons' and 'overcoming obstacles' are. This situation only arises if 'playing a character' is something that's inherently distasteful, and I just can't buy that premise. This is also, IMO, good game design - where inherently rewarding activities just happen to also be rewarded in-game.

The main difficulty, I think, would be for a Fate gamer moving to an OD&D/early AD&D game, which prizes 'player skill' and is focused around minimizing risk instead of seeking it out. The reverse holds true as well.


I think the difference that's is getting missed is that in FATE, and any game that works on similar logic, is that not only does playing to type reward the player it actively moves the game forward by virtue of the rules in place. GURPS which has an Alcoholic drawback doesn't actively move the game forward by playing to type, in fact all being an Alcoholic does give you some points at character creation and then actively punishes the player for playing to type because when it is played the Drawback makes it harder to get the game moving forward.

There in I think is the big difference. Narrative games operate on the basis that the game is an ongoing story, one that all of the people involved with can help control to varying degrees, and provides rules that move that story forward without hindering its ability to move.
Excellently put.



* This is kind of a side-topic. Earlier editions of D&D - including many current OSR games - prize Player Skill. So if you, the player, knows that a blue-nosed orange dude is a Hobgoblin, it's completely kosher to bring that knowledge into play even if your Level 1 dude had never met one. Or, acting far more cautiously about dungeon dangers than your inexperienced dungeon-crawler on his first delve could ever know (stairs lead to harder monsters! bring a 10' pole! make a map to find secret rooms!). In these kinds of games, there's absolutely nothing improper about using metagame player knowledge like this. Lots of times, it's kind of the whole point.

Amphetryon
2016-12-28, 03:24 PM
Actually, reviewing what Max said, I think the issue is on a different plane, so I want to provide my own addendum.

In one situation, the mechanics-focused player has his character go out carousing to earn drama points for the big fight the next day. He willingly accepts the temporary trait 'Severely Hung Over' as the mechanical cost to get a bonus when he attacks the bad guy later. This is mechanically viable and legal, but since it's done purely for the sake of mechanical advantage, it's completely missing the intent of the rule system and suffering for it.

In the other situation, the narrative-focused player also has his character go out carousing, because his character has suffered with alcoholism for years, and the stress of knowing the big fight is coming up tomorrow has driven him to seek out some liquid courage. He'll be Severely Hung Over tomorrow, and quite ashamed of himself for that moment of weakness, but vowing to himself that last night was the last time he'd slip up gives a burst of heroic resolve during the fight when he really needs it. This is exactly the same, mechanically, as the other situation, but the player has deliberately woven the actions of his character into propelling that character's narrative forward. The Drama Point earned is not the reward in and of itself, but rather it is a bonus for doing something the player wanted to do anyways.
Doesn't the mechanical advantage from the first example propel the character's narrative forward, also? How, exactly, are we determining that a given Player is steering her Character's actions by in-game or metagame concerns? Does the existence of a metagame reward automatically mean that Characters are driven by that reward, rather than internal consistency?
These read as important distinctions, here, as it would appear that some of those makes for a bad gaming experience for the OP.

The Glyphstone
2016-12-28, 03:32 PM
Doesn't the mechanical advantage from the first example propel the character's narrative forward, also? How, exactly, are we determining that a given Player is steering her Character's actions by in-game or metagame concerns? Does the existence of a metagame reward automatically mean that Characters are driven by that reward, rather than internal consistency?
These read as important distinctions, here, as it would appear that some of those makes for a bad gaming experience for the OP.

In the first example, the player isn't motivated by character narrative. They're playing the game and using the mechanics strictly for the benefits they receive, and the story is an incidental side benefit/bonus. The second example is the reverse, where the story is the player's primary goal and the mechanical advantage is a bonus. That's what the only contrast between the two scenarios is, the player's internal motivation for taking those actions. Telling the difference from the outside is indeed difficult, particularly since a person can lie about their reasons if questioned.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-28, 03:38 PM
It might also be bothering me that there's this Behaviorist / Skinnerian notion here of "rewarding" players to influence their behavior. Not only does it seem just a bit creepy to me, it's also the sort of thing that I instinctively respond negatively to.

Steel Mirror
2016-12-28, 03:48 PM
In the first example, the player isn't motivated by character narrative. They're playing the game and using the mechanics strictly for the benefits they receive, and the story is an incidental side benefit/bonus. The second example is the reverse, where the story is the player's primary goal and the mechanical advantage is a bonus. That's what the only contrast between the two scenarios is, the player's internal motivation for taking those actions. Telling the difference from the outside is indeed difficult, particularly since a person can lie about their reasons if questioned.
I'd also say that, for my games, what's happening with the player internally isn't really my concern save for one point: is the player having fun? If yes, then I don't care if they are having fun by cheesing the system in such a way that it makes the game better for everyone, or if they are having fun by immersing themselves in their character and the plot while following the system in such a way that it makes the game better for everyone. To my mind, the important parts are the "fun" and the "game is better for everyone".

I don't think this is the only valid viewpoint, but I do think that, as a game designer, you have the power to design your system and its rules. You do not have the power to decide how a player will be internally motivated, but you do have the ability to harness those internal motivations with your external design decisions. Nor do you, as a GM or a player, have the ability to read a player's mind to determine if they are doing something because they buy into the game's fictional internal logic, or if they are doing it for moar pointz. Fate does a great job of lining things up such that the results of a powergamer and a roleplayer uncompromisingly doing their separate thing lead to a game which can be mutually enjoyed by each other at the same time, so to my mind that's a huge success for the system.

Amphetryon
2016-12-28, 04:00 PM
In the first example, the player isn't motivated by character narrative. They're playing the game and using the mechanics strictly for the benefits they receive, and the story is an incidental side benefit/bonus. The second example is the reverse, where the story is the player's primary goal and the mechanical advantage is a bonus. That's what the only contrast between the two scenarios is, the player's internal motivation for taking those actions. Telling the difference from the outside is indeed difficult, particularly since a person can lie about their reasons if questioned.

And one of those options creates a bad gaming experience, despite being admittedly difficult to distinguish. I am legitimately curious about how this can be avoided.

Koo Rehtorb
2016-12-28, 04:02 PM
And one of those options creates a bad gaming experience, despite being admittedly difficult to distinguish. I am legitimately curious about how this can be avoided.

By people playing the right game for what they want to do.

Beleriphon
2016-12-28, 04:08 PM
It might also be bothering me that there's this Behaviorist / Skinnerian notion here of "rewarding" players to influence their behavior. Not only does it seem just a bit creepy to me, it's also the sort of thing that I instinctively respond negatively to.

Its not so much a "reward" as in have a cookie if you do as I say, its more of a have a thing to use later by accepting this complication now. The just bakes the idea of complications and things to use later into the rules.

obryn
2016-12-28, 04:10 PM
It might also be bothering me that there's this Behaviorist / Skinnerian notion here of "rewarding" players to influence their behavior. Not only does it seem just a bit creepy to me, it's also the sort of thing that I instinctively respond negatively to.
It's been a part of RPGs since the earliest days. In the past two-ish decades, though, people have begun explicitly talking about it. The difference is that you're not really conditioning your players; you're setting up the ground rules for success in the game. And then from there, you need to ask, "What is the most pragmatic and likely way that the players are going to strive for success? And does this kind of action reinforce the kind of game I'm trying to run, or does it harm it?" You're honestly evaluating how to 'win' your game - whatever 'winning' means - and then comparing that to what you're hoping the game will look like as-played.

The best example I can come up with is OD&D's gold-for-XP, which I've referred to a bunch of times already. Since XP gets you levels, and leveling up is good and lets your character do more stuff, this encourages players to take loot out of a dungeon and bring it back home with them even if there's no specific way in which the character could expect to spend that money.

Steel Mirror
2016-12-28, 04:11 PM
It might also be bothering me that there's this Behaviorist / Skinnerian notion here of "rewarding" players to influence their behavior. Not only does it seem just a bit creepy to me, it's also the sort of thing that I instinctively respond negatively to.Well every game has this dynamic. In D&D you are rewarded for choosing a strong combination of ability scores and character customization options. You are rewarded for being paranoid and poking everything with a 10-foot pole before walking on it. You are rewarded for system knowledge and exploitation of corner case rules. You are rewarded for making astute tactical decisions in combat situations, and for cooperating with other players to do so. You are rewarded for stealing everything in the dungeon that isn't bolted down (and everything that is, too) so that you can sell your stuff and convert it into more powerful gear.

I'd also point out that there is a subtle distinction in the way Fate works. The player is rewarded for the behavior of their character. FP are a metagame resource, not representative of any tangible aspect of game reality that the character in the game could possibly be aware of, yet FP can't be granted or used without the actions and existence of the in-game character. And that's an important point which I suspect is a big part of why you just don't like the system.

In the end though, just saying that you find this sort of game design "creepy" and something you "instinctively respond negatively to" is completely subjective, and also totally fine. If that's the way it is, then nothing we say is going to convince you to like Fate, though I hope that you'll at least grant that we have some pretty good reasons for liking it ourselves. It does sort of bring us back to one of the page one responses, though:

This just comes down to game preference.
I suspect that's going to be the end point of this discussion one way or the other, even if we have a pretty good conversation in the meantime about why we each prefer what we each prefer. :smallwink:

EDIT: Also, Obryn's post is well-put and I was debating trying to say something like it before he phrased it better, first.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-28, 04:17 PM
Well every game has this dynamic. In D&D you are rewarded for choosing a strong combination of ability scores and character customization options. You are rewarded for being paranoid and poking everything with a 10-foot pole before walking on it. You are rewarded for system knowledge and exploitation of corner case rules. You are rewarded for making astute tactical decisions in combat situations, and for cooperating with other players to do so. You are rewarded for stealing everything in the dungeon that isn't bolted down (and everything that is, too) so that you can sell your stuff and convert it into more powerful gear.

I'd also point out that there is a subtle distinction in the way Fate works. The player is rewarded for the behavior of their character. FP are a metagame resource, not representative of any tangible aspect of game reality that the character in the game could possibly be aware of, yet FP can't be granted or used without the actions and existence of the in-game character. And that's an important point which I suspect is a big part of why you just don't like the system.

In the end though, just saying that you find this sort of game design "creepy" and something you "instinctively respond negatively to" is completely subjective, and also totally fine. If that's the way it is, then nothing we say is going to convince you to like Fate, though I hope that you'll at least grant that we have some pretty good reasons for liking it ourselves. It does sort of bring us back to one of the page one responses, though:


Sorry, to be clear, I don't just mean FATE's design, I'm not singling out FATE with that comment -- I mean designing any game in a way that's meant to reward the player for the behavior you want. It can easily feel manipulative to me, and I tend to flinch very hard away from even the impression that someone's trying to manipulate me.

(I didn't intend this thread to be about FATE in particular, so please don't think I'm trying to single out and trash that system.)

Steel Mirror
2016-12-28, 04:34 PM
Sorry, to be clear, I don't just mean FATE's design, I'm not singling out FATE with that comment -- I mean designing any game in a way that's meant to reward the player for the behavior you want. It can easily feel manipulative to me, and I tend to flinch very hard away from even the impression that someone's trying to manipulate me.

(I didn't intend this thread to be about FATE in particular, so please don't think I'm trying to single out and trash that system.)
Oh don't worry, I keep talking about Fate because it's the game I know and it seems to be the one this thread keeps coming back to, but I figured that you meant that this sort of thing was something you didn't like generally as well as not liking when Fate does it.

For what it's worth, I totally understand feeling that the game is manipulative. It's not even an unfair accusation to make, though I would say that every game designer is being to some extent manipulative when they design a set of rules, even if they aren't consciously aware of being so. How you design a game will influence how players approach trying to 'win' it, using the vocabulary Obryn was using earlier. The structure of the rules determines which sorts of decisions are rewarded and which are discouraged.

The difference between, say, Fate and D&D is that, for the most part, all the rewards of D&D are given to the character, for decisions and actions taken by the character in the game. Sure, the player is the ultimate author of all those decisions, but when you decide to flank an ogre to get a benefit, that's an in-game action with an in-game reward. Equipping a belt of strength instead of a belt of water breathing is also an in-game decision with in-game consequences.

Fate, on the other hand, explicitly hands the rewards to the player while giving the consequences to the character (at least, when we're talking about FP interacting with aspects). Those FP rewards can then be fed back into the game to make your character hit better or dodge faster or whatever, but they might also be used to give the player authorial input on certain parts of a scene or the story, among other uses which are demonstrably beyond the internal logic of the gameworld. That's a real difference.

What separates those like you and those like me, is that I'm happy knowing those strings are attached to me in Fate, because it leads to a fun experience (for all the reasons I've been talking about) and because I maintain that every game has its own version of those strings secretly shaping my behavior, Fate is just very explicit about it.

Frozen_Feet
2016-12-28, 04:34 PM
In one situation, the mechanics-focused player has his character go out carousing to earn drama points for the big fight the next day. He willingly accepts the temporary trait 'Severely Hung Over' as the mechanical cost to get a bonus when he attacks the bad guy later. This is mechanically viable and legal, but since it's done purely for the sake of mechanical advantage, it's completely missing the intent of the rule system and suffering for it.

Suffering for it?

No. If we presume a system where powergaming and roleplaying coincide perfectly, the powergamer doesn't suffer.

The person who suffers is that who tried to teach him to roleplay. Because in a system where powergaming and roleplaying coincide perfectly, how do you teach a person that they're actually different things?

That's the issue. You don't need to agree with, or even wholly understand, Max_Killjoy's definition of roleplaying to get his point. The point is that he's identified a skillset which he finds desireable and which isn't necessarily taught by reward systems like FATE's.

As noted, it would be possible to test whether FATE does or not. I'm not arguing for either at this point.

To give a practical example of where a player's motivation and what they've learned of roleplaying matters, consider them becoming a GM. What kind of a GM does a person become if they're doing it to score points, versus if they're doing it to act out antagonists in a story? Would the former person even want to be a GM if they're told the point is not to score points?

More generally, think of all the people you know who moved from a player to a GM, versus all the people who play but have never GM'd, or vice versa.

---

@Obryn: you make a lot of good points but fail to relate them to what I'm saying.

Consider your own example of moving from FATE to playing OD&D or vice versa.

Did you stop to consider that one group might have an easier time going through the transition, because of what the earlier system taught them of roleplaying?

You and Steel Mirror both seem quick to reduce my arguments to binary bad-wrong-dichtomy, such as when you claimed that in order for my argument to hold, "playing a character" would need to be actively distasteful to a player. But it doesn't. If a player is indifferent to roleplaying, they are not learning how to roleplay, even if the system is rigged so that their actions will lead to playing a role regardless. Not that there aren't plenty of people to which playing a character would be distasteful, especially if you start breaking it down by role.

But for now, assune a player who simply doesn't care about playing a role, but does care about scoring the most points. In a game where these two coincide perfectly, how do you teach them the difference? How do you make the transition from one type of motivation to the other, so that a player will keep roleplaying even when there are no points to be scored for it?

Lord Raziere
2016-12-28, 04:43 PM
Sorry, to be clear, I don't just mean FATE's design, I'm not singling out FATE with that comment -- I mean designing any game in a way that's meant to reward the player for the behavior you want. It can easily feel manipulative to me, and I tend to flinch very hard away from even the impression that someone's trying to manipulate me.

(I didn't intend this thread to be about FATE in particular, so please don't think I'm trying to single out and trash that system.)

Technically every system is designed to reward players for certain behaviors over others. By picking a system at all, you manipulate people into having to buy into the certain paradigm of chance over another form of chance. By picking the system you want, your manipulating people by saying "you either play this with me or you get no game at all."

Its just that many players are so used to being rewarded for murderhoboism, combat, ten-foot pole shenanigans, rolling a log on traps to replace a rogue, get gradually better items and so on that getting reward for other behaviors is strange to them.

Heck a leveling system is technically manipulation since its providing you incentive to get to a high level in a certain class which pays off in the long term, often in the form of a wizard being incredibly powerful. Its not a fate point, but technically by choosing a system where that leveling can occur your manipulating people by communicating that you want a system where thats possible, and killing large numbers of enemies for exp is rewarded. Its a very successful form of manipulation as well, since MMO's use it all the time as well as it spreading to other forms of games.

Steel Mirror
2016-12-28, 04:47 PM
You and Steel Mirror both seem quick to reduce my arguments to binary bad-wrong-dichtomy, such as when you claimed that in order for my argument to hold, "playing a character" would need to be actively distasteful to a player.
I'm not sure what you're referring to. I don't think I've ever claimed that your style of play was badwrongfun, or said that you were trying to call my style of play badwrongfun. I think you are making semantic distinctions which are just inventing problems where they don't seem to exist, but I never accused you of arguing in bad faith. Or did you mean something else? I'm possibly not understanding you.


Consider your own example of moving from FATE to playing OD&D or vice versa.

Did you stop to consider that one group might have an easier time going through the transition, because of what the earlier system taught them of roleplaying?


But it doesn't. If a player is indifferent to roleplaying, they are not learning how to roleplay, even if the system is rigged so that their actions will lead to playing a role regardless. Not that there aren't plenty of people to which playing a character would be distasteful, especially if you start breaking it down by role.

But for now, assune a player who simply doesn't care about playing a role, but does care about scoring the most points. In a game where these two coincide perfectly, how do you teach them the difference? How do you make the transition from one type of motivation to the other, so that a player will keep roleplaying even when there are no points to be scored for it?
I think that learning to RP in a system like Fate, which has explicit rewards for it, absolutely builds good RP habits which you can take with you when you try out other games. To use my own experiences as anecdotal evidence again, my group played the Dresden Files Fate game back when it first came out, and that was our first exposure to Fate. We loved how it got even our most RP-averse players excited about RP, and when we went back to playing our D&D game those players were more proactive about RP and enjoyed doing it more than they had before.

Even if that weren't true though, it would still be the case that playing Fate made them more involved and more interested RP'ers. If that never translated to them being more likely to RP in other systems, that wouldn't be a flaw with Fate, it would just mean that Fate did a good job of coaxing them into a certain playstyle, while other games didn't bring that behavior out in them. If you want those players to be able to have fun with your heavy RP players in the same campaign, Fate would still be a good choice for that game.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-28, 05:00 PM
Technically every system is designed to reward players for certain behaviors over others. By picking a system at all, you manipulate people into having to buy into the certain paradigm of chance over another form of chance. By picking the system you want, your manipulating people by saying "you either play this with me or you get no game at all."

Its just that many players are so used to being rewarded for murderhoboism, combat, ten-foot pole shenanigans, rolling a log on traps to replace a rogue, get gradually better items and so on that getting reward for other behaviors is strange to them.

Heck a leveling system is technically manipulation since its providing you incentive to get to a high level in a certain class which pays off in the long term, often in the form of a wizard being incredibly powerful. Its not a fate point, but technically by choosing a system where that leveling can occur your manipulating people by communicating that you want a system where thats possible, and killing large numbers of enemies for exp is rewarded. Its a very successful form of manipulation as well, since MMO's use it all the time as well as it spreading to other forms of games.

I really don't care for levels/classes either. Although, I do think you're overapplying "manipulation" here a bit.

On the subject of murderhobos, I also don't care for the sort of "gotcha-ism" that actively encourages players to play "murderhobo" characters by treating all interpersonal connections, mercy, empathy, etc, as vulnerabilities.

I think this is something that occurs across the spectrum of campaigns, from games of a certain "kill and loot" D&D style, to games of a certain "drama uber alles" style. Whether it's an adversarial GM looking to "defeat" players by using the characters' emotional connections against them, or a "narrative" GM looking to "create drama" by using the characters' emotional connections to drive them, this can easily lead players to avoid all emotional connections.

"Oh hey, I let my character get involved in a romantic relationship, and sure enough, their SO got stuffed in the fridge... why did I bother, again?"

Frozen_Feet
2016-12-28, 05:10 PM
And one of those options creates a bad gaming experience, despite being admittedly difficult to distinguish. I am legitimately curious about how this can be avoided.

Similar to what I said to Glyphstone and Steel Mirror already:

It's not this one game that's bad.

There's no issue if you're just trying to have a game. Almost no issue if you only want a bunch of people to entertain you for the evening.

It's when you want a person to generalize what they're doing beyond a single game.

Consider some widespread truism of tabletop games, like "don't split the party". In any given game, why are the players adhering to this principle? Is it necessarily the best way to play that game? Is this truism vital to definition of RPGs?

Some players have never played any RPG where it isn't in effect. Contrast this with a new player who has never played a game where it was in effect.

How do you get the latter to play nice with the former? What motivates the latter to not split the party? How do you move from external motivation (such as fear of being kicked out the table) to internal motivation (desire to co-operate)?

Or by contrast: what happens if you don't try to motivate them? What happens if you as a GM say splitting the party is allowed? Which players will adapt to the new situation better? Will they all act the same?

Beleriphon
2016-12-28, 05:24 PM
Sorry, to be clear, I don't just mean FATE's design, I'm not singling out FATE with that comment -- I mean designing any game in a way that's meant to reward the player for the behavior you want. It can easily feel manipulative to me, and I tend to flinch very hard away from even the impression that someone's trying to manipulate me.

(I didn't intend this thread to be about FATE in particular, so please don't think I'm trying to single out and trash that system.)

I don't think anybody is, FATE just happens to be the most accessible and popular narrative system right now.

I don't think its manipulating the players as such. Every game provides a style of play. D&D has a giant chapter on combat and book full of things for the players to interact with that all have combat stats, what do we expect to happen in D&D? We stab orcs in the face and take their stuff. The rules of the game, even the tone of the game's rules language, influences the way the game is played.

Narrative focused games encourage follow the rules and logic of an action movie, or other story, to achieve the game play. Villains escaping aren't fiat by the GM, there's a rule there to allow it to be more likely. Most narrative games allow the player(s) to decide that nope, Doctor Doom isn't getting away and we're going to get him this time. With FATE in particular if the players decide to do go that route the GM gets to decide how Doctor Doom is defeated if the Latverian Dictator concedes the fight.

There are other things in play other than what might seem like incongruous things affecting each character. In essence a narrative game at its heart lets any participant to declare something to be true about a scene: the ground is muddy, my character is drunk off his ass, the building is on fire, there are barrels EVERYWHERE!, whatever you can think of that you want to add to the scene. Sometimes the GM might have these things set out in advance, a tense negotiation with Little Tony and his triggermen in a fish packing factories implies a great deal. Some times the players create them on their own, dumping a load of packing ice once Tony decides to start shooting on the floor to make the floor slippery. FATE for example would have scene aspects like Packing Crates Everywhere, Deactivated Machinery, and maybe Poorly Light. A player could use these in a fight with Tony and his thugs, and the GM can use them against the players.

Another factor a good number narrative games tend to use generic or consolidated actions/results to cover a wide variety of situations. FATE for example has only four actions in the game: overcome, create an advantage, attack, or defend. Overcome is removing negative temporary aspects on your character (like a Jammed Gun) or somehow surmounting another immediate challenge (climbing a Greased Rope). Create advantage is just that creating a new aspect to give your character a boost, or using an advantage you already have already created. Attack is a pretty straight forward action, your character attacks. Defend is the way a character stops one of the other actions that directly affects your character. These four actions cover just about everything in the game as far the way they interact with other characters and the environment.


"Oh hey, I let my character get involved in a romantic relationship, and sure enough, their SO got stuffed in the fridge... why did I bother, again?"

Most narrative systems have a way to avoid exactly that from the player side. Some would provide a benefit if the player decided that happened. The big difference is that in say D&D, or GURPS, or Shadowrun if the character's romantic entanglement ends up fridged then the player gets nothing in compensation other than a hate on for the GM. With most narrative games if the player agrees to let something like that happen then they get some kind of rules function reward to use later (FATE points, bonus tokens, something to use at a later time).

Frozen_Feet
2016-12-28, 05:26 PM
I'm not sure what you're referring to. I don't think I've ever claimed that your style of play was badwrongfun, or said that you were trying to call my style of play badwrongfun. I think you are making semantic distinctions which are just inventing problems where they don't seem to exist, but I never accused you of arguing in bad faith. Or did you mean something else? I'm possibly not understanding you.
When I wrote my post, I had in mind someone who did use the exact words of "badwrongfun", but it may be I got confused with who I was referring to, or who you referred to.

I don't have anything left to add as pertains to FATE in particular.

As for "semantics" or "inventing problems", I know I am not. It will take a while for me to dig it up, but to see the problem in practice, there's an interesting video on how to get self-learning AIs to play classic games such as Tetris or Super Mario. A simple starting point is to make an algorithm which optimizes towards some ascending number, such as hi-score or level number. It's then hilarious to see how well the same kind of algorithm does in different games.

If I find it, I hope it will illustrate what mistake other people are making by over-emphasizing how every game rewards you for something.

EDIT: Ah, here it is. (https://youtu.be/xOCurBYI_gY)

In case you watched it and didn't make any connection to what I've been saying: that program is all about finding the best possible "reward" for playing the game. It does good in some games, can in fact do better than the human who provided the inputs in some... and then utterly fails at others, where the "rewards" are not as straight-forward.

That's what I was getting at with my point about teaching anti-powergaming being allowed or possible. Just because RPGs have rewards does not mean getting those are the extent of what roleplaying is or should be to a human player. For a more concrete example, just because OD&D rewards you for gold and not for being a cool guy, does not mean "being a cool guy" isn't part of what the game is about, nor does it mean "being a cool guy" is always subservient to acquiring more gold. Humans can optimize towards more or different values than what a game system explicitly lays out.

To loop back to the lines which started this tangent, those are the "hidden benefits". Those are "player skills" which carry across games and game systems. And I wager those are quite close to skill of playing a role, if playing a role is indeed the common vein of roleplaying games.

Knaight
2016-12-28, 05:27 PM
I really don't care for levels/classes either. Although, I do think you're overapplying "manipulation" here a bit.

It's this level of manipulation in all the cases - think economic incentives, not Skinner boxes. The point of Fate style mechanics is to incentivize the roleplaying that players were already going to do, so as to counteract the disincentives inherent to that roleplaying in the context of more conventional mechanics* (Which Fate still has, it just has more layered on top).

*The big one being that if a character dies, then you're done playing that character. That's an incentive to caution, and it's an incentive worth counteracting in a system that is intended for flawed characters that get themselves into trouble.

The Glyphstone
2016-12-28, 05:30 PM
And one of those options creates a bad gaming experience, despite being admittedly difficult to distinguish. I am legitimately curious about how this can be avoided.


By people playing the right game for what they want to do.

Kho basically said what I would. Frozen misinterpreted what I was going for there - the player does not suffer by failing to use the mechanics how they're intended. The game suffers by not being used to its full potential, when there are dozens of other games on the market that would reward said player for their preferred style more directly and completely.

Quite simply, you can't force someone to play in a style they're not comfortable with. Better they find a game that fits their preferences and their play style.

Though as far as narrative-oriented systems, Burning Wheel was the first one I met. It's narrative-oriented and incredibly crunchy, which interacts in weird ways sometimes. FATE is also narrative-oriented, but far less crunchy.

Steel Mirror
2016-12-28, 05:32 PM
As for "semantics" or "inventing problems", I know I am not. It will take a while for me to dig it up, but to see the problem in practice, there's an interesting video on how to get self-learning AIs to play classic games such as Tetris or Super Mario. A simple starting point is to make an algorithm which optimizes towards some ascending number, such as hi-score or level number. It's then hilarious to see how well the same kind of algorithm does in different games.

If I find it, I hope it will illustrate what mistake other people are making by over-emphasizing how every game rewards you for something.
I'm not really sure where you're going with that point, but I'll wait for you to (hopefully) find that video so that you can use it to delve into your argument.

And because that actually sounds pretty cool to see all by itself, so I hope you find it!

The Glyphstone
2016-12-28, 05:34 PM
I'm not really sure where you're going with that point, but I'll wait for you to (hopefully) find that video so that you can use it to delve into your argument.

And because that actually sounds pretty cool to see all by itself, so I hope you find it!

I think I've seen the Super Mario one at least, and it's kind of hilarious. The AI is searching for the most direct route to the end of the level, the result of which is it basically finding every possible way to kill Mario that it can in the attempt to select the optimal zero-death path of actions.

Amphetryon
2016-12-28, 05:37 PM
Kho basically said what I would. Frozen misinterpreted what I was going for there - the player does not suffer by failing to use the mechanics how they're intended. The game suffers by not being used to its full potential, when there are dozens of other games on the market that would reward said player for their preferred style more directly and completely.

Quite simply, you can't force someone to play in a style they're not comfortable with. Better they find a game that fits their preferences and their play style.

Though as far as narrative-oriented systems, Burning Wheel was the first one I met. It's narrative-oriented and incredibly crunchy, which interacts in weird ways sometimes. FATE is also narrative-oriented, but far less crunchy.
All due respect, the answer doesn't read as answering the question I actually asked.

The Glyphstone
2016-12-28, 05:41 PM
All due respect, the answer doesn't read as answering the question I actually asked.

You asked how the bad gaming experience could be avoided, didn't you?.There's no way to guarantee a good gaming experience, but one way you can minimize the odds of a bad gaming experience is by ensuring player expectations and system expectations are synchronized.

Amphetryon
2016-12-28, 06:15 PM
You asked how the bad gaming experience could be avoided, didn't you?.There's no way to guarantee a good gaming experience, but one way you can minimize the odds of a bad gaming experience is by ensuring player expectations and system expectations are synchronized.

I asked how we are to accurately determine what is motivating a Character - in-game or metagame concerns, because one of those options creates a bad gaming experience for the OP. I asked whether the existence of a metagame reward automatically eliminated in-game motivations as valid explanations for a Character's actions. As I understood you to say, determining these things is especially tricky since a Player may lie about motivations.

I don't think 'playing the right game for what you want to do' answers these questions; if you could clarify how it does, I am listening.

The Glyphstone
2016-12-28, 06:28 PM
I asked how we are to accurately determine what is motivating a Character - in-game or metagame concerns, because one of those options creates a bad gaming experience for the OP. I asked whether the existence of a metagame reward automatically eliminated in-game motivations as valid explanations for a Character's actions. As I understood you to say, determining these things is especially tricky since a Player may lie about motivations.

I don't think 'playing the right game for what you want to do' answers these questions; if you could clarify how it does, I am listening.

No, that's a completely different question than what both of us thought you were asking, something a fair bit more specific. As to how you determine that...

uh...sodium pentathol injections? I don't think there is a way to 100% objectively determine how or why a person chooses to do what they do, or in this case chooses the actions their fictional alter ego takes. A seeming 'powergamer' or mechanics-focused player could have multiple motivations for their behavior, the same as a nominally narrative-focused one. (And let's not devolve into a tangent about subconscious behaviors, down that road likes psychology and madness).

But if your root question you're asking is 'does a metagame reward automatically eliminate in-game motivations as reasoning'...and obviously I think the answer is no, because of the initial post I made that set this whole tangent off; the existence of the metagame reward is consistent in both hypothetical scenarios, but one player happens to place it higher on the priority list. And without the aforementioned truth drugs to interrogate A and B with, there's no guarantee you can distinguish which is which.

Incidentally, if your gaming experience involves being injected with truth drugs, leave the group.

Frozen_Feet
2016-12-28, 06:47 PM
@Glyphstone:

For the sake of argument, again imagine a game where powergaming perfectly coincides with roleplaying.

In such a game, a powergamer and a roleplayer will both use the game to its full potential.

In context of the AI example, this would mean an AI that could complete all levels of Super Mario.

It still does not follow that the powergamer and the roleplayer, or the AI and a human, see the game in the same way or are learning to do the same things.

So when there's a shift in game or dynamic, for example shifting from Mario to Tetris or moving from a player to a GM, it's not given the two persons perform equally well.

---

To all people saying "you can't force people to like a game they don't like" or "you can't know/change their internal motivation" or any variation thereof. Uh. First, that is not logically consistent with using any sort of reward/punishment system, including the one you're defending.

Also, if such statements were true, they would undermine the very concept of teaching or raising interest in a person, including teaching or raising interest toward roleplaying games. Just because it's a difficult thing doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't be done. I have encountered the stance that "it isn't a GM's place to teach their players" before on these boards, but such statements become absurd once you try to apply them to new players or any attempt to spread or maintain the hobby.

So let's try to lay some groundwork:

1) playing a role is a skill.
2) you can be good or bad at it.
3) you can be motivated or unmotivated, internally or externally, to learn this skill.
4) motivation and skill can both be deciphered by prolonged observation of behavior.
5) there's more than one roleplaying game.
6) not all games teach this skill or produce motivation evenly.
7) to become a better roleplayer, a change in game can hence be recommended.
8) external motivation to become a better roleplayer or to change a system can be turned into internal motivation.

Where, exactly, I am wrong?

Lord Raziere
2016-12-28, 06:59 PM
I'd personally say that roleplaying is closer to a form of cooperative art, its just that different systems produce different forms of that, and not all artists like making the same kind of art. the skill of knowing how to animate or draw a comic book is different from being able to tell good stories of a certain genre, animation is universal to both dark and gritty stories and lighthearted fluffy ones but I wouldn't ask an artist who likes one kind of story to do another if they're not willing even if I offer a reward for it.

The Glyphstone
2016-12-28, 07:01 PM
The only potential point of failure I can see is in Step 3. Some people just can't or won't adapt or expand their gaming style/philosophy, and trying to get them to do otherwise will just be an exercise in futility. So with a Step 3.5 where you determine if proceeding further down your action plan is going to be viable relative to the effort you'll be investing, it looks like a pretty solid eight-step plan structure.

Fiery Diamond
2016-12-28, 10:05 PM
When I wrote my post, I had in mind someone who did use the exact words of "badwrongfun", but it may be I got confused with who I was referring to, or who you referred to.

I don't have anything left to add as pertains to FATE in particular.

As for "semantics" or "inventing problems", I know I am not. It will take a while for me to dig it up, but to see the problem in practice, there's an interesting video on how to get self-learning AIs to play classic games such as Tetris or Super Mario. A simple starting point is to make an algorithm which optimizes towards some ascending number, such as hi-score or level number. It's then hilarious to see how well the same kind of algorithm does in different games.

If I find it, I hope it will illustrate what mistake other people are making by over-emphasizing how every game rewards you for something.

EDIT: Ah, here it is. (https://youtu.be/xOCurBYI_gY)

In case you watched it and didn't make any connection to what I've been saying: that program is all about finding the best possible "reward" for playing the game. It does good in some games, can in fact do better than the human who provided the inputs in some... and then utterly fails at others, where the "rewards" are not as straight-forward.

That's what I was getting at with my point about teaching anti-powergaming being allowed or possible. Just because RPGs have rewards does not mean getting those are the extent of what roleplaying is or should be to a human player. For a more concrete example, just because OD&D rewards you for gold and not for being a cool guy, does not mean "being a cool guy" isn't part of what the game is about, nor does it mean "being a cool guy" is always subservient to acquiring more gold. Humans can optimize towards more or different values than what a game system explicitly lays out.

To loop back to the lines which started this tangent, those are the "hidden benefits". Those are "player skills" which carry across games and game systems. And I wager those are quite close to skill of playing a role, if playing a role is indeed the common vein of roleplaying games.

You do realize humans are not AIs and do not function the same way AIs do, right? Consider:

Person A plays the game trying to get as many points to use as he can. In a narrative game like FATE, this results in him playing his character in ways that overlap significantly (or nearly identically) to the way Person B, who plays the game specifically to roleplay rather than being motivated by point, would. The thread has established this is a thing.

You seem to believe that Person A will learn nothing about roleplaying and not carry any of the behaviors with him when moving to another game that does not align powergaming and roleplaying because they are no longer aligned. This is how computers work, and also how idiots work. Most people are not like that. Most people build associations and habits. Unless he's moving to a system that actively discourages the type of roleplaying behavior he's been engaging in, he will carry it with him. Why? Because he's gotten used to doing it. Maybe he's gotten to enjoy it for its own sake (becoming a "true roleplayer" whatever that means) or maybe he's just doing it because that's now what he's used to doing and he knows the other players tend to enjoy it. Either way, he's now roleplaying independently of his powergaming, because that's how human beings work.



Sidenote: Reading this thread has really made me want to play FATE. I've never had the chance before.


Edit: On the other hand, if the system he's moving to DOES discourage that type of roleplaying behavior (and yes, putting "what gains you points" at odds with that type of roleplaying behavior is 100% discouraging that type of behavior, even for a non-powergamer), if his primary motivation is still "earn myself lots of points", he will quickly shed his roleplaying behaviors. Does this mean he failed to learn how to roleplay? No, it means he still values earning points more than he values roleplay, not that he didn't learn how to do it.

RazorChain
2016-12-28, 10:30 PM
About the Narrative Causality, Ropleplaying games are full of it, permeates every aspect of it. This is not a bad thing in itself as Max Killjoy said there exists a spectrum.

Most GMs/DMs use narrative causality when designing for example encounters, dungeons, adventures...I mean the good guys always win (mostly). If we would use objective causality then the usual adventure party would be dead.

For me Narrative Causalitiy causes no problems until taken to extreme. When a GM has decided upon an narrative and decides to enforce it. This is usually a problem because it invalidates agency.
The PC was going to shoot the villain and the GM said no you can't, he should escape so I can use him again.

Other problems can also be implausibilty and improbability. I would say that most games are far into the realm of improbabilty already so that leaves us with implausibilty. Implausibilty is usually bad because it breaks immersion.

All the PC's want to shoot the villain and all their guns jam at the same time.
The PC's are drowning and an giant octopus comes out of nowhere and saves them.

GMs fall into the trap of using narrative causality mostly when they have envisioned a story line or a certain end to a plot and add things/make things happen to enforce it.

RazorChain
2016-12-28, 10:44 PM
I'd personally say that roleplaying is closer to a form of cooperative art, its just that different systems produce different forms of that, and not all artists like making the same kind of art. the skill of knowing how to animate or draw a comic book is different from being able to tell good stories of a certain genre, animation is universal to both dark and gritty stories and lighthearted fluffy ones but I wouldn't ask an artist who likes one kind of story to do another if they're not willing even if I offer a reward for it.

I'm going to say that roleplaying is more close to acting than anything. I did a lot of acting in my youth, was active with a amateur theater group, did some improv and theater sports as well.

When you act a role you usually think of the role's background, motivations, fears, traits etc. This is why actors portray the same character differently, because most plays don't assign these to the roles.

Now when I knock on the door dressed up as a plumber, with a toolkit and a toolbelt and my wife answers I'm acting out a certain role. This is roleplaying....just without the game. Now am I playing the plumber that has a girlfriend and is hard to seduce? Am I playing the domineering plumber and will end up tying my wife up with my toolbelt? Now I have assigned some traits to my role.

I could just as well have sex with my wife without roleplaying, just like I could just play a game without roleplaying. I don't need any motivation or incentives for roleplaying other than it is fun.

Koo Rehtorb
2016-12-28, 11:24 PM
Roleplaying is about getting the most loot and experience points and using them to pwn noobs.

RedWarlock
2016-12-29, 12:09 AM
Maybe it's just me, but it feels like some folks in this thread are discounting mechanics-encouraged roleplaying, as if to say that because the players didn't want to RP purely out of pure storytelling-desire, it doesn't count as 'true' roleplaying. (Kinda one of those Stormwind/No-True-Scotsman-esque 'we must SUFFER (mechanically) for our art!' kind of mentalities.) No negative accusations implied, just feels like some folks are a bit purist about their roleplay.

Mechanics-encouraged RP is great, from where I stand, because it serves manifold purpose, pushing mechanics-focused players into RP, AND rewarding story-driven players with more mechanical currency to work with, AND helping the GM to expand their game/world when the players want more out of it than they have prepared.

The couple of times I've played more story-driven games, I find myself having to hands-off the minutiae to a certain degree, because I'm so used to having to guide it (from D&D-style games), I wind up tripping over myself more than anything, causing the plot to flounder because I'm so set in my prescriptive-storytelling ways. Fate Core seems like a system where you could allow your players to build themselves into a plot. You almost need more GM tips about how much to provide only certain story elements in such a fashion, and no more than that.

That kind of narrative-encouragement is actually getting me thinking, because I've got a game system I've been writing up for myself, and I want to include some of these kinds of open-concept RP elements into the game. (Like, I've got a specific step in character creation where you fill in three descriptive elements in the form of phrases, and I intentionally leave it open enough to where they could be used as alignment descriptors, character flaws, secondary-skill refinement, or Fate-style aspects, and they can be invoked in all those same ways.) It's more a matter of how to provide these kinds of rewards, to encourage desired behavior, without being deceptive/controlling about it.

Some of Max_Killjoy's rejection of this kind of behavior feels like a reaction to a badly-run/badly-played narrative game. Those kind of tropes you reject, a lot of people would, because they're being mangled by the hypothetical GM or player (in theory). No insult to your play history, Max, but I'm wondering if a better example of a well-run game of Fate Core would improve your disposition to the system style. (I haven't seen a good one yet, either, mostly because I've had trouble keeping gaming groups together lately, of any kind.)

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-29, 09:58 AM
Maybe it's just me, but it feels like some folks in this thread are discounting mechanics-encouraged roleplaying, as if to say that because the players didn't want to RP purely out of pure storytelling-desire, it doesn't count as 'true' roleplaying. (Kinda one of those Stormwind/No-True-Scotsman-esque 'we must SUFFER (mechanically) for our art!' kind of mentalities.) No negative accusations implied, just feels like some folks are a bit purist about their roleplay.


Let us say that I am suspicious of RP that's playing to the mechanics, rather than for its own sake.

For me, the mechanics are just a tool. Once I've decided how my character would react and what my character would (attempt to) do, the mechanics are just the means to achieve the ends, and nothing more.




Mechanics-encouraged RP is great, from where I stand, because it serves manifold purpose, pushing mechanics-focused players into RP, AND rewarding story-driven players with more mechanical currency to work with, AND helping the GM to expand their game/world when the players want more out of it than they have prepared.

The couple of times I've played more story-driven games, I find myself having to hands-off the minutiae to a certain degree, because I'm so used to having to guide it (from D&D-style games), I wind up tripping over myself more than anything, causing the plot to flounder because I'm so set in my prescriptive-storytelling ways. Fate Core seems like a system where you could allow your players to build themselves into a plot. You almost need more GM tips about how much to provide only certain story elements in such a fashion, and no more than that.

That kind of narrative-encouragement is actually getting me thinking, because I've got a game system I've been writing up for myself, and I want to include some of these kinds of open-concept RP elements into the game. (Like, I've got a specific step in character creation where you fill in three descriptive elements in the form of phrases, and I intentionally leave it open enough to where they could be used as alignment descriptors, character flaws, secondary-skill refinement, or Fate-style aspects, and they can be invoked in all those same ways.) It's more a matter of how to provide these kinds of rewards, to encourage desired behavior, without being deceptive/controlling about it.


The last game I ran, space-traveling science fiction, featured more improvised planets (and other locations) inspired by what the PCs wanted to do and things the players said, than pre-built locations. Several of the pre-built worlds were based on the PC's backstories.

One does not need narrative rules to have the world live and breath and react to the PCs, or to have new material inspired by the PCs and players.




Some of Max_Killjoy's rejection of this kind of behavior feels like a reaction to a badly-run/badly-played narrative game. Those kind of tropes you reject, a lot of people would, because they're being mangled by the hypothetical GM or player (in theory). No insult to your play history, Max, but I'm wondering if a better example of a well-run game of Fate Core would improve your disposition to the system style. (I haven't seen a good one yet, either, mostly because I've had trouble keeping gaming groups together lately, of any kind.)


I've never played in or GMed a game using rules like FATE's. For me, personally, they're antithetical to what I want out of a system.

For example, looking at FATE, I don't see any "characteristics" on the characters -- no Intelligence, or Strength, or... whatever. From what I've read elsewhere and here, I'm surmising that characters don't have objective measures of their core capabilities, but rather those capabilities are subservient to their "role" in the narrative, or somehow otherwise subjective based on the needs of the narrative.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-29, 10:11 AM
Something else that I think has occurred to the use of the word "narrative" in the way it's used to discuss RPGs.

In discussion of fiction, and tropes of fiction, "narrative" is used in reference to the story and plot, to the sequence of events in the story.

In discussion of RPGs, it seems that many people use "narrative focus" to refer to character-driven games (See, GNS Theory, and previous references to "N" being focused on the characters rather than the Game or the Simulated World).

This probably has caused some confusion.

For me, "narrative" refers to the ongoing story, and "narrative causality (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheoryOfNarrativeCausality)" as a term often refers to issues of ignoring in-story continuity or warping the characters as suits the story that someone wants to tell at that particular moment. (For example, the character who conveniently forgets that he can pick locks with a couple of pins or paperclips, when the writer wants them locked out of a room for a scene.)

The use of "Narrative" to refer to character-centric / character-driven games is odd for me, given that part of the issue I have with "narrative causality" is the inherent disregard for the continuity, coherence, and consistency of characters.

Thinker
2016-12-29, 10:20 AM
For example, looking at FATE, I don't see any "characteristics" on the characters -- no Intelligence, or Strength, or... whatever. From what I've read elsewhere and here, I'm surmising that characters don't have objective measures of their core capabilities, but rather those capabilities are subservient to their "role" in the narrative, or somehow otherwise subjective based on the needs of the narrative.

I can't speak for Fate since I don't play that system, but I play other character-driven games like Apocalypse World. Every system has core capabilities, but they're not always trying to represent physical and mental abilities. I find it unrealistic to try to assign an all-encompassing number to a character's strength, agility, intellect, cunning, and personality in the first place. I like the abstraction of the Hard stat telling me that the character is physically strong, violent, and aggressive. It doesn't matter exactly where that strength comes from - the character might be a body builder, a gunslinger, or a hot-headed desk clerk. The player decides why the character is hard. It also allows for situations where the character can be really good at casting spells, but not necessarily all that bright or charismatic.

obryn
2016-12-29, 10:34 AM
For example, looking at FATE, I don't see any "characteristics" on the characters -- no Intelligence, or Strength, or... whatever. From what I've read elsewhere and here, I'm surmising that characters don't have objective measures of their core capabilities, but rather those capabilities are subservient to their "role" in the narrative, or somehow otherwise subjective based on the needs of the narrative.
You infer them from the Aspects inasmuch as they are even necessary in the first place. If you don't have relevant Aspects or Skills, it's assumed that it's not going to be an important fact about your character.

If I have an Aspect "Former pro-wrestler" it can be assumed I'm pretty strong & tough, and that it's appropriate for me to invoke that Aspect when I need to be strong or tough.

If I have an Aspect "Skilled duelist of the Arronzyo School" I could invoke that Aspect for anything I'd need to be dextrous or acrobatic for, but probably not feats of strength. (Note that this Arronzyo School would need to be defined in-game; here I'm assuming it's like a Princess Bride-Style Inigo Montoya fencing thing.)

In neither case could I invoke these Aspects for something involving - say - nuclear physics. (No, no, your Wrestler doing the Atom Smasher doesn't count.)

(As a side note, Green Ronin did a Freeport conversion for Fate Accelerated. In that, they turned the D&D stats into the game's Approaches - basically Skills.)

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-29, 10:50 AM
I can't speak for Fate since I don't play that system, but I play other character-driven games like Apocalypse World. Every system has core capabilities, but they're not always trying to represent physical and mental abilities. I find it unrealistic to try to assign an all-encompassing number to a character's strength, agility, intellect, cunning, and personality in the first place. I like the abstraction of the Hard stat telling me that the character is physically strong, violent, and aggressive. It doesn't matter exactly where that strength comes from - the character might be a body builder, a gunslinger, or a hot-headed desk clerk. The player decides why the character is hard. It also allows for situations where the character can be really good at casting spells, but not necessarily all that bright or charismatic.

Is AW/PbtA a character-driven system, or a narrative-driven system? (See above post.)

"Hard" seems subjective and even a bit nebulous, and appears to encompass diverging concepts as much as "Strength" or "Intelligence" would.

Beleriphon
2016-12-29, 11:07 AM
I've never played in or GMed a game using rules like FATE's. For me, personally, they're antithetical to what I want out of a system.

For example, looking at FATE, I don't see any "characteristics" on the characters -- no Intelligence, or Strength, or... whatever. From what I've read elsewhere and here, I'm surmising that characters don't have objective measures of their core capabilities, but rather those capabilities are subservient to their "role" in the narrative, or somehow otherwise subjective based on the needs of the narrative.

Oh, they still have skills, with numerical ratings at least in the FATE Core ruleset. Characters still have stress tracks, that are modified by the skill levels. They still have numerical benefits, its just that the narrative parts of the game are the core of how a character is described. So Conan is a Might Thewed Barbarian, he isn't a human with the barbarian class and a strength of 18/00 for example. In the narrative a Mighty Thewed Barbarian can do all of the things such a character should be able to do to, since we're telling stories about Might Thewed Barbarians. FATE as a whole is looser in terms of what is permissible than D&D, or many other games with more concrete stats.

In general the Aspects are essential truths about your character. The two biggest ones are the High Aspect, and the Trouble.

High Aspect: core conceit of a character, a very high level description. The Dark Knight Detective for example might be Batman's.
Trouble: Something that gets your character into trouble, a character flaw or background issue you have. Extensive Rogue's Gallery, again for Batman.

You then get a few other aspects that basically describe your first adventure, or what precipitated the character doing what they are doing now. Then you work with one other player (usually sitting left or right) to come up with a reason why their character knows yours, trade left (or right) again and explain how that character knows yours. This creates two new Aspects that you come up with based on those stories. These aspects effectively describe your character, and allow other characters to take advantage of the aspects, or you as a player can trigger the aspects to give yourself bonuses on skills rolls as long as the two things are related, or you can come up with a reason why they are related.

So character creation is a collaborative effort and is as much a part of the game as the rolling dice. So FATE doesn't really allow you to come up with a character completely on your own.

Skills are fairly general, and customized to the game one wants to play. If you're playing a magical ponies game one might want to include a specific skill for Magic, but remove skills that aren't important. By the same token a space explorers game where maybe magic doesn't exist but there are some extra skills about exploration or using computers.

Skills are rated, at least to start, range from Average (+1) to Great (+4). Using Fate points, or getting advantages from aspects can provide up to an additional +2 bonus. There are stunts (say Ninja Training to give a +2 bonus to try and hide when its dark) and other things as well that provide circumstantial benefits to skills as well, but that's a bit beyond what I think I'm trying to explain.


Something else that I think has occurred to the use of the word "narrative" in the way it's used to discuss RPGs.

In discussion of fiction, and tropes of fiction, "narrative" is used in reference to the story and plot, to the sequence of events in the story.

In discussion of RPGs, it seems that many people use "narrative focus" to refer to character-driven games (See, GNS Theory, and previous references to "N" being focused on the characters rather than the Game or the Simulated World).

This probably has caused some confusion.

For me, "narrative" refers to the ongoing story, and "narrative causality (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheoryOfNarrativeCausality)" as a term often refers to issues of ignoring in-story continuity or warping the characters as suits the story that someone wants to tell at that particular moment. (For example, the character who conveniently forgets that he can pick locks with a couple of pins or paperclips, when the writer wants them locked out of a room for a scene.)

The use of "Narrative" to refer to character-centric / character-driven games is odd for me, given that part of the issue I have with "narrative causality" is the inherent disregard for the continuity, coherence, and consistency of characters.

Narrative Causality is a bit of a mis-nomer when really character driven/character-centered games are probably better described as narrative logic games. The games aren't attempting to simulate a "real" world any more than Die Hard is attempting to actually simulate a real world. Die Hard is a grounded action movie, in that it doesn't go completely over the top the way Commando can be. But Die Hard does follow certain conventions as a movie, and more specifically as an action movie. Many narrative games have rules in place to emulate the way any given action would work in a movie, rather than rules to simulate a specific action would play out in some kind of realistic way (for any given value of realistic).

So a master locksmith is probably going to be able to crack open locks, but in the vein of tense heist movie scene there might be complications, which the game attempts to emulate. What those complications are, up to the player and GM but unless there is some chance or interesting result from failure the action succeeds by default since most narrative games operate on the assumption the characters are competent at they things they are supposed to be doing. Not necessarily successful, but competent.

Thinker
2016-12-29, 11:11 AM
Is AW/PbtA a character-driven system, or a narrative-driven system? (See above post.)

"Hard" seems subjective and even a bit nebulous, and appears to encompass diverging concepts as much as "Strength" or "Intelligence" would.

PbtA is focused pretty firmly on the characters. The world will move on without them, but ultimately the characters are where the interesting bits happen. The duke might want to start a war to gain access to spice and bring about the apocalypse has been foretold, but it's up to the players/characters about whether or not they want to interfere and how much they want to do so. There isn't a narrative like in a novel or movie - the GM doesn't know what will happen any more than the players do except for having some ideas for how the duke's plan plays out without meddling. Additionally, there are mechanics for character interactions and resolving past history, which typically leads to XP (manipulating the players into playing with their backgrounds).

The stats in PbtA games are probably more nebulous than stats in DnD, GURPS, or the like. It just doesn't pretend it's an objective score that rates a character's mental or physical aspects. It leaves that part up to the player to decide - why is the character this way?

Knaight
2016-12-29, 12:09 PM
One of the advantages that hasn't been discussed in terms of role playing is the way the reward structure of a game (along with other mechanical aspects) suggests for the PC group as a whole to act, thus limiting what characters fit within group expectations. D&D is specifically made to focus on party vs. environment play, and a lot of D&D players get really annoyed when you bring a character who is suboptimal to a game, or when you play a character making a mistake deliberately, or any number of other things. It's not what the game focuses on. Meanwhile in something like Fiasco the way the game is structured is explicitly for screwups who get themselves in ludicrous amounts of trouble, and so bringing that sort of character isn't just allowed it's encouraged.


For example, looking at FATE, I don't see any "characteristics" on the characters -- no Intelligence, or Strength, or... whatever. From what I've read elsewhere and here, I'm surmising that characters don't have objective measures of their core capabilities, but rather those capabilities are subservient to their "role" in the narrative, or somehow otherwise subjective based on the needs of the narrative.

Yeah, no. The absence of attributes is because a decision was made to collapse them into skills - the game doesn't care if you're an excellent scientist because you're really smart and have limited training or generally not too bright but happen to have a knack for it specifically or whatever else. Similarly it doesn't really care how much of your fighting skill comes from being strong and fast versus how much of it comes from technical skill. The narrative doesn't come up at all here, this part is just the choice to focus on the skill system instead of having both skills and attributes. That's the sort of thing that crops up so often within the context of games that are explicitly simulationist.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-29, 01:31 PM
Oh, they still have skills, with numerical ratings at least in the FATE Core ruleset. Characters still have stress tracks, that are modified by the skill levels. They still have numerical benefits, its just that the narrative parts of the game are the core of how a character is described. So Conan is a Might Thewed Barbarian, he isn't a human with the barbarian class and a strength of 18/00 for example. In the narrative a Mighty Thewed Barbarian can do all of the things such a character should be able to do to, since we're telling stories about Might Thewed Barbarians. FATE as a whole is looser in terms of what is permissible than D&D, or many other games with more concrete stats.

In general the Aspects are essential truths about your character. The two biggest ones are the High Aspect, and the Trouble.

High Aspect: core conceit of a character, a very high level description. The Dark Knight Detective for example might be Batman's.
Trouble: Something that gets your character into trouble, a character flaw or background issue you have. Extensive Rogue's Gallery, again for Batman.

You then get a few other aspects that basically describe your first adventure, or what precipitated the character doing what they are doing now. Then you work with one other player (usually sitting left or right) to come up with a reason why their character knows yours, trade left (or right) again and explain how that character knows yours. This creates two new Aspects that you come up with based on those stories. These aspects effectively describe your character, and allow other characters to take advantage of the aspects, or you as a player can trigger the aspects to give yourself bonuses on skills rolls as long as the two things are related, or you can come up with a reason why they are related.

So character creation is a collaborative effort and is as much a part of the game as the rolling dice. So FATE doesn't really allow you to come up with a character completely on your own.

Skills are fairly general, and customized to the game one wants to play. If you're playing a magical ponies game one might want to include a specific skill for Magic, but remove skills that aren't important. By the same token a space explorers game where maybe magic doesn't exist but there are some extra skills about exploration or using computers.

Skills are rated, at least to start, range from Average (+1) to Great (+4). Using Fate points, or getting advantages from aspects can provide up to an additional +2 bonus. There are stunts (say Ninja Training to give a +2 bonus to try and hide when its dark) and other things as well that provide circumstantial benefits to skills as well, but that's a bit beyond what I think I'm trying to explain.


That strikes me as precisely the sort of "characters and their abilities are defined by their archetype / role in the story" thing that I want to avoid completely, both in fiction and in games.




Narrative Causality is a bit of a mis-nomer when really character driven/character-centered games are probably better described as narrative logic games. The games aren't attempting to simulate a "real" world any more than Die Hard is attempting to actually simulate a real world. Die Hard is a grounded action movie, in that it doesn't go completely over the top the way Commando can be. But Die Hard does follow certain conventions as a movie, and more specifically as an action movie. Many narrative games have rules in place to emulate the way any given action would work in a movie, rather than rules to simulate a specific action would play out in some kind of realistic way (for any given value of realistic).

So a master locksmith is probably going to be able to crack open locks, but in the vein of tense heist movie scene there might be complications, which the game attempts to emulate. What those complications are, up to the player and GM but unless there is some chance or interesting result from failure the action succeeds by default since most narrative games operate on the assumption the characters are competent at they things they are supposed to be doing. Not necessarily successful, but competent.


I'd say Narrative Causality isn't a misnomer, and that the misnomer would instead be using "narrative" to describe character-driven/centric games.

As for what "narrative games" are trying to emulate -- I get that. That attempt to emulate genre contrivances conventions and "story structure" is part of why I'm put off by most of those games.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-29, 01:47 PM
One of the advantages that hasn't been discussed in terms of role playing is the way the reward structure of a game (along with other mechanical aspects) suggests for the PC group as a whole to act, thus limiting what characters fit within group expectations. D&D is specifically made to focus on party vs. environment play, and a lot of D&D players get really annoyed when you bring a character who is suboptimal to a game, or when you play a character making a mistake deliberately, or any number of other things. It's not what the game focuses on. Meanwhile in something like Fiasco the way the game is structured is explicitly for screwups who get themselves in ludicrous amounts of trouble, and so bringing that sort of character isn't just allowed it's encouraged.


This is just a personal preference, I guess, but I have a fairly low tolerance for the "screw up" character archetype and its subtropes. I can at least understand them if the fictional work is of the sort where they fit (farce, satire, certain forms of comedy), but even that gets old. When a character is defined by their ineptitude in a setting/story where competence would appear to be possible and needed, and that character shows no sign of growth, and yet somehow keeps showing up and surviving and being dragged along by the other characters... it's like nails on a chalkboard.




Yeah, no. The absence of attributes is because a decision was made to collapse them into skills - the game doesn't care if you're an excellent scientist because you're really smart and have limited training or generally not too bright but happen to have a knack for it specifically or whatever else. Similarly it doesn't really care how much of your fighting skill comes from being strong and fast versus how much of it comes from technical skill. The narrative doesn't come up at all here, this part is just the choice to focus on the skill system instead of having both skills and attributes. That's the sort of thing that crops up so often within the context of games that are explicitly simulationist.


Perhaps it is the case, then, that some advocates for the games in question (posting elsewhere) tend to project their own love of narrative systems into the mechanics even when it's not an accurate depiction of the design intent of some part thereof, because one can easily get the impression that, for example, FATE has "aspects" instead of "characteristics" specifically because of the narrative-driven nature of the system.

obryn
2016-12-29, 01:49 PM
That strikes me as precisely the sort of "characters and their abilities are defined by their archetype / role in the story" thing that I want to avoid completely, both in fiction and in games.
Fate's skills are pretty much as 'trad' as it comes. It's far and away the least narrative part of the system. They aren't tied to any attributes, but that'd be a pretty weird measure to rate them by.

Aspects are a lot more freeform, but again it's not about a role in the story; they are broad but relatively objective descriptors of the character's experience, training, competencies, connections, and complications. They're much less archetypal than - say - D&D's classes.


As for what "narrative games" are trying to emulate -- I get that. That attempt to emulate genre contrivances conventions and "story structure" is part of why I'm put off by most of those games.
If everyone agrees that this is a matter of simple preference, why are we even arguing about it? If you want to know what others get out of it, I think it's been explained by now. But just in case, here's my perspective.

If I'm running a superhero game, I want it to run and play like a comic book reads. If I'm running a Star Wars game, I want it to run and play like a Star Wars movie or show. If I'm running Feng Shui, I want it to feel like the players are in the middle of a Jackie Chan or Jet Li or John Woo-directed action movie. To this end - which is a pure value statement, and not in the least an objective claim about what all RPGs should aspire towards - I expect the rules of the game to create those kinds of play experiences.

If you have zero interest in genre conventions or having your games naturally unfold like movies, shows, or books - that's just fine. That's simply not something that you value, and it's why we have games like GURPS.

Beleriphon
2016-12-29, 01:49 PM
That strikes me as precisely the sort of "characters and their abilities are defined by their archetype / role in the story" thing that I want to avoid completely, both in fiction and in games.

But they aren't defined by the archetype. They still have skills that actually determine how competent characters are, the other stuff just determines what kind of bonuses the players can justify or use.





I'd say Narrative Causality isn't a misnomer, and that the misnomer would instead be using "narrative" to describe character-driven/centric games.

As for what "narrative games" are trying to emulate -- I get that. That attempt to emulate genre contrivances conventions and "story structure" is part of why I'm put off by most of those games.

But the game isn't following a story structure per se. Its not like it has a beginning middle and end, at least no more so than any other game's structure has that. The important part is emulation of conventions of certain genres. If you want to have a heist game in the vein of Ocean's Eleven or Now You See Me then D&D probably isn't the best game, while FATE might work better since the game is to emulate the way those kinds of scenarios play out.

You're complaint about contrivances seems misplaced, specifically since all games that emulate any kind of genre are going to have rules that work towards emulating them. A superhero game should have rules in place that explain why a dude that can lift 1000 tons doesn't make bank robbers explode when he punches them, that's a genre convention as much as the pacing of the game to match a comic book's pacing.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-29, 02:05 PM
But the game isn't following a story structure per se. Its not like it has a beginning middle and end, at least no more so than any other game's structure has that. The important part is emulation of conventions of certain genres. If you want to have a heist game in the vein of Ocean's Eleven or Now You See Me then D&D probably isn't the best game, while FATE might work better since the game is to emulate the way those kinds of scenarios play out.

You're complaint about contrivances seems misplaced, specifically since all games that emulate any kind of genre are going to have rules that work towards emulating them. A superhero game should have rules in place that explain why a dud that can lift 1000 tons doesn't make bank robbers explode when he punches them, that's a genre convention as much as the pacing of the game to match a comic book's pacing.


One of the things that I liked about Champions (HERO) is that someone who can lift 1 kiloton does enough damage with their default unpulled punch or kick or bearhug to kill a normal person. (75 STR = 15d6 damage, average of 15 BODY damage from that roll... and the average normal person has 10 BODY.)

Beleriphon
2016-12-29, 02:56 PM
One of the things that I liked about Champions (HERO) is that someone who can lift 1 kiloton does enough damage with their default unpulled punch or kick or bearhug to kill a normal person. (75 STR = 15d6 damage, average of 15 BODY damage from that roll... and the average normal person has 10 BODY.)

And most superhero games do the same thing, but they still have a rule in place to explain why that doesn't happen. Whatever that specific rule happens to be. Champions has plenty of rules that cleave to superhero conventions pretty closely, in particular how Doctor Destoryer seems to keep escaping or worse coming back from the dead.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-29, 03:04 PM
And most superhero games do the same thing, but they still have a rule in place to explain why that doesn't happen. Whatever that specific rule happens to be. Champions has plenty of rules that cleave to superhero conventions pretty closely, in particular how Doctor Destoryer seems to keep escaping or worse coming back from the dead.

Champions doesn't (or didn't) flinch from the implications of being strong enough to lift 1000 tons -- if a character that strong didn't pull their punches or something, hitting average normals would kill them.

"Doctor Destroyer escapes again" wasn't baked into the rules at all, unless some published version of him that I missed had an actual power built around that trope (which would be quite expensive, really).

Thrudd
2016-12-29, 03:19 PM
You're complaint about contrivances seems misplaced, specifically since all games that emulate any kind of genre are going to have rules that work towards emulating them.

That is true, but the point here is that not all games are designed to emulate a genre. Some are meant to simulate a fictional world and people in a more objective way, and let the players interact with the world in similar ways that they interact with the real world.

Beleriphon
2016-12-29, 03:34 PM
That is true, but the point here is that not all games are designed to emulate a genre. Some are meant to simulate a fictional world and people in a more objective way, and let the players interact with the world in similar ways that they interact with the real world.

Very true, but most games have a genre. D&D has gotten to the point that its a genre unto itself. All Flesh Must Be Eaten is about emulating zombie apocalypse fiction. Champions and Mutants & Masterminds are designed for superheroing. Traveller is space opera. GURPS doesn't have a default genre, but it is also designed to be as generic as possible and then customeize how it works for a given group.

Even realistic interaction a genre of some kind, the game is about something even if that something is relative mundane. If I'm going to write Seinfeld the RPG it needs to emulate an episode of Seinfeld, even though nobody on the show does anything particularly out of the ordinary, as far as actually physical abilities go anyways.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-29, 03:42 PM
Very true, but most games have a genre. D&D has gotten to the point that its a genre unto itself. All Flesh Must Be Eaten is about emulating zombie apocalypse fiction. Champions and Mutants & Masterminds are designed for superheroing. Traveller is space opera. GURPS doesn't have a default genre, but it is also designed to be as generic as possible and then customeize how it works for a given group.

Even realistic interaction a genre of some kind, the game is about something even if that something is relative mundane. If I'm going to write Seinfeld the RPG it needs to emulate an episode of Seinfeld, even though nobody on the show does anything particularly out of the ordinary.


As the editions kept going, Champions become the superheroic-specific subset of HERO. HERO itself is entirely genre-less. I'll admit that HERO doesn't handle to a "normals" game as well as it could, due to its origins as a superheroic game, but that's entirely about scale, granularity, etc, and not at all about genre-specific rules.

I'm not at all sure I would agree that "real world" is a genre.

Beleriphon
2016-12-29, 04:03 PM
As the editions kept going, Champions become the superheroic-specific subset of HERO. HERO itself is entirely genre-less.

I'll admit that HERO doesn't handle to a "normals" game as well as it could, due to its origins as a superheroic game, but that's entirely about scale, granularity, etc, and not at all about genre-specific rules.

I know, I'm familiar with HERO. It does however have plenty of suggestions about how to mold the base rules into the genre you want. No game is completely about not having a genre. You can't just play the game HERO without determining what kind of game you want to play, whether the rules compliment or detract from the type of game you want is a different question. That said none of that really has anything to do with narrative rules or not.

My point was more that every game reinforces the genre it is emulating in some fashion or another, or at least provides suggestions about how to emulate genre using the rules in the game. Narrative games work on the basis of emulating fiction, by reinforcing certain conventions from fiction without taking away from the game part of an RPG. FATE still roles dice, random chance still plays a large part, it even still had statistics to keep track of in the form of skills. However the difference between a 10 strength and a 15 strength is immaterial since the how something is achieved is often less important than why a character is doing something or what they will do about a situation.

Thrudd
2016-12-29, 05:15 PM
Very true, but most games have a genre. D&D has gotten to the point that its a genre unto itself. All Flesh Must Be Eaten is about emulating zombie apocalypse fiction. Champions and Mutants & Masterminds are designed for superheroing. Traveller is space opera. GURPS doesn't have a default genre, but it is also designed to be as generic as possible and then customeize how it works for a given group.

Even realistic interaction a genre of some kind, the game is about something even if that something is relative mundane. If I'm going to write Seinfeld the RPG it needs to emulate an episode of Seinfeld, even though nobody on the show does anything particularly out of the ordinary, as far as actually physical abilities go anyways.

I think it comes down to whether the game means to primarily simulate certain types of stories, or whether it means to simulate a type of world/reality. Do you want the game to play out like a movie or a novel, with certain types of genre appropriate narrative beats and pacing? Or do you want the game to work as though the players are living in a fictional world (which may happen to be based on or inspired by the setting found in movies or novels)? Should the world react to the players as though it were a real, living world, or should the world react as it would be expected in a type of story?

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-29, 06:45 PM
I think it comes down to whether the game means to primarily simulate certain types of stories, or whether it means to simulate a type of world/reality. Do you want the game to play out like a movie or a novel, with certain types of genre appropriate narrative beats and pacing? Or do you want the game to work as though the players are living in a fictional world (which may happen to be based on or inspired by the setting found in movies or novels)? Should the world react to the players as though it were a real, living world, or should the world react as it would be expected in a type of story?


Well said, yes. There's a huge difference between those two setups, and there are places where they absolutely do not and cannot overlap.

(Should be pretty obvious at this point which one I choose 100 out of 100 times...)

Thrudd
2016-12-29, 07:14 PM
Well said, yes. There's a huge difference between those two setups, and there are places where they absolutely do not and cannot overlap.

(Should be pretty obvious at this point which one I choose 100 out of 100 times...)

I enjoy both, but I also think there should be little or no overlap. A game should know what it's supposed to be and its rules should reflect that. If it's Feng Shui, then it's going to be kung fu/action movie tropes. If it's a fantasy hex/dungeon crawl then it's going to be verisimilitude and world simulation.

The Glyphstone
2016-12-29, 07:17 PM
What if the campaign is set in Discworld, where the physics literally run on narrative causality?:smallwink:

obryn
2016-12-29, 07:48 PM
Well said, yes. There's a huge difference between those two setups, and there are places where they absolutely do not and cannot overlap.

(Should be pretty obvious at this point which one I choose 100 out of 100 times...)
You know this is quite literally what everyone has been saying for 5 pages, right? :smallbiggrin:

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-29, 07:59 PM
What if the campaign is set in Discworld, where the physics literally run on narrative causality?:smallwink:

I'd consider those worlds special cases... same thing if someone wanted to set up a campaign set in the Hitchhiker's setting, or a Vonnegut novel.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-29, 08:06 PM
You know this is quite literally what everyone has been saying for 5 pages, right? :smallbiggrin:

No, not really.

I've seen a lot of people saying things that seemed to be equating emulating a fictional setting and emulating the fiction -- and the only way that's actually the same thing is if "narrative causality" is explicitly the "physics" of that setting.

Or if the writer(s) have avoided narrative and plot contrivances

RedWarlock
2016-12-29, 09:24 PM
What kind of 'plot contrivances' do you see coming out of such a game? (Give us something concrete to dispute, here.)

Edit: You mentioned something earlier, what, in your opinion, is the difference between emulating a genre, and emulating genre fiction?

georgie_leech
2016-12-29, 09:37 PM
It might also be bothering me that there's this Behaviorist / Skinnerian notion here of "rewarding" players to influence their behavior. Not only does it seem just a bit creepy to me, it's also the sort of thing that I instinctively respond negatively to.

Just wanted to come back to this for a bit. Stepping away from RPG's entirely for a moment, does it bother you then that, say, Mario games have points awarded for doing things like finishing levels quickly or jumping on a bunch of enemies in a row without touching the ground? Because that's a mechanic designed to encourage players to get better at the platforming by "rewarding" them with an increased score. And I'd say that "getting better at the game" is generally something most game designers would like players to do.

No gotcha's or trick questions here, I'm genuinely just trying to understand where you're coming from here.

veti
2016-12-29, 09:51 PM
One of the things that I liked about Champions (HERO) is that someone who can lift 1 kiloton does enough damage with their default unpulled punch or kick or bearhug to kill a normal person. (75 STR = 15d6 damage, average of 15 BODY damage from that roll... and the average normal person has 10 BODY.)

It seems to me that you are quite strongly invested in the basic model of "quantifiable damage, hit point totals, KO at zero HP" that has basically been the industry default ever since D&D first popularised it back in the 70s. But some games, and FATE is prominent among them, don't use this model at all. There's no such thing as hit points (by any name) in FATE.

But the game handles wounding and death just as well and, I would say, just as rigorously as D&D does. Indeed, I would say it handles them better - because wounds affect actions, which is something that's always been conspicuous in its absence from D&D (and has always needed to be explained away with implausible handwaving and - brace yourself - appeals to narrative conventions, in the form "fantasy heroes can keep fighting to the end").

I get that you don't like the idea of FATE. That's fine, you don't have to play it. But if you are criticising it on the grounds that it's "unrealistic", I would respectfully ask you to consider the frickin' lumberyard in your own eye as well.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-29, 11:01 PM
It seems to me that you are quite strongly invested in the basic model of "quantifiable damage, hit point totals, KO at zero HP" that has basically been the industry default ever since D&D first popularised it back in the 70s. But some games, and FATE is prominent among them, don't use this model at all. There's no such thing as hit points (by any name) in FATE.

But the game handles wounding and death just as well and, I would say, just as rigorously as D&D does. Indeed, I would say it handles them better - because wounds affect actions, which is something that's always been conspicuous in its absence from D&D (and has always needed to be explained away with implausible handwaving and - brace yourself - appeals to narrative conventions, in the form "fantasy heroes can keep fighting to the end").

I get that you don't like the idea of FATE. That's fine, you don't have to play it. But if you are criticising it on the grounds that it's "unrealistic", I would respectfully ask you to consider the frickin' lumberyard in your own eye as well.


The only reason FATE keeps coming up is because other people keep bringing it up as an example, or because for some reason they mistakenly THINK I'm singling out FATE. You'll notice that in the post you replied to, for example, I never mention FATE. I've even said that this thread wasn't to trash FATE, and that I'm not specifically targeting FATE.

I've also said that D&D is one of my least favorite systems for a multitude of reasons.

But the discussion is right back to D&D vs FATE... with the apparent presumption that I'm some sort of D&D-partisan who is attacking FATE. All based on a statement that I liked the way HERO/Champions deals with superstrength and damage to "normals".


And yet people wonder why I keep referring to the false dichotomy.

RazorChain
2016-12-29, 11:20 PM
It seems to me that you are quite strongly invested in the basic model of "quantifiable damage, hit point totals, KO at zero HP" that has basically been the industry default ever since D&D first popularised it back in the 70s. But some games, and FATE is prominent among them, don't use this model at all. There's no such thing as hit points (by any name) in FATE.

But the game handles wounding and death just as well and, I would say, just as rigorously as D&D does. Indeed, I would say it handles them better - because wounds affect actions, which is something that's always been conspicuous in its absence from D&D (and has always needed to be explained away with implausible handwaving and - brace yourself - appeals to narrative conventions, in the form "fantasy heroes can keep fighting to the end").

I get that you don't like the idea of FATE. That's fine, you don't have to play it. But if you are criticising it on the grounds that it's "unrealistic", I would respectfully ask you to consider the frickin' lumberyard in your own eye as well.

It has been well established that DnD handles wounding and death atrociously so that's setting the bar at it's lowest

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-30, 12:02 AM
What kind of 'plot contrivances' do you see coming out of such a game? (Give us something concrete to dispute, here.)

Edit: You mentioned something earlier, what, in your opinion, is the difference between emulating a genre, and emulating genre fiction?


The context there was the difference between emulating a fictional setting, versus emulating the fiction -- and that the only way those can be matched overlapping sets is if either the fictional world explicit operates with "narrative causality" as its "physics", or if the writer(s) of said fiction were pretty fastidious in avoiding plot contrivances. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThePlotDemandedThisIndex)

Those sorts of plot contrivances are the result of narrative causality (which literally means that things happen because the plot demands it, or because it makes "a better story", regardless of the plausibility or probability).

SOME advocates of narrative-focused RPG systems SEEM to view those sorts of plot contrivances as desirable, rather than as something to be avoided. See, the previous discussion on whether "gun jams when the PC tries to shoot the Big Bad " is a bit of genre-appropriate fun, or an eye-roll-worthy cliche.




Just wanted to come back to this for a bit. Stepping away from RPG's entirely for a moment, does it bother you then that, say, Mario games have points awarded for doing things like finishing levels quickly or jumping on a bunch of enemies in a row without touching the ground? Because that's a mechanic designed to encourage players to get better at the platforming by "rewarding" them with an increased score. And I'd say that "getting better at the game" is generally something most game designers would like players to do.

No gotcha's or trick questions here, I'm genuinely just trying to understand where you're coming from here.


I'd be less bugged by it if they just gave out the higher score because those things are more difficult, or to increase the replay value by giving players extra things to shoot for.

Lord Raziere
2016-12-30, 12:54 AM
SOME advocates of narrative-focused RPG systems SEEM to view those sorts of plot contrivances as desirable, rather than as something to be avoided. See, the previous discussion on whether "gun jams when the PC tries to shoot the Big Bad " is a bit of genre-appropriate fun, or an eye-roll-worthy cliche.

You see, the great thing about all these systems though?

You can either include all the cliches, none of the cliches, or just some of the cliches, and they are valid ways to play no matter which one you choose. If you run a narrative system not doing a single thing from any action movie ever, it will work just as well as if you did. Just for different reasons.

a simulation system like you propose, while having the good points of objectivity or whatever, can have its own problems. A simulation for a modern world is different from a simulation of a medieval one. Thus requiring a lot of supplementary rules to deal with the differences in one system. and these are only two situations out of the potentially infinite conjurations of the imagination. GURPs of course fixes this by....just making a lot of supplements, they don't care, they get more money for it. and if your willing to go through all those supplements to get that simulation fix and 4-5 other people just as willing, your golden.

but then there are other people:
-people who might not want to spend so much learning such comprehensive rules for a single setting. They want to get right to the good stuff, they want to play more than one setting, they want to try a lot of character concepts and don't have time to write up a comprehensive sheet how they are exactly simulated in the world, just so much stuff they want to do and not enough time to make a fancy fully simulated thing for it that covers every situation.
-there are some people who just like light systems better and narrative systems are often lighter. mostly because again, not wanting to learn so many rules. its just better for them to get an elegant system that they can flexibly use a couple light tools to accomplish a lot rather than needing a full machine to get a single thing done in all its intricacy.
-money. some people don't want to spend a lot of money to simulate everything, so they get a system that accomplishes more with less, like above.
-with simulation systems, there are ALWAYS a couple of uh....glitches in the programming. DnD is an extreme very overused example of this, like its supposed to be a simulation but start optimizing it and everything breaks, but other systems have this problem as well but to lesser degrees. Far lesser degrees, but they still have it nonetheless. some people use narrative systems because their entire premise is agreeing not to abuse the chassis and rules your playing with, because every system can be broken and everyone there is mature enough to recognize that you don't have the time for that bull and just want a fun game y'know? its like martial arts: you learn it, so that you know when not to abuse it.

so yeah, its not just for the sake of the narrative itself that people get these kinds of system,its also because of things time, money, efficiency, flexibility, simplicity, less likely to be broken through player action, things like that.

Simulationist systems on the other hand that can do the setting modeling you want, require a lot of time and money investment for something more complex, intricate and models less with more, and as the number of moving parts increase, so does the likelihood of some previously unforeseen combination coming up that breaks the game when used. But hey, if thats your cup of tea that your willing to drink, why stop you? Its what you value, I'm just pointing out all the things people can value instead that are viable reasons to purchase these systems, other than the cliche thing.

georgie_leech
2016-12-30, 02:02 AM
I'd be less bugged by it if they just gave out the higher score because those things are more difficult, or to increase the replay value by giving players extra things to shoot for.

Okay, so more difficult things should be more rewarding then? That is, the mechanics of the game should reward taking on more difficult challenges? Why's that? Doesn't that encourage taking on more difficult challenges instead of exploring the 2d map, or discouraging not defeating enemies?

Super Mario Bros. really only has three rewards: game progress, which results in harder challenges, extra lives (in the case of coins 1/100 thereof) that let you reattempt failed challenges, and points, which come from more expertly overcoming challenges. The mechanics of the game encourage you to go about overcoming platforming challenges even though you could theoretically have fun other ways. Is it a bad thing that Super Mario Bros. wants the player to get better at the game?

Koo Rehtorb
2016-12-30, 02:47 AM
I'm continually surprised by the amount of discussion people can get out of "Different people like different things."

Fri
2016-12-30, 03:01 AM
I'm continually surprised by the amount of discussion people can get out of "Different people like different things."

Well, different people like different things :smalltongue:

obryn
2016-12-30, 08:29 AM
The only reason FATE keeps coming up is because other people keep bringing it up as an example, or because for some reason they mistakenly THINK I'm singling out FATE.
Not really; I wouldn't take it personally. It is just the most well-known and popular exemplar of some of the narrative approaches you're discussing. It's also got one foot planted firmly in the traditional RPG systems, so it's not a completely alien beast.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-30, 06:20 PM
You see, the great thing about all these systems though?

You can either include all the cliches, none of the cliches, or just some of the cliches, and they are valid ways to play no matter which one you choose. If you run a narrative system not doing a single thing from any action movie ever, it will work just as well as if you did. Just for different reasons.

a simulation system like you propose, while having the good points of objectivity or whatever, can have its own problems. A simulation for a modern world is different from a simulation of a medieval one. Thus requiring a lot of supplementary rules to deal with the differences in one system. and these are only two situations out of the potentially infinite conjurations of the imagination. GURPs of course fixes this by....just making a lot of supplements, they don't care, they get more money for it. and if your willing to go through all those supplements to get that simulation fix and 4-5 other people just as willing, your golden.

but then there are other people:
-people who might not want to spend so much learning such comprehensive rules for a single setting. They want to get right to the good stuff, they want to play more than one setting, they want to try a lot of character concepts and don't have time to write up a comprehensive sheet how they are exactly simulated in the world, just so much stuff they want to do and not enough time to make a fancy fully simulated thing for it that covers every situation.
-there are some people who just like light systems better and narrative systems are often lighter. mostly because again, not wanting to learn so many rules. its just better for them to get an elegant system that they can flexibly use a couple light tools to accomplish a lot rather than needing a full machine to get a single thing done in all its intricacy.
-money. some people don't want to spend a lot of money to simulate everything, so they get a system that accomplishes more with less, like above.
-with simulation systems, there are ALWAYS a couple of uh....glitches in the programming. DnD is an extreme very overused example of this, like its supposed to be a simulation but start optimizing it and everything breaks, but other systems have this problem as well but to lesser degrees. Far lesser degrees, but they still have it nonetheless. some people use narrative systems because their entire premise is agreeing not to abuse the chassis and rules your playing with, because every system can be broken and everyone there is mature enough to recognize that you don't have the time for that bull and just want a fun game y'know? its like martial arts: you learn it, so that you know when not to abuse it.

so yeah, its not just for the sake of the narrative itself that people get these kinds of system,its also because of things time, money, efficiency, flexibility, simplicity, less likely to be broken through player action, things like that.

Simulationist systems on the other hand that can do the setting modeling you want, require a lot of time and money investment for something more complex, intricate and models less with more, and as the number of moving parts increase, so does the likelihood of some previously unforeseen combination coming up that breaks the game when used. But hey, if thats your cup of tea that your willing to drink, why stop you? Its what you value, I'm just pointing out all the things people can value instead that are viable reasons to purchase these systems, other than the cliche thing.


Thing is... the "ideal" simulationist system would need expansions, not variations. It would be, in effect, time-traveler proof.

The base simulationist system should be usable for a medieval world, a modern world, a hard SF world, a soft SF world, whatever world. The details of the setting and the equipment available and the skills characters could take and the species/races available would all vary, yes. But a sword is a sword, and works as a sword works.

The only time that "ideal" system would need actual variation, is if the world you're building has serious differences in the "physics".

Knaight
2016-12-30, 06:30 PM
Thing is... the "ideal" simulationist system would need expansions, not variations. It would be, in effect, time-traveler proof.

The base simulationist system should be usable for a medieval world, a modern world, a hard SF world, a soft SF world, whatever world. The details of the setting and the equipment available and the skills characters could take and the species/races available would all vary, yes. But a sword is a sword, and works as a sword works.

The only time that "ideal" system would need actual variation, is if the world you're building has serious differences in the "physics".

This runs into a few major problems. First, take attributes - if the system is going to have something like those, it's generally going to try and package them together in a way that makes sense and gets things of roughly comparable utility. That sort of thing is extremely setting dependent though, so you run into issues where things that should be modeled in detail are glossed over and irrelevant side things that you can safely neglect. An analogy here would be engineering modeling - microfluidics design and wastewater flow in industrial wastewater plants follow the same laws of physics. That doesn't mean that the simplified equations actually used in the field for both of them look at much like each other - there's case after case where key components in one are completely neglected in the other. The same thing applies to simulationist systems.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-30, 06:52 PM
We'll just have to disagree. Other than which skills and equipment are listed, I don't see any reason to change objective mechanics as long as you get them right.

georgie_leech
2016-12-30, 06:59 PM
How would you avoid the tech level problem? (http://darthsanddroids.net/episodes/1445.html)

RazorChain
2016-12-30, 07:13 PM
Thing is... the "ideal" simulationist system would need expansions, not variations. It would be, in effect, time-traveler proof.

The base simulationist system should be usable for a medieval world, a modern world, a hard SF world, a soft SF world, whatever world. The details of the setting and the equipment available and the skills characters could take and the species/races available would all vary, yes. But a sword is a sword, and works as a sword works.

The only time that "ideal" system would need actual variation, is if the world you're building has serious differences in the "physics".

Actually Lord Raziere is wrong about Gurps. You use the same rules independent of time periods or if you are playing fantasy or sci fi. In fact you can easily play fantasy sci fi and no rule changes required. As you say, sword is a sword.

What Gurps does is expand upon the core rules like psionics, magic and super powers and even gives options of different magic rules to be used with the core rules and gives you the options to tailor your game to the setting. You can even use different magic rules to represent different magic schools and it all works in with the core rules.

A lot of Gurps supplement dont have much crunch. You have crunch books like martial arts, powers, magic and then you have equipment books like low tech, high tech, ultra tech. And then you have setting books and fluff like Banestorm, Celtic Myths, Rome.

The rules never change but you can expand upon them or use optional rules or cinematic rules as you like.

This means that the GM and players have to clearly define what is in use and what isn't

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-30, 07:14 PM
How would you avoid the tech level problem? (http://darthsanddroids.net/episodes/1445.html)

At least as it applies to weapons as shown in that comic --by basing the damage a weapon does on something other than an arbitrary scale, and actually calibrating across a wider array of possible weapons?

georgie_leech
2016-12-30, 07:29 PM
At least as it applies to weapons as shown in that comic --by basing the damage a weapon does on something other than an arbitrary scale, and actually calibrating across a wider array of possible weapons?

So for instance, you could base it on...? What system isn't arbitrary on some level?

Koo Rehtorb
2016-12-30, 07:43 PM
So for instance, you could base it on...? What system isn't arbitrary on some level?

A universal simulationist system sounds dreadful to me, but I don't think this is as big a problem as you're making it out to be.

For one, I don't think getting shot is particularly more lethal than getting hit with a greatsword. A lot of weapon tech advances are improvements on logistics more than efficiency, easier to mass produce, easier to train people in, etc. All weapons are lethal enough, because that's kind of the point of them.

Which isn't to say weapon efficiency hasn't improved at all, because it obviously has. But a lot of the time that improvement of efficiency is in terms of range and effectiveness vs armour. When it comes down to it the differences between two unarmoured people fighting with swords and two unarmoured people fighting with lightsabers are probably pretty minimal, if you get hit with either you've probably lost the fight.

Edit - in the above example I'd probably say that trying to club Stormtroopers to death with sticks is just ineffective. The sticks do not penetrate their armour, try something else.

RazorChain
2016-12-30, 08:58 PM
So for instance, you could base it on...? What system isn't arbitrary on some level?

Well all systems are arbitrary, some just less so.

Damage of the stick is clearly based on mass and velocity. Those Ewoks are clearly beings of massive strength. Don't forget to account for leverage!

Lord Raziere
2016-12-30, 09:02 PM
Actually Lord Raziere is wrong about Gurps. You use the same rules independent of time periods or if you are playing fantasy or sci fi. In fact you can easily play fantasy sci fi and no rule changes required. As you say, sword is a sword.

What Gurps does is expand upon the core rules like psionics, magic and super powers and even gives options of different magic rules to be used with the core rules and gives you the options to tailor your game to the setting. You can even use different magic rules to represent different magic schools and it all works in with the core rules.

A lot of Gurps supplement dont have much crunch. You have crunch books like martial arts, powers, magic and then you have equipment books like low tech, high tech, ultra tech. And then you have setting books and fluff like Banestorm, Celtic Myths, Rome.

The rules never change but you can expand upon them or use optional rules or cinematic rules as you like.

This means that the GM and players have to clearly define what is in use and what isn't

Yeah but thats not the point:

The point is that you still need a lot of work to get it all working as a setting. and still needs options for those settings to work even if they are an expansion, which is actually what I was talking about, because you need a supplement, and some people don't want the extra work, or expense, or all the time it would take to read, or get all the specialized options and so on. Regardless of the crunch, thats still more books and more stuff and option to learn, that not everyone wants to go through.

RazorChain
2016-12-30, 09:36 PM
Yeah but thats not the point:

The point is that you still need a lot of work to get it all working as a setting. and still needs options for those settings to work even if they are an expansion, which is actually what I was talking about, because you need a supplement, and some people don't want the extra work, or expense, or all the time it would take to read, or get all the specialized options and so on. Regardless of the crunch, thats still more books and more stuff and option to learn, that not everyone wants to go through.

I don't know...just for fun I searched for Fate on drivethru rpg and got 2000+ results, most different settings and expansion powered by Fate. Don't see how this is any different from Gurps...you even have a fate toolkit and accelerated Fate which looks akin to Gurps lite.

Currently I'm running a Gurps game and I use 4 books total Gurps Basic set, martial arts, low tech and magic. Compared other systems I've run(Cyberpunk, DnD, Runequest, Exalted, Warhammer Fantasy) this is actually low number of books and even then I could easily have done without martial arts and low tech.

Lord Raziere
2016-12-30, 09:46 PM
I don't know...just for fun I searched for Fate on drivethru rpg and got 2000+ results, most different settings and expansion powered by Fate. Don't see how this is any different from Gurps...you even have a fate toolkit and accelerated Fate which looks akin to Gurps lite.

Currently I'm running a Gurps game and I use 4 books total Gurps Basic set, martial arts, low tech and magic. Compared other systems I've run(Cyberpunk, DnD, Runequest, Exalted, Warhammer Fantasy) this is actually low number of books and even then I could easily have done without martial arts and low tech.

In Fate, all those games are their own. and each one can pretty much be engineered and house-ruled much easier. they're pretty much all the same system, just their own little versions of the game rather than being an expansion of one. if you want a fantasy thing but still want some universal-ness to fool around with, you don't need even the core book Fate book, it has all the rules in the fantasy book without needing the core book

I've read GURPS lite and it was way too much for me in comparison. None of the options were even interesting.

veti
2016-12-30, 10:11 PM
But the discussion is right back to D&D vs FATE... with the apparent presumption that I'm some sort of D&D-partisan who is attacking FATE. All based on a statement that I liked the way HERO/Champions deals with superstrength and damage to "normals".

But my point is that you like the Champions system because it's firmly grounded in numbers, which can be crunched and understood. The same amount of crunching will tell you that the same punch from the character who can bench 1000 tonnes would not kill a "normal" with some training - a boxer, say, or a soldier, or even a reasonably fit cop. (They'll likely have a higher BODY, and definitely a higher PD.) So it seems to me that the outcome you approve - is a very specific case.

I like Champions too, it's probably my favourite of the "crunchy" systems, but - that doesn't mean "crunchy" is inherently any better than "narrative" - not from any point of the GNS spectrum. The narrative system has different ways of handling resolution, but those ways can actually work better than numerical ones. Both will produce absurdities in some cases. The big difference, I'd say, is that the numerical system will insist on the absurdities (unless you start house-ruling), whereas the more narrative-based system leaves "how silly do you want the world to be" question to the discretion of the players.

obryn
2016-12-30, 10:42 PM
We'll just have to disagree. Other than which skills and equipment are listed, I don't see any reason to change objective mechanics as long as you get them right.
Every game requires abstractions, otherwise it's basically just a perfect model of reality. This is not a neutral decision. The decision about what to abstract, and by how much, will be determined by your design goals and will influence the resulting feel of the game.

kyoryu
2016-12-31, 12:37 AM
I'm coming late to the party, but I'd like to add a few things.

First, I... kind of disagree with the definition of narrative causality that's been tossed around. I view it not as "what makes a good story" or "what should the story do here" or "what must happen to make the story go the 'right' way" and more of "what has been established?"

You can see this in movies and stuff all. The. Time. In Guardians of the Galaxy, we see crazy-ass geysers as we zoom into the opening planet - and so we're not surprised when Star-Lord gets caught by one as he's trying to run out.

That, to me, is narrative causality. It's this rhythm of "establish, then payoff" that occurs all over in fiction. Even knocking someone down, and then taking advantage of that is a small example of this.

So when talking about the "gun misfiring" example, in Fate, specifically, we need to have an aspect somewhere in play before we can make the gun misfire. If we know that the gun is in some way suspect, or has been damaged, or is trouble-prone, then it misfiring doesn't surprise us and meets up with the requirements of narrative causality. If the author hasn't established with the audience, in some way, that the gun misfiring is an expected occurrence, then the audience feels cheated. It's a kind of foreshadowing, or an application of Chekov's gun.

As far as stats in Fate... well, Fate has skills. Some of those skills, like Physique, kind of overlap what traditional stats would do. But in general, Fate is very direct. And what has happened is that games started with stats (D&D), then added skills, and now the stats are really there as just skill bases/modifiers. So Fate mostly just did away with that. Which is nice in a lot of games because it opens up some character options that are difficult to do with stat+skill systems - namely, ones that don't cluster around skills that are based on a single stat.

Now, why would you choose a dependent if you know that dependent will get in trouble? Well, you'd choose it because you know that your character is going to get in trouble (in a more 'narrative' system this is usually a default assumption), and you think that this is a more *interesting* way of getting in trouble. So it's a flag to the GM that this is the kind of trouble you want. In Fate, at least, if you don't want a dependent to get in trouble, you don't make that dependent an aspect, and certainly not a Trouble aspect. In fiction, good characters get in trouble frequently. Han Solo has Jabba the Hutt coming after him. Harry Dresden's arrogance and attempts to "protect" those around him, plus all of his other stuff. Fate assumes the game will revolve around the characters, and so gives the players ways to say "this is the kind of problem I'd like to have, and the kind of story I want my character to be invovled in".

Steel Mirror
2016-12-31, 12:42 AM
Now, why would you choose a dependent if you know that dependent will get in trouble? Well, you'd choose it because you know that your character is going to get in trouble (in a more 'narrative' system this is usually a default assumption), and you think that this is a more *interesting* way of getting in trouble. So it's a flag to the GM that this is the kind of trouble you want. In Fate, at least, if you don't want a dependent to get in trouble, you don't make that dependent an aspect, and certainly not a Trouble aspect. In fiction, good characters get in trouble frequently. Han Solo has Jabba the Hutt coming after him. Harry Dresden's arrogance and attempts to "protect" those around him, plus all of his other stuff. Fate assumes the game will revolve around the characters, and so gives the players ways to say "this is the kind of problem I'd like to have, and the kind of story I want my character to be invovled in".
This is basically just a post because I can't +1 you in this site. But even if all Aspects did was describe a character and then give me (as the GM) a good idea of what kind of challenges you want your character to face and horrible shenanigans you want to find yourself in, it would be one of my favorite things in gaming.

Now as we've talked about before, Aspects end up doing a lot more (and are the mechanic on which Fate turns, once you bring FP into the picture), but the player-to-GM signalling feature is one that has also really helped me evolve as a GM (hopefully for the better).

RazorChain
2016-12-31, 01:30 AM
I'm coming late to the party, but I'd like to add a few things.

First, I... kind of disagree with the definition of narrative causality that's been tossed around. I view it not as "what makes a good story" or "what should the story do here" or "what must happen to make the story go the 'right' way" and more of "what has been established?"

You can see this in movies and stuff all. The. Time. In Guardians of the Galaxy, we see crazy-ass geysers as we zoom into the opening planet - and so we're not surprised when Star-Lord gets caught by one as he's trying to run out.

That, to me, is narrative causality. It's this rhythm of "establish, then payoff" that occurs all over in fiction. Even knocking someone down, and then taking advantage of that is a small example of this.

So when talking about the "gun misfiring" example, in Fate, specifically, we need to have an aspect somewhere in play before we can make the gun misfire. If we know that the gun is in some way suspect, or has been damaged, or is trouble-prone, then it misfiring doesn't surprise us and meets up with the requirements of narrative causality. If the author hasn't established with the audience, in some way, that the gun misfiring is an expected occurrence, then the audience feels cheated. It's a kind of foreshadowing, or an application of Chekov's gun.

This I agree with, this is because of plausibility. Narrative Causality is all over the place in RPG's it's just when it's misused when it becomes a problem and that is when the person who as narrative control (usually the GM) abuses it.

If I am going for a story about betrayal, then as a GM I should use somebody the PC's know and maybe trust. Some random NPC isn't going to evoke the same reaction when he betrays the party.
Now if the party decides to kill my treasured NPC that I've cultivated for my betrayal and I don't allow it to happen. "No, you can't kill him, he's your friend" just so I can have him betray the party in the next scene then it's a case of abusing narrative causality because I've decided on the plot and it can't be altered.

RazorChain
2016-12-31, 01:53 AM
This runs into a few major problems. First, take attributes - if the system is going to have something like those, it's generally going to try and package them together in a way that makes sense and gets things of roughly comparable utility. That sort of thing is extremely setting dependent though, so you run into issues where things that should be modeled in detail are glossed over and irrelevant side things that you can safely neglect. An analogy here would be engineering modeling - microfluidics design and wastewater flow in industrial wastewater plants follow the same laws of physics. That doesn't mean that the simplified equations actually used in the field for both of them look at much like each other - there's case after case where key components in one are completely neglected in the other. The same thing applies to simulationist systems.


Most people think simulationists want to have a rule for every aspect of the world and when I refer to simulationist I mean those who want a system to simulate the real world.

Most simulationists that I know and have played with aren't necessarily striving for this. This is more about realistic expectations. If you shoot a person in the head with a pistol you know the person is most likely going to get badly wounded or die. This is a realistic expectation.

If you take a person who has never roleplayed before and tell her that her character has a pistol and knows how to use it. Now she has a stop the bad guy from running but doesn't want to kill him what will she do? It just comes naturally that she will aim for the leg....or even better the knee. It meets our realistic expectations that if you shoot somebody in the leg it's likely to stop him....and the knee is even better. When that new roleplayer gets a more penalty to attack roll for hitting the knee instead the leg it meets her realistic expectation as the knee is smaller that the leg and therefore harder to hit.

Realistic expectation helps with immersion and comes quite naturally to new roleplayers, you don't even have to explain the rules in detail. Realistic expectation can even cover fiction and superheroes. My realistic expectation is if Superman hits Batman in the face then Batman's face is going splat.

Simulationists don't want crunch just for crunch sake, there are lot's of crunchy systems out there that don't meet my realistic expectations.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-31, 09:14 AM
Every game requires abstractions, otherwise it's basically just a perfect model of reality. This is not a neutral decision. The decision about what to abstract, and by how much, will be determined by your design goals and will influence the resulting feel of the game.


The difference is in how the abstractions are determined, and whether they change every time you have a new setting or "genre".

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-31, 09:27 AM
Most people think simulationists want to have a rule for every aspect of the world and when I refer to simulationist I mean those who want a system to simulate the real world.

Most simulationists that I know and have played with aren't necessarily striving for this. This is more about realistic expectations. If you shoot a person in the head with a pistol you know the person is most likely going to get badly wounded or die. This is a realistic expectation.

If you take a person who has never roleplayed before and tell her that her character has a pistol and knows how to use it. Now she has a stop the bad guy from running but doesn't want to kill him what will she do? It just comes naturally that she will aim for the leg....or even better the knee. It meets our realistic expectations that if you shoot somebody in the leg it's likely to stop him....and the knee is even better. When that new roleplayer gets a more penalty to attack roll for hitting the knee instead the leg it meets her realistic expectation as the knee is smaller that the leg and therefore harder to hit.

Realistic expectation helps with immersion and comes quite naturally to new roleplayers, you don't even have to explain the rules in detail. Realistic expectation can even cover fiction and superheroes. My realistic expectation is if Superman hits Batman in the face then Batman's face is going splat.

Simulationists don't want crunch just for crunch sake, there are lot's of crunchy systems out there that don't meet my realistic expectations.


Even if these forums had +1s, I wouldn't have enough to give to this post. You have it exactly right -- the point of "simulationism" isn't to create a perfect numerical simulation of the real world, it's to create something that feels consistent, and coherent, and fosters verisimilitude. At least that's the point if I'm a simulationist, as people have repeatedly labelled me.

That notion that simulationists want "crunch for the sake of crunch" and "a rule for every little tiny thing" is exactly why I sometimes reject the label, because I know that's what people are presuming and it could not be more wrong. I'm not sure who wants crunch for the sake of crunch, or 1,000,001 rules, but it's not me.

I'd go so far as to say that crunch is tangential to the whole "GNS" discussion... FFG's SW is proclaimed "narrative", but is also crunchy as hell.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-31, 09:32 AM
I'm coming late to the party, but I'd like to add a few things.

First, I... kind of disagree with the definition of narrative causality that's been tossed around. I view it not as "what makes a good story" or "what should the story do here" or "what must happen to make the story go the 'right' way" and more of "what has been established?"

You can see this in movies and stuff all. The. Time. In Guardians of the Galaxy, we see crazy-ass geysers as we zoom into the opening planet - and so we're not surprised when Star-Lord gets caught by one as he's trying to run out.

That, to me, is narrative causality. It's this rhythm of "establish, then payoff" that occurs all over in fiction. Even knocking someone down, and then taking advantage of that is a small example of this.

So when talking about the "gun misfiring" example, in Fate, specifically, we need to have an aspect somewhere in play before we can make the gun misfire. If we know that the gun is in some way suspect, or has been damaged, or is trouble-prone, then it misfiring doesn't surprise us and meets up with the requirements of narrative causality. If the author hasn't established with the audience, in some way, that the gun misfiring is an expected occurrence, then the audience feels cheated. It's a kind of foreshadowing, or an application of Chekov's gun.


This is the sort of thing I'm talking about when I use the term "narrative causality".

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheoryOfNarrativeCausality
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThePlotDemandedThisIndex

(Note that the TV Tropes definition happens to match mine, rather than being the source of mine.)

So it's pretty much the opposite of when effects flow naturally from established causes.

Knaight
2016-12-31, 10:30 AM
We'll just have to disagree. Other than which skills and equipment are listed, I don't see any reason to change objective mechanics as long as you get them right.
Take GURPS - the core attributes are Strength, Agility, Health, and Intellect. Intellect covers basically everything mental, and for a lot of genres that works. Now take a game where the PCs are artificial intelligences that move from chassis to chassis. Suddenly Strength, Agility, and Health don't make a lot of sense as character attributes, and Intellect suddenly becomes way too broad to be useful.


I don't know...just for fun I searched for Fate on drivethru rpg and got 2000+ results, most different settings and expansion powered by Fate. Don't see how this is any different from Gurps...you even have a fate toolkit and accelerated Fate which looks akin to Gurps lite.

Currently I'm running a Gurps game and I use 4 books total Gurps Basic set, martial arts, low tech and magic. Compared other systems I've run(Cyberpunk, DnD, Runequest, Exalted, Warhammer Fantasy) this is actually low number of books and even then I could easily have done without martial arts and low tech.
Those aren't expansions. GURPS is run by Steve Jackson Games, and the expansions are comparable to D&D splatbooks - they're made by the same company and designed to work together to an extent. The Fate games are generally complete games which aren't built to be combined, and the vast majority of them aren't from Evil Hat, the company that actually came up with Fate*. It's similar to how there are a ton of d20 system books that aren't associated with D&D and don't work with it. Sure, you could try to jam in Spycraft or Mutants and Masterminds as splatbooks, but it won't actually work.

*The one that isn't Grey Ghost anyways, but that's a whole different kettle of fish.


Most people think simulationists want to have a rule for every aspect of the world and when I refer to simulationist I mean those who want a system to simulate the real world.

Most simulationists that I know and have played with aren't necessarily striving for this. This is more about realistic expectations. If you shoot a person in the head with a pistol you know the person is most likely going to get badly wounded or die. This is a realistic expectation.

If you take a person who has never roleplayed before and tell her that her character has a pistol and knows how to use it. Now she has a stop the bad guy from running but doesn't want to kill him what will she do? It just comes naturally that she will aim for the leg....or even better the knee. It meets our realistic expectations that if you shoot somebody in the leg it's likely to stop him....and the knee is even better. When that new roleplayer gets a more penalty to attack roll for hitting the knee instead the leg it meets her realistic expectation as the knee is smaller that the leg and therefore harder to hit.

This is the sort of thing I'm talking about when it comes to what gets glossed over. You could have a health model with generic health, a model with body specific injuries at a gross limb level (leg, arm) and associated penalties, and a model with smaller body part injuries (foot, calf, knee, thigh, etc.) and associated penalties. There's an increasing mechanical cost to doing this, and eventually you come into the matter of whether or not its worth it for the game. If the game is about combatants or athletes it might very well be. If the game is meant to simulate career musicians then the vast majority of these are wasted rules. In any simulation, some things are within the simulation and some completely outside of it. Then some things in the simulation are modeled, some are completely ignored.

I'm a primarily simulationist GM who runs mostly generic systems. I'm familiar with the arguments here. I'm also familiar with the numerous reasons that non-generic systems still exist and still see use, and the numerous reasons that narrative systems exist and see use. The design choices that go into choosing to make a system simulationist do inherently give up certain things, and the design choices that go into making a system generic do inherently give up certain things. I mostly still use a simulationist generic system because I highly value the things gained and mostly don't care about the losses (sim works best for me as a GM, generic lets me do the sort of odd stuff that I tend to enjoy GMing setting wise while being worse at straight genre stuff I tend to find less interesting and worse at setting specific stuff for other peoples settings I have very little desire to GM).

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-31, 10:53 AM
But my point is that you like the Champions system because it's firmly grounded in numbers, which can be crunched and understood. The same amount of crunching will tell you that the same punch from the character who can bench 1000 tonnes would not kill a "normal" with some training - a boxer, say, or a soldier, or even a reasonably fit cop. (They'll likely have a higher BODY, and definitely a higher PD.) So it seems to me that the outcome you approve - is a very specific case.


He's still grievously wounded, unless you're giving out BODY like candy.

Also, are you taking knockback damage (or one of the various optional versions) into account?




I like Champions too, it's probably my favourite of the "crunchy" systems, but - that doesn't mean "crunchy" is inherently any better than "narrative" - not from any point of the GNS spectrum. The narrative system has different ways of handling resolution, but those ways can actually work better than numerical ones. Both will produce absurdities in some cases. The big difference, I'd say, is that the numerical system will insist on the absurdities (unless you start house-ruling), whereas the more narrative-based system leaves "how silly do you want the world to be" question to the discretion of the players.


"Crunchy" and "narrative" are not ends of an axis, they're parts of separate, tangential axes.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-31, 10:55 AM
Take GURPS - the core attributes are Strength, Agility, Health, and Intellect. Intellect covers basically everything mental, and for a lot of genres that works. Now take a game where the PCs are artificial intelligences that move from chassis to chassis. Suddenly Strength, Agility, and Health don't make a lot of sense as character attributes, and Intellect suddenly becomes way too broad to be useful.


HERO would handle that by building the PCs as AIs, and the chassis as Automatons or Vehicles.

Knaight
2016-12-31, 11:17 AM
HERO would handle that by building the PCs as AIs, and the chassis as Automatons or Vehicles.

Sure. I picked GURPS as an example because I'm more familiar with it than HERO, but HERO could handle this particular concept just fine. That doesn't mean that it is somehow immune to the fundamental nature of modeling - which is that to make a model you are inherently making a simpler version of something else so that you can actually interact with the model in a way you can't with the reality*, and that what simplifications you should be making depend on what the model is going to be used for and what tools you have to use the model. To use a really generic example in RPGs, take dice. Inasmuch as there is a standard way of modeling randomness in the setting, dice are it. There's the occasional game with no randomizers and the occasional card based system, but dice are ubiquitous. On top of that, there are certain very specific ways dice tend to be used over and over again, and these methods tend to show up so often because they're quickly usable. These algorithms have different applications where some work better than others even in a simulation based game, and while you could choose to break down things by application it's a spectacular way to make a model too complicated to use effectively. Generally a given system will pick one, and even in making that choice the model is being specialized.

*And when I say "the reality", in an RPG context it's much more likely to mean "the setting and its characters".

kyoryu
2016-12-31, 01:29 PM
"Crunchy" and "narrative" are not ends of an axis, they're parts of separate, tangential axes.

The problem is that "narrative" is a vague label that means a number of different things, most of them tangential to the Forge definition, which is as far as I know the origination.

There's the aspect of players being able to make declarations about things beyond their character's immediate control.

There's the aspect of assuming the PCs are protagonists, and not random people.

There's the aspect of treating the imagined world as primary, and the numbers reflect that and are used to resolve actions, rather than the numbers and game widgets "defining" the game world.

By the original definition of "narrative" games, there's the idea of focusing on exploration of theme.

Any individual game can have some of these, none of these, or all of these. There's nothing inherently linking them together.

So "crunchy" doesn't really impact most of these definitions - but it's weakly opposed to the idea of the numbers of the system just being used to reflect the game world and not define it.

Quertus
2016-12-31, 05:30 PM
Multi quoting has failed me for the last time yet again, so I can only hope people know what I'm talking about as I point out some of the many things I've read that confuse me. If anyone can enlighten me how these things I've read make sense, please do so. I apologize if I come off as attacking - I'm just confused to the point of telling my DM that I attempt to disbelieve.

So, the first thing that confuses me is people bringing role-playing into the equation; stranger still, bringing it in on the side of narrative causality. Apparently, by pulling you out of your character and into the metagame, often with corresponding metagame resources and mechanics, this somehow does a better job of putting you in your character's headspace, somehow enables you to better make decisions as the character? I'm thoroughly baffled how that can even be possible.

But, even assuming for the moment that, say, constantly being pulled out of character helps you to see what it means to be in character in the first place... That it doesn't so much enable as teach... Wouldn't it be easier, once you've seen the light and understand what role-playing is, to then set aside the training wheels, and play in a game that lets you stay in character in the first place?

I'm also confused by the discussion of emulating role-playing vs actually role-playing. And, to share my confusion, I'm going to argue both sides of this one.

See, I never understood why people liked roller coasters. So, one day, I decided to emulate those who did. I stuck my arms in the air, and gave an unenthusiastic "whee". I repeated this for a while, steadily raising my volume, until, at one point, I "saw the elephant" - I understood why people found roller coasters fun. These days, I love roller coasters. And I know from experience that one can "get it" through emulation. But there was definitely a point where, to an outside observer, I would appear to love roller coasters, but, inwardly, still considered them a waste of time between me and the "good" stuff.

I'm also confused how there can be people who say that they like FATE's aspects, because it lets the GM know how they want to be challenged (sounds cool to me, mostly), yet there can still be people who can't grasp that taking Teleport is a signal to the GM that maybe overland travel isn't what they are looking for any more. And, perhaps even more confusing, is the existence of people who want to exalt human intelligence and learning over that of AI, when both the former, seemingly incompatible camps exist. :smalltongue:

Personally, I enjoy role-playing for role-playing's sake. Sometimes, I also get to enjoy it as "playing on hard mode", or even as getting replay value of playing through a similar scenario differently because I'm playing a different character this time.

But, all this role-playing talk aside... (Unless someone wants to explain why the definition the OP is using for narrative causality games must somehow be inherently tied into better role-playing mechanics than, say, a more simulation style set of mechanics ever possibly could)... Can anyone explain, assuming both systems encouraged / facilitated / allowed role-playing equally, why someone would prefer a system with narrative causality over one without?

And it's not just talk of role-playing that had me confused. There was also the idea that the underlying mechanics somehow affect the prep and flow for solving a murder mystery.

I've seen - to good and ill effect - GMs create 0-prep murder mysteries on various systems. Personally, I prefer the GM to have established Fact, regardless of what the players know, so that the game remains internally consistent. But 0-prep murder mysteries can be done in any system.

So... Why did it sum like it was only possible in one system but not the other, and how / why did it play out differently to, IIRC, make one more fun than the other?

kyoryu
2016-12-31, 05:43 PM
Unless someone wants to explain why the definition the OP is using for narrative causality games must somehow be inherently tied into better role-playing mechanics than, say, a more simulation style set of mechanics ever possibly could

Again... define "narrative causality". Because I've seen "the PCs are the protagonists of a story" happen as much in D&D as in any other system.

But as to why you might like narrative systems... To me, it's like arguing why someone might like Jeeps, when obviously race cars are better for racing. They're lower to the ground, have tighter suspension, faster engines, etc.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-31, 07:27 PM
The problem is that "narrative" is a vague label that means a number of different things, most of them tangential to the Forge definition, which is as far as I know the origination.


I think these vague, broad, and sometimes conflicting definitions are a major part of why these discussion get so round-about and even contentious. We aren't really making arguments about the same things, yet we don't always realize it.

Just look at how often people think "simulationist" means "wants rules for the sake of rules and the maximum possible crunch", and then assume anyone who sounds "simmy" wants that sort of thing -- when it really has nothing to do with simulationist preferences or systems.

We've seen in these threads that people can't even agree if "narrative" means "character-focused" or "story-focused" or "genre-emulation-focused", or some mix. Given how much I get into the characters and their lives and their thoughts & feelings, and their backstories... I'm a bit miffed at "narrative" trying to lay claim to "character".

This is one of the reasons for my distrust of the whole "GNS" thing.




There's the aspect of players being able to make declarations about things beyond their character's immediate control.


As a GM, that makes me nervous, because it makes my responsibility of presenting a coherent and consistent world harder unless the players are 100% tuned in to the setting details, the atmosphere, and the setting/rules synchronicity. I have NO problem keying off what they like and what they're doing and what they're saying, and taking feedback and suggestions -- I want the game to be engrossing and fun -- but for me it has to go through that filter on my side of the screen.

As a player, that makes me nervous, because it means I'm expected to step out of my character's shoes into these muddied, meta-gamey waters, and puts the things I enjoy the most as a player -- solving "problems and mysteries" in the broad sense, exploration, meeting and interacting with NPCs, etc -- in jeopardy.




There's the aspect of assuming the PCs are protagonists, and not random people.


For me, this is a tricky one. There's a world of difference between the PCs being the protagonists because there's something special about them, even if it's just the circumstances... or the PCs being special "because they're the protagonists". The latter should, IMO, be avoided at just about all costs.

Or, to put it another way, they're the protagonists because the story is about them and the story is about them because they're the protagonists -- but that they are the protagonists is in and of itself nothing special, and "reality" should never warp around them because of it. Whether we're talking fiction or a game, the characters should succeed through their own efforts, never simply because they're "the heroes".




There's the aspect of treating the imagined world as primary, and the numbers reflect that and are used to resolve actions, rather than the numbers and game widgets "defining" the game world.


For me, "perfection" would be synchronicity between the imagined world and the numbers, and the choice would never have to be made. However, perfection is an impossible goal and an abstraction, and given that fact, the imagined world must be primary. As I've said before, the game's mechanics/rules are just the map... the setting and characters are the actual territory. The numbers are just the means, to achieve an end.




By the original definition of "narrative" games, there's the idea of focusing on exploration of theme.


Ugh. No. I got enough haut literary theory in my high school and college lit classes, I don't need more in my games.




So "crunchy" doesn't really impact most of these definitions - but it's weakly opposed to the idea of the numbers of the system just being used to reflect the game world and not define it.


"Rules for the sake of rules" strikes me as leaning more into Gamist territory, if we're stuck with the three pigeon holes.

Lord Raziere
2016-12-31, 07:50 PM
So, the first thing that confuses me is people bringing role-playing into the equation; stranger still, bringing it in on the side of narrative causality. Apparently, by pulling you out of your character and into the metagame, often with corresponding metagame resources and mechanics, this somehow does a better job of putting you in your character's headspace, somehow enables you to better make decisions as the character? I'm thoroughly baffled how that can even be possible.


I'll be honest: I'm thoroughly baffled as to how simulationists can roleplay the way they do it from the other direction. With simulation mechanics, your focusing all your energies on the realistic stuff that you expect for the setting instead of figuring out whats possible for your character. Like, take the world of say....One Punch Man. A vast majority of the world doesn't reach Saitama's power, are far far weaker than him. If you were to come at that world from a simulation perspective, Saitama would be a complete anomaly. A completely unrealistic occurrence in the rules that has no explanation for how its possible or why. Because there is none. There is no explanation for One Punch Man beyond "he just trained a normal regimen and suddenly he is the most powerful being in existence." which contradicts the evidence for 99.9999999999999% of humanity not gaining a similar level of power in his world. Thus its inconsistent with any realistic rule for the setting, and thus can't really be simulated, because he is an exception. the rules would be designed to account for the characters who ARE NOT exceptions and therefore wouldn't be One Punch Man

with a narrative system, you don't have to worry about that. One Punch Man's story is that he is an exception to the rule and how he has to deal with being that extreme of an exception, not just in combat- which is short and ends with everyone dying in one shot, so not really a combat character, just one who ends combat and has to struggle with other things that happen because he participated in combat. and so on.

Similarly, I don't feel like the things I want to do are possible in simulationist systems, because of the emphasis on realistic outcomes, regardless of how much crunch. like simulationist systems are great if you want to build an entire world of pyromancers and deal with only pyromancers and what that world would be like. Narrative systems are for when you want introduce that one hydromancer into a world of pyromancers, when otherwise in a simulationist system you'd have to do more work to get the same effect, and somehow all this emphasis on the actual outcomes and the rules for the entire world is supposed to help you with the character you want to play and not limit you? Because your going for all the most probable, most boring outcomes if your being realistic. You don't get Spiderman or The Flash from a simulation mindset, because a simulation abhors inconsistency and protagonists, and their stories are incredibly inconsistent and full of exceptions to the rules. Characters, what they think and why they are doing anything has nothing to do with realism. Similarly, if you want to pull off some improvised plan to save the day or defeat the boss, and thats the kind of plan your character would come up with, that feels more in character than some simulated thing where they just do a sensible thing thats more boring, because they have to do it.

Like if my character is a dashing swashbuckler who is reckless but good enough to pull off all these stunts, its more in character for him to actually pull those off and feel the rush of doing so, like making a very risky jump- in a narrative system I get a bonus because thats exactly the kind of thing that character would do and survive from, because those are the actions I intend to make with that character, while a simulated system doesn't CARE what actions I WANT to make with that character, they want to focus on the actions I HAVE to make with them, and actions I HAVE to do, are not fun. and in a simulated system if I WANT to do that stuff, I HAVE to meet certain requirements for that system, which I may not want to do, because again: something I HAVE to do is not fun, something I WANT to do is. in a narrative system I don't HAVE to meet any requirements, or think about penalties to doing something risky or any of that. Because I can just make the character I want right off the bat, no requirements I NEED to have, and take the actions I WANT without "ok but you get a -2 to this, and because you rolled bad you crash and look incompetent" that just brings me out of the character I want to play, because I don't my character to crash and look incompetent unless its specifically for comedic effect and thus intended to be a comedic character. See?

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-31, 08:38 PM
I'll be honest: I'm thoroughly baffled as to how simulationists can roleplay the way they do it from the other direction. With simulation mechanics, your focusing all your energies on the realistic stuff that you expect for the setting instead of figuring out whats possible for your character. Like, take the world of say....One Punch Man. A vast majority of the world doesn't reach Saitama's power, are far far weaker than him. If you were to come at that world from a simulation perspective, Saitama would be a complete anomaly. A completely unrealistic occurrence in the rules that has no explanation for how its possible or why. Because there is none. There is no explanation for One Punch Man beyond "he just trained a normal regimen and suddenly he is the most powerful being in existence." which contradicts the evidence for 99.9999999999999% of humanity not gaining a similar level of power in his world. Thus its inconsistent with any realistic rule for the setting, and thus can't really be simulated, because he is an exception. the rules would be designed to account for the characters who ARE NOT exceptions and therefore wouldn't be One Punch Man

with a narrative system, you don't have to worry about that. One Punch Man's story is that he is an exception to the rule and how he has to deal with being that extreme of an exception, not just in combat- which is short and ends with everyone dying in one shot, so not really a combat character, just one who ends combat and has to struggle with other things that happen because he participated in combat. and so on.

Similarly, I don't feel like the things I want to do are possible in simulationist systems, because of the emphasis on realistic outcomes, regardless of how much crunch. like simulationist systems are great if you want to build an entire world of pyromancers and deal with only pyromancers and what that world would be like. Narrative systems are for when you want introduce that one hydromancer into a world of pyromancers, when otherwise in a simulationist system you'd have to do more work to get the same effect, and somehow all this emphasis on the actual outcomes and the rules for the entire world is supposed to help you with the character you want to play and not limit you? Because your going for all the most probable, most boring outcomes if your being realistic. You don't get Spiderman or The Flash from a simulation mindset, because a simulation abhors inconsistency and protagonists, and their stories are incredibly inconsistent and full of exceptions to the rules. Characters, what they think and why they are doing anything has nothing to do with realism. Similarly, if you want to pull off some improvised plan to save the day or defeat the boss, and thats the kind of plan your character would come up with, that feels more in character than some simulated thing where they just do a sensible thing thats more boring, because they have to do it.


Of course you can get Spiderman or the Flash or whoever. A simulationist system doesn't have to emulate the real world, it just has to emulate A world... consistently and coherently. Champions/HERO doesn't have a narrative bone in its body, and it's one of the classic superheroic-game systems. If you're running a world with superheroes, then that's part of the world you're "simulating".

There's nothing inherently anti-exceptionalist about a sim system, either, and nothing that says you can't get that one hydromancer in a world of pyromancers, as long as the player and GM can come up with something that works in the context of the gaming group and the setting.

Simulationism isn't about aping the real world, it's about verisimilitude -- the sense that the world of the game COULD be real -- fostered by consistency, coherence, and synchronicity.


For me, the problem with narrative causality is that it's built on inconsistency, incoherence, disconnection, and asynchronicity... instead of the protagonists being special because of who they are as characters and because of what they're capable of... they're special -- and treated in a special way -- simply because they're The Protagonists, because of their role in the narrative. A protagonist "happens" to bump into the character they need to meet, because the story can't advance until they meet them. The villain is saved from being shot halfway through the story by a "coincidence", because if he dies the story ends. I loath that crap.





Like if my character is a dashing swashbuckler who is reckless but good enough to pull off all these stunts, its more in character for him to actually pull those off and feel the rush of doing so, like making a very risky jump- in a narrative system I get a bonus because thats exactly the kind of thing that character would do and survive from, because those are the actions I intend to make with that character, while a simulated system doesn't CARE what actions I WANT to make with that character, they want to focus on the actions I HAVE to make with them, and actions I HAVE to do, are not fun. and in a simulated system if I WANT to do that stuff, I HAVE to meet certain requirements for that system, which I may not want to do, because again: something I HAVE to do is not fun, something I WANT to do is. in a narrative system I don't HAVE to meet any requirements, or think about penalties to doing something risky or any of that. Because I can just make the character I want right off the bat, no requirements I NEED to have, and take the actions I WANT without "ok but you get a -2 to this, and because you rolled bad you crash and look incompetent" that just brings me out of the character I want to play, because I don't my character to crash and look incompetent unless its specifically for comedic effect and thus intended to be a comedic character. See?


Now, here, you're right. A simulationist system doesn't care about what your character wants. In that, it's just like the real world.

Frankly, I don't want the fictional reality in a story or game, or the system used to "map" it in a game, to give a tinker's damn about what the character wants. What I want is an objective, consistent, coherent "reality" that responds in predictable and repeatable ways, so that it can be interacted with in a naturalistic way.

As Razorchain said:




If you shoot a person in the head with a pistol you know the person is most likely going to get badly wounded or die. This is a realistic expectation.

If you take a person who has never roleplayed before and tell her that her character has a pistol and knows how to use it. Now she has a stop the bad guy from running but doesn't want to kill him what will she do? It just comes naturally that she will aim for the leg....or even better the knee. It meets our realistic expectations that if you shoot somebody in the leg it's likely to stop him....and the knee is even better. When that new roleplayer gets a more penalty to attack roll for hitting the knee instead the leg it meets her realistic expectation as the knee is smaller that the leg and therefore harder to hit.

Realistic expectation helps with immersion and comes quite naturally to new roleplayers, you don't even have to explain the rules in detail.

Quertus
2016-12-31, 08:48 PM
Again... define "narrative causality". Because I've seen "the PCs are the protagonists of a story" happen as much in D&D as in any other system.

But as to why you might like narrative systems... To me, it's like arguing why someone might like Jeeps, when obviously race cars are better for racing. They're lower to the ground, have tighter suspension, faster engines, etc.

Yes, there are plenty of bad games in any system. But I apparently don't - to use your example - understand that people would care about suspension until someone mentions it, or why they care until someone explains it.

And I'm very much trying not to define narrative causality, because we all seem to define it differently, so, out of courtesy to the OP, I say, "by the OP's definition of...".


I'll be honest: I'm thoroughly baffled as to how simulationists can roleplay the way they do it from the other direction. With simulation mechanics, your focusing all your energies on the realistic stuff that you expect for the setting instead of figuring out whats possible for your character. Like, take the world of say....One Punch Man. A vast majority of the world doesn't reach Saitama's power, are far far weaker than him. If you were to come at that world from a simulation perspective, Saitama would be a complete anomaly. A completely unrealistic occurrence in the rules that has no explanation for how its possible or why. Because there is none. There is no explanation for One Punch Man beyond "he just trained a normal regimen and suddenly he is the most powerful being in existence." which contradicts the evidence for 99.9999999999999% of humanity not gaining a similar level of power in his world. Thus its inconsistent with any realistic rule for the setting, and thus can't really be simulated, because he is an exception. the rules would be designed to account for the characters who ARE NOT exceptions and therefore wouldn't be One Punch Man

with a narrative system, you don't have to worry about that. One Punch Man's story is that he is an exception to the rule and how he has to deal with being that extreme of an exception, not just in combat- which is short and ends with everyone dying in one shot, so not really a combat character, just one who ends combat and has to struggle with other things that happen because he participated in combat. and so on.

Similarly, I don't feel like the things I want to do are possible in simulationist systems, because of the emphasis on realistic outcomes, regardless of how much crunch. like simulationist systems are great if you want to build an entire world of pyromancers and deal with only pyromancers and what that world would be like. Narrative systems are for when you want introduce that one hydromancer into a world of pyromancers, when otherwise in a simulationist system you'd have to do more work to get the same effect, and somehow all this emphasis on the actual outcomes and the rules for the entire world is supposed to help you with the character you want to play and not limit you? Because your going for all the most probable, most boring outcomes if your being realistic. You don't get Spiderman or The Flash from a simulation mindset, because a simulation abhors inconsistency and protagonists, and their stories are incredibly inconsistent and full of exceptions to the rules. Characters, what they think and why they are doing anything has nothing to do with realism. Similarly, if you want to pull off some improvised plan to save the day or defeat the boss, and thats the kind of plan your character would come up with, that feels more in character than some simulated thing where they just do a sensible thing thats more boring, because they have to do it.

Like if my character is a dashing swashbuckler who is reckless but good enough to pull off all these stunts, its more in character for him to actually pull those off and feel the rush of doing so, like making a very risky jump- in a narrative system I get a bonus because thats exactly the kind of thing that character would do and survive from, because those are the actions I intend to make with that character, while a simulated system doesn't CARE what actions I WANT to make with that character, they want to focus on the actions I HAVE to make with them, and actions I HAVE to do, are not fun. and in a simulated system if I WANT to do that stuff, I HAVE to meet certain requirements for that system, which I may not want to do, because again: something I HAVE to do is not fun, something I WANT to do is. in a narrative system I don't HAVE to meet any requirements, or think about penalties to doing something risky or any of that. Because I can just make the character I want right off the bat, no requirements I NEED to have, and take the actions I WANT without "ok but you get a -2 to this, and because you rolled bad you crash and look incompetent" that just brings me out of the character I want to play, because I don't my character to crash and look incompetent unless its specifically for comedic effect and thus intended to be a comedic character. See?

Presumedly, in your every day life, you are making decisions which are 100% in character for you, in a world which is a perfect simulation of reality.

See, it wasn't that hard. Everybody does it, right? Ok, maybe some people are delusional, but everybody else does it, right?

So, making "in character" decisions in a world understood through "simulationist" rules is actually the norm.

Now, OPM? I'd be investigating that anomaly, trying to understand the underlying mechanics of what caused it, and probably how to reproduce it. Just saying. :smallwink:

And for my characters, I want the world to behave... Reliably. Predictably. In a way that my character can understand their capabilities, and the world they live in. In a way that they can make informed decisions about what actions to take based on reasonable predictions of the outcomes of said actions, so as to, as you put it, not look incompetent. I can't see how to do that under... most definitions of... probably not just narrative causality, but most anything other than simulationist mechanics, to be honest.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-31, 09:02 PM
And for my characters, I want the world to behave... Reliably. Predictably. In a way that my character can understand their capabilities, and the world they live in. In a way that they can make informed decisions about what actions to take based on reasonable predictions of the outcomes of said actions, so as to, as you put it, not look incompetent. I can't see how to do that under... most definitions of... probably not just narrative causality, but most anything other than simulationist mechanics, to be honest.


Yes -- exactly.

It's the difference between an empirical world, and a mythical world.

RazorChain
2016-12-31, 11:24 PM
Take GURPS - the core attributes are Strength, Agility, Health, and Intellect. Intellect covers basically everything mental, and for a lot of genres that works. Now take a game where the PCs are artificial intelligences that move from chassis to chassis. Suddenly Strength, Agility, and Health don't make a lot of sense as character attributes, and Intellect suddenly becomes way too broad to be useful.

Not really, Transhuman Space covered this as you could uplift yourself into machines and new bodies and in the basic set you can even take an advantage and play a being of pure thought. Also this was covered extensively in Gurps Robots and Reign of Steel.

Even in a fantasy game I played one PC was a body jumper, he jumped between bodies or stole them. The trick is that being able to jump between bodies or switch bodies is going to take a large chunk of your character points.

IQ has 2 substats that players can adjust independantly, Will and Perception.



Those aren't expansions. GURPS is run by Steve Jackson Games, and the expansions are comparable to D&D splatbooks - they're made by the same company and designed to work together to an extent. The Fate games are generally complete games which aren't built to be combined, and the vast majority of them aren't from Evil Hat, the company that actually came up with Fate*. It's similar to how there are a ton of d20 system books that aren't associated with D&D and don't work with it. Sure, you could try to jam in Spycraft or Mutants and Masterminds as splatbooks, but it won't actually work.


I think what overwhelms people is the sheer amount of material for Gurps, even though you'll usually just use handfull of books, if that. Also many perceive Gurps as very crunchy system with lots of math and colossal amount of rules. Most of the math done is at character creation and is easy enough that my 8 year old son is able to do it. The single most hard math is finding speed...which is DX+HT divided by 4. So if you manage to add togehter 2 numbers and divide by 4 once, then you are golden.

For players, most rolls are just roll 3d6 and try to roll lower than your skill or stat. GMs are probably going to have a harder time, I can't really say as I've been playing the system for about 25 years.

But remembering every single feat or spell in DnD is probably more hassle than remembering all the important rules in Gurps.

The mistake Gurps makes is trying to cover everything, who cares how big a hole you can dig in 2 hours with 3 men digging?




This is the sort of thing I'm talking about when it comes to what gets glossed over. You could have a health model with generic health, a model with body specific injuries at a gross limb level (leg, arm) and associated penalties, and a model with smaller body part injuries (foot, calf, knee, thigh, etc.) and associated penalties. There's an increasing mechanical cost to doing this, and eventually you come into the matter of whether or not its worth it for the game. If the game is about combatants or athletes it might very well be. If the game is meant to simulate career musicians then the vast majority of these are wasted rules. In any simulation, some things are within the simulation and some completely outside of it. Then some things in the simulation are modeled, some are completely ignored.

I'm a primarily simulationist GM who runs mostly generic systems. I'm familiar with the arguments here. I'm also familiar with the numerous reasons that non-generic systems still exist and still see use, and the numerous reasons that narrative systems exist and see use. The design choices that go into choosing to make a system simulationist do inherently give up certain things, and the design choices that go into making a system generic do inherently give up certain things. I mostly still use a simulationist generic system because I highly value the things gained and mostly don't care about the losses (sim works best for me as a GM, generic lets me do the sort of odd stuff that I tend to enjoy GMing setting wise while being worse at straight genre stuff I tend to find less interesting and worse at setting specific stuff for other peoples settings I have very little desire to GM).

I agree, when you complicate things too much and get too many rules it just bogs things down. Usually I want to resolve things quickly, ideally with a single die roll if possible. I don't think simulationist system give up anything, neither if they are generic. I just see a toolbox of opportunites to fine tune the system to my liking. I dislike systems where I have to roll heaps of dice (looking at you Shadowrun, WoD, Exalted and old SW) and I dislike too much randomness (looking at you Cyberpunk, Ars Magica) therefore the even spread of 3d6 is just perfect for me. But still I own and run/play a ton of other systems...because I don't have pizza for every meal.

kyoryu
2017-01-01, 01:15 AM
Yes, there are plenty of bad games in any system. But I apparently don't - to use your example - understand that people would care about suspension until someone mentions it, or why they care until someone explains it.

I don't understand what you're saying, and frankly, whether someone cares about suspension or not is irrelevant - some things make good race cars, and some don't. The things that make a car good for off-roading are basically the opposite of what make good race cars.

That's the point, really. When people say they don't like "thing x" or that "thing x" is bad, it's often becuase they're basically used to race cars, and then people talk about modifications for off-roading, and that makes no sense. And it's hard to intellectually explain off-roading and why it's fun to someone that just likes racing. It's usually easier to just take them off-road and see how fun it is for themselves.

And some people won't like it, and some people will. And that's cool, too. But off-roading and racing are different kinds of fun that you can have with four-wheeled vehicles, and neither takes away from the other.

veti
2017-01-01, 01:53 AM
Presumedly, in your every day life, you are making decisions which are 100% in character for you, in a world which is a perfect simulation of reality.

See, it wasn't that hard. Everybody does it, right? Ok, maybe some people are delusional, but everybody else does it, right?

So, making "in character" decisions in a world understood through "simulationist" rules is actually the norm.

That would be a fairly convincing argument, if and only if the simulationist rules were a perfect reflection of the reality of our everyday experience.

They're not. As individuals, we can't even agree on the rules that our reality follows - that's why there's such a thing as politics. If the DM and I disagree about some aspect of, say, human psychology (and invariably we will disagree about that, and very likely much more besides), then the clues that I infer through observing the behaviour of NPCs will not be valid. To make decisions based on the simulated reality you need to know not only the rules of that reality, but also how your DM is interpreting those rules. It is, in short, a lot of work.

The rules of "narrative causality", on the other hand, are at least as well understood as those of sociology, politics, and all the other things that the DM has to be an expert in.


And for my characters, I want the world to behave... Reliably. Predictably. In a way that my character can understand their capabilities, and the world they live in. In a way that they can make informed decisions about what actions to take based on reasonable predictions of the outcomes of said actions, so as to, as you put it, not look incompetent. I can't see how to do that under... most definitions of... probably not just narrative causality, but most anything other than simulationist mechanics, to be honest.

That's really just a matter of knowing the game system. I wouldn't say that a 'narrative' based system is any less predictable than a 'simulationist' one - because even in a simulationist one, you're still at the mercy of what other players - most importantly of course the DM, but also your fellow PC players - decide to spring on you. And, more importantly, there are always differences of opinion about the several million rules that aren't defined by the system, but everyone assumes they can infer for themselves.

The 'narrative' system may even be better in the "predictability" stakes, because it gives you a defined framework for "things the DM decides to pull out of his rectum", and even a way of opposing those things if you want to.

Fiery Diamond
2017-01-01, 03:19 AM
Of course you can get Spiderman or the Flash or whoever. A simulationist system doesn't have to emulate the real world, it just has to emulate A world... consistently and coherently. Champions/HERO doesn't have a narrative bone in its body, and it's one of the classic superheroic-game systems. If you're running a world with superheroes, then that's part of the world you're "simulating".

There's nothing inherently anti-exceptionalist about a sim system, either, and nothing that says you can't get that one hydromancer in a world of pyromancers, as long as the player and GM can come up with something that works in the context of the gaming group and the setting.

Simulationism isn't about aping the real world, it's about verisimilitude -- the sense that the world of the game COULD be real -- fostered by consistency, coherence, and synchronicity.


For me, the problem with narrative causality is that it's built on inconsistency, incoherence, disconnection, and asynchronicity... instead of the protagonists being special because of who they are as characters and because of what they're capable of... they're special -- and treated in a special way -- simply because they're The Protagonists, because of their role in the narrative. A protagonist "happens" to bump into the character they need to meet, because the story can't advance until they meet them. The villain is saved from being shot halfway through the story by a "coincidence", because if he dies the story ends. I loath that crap.





Now, here, you're right. A simulationist system doesn't care about what your character wants. In that, it's just like the real world.

Frankly, I don't want the fictional reality in a story or game, or the system used to "map" it in a game, to give a tinker's damn about what the character wants. What I want is an objective, consistent, coherent "reality" that responds in predictable and repeatable ways, so that it can be interacted with in a naturalistic way.

As Razorchain said:




Quick question: What's the purpose of this discussion? As has been stated several times throughout this thread, this all basically boils down to preferences. Did you create and participate in this thread merely to have a platform to complain about something other people like? Because at this point, there are really only two things happening in this thread: people arguing about misunderstanding exactly what the other person in the discussion thinks while presenting their own views, and you loudly proclaiming you "loath that crap" in rather emphatic ways about, and I repeat, THINGS OTHER PEOPLE LIKE. Guess what, Max_Killjoy? Some people ACTIVELY ENJOY and find A DESIRABLE GOAL the very things that you so vehemently despise. Get over it. Nobody cares that you don't like it, just like you aren't influenced by other people liking it. Instead of trying to rile people up by telling them "I loath [what you love]", maybe DON'T HAVE THIS CONVERSATION.

RazorChain
2017-01-01, 04:44 AM
Quick question: What's the purpose of this discussion?

Now even though this question seems to be pointed at Max Killjoy, I'll pretend it isn't hypothetical and answer.

Instead of celebrating their differences, humans seem to like arguing about them. Hence when you have preference in deity, sexuality, political leanings or just whatever else then someone will tell you that you are wrong and try to convince you to follow their preference instead, because their preference is clearly better than yours.

We could go on and on about how our ego tries to validate our preferences or how western rhetoric is inherently antagonistic because instead encouraging lateral thinking it assumes one party is wrong and the other is right. That would derail this beautiful discussion where we argue about our differences.

People who are prone to introspection or have studied human behaviour usually realize this and don't have to butt their head in and command people not have this conversations, because clearly they are right and we are wrong.


As has been stated several times throughout this thread, this all basically boils down to preferences. Did you create and participate in this thread merely to have a platform to complain about something other people like? Because at this point, there are really only two things happening in this thread: people arguing about misunderstanding exactly what the other person in the discussion thinks while presenting their own views, and you loudly proclaiming you "loath that crap" in rather emphatic ways about, and I repeat, THINGS OTHER PEOPLE LIKE. Guess what, Max_Killjoy? Some people ACTIVELY ENJOY and find A DESIRABLE GOAL the very things that you so vehemently despise. Get over it. Nobody cares that you don't like it, just like you aren't influenced by other people liking it. Instead of trying to rile people up by telling them "I loath [what you love]", maybe DON'T HAVE THIS CONVERSATION.

DoomHat
2017-01-01, 08:09 AM
This is the sort of thing I'm talking about when I use the term "narrative causality".

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheoryOfNarrativeCausality
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThePlotDemandedThisIndex

(Note that the TV Tropes definition happens to match mine, rather than being the source of mine.)

So it's pretty much the opposite of when effects flow naturally from established causes.

I, wait, okay... I think I get where you're coming from now, but I'm pretty sure it's someplace I'd rather not visit myself too often. It all boils down to a matter of personal preference. Just like I'm sure there's some people out there who like to grind instant coffee powder and mint leafs into their tuna fish, I can't pretend to fully understand it, and it's certainly not for me, but hey man, you do you.

To my mind the pure simulationist creed you seem to be advocating tends to lead to (and has led to in my personal experience) some of the most excruciatingly bad RPG experiences on record. When emulating the stuff that makes a good story takes a back seat to "realism" in one's collaborative story telling game, you wind up emulating two things rather constantly that show up a lot in reality...

Frustrating and/or nonsensical anticlimaxs, with hours of mind boggling tedium between.

After forty minutes of watching our heroes setup camp and establish watch rotations four or five times in between hiking and hunting for game other supplies (because the random encounter chart stubbornly refused to deliver anything), The Fellowship of the Ring comes across an old well. Frodo's player rolls a fumble while trying to check if it's still any good, falls in and snaps his little neck at the bottom.

After an hour of trying, resulting only in the ignoble death of Legolas as well, the party is forced to give up. The Ring, and with it any hope of halting the forces of Mordor, are lost. Well great campaign everyone, see you next week, I think Tod said he's been wanting to run ShadowRun, so bring your books for that.

Max_Killjoy
2017-01-01, 10:31 AM
I, wait, okay... I think I get where you're coming from now, but I'm pretty sure it's someplace I'd rather not visit myself too often. It all boils down to a matter of personal preference. Just like I'm sure there's some people out there who like to grind instant coffee powder and mint leafs into their tuna fish, I can't pretend to fully understand it, and it's certainly not for me, but hey man, you do you.

To my mind the pure simulationist creed you seem to be advocating tends to lead to (and has led to in my personal experience) some of the most excruciatingly bad RPG experiences on record. When emulating the stuff that makes a good story takes a back seat to "realism" in one's collaborative story telling game, you wind up emulating two things rather constantly that show up a lot in reality...

Frustrating and/or nonsensical anticlimaxs, with hours of mind boggling tedium between.

After forty minutes of watching our heroes setup camp and establish watch rotations four or five times in between hiking and hunting for game other supplies (because the random encounter chart stubbornly refused to deliver anything), The Fellowship of the Ring comes across an old well. Frodo's player rolls a fumble while trying to check if it's still any good, falls in and snaps his little neck at the bottom.

After an hour of trying, resulting only in the ignoble death of Legolas as well, the party is forced to give up. The Ring, and with it any hope of halting the forces of Mordor, are lost. Well great campaign everyone, see you next week, I think Tod said he's been wanting to run ShadowRun, so bring your books for that.


First, not every RPG is a "collaborative storytelling game", unless one just takes the word of Ron "Brain Damage" Edwards.

Second, you seem to be implying that "emulating a good story" requires embracing and encouraging plot contrivances -- whereas for me those are the things that can easily ruin a story. The PC can meet that NPC who is critical to advancing the plot in a non-contrived manner, rather than through some 1-to-1000000 coincidence. The villain can get away because he had a contingency plan (pre-arranged, not arse-pulled), or a loyal lieutenant takes the bullet (thus still depriving the villain of his services later, rather than screw-jobbing the PC with yet another "jammed gun" or "wacky coincidence".)

Third, as with so many who have commented before, you're mistakenly assigning a sort of pure-mechanical "the dice must determine everything, and everything must be rolled" methodology to "simulationism". "Rules uber alles" strikes me as more of a "gamist" approach, if we're going to


Why would the GM call for Frodo to roll a life-threatening check for something as mundane as checking a well, and if it wasn't that mundane with this particular well, why did the GM determine that the fumble was automatic death? If you've had a GM run that sort of campaign, that wasn't "pure sim", that was "I'm a bad GM and the dice give me either cover for my badness, or a smokescreen to be a tool". The core point of a roleplaying game is to be fun and engrossing, regardless of the methodology, and having a PC insta-die falling into a well on a random check isn't fun for most players, I'd wager -- it has nothing to do with "emulating a good story".

georgie_leech
2017-01-01, 11:31 AM
I just want to make sure I understand this right: even though potentially tripping and breaking your neck in a well is a reasonable thing that can happen despite being generally coordinated and careful, that shouldn't be a possibility because it makes for a worse game? That is, 'does this make sense' can sometimes take a backseat to 'is this fun' so long as that doesn't happen constantly?

Max_Killjoy
2017-01-01, 12:22 PM
I just want to make sure I understand this right: even though potentially tripping and breaking your neck in a well is a reasonable thing that can happen despite being generally coordinated and careful, that shouldn't be a possibility because it makes for a worse game? That is, 'does this make sense' can sometimes take a backseat to 'is this fun' so long as that doesn't happen constantly?



First, I suspect that "death by falling into a well" was never that common a cause of death... to the point that most dice systems that might actually encode for it would exaggerate the likelihood.

Second, Most systems wouldn't specifically encode for it -- rather it would be a GM call on a generic fumble, which could have just as easily resulted in the character dropping the bucket in and losing it, or breaking something, or ending up hanging from the edge and needing to climb out or get help without making a ton of noise.

Third, "does this make sense?" should be a filter to keep out the ridiculous (the "no" answers), not a ticket that gets every event holding it automatically through the door into the game. That is, just because it "makes sense" doesn't mean it's something that HAS to happen. Follow up on this below1.

Fourth, "Is this fun?" should also be a filter, keeping out the things that would make the game suck for one or more of the players. This is also why you avoid using mind control spells/powers on the PC of the players who hates them, for example.

But yes, at the end of the day, it's a game, and it's supposed to be enjoyable. Letting any agenda (sim, nar, or gamist, if one sticks with the pigeon holes) ruin the fun for the players is going too far with that agenda.


1 My issue with narrative causality is that it starts poking holes in the filter and letting things in that don't make sense, for the sake of "The Story". For me, it's more about keeping out things that don't make sense, than it is about striving for the impossible goal of a 100% perfect 1-to-1 model/map. The map doesn't have to include every blade of grass in the rest area, it just needs to tell you that there's a rest area here, and do so usefully and reliably and consistently and coherently -- and in a way that lets you add to the map as you travel beyond its original edges, adding new highways and roads and rest areas and whatnot as you go.

This is where we could branch off into "associated vs disassociated (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanics-a-brief-primer)" mechanics, and how disassociated mechanics (often linked with "story games (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/6517/roleplaying-games/roleplaying-games-vs-storytelling-games)", but ironically also seen in some very "gamist" systems) are far harder to extrapolate when one comes to the edge of the existing map, because the symbols used on the map don't have a 1-to-1 correlation with the actual territory they're being used to represent.

Buffer.

georgie_leech
2017-01-01, 12:49 PM
Fourth, "Is this fun?" should also be a filter, keeping out the things that would make the game suck for one or more of the players. This is also why you avoid using mind control spells/powers on the PC of the players who hates them, for example.

But yes, at the end of the day, it's a game, and it's supposed to be enjoyable. Letting any agenda (sim, nar, or gamist, if one sticks with the pigeon holes) ruin the fun for the players is going too far with that agenda.
[/COLOR]

That I can agree with. All I mean to say is how much of any "agenda" results in a game not being fun for someone varies from person to person. Sometimes, people do want to play in a game where "narrative" concerns change what happens, because it helps bring about some trope or theme they wanted to play with. Sure, it can be used too much or in too heavy handed a manner, but that's true of everything.

Max_Killjoy
2017-01-01, 12:55 PM
That I can agree with. All I mean to say is how much of any "agenda" results in a game not being fun for someone varies from person to person. Sometimes, people do want to play in a game where "narrative" concerns change what happens, because it helps bring about some trope or theme they wanted to play with. Sure, it can be used too much or in too heavy handed a manner, but that's true of everything.

Maybe part of the trouble I have seeing the appeal of those mechanics, is that I don't get the whole "play with a trope or theme" thing. Frankly I don't get it in fiction, either -- in fiction, my response is usually "just tell the damn story already".

The Glyphstone
2017-01-01, 01:00 PM
Good fiction should tell the story without calling attention to its tropes - by definition they are unavoidable components of fiction, but done properly they are just there, not pointed at with loud wink-wink-nudges.

Max_Killjoy
2017-01-01, 01:08 PM
Good fiction should tell the story without calling attention to its tropes - by definition they are unavoidable components of fiction, but done properly they are just there, not pointed at with loud wink-wink-nudges.

Enough stories have been told over the ages that things that just about anything that happens or is shown in stories can be categorized, and those descriptive categories can be called "tropes". They're unavoidable because there are a lot of already-existing stories, and the tropes are just categories of stuff that has happened.

Two problems arise.

First, when an element in a story goes from simple trope, to outright cliche. TV Tropes goes to great lengths to say "tropes aren't bad", but many of the entries come off as describing an outright cliche rather than a simply common element.

Second, when those descriptive categories become prescriptive. See also, what happened to Joseph Campbell's "hero's journey". I suspect that it was intended to be descriptive and illuminating, but so often it's been taken as prescriptive. Rather than "many stories across time and cultures have followed this pattern and hit these beats", it was taken by some writers and critics and teachers as "In other to tell a good story, you must follow this pattern and hit these beats." When any analysis is warped into the prose-writing version of "paint by numbers", it's a very bad thing.

Third, when they become lazy shorthand -- when writers use some common element to tell us about a character, rather than showing us that character. "The dark haired girl is the savvy cynical one, the blonde haired girl is the sweet and innocent one"... or whatever.

georgie_leech
2017-01-01, 01:11 PM
Good fiction should tell the story without calling attention to its tropes - by definition they are unavoidable components of fiction, but done properly they are just there, not pointed at with loud wink-wink-nudges.

I dunno, depends on the tone of the work, I think (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0546.html) :smallwink:

The Glyphstone
2017-01-01, 01:19 PM
I dunno, depends on the tone of the work, I think (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0546.html) :smallwink:

Intentional parodies obviously get an exemption.:smalltongue:

DoomHat
2017-01-01, 01:38 PM
First, not every RPG is a "collaborative storytelling game", unless one just takes the word of Ron "Brain Damage" Edwards.

Second, you seem to be implying that "emulating a good story" requires embracing and encouraging plot contrivances -- whereas for me those are the things that can easily ruin a story. The PC can meet that NPC who is critical to advancing the plot in a non-contrived manner, rather than through some 1-to-1000000 coincidence. The villain can get away because he had a contingency plan (pre-arranged, not arse-pulled), or a loyal lieutenant takes the bullet (thus still depriving the villain of his services later, rather than screw-jobbing the PC with yet another "jammed gun" or "wacky coincidence".)

Third, as with so many who have commented before, you're mistakenly assigning a sort of pure-mechanical "the dice must determine everything, and everything must be rolled" methodology to "simulationism". "Rules uber alles" strikes me as more of a "gamist" approach, if we're going to


Why would the GM call for Frodo to roll a life-threatening check for something as mundane as checking a well, and if it wasn't that mundane with this particular well, why did the GM determine that the fumble was automatic death? If you've had a GM run that sort of campaign, that wasn't "pure sim", that was "I'm a bad GM and the dice give me either cover for my badness, or a smokescreen to be a tool". The core point of a roleplaying game is to be fun and engrossing, regardless of the methodology, and having a PC insta-die falling into a well on a random check isn't fun for most players, I'd wager -- it has nothing to do with "emulating a good story".
Fumble itself doesn't need to be instant death for the tragedy to play out. Fumble, fall in, take fall damage, critical result, dead.

Historically wells are known for three things; a place to get drinking water, the superstitious hope that throwing coins in them may grant wishes, and that people are known to occasionally tumble down them and die.

So, I take it back, I don't have any idea what your point is.
Charitably I'd assume what you take issue with is plot holes. When stuff happens "4 Rasiens!!1". But you seem to reject even the most internally consistent/coherent player interaction with the flow of the narrative.

Also, I have to confess that from my understanding, if an RPG is not first and foremost a story driven experience then I probably have no idea what RPGs are. An RPG that isn't fundamentally a story telling exercise sounds like just a board game? Some sort of analog Rogue-like video game?

I mean, if you're the sort of guy who typically discribes their character's appearance when pressed as something along the lines of, "He's a 2nd level elf wizard with 9HP and the Combat Casting feat, carrying... hold on, two potions of Cure Light Wounds and a scroll of identification", then I guess that works well enough for you. Shine on you crazy diamond and so forth.

Hawkstar
2017-01-01, 01:47 PM
Some of us like to play out a character, not a story. The act of Sir Horace saving the king from evil ninjas is insignificant compared to the simple case of Billy From Sales getting to be Sir Horace, the Knight of the Realm, storyline be damned.

Thrudd
2017-01-01, 02:33 PM
Also, I have to confess that from my understanding, if an RPG is not first and foremost a story driven experience then I probably have no idea what RPGs are. An RPG that isn't fundamentally a story telling exercise sounds like just a board game? Some sort of analog Rogue-like video game?

I mean, if you're the sort of guy who typically discribes their character's appearance when pressed as something along the lines of, "He's a 2nd level elf wizard with 9HP and the Combat Casting feat, carrying... hold on, two potions of Cure Light Wounds and a scroll of identification", then I guess that works well enough for you. Shine on you crazy diamond and so forth.

You're using some silly hyperbole here, as well as in the previous post about LotR.

Also RPGs are not all story telling exercises. That is just one type of RPG that has gained popularity over the last 20 years or so. The term "roguelike" is also a very roundabout way of saying a game that is similar to early D&D, as "Rogue" was an early video game inspired by D&D, the first RPG.

The point of D&D and many other RPGs was/is to overcome the challenges of a fictional world with strategy and tactics and luck by donning the persona and abilities of a character living in that world. The DM/GM invents scenarios which should engage the players to use their wits while portraying the simulated fictional world and all its inhabitants. The results of those scenarios, where the characters live or die, succeed or fail according to the players' skill and luck, result in "stories" that the players may retell later or provide an inspiration for a writer to craft a narrative.
One aspect of many games is the challenge of keeping a character alive long enough to grow in power, letting them face tougher and tougher challenges and becoming legends of their world.

Neither this sort of game, nor the storytelling/narrative variety, have any impact on whether you describe or portray your character in a believable or immersive way. A player can "game" any system or get stuck in meta-game thinking.

DoomHat
2017-01-01, 05:50 PM
You're using some silly hyperbole here, as well as in the previous post about LotR.

Oh god, you and I both wish. Mr A. Wizard describes with frightening fidelity a number of people people I've met, and I've been in at least two games that played very literally like my LotR example.

You've lived a blessed life if you've never encountered these things in the wild.

Thrudd
2017-01-01, 07:40 PM
Oh god, you and I both wish. Mr A. Wizard describes with frightening fidelity a number of people people I've met, and I've been in at least two games that played very literally like my LotR example.

You've lived a blessed life if you've never encountered these things in the wild.

I have sadly (or happily) encountered only one such.
A game of RIFTS I joined, trying out a new group. In the first session, my character climbed on top of a tank, for some reason I don't recall, and when I said "I climb down from the tank", the GM told me that since I failed to specify that I step over the short railing which ringed the top of the tank (which was never described prior, did not impede me or catch my notice when climbed onto it), therefore I tripped over it and fell from the tank taking damage that nearly killed me. I didn't fail a climb check, or anything. No roll, I just tripped because I personally did not read the GM's mind and my character was assumed to be incompetent. I did not return for another session.

This is a ridiculous fringe case which should not dictate how people view RIFTS or any other game system (though RIFTS certainly has systematic problems, this isn't one of them).
It is a bad GM, such a GM can ruin any game of any system.

Max_Killjoy
2017-01-01, 07:52 PM
Fumble itself doesn't need to be instant death for the tragedy to play out. Fumble, fall in, take fall damage, critical result, dead.

Historically wells are known for three things; a place to get drinking water, the superstitious hope that throwing coins in them may grant wishes, and that people are known to occasionally tumble down them and die.

So, I take it back, I don't have any idea what your point is.
Charitably I'd assume what you take issue with is plot holes. When stuff happens "4 Rasiens!!1". But you seem to reject even the most internally consistent/coherent player interaction with the flow of the narrative.

Also, I have to confess that from my understanding, if an RPG is not first and foremost a story driven experience then I probably have no idea what RPGs are. An RPG that isn't fundamentally a story telling exercise sounds like just a board game? Some sort of analog Rogue-like video game?

I mean, if you're the sort of guy who typically discribes their character's appearance when pressed as something along the lines of, "He's a 2nd level elf wizard with 9HP and the Combat Casting feat, carrying... hold on, two potions of Cure Light Wounds and a scroll of identification", then I guess that works well enough for you. Shine on you crazy diamond and so forth.


So again we come back to this false dichotomy, this fallacy of the excluded middle everything else, that tries to depict all of RPG gaming as a binary choice between "storytelling games" and "that dice-rolling level-mongering murdohoboing D&D-like stuff". At this point can people please stop telling me that the repeatedly assertion of this false dichotomy is just something I'm imagining?

It's right here -- "Oh, well if an RPG isn't a story-driven experience for you, then I guess you're just playing glorified board games and you're the sort who when forced describes their character's appearance by their level/class/race combo".

To which I say... There are more games, in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your dichotomy.


Personally, I gave up on D&D, d20, etc, more than two decades ago, and I greatly dislike levels and character classes in my RPG systems. I want character-driven, meaty games, and systems that meld right into it all, without ever being warped and twisted by plot contrivances.




You're using some silly hyperbole here, as well as in the previous post about LotR.



Oh god, you and I both wish. Mr A. Wizard describes with frightening fidelity a number of people people I've met, and I've been in at least two games that played very literally like my LotR example.

You've lived a blessed life if you've never encountered these things in the wild.



Frankly, DoomHat, I think this may simply be a case where you've only seen those two types of games.

There are plenty of us who moved our gaming away from the "you fumble, fall in the well, and die from the damage, so sad" a decade or two before the notion of the three GNS pigeonholes came to pass.

We'd never heard of this whole notion of "storytelling games" until long after it had been all the rage, and "indie games" never really made it onto our radar.

We rolled our eyes at the hipster goths writing oWoD books who kept warning us against having badwrongfun with their games, and we got on with playing vampires or werewolves because they made for fun games for our groups, and then we rolled our eyes again when Mr Edwards tried to tell us that we'd been braindamaged by those same games.


For many of us, it's the characters and the settings and getting into them, it's overcoming challenges and interacting with NPCs, it's solving mysteries and uncovering plots, it's beating the villain's forces to the artifact, it's all that stuff, it's depth and breadth and wonder. None of that has anything to do with "The Story".

Quertus
2017-01-01, 08:18 PM
I don't understand what you're saying, and frankly, whether someone cares about suspension or not is irrelevant - some things make good race cars, and some don't. The things that make a car good for off-roading are basically the opposite of what make good race cars.

That's the point, really. When people say they don't like "thing x" or that "thing x" is bad, it's often becuase they're basically used to race cars, and then people talk about modifications for off-roading, and that makes no sense. And it's hard to intellectually explain off-roading and why it's fun to someone that just likes racing. It's usually easier to just take them off-road and see how fun it is for themselves.

And some people won't like it, and some people will. And that's cool, too. But off-roading and racing are different kinds of fun that you can have with four-wheeled vehicles, and neither takes away from the other.

Nah, the point is, if I only understand race cars, I may need to be told that people can care about things that make for bad race cars, what it is about those things they like, and why.

Otherwise, I might just assume that everything that is bad for a race car is just categorically bad.

Because, personally, I am very confused by a lot of things I read in this thread. I can't even begin to understand how someone could hold some of these opinions.

That, I hope, is the point of this thread - to be able to distinguish between "bad for one play style" and "just plain bad". To try to see why people like things some of us hate. And, apparently, to convince some people who only see the world one way that there are, in fact, other valid ways to see the world.

... Or the OP can tell me that I'm wrong, I've missed the point - or even am taking a **** all over his thread.


That would be a fairly convincing argument, if and only if the simulationist rules were a perfect reflection of the reality of our everyday experience.

They're not. As individuals, we can't even agree on the rules that our reality follows - that's why there's such a thing as politics. If the DM and I disagree about some aspect of, say, human psychology (and invariably we will disagree about that, and very likely much more besides), then the clues that I infer through observing the behaviour of NPCs will not be valid. To make decisions based on the simulated reality you need to know not only the rules of that reality, but also how your DM is interpreting those rules. It is, in short, a lot of work.

The rules of "narrative causality", on the other hand, are at least as well understood as those of sociology, politics, and all the other things that the DM has to be an expert in.



That's really just a matter of knowing the game system. I wouldn't say that a 'narrative' based system is any less predictable than a 'simulationist' one - because even in a simulationist one, you're still at the mercy of what other players - most importantly of course the DM, but also your fellow PC players - decide to spring on you. And, more importantly, there are always differences of opinion about the several million rules that aren't defined by the system, but everyone assumes they can infer for themselves.

The 'narrative' system may even be better in the "predictability" stakes, because it gives you a defined framework for "things the DM decides to pull out of his rectum", and even a way of opposing those things if you want to.

Hmmm... First things first. The game need not be a perfect simulation of this world - it only matters how well it simulates its intended world. It's not that people make decisions as themselves in this world, it's that people make decisions as themselves in a world that they understand as mechanics and, as you yourself stated, only understand incompletely.

When the simulation egregiously fails to match the fiction, sure, that's bad. I never said you couldn't have bad simulations. But talking about the failings of bad simulations is outside the scope of this discussion. And is comparing apples to oranges.

Second, as a vocal advocate of the "talk to people" solution to gaming problems, I'm a bit leery of rules that codify exactly how the GM is allowed to be a jerk, and exactly what your valid responses are. :smallyuk: So I don't see how that's supposed to be a selling point.

So... If I'm playing a reasonably athletic (human sized, humanoid) character, I expect to be able to consistently jump over a 2' pit.

In a simulation game, I expect I'll be able to notice things that could make me fail: I'm drunk, my leg has been shot off, I'm impacted by a cannonball halfway across, etc.

In a game with narrative causality, I can succeed or fail for no apparent reason simply because the plot demands it. It's no longer a pit, it's a plot hole.

How do you figure that my character can better predict whether he can jump that pit in a game with narrative causality than one with simulation mechanics? Is there some fundamental flaw in either my perception or reasoning that makes my analysis inaccurate?

Lord Raziere
2017-01-01, 08:39 PM
To which I say... There are more games, in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your dichotomy.


Personally, I gave up on D&D, d20, etc, more than two decades ago, and I greatly dislike levels and character classes in my RPG systems. I want character-driven, meaty games, and systems that meld right into it all, without ever being warped and twisted by plot contrivances.

We rolled our eyes at the hipster goths writing oWoD books who kept warning us against having badwrongfun with their games, and we got on with playing vampires or werewolves because they made for fun games for our groups, and then we rolled our eyes again when Mr Edwards tried to tell us that we'd been braindamaged by those same games.

For many of us, it's the characters and the settings and getting into them, it's overcoming challenges and interacting with NPCs, it's solving mysteries and uncovering plots, it's beating the villain's forces to the artifact, it's all that stuff, it's depth and breadth and wonder. None of that has anything to do with "The Story".

...........I was going to ask your opinion on WW games, but I guess that answered it.

Ok, lets try this:
Whats your opinion on say, something like Black Crusade? or the WH40k rpgs in general? technically has classes but they are well-integrated into the setting and the point is to largely be a random character within the setting doing stuff they do anything else.

Whats your opinion on say, Rune Quest?

or your opinion on Shadowrun? too DnD in setting? its skill-based and not narrative, with no real classes.

whats your opinion on say, Eclipse Phase? all its rules are basically all skill checks, its a hard sci-fi setting, has no narrative mechanics that I can name, and everything you are and own is equipment aside form your mind.

or say, Savage Worlds? I've heard its the system lite but still a non-narrative alternative to Fate.

what about Rocket Age?

and here is weird ball for ya: what about Nobilis? super-mythical world, but I wouldn't say anything about it is a meta-game construct. Even I don't understand how it works.

and just for fun: what do you think of Dungeons: the Dragoning? :smallbiggrin:

DoomHat
2017-01-01, 09:52 PM
For many of us, it's the characters and the settings and getting into them, it's overcoming challenges and interacting with NPCs, it's solving mysteries and uncovering plots, it's beating the villain's forces to the artifact, it's all that stuff, it's depth and breadth and wonder. None of that has anything to do with "The Story".

:smalleek:My confusion reaches dizzying new heights! I think we're suffering from a severe confusion in terms. :smallconfused:
Please understand that from my point of view, this statement reads; "For many of us, its about making great stories. None of that has anything to do with 'The Story'".

I'm not clear what the word "story" means to you? Characters overcoming conflicts and antagonists in a colorful setting and growing as a result... isn't a story?

Okay, so... alright. I'm going to crack open my copy of GURPS 4th Ed (which I assume you wouldn't regard as a "Story Driven" game?) and I'm going to find some advantages and disadvantages that would, to me at least, seem to hinge on ''Narrative Causality" as best I can decipher from the discussion thus far. You tell me if and how I'm wrong??

Allies: You have a positive relationship with an NPC who will show up at a frequency, and display a level of actual helpfulness, determined by the level of your point investment in them. Is it not a narrative contrivance that this wacky guest star keeps showing up to get involved in whatever shenanigans the party is conducting this week?

Contacts: Same deal except they sometimes show up demanding favors from YOU in order to maintain the relationship. Seems like a well worn narrative contrivance to generate plot??

Destiny: You can not die except by virtual suicide until you've accomplished an as yet unknown world changing feat. Which is strikingly similar to the concept of 'Plot Armor' I think(See also the "Extra Life" advantage).

Higher Purpose: You have a declared dedicated mission in life. You conviction in that purpose grants you a bonus to all rolls directly related to achieving it. This is conceptually almost identical to how a lot of Aspects in FATE are used...

Alright enough's enough. That, I think, is a pretty decent sample size.
Are these advantages problems? Do you disapprove of their existence/implementation? Are they founded on 'Narrative Causality'?

RazorChain
2017-01-01, 10:35 PM
:smalleek:My confusion reaches dizzying new heights! I think we're suffering from a severe confusion in terms. :smallconfused:
Please understand that from my point of view, this statement reads; "For many of us, its about making great stories. None of that has anything to do with 'The Story'".

I'm not clear what the word "story" means to you? Characters overcoming conflicts and antagonists in a colorful setting and growing as a result... isn't a story?

Okay, so... alright. I'm going to crack open my copy of GURPS 4th Ed (which I assume you wouldn't regard as a "Story Driven" game?) and I'm going to find some advantages and disadvantages that would, to me at least, seem to hinge on ''Narrative Causality" as best I can decipher from the discussion thus far. You tell me if and how I'm wrong??

Allies: You have a positive relationship with an NPC who will show up at a frequency, and display a level of actual helpfulness, determined by the level of your point investment in them. Is it not a narrative contrivance that this wacky guest star keeps showing up to get involved in whatever shenanigans the party is conducting this week?

You can also just use logic, if your ally hears you are in trouble he might come to help or you could ask your ally for help. Just as I have a good friend and when I ask him for help he usually helps me if he isn't otherwise occupied. If I was in jail he'd probably show up and post bail. You don't roll your ally roll everytime you get into trouble and if you succeed your ally does "beam me down Scotty" and suddenly appears to help you out....that would be silly.




Contacts: Same deal except they sometimes show up demanding favors from YOU in order to maintain the relationship. Seems like a well worn narrative contrivance to generate plot??

Contacts are more favor for a favor, you know somebody at the police department that gives you information....you might have to donate to his retirement fund or take care of a problem for him if you want to maintain the relationship. And actually contacts are not the same as allies...contacts are very rarely going to put their life on the line for your character or help you out in a fight unless it serves their interest or are duly compensated.




Destiny: You can not die except by virtual suicide until you've accomplished an as yet unknown world changing feat. Which is strikingly similar to the concept of 'Plot Armor' I think(See also the "Extra Life" advantage).

Destiny is indeed a plot armour, but then again Gurps is all inclusive and therefore called General Universal Roleplaying System. If you don't want someone to have plot armor in your campaign...well don't allow destiny. A lot of advantages from Gurps must be vetoed because if someone shows up with a character that regenerates instantly, regrows limbs and can sprout adamantium claws out of his knuckles to your 1920's horror session then he clearly didn't get the memo.



Higher Purpose: You have a declared dedicated mission in life. You conviction in that purpose grants you a bonus to all rolls directly related to achieving it. This is conceptually almost identical to how a lot of Aspects in FATE are used...

I don't see the problem here? Daredevil advantage gives you bonus to your rolls when you take insane risks, Combat Reflexes gives you bonuses to your defenses....so this is just a bonus when you try to accomplish your mission. It provides mechanical bonus to rolls when doing something specific just like Acute hearing gives you bonus to listening.



Alright enough's enough. That, I think, is a pretty decent sample size.
Are these advantages problems? Do you disapprove of their existence/implementation? Are they founded on 'Narrative Causality'?

This is just silly....I mean most people have friends that help them out, even in a fight. You might have aquintances where you might call in a favor and repay the favor later. Higher purpose is just a mechanical bonus that represents you ae focused on a task or mission.

Destiny is the only one founded on Narrative Causality. Narrative Causality can and exists in all systems, it is mostly just based on who is running the show. Simulationist system just usually don't have a game mechanic that encourages Narrative Causality. The GM can't just invoke a rule that says: "pay me metacurrency or your weapon will jam and the bad guy gets away because I think it will make for a better story."

The Glyphstone
2017-01-01, 10:45 PM
Destiny is the only one founded on Narrative Causality. Narrative Causality can and exists in all systems, it is mostly just based on who is running the show. Simulationist system just usually don't have a game mechanic that encourages Narrative Causality. The GM can't just invoke a rule that says: "pay me metacurrency or your weapon will jam and the bad guy gets away because I think it will make for a better story."

It should be noted that in FATE, at least, it's not 'Pay metacurrency or the bad guy gets away', it's "let the bad guy get away to EARN metacurrency, or pay metacurrency to stop him now, your choice. There's a carrot built in to that stick.

kyoryu
2017-01-01, 11:59 PM
Nah, the point is, if I only understand race cars, I may need to be told that people can care about things that make for bad race cars, what it is about those things they like, and why.

Otherwise, I might just assume that everything that is bad for a race car is just categorically bad.

Because, personally, I am very confused by a lot of things I read in this thread. I can't even begin to understand how someone could hold some of these opinions.

Ah gotcha. And yeah, that's *exactly my point*.

Further, I kinda believe that explaining it doesn't work. You've gotta try it out. Accept that it's different, have someone explain some of what you're in for you to prep you, and then try a few sessions. Otherwise, it's really hard to understand the whole of the thing and not view it through the lens of the gaming you're used to.

And I say this from experience, having gone through *exactly that process*.




There are plenty of us who moved our gaming away from the "you fumble, fall in the well, and die from the damage, so sad" a decade or two before the notion of the three GNS pigeonholes came to pass.

We'd never heard of this whole notion of "storytelling games" until long after it had been all the rage, and "indie games" never really made it onto our radar.

Cool, and let's for a moment accept that just as "fall in a well and die" is bad "simulationist" GMing, that there's plenty of bad "narrativist" GMing. Quotes because GNS can die in a fire.

Because a lot of what you describe is just bad GMing, even of a "narrativist" bent.


For many of us, it's the characters and the settings and getting into them, it's overcoming challenges and interacting with NPCs, it's solving mysteries and uncovering plots, it's beating the villain's forces to the artifact, it's all that stuff, it's depth and breadth and wonder. None of that has anything to do with "The Story".

But... isn't that the story? The problem is, I think, in the difference between the story (aka, what happens) and The Story, meaning the grand tale that the GM has planned.

As someone that GMs Fate, when it comes to The Story, I say.... go get yourself a copy of Word, and write your story instead of inflicting it on a captive audience.

Seriously. If someone dies in a conflict, so be it. My mistake as a GM for having them there. Might a gun jam? Sure, but only if for some reason it's been pointed out as being unreliable previously. Being a good "narrativist" (again, GNS, quotes, fires, dying in, etc.) GM requires you to acknowledge *and embrace* that things aren't going to be what you thought they were, because you're only one of many voices at the table, and the players, even if just through their actions, will drag things in ways you never anticipated, and the best thing is to roll with that.

And what happens is that we end up with an initial situation that resolves itself in some way. And that's the only "story" I care about.



Okay, so... alright. I'm going to crack open my copy of GURPS 4th Ed (which I assume you wouldn't regard as a "Story Driven" game?) and I'm going to find some advantages and disadvantages that would, to me at least, seem to hinge on ''Narrative Causality" as best I can decipher from the discussion thus far. You tell me if and how I'm wrong??

There's definitely hints that GURPS (and Champions/HERO) were intended to be run in a semi-"narrative" fashion.


It should be noted that in FATE, at least, it's not 'Pay metacurrency or the bad guy gets away', it's "let the bad guy get away to EARN metacurrency, or pay metacurrency to stop him now, your choice. There's a carrot built in to that stick.

And, importantly, the GM had better be ready for the players to go "yeah, no I don't think so. I'm taking that sucker out."

A lot of indie RPG design is a reaction not to the original exploration style gaming of the 70s and early 80s, but to the railroad-plot stuff of the mid-to-late 80s and beyond. Which is where, before I did my narrative game exploration, I had the same type of visceral reaction to "The Story" - and still do.

Talakeal
2017-01-02, 03:02 AM
Just because a mechanic isn't wholly simulationist doesn't mean that it is narratavist. It is possible for something to be less than completely simulationist without being narrativist, and it is (imo) possible for a mechanic to be neither. Even GNS theory works on a triangle, which means that a non-wholly simulationist mechanic can still be partially (or completely) gamist and still not narrativist.



Also, it is kind of annoying when tropes start to be prescriptive. I like the movie Willow, but the last time I watched it I wondered why they have the scene with the fairies in the movie as the scene is kind of out of nowhere and Charlindria (sp?) is kind of redundant with Fin Razel. Then I realized that the movie was just following Cambell beat for beat and that they came to "Meeting with the Goddess" on the list and so they had to invent a fairy queen to check off that box. It made me appreciate the movie a lot less when I realized how nakedly it was ripping off Cambell (and Star Wars).

Max_Killjoy
2017-01-02, 10:36 AM
Nah, the point is, if I only understand race cars, I may need to be told that people can care about things that make for bad race cars, what it is about those things they like, and why.

Otherwise, I might just assume that everything that is bad for a race car is just categorically bad.

Because, personally, I am very confused by a lot of things I read in this thread. I can't even begin to understand how someone could hold some of these opinions.

That, I hope, is the point of this thread - to be able to distinguish between "bad for one play style" and "just plain bad". To try to see why people like things some of us hate. And, apparently, to convince some people who only see the world one way that there are, in fact, other valid ways to see the world.

... Or the OP can tell me that I'm wrong, I've missed the point - or even am taking a **** all over his thread.


My original purpose was to stop derailing someone else's thread after the subject of narrative systems came up regarding FFG's SW system.

It was previous discussion of that system on their forums that really brought my concern over the encoding of narrative contrivance directly into RPG rules to a head -- examples such as the talent that lets a "main villain" use followers to absorb damage (to protect him from premature death/capture in the story arc), the talent that lets a character cause a random object to fail through narrative fiat and requires the cause of that failure to be retconned in (it fails regardless of maintenance, etc), the talent that lets a character pull whatever (small, stowable, portable) equipment they happen to need effectively out of thin air, and so on. These are not "things the character can do within the context of the setting", these are "things the character sheet has that enable the player to do stuff to the game for narrative reasons."

And despite being very crunchy and elaborate, those rules are also disassociated -- there's a lot of "negotiating" back and forth between the rules and the in-setting events. More on this below.




Hmmm... First things first. The game need not be a perfect simulation of this world - it only matters how well it simulates its intended world. It's not that people make decisions as themselves in this world, it's that people make decisions as themselves in a world that they understand as mechanics and, as you yourself stated, only understand incompletely.

When the simulation egregiously fails to match the fiction, sure, that's bad. I never said you couldn't have bad simulations. But talking about the failings of bad simulations is outside the scope of this discussion. And is comparing apples to oranges.

Second, as a vocal advocate of the "talk to people" solution to gaming problems, I'm a bit leery of rules that codify exactly how the GM is allowed to be a jerk, and exactly what your valid responses are. :smallyuk: So I don't see how that's supposed to be a selling point.

So... If I'm playing a reasonably athletic (human sized, humanoid) character, I expect to be able to consistently jump over a 2' pit.

In a simulation game, I expect I'll be able to notice things that could make me fail: I'm drunk, my leg has been shot off, I'm impacted by a cannonball halfway across, etc.

In a game with narrative causality, I can succeed or fail for no apparent reason simply because the plot demands it. It's no longer a pit, it's a plot hole.

How do you figure that my character can better predict whether he can jump that pit in a game with narrative causality than one with simulation mechanics? Is there some fundamental flaw in either my perception or reasoning that makes my analysis inaccurate?


There's no flaw in your perception or reasoning.

A character in a game with narrative rules and narrative causality can't make reliable predictions about events, including his own capabilities, and the capabilities of other characters. And neither can the player of that character. This is in part because narrative rules are by their nature to some degree disassociated -- what's going on in the mechanics maps to "the story", at least as much as it maps to (fictional) reality.

A character should not have to be "genre savvy" to understand what's actually going on.

Beleriphon
2017-01-02, 11:48 AM
There's no flaw in your perception or reasoning.

A character in a game with narrative rules and narrative causality can't make reliable predictions about events, including his own capabilities, and the capabilities of other characters. And neither can the player of that character. This is in part because narrative rules are by their nature to some degree disassociated -- what's going on in the mechanics maps to "the story", at least as much as it maps to (fictional) reality.

A character should not have to be "genre savvy" to understand what's actually going on.

I had a chance to ponder a lot of this over the weekend. Character don't have to be genre savvy to know what's going on in most narrative games, you play them just like normal. The games tend to work on narrative truths, that is to say making statements that are given to be true about the game or characters. For example the FATE Core examples use a group creating characters and working on the setting. One of the characters, Landon, is a Disciple of the Ivory Shroud, which is an esoteric martial arts school, so the setting now has esoteric martial arts schools and all that implies. That means that if Landon wants to try to recognize another martial arts dude's fighting style and gain an advantage in combat he gets to roll again his own aspect since as a Disciple of the Ivory Shroud he should be able to find weaknesses in others fighting styles, which gives a bonus to attacks or other things. Whether that's even possible, or what skill is needed is between the GM and the player depending on how they see that particular action working out. The FATE Core GM advice tends to err on the side of let the characters be awesome, but the GM could still say no that if they feel it is completely outside of the setting.

You can apply the logic to other things as well. If the ground is muddy maybe that all that dirt did jam your gun finally. A system like FATE basically goes with the GM, or the players, deciding that a jammed gun would make the game more fun and let interesting things happen, and the dice gods are with them then it happens. The big to remember is that narrative games don't let the player do things just because, there has to be an in setting justification to do so. You can't get jammed guns in orbit because of mud, there would have to be a reason that gun isn't going to work in context of the setting.

On the note of the pit jump, most narrative games, and FATE in particular would do one of two things. If failing makes things interesting, or there is some question about possible success, roll a skill and depending on you how well you do stuff happens. The other option is the pit jump is automatic because it doesn't add anything meaningful to the game other than window dressing. In another game's parlance do you make players roll to jump over pits if failure isn't relevant? The only difference is how a narrative games narrates the outcome. Most don't assume failure is failure, it means the character succeeded but something else happened that isn't so great (say they banged up their shin and later on somebody can use that as an advantage against them).

Narrative games aren't going to work for every setting though, a gritty war setting where death is cheap probably not a good choice. A zombie game where running, survival, and scrounging are most important? Probably not a good choice. In contrast a political intrigue game set against the back drop of the English Civil War however might be good for a narrative game, The Walking Dead inspired game is also probably a good choice.

kyoryu
2017-01-02, 12:39 PM
A character in a game with narrative rules and narrative causality can't make reliable predictions about events, including his own capabilities, and the capabilities of other characters. And neither can the player of that character. This is in part because narrative rules are by their nature to some degree disassociated -- what's going on in the mechanics maps to "the story", at least as much as it maps to (fictional) reality.

I'd say you're describing *bad* "narrative" GMing. And bad GMing is, you know, bad.

Satinavian
2017-01-02, 01:48 PM
:smalleek:My confusion reaches dizzying new heights! I think we're suffering from a severe confusion in terms. :smallconfused:
Please understand that from my point of view, this statement reads; "For many of us, its about making great stories. None of that has anything to do with 'The Story'".

I'm not clear what the word "story" means to you? Characters overcoming conflicts and antagonists in a colorful setting and growing as a result... isn't a story?
While i am not Max_Killjoy, i seem to have a similar taste and really don't play narrative games.

- overcoming conflicts : The fun part is often the challenge. Which is fun, if the result is open. And not only open but depending on the actions of the players and not on how narrative pleasing one finds the result.

- Characters : Matter of taste mostly. But pretty independent from the story. You can have good characters in bad stories and lackluster characters in good stories.

- Setting : Works best when versimilitude is achieved. By internal consistency and by running on a logic that is convincingly believable instead of following narrative structures.

- Interacting with NPCs : that is mostly fun with roleplaying. Has nothing to do with the story itself.

- Solving mysteries and uncovering plots : Well the fun part is looking for hints and combining them. If people actually find then is open. If they draw the right conclusions is open. And when they are done with it is also open. You don't get the pacing here that you would expect from a criminal novel or a film. There is no "finding the last clue just in time to get to the grand finale.


So no, nothing of all that says "Story". Many of the stuff in my RPGs are utterly unclimatic and doesn't follow any known narrative structure. And i like it this way because it makes for better conflicts (open) and better settings (no narrative causality).

Beleriphon
2017-01-02, 02:17 PM
While i am not Max_Killjoy, i seem to have a similar taste and really don't play narrative games.

- overcoming conflicts : The fun part is often the challenge. Which is fun, if the result is open. And not only open but depending on the actions of the players and not on how narrative pleasing one finds the result.

You still need to over come conflicts. And it still requires that the players take meaningful action and make choices. The difference is that the game rules usually allow for something interesting to happen regardless of the success of those decisions. So the choices are more meaningful, since they usually end up being what do you do about this thing that has complicated your successes? Or how does your character deal with failing at such and such a task? The game is structured to require those answers to proceed.


- Characters : Matter of taste mostly. But pretty independent from the story. You can have good characters in bad stories and lackluster characters in good stories.

Not idea how this makes any difference one way or another.


- Setting : Works best when versimilitude is achieved. By internal consistency and by running on a logic that is convincingly believable instead of following narrative structures.

- Interacting with NPCs : that is mostly fun with roleplaying. Has nothing to do with the story itself.

Narrative games don't actually follow narrative structure strictly speaking, they produce results that make it feel like a movie or novel. Usually this means failure at tasks doesn't bring the game to a halt. And the setting still needs to be consistent. My previous example involves usually setting the game up as a group, rather than the usual "GM creates a setting players you make characters: GO!" process that other games tend to assume.

Again you can have a narrative game that still makes sense, since most operate on the basis that something in the setting is true and the characters can interact with that truth. But the truths need to make sense context. A sword and sorcery game doesn't have elves unless somebody establishes that it does, but it probably has swords, evils wizards, might thewed barbarians, and magic.

After a fashion narrative games tend to play off of tropes to determine the scope for what is being done. So again a narrative game would have a broad description and broad skills which then play off of each other to determine what a character can do. So a mighty thewed barbarian can try to kick down a door, while a city rat urchin might try to pick the lock. Nothing precludes the the barbarian from picking the lock but they don't necessarily get the option to have any bonuses, but there has to be a narrative truth to the character that allows this to be the case. D&D does the same thing, it just says the character only gets to pick locks if they invested skill points in a skill. Its really the same thing, just presented differently.


- Solving mysteries and uncovering plots : Well the fun part is looking for hints and combining them. If people actually find then is open. If they draw the right conclusions is open. And when they are done with it is also open. You don't get the pacing here that you would expect from a criminal novel or a film. There is no "finding the last clue just in time to get to the grand finale.

Very few narrative games actually do this, in fact several mystery games outright just give the players clues and leave it up to the skill rolls to determine how much they learn from the clues. And then leave it to the players to actually put it together. In fact GUMSHOE is structured so that no matter what happens the players are always working from incomplete information. Just like a real detective never has ever single possible bit of evidence.


So no, nothing of all that says "Story". Many of the stuff in my RPGs are utterly unclimatic and doesn't follow any known narrative structure. And i like it this way because it makes for better conflicts (open) and better settings (no narrative causality).

I think the issue is people assume that because narrative games use things to make the end result work like a movie, or a novel. It doesn't mean the players have no agency or ability to make decisions, or that the setting isn't consistent. In fact to make this work everybody has to be working from the same basic premises for a setting or there is no agreement on what is permissible. Narrative games don't mean random stuff happens for no reason, it means end results emulate stories, but they don't don't force things to happen in a story structure sort of way.

Max_Killjoy
2017-01-02, 02:39 PM
I'd say you're describing *bad* "narrative" GMing. And bad GMing is, you know, bad.

I'm working off the things I've seen repeatedly pushed as desirable, by self-described advocates of narrative systems / games, in places like the FFG Star Wars forums.



I had a chance to ponder a lot of this over the weekend. Character don't have to be genre savvy to know what's going on in most narrative games, you play them just like normal. The games tend to work on narrative truths, that is to say making statements that are given to be true about the game or characters. For example the FATE Core examples use a group creating characters and working on the setting. One of the characters, Landon, is a Disciple of the Ivory Shroud, which is an esoteric martial arts school, so the setting now has esoteric martial arts schools and all that implies. That means that if Landon wants to try to recognize another martial arts dude's fighting style and gain an advantage in combat he gets to roll again his own aspect since as a Disciple of the Ivory Shroud he should be able to find weaknesses in others fighting styles, which gives a bonus to attacks or other things. Whether that's even possible, or what skill is needed is between the GM and the player depending on how they see that particular action working out. The FATE Core GM advice tends to err on the side of let the characters be awesome, but the GM could still say no that if they feel it is completely outside of the setting.

You can apply the logic to other things as well. If the ground is muddy maybe that all that dirt did jam your gun finally. A system like FATE basically goes with the GM, or the players, deciding that a jammed gun would make the game more fun and let interesting things happen, and the dice gods are with them then it happens. The big to remember is that narrative games don't let the player do things just because, there has to be an in setting justification to do so. You can't get jammed guns in orbit because of mud, there would have to be a reason that gun isn't going to work in context of the setting.

On the note of the pit jump, most narrative games, and FATE in particular would do one of two things. If failing makes things interesting, or there is some question about possible success, roll a skill and depending on you how well you do stuff happens. The other option is the pit jump is automatic because it doesn't add anything meaningful to the game other than window dressing. In another game's parlance do you make players roll to jump over pits if failure isn't relevant? The only difference is how a narrative games narrates the outcome. Most don't assume failure is failure, it means the character succeeded but something else happened that isn't so great (say they banged up their shin and later on somebody can use that as an advantage against them).


And one of the problems I have with narrative systems is that they telegraph information about what's going on to the player, bypassing the character's knowledge of the situation. Insisting that rolls only happen when there's something important at stake, and focusing on conflicts rather than attempted actions, makes it quite clear to the player that something is up, or that there's nothing going on.

kyoryu
2017-01-02, 02:46 PM
- overcoming conflicts : The fun part is often the challenge. Which is fun, if the result is open. And not only open but depending on the actions of the players and not on how narrative pleasing one finds the result.

Not entirely sure what this means, and how this is impossible in narrative systems.


- Characters : Matter of taste mostly. But pretty independent from the story. You can have good characters in bad stories and lackluster characters in good stories.

Not sure what this has to do with either. You can have good characters in any system, narrative or not.


- Setting : Works best when versimilitude is achieved. By internal consistency and by running on a logic that is convincingly believable instead of following narrative structures.

I've never seen a system which doesn't do this. I mean, do you have specifics here, or just "narrative bad! Narrative games are bad because they work on narrative stuff!"


- Interacting with NPCs : that is mostly fun with roleplaying. Has nothing to do with the story itself.

Um, and?


- Solving mysteries and uncovering plots : Well the fun part is looking for hints and combining them. If people actually find then is open. If they draw the right conclusions is open. And when they are done with it is also open. You don't get the pacing here that you would expect from a criminal novel or a film. There is no "finding the last clue just in time to get to the grand finale.

While some narrative systems do go in deep on the "the answer to the mystery is what the group decides it is", that is certainly not a universal statement. I made a post a bit ago about the various independent "bits" that get lumped in together with the term "narrative", it might help precision a bit here.


So no, nothing of all that says "Story". Many of the stuff in my RPGs are utterly unclimatic and doesn't follow any known narrative structure. And i like it this way because it makes for better conflicts (open) and better settings (no narrative causality).

... and I think you've got a strange idea of what "narrative" games are, at least most of the time. As far as following "narrative structure", I've probably seen more D&D games do that via railroading than anything else.

Again, what I see the most in people that don't like "narrative" games is a dislike of, well, railroading. Which is understandable - I personally don't like it either. But most "narrative" games are opposite of railroading, and emphasize seeing what happens in the game, playing through, etc. In many ways, most narrative games do not *embrace* the idea of a pre-developed story that's going to happen no matter what, and putting that story above anything else - they're a reaction to that, and emphasize player choice, seeing what happens, etc.

Basically, I'm saying here that most of the things you're talking about I understand you not liking. But they're not usually associated with "narrative" game. It's a common misunderstanding, and one that I had.

ImNotTrevor
2017-01-02, 02:58 PM
I'm working off the things I've seen repeatedly pushed as desirable, by self-described advocates of narrative systems / games, in places like the FFG Star Wars forums.

Then you likely don't understand their points, because I've not actually seen anyone proclaim that all things take a backseat to story, including common sense, except for really terrible GMs. Advocating for some narrative elements =/= advocating for them to be Lord God Of All Determination Of Outcome.

The idea that you either have no narrative elements or narrative determines all outcomes is a false dichotomy of your own.

Max_Killjoy
2017-01-02, 03:14 PM
Then you likely don't understand their points, because I've not actually seen anyone proclaim that all things take a backseat to story, including common sense, except for really terrible GMs. Advocating for some narrative elements =/= advocating for them to be Lord God Of All Determination Of Outcome.

The idea that you either have no narrative elements or narrative determines all outcomes is a false dichotomy of your own.

I would really appreciate it if you'd go to hell, and while you're at it, stop trying to tell other people what they think.

/plonk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plonk_(Usenet))

Beleriphon
2017-01-02, 03:23 PM
I'm working off the things I've seen repeatedly pushed as desirable, by self-described advocates of narrative systems / games, in places like the FFG Star Wars forums.

And one of the problems I have with narrative systems is that they telegraph information about what's going on to the player, bypassing the character's knowledge of the situation. Insisting that rolls only happen when there's something important at stake, and focusing on conflicts rather than attempted actions, makes it quite clear to the player that something is up, or that there's nothing going on.

I think the biggest departure from other games that the FFG Star Wars games have is a roll to see if some part of the character's back story shows up, or its some how important to the current session. Whether or not it necessarily makes sense to what is planned is a function of the GM being reactive to the dice. Other games have similar things, but not quite so baked into the rules. Many narrative games are by their nature reactive to what the players do, more so that other games like D&D to a very high degree.

The big one for focusing on on important actions is that the game doesn't focus on unimportant things, no game does. D&D does the same thing, if there is no risk involved there is no need to roll. And attempted actions are conflicts, they're ones the player has created however rather than one the GM has created. If there's no risk in attempting an action, why are we rolling dice? The dice are there to represent risk, and most narrative games still treat skill rolls and what not the same as non-narrative games, they just adjudicate the results differently.

I'm going illustrate my point with D&D and FATE with a fairly typical group. So we have Ardon the elf ranger, Beatrix the dwarf fighter, Clyde the human cleric and Deirdre the halfling wizard. In D&D they're on their way to the see the baron about a quest, but along the way they stop to buy some weapons at Ye Olde Weaponsmith from Scrooge McDwarf. They pay their money and off they go with some fun new toys. OR they could make some skill rolls because they don't like Scrooge McDwarf's prices, maybe they use the rules to assist to get some bonuses. They figure out their results, pay their gold and off they go. OR they fully roleplay the whole thing out and figure it out that way.

In FATE the same characters want to go buy some new weapons from Scrooge McDwarf. If the choose not to do anything in particular they get their weapons, and off they go. OR if they want to see about haggling a better price somebody makes a skill roll and sees, maybe Beatrix uses one of her aspects as a dwarf fighter to help get a better price from Scrooge. Either way dice are rolled and results are figured. OR the group decides that Scrooge is a mean bugger and he just wont give in, but they'll get him to agree so we use the full conflict rules and the players resolve their negotiations that way. OR the fully roleplay the whole thing because they just feel like doing that today.

ImNotTrevor
2017-01-02, 03:31 PM
I would really appreciate it if you'd go to hell, and while you're at it, stop trying to tell other people what they think.

/plonk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plonk_(Usenet))

I'd point out that you literally told me what I think in another thread. Even quote it here.

But I'm not going to derail. Just point out hypocrisy where it sits.

Satinavian
2017-01-02, 04:06 PM
You still need to over come conflicts. And it still requires that the players take meaningful action and make choices. The difference is that the game rules usually allow for something interesting to happen regardless of the success of those decisions. So the choices are more meaningful, since they usually end up being what do you do about this thing that has complicated your successes? Or how does your character deal with failing at such and such a task? The game is structured to require those answers to proceed.Yes. But i don't find that as fun as doing the original conflict.

Not idea how this makes any difference one way or another.
Max_Killjoy said he liked settings, character, interacting with NPCs and so on and didn't care to much about the story. Some posters answered that those things are more or less the story. Which is not something i agree with. You can have all this stuff in a good way and still have no story focused game. That is the argument,



Narrative games don't actually follow narrative structure strictly speaking, they produce results that make it feel like a movie or novel.Yes. That is the issue. I don't want it to feel like a movie. I prefer it to feel like a news agency report or a history book.
My previous example involves usually setting the game up as a group, rather than the usual "GM creates a setting players you make characters: GO!" process that other games tend to assume.Which has nothing to do with narrative games. Only about distribution of tasks between players and GM. Quite a lot of really oldfashioned sandboxed are done after collective worldbuilding.

After a fashion narrative games tend to play off of tropes to determine the scope for what is being done. So again a narrative game would have a broad description and broad skills which then play off of each other to determine what a character can do. So a mighty thewed barbarian can try to kick down a door, while a city rat urchin might try to pick the lock. Nothing precludes the the barbarian from picking the lock but they don't necessarily get the option to have any bonuses, but there has to be a narrative truth to the character that allows this to be the case. D&D does the same thing, it just says the character only gets to pick locks if they invested skill points in a skill. Its really the same thing, just presented differently.

I think the issue is people assume that because narrative games use things to make the end result work like a movie, or a novel. It doesn't mean the players have no agency or ability to make decisions, or that the setting isn't consistent.No, that is not the issue. At least not for me. The issue for me is that i am simply not that interested in creating a good story and that there are other things i want from a game.

@ kyoryu

I postet DoomHat for a reason.

My argument was that all of the stuff that Max_Killjoy listed and we both seem to like are pretty much independend from a good story. Not opposed to it. So your agument that you can have that in a narrative game somehow misses the point. Of course you can have it if it is independend.



Again, what I see the most in people that don't like "narrative" games is a dislike of, well, railroading. Which is understandable - I personally don't like it either. But most "narrative" games are opposite of railroading, and emphasize seeing what happens in the game, playing through, etc. In many ways, most narrative games do not *embrace* the idea of a pre-developed story that's going to happen no matter what, and putting that story above anything else - they're a reaction to that, and emphasize player choice, seeing what happens, etc.No, railroading is also independend. Sure, there are a lot of bad GMs who have a non-narrative game want a story focused experience and use railroading to get there instead of using a narrative game. But my issue is that i dislike the story-focused experience itself. I prefer if events unfold in the most likely way with maybe a small hint of randomness for surprise even if it is completely anticlimatic. I probably care about the characters and the world, but not about the story.

Max_Killjoy
2017-01-02, 04:10 PM
I think the biggest departure from other games that the FFG Star Wars games have is a roll to see if some part of the character's back story shows up, or its some how important to the current session. Whether or not it necessarily makes sense to what is planned is a function of the GM being reactive to the dice. Other games have similar things, but not quite so baked into the rules. Many narrative games are by their nature reactive to what the players do, more so that other games like D&D to a very high degree.

The big one for focusing on on important actions is that the game doesn't focus on unimportant things, no game does. D&D does the same thing, if there is no risk involved there is no need to roll. And attempted actions are conflicts, they're ones the player has created however rather than one the GM has created. If there's no risk in attempting an action, why are we rolling dice? The dice are there to represent risk, and most narrative games still treat skill rolls and what not the same as non-narrative games, they just adjudicate the results differently.


So rolls are about representing risk, rather than providing fair adjudication? I have no problem with mundane tasks not being rolled, or with rolls being used to determine how successful the attempt is or how long it takes, rather than being used as a pass-fail.

In the context of "conflict" as used by its proponents, there's a distinct difference between "attempted actions" and "conflict". Here's Conflict-based resolution as explained by Ron "Brain Damage" Edwards, regarding a hypothetical in which the players make a stealth roll to avoid being noticed by a guard, and the GM immediately has them stumble into more guards because he didn't want them to succeed:



The guards-after-the-guards problem is already solved, and has been for about four or five years now, among the body of games that I'm talking about. It's solved by focusing on the conflict of interest that the dice are solving.

In the older, task-oriented approach, the two people failed to define the task at hand - getting by this guard, or getting through the guards undetected. The system as written would not help you, and groups (a) had to arrive at a consensus about it in order to play such scenes at all; (b) had to jettison dice rolls for such scenes, relying on pure narration; or (c) undergo that asshat-conversation you saw beginning in my example, every damn time.

With conflict resolution, that problem simply disappears. Is the conflict between this very guard and the character? Is it between the character and the Duke, with the guard as a proxy/medium for the Duke? Whose interests are really opposed such that we even want to roll dice in the first place? The "free and clear" pre-roll phase in Sorcerer, the "say yes or roll the dice" principle in Dogs, and related statements and rules across many 2001-2003 game texts are all versions of this idea. Upon applying it, the guards-after-the-guards problem vanishes forever.

For example, if the conflict was between this guard and the character (and why? well, the guard would have to be interesting in some way, a priori, and not be just some talking furniture wearing a helmet), then a second conflict about a group of guards is kosher, if it qualifies as a conflict-of-interest on its own. But if the conflict was about sneaking through the guards, period, and let's say the conflict-of-interest is really with the Duke, then hammering the characters with more guards is cheating - you're trying to re-roll an outcome you didn't like, which is asshattery in conflict resolution.



That's clearly drawing a line between "conflict" resolution, and task-based resolution.

The solution to the guards-after-the-guards problem wasn't for a self-important postmodernist blowhard like Edwards to "revolutionize" gaming, the solution was for the GM to stop being a jerkarse. The GM should have had an idea of how many guards there were and where they'd be, and stuck with it -- and should never have imposed a failure, and should not have "fished" for a failure.

That idea that everyone must agree on the exact "conflict of interest" every time is a tacit insistence that the players know exactly what can go wrong beforehand, whether their characters do or not.

flond
2017-01-02, 05:10 PM
I'm...going to throw my hat in at this late hour to make some points that...I feel like making.

Yes, generally narrative games, and narrative style play make some assumptions. (Narrative play in the sense it is normally actually used, which is frankly, games that have grown off the body of the work of the Forge over 1 or more degrees.)

Yes, narrative play is disassociated in the sense that moves, actions, choices and game results happen outside of the knowledge of the character. The character is not the end all and be all of play in this style. To pretend it is and it is no different at all from traditional play does both a disservice. Because well...if they were exactly the same there wouldn't be a point.

To people who enjoy it this is often an advantage. Being able to shape and influence things outside of your character and to ensure that the experience is satisfying and resonant with specific genre/story beats is the point.

And I feel like pretending that it's not one of the big advantages of this style of play is a bad thing that muddles the issue. To put some of this more simply. It doesn't matter if your character knows that they fell in a pit because of dramatic importance, because your character is not the only point of decision making anymore. You the player, understand why this is happening.

The Glyphstone
2017-01-02, 05:20 PM
So rolls are about representing risk, rather than providing fair adjudication? I have no problem with mundane tasks not being rolled, or with rolls being used to determine how successful the attempt is or how long it takes, rather than being used as a pass-fail.


Those don't have to necessarily be exclusive. It sounds like the idea is that if there is no discernible difference between the outcomes of passing and failing the roll, whether that is on a mechanical or narrative scale, there's no point in doing the roll to begin with - mundane tasks, the way you put it. When passing or failing has consequences - i.e. risk, the dice come into play to provide the fair adjudication.

Beleriphon
2017-01-02, 05:35 PM
So rolls are about representing risk, rather than providing fair adjudication? I have no problem with mundane tasks not being rolled, or with rolls being used to determine how successful the attempt is or how long it takes, rather than being used as a pass-fail.

On risk versus adjudication its both really. By that I mean if there is no risk of failure of a task, don't roll. When you need to determine a fair result to overcome a risk of failure use dice, or some other randomized method that is deemed objective to the situation. On the success rate vs


In the context of "conflict" as used by its proponents, there's a distinct difference between "attempted actions" and "conflict". Here's Conflict-based resolution as explained by Ron "Brain Damage" Edwards, regarding a hypothetical in which the players make a stealth roll to avoid being noticed by a guard, and the GM immediately has them stumble into more guards because he didn't want them to succeed:

That's clearly drawing a line between "conflict" resolution, and task-based resolution.

The solution to the guards-after-the-guards problem wasn't for a self-important postmodernist blowhard like Edwards to "revolutionize" gaming, the solution was for the GM to stop being a jerkarse. The GM should have had an idea of how many guards there were and where they'd be, and stuck with it -- and should never have imposed a failure, and should not have "fished" for a failure.

That idea that everyone must agree on the exact "conflict of interest" every time is a tacit insistence that the players know exactly what can go wrong beforehand, whether their characters do or not.

Erm.... I'm not sure what's so revolutionary about Ron Edwards here? Or how that is specifically a narrative situation/solution. I think the big problem with explaining what I'm trying to get across is that he examples are poor. Most games narrative or otherwise treat something as straight forward as hiding either as task resolutions or extended skill checks. I'm also not understanding the context of your quote at all since I think I actually agree with you.

I'm going to return to FATE, because I honestly think of all of the narrative games I've seen you'd probably like it given what I'm understanding from your posts.

If you're trying to sneak past a group of guards you roll skill. If you fail one of two things can happen you sneak past but take a severe consequence, or you fail the and the guards notice you deal with that situation. If you tie the necessary target you succeed but with a minor consequence. If you succeed you well succeed, if you succeed with style (roll really good) you succeed and get a bonus related to the sneaking to use later.

That's a pretty straight forward task resolution. FATE has rules for an extended skill check, like say helping each other a mountain side. A conflict is when you use the conflict resolution rules, which are considerably more involved and generally mean there are pretty dire consequences for not succeeding in the conflict. In a fight that could mean death, or in a negotiation it could mean you don't get anything that you want and maybe getting thrown out. If does help in the conflict resolution to know what the stakes are before hand so we know what we're actually fighting about.

So a task is open a door. An extended skill check/task is climb a mountain. A conflict is either a physical fight or some other engagement that has equally as important consequences within the context of the setting (high school drama probably means you don't get invited to the prom, or have detention for a year).

Here's a quick example of a FATE character, its missing a few parts since we need a few other players to flesh out some parts of character creation.


Name: Corman the Librarian
High Concept: Might Thewed Library Technician
Trouble: I'm a Librarian, not a Barbarian!
Aspect 1:
Aspect 2:
Aspect 3:
Skills: Lore (+4), Physique (+3), Investigate (+3), Fight (+2), Contacts (+2), Will (+2), Empathy (+1), Deceive (+1), Athletics (+1), Will (+1)


We can see what Corman is good at, we can see his high concept gives an idea about what kind of things he does in a game, and his trouble explains the kinds of problems he has.

Darth Ultron
2017-01-02, 06:22 PM
Max_Killjoy said he liked settings, character, interacting with NPCs and so on and didn't care to much about the story. Some posters answered that those things are more or less the story. Which is not something i agree with. You can have all this stuff in a good way and still have no story focused game. That is the argument,.

So how does a game not have a story? Or is everyone talking ''story'' as ''a railroaded plot made by one person''.

Most RPG's a player makes a character and then has that character ''do'' something.....well that something is a story. Right?

Like you start with an idea ''lets be secret agents'', and pick a game system and players make characters. Ok, now a normal story game someone will make up a ''Dr evil has a new laser and you must stop him'' story. But people say they play games with no story? So how does that even work?

Like...ok four secret agent characters are standing in a field. With no story, nothing is happening. So what do you do in the game? Doing nothing does not sound like fun?

DoomHat
2017-01-02, 06:35 PM
I'm at this point 99% convinced that the heart of this dispute is a weird language divide, because words like "story" mean something wildly different to a lot of you guys then it does to me.

Here's my current take:
I've come into a thread titled ["Green Eggs and Ham?"], and found that the original poster and a good number of others are stating that they despise the taste of Green Eggs and Ham. As a fan of Green Eggs and Ham myself, I resolve to try to understand what people are finding so offensive about them.

I posited aloud that perhaps the detractors instead prefer the only alternative I'm aware of; Blue Eggs and Ham. But no, in fact, the detractors have been largely offended that I'd suggest they eat Blue Eggs and Ham. I'm told that Blue Eggs and Ham are disgusting and apparently (regardless of how many Blue Egg scarfing Scotsmen I've encountered) no True Scotsman will tolerate them. The detractors further clarify that Teal Eggs and Ham are where it's at.

Teal Eggs and Ham are, I'm assured, delicious.

At this point I become deeply confused. I've only ever thought of the Eggs and Ham I prefer as being "Green", but the way the detractors describe the taste of "Teal" Eggs and Ham, it just sounds like they're describing the same Green Eggs and Ham I enjoy. No matter which way I turn it or how I ask, I can't seem to discern where the line is drawn between Teal and Green.

Worse still, a lot of the ways Green Eggs and Ham are being described sounds really alien to me. I don't think you and I are eating the same Green Eggs and Ham?

Dropping the metaphor, the complaints I'm seeing in regards to whatever the hell "Narrative Causality" is ultimately supposed to mean are not things I've ever encountered playing or running FATE, Houses of the Blooded, or Legends of the Wulin.

In the case of FATE(the number of sacrifices being piled on this particular alter frankly creep me out even as a fanboy myself, but I digress), by and large it's core mechanic of Aspects and Fate Points only ever replicate(and streamline) all the convoluted horse puke of interlocking advantages and disadvantages other "crunchier" systems convolute themselves with.

kyoryu
2017-01-02, 06:35 PM
Yes. That is the issue. I don't want it to feel like a movie. I prefer it to feel like a news agency report or a history book.

And this is an interesting statement, but I do find it a bit imprecise.

Please keep in mind that I'm not against "traditional" games in any way, shape, or form.


No, that is not the issue. At least not for me. The issue for me is that i am simply not that interested in creating a good story and that there are other things i want from a game.

What are the activities you find bad? I mean, if you play through all of something like DragonLance, which is clearly a story, does that set off your "Story Bad!" sense?


My argument was that all of the stuff that Max_Killjoy listed and we both seem to like are pretty much independend from a good story. Not opposed to it. So your agument that you can have that in a narrative game somehow misses the point. Of course you can have it if it is independend.

Well, yes. Which is why those are arguments neither for nor against narrative games. I think we're in agreement there?

The vast majority of times I've heard that things must be in service to "the story" hasn't been because of the narrativist leanings of a game or not. It's been because the GM has a story they want to tell, and they're damn well going to do it regardless of those pesky dice. YMMV.



I'm going to return to FATE, because I honestly think of all of the narrative games I've seen you'd probably like it given what I'm understanding from your posts.

The funny thing with Fate is that Fred Hicks has said it's his argument *against* Ron Edwards' theories.

So arguing against Ron Edwards doesn't necessarily mean you're against all "narrativist" games. As I've posted above, there's a few things that often get lumped in with the term that I think are mostly orthogonal to each other.

At this point I think we're arguing internal definitions without ever really well defining the terms being used. Maybe it would be more useful to talk about specific instances of what people find objectionable, rather than sweeping statements?

kyoryu
2017-01-02, 06:40 PM
Worse still, a lot of the ways Green Eggs and Ham are being described sounds really alien to me. I don't think you and I are eating the same Green Eggs and Ham?

This is what I'm getting a lot, frankly. I hear a lot of things described that don't relate in any way to my experience with "narrative" systems.

And I'm not some new-fangled hipster just picking up narrative games because it's the cool thing. I've been playing since the (very) early 80s, have played in incredibly traditional games, have worked with some of the OG crew on D&D and other big-name traditional games, etc. I *get* traditional games. I *love* traditional games. It took me about a year of playing narrative games to really start to grok them, and understand them. And I fully understand why some traditional players will never like them.

But what I see in this thread doesn't match my experiences playing "narrative" games. At all. I'd offer to run an online game for some of you if you're interested.

And don't ask me to defend Ron Edwards. Ain't gonna happen. I'll be standing in line for the pitchforks and torches with you on that one.

Max_Killjoy
2017-01-02, 07:14 PM
As some of you just said, I think we're finding that this discussion is a giant mess of terminology disconnects.

For example, "conflict resolution", I've been taking as meant by Mr Edwards and his acolytes -- as "conflict of interest" resolution, where it's based on resolving events in chunks based on conflicting interests, conflicting goals, conflicting intents, etc... and if the conflict is with the Lord of the Keep instead of the guards, then you roll against the Lord, not his guards, even if you're trying to sneak past the guards. This is opposed to "attempted action resolution" or "task resolution".

"Narrative causality", I've been taking to mean "things happen because The Story demands that they happen now, or don't happen because they would conflict with The Story" -- usually involving Plot Contrivances and the breaking of Empirical Causality. The shot doesn't miss the villain because the character missed the shot as a natural outcome of the preceding events, but because if the villain got shot now, the story would be over. It's a matter of "root cause" -- do events arise as the natural and direct outcome of character actions and reactions and the consequences thereof, in a loop with the mechanics... or do they arise at heart from OOC decisions about what would "make the better story".

"The Story", I've been using to mean "story as the purpose and goal of the game" -- as an extension of the narrative causality meaning given above. Players making decisions for the sake of advancing a "good story" rather than making decisions as their characters, and events being distorted to fit the desired story structure.



Under those definitions, I don't think that I've ever used "narrative causality" in my gaming, as a player or as a GM (no matter what some might try to assert). I've been arguing against those meanings of the terms and the attached approach to gaming, because I thought those were THE meanings based on those meanings being pushed HARD by people in other venues. This is not me mistaking what those others have been saying, this is THEM using different meanings than most of YOU might be using. I'm not deliberately arguing with people who aren't here (which I see people do a lot), but some of my arguments may have accidentally been directed at them.


I would also say that, as there appears to be no single "narrative games", there is also no single "traditional games", and trying to divide games into those two categories isn't going to be very useful.

Max_Killjoy
2017-01-02, 07:46 PM
:smalleek:My confusion reaches dizzying new heights! I think we're suffering from a severe confusion in terms. :smallconfused:
Please understand that from my point of view, this statement reads; "For many of us, its about making great stories. None of that has anything to do with 'The Story'".

I'm not clear what the word "story" means to you? Characters overcoming conflicts and antagonists in a colorful setting and growing as a result... isn't a story?

Okay, so... alright. I'm going to crack open my copy of GURPS 4th Ed (which I assume you wouldn't regard as a "Story Driven" game?) and I'm going to find some advantages and disadvantages that would, to me at least, seem to hinge on ''Narrative Causality" as best I can decipher from the discussion thus far. You tell me if and how I'm wrong??

Allies: You have a positive relationship with an NPC who will show up at a frequency, and display a level of actual helpfulness, determined by the level of your point investment in them. Is it not a narrative contrivance that this wacky guest star keeps showing up to get involved in whatever shenanigans the party is conducting this week?

Contacts: Same deal except they sometimes show up demanding favors from YOU in order to maintain the relationship. Seems like a well worn narrative contrivance to generate plot??

Destiny: You can not die except by virtual suicide until you've accomplished an as yet unknown world changing feat. Which is strikingly similar to the concept of 'Plot Armor' I think(See also the "Extra Life" advantage).

Higher Purpose: You have a declared dedicated mission in life. You conviction in that purpose grants you a bonus to all rolls directly related to achieving it. This is conceptually almost identical to how a lot of Aspects in FATE are used...

Alright enough's enough. That, I think, is a pretty decent sample size.
Are these advantages problems? Do you disapprove of their existence/implementation? Are they founded on 'Narrative Causality'?


I'm sorry for missing this one earlier.

Allies -- no, not a narrative contrivance, people have friends. It only becomes contrivance if whether they appear or not is routinely convenient to The Story. If your friend finds out that you're in trouble and comes to help, that's not contrived. If your friend always seems to show up to help at the most "dramatic" moment possible, and repeatedly gets "held up in traffic" or whatever when The Story needs you to face a challenge alone or without that friend's particular skills, it's getting deep into contrivance territory.

Contacts -- no, not a contrivance, people do favors for each other. See above, same caveat applies.

Destiny -- big fat plot contrivance.

Higher Purpose -- to me, it depends on the way it's mechanically structured.

kyoryu
2017-01-02, 09:07 PM
Allies -- no, not a narrative contrivance, people have friends. It only becomes contrivance if whether they appear or not is routinely convenient to The Story. If your friend finds out that you're in trouble and comes to help, that's not contrived. If your friend always seems to show up to help at the most "dramatic" moment possible, and repeatedly gets "held up in traffic" or whatever when The Story needs you to face a challenge alone or without that friend's particular skills, it's getting deep into contrivance territory.

"Narrative" games I know give you a chance to have an ally show up when you need them. Same with contacts.


Destiny -- big fat plot contrivance.

And yet frequently seen in certain types of D&D games as well. Hell, back in DragonLance they gave you advice on how to bring back characters that had "died".

But, yeah, that would annoy me. I play various Fate and PbtA games in additon to more traditional games, and I don't know of any that mandate this.


Higher Purpose -- to me, it depends on the way it's mechanically structured.

That's really not how aspects work in Fate, but I agree. If you're "destined" to do something and can't fail, then why the hell are you even playing a supposed "game"?


As some of you just said, I think we're finding that this discussion is a giant mess of terminology disconnects.

Which is why I'm suggesting we move away from "definitions" and towards "examples". Like "at the table, this is the situation, and this is how it resolves, due to this thing I don't like". Then we can discuss that thing directly, without the layer of "definition" that I think is interfering.

Like when people say "I don't like it when The Story is the number one thing".... I literally don't know what they're talking about. Not that they're wrong, or anything like that. But literally those words don't tell me what at-table situation they're speaking of.

But when people say "Big Bad Guy is getting away, and he literally can't be hit because he's needed for the rest of the story"... yeah, I can understand that, and frankly agree with it being annoying.

Darth Ultron
2017-01-02, 10:36 PM
But when people say "Big Bad Guy is getting away, and he literally can't be hit because he's needed for the rest of the story"... yeah, I can understand that, and frankly agree with it being annoying.

So I get that some people don't like to be told they can't do something. But this only a problem when you have a bad GM that says stuff like ''you can't hit my bad guy and he gets away''. Right? So all you need is a GM type that does not tell the players metagame details about the game ever.

A player can only complain if they know something is happening or not happening for a fact. And really can only know for sure if the GM says so.

A good GM can use the game rules against the players (harsh true, but it is what the players want, right?) and say ''you miss per rule X'' and ''he gets away per rule Y'' and such. Like where the bad guy goes to escape and the two archer player characters are all like ''we shoot our arrows!'', but then the DM says ''sorry they bounce off nothing a couple feet from him as he has a protection from arrows spell(something the bad guy character has access to and would cast with a does of common sense.)

But even more, a good DM would avoid getting the bad guy within range of the Pc's anyway.

Satinavian
2017-01-03, 04:43 AM
And this is an interesting statement, but I do find it a bit imprecise.

Please keep in mind that I'm not against "traditional" games in any way, shape, or form.And i am not against narrative games. They seem to do a good job at achieving what they try to do. I just personally don't like to play them because i don't share those goals. But yes, the RPG scene is better off with those systems existing for players who want that kind of game.

What are the activities you find bad? I mean, if you play through all of something like DragonLance, which is clearly a story, does that set off your "Story Bad!" sense?I am not that familiar with DragonLance, but i would guess yes, i would dislike it as RPG experience because it feels to much like a story. When i started roleplaying, most of the games were this way. But i learned that i can achieve deeper immersion if the events evolve in the most believable way, not the most dramatic way. And that i really like immersion. And that i really don't need a traditional arc of tension in any adventure. Or any of the other things that supposedly make good stories.

I think i came to the realisation first in Shadowrun. Which is played very differently in different groups. While the rules have very little in regard to drama, it is used for several slightly different genres and genre expectations often clash. There are players that really want to follow a certain genre and are upset if others don't. There are other players who don't really care about genre conventions at all.
Personally i had often a lot of fun with runs where we spent several hours planning IC. And then we went to the run. And the plan actually worked. No single surprise for the secaond half of the whole adventure. All risks being exactly the same as discussed and accepted before and turning out to be in tolerance. No stupid final "unexpected betrayal".
We had also runs where we spent several hours planning and then ... decided to not even try it. Those were also fun. Trying to find soutions, contemplating risk vs. reward from character perspective and decide to not take the risk.
We also had runs where we planned for hours, failed something stupid at the beginning (either because we missed a detail or because we botched some important rolls) and basically couldn't execute the plan but got not far enough to be in any risk for the characters. We missed the timeframe of the run and the more serious and exciting events just because of some failure at laying the preparational groundwork. And those were also fun.

But you would find nothing like that in a Shadowrun novel. Because it makes for a bad story. I eventually ran into players with the believe that those things should not actually ever happen in a Shadowrun game because it would make for a bad story. That the legwork results should always be flawed. That there should always be hidden surprises either near the eclipse of the run or at the end with the Johnson. And that the runners should always get to the actual run where they risk something. That certain tropes should be included because they belong to Shadowrun. That was the moment for me to think again about how important story is for me and to realize the answer was "not particularly much".

Of course we also had a lot of runs that made for good stories. But those could also happen in narrative groups the same way so are not really important for the argument.

Frozen_Feet
2017-01-03, 05:57 AM
Dragonlance is a good example to think about, because it was among the first series of D&D modules to explicitly have an overarching metaplot which demanded specific characters to survive, and hence first one to implement special rules exceptions to facilitate this.

Historically, Dragonlance was one of the big contributors to a paradigm shift in D&D, causing people to start thinking "D&D for telling stories", as opposed to earlier styles of playing D&D which were about world emulation or overcoming challenges.

Max_Killjoy
2017-01-03, 12:12 PM
Which is why I'm suggesting we move away from "definitions" and towards "examples". Like "at the table, this is the situation, and this is how it resolves, due to this thing I don't like". Then we can discuss that thing directly, without the layer of "definition" that I think is interfering.

Like when people say "I don't like it when The Story is the number one thing".... I literally don't know what they're talking about. Not that they're wrong, or anything like that. But literally those words don't tell me what at-table situation they're speaking of.

But when people say "Big Bad Guy is getting away, and he literally can't be hit because he's needed for the rest of the story"... yeah, I can understand that, and frankly agree with it being annoying.


I'm going to add in another quoted post, before I reply, because I think I can work from the example given.




I think i came to the realisation first in Shadowrun. Which is played very differently in different groups. While the rules have very little in regard to drama, it is used for several slightly different genres and genre expectations often clash. There are players that really want to follow a certain genre and are upset if others don't. There are other players who don't really care about genre conventions at all.

Personally i had often a lot of fun with runs where we spent several hours planning IC. And then we went to the run. And the plan actually worked. No single surprise for the secaond half of the whole adventure. All risks being exactly the same as discussed and accepted before and turning out to be in tolerance. No stupid final "unexpected betrayal".

We had also runs where we spent several hours planning and then ... decided to not even try it. Those were also fun. Trying to find soutions, contemplating risk vs. reward from character perspective and decide to not take the risk.

We also had runs where we planned for hours, failed something stupid at the beginning (either because we missed a detail or because we botched some important rolls) and basically couldn't execute the plan but got not far enough to be in any risk for the characters. We missed the timeframe of the run and the more serious and exciting events just because of some failure at laying the preparational groundwork. And those were also fun.

But you would find nothing like that in a Shadowrun novel. Because it makes for a bad story. I eventually ran into players with the believe that those things should not actually ever happen in a Shadowrun game because it would make for a bad story. That the legwork results should always be flawed. That there should always be hidden surprises either near the eclipse of the run or at the end with the Johnson. And that the runners should always get to the actual run where they risk something. That certain tropes should be included because they belong to Shadowrun. That was the moment for me to think again about how important story is for me and to realize the answer was "not particularly much".

Of course we also had a lot of runs that made for good stories. But those could also happen in narrative groups the same way so are not really important for the argument.


In fiction, it puts me in "throw book against the wall" mode when I get to that "it's an X novel, of course plot points A, B, and C have to occur" moment in the book or the movie.

And so when I game, I want to avoid those moments as much as possible -- I want to avoid well-worn, expected "twists", and the cliches. Not only do I not care if it makes "a bad story" to not have those plot points occur, I actually think a BETTER story usually results from the game if they do not reliably occur.

When I talk about "The Story", what I mean is that there's a story that the writer wants to tell, and damnit if it's not going to get told no matter what, and to hell with consistency and coherency of setting and of characters. For example, a character who's shown over and over to be a crack shot with his well-maintained favorite pistol, suddenly misses what looks like an easy shot, for no explicable reason, because the writer wants to tell the story of The One Who Got Away. Or when a well-worn genre element gets included because they're telling That Kind of Story.

This sort of thing then gets carried over to gaming in some systems and by some gaming groups, because it's "part of the genre". Using Satinavian's example, because the betrayals and missed warning signs and hidden surprises and risks and mistakes and fallout are "part of a good Shadowrun story", those game designers and players believe that they NEED to happen in a Shadowrun game, and that the game design or the campaign itself has failed if they don't occur. (I'm not saying that Shadowrun designers ever went down that path, I'm just using that as a hypothetical.)

And that's exactly what I DO NOT want in my gaming. If the PCs figure out the "twist" before it happens, and it cuts the arc short, and the campaign moves on to the next arc, then GOOD for the players. If the PCs pull off a masterful move and nail the main antagonist before they were "supposed" to, then GOOD for the players, and the GM needs to adapt. If the PCs are extra careful and out-plan the NPCs, then GOOD for the players. If the PCs smell a rat and turn down a job or bail on a job, then GOOD for the players, and the GM should proceed with all the NPCs and the setting reacting to what the players have done -- next move by whoever was trying to set them up, or whatever.


Regarding rules, the split is here: I want the mechanics to map/model things inside the game world. Take the FFG Star Wars talent that allows the player to declare that some tool or device or tech has failed. This doesn't represent something that the PC can do within the setting, they're not a technopath. It's something that the player can do to "the story" that needs to then be retro-justified within the setting.

I'd have LESS issue with a PC who is a technopath, than I have with the player having a deeply disassociated "drama card" they can lay down once per session.

But then, at least in FFG Star Wars, it appears that EVERYTHING in the mechanics is a disassociated element that needs to be pre- or post-roll negotiated and narrated to determine what it actually really means in terms of the rules-setting "loop".

ImNotTrevor
2017-01-03, 12:33 PM
I'm familair with the specific rule being quoted. And the rule has a purpose despite being very silly. In fact, it is in and of itself a reference.

I believe it's called "Bad Motivator." It comes from a specific scene in the first Star Wars movie in which Luke almost doesn't end up with R2-D2 when his uncle chooses an R3 unit. Thanks to blind luck, the R3 unit happens to have a "Bad Motivator" and luckily short circuits. Lucky/serendipitous technological failures are really common in Star Wars. And so they made it an ability a character can have because it's really Star Wars, not because it's sensical. Because it's not any more sensical when it happens in Star Wars. They just wanted to make that a thing players could do, and its inclusion leads to generally lighter fare in a game/campaign.

Again, the purpose of that rule is to emulate the kind of crap that happens in Star Wars adventures for some reason.

100% ok to not like it. I find the rule to be a humorous callback, but I would bar it from certain campaigns. Otherwise my experience with FFG games doesn't involve very much retcon at all, though it will occassionally involve some fortune-teller-esque readings of dice results. (Which, as much as it can cause some silly things like passing out of stress from trying to coerce a guy, is actually a really strong non-binary outcomes system.

Steel Mirror
2017-01-03, 01:51 PM
And that's exactly what I DO NOT want in my gaming. If the PCs figure out the "twist" before it happens, and it cuts the arc short, and the campaign moves on to the next arc, then GOOD for the players. If the PCs pull off a masterful move and nail the main antagonist before they were "supposed" to, then GOOD for the players, and the GM needs to adapt. If the PCs are extra careful and out-plan the NPCs, then GOOD for the players. If the PCs smell a rat and turn down a job or bail on a job, then GOOD for the players, and the GM should proceed with all the NPCs and the setting reacting to what the players have done -- next move by whoever was trying to set them up, or whatever.
I'm mostly just lurking at this point because I think the conversation has basically run out of steam and is going in circles, but for what it's worth, you are describing exactly how I run my current DF Fate game. The players figured out a plot point waaaay earlier than I intended recently, and I let them totally mess up his plans and come out on top on an arc which I was expecting to run for several more sessions. He's dead now, and the players are enjoying a respite from the major ascending action that I was building up to, but his wasn't the only plot going, and by knocking down one big bad they've opened the way for a few other scheming powers to try and fill the gaps.

And they figured the bad guy out, by the way, thanks to the kind of set up that you've been praising even as you knock down the ideas of functional aspects and story-crafting mechanics. They investigated, discovered some aspects on certain NPCs with good RP that gave them clues about the identity of the BBEG, and then made an intuitive leap based on character motivations to figure out who was benefiting from the situation and therefore who was orchestrating it. They further made a few declarations (one of the PCs is an ex-con, for instance, so he spent a FP to say that he had an old buddy in this evil organization who could verify some of their suspicions with hard evidence), and then it was time for the (much earlier than I expected) final showdown.

And I was fine with that, and it was awesome. It wasn't the story I had planned on unfolding, but it was a good story and the players now are even prouder knowing they short-circuited what was planned to be a much more dangerous plot. Having mechanics that support satisfying stories =/= railroading the game onto a story that a GM wants to tell. In many ways it's quite the opposite; it subtly guides the game such that the story that emerges is stronger than what anyone could have planned, and it does so by encouraging the whole group to build that satisfying story together.

At least, that's how it works at my table (on the best days). I'm not trying to convince you to use it in any of your games, but I am defending the way I've seen these narrative games work from what I think are some unfair assumptions that you've made a couple times.