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Drache64
2020-12-28, 06:16 PM
Mechanics vs interpretation based RPG systems.

People may nit pick on my terms here, and they'll probably all be right. So please focus on what I'm trying to say not any wrong terminology I accidentally use.

By mechanics based I mean an RPG system like D&D. Most of what you want to do has to be interpreted through available mechanics like feats and class abilities. Do you want to disarm your opponent with your Sorcerer staff? Too bad, you're not a battle master. Do you want to blast a spell at your enemy to knock him off a bridge? Better hope you're a warlock with repelling blast.
Pros:
Tactical mechanic combat
Some people need structure in their imagination

Cons:
Limits to what you can do.
Able to break the game mechanics
Players encouraged to optimize a build

By interpretation based, I mean that anything you want to sensibly do, you tell the DM and roll to see if it can happen. "I use control water to suck the water out of my opponent", "I tackle my enemy and beat him with his own weapon".
Pros:
Can do anything you can reasonably think of.
Free to think outside the box solution, no cookie cutter approach to combat, builds, spells.

Cons:
You might suck at imagination, no cookie cutter approach to combat, builds, spells.

What do you guys think? I'd love to read some discussions on this.

NichG
2020-12-28, 06:32 PM
My design philosophy is that mechanics are promises and prompts.

Promises in that if I specify a mechanic for something, you can assume that when you use that thing it will work the way I said, without having to ask me. Notably it's not a promise that it's the only way it could ever work. You or an NPC could both find other ways of obtaining that effect, or could vary things to modify the effect, but in doing so you would sacrifice any guarantees of what will happen and need to work with the GM to figure that out. So if a spell says 'Control Water: This spell lets you manipulate small amounts of water. Can dry objects, draw up to 1L of water per minute from even dry air, and can cause 1 point of damage to organic creatures from dehydration' then those things are guaranteed. But if you said 'I want to specifically dry out their eyes' or 'I want to protect myself from poison spit' or 'I want to stabilize the surface of this lake and walk on water' then it might work, or not.

Prompts in that often having ideas what to do in a vacuum is difficult and even limiting. By specifying some (but not all) of the things that are possible in the world, a good mechanic can give players ideas for things to try or even things to accomplish. In this sense, its better to have mechanics that say 'by the way, here's this interesting thing you might not have thought of' rather than 'when you want to do X, Y is how we resolve it'

MoiMagnus
2020-12-28, 06:36 PM
Some systems try to play on both sides, like Mutants and Mastermind, which has a mechanical structure but at its core is interpretation-based.
=> Every power has a mechanical effect, like "Damage 10", and a descriptor, like "Fire Bolt", and while most of the time the descriptor is meaningless mechanically, it might come in play when the circumstances are right, like instead of using the fire bolt as an attack, you could argue with the DM that you can use it as a defensive power to counter an enemy power that has the "Darkness" descriptor. And the whole game is like that; it has explicit mechanics on how you can come up with mechanical effects that are not on your character sheet but make sense.

On your note, I'd like to argue the "Player encouraged to optimize a build" as a clear cons. It's more a game-changer than a cons.

It's would be like putting "Players encouraged to tank in-character" as a cons for some decision. Some peoples might be annoying when they talk in-character, some peoples might feel bad for being pressured into talking in-character, but on the other side some peoples play RPG in order to be able to RP their character.

Same here, some peoples are really annoying when they optimize their build, some peoples feel bad for being pressured into optimizing, but on the other side some peoples play RPG in order to be able to optimize their character.

Jay R
2020-12-28, 08:51 PM
They are different games and you should play them differently. People who can play one style well but not the other, will naturally prefer the style in which they excel.

For each style:
Pros -- you can have fun doing what this game does well.
Cons -- you can get frustrated trying to do what this game doesn't do well.

My preference? I don't care. I will play the game we're actually playing. Sometimes it takes me awhile to learn the right way to approach a specific game. This is the part of the fun of playing it. I expect to earn experience in a specific game system and slowly get better at it, just as my character gains experience and gets better.

If I play a situation in original D&D the same way I would play the same situation in 3.5e, then I am playing poorly. I need to learn to play the system I'm actually playing. This is no different from saying that I will play checkers differently from chess, or football.

I enjoy the business of slowly learning, and improving at, a new system. This is the greatest challenge, and therefore the greatest potential fun, of any system -- slowly developing skills in that system.

My favorite games are Flashing Blades, original D&D, AD&D 1e, D&D 3.5e, TOON, Pendragon, Champions, GURPS, Fantasy Hero, and even Chivalry & Sorcery. As near as I can tell, there is no unifying factor except that I have had excellent GMs in each of these games. I don't want to play any of them with a poor GM.

And I will play pretty much any game with a good GM who knows the system.

Drache64
2020-12-28, 08:59 PM
My design philosophy is that mechanics are promises and prompts.



Some systems try to play on both sides, like Mutants and Mastermind, which has a mechanical structure but at its core is interpretation-based.


Solid answers! Thank you both! Very informative and helping me think through this!


On your note, I'd like to argue the "Player encouraged to optimize a build" as a clear cons. It's more a game-changer than a cons.


I like your take here but I'll clarify what aspect of optimization I see as a con.

In my 5e Campaign I'm currently playing a Goliath Barbarian with a magic hammer. I wanted a 1 handed hammer like mjolnir, and I did go with that. But I was frustrated I couldn't use the feat "great Weapon Master" with it, which is a mechanic I really enjoy. And I'm saddened that my typical 2d6 with a great sword is now 1d8 with my hammer. The mechanics encourage me to optimize (choose a great sword and great Weapon Master) and forsake the role play.

When optimization steers you away from RP in a TTRPG, I see it as a negative.


They are different games and you should play them differently.

And I will play pretty much any game with a good GM who knows the system.

I like your take and it seems we are the same. I want to play both styles.

But this conversation is about discussing the differences between the two, to help decide what my preference could be. If I'm going to run a 5 year Campaign I'm wanting to understand both systems to help decide.

GeoffWatson
2020-12-29, 04:21 AM
I find the "interpretation" method to be more about the players fast-talking the DM rather than playing by the rules.
I remember some discussions about the Fate system where one player had "Magic" skill at +4 (maximum skill in Fate). She would use that skill for everything, as magic can do anything, and never used her other, worse, skills.

Satinavian
2020-12-29, 04:33 AM
I like your take here but I'll clarify what aspect of optimization I see as a con.

In my 5e Campaign I'm currently playing a Goliath Barbarian with a magic hammer. I wanted a 1 handed hammer like mjolnir, and I did go with that. But I was frustrated I couldn't use the feat "great Weapon Master" with it, which is a mechanic I really enjoy. And I'm saddened that my typical 2d6 with a great sword is now 1d8 with my hammer. The mechanics encourage me to optimize (choose a great sword and great Weapon Master) and forsake the role play.

When optimization steers you away from RP in a TTRPG, I see it as a negative.

But it would be totally reasonable for a GM to say that all combat styles that only use one hand are far inferior to those that use both hands and that your Character thus has to be less effective with a one handed hammer than he would be with a two handed one

Optimization can happen in both styles. The only difference is whether you choose options that the book says are strongest or those that your GM thinks are strongest.

Drache64
2020-12-29, 09:03 AM
But it would be totally reasonable for a GM to say that all combat styles that only use one hand are far inferior to those that use both hands and that your Character thus has to be less effective with a one handed hammer than he would be with a two handed one

Optimization can happen in both styles. The only difference is whether you choose options that the book says are strongest or those that your GM thinks are strongest.

I agree, but to an extent it makes sense. Larger weapons deal more damage. The mechanic system limits your ability to compensate for this, as in D&D 5e it is almost impossible to overcome a great Weapon Master and great sword damage gap (2d6+17 vs 1d8+7).

The interpretive system I'm looking at is "Cogent". In this system, the one handed weapons gain 1d6 bonus whereas large weapons get 2d6, so it's 50% better. But in this interpretive system, the player builds a pool of d6's by utilizing skills. So the player with 1 handed can say he's going to bring one of those other skills to bear in his attack and suddenly he's on even footing.

It just seems mechanical systems can make a lot of play styles less viable. EG: I had a player who really really wanted to play a Daredevil blind monk in Pathfinder. It's just not doable in the system as the mechanic for blind sight was just too broken to hand out at level 1. Essentially as a DM I wanted to say yes, but the mechanics said no.

Quertus
2020-12-29, 10:58 AM
My design philosophy is that mechanics are promises and prompts.

I just wanna expand on this a bit: they aren't just *positive* promises, they're *negative* promises, too.

Include a descriptor for [knockback]? Everything that doesn't have that descriptor doesn't / can't cause knockback. Include a *ranked* descriptor for Fire spells? If rank 3 fire causes standard combustibles to ignite, it's a promise that fire below rank 3 will not do so.

Without these negative promises, too many GMs will be too tempted to make your spells behave in unpredictable (and generally detrimental) ways, IME. Give me rules any day!

Now, anything *outside* these rules - like, which of these spells might have an effect on fertility rates - I'm open to negotiation. Or, better yet, I like systems which facilitate the ease with which my character can invent their own spells to manipulate these "out of scope" variables.


I find the "interpretation" method to be more about the players fast-talking the DM rather than playing by the rules.

Yeah, this too. Between unintended consequences and lack of intended consequences, such games are not about the game, or the characters - they're just about the GM. :smallyuk:



I remember some discussions about the Fate system where one player had "Magic" skill at +4 (maximum skill in Fate). She would use that skill for everything, as magic can do anything, and never used her other, worse, skills.

And… why would they want to use their worse skills? As one of my characters once said in response to "never play an ace when a duce will do", "never play a duce when you have an unlimited supply of aces".

NichG
2020-12-29, 11:23 AM
I just wanna expand on this a bit: they aren't just *positive* promises, they're *negative* promises, too.

Include a descriptor for [knockback]? Everything that doesn't have that descriptor doesn't / can't cause knockback. Include a *ranked* descriptor for Fire spells? If rank 3 fire causes standard combustibles to ignite, it's a promise that fire below rank 3 will not do so.

Without these negative promises, too many GMs will be too tempted to make your spells behave in unpredictable (and generally detrimental) ways, IME. Give me rules any day!

Now, anything *outside* these rules - like, which of these spells might have an effect on fertility rates - I'm open to negotiation. Or, better yet, I like systems which facilitate the ease with which my character can invent their own spells to manipulate these "out of scope" variables.



I explicitly avoid having this kind of negative promise on rule systems I write, because I want to encourage people to venture outside of the promise-controlled region as much as possible, and I want games that involve discovery and invention as fundamental themes. So if a rule is being used to say e.g. 'this fruit can't heal wounds, because only Divine Magic can accelerate healing and this detects as non-magical', that's a problem.

Or to put it another way, I want a 'points of light' type of player knowledge where there are small regions in which the players absolutely know exactly how things work, an infinite dark of possible things that could work arbitrarily differently, and the ability to choose for themselves (but not for that which they encounter) how deep into the dark to push. Some areas may be able to be lit (generate new promises) as a result of character research, while other areas may persistently be unlightable (you can gain abilities in this direction, but at the cost of never being able to guarantee how they work).

So in my systems, an ability that promises 'Gain [Immunity] to the [Death] condition' would be a distinct, weaker ability than one that says 'With this ability, regardless of the events that befell your character you may choose at any time for them to be alive, able to act, and under your control'. Because out in the dark may be powers that suppress the [Immunity] tag, or disintegrate bodies or directly rip out souls without applying the [Death] condition first, or which just replace a character's mind and soul with a completely different, alien one.

Against the second promise, you would still have to worry about things that could suppress, remove, or modify abilities, but you could proactively resolve those other issues. That proactive bit is the important one to me - I want players saying 'I can do X' and not 'they can't do Y'

Vegan Squirrel
2020-12-29, 11:38 AM
I fall on the interpretive side. See, I feel like the game system, the GM, and the group of players all have similar levels of impact on how you'd classify a given game session. Most of the interpretive examples in this thread are things that I would expect to fly in a D&D 5e game, even though that was the system you used as your example of a mechanical system. Even when we were playing D&D 3.5, my groups wouldn't rule out those sorts of actions. I'd imagine a blend of approaches is pretty common.


My design philosophy is that mechanics are promises and prompts.
And that's how I feel many players approach mechanics-heavy games. If you want to use a fireball spell to light up a cavern for a moment so you can see how big it is, I'd find the argument that the spell doesn't say it illuminates an area to be quite weak. It'll probably obscure the far side of the room, but the near side will be pretty bright for a moment. Does your sorcerer want to disarm someone with their staff? It'll be a difficult check, probably with consequences for failure (say, you'll leave yourself in a vulnerable position due to your lack of expertise and their next attack on you will get advantage), but it should be possible. That's the advantage of having a live GM—they can make ad-hoc rulings to adjudicate whatever the players are trying to do.

Mechanics are a promise, a prompt, and a fallback option when nothing more imaginative occurs (which is always fine!). They are a tool prepared to resolve the most common and most likely courses of action, but if they set too hard limits, then the mechanics become detrimental to the role-playing experience.

MoiMagnus
2020-12-29, 11:48 AM
I find the "interpretation" method to be more about the players fast-talking the DM rather than playing by the rules.
I remember some discussions about the Fate system where one player had "Magic" skill at +4 (maximum skill in Fate). She would use that skill for everything, as magic can do anything, and never used her other, worse, skills.

Interpretation-based game rely much more than mechanical games on players (and DM) aiming at everybody's fun, and having a clear understanding of the impact of the way they play on the fun of others.
It relies on peoples respecting the spirit of the rules rather than their wording, and in particular you should self-regulate to keep the uses of your powers/skill/... within the range that correspond to their cost.

Sure, you can fast-talk the DM, but you should only fast-talk the DM when what you want to do is reasonable. Otherwise that's abusing the DM's trust in your words.

Telok
2020-12-29, 01:17 PM
My feelings are that the system sets boundaries, for good or ill.

Good boundries are like saftey railings around cliffs. Bad ones like high voltage electric fences. Hard boundries like walls, soft ones like painted lines on the floor. Inclusive boundries like wifi zones, and exclusive boundaries like locked doors.

These days I'm gravitating more towards open ended systems that provide a floor of character ability and guidelines to exceed that, with rules that work as guidance and something to build on. I'm falling out of favor with the "hard no" systems like current D&Ds & knockoffs.

To me the "mechanics vs interpretation" isn't really a thing. A system has mechanics*, they're the written rules. A system is interpreted by players, in play and in discussions like this. Some games have an explicit stunt or "beyond the published rules" mechanic, others don't, and some fig-leaf it by telling the players to try anything and the GM to create mechanics for that on the spot.

The "fast talk the GM" is present in all systems to a greater or lesser extent. Some systems give the GM mechanics to enable or help, others don't. Most systems have explicit boundaries to what should be allowed. Some systems have more and harder boundaries, others fewer and softer boundaries.

*A mechanic being something beyond the base task resolution system that's usually something like "GM makes up a number, player rolls dice hoping to roll higher/lower". Even if it's just an explanation the consequences and probabilities of making certain actions harder or easier and options for how to handle those consequences.

MoiMagnus
2020-12-29, 01:40 PM
To me the "mechanics vs interpretation" isn't really a thing. A system has mechanics*, they're the written rules. A system is interpreted by players, in play and in discussions like this. Some games have an explicit stunt or "beyond the published rules" mechanic, others don't, and some fig-leaf it by telling the players to try anything and the GM to create mechanics for that on the spot.

In game design, there are two opposite ways to design that are "from the theme" (or top-down) and "from the mechanics" (or bottom-up). This same opposition appears when you are playing a RPG, are you starting from the description of your action (and then the mechanical resolution follows), or are you starting from the mechanics (and the description follows).

Both approaches can be made in (almost) every system, but some systems will encourage some specific behaviours.
E.g any system that has an explicit action economy will tend toward the mechanical end, as players will start to think things like "what can I do with my bonus action this turn?" (which is a very boardgamey way of playing a RPG).

Note that to complexify this discussion, there is also a in-universe mechanics-based VS interpretation-based, which is often presented as hard magic VS soft magic.

Quertus
2020-12-29, 10:15 PM
I explicitly avoid having this kind of negative promise on rule systems I write, because I want to encourage people to venture outside of the promise-controlled region as much as possible, and I want games that involve discovery and invention as fundamental themes. So if a rule is being used to say e.g. 'this fruit can't heal wounds, because only Divine Magic can accelerate healing and this detects as non-magical', that's a problem.

No, that's absolutely horrible, and absolutely not what I meant.

"Divine magic" (or, more likely, "divine magic x" has the [healing] trait. That says *absolutely nothing* about this fruit… which, perhaps, *also* has the [healing] trait. As does my sword, btw. (EDIT: and "mommy spit", according to most mothers I know)

Traits - as I described them - are *not* exclusive. Otherwise, I'll take the [intelligent] trait. :smalltongue:

But my point is, if this fruit doesn't have the [fire 3] descriptor, it doesn't set paper on fire by touch (unless, of course, it has some *other* descriptor, like [paper ignitor] or something…).

Point being, if an effect doesn't deal knockback, you can communicate that by not including a [knockback] descriptor, and not be worried that the horrifically bad GM (like all GMs are) won't randomly have the effect cause knockback.

These promises are about having a predictable world, with predicable cause and effect, rather than a pants-on-head, "mother may I", "oops, that had these completely random unintended consequences that don't match anything that's happened thus far".

*That's* what I mean by "negative promises": your effects won't do things that they don't do.

Telok
2020-12-29, 11:28 PM
In game design, there are two opposite ways to design that are "from the theme" (or top-down) and "from the mechanics" (or bottom-up). This same opposition appears when you are playing a RPG, are you starting from the description of your action (and then the mechanical resolution follows), or are you starting from the mechanics (and the description follows).

Both approaches can be made in (almost) every system, but some systems will encourage some specific behaviours.
E.g any system that has an explicit action economy will tend toward the mechanical end, as players will start to think things like "what can I do with my bonus action this turn?" (which is a very boardgamey way of playing a RPG).

Note that to complexify this discussion, there is also a in-universe mechanics-based VS interpretation-based, which is often presented as hard magic VS soft magic.

I must admit that I don't follow as to how this is relevant to the part of my post that you quoted. Would you be willing to clarify?

I think you're saying that systems can be both designed and played in ways that are driven by the fiction and by the mechanics, with some systems being one way or the other by design or accident. All of which is true, and I've seen (as I'm sure you have too) players use a fiction driven or mechanics driven play styles in games that were designed the other way.

I mean, I played D&D 4e as a fiction driven beastform druid who was never in a humanoid form. And yes, that system was totally mechanics driven which meant anything that character attempted that wasn't backed up by mechanics (and some things that were) was a complete waste of time and effort no matter what was going on at the fiction/narrative level. So, yeah, agree with you.

But I'm saying that all games have mechanics and all mechanics are interpreted. Over the years I've become happier with mechanics that lend themselves more to supporting and informing player actions and that are more easily interpreted as doing so. Whether those systems push a more mechanic driven or fiction driven style, and whether the players use the systems that way, is sort of tangential... maybe. Let me think about that.

Lucas Yew
2020-12-29, 11:47 PM
In case my sig fails to communicate, I elaborate clearly that I'm a "Rules As Physics" type of gamer by my very soul. I learned it in a wild way when I learned of 3.5e's existence after my very first RPG books (the entire 4.Ee set, in Honolulu of all places), quickly abandoning ship despite its amiably notable merits...

So Mechanics over Interpretation, especially with core interactive rules mechanized as much as it can, I think.

NichG
2020-12-30, 01:43 AM
No, that's absolutely horrible, and absolutely not what I meant.

"Divine magic" (or, more likely, "divine magic x" has the [healing] trait. That says *absolutely nothing* about this fruit… which, perhaps, *also* has the [healing] trait. As does my sword, btw. (EDIT: and "mommy spit", according to most mothers I know)

Traits - as I described them - are *not* exclusive. Otherwise, I'll take the [intelligent] trait. :smalltongue:

But my point is, if this fruit doesn't have the [fire 3] descriptor, it doesn't set paper on fire by touch (unless, of course, it has some *other* descriptor, like [paper ignitor] or something…).

Point being, if an effect doesn't deal knockback, you can communicate that by not including a [knockback] descriptor, and not be worried that the horrifically bad GM (like all GMs are) won't randomly have the effect cause knockback.

These promises are about having a predictable world, with predicable cause and effect, rather than a pants-on-head, "mother may I", "oops, that had these completely random unintended consequences that don't match anything that's happened thus far".

*That's* what I mean by "negative promises": your effects won't do things that they don't do.

I still see this as similar to the fruit.

I make a learned ability called 'Temporal Rush' which has as fluff 'you store a surplus of moments by coiling your timeline and then use them surge forward, moving at three times your normal rate, followed by an attack that is backed up by your momentum for +2 to damage'. I don't give it the [Knockback] tag. A player says 'I want to Rush at the enemy, but instead of using my momentum for damage I want to try to use it to shove the enemy backwards'. This is the desired interaction with the system, and should work following adjudication.

Promises are selective. I don't want to make a world where all things are predictable, and I certainly don't want all GMs to run things identically to how I would run them. Rather, I want very specific things to be predictable in certain ways, and for that to be a special property of those things rather than the expected norm.

If you're a Spirit Whisperer, maybe sometimes your fireballs cause flowers to grow, and there's no practical way for you to know that ahead of time. That situation should coexist within the system with an Empiricist Tinkerer who can tell you to the degree centigrade how much their Burn Ray will heat a litre of water. The difference in predictability becomes a tool of game design, to create different feels, prompt exploration, and reward careful experimentation or practice. You could very well have an Monk of Eternal Order with an ability whose function is literally 'ask the GM to write down a rule for this thing that normally would be pure ruling'.

Vahnavoi
2020-12-30, 04:45 AM
I feel a sudden urge to quote myself from a different thread entirely:


Also, to put some things into perspective:

Modern tabletop RPGs owe a lot to wargames, and wargames owe a lot to Kriegsspiel. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegsspiel)

Kriegsspiel basically codified the idea of a game master (called umpire in the article) . A word needs to be said about the role of the game master: Kriegsspiel had several versions, some with heavier mechanistic rules and others with lighter rules with more control given to the game master. The rationale for doing away with some of the more obscure rules in favor of on-the-spot rulings by a game master was something that ought to be immediately recognizable: the heavier versions were slow and deemed to take too much time compared to thing they were trying to model.

However, this increased importance of a game master came with a cave-at: to keep the game grounded in reality, the game master ought to be a superior officer with field experience. This obviously wasn't a position for non-experts.

As wargames spread outside the military and started to be played as a fun past-time instead of a serious training tool, the thought was somewhat lost along the line. Come D&D and especially AD&D, Gary Gygax, in the books, outright says the game is not meant to simulate anything outside itself and that as a model of reality, it can only be considered a failure. Furthermore, Gygax also noted that creating and running an entire fictional world to high degree of realism is not possible for most individuals. Realism ought to be attempted only where it improves the game and no-one should aim for the impossible.

Still, it's still clearly laid out in AD&D books that ideally, the game master (called dungeon master since it's D&D) ought to know the rules and the setting best out of everyone at their table, including willingness to look at real history and culture to keep a game relatable. So a game master should have some expertise at least relative to their players. If they don't, it raises the question of what are they doing in that position? It's one thing if experienced players are teaching an inexperienced person how to run a game, but beyond that, the dynamic where one person has an authoritative position over the game requires some backing for that authority. I'd argue one reason why inexperienced game masters sometimes cope poorly with more experienced or knowledgeable players, is because it reminds them their authority is only nominal and they can only do their job with player good faith.

But, to tie this together: if you want to make puzzles or run games based on detailed real world knowledge, you are then playing by Kriegsspiel rules: if you don't have brass on your collar, you are not qualified. You cannot make good puzzles reliant on skills you don't actually have. Stick to what you know, which in the case of hobby gaming mostly means abstracted game rules.

In the case the relevant point is not immediately obvious: mechanics and interpretation aren't two mutually exlusive playstyles, a sane game design uses both. Specifically, you use mechanics where they are reasonably quick and accurate and you use interpretation where a living person relying on their own expertise is quicker.

The best way to avoid "fast-talking the GM" problem is for the GM to be a person with an actual spine and firm knowledge of their rules and subject matter of a game. You don't solve this problem by increasing amount of mechanical rules, because a rules-savvy player can talk circles around a less-savvy player. A persuasive player can convince a spineless GM or other player to ignore the rules alltogether if they want to.

Quertus
2020-12-30, 12:01 PM
I still see this as similar to the fruit.

I make a learned ability called 'Temporal Rush' which has as fluff 'you store a surplus of moments by coiling your timeline and then use them surge forward, moving at three times your normal rate, followed by an attack that is backed up by your momentum for +2 to damage'. I don't give it the [Knockback] tag. A player says 'I want to Rush at the enemy, but instead of using my momentum for damage I want to try to use it to shove the enemy backwards'. This is the desired interaction with the system, and should work following adjudication.

Promises are selective. I don't want to make a world where all things are predictable, and I certainly don't want all GMs to run things identically to how I would run them. Rather, I want very specific things to be predictable in certain ways, and for that to be a special property of those things rather than the expected norm.

If you're a Spirit Whisperer, maybe sometimes your fireballs cause flowers to grow, and there's no practical way for you to know that ahead of time. That situation should coexist within the system with an Empiricist Tinkerer who can tell you to the degree centigrade how much their Burn Ray will heat a litre of water. The difference in predictability becomes a tool of game design, to create different feels, prompt exploration, and reward careful experimentation or practice. You could very well have an Monk of Eternal Order with an ability whose function is literally 'ask the GM to write down a rule for this thing that normally would be pure ruling'.

And if you are a Wild Mage, the results of your spells are highly random.

And that is a property of the rules.

An Empiricist Tinkerer doesn't have to worry about his Burn Ray spontaneously causing flowers to grow, or freezing the water, or randomly converting its damage to knockback.

There should be general rules to cover intentionally converting physical damage / momentum into knockback.

The player of the Monk of Eternal Order should know that they have an ability whose function is literally 'ask the GM to write down a rule for this thing that normally would be pure ruling', to encourage their (lack of) experimentation or practice.

Characters have presumably used their abilities before session 1, let alone seen their abilities used (by their peers, or those who trained them)… and those who trained them ought to have, you know, trained them.

Which is why, if I want exploration and experimentation, then I want to be a special snowflake, first and only of their kind inventor of something entirely new, who gets to actually go through the Exploration phase of experimentation and practice, to learn about the underlying bits that any sane practitioner would have taught their students.

NichG
2020-12-30, 01:01 PM
And if you are a Wild Mage, the results of your spells are highly random.

And that is a property of the rules.

An Empiricist Tinkerer doesn't have to worry about his Burn Ray spontaneously causing flowers to grow, or freezing the water, or randomly converting its damage to knockback.

There should be general rules to cover intentionally converting physical damage / momentum into knockback.

The player of the Monk of Eternal Order should know that they have an ability whose function is literally 'ask the GM to write down a rule for this thing that normally would be pure ruling', to encourage their (lack of) experimentation or practice.

Characters have presumably used their abilities before session 1, let alone seen their abilities used (by their peers, or those who trained them)… and those who trained them ought to have, you know, trained them.

Which is why, if I want exploration and experimentation, then I want to be a special snowflake, first and only of their kind inventor of something entirely new, who gets to actually go through the Exploration phase of experimentation and practice, to learn about the underlying bits that any sane practitioner would have taught their students.

So in my design philosophy, and accordingly in the games I design, 'the results of your spells are highly random' is not necessarily a property of the rules, 'there should be general rules to cover intentionally converting physical damage into knockback', and 'characters have presumably used their abilities before session 1, let alone seen their abilities used by their peers or those who trained them' is also generally not going to be true.

Examples:

The game takes place in a plane of existence called (by people outside of it) 'the Unknowing World'. It is a place where amnesia can literally be weaponized, because something you do not know is literally malleable and is yet to be determined. Characters who make it to the Unknowing World all have holes in their memory or understanding of the world, and can consciously fill those holes to rewrite reality. Therefore, this is a sort of battleground between ossified forces in an eternal conflict of potential where they try to exert influence to get those few who end up there to 'decide' in a way that rewrites history so that they were the victors.

A character who is told too much about the properties of the plane or what is actually going on is ejected from the Unknowing World into the reality their decisions created. However, a character who figures these things out without having certain and sure knowledge of them can stay in the Unknowing World and intentionally manipulate this power to decide what should fill the holes in their memory.

It's a system that at some level is almost operating on the principle that 'if you know a rule, you can no longer use it', though it's more at the setting level than at the level of things like combat maneuvers. The big uncertainties centered around a decision of what to do when encountering the shards of the shattered souls of the gods: a choice to Absorb, Consume, or Destroy the soul shard. Following that choice, the player would get some vision of their past and at some point during the vision take over the narration (Absorb), would be faced with the idea that their nature or self had components they had not been aware of which could be adopted or rejected (Consume), or would gain brief opportunity to deny or effectively rewrite some small underlying principle of reality in exchange for suffering an accumulating curse for breaking a cosmic taboo (Destroy). However, players weren't told that this is how any of those things work - they had to reason it out based on what happened.

A very surreal campaign; one character Enlightened out, and another figured out what was going on without hitting their Enlightenment cap and kept trying to sway the party into doing certain things without really explaining why. In the end, they used their rewrite opportunities to change the fundamental character of the gods whose souls had been shattered from jerks who treated the universe as an etch-a-sketch and periodically wiped it so they could have a fresh playground to more helpful, constructive, and thoughtful entities.


Every power set is literally unique, and no one else has those powers. Characters gain their powers during the middle of Session 1. The entire premise of the system is that everyone is basically secretly omnipotent (as long as they don't come into direct contest with another person with that omnipotent flag), and while there's an XP system for progressing those direct contests basically the majority of the progression is the players figuring out what having no limits really and truly implies. There are two rules that sort of cues this and starts it off, but which are intentionally vague and open-ended in order to create the effect: '1) You can create a Lv0 power for free at any time, that does anything within your domain and tags. 2) Regardless of whether you're aware of this in character, you can always choose to start a contest in response to a power or circumstance affecting you so long as you have some way of resisting the power's affects or responding to them with powers of your own; if you win the contest, the power's effects do not occur'.

The trick is in that 'anything'. My power is Sleep. I could put a person to sleep (but it would be a contest), a computer to sleep, I could make it so that when people sleep their skin falls off (a contest), or that when people sleep it forges a pathway for hostile extradimensional entities to go to that person's location (no contest), or that the act of sleeping - anyone sleeping, anywhere in the universe - empowers the sleeper to selectively overwrite waking reality with the reality of their dreams (whether there's a contest or not is complex).

The system wouldn't work if the rules explicitly spelled these examples out, because the actual gameplay is about discovering organically that you really only have the limits you impose on yourself. For example I had a player whose character had the power Word. They saw this as manipulating those things written down or spoken, with an emphasis on anchoring the truth of what was written. Their first use of a power was to reaffirm that their character would never speak a lie (and to sort of make people supernaturally aware of that fact). What they discovered soon after (without exactly realizing the extent of this when they first made the power) is that if they forced the issue - e.g. if they had their character say something which they could not know was true like 'it'll be okay, nothing will happen on this trip' then their statement of 'I cannot lie' had a higher precedence than the universe's 'this is how things are'.


This is a game about colonizing a new plane of reality simultaneously discovered by a trio of worlds during a planar conjunction. Each of the worlds had fundamentally different laws of physics - a world where high sci-fi stuff like nanobot clouds and teleporters and programmable matter were technologically possible; a world driven by the circulation of energies and humours with a civilization of immortal Xian Xia martial artists whose arts were all about circulating qi, concentrating will, manipulating the flows of Breath and Blood, etc; a world driven by the collective subconscious of societies and belief structures, giving rise to spirits who could be contracted with and negotiated with in order to bring about effects. None of their stuff worked as-is in the new plane, but those things provided angles for adaptation to the properties of that plane. There were new laws of physics that the sci-fi worlders could apply scientific methodology and engineering discipline to in order make new tech (I can use this thing to create materials with 32x the density of normal metals? okay, this is how I can exploit that); there was a concept-bearing fluid that permeated the setting which was similar enough to the Xian Xia worlders' qi that they figured out how to manipulate it, but it did different things and was external to their body rather than internal and had to be drawn from reservoirs; there was an underlying animistic principle associated with the plane and its history, but rather than spirits this had to do with a sort of memetic infection in the heart of the plane, so the spirit-talkers' intuition about spirits wasn't totally off but their rituals and hierarchies didn't work.

In Homestead, basically you have almost no powers written out for you at the start, but Homestead PCs got something called a 'Schematic point' once per session. Everything a PC can do arises via experimentation, which can happen at any time on the fly as long as you describe what you're actually trying in fine detail. So you can't say 'I want to try to throw a fireball', you have to say 'I am going to draw a portion of Flux from the reservoir, pass it through this flower I found that seems to always be hotter than its environment, then compress that flux into the space just in front of my finger tip, and make a throwing motion'. Maybe that creates a fireball, or a heat ray, or explodes in your hand. If you want to keep the result, you spend a Schematic Point and the GM writes down a named ability for you that is always resolved the same way when you repeat it in the future. If you don't spend the Schematic Point, you could try something similar or even identical again in the future and the outcome could in theory be resolved totally differently based on context, GM's mood, whatever. It doesn't even have to be magic stuff - you could be fighting and say 'I want to take this blow on my shoulder' and use a Schematic Point to make 'taking hits on specified body parts' a codified part of the system.

That turned 'things which you can have specified rules about' into a limited resource, which you have to choose how to spend.


So anyhow, I don't think there should be a rule for something unless you are trying to achieve a specific design end by making that specific promise. So for me, you should never make a rule just because 'someone might want to do it and then you'd need a rule'. Start with a blank slate in which literally everything is an on-the-fly resolution and under which there is no assumption even that if you did the same thing twice it would be resolved the same way. Then mark out only those specific things you want to be 'positively' reliable. For realism aesthetics this could be the particular things that are well-studied in the setting, but I think its more valuable to use this for things which the players would tend to avoid without having a guarantee, because the existence of a rule isn't a promise to the character but rather a promise to the player.

For example, it can shape play quite a lot to have a rule saying 'your character will not be taken away from you or ended permanently against your will unless you declare that you have the Death flag up; however, if you don't choose to have the Death flag up, then there will be some scenes or actions that your character cannot participate in'. That doesn't mean that in character people have death flags, and they understand this property of the universe because of extensive experimentation. It's a rule designed to tell players 'in this game I want lean towards risky, spontaneous play and away from cautious or paranoid self-protective play, so I'm placing a cap on the consequences of your actions - please do whatever'.

Another example ability that I tend to use which leans on the 'promises' idea is things that tell you before you commit to a course of dialogue exactly how a given NPC will respond. This kind of thing is my preferred way of implementing social mechanics - rather than a roll or ability that forces a certain direction of response, the ability gives the character an absolute guarantee that their line of argumentation is going to work, or tells them before they commit to it that it will fail. Similarly, an ability associated with high intelligence/cleverness/etc that I tend to put into systems is the ability to 1/game voice a hypothesis about something aloud and have the GM respond with 'correct', 'incorrect', 'mixed', or 'you don't have the information to tell'. It's a purely meta thing - the player is encouraged to guess and make leaps of reasoning that they can't 100% defend, because they get to know the GM's truth about whether they were right as long as they can get close enough with their guess. Whereas without an ability like that, you more often get a dynamic between players where someone will intuit the correct thing and then others will end up convincing them that they were wrong.

gijoemike
2020-12-30, 01:51 PM
I find the "interpretation" method to be more about the players fast-talking the DM rather than playing by the rules.
I remember some discussions about the Fate system where one player had "Magic" skill at +4 (maximum skill in Fate). She would use that skill for everything, as magic can do anything, and never used her other, worse, skills.

Amen to that. I have seen multiple interpretation based games turn into extended Mother-May-I games. Where a player asks in nearly every round if X skill applied in Y fashion will accomplish Z action. And when No is stated they ask in a different way. Every player winds up doing this because the lack of structure means they cannot assume X-Y-Z won't work.

Or a smooth talker using a bit of logic gets away with nearly anything using any skill they want. Granted in your example the action can be detected as any sort of detect magic, and the action would be completed in a very magical way. It would actually expose the skill to multiple methods of detection and countering that had they just used the regular skill it wouldn't have been. You don't pick their pocket you levitate the object out and to your hand, but an alarm goes off, because mind reading is magical and they wanted to detect telepaths.

Pex
2020-12-30, 03:25 PM
Interpretation is Mother May I. I want to do something. What's the target number I need to roll? Who determines it? Since there's no mechanical rule it has to be the DM, so I can only ever do what the DM says I can do. It's never my choice, my freedom. Maybe even in interpretation there is a defined target number, such as roll 1d6 and succeed on 4, 5, or 6. DM may raise or lower the number. That's still DM dependent because if he doesn't like what I want to do I need to roll a 7 on a d6, so that particular method doesn't work for me. What if I play two games with different DMs. I want to do something. One DM says I need to roll at least 5. Another says at least 3. My ability to do something depends on who is DM that day. Hmm, this sounds familiar.

I want mechanics. Mechanics can themselves be bad, see D&D 3E Truenamer or 4E, but I want to know what I can do by my own choices because I want to do it.

Vahnavoi
2020-12-30, 04:31 PM
Rules put in a book are still decisions made by an external person. If you think they give you any more freedom than decisions made by a game master, oh boy.

Also, I'm firmly of the opinion that people who use Mother May I as a derogatory description of some playstyles ought to go and play few rounds of Mother May I. And maybe a few other children's games at that. You might learn something about games.

Duff
2020-12-30, 05:42 PM
Quote Originally Posted by GeoffWatson
I remember some discussions about the Fate system where one player had "Magic" skill at +4 (maximum skill in Fate). She would use that skill for everything, as magic can do anything, and never used her other, worse, skills.

And… why would they want to use their worse skills? As one of my characters once said in response to "never play an ace when a duce will do", "never play a duce when you have an unlimited supply of aces".
One of the usual premises of an RPG is that the PCs are (more or less approximately) peers within the rules. If magic is clearly the "best skill" because it will do everything as well as other skills do their own thing, that premise has failed. Maybe that's part of the premise of this game, but in that case, it's a feature not a bug.
But for Fate, the GM is responsible for limiting the magic skill - maybe by raising difficulties, maybe by having a price on it's use, maybe by saying magic is too broad a skill and needs to be broken up. The fact that the rules are so vague is a reason Fate does ask a lot of the GM.


In fact, that's one other difference between Mechanics and Interpretation based games.
Mechanics comes with a lot more rules to learn, to remember exist, to think of when they're relevant and then to wade through when you need to find them.
Interpretation requires the GM to do a lot more of the work of deciding what's possible and how hard it is, and then there will be cases where a player feels they should be allowed to do a thing because someone else could ages ago. Either precedent is recorded at the time and can be searched through, there's a discussion about if that example really happened and is indeed relevant or the party accept the possibility the GM worked night shift and is grumpy today might affect how things go.

EggKookoo
2020-12-30, 07:52 PM
By mechanics based I mean an RPG system like D&D. Most of what you want to do has to be interpreted through available mechanics like feats and class abilities. Do you want to disarm your opponent with your Sorcerer staff? Too bad, you're not a battle master.

In the current edition of D&D, anyone can attempt to disarm a target creature. The attacker makes a melee weapon attack opposed by the target's athletics or acrobatics check. Granted, it's an optional rule in the DMG, but it's part of the game. Technically feats are optional rules in 5e.


Do you want to blast a spell at your enemy to knock him off a bridge? Better hope you're a warlock with repelling blast.

This one's trickier as most ranged attacks don't have that kind of kinetic component. You can't knock someone back with a shot from a bow, but you can't in real life anyway. Hollywood makes us think being shot by a gun can knock the target back, but that doesn't happen. So really it's just that D&D isn't allowing you to do something you couldn't do, but then provides a specific "repulsor" effect with Repelling Blast. I suppose one could homebrew a ranged attack that applies the Shove action...

Even fireball doesn't blow people back/away.

Pex
2020-12-30, 08:17 PM
Rules put in a book are still decisions made by an external person. If you think they give you any more freedom than decisions made by a game master, oh boy.

Also, I'm firmly of the opinion that people who use Mother May I as a derogatory description of some playstyles ought to go and play few rounds of Mother May I. And maybe a few other children's games at that. You might learn something about games.

I played Mother May I. Mother chose the winner before the game started. We stopped playing because we all figured out how dumb it was. Red Light Green Light was the better system. I optimized playing it. I move as fast as I want but always stop when the person starts counting at 1 and get into a comfortable position so I don't move. I won frequently.

Telok
2020-12-31, 12:35 AM
In the current edition of D&D, anyone can attempt to disarm a target creature. The attacker makes a melee weapon attack opposed by the target's athletics or acrobatics check. Granted, it's an optional rule in the DMG, but it's part of the game. Technically feats are optional rules in 5e.

Sure, anyone can try to disarm anyone else. If the DM remembers an optional rule tucked away in a different book and says you can or if your class/feat abilities say that you can. My D&D 5e DM said "no" to stuff like that.

That DM also had climbing/swimming always be a roll, didn't use passive scores, and played monsters like MMO mobs. The received wisdom of the interwebs says that's a bad DM, but he was honestly following the book's written advice of deciding DCs for himself and calling for rolls when he thought there were important conseqences.

I don't think he was a bad DM. He was new to DMing and was trying to use a popular, well advertised system that didn't have the structure and rules he needed to run a game. His interpretation of the rules, from his reading the books (not the internet) was that he should say "no" if the character didn't have a "yes" on the character sheet and that having the players roll dice was "fun".

He had much more success at running a Starfinder game. Still not perfect, but he had less guess work to do in that system. More to remember, but less work and guessing. I may harp on the restrictive and railroady nature of Starfinder, but they nailed the system math. Some of the adventure writers, not so much. But the system math is nice and tight, doing exactly what it's supposed to when you just follow the rules in the book.

Well, ok, the Starfinder spaceship rules are a dumpster fire of bad choices and design. But even then they at least got the attack/defense/hit points math right.

EggKookoo
2020-12-31, 06:42 AM
Sure, anyone can try to disarm anyone else. If the DM remembers an optional rule tucked away in a different book and says you can or if your class/feat abilities say that you can. My D&D 5e DM said "no" to stuff like that.

I'm just saying D&D currently is more akin to the "interpretation" model Drache64 is talking about than the "mechanics" one.


I don't think he was a bad DM. He was new to DMing and was trying to use a popular, well advertised system that didn't have the structure and rules he needed to run a game. His interpretation of the rules, from his reading the books (not the internet) was that he should say "no" if the character didn't have a "yes" on the character sheet and that having the players roll dice was "fun".

Sure, we can chalk that up to DM inexperience. The 5e DMG says a PC can do anything that is actually possible to do, given enough time. Checks come in if there's some kind of constraint, like a threat or limited time or a significant consequence of failure. This is explained in the book, but I agree it's not explained as clearly as it should be. New DMs likely miss it, especially if they come to the game from other editions or other games entirely.

Cluedrew
2020-12-31, 09:15 AM
The game takes place in a plane of existence called (by people outside of it) 'the Unknowing World'. It is a place where amnesia can literally be weaponized, because something you do not know is literally malleable and is yet to be determined. Characters who make it to the Unknowing World all have holes in their memory or understanding of the world, and can consciously fill those holes to rewrite reality. Therefore, this is a sort of battleground between ossified forces in an eternal conflict of potential where they try to exert influence to get those few who end up there to 'decide' in a way that rewrites history so that they were the victors.

A character who is told too much about the properties of the plane or what is actually going on is ejected from the Unknowing World into the reality their decisions created. However, a character who figures these things out without having certain and sure knowledge of them can stay in the Unknowing World and intentionally manipulate this power to decide what should fill the holes in their memory.

It's a system that at some level is almost operating on the principle that 'if you know a rule, you can no longer use it', though it's more at the setting level than at the level of things like combat maneuvers. The big uncertainties centered around a decision of what to do when encountering the shards of the shattered souls of the gods: a choice to Absorb, Consume, or Destroy the soul shard. Following that choice, the player would get some vision of their past and at some point during the vision take over the narration (Absorb), would be faced with the idea that their nature or self had components they had not been aware of which could be adopted or rejected (Consume), or would gain brief opportunity to deny or effectively rewrite some small underlying principle of reality in exchange for suffering an accumulating curse for breaking a cosmic taboo (Destroy). However, players weren't told that this is how any of those things work - they had to reason it out based on what happened.

A very surreal campaign; one character Enlightened out, and another figured out what was going on without hitting their Enlightenment cap and kept trying to sway the party into doing certain things without really explaining why. In the end, they used their rewrite opportunities to change the fundamental character of the gods whose souls had been shattered from jerks who treated the universe as an etch-a-sketch and periodically wiped it so they could have a fresh playground to more helpful, constructive, and thoughtful entities.


Every power set is literally unique, and no one else has those powers. Characters gain their powers during the middle of Session 1. The entire premise of the system is that everyone is basically secretly omnipotent (as long as they don't come into direct contest with another person with that omnipotent flag), and while there's an XP system for progressing those direct contests basically the majority of the progression is the players figuring out what having no limits really and truly implies. There are two rules that sort of cues this and starts it off, but which are intentionally vague and open-ended in order to create the effect: '1) You can create a Lv0 power for free at any time, that does anything within your domain and tags. 2) Regardless of whether you're aware of this in character, you can always choose to start a contest in response to a power or circumstance affecting you so long as you have some way of resisting the power's affects or responding to them with powers of your own; if you win the contest, the power's effects do not occur'.

The trick is in that 'anything'. My power is Sleep. I could put a person to sleep (but it would be a contest), a computer to sleep, I could make it so that when people sleep their skin falls off (a contest), or that when people sleep it forges a pathway for hostile extradimensional entities to go to that person's location (no contest), or that the act of sleeping - anyone sleeping, anywhere in the universe - empowers the sleeper to selectively overwrite waking reality with the reality of their dreams (whether there's a contest or not is complex).

The system wouldn't work if the rules explicitly spelled these examples out, because the actual gameplay is about discovering organically that you really only have the limits you impose on yourself. For example I had a player whose character had the power Word. They saw this as manipulating those things written down or spoken, with an emphasis on anchoring the truth of what was written. Their first use of a power was to reaffirm that their character would never speak a lie (and to sort of make people supernaturally aware of that fact). What they discovered soon after (without exactly realizing the extent of this when they first made the power) is that if they forced the issue - e.g. if they had their character say something which they could not know was true like 'it'll be okay, nothing will happen on this trip' then their statement of 'I cannot lie' had a higher precedence than the universe's 'this is how things are'.


This is a game about colonizing a new plane of reality simultaneously discovered by a trio of worlds during a planar conjunction. Each of the worlds had fundamentally different laws of physics - a world where high sci-fi stuff like nanobot clouds and teleporters and programmable matter were technologically possible; a world driven by the circulation of energies and humours with a civilization of immortal Xian Xia martial artists whose arts were all about circulating qi, concentrating will, manipulating the flows of Breath and Blood, etc; a world driven by the collective subconscious of societies and belief structures, giving rise to spirits who could be contracted with and negotiated with in order to bring about effects. None of their stuff worked as-is in the new plane, but those things provided angles for adaptation to the properties of that plane. There were new laws of physics that the sci-fi worlders could apply scientific methodology and engineering discipline to in order make new tech (I can use this thing to create materials with 32x the density of normal metals? okay, this is how I can exploit that); there was a concept-bearing fluid that permeated the setting which was similar enough to the Xian Xia worlders' qi that they figured out how to manipulate it, but it did different things and was external to their body rather than internal and had to be drawn from reservoirs; there was an underlying animistic principle associated with the plane and its history, but rather than spirits this had to do with a sort of memetic infection in the heart of the plane, so the spirit-talkers' intuition about spirits wasn't totally off but their rituals and hierarchies didn't work.

In Homestead, basically you have almost no powers written out for you at the start, but Homestead PCs got something called a 'Schematic point' once per session. Everything a PC can do arises via experimentation, which can happen at any time on the fly as long as you describe what you're actually trying in fine detail. So you can't say 'I want to try to throw a fireball', you have to say 'I am going to draw a portion of Flux from the reservoir, pass it through this flower I found that seems to always be hotter than its environment, then compress that flux into the space just in front of my finger tip, and make a throwing motion'. Maybe that creates a fireball, or a heat ray, or explodes in your hand. If you want to keep the result, you spend a Schematic Point and the GM writes down a named ability for you that is always resolved the same way when you repeat it in the future. If you don't spend the Schematic Point, you could try something similar or even identical again in the future and the outcome could in theory be resolved totally differently based on context, GM's mood, whatever. It doesn't even have to be magic stuff - you could be fighting and say 'I want to take this blow on my shoulder' and use a Schematic Point to make 'taking hits on specified body parts' a codified part of the system.

That turned 'things which you can have specified rules about' into a limited resource, which you have to choose how to spend.
Wow, my weird experimental system is about flying a spaceship. I mean the flying the spaceship is not the experimental part, deciding what the places you go to are like is the experimental part.


Interpretation is Mother May I.Any yet it is the only reason to play a pen-and-paper/table-top role-playing games over a computer game.

I'm serious, assuming I've got what everyone is talking about you need it. For all the stories about people taking it too far, GM's not being able to be consistent or playing favourites, without some ability to make decisions from fiction to mechanics instead of the other way around, what is the point? Even dialog choices are fixed, A, B or C, there is no "D, because I have a crazy idea" or even "B, but phrased differently because my character doesn't speak like that". You can have too much, but without a little you are just turning pages in a choose-your-own-adventure book.

Ajustusdaniel
2020-12-31, 09:30 AM
a build

By interpretation based, I mean that anything you want to sensibly do, you tell the DM and roll to see if it can happen. "I use control water to suck the water out of my opponent", "I tackle my enemy and beat him with his own weapon".


But roll what? If there's no mechanics supporting the action, then is the DM just making up a probability on the fly?

EggKookoo
2020-12-31, 09:33 AM
But roll what? If there's no mechanics supporting the action, then is the DM just making up a probability on the fly?

A good system will provide guidance for the GM to determine it. Some systems outright list probabilities, but no list is without gaps, so in the end the GM may need to come up with something.

Vahnavoi
2020-12-31, 09:57 AM
But roll what? If there's no mechanics supporting the action, then is the DM just making up a probability on the fly?

You think the numbers put on paper by some third party are less arbitrary than a GMs? Please. Made up numbers don't become better by being written down. At best, you're hoping a writer did research where your GM didn't, but if you don't trust your GM to do their job, why are you letting them be a GM?

Satinavian
2020-12-31, 10:26 AM
You think the numbers put on paper by some third party are less arbitrary than a GMs? Please. Made up numbers don't become better by being written down. At best, you're hoping a writer did research where your GM didn't, but if you don't trust your GM to do their job, why are you letting them be a GM?
Numbers put on paper by a third party have a couple of advantages :

1) They are consistent. The numbers on the paper don't change but a GM hardly remembers all their rulings and difficulties over several sessions

2) Those third party people had time to think about those numbers and talk with each other about them as well while the GM has to decide on the fly to not bog the game down. That doesn't make all the numbers on paper better but on average, they are.

3) Players can know the numbers and plan accordingly. Misunderstanding and miscommunication about expected difficulties are far rarer.

Ajustusdaniel
2020-12-31, 10:57 AM
A good system will provide guidance for the GM to determine it. Some systems outright list probabilities, but no list is without gaps, so in the end the GM may need to come up with something.

Well, then that system is providing mechanics guiding what you can and can't practically do. Sure, there's a difference between "No, you can't do that," and "Well, sure, you can do that, if you roll three sixes (IE, in one out of 216 cases)," but in this case I would come down on the side of "Mechanics."


You think the numbers put on paper by some third party are less arbitrary than a GMs? Please. Made up numbers don't become better by being written down. At best, you're hoping a writer did research where your GM didn't, but if you don't trust your GM to do their job, why are you letting them be a GM?

Well, that might be an argument for systemless roleplay. Why use anything anyone else has written down?

But beyond that, if you can trust your GM to have done the research for every possibility any player might raise in a system with no mechanical limit on what characters have what kind of abilities or can attempt what kind of tactics, then, yeah, hang onto that GM.

Back to the initial question. Let's game this out. A player's sorcerer wants to knock someone off a bridge. What does he roll? What does the fighter have to roll to cast a firebolt?

Vahnavoi
2020-12-31, 10:59 AM
1) So you are presuming a person with bad memory and self-consistency and are letting the be a GM because...? Why'd a person who can't keep their own rules straight be any good at running rules made by someone else?

2) How are you quantifying that claim at the end?

3) You have a living person at your table that you can ask directly for that information. If they aren't providing you with info, chances are you are not supposed to know your exact chances to begin with. This is why you shouldn't confuse issues of mechanics versus interpretation with issues of available knowledge. A GMs numbers aren't bad just because you don't or can't know them beforehand.

---



Well, that might be an argument for systemless roleplay. Why use anything anyone else has written down?

No, it isn't. You are committing a non-sequitur where you think "not written down" means "no system". All systems start as thoughts in someone's head; the reason to put those thoughts on paper is because someone thinks they're good or useful enough to record for further use. But the process of being written down is not what makes them good or useful.


But beyond that, if you can trust your GM to have done the research for every possibility any player might raise in a system with no mechanical limit on what characters have what kind of abilities or can attempt what kind of tactics, then, yeah, hang onto that GM.

A red herring; nobody does research for everything, not your GM, not book writers. You have a GM at your table precisely because having a living human invent solutions to one-off problems is more practical than trying to write absolutely comprehensive mechanical rules.


Back to the initial question. Let's game this out. A player's sorcerer wants to knock someone off a bridge. What does he roll? What does the fighter have to roll to cast a firebolt?
These aren't the initial question and there isn't a point to answering them outside an actual game being played; that's the point of interpretative GMing.

Ajustusdaniel
2020-12-31, 11:37 AM
No, it isn't. You are committing a non-sequitur where you think "not written down" means "no system". All systems start as thoughts in someone's head; the reason to put those thoughts on paper is because someone thinks they're good or useful enough to record for further use. But the process of being written down is not what makes them good or useful.


Writing things down opens up a ton of uses for them- for example, I as a player can read them, and therefore have a sense of what is and is not feasible within a system, whereas I have difficulty doing that with my GM's thoughts.



A red herring; nobody does research for everything, not your GM, not book writers. You have a GM at your table precisely because having a living human invent solutions to one-off problems is more practical than trying to write absolutely comprehensive mechanical rules.


I'll note you're the one who brought up the expectation that the GM should have done the research in order to have the answer to given questions.



These aren't the initial question and there isn't a point to answering them outside an actual game being played; that's the point of interpretative GMing.

So, in your interpretative system, at what point do I, as a player, find out whether or not my fighter can cast firebolt?

Cluedrew
2020-12-31, 11:45 AM
1) So you are presuming a person with bad memory and self-consistency and are letting the be a GM because...? Why'd a person who can't keep their own rules straight be any good at running rules made by someone else?Because maybe one is a brilliant story-teller, world-builder and can create what feel like deep preplanned NPCs on the fly, but this person has no sense of probability, in fact is terrible at math in general, can't quite figure out how all these different abilities come together and is now trying to extrapolate from the time John's cyborg knocked his evil win off the cliff and the time Crystal dropped the vending machine on the mob boss and now Ryan's really short but absurdly muscled mutant is trying to knock a robot off a roof top.


2) How are you quantifying that claim at the end?Time spend and number of people who looked at in. A system that was made up, tested, updated and so on until the creators thought it was up to snuff is - all other things being equal - going to be a lot better than one that was made up just now. In fact if the GM picked up the system and decided it worth running it probably passed their inspection. Unless you just play D&D (or some other system in theory) because its the only one you know.

I got nothing to say about point three. Both sides can work just fine.

EggKookoo
2020-12-31, 11:49 AM
Well, then that system is providing mechanics guiding what you can and can't practically do. Sure, there's a difference between "No, you can't do that," and "Well, sure, you can do that, if you roll three sixes (IE, in one out of 216 cases)," but in this case I would come down on the side of "Mechanics."

Okay, if you don't mind clarifying. Are we saying an "interpretation" game has no mechanics (i.e. rules) at all?

Pex
2020-12-31, 11:53 AM
You think the numbers put on paper by some third party are less arbitrary than a GMs? Please. Made up numbers don't become better by being written down. At best, you're hoping a writer did research where your GM didn't, but if you don't trust your GM to do their job, why are you letting them be a GM?

The mechanics game was bought precisely so no one has to make up the numbers. Of course those numbers the game designers come up with are arbitrary, but that's their job. The numbers have to come from somewhere, and we pay the game company for them. Now the DM is free to run the game instead of doing statistcal analysis.

Telok
2020-12-31, 12:21 PM
I'm just saying D&D currently is more akin to the "interpretation" model Drache64 is talking about than the "mechanics" one.

See, I don't know about that. Drache64's "interpretation" thing sounded more freeform or rules-light. Although maybe the Amber Diceless system would also fit, and that was pretty "mechanics first" and not rules-light even if it did tie it's fiction and mechanics very tightly.

I think OD&D and 1e AD&D were pretty heavy on interpretation and DM discretion. Classes were pretty basic, no skill system as many gamers today would recognize it, and all those seemingly random tables and "sub-systems" in AD&D were pretty obviously the result of someone coming up with a rule to address something a player wanted to do. And all those random bits were also "optional".

AD&D 2e, and after that the WotC D&Ds, are all just mechanic based re-writes of the previous edition. People only appeal to a completely abstract and disconnected sort of basic die roll method when they run out of guidance from the system. Anywhere there's actual rules people use them (when they remember they exist) in preference to, and often overriding any player asks or fiction layer action.

The Paranoia anniversary edition is much more fiction driven. There aren't these D&D-esqe sub-systems and variant rules scattered around. It's all "you have stuff written on your character sheet, roll a d20 under that number but higher is better". Everything else not covered by the character sheet abilities (which is very little) is a question of "is it funny" and maybe flipping a coin. The system enacts the fiction without bodging, hacks, or the DM having to make up rules and sub-systems.

Pendragon is mechanics heavy and has several sub-systems, notably the winter court rotine and inheritance stuff, but it matches the fiction you're running beautifully. However it's also quite explicit about the bounds of that fiction and the fact that deviating from Arthurian legend knighthood is not supported by the rules.

So my understanding of the original question is more about the "rules-light vs rules heavy in play" rather than "mechanics vs free-form during design", because while there's significant overlap in some systems I've met other systems that don't correlate that way.


The mechanics game was bought precisely so no one has to make up the numbers. Of course those numbers the game designers come up with are arbitrary, but that's their job. The numbers have to come from somewhere, and we pay the game company for them. Now the DM is free to run the game instead of doing statistcal analysis.

Sorry for the double post but I'm on the phone and need to hit this one up.

I recently did research for game numbers. Specifically I combed through published research papers for graphs and numbers relating to the probability of people seeing things. Then I mapped that to a game, with numbers. I took what I learned from the research and the stats of what I thought the people involved would be. Then took the odds of those stats rolling different %s (not a flat math system) and mapped them to the graphs. The resulting "did they see it" stuff should work for bunnies in a field, people in a shop, jets in the sky, and battleships on the horizon.

The numbers don't need to be arbitrary or made up. The designers should know the % outputs of their system. They absolutely can map those %s to the kind of stuff that actually does happen in RL.

EggKookoo
2020-12-31, 12:50 PM
See, I don't know about that. Drache64's "interpretation" thing sounded more freeform or rules-light. Although maybe the Amber Diceless system would also fit, and that was pretty "mechanics first" and not rules-light even if it did tie it's fiction and mechanics very tightly.

Yeah, I backed up and cast about for a definition of these terms.

Vahnavoi
2020-12-31, 01:18 PM
Writing things down opens up a ton of uses for them- for example, I as a player can read them, and therefore have a sense of what is and is not feasible within a system, whereas I have difficulty doing that with my GM's thoughts.

Again, it's a live person at your table, you can ask them directly for information. The only time you need to guess is when you're not supposed to know in the first place. Interpretative GMing is not synonymous with hiding knowable information.


I'll note you're the one who brought up the expectation that the GM should have done the research in order to have the answer to given questions.

You are correct; no-one's still doing or expecting anyone to do research on everything.


So, in your interpretative system, at what point do I, as a player, find out whether or not my fighter can cast firebolt?

At the point at which you think to ask, provided it is something that you, as a player, are meant to know. Or, in the case you never do think to ask, at the point where the GM deems the answer to be immediately obvious and relevant to your decisions.

---


The mechanics game was bought precisely so no one has to make up the numbers. Of course those numbers the game designers come up with are arbitrary, but that's their job. The numbers have to come from somewhere, and we pay the game company for them. Now the DM is free to run the game instead of doing statistcal analysis.

Paying money for something is no guarantee of quality. So you paid a company to make up numbers instead of your GM making up numbers; this means those numbers are less arbitrary because...?

---


Because maybe one is a brilliant story-teller, world-builder and can create what feel like deep preplanned NPCs on the fly, but this person has no sense of probability, in fact is terrible at math in general, can't quite figure out how all these different abilities come together and is now trying to extrapolate from the time John's cyborg knocked his evil win off the cliff and the time Crystal dropped the vending machine on the mob boss and now Ryan's really short but absurdly muscled mutant is trying to knock a robot off a roof top.

You just described:

A) A GM who ought to improve a facet of their GMing

B) the writers of the World of Darkness systems. :smalltongue:

But in case it's A) : why do you think a math heavy mechanized system would be an answer to this person's problems?


Time spend and number of people who looked at in. A system that was made up, tested, updated and so on until the creators thought it was up to snuff is - all other things being equal - going to be a lot better than one that was made up just now. In fact if the GM picked up the system and decided it worth running it probably passed their inspection. Unless you just play D&D (or some other system in theory) because its the only one you know.

That looks like an empirical claim. You'd like some statistics about numbers in published game systems versus numbers decided by individual game masters to support it. Now, it's reasonable to expect that adults who've been taught probability do better than 10-year-olds, but it's equally true 10-year-olds picking up their first game system are incapable of analyzing or even appreciating what the adults did. For adults playing, I'd say it's a toss-up, because state of professional tabletop game design often isn't all that hot compared to the amateur side of things. See aforementioned comment on World of Darkness. I'd be happy to be proven wrong. :smalltongue:


I got nothing to say about point three. Both sides can work just fine.

Part of the reason why I'm asking to consider availability of information separately.

Ajustusdaniel
2020-12-31, 02:07 PM
At the point at which you think to ask, provided it is something that you, as a player, are meant to know. Or, in the case you never do think to ask, at the point where the GM deems the answer to be immediately obvious and relevant to your decisions.
---

So in my case, that would be at or before character creation, along with follow-up questions as to "How does that work, in play?" And "Could I be better at that if I did X?" And "Then that would make me worse at Y?" So what we wind up with looks, from my perspective, an awful lot like a mechanical system, wherein the details of the system have been transmitted to me orally rather than textually.

Vahnavoi
2020-12-31, 03:16 PM
---

So in my case, that would be at or before character creation, along with follow-up questions as to "How does that work, in play?" And "Could I be better at that if I did X?" And "Then that would make me worse at Y?" So what we wind up with looks, from my perspective, an awful lot like a mechanical system, wherein the details of the system have been transmitted to me orally rather than textually.

The system would just basic semantic logic based on game premises. F. ex., D&D doesn't usually say "Fighters can't cast firebolt" ; instead, that is a statement you can arrive at using basic eliminative logic: the game has a specific mechanic for firebolt and fighters typically don't get it.

Satinavian
2020-12-31, 03:31 PM
1) So you are presuming a person with bad memory and self-consistency and are letting the be a GM because...? Why'd a person who can't keep their own rules straight be any good at running rules made by someone else?Because everyone should be able to GM ? If you can claim superior DMs, i can claim superior designers. But more importantly we should make running a game easy to get enough DMs.

2) How are you quantifying that claim at the end?I don't need to quantify it. Qualifying is enough. Several people collaborating with enough time to think stuff over tend to produce better results than one person under time pressure. Do you disagree ?

3) You have a living person at your table that you can ask directly for that information. If they aren't providing you with info, chances are you are not supposed to know your exact chances to begin with. This is why you shouldn't confuse issues of mechanics versus interpretation with issues of available knowledge. A GMs numbers aren't bad just because you don't or can't know them beforehand.When the PCs start to ask the DM for chances for everything they are only considering to, it bogs down the game to some absurd degree. Especcially with multi-step plans and difficult preparations. We already get hour long planning sessions as it is.

Ajustusdaniel
2020-12-31, 05:31 PM
The system would just basic semantic logic based on game premises. F. ex., D&D doesn't usually say "Fighters can't cast firebolt" ; instead, that is a statement you can arrive at using basic eliminative logic: the game has a specific mechanic for firebolt and fighters typically don't get it.

If I have a system where I go in having a good idea what my character is capable of doing, and how to build my character to be better at certain things than others, I'm happy. We could quibble about the best way to present that information, but at the end of the day, there are still mechanics underlying it.

Vahnavoi
2020-12-31, 07:12 PM
Because everyone should be able to GM ? If you can claim superior DMs, i can claim superior designers. But more importantly we should make running a game easy to get enough DMs.

Maybe everyone should be able to, but not everyone is. Mechanics are a dubious way to make running a game easier. Again, consider the historical example of Kriegsspiel. The umpire (functionally, game master) was given more control because the mechanics were taking too long to resolve things; this put greater pressure on the umpire to be an expert in warfare, but consider the implication of reversing the process. You can eliminate the need for the umpire to be an expert, even eliminanate the need for an umpire alltogether, but this requires rules that are complete enough that knowing them is effectively sufficient to make the players into experts.

The same applies to roleplaying games. There's a point beyond which mechanical design can only make things easier for the GM by demanding more from the players.


I don't need to quantify it. Qualifying is enough. Several people collaborating with enough time to think stuff over tend to produce better results than one person under time pressure. Do you disagree ?

I do partially disagree, but I'm struggling to find a good way and example to explain my disagreement. Watch this video and pay special attention to the point where it talks about decisions in strategy games. (https://youtu.be/L5pUA3LsEaw) The generalized form of the point being made is: groups of humans only defeat individual humans in some types of decision problems. It is an open question whether the parts of game design material to our topic fall in that group. That's why you'd want to quantify it.

This matters more in theory than in practice, because in practice, mechanics of even a lot of published game systems are basically made by one person. The number of tabletop games which had their mechanics actually designed as a coherent group effort is limited.


When the PCs start to ask the DM for chances for everything they are only considering to, it bogs down the game to some absurd degree. Especcially with multi-step plans and difficult preparations. We already get hour long planning sessions as it is.

Intricate mechanics can bog down gaming to equally absurd degree. You'd really want to quantify the time taken for your plans in different kinds of systems to see whether mechanization is actually helping you at all.

---


If I have a system where I go in having a good idea what my character is capable of doing, and how to build my character to be better at certain things than others, I'm happy. We could quibble about the best way to present that information, but at the end of the day, there are still mechanics underlying it.

As noted by myself, absence of writing doesn't mean absence of system. If that was the extent of it, this discussion would end here, but I'm not sure you understood what I was talking about.

Let me try to find a better example: in context of 3rd edition D&D, some cheeky wanker noticed that the system doesn't "technically" define "dead" or "death" as a conditions and thus the system doesn't prohibit you from taking actions when dead. This argument was obviously nonsense; the system had just used "dead" and "death" in plain English, with the expectation that whoever reads actually understands English as a natural language. This is the most basic way in which interpretation comes in in all systems written mostly in a natural language. They rely on a human to get over naturally occurring semantic ambiguity and incompleteness. The "mechanics" are interpretative powers of the human brain, and thus what you can get out of written rules is always limited by the brains of the actual people at your table.

NichG
2020-12-31, 07:31 PM
Because everyone should be able to GM ? If you can claim superior DMs, i can claim superior designers. But more importantly we should make running a game easy to get enough DMs.

Personally, I'm not really a fan of this direction. I don't want systems that protect me from bad GMs, I want systems that help good GMs and players shine and reach new heights. I'd much rather play a game with a 25% chance of being transcendant and a 75% chance of being awful than a game with a 100% chance of being decent but not spectacular.

I think its fine if everyone can try to GM. They can do badly, they can do well, they can even say 'I want to improve' and get better. But if you had a system that guaranteed that all GMs would be equal, by virtue of taking responsibility out of their hands, I wouldn't want to play it.

Ajustusdaniel
2020-12-31, 07:57 PM
As noted by myself, absence of writing doesn't mean absence of system. If that was the extent of it, this discussion would end here, but I'm not sure you understood what I was talking about.

Let me try to find a better example: in context of 3rd edition D&D, some cheeky wanker noticed that the system doesn't "technically" define "dead" or "death" as a conditions and thus the system doesn't prohibit you from taking actions when dead. This argument was obviously nonsense; the system had just used "dead" and "death" in plain English, with the expectation that whoever reads actually understands English as a natural language. This is the most basic way in which interpretation comes in in all systems written mostly in a natural language. They rely on a human to get over naturally occurring semantic ambiguity and incompleteness. The "mechanics" are interpretative powers of the human brain, and thus what you can get out of written rules is always limited by the brains of the actual people at your table.

Sure- I wouldn't want to replace my GMs with a GM-atron even on purely a rules level, setting aside the storytelling and worldbuilding aspects of the role. But the OP defined a mechanics based system as
Most of what you want to do has to be interpreted through available mechanics like feats and class abilities.

And what I'm trying to work out it was they meant by an interpretation based system being defined in opposition to that. In which case, the question of whether or not the 'mechanics like feats and class abilities' should be written down is a moot point1. (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=24865337&postcount=328) If the question "can I do X," is not defined by available mechanics, whether those are created by the GM or a third party, whether they're written down in books or related verbally by the GM, how do I develop a sense of what my character can do?

Vahnavoi
2020-12-31, 09:03 PM
The same way you'd do in a game with hidden rules: through trial and error, using your natural language understanding of the game situation as a starting point. The difference is largely on the GM's side, not the player's.

Ajustusdaniel
2020-12-31, 09:33 PM
The same way you'd do in a game with hidden rules: through trial and error, using your natural language understanding of the game situation as a starting point. The difference is largely on the GM's side, not the player's.

Right. So by the end of character creation, I've arrived at what
looks, from my perspective, an awful lot like a mechanical system, wherein the details of the system have been transmitted to me orally rather than textually. Since the OP seems to have been asking us to evaluate the benefits of mechanics vs interpretation from a player's perspective, are you going with "there is little to no difference?"

Cluedrew
2020-12-31, 09:48 PM
On Rules as Tools: This is in partially in response to Vahnavoi and NichG but also just covers a framing decide. Whenever I design or think about systems I start with no rules. Then I add and later change rules to try and improve the situation. So if I have created or just picked a system to run (outside of a play-test/test-run) than I have decided that its rules are an improvement over not having rules. What makes it an improvement? It improves my ability to run the game. And at a certain level (possibly not exactly and often framed differently) I think that is what all GM, by that title or not, all looking for, rules that help them run the game that is better than sitting down with some blank pieces of paper.

I just realized I don't know how this relates to the main topic anymore. I might have to re-focus.

anthon
2020-12-31, 10:07 PM
i come from the "Make a Dex/Con check at -8" school of DMing, Class of '92.

Back in those days, everybody had stats of around 12-19 (except dump stats) and if you rolled on a d20, you had around a 75% chance of succeeding overall.

So if it was meant to be easy, we might add +2 or +4 to the check.

if it was something you sorta could fail at, we would make it a flat check.

if it was hard, -2 to -4

and if it was insane, daring, or outlandish, -6 to -8.

Sometimes we would wed a Dexterity Check to an Attack or whatever. Like trying to Balance on a tree limb in a wind storm while trying to move silently into position to leap atop and backstab a goblin captain.

or trying to run up the back of the neck of a dragon to get into position to stab/lasso them.

Rules were there to provide examples of where difficulties were, and we use those as numbers of a thermometer to gauge what we guessed was "hot" or "cold" for difficulty.

Not having a particular skill or feat or proficiency only meant a higher difficulty. If your stat was amazing, or your background said you could probably do it, or would at least try, then we would assign a difficulty.

Let the dice/Kismet decide whether you were worthy.

anthon
2020-12-31, 10:17 PM
Well, then that system is providing mechanics guiding what you can and can't practically do. Sure, there's a difference between "No, you can't do that," and "Well, sure, you can do that, if you roll three sixes (IE, in one out of 216 cases)," but in this case I would come down on the side of "Mechanics."



Well, that might be an argument for systemless roleplay. Why use anything anyone else has written down?

But beyond that, if you can trust your GM to have done the research for every possibility any player might raise in a system with no mechanical limit on what characters have what kind of abilities or can attempt what kind of tactics, then, yeah, hang onto that GM.

Back to the initial question. Let's game this out. A player's sorcerer wants to knock someone off a bridge. What does he roll? What does the fighter have to roll to cast a firebolt?

The purpose of game mechanics is to inform the reader that fire from a cutting torch is hotter than fire from an oven.

that's the short and skinny of all tables, rules, and mechanics:

you are comparing things and you can't be sure your reader will know the differences, so you jot down some quick comparisons, so they understand things like bamboo are strong, balsa is weak, and hardwoods are brittle.

You let the reader know that obsidian is sharp, steel is strong, and copper conducts heat as well as lightning bolts.

When the player enters a fictional setting, the GM may have things like multi-eyed argos blobs or tentacle acid monsters. But how acidic? How strong is that blob? What if two wizards each cast one charm monster spell, and the Argos Eye Blob has to fight the Tentacle Acid Monster?

You now have to arbitrate how these two creatures might interact.

Mechanics are there to help people resolve the many arguments you see in Free Form roleplaying. Their tool is number.

Pex
2021-01-01, 12:46 AM
Paying money for something is no guarantee of quality. So you paid a company to make up numbers instead of your GM making up numbers; this means those numbers are less arbitrary because...?




Naturally. As I said, see 3E Truenamer or 4E. The successful games will have mechanics that do work well being fun to play. Sometimes it's just a matter of personal taste. Some people very much like 4E after all. People today are still playing 3E. It's the game designers' job to come up with the rules. They're being paid to do so. The DM spends time setting up the campaign. Having defined rules means he can focus on the scenery and plots. I would trust game designers who spend 40 hours a week working on the rules to come up with better arbitrary numbers more than a DM who works 40 hours a week at some other job, may have a family, can only spend an hour prep time for the game. For the youngsters, better than the DM who has to study for Finals or even only in high school going through puberty.

Ashiel
2021-01-01, 01:28 AM
Mechanics vs interpretation based RPG systems.

People may nit pick on my terms here, and they'll probably all be right. So please focus on what I'm trying to say not any wrong terminology I accidentally use.

By mechanics based I mean an RPG system like D&D. Most of what you want to do has to be interpreted through available mechanics like feats and class abilities. Do you want to disarm your opponent with your Sorcerer staff? Too bad, you're not a battle master. Do you want to blast a spell at your enemy to knock him off a bridge? Better hope you're a warlock with repelling blast.
Pros:
Tactical mechanic combat
Some people need structure in their imagination

Cons:
Limits to what you can do.
Able to break the game mechanics
Players encouraged to optimize a build

By interpretation based, I mean that anything you want to sensibly do, you tell the DM and roll to see if it can happen. "I use control water to suck the water out of my opponent", "I tackle my enemy and beat him with his own weapon".
Pros:
Can do anything you can reasonably think of.
Free to think outside the box solution, no cookie cutter approach to combat, builds, spells.

Cons:
You might suck at imagination, no cookie cutter approach to combat, builds, spells.

What do you guys think? I'd love to read some discussions on this.

I prefer the more mechanical system like D&D 3.x/d20, because IMHO it facilitates better roleplaying, because it provides a stable framework for what is reasonable, and as a direct result you can quickly learn how things relate to one-another. You can understand what you can do, why you can do it, and so on, and that allows you to engage in the world more as if you are living in it and have a more immersive experience.

A simple example I use most of the time when discussing topics like this is, in D&D if you understand that the DC to climb a tree is 15, and you have a +5 climb modifier, you can climb trees. You don't have to ask the GM if you can climb a tree. If the difficulty is higher, such as being heavily covered in wet moss (say a +2 to the DC), or someone oiled the tree by casting grease on the it (say +10 to the DC), you can easily understand why you can normally climb trees easily but this one is harder and understand how big a deal it is to be able to casually climb those trees relative to what you're capable of now. It also means that you might intuitively understand how to solve such problems: if there's thick moss grown on the tree, you might spend a bit using a shortsword to scrape the moss off as you're climbing it (effectively negating the +2 to the DC in exchange for climbing up slower) or attempt to foil the lubricant by patting the tree with crushed chalk or flour; for you understand why there is a difference and can interact with it naturally.

This leads to immersive emergent gameplay. If you're wandering through a forest with a thick canopy (dim light, things are difficult to see clearly) on the way to find a tower somewhere in the forest and you're not sure which way you are going, but you have a +5 climb modifier, you don't say "Hey GM, can I climb a tree to look around? If I get a better view from up there, will I be able to see any better? Will I...?". Instead, what you say is "I can climb trees, so I climb up a tall one and have a look around for the tower." You know that you can climb trees, and you know that getting clear line of sight in bright light above the canopy will allow you to see the tower without trouble and orient yourself. You have, naturally, intuitively, interacted with the world as if it were in a sense real and as a result makes it easier to roleplay without pauses, for both the player and the GM. The GM likewise benefits because s/he doesn't have to decide whether or not you can climb this tree and can instead focus on describing the results of your actions and further the story from there.

It opens avenues for more pro-active gameplay and decision making. Knowing how the world works allows you to act accordingly. Knowing that it's harder to see you at a distance (-1 penalty to Perception per 10 ft.) can influence your decisions when tailing a suspected spy through a city, as you decide whether or not you want to risk them getting out of sight because they are far enough away that they could turn a corner or two before you could see which way they went, or if you want to stay further back to ensure you aren't spotted in a crowd.

There is functionally nothing lost in a crunchy system since nothing is off limits if the GM and group wants it so. You can always simply ask if you can use a thing in a way not specified, but these sorts of considerations are actually made easier to handle for the players and GMs by a consistent framework that you can reference. For example, if your party is ambushed by some invisible stalkers or rogues with greater invisibility cast on them, you can ask to do something not covered by the rules such as "Can I scatter powdered sugar around the room to reveal the invisible people?" - "Sure, but it won't reveal them completely, and the cloud will make it hard to see anything in the room for a bit, so they'll loose invisibility and everyone in the room gains concealment 20% for...two rounds, then only the invisible people will have concealment as the dust settles".

In a similar vein, being able to compare things at different scales can help decide on things that aren't already covered in the rules. If you know that iron has hardness 10, you know you need to have a fire that's hotter than 10 points of fire damage (on average) after halving it to melt the metal, so if a minotaur bull-rushes a PC into the coals of a giant furnace, you can say "Oh, well that's probably at least 6d6 fire damage since it's gotta be hot enough to actually get the metal soft".

So I like the mechanical stuff because I find it supports roleplaying and doing interesting things more than flavors of "mother-may-I".

Pex
2021-01-01, 04:18 AM
It's great when people say the same thing I've been saying for years but with better verbiage.

What Ashiel said.

Vahnavoi
2021-01-01, 09:54 AM
Right. So by the end of character creation, I've arrived at what Since the OP seems to have been asking us to evaluate the benefits of mechanics vs interpretation from a player's perspective, are you going with "there is little to no difference?"

No, but to make the difference noticeable to the player, they'd have to try out the same actions under different rulesets and different GMs. I'd advise you to go back and read my first post to this thread, 'cause I feel this will turn into me repeating myself otherwise.

Shortly: there's a difference, firstly in how long it takes for a game master to process a player move and secondly in accuracy of resolution, but this metric doesn't always favor one type of resolution over the other. It depends on what you're trying to model, to what degree of fidelity and how long you want to spend time on it. That's why sane game design uses both styles.

---


On Rules as Tools: This is in partially in response to Vahnavoi and NichG but also just covers a framing decide. Whenever I design or think about systems I start with no rules. Then I add and later change rules to try and improve the situation. So if I have created or just picked a system to run (outside of a play-test/test-run) than I have decided that its rules are an improvement over not having rules. What makes it an improvement? It improves my ability to run the game. And at a certain level (possibly not exactly and often framed differently) I think that is what all GM, by that title or not, all looking for, rules that help them run the game that is better than sitting down with some blank pieces of paper.

I just realized I don't know how this relates to the main topic anymore. I might have to re-focus.

That's all fine. I'm not against "rules as tools" mindset. It does relate to the main topic in a very simple way: when testing out mechanics, you'd also want to test them against freeform judgements by living humans. To use my prior example, you don't need to spend ink on detailing what "dead" and "death" means when everyone over age 4 understands it means you don't get to do things as your character anymore.

---


. It's the game designers' job to come up with the rules. They're being paid to do so. The DM spends time setting up the campaign. Having defined rules means he can focus on the scenery and plots. I would trust game designers who spend 40 hours a week working on the rules to come up with better arbitrary numbers more than a DM who works 40 hours a week at some other job, may have a family, can only spend an hour prep time for the game. For the youngsters, better than the DM who has to study for Finals or even only in high school going through puberty.

The average tabletop game designer doesn't spend 40 hours a week on game mechanics. Locally, I know for fact that majority of games were done by individual people as a sideprojects to their real work as book authors, videogame designers, artists and what not. The tabletop roleplaying industry is niche and amateurish enough that this is honestly quite rare to find a person crunching numbers as their actual day job even in big companies like Paizo or Wizards of the Coast.

So what you're actually paying for in a published game design, is only tiny part of effort spent on rules, and mostly marketing and logistics costs, graphic design etc.. It doesn't take much for an interested amateur who doesn't have to worry about the business side of things to do better on the numbers side.

Also, for the youngsters crunching it for the finals or an adult mired in work and family life... I heavily doubt a mechanics-intensive game design is actually in their interests.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-01-01, 11:01 AM
I find that mechanics-heavy games cause way more jarring problems than they solve.

Take, for instance, that DC 15 "climb a tree" check. An average human child commoner 1 has at most a +0 to Climb. So they not only can't take 10, they fall out of the tree 70% of the time when climbing under any pressure.

Whereas in real life, kids climb trees all the time--falling out of them is the exception. Even under pressure. I'd say that child-me (who was anything but athletic) is a better climber than current-me. More coordinated, way less fearful, and most importantly a whole heck of a lot lighter.

So these mechanics claim to simulate reality...but instead make things worse. While at the same time introducing substantial overhead to every single interaction. Now the DM must either keep a table open (ugh, table lookups are a drag) or keep dozens of tables constantly in memory including interpolating between tables of modifiers. And no, the players can't take that load entirely because they don't (and can't) know all the details. Unless you only ever use "stock" elements (if it's not in the table, it doesn't exist). Which is bland and repetitive.

Beyond even that, why are we rolling to climb an average tree in the first place? Either it's a special tree with a special place in the world and it's do or die (and thus won't use the book numbers at all) or (much more likely) it's a relatively inconsequential part of something else. No substantial chance of failure, no particular interesting results of failure or success...why roll in the first place? Just narrate that you climbed the tree and move on. Maybe cost extra movement if you're under pressure and need to do it faster than someone else.

Edit: I will say that more "interpretive" games have other issues as well. Just different ones. So IMO, there's a balance to be struck. Call it "rules medium" or "rules as shared toolkit". The rules aren't in control, but they're building blocks for tables to use. You don't get the mathematical precision[1], but you also get turns that don't take 10s of minutes. You get the much better narrative fit, but you don't get the constant need to discuss how to translate a player action into a character action.

[1] which I'd say is mostly false and unrealistic--you can't pin down the success probability of most things beyond "these things I can always do (unless something radical intervenes", "those things I can often do" and "those things I can only do when I get really lucky"). People are bad with probabilities in real life. Horribly so. And most probabilities aren't even meaningful for things you do only a few times.

EggKookoo
2021-01-01, 11:34 AM
Beyond even that, why are we rolling to climb an average tree in the first place? Either it's a special tree with a special place in the world and it's do or die (and thus won't use the book numbers at all) or (much more likely) it's a relatively inconsequential part of something else. No substantial chance of failure, no particular interesting results of failure or success...why roll in the first place? Just narrate that you climbed the tree and move on. Maybe cost extra movement if you're under pressure and need to do it faster than someone else.

Exactly. Two things are often argued together. One is the question of when and whether or not there should be a check, and the other is what the difficulty of the check should be. Both are left to the DM to decide, but the DMG repeats in a few places that the DM should only call for a check if there's an outstanding reason to. A DM that calls for a check to climb a tree when there's no duress or constraint is certainly free to do so, but that's not what the game encourages.

Given the above, the idea that there's a standard DC for any given check is invalid. If the DM is calling for a check because there's some constraint or threat on the player, then the nature of the constraint or threat informs the DC (just as much as the existence of the constraint or threat determines if a check is made in the first place).

Cluedrew
2021-01-01, 01:33 PM
I think we are varying from the main point a bit. In that I don't think this description lines up with rules-lite vs. rules-heavy. There is a correlation of mechanics based to rules-heavy because that design pattern benefits more from having more rules. Interpretation based systems can do pretty well with fewer rules.

In fact although the focus shifts I think every system uses both. The core mechanics are almost always "mechanics based" because they have to set up a connection between fiction and the resolution mechanics, even in a loose "just roll whatever stat feels appropriate" system. Then that establishes a precedent you use when you step outside the defined mechanics and decide how to handle a new situation.

Then you have a fuzzy scale, here with a few examples along it:
Mechanics-Based
You can't do anything not described by the rules. Which is an extreme stance few systems take.*
Going outside the rules is an exceptional event, look to similar rules to make something up.
Common situations are clearly defined but less common ones are given only some guidelines.
All checks are described as handling kinds of situations. It is entirely up to the table what sort of this situation is.
There are no rules. This is free-form and you can role-play but isn't really a rules-system.
Interpretation-Based

* Insert D&D 4th edition joke here.

Ashiel
2021-01-01, 01:39 PM
Take, for instance, that DC 15 "climb a tree" check. An average human child commoner 1 has at most a +0 to Climb. So they not only can't take 10, they fall out of the tree 70% of the time when climbing under any pressure.

Whereas in real life, kids climb trees all the time--falling out of them is the exception. Even under pressure. I'd say that child-me (who was anything but athletic) is a better climber than current-me. More coordinated, way less fearful, and most importantly a whole heck of a lot lighter.
Depends on the child, and the tree. Everyone knows not just any kid is prone to climbing trees, and parents tend to prefer they don't because the risk of falling is pretty real. Also, DC 15 is for an average tree, but some trees are shaped as to be easier to climb (particularly gnarled, short, and squat trees). My sister and I used to climb trees, but they were not typical trees, and they were not very tall (it would have been unlikely for us to get seriously hurt falling out of them).

For example, there might be a pretty big difference between climbing these trees. The first one might not even require a climb check and might actually just be difficult terrain and a narrow ledge for most of it, while the latter two are probably worthy of being DC 15 as is expected.


https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP. qQOgydM9lHKA7orDOBqOswAAAA%26pid%3DApi&f=1
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fcf.ltkcdn.net%2Fgarden%2Fimages%2F std%2F109525-425x283-Oak-tree.jpg&f=1&nofb=1
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.coniferousforest.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F08%2FShortleaf-Pine-Tree.jpg&f=1&nofb=1


So these mechanics claim to simulate reality...but instead make things worse. While at the same time introducing substantial overhead to every single interaction. Now the DM must either keep a table open (ugh, table lookups are a drag) or keep dozens of tables constantly in memory including interpolating between tables of modifiers. And no, the players can't take that load entirely because they don't (and can't) know all the details. Unless you only ever use "stock" elements (if it's not in the table, it doesn't exist). Which is bland and repetitive.
Or they could just not, since the majority of DCs conform to the standard: very easy (0), easy (5), average (10), tough (15), challenging (20), formidable (25), heroic (30), near impossible (40). Then there's the standard +2/-2 adjustments for circumstances. Generally means that if you want to be lazy, you can be lazy and still have things be pretty consistent within the usual framework, as long as you are consistently being consistent (e.g. don't decide that a simple wooden door is DC 15 today and DC 20 tomorrow without their being a reason).

More nuanced tool exist if you want to use them, which IMHO is better than not having the tools in the first place.


Beyond even that, why are we rolling to climb an average tree in the first place? Either it's a special tree with a special place in the world and it's do or die (and thus won't use the book numbers at all) or (much more likely) it's a relatively inconsequential part of something else. No substantial chance of failure, no particular interesting results of failure or success...why roll in the first place? Just narrate that you climbed the tree and move on. Maybe cost extra movement if you're under pressure and need to do it faster than someone else.
Because not everyone can climb trees. If you're wearing 50 lbs. of hardened steel, then the notion of climbing the tree to look around might be less appealing than trying to make a Perception check to find a trail, or a survival check to ensure you're oriented and not lost. It makes context and situations matter, which improves immersion. It also demonstrates the radical difference between someone who can comfortably climb even while in splint mail and someone who can climb in just their clothes, and if the guy who can climb in the armor takes it off he probably could rival a monkey.

Again, it's about immersion. You're not going to suddenly be able to or not able to do a thing just because it's suddenly a "scene" where failure might matter. There's no magic moment where the director shouts "action" and then suddenly the world works differently (even rolling for initiative is nothing but a dramatically slowed down version of regular game time). You are capable of what you are capable of, which reduces the "mother-may-I" effect and allows you to more proactively and confidently interact with the world. A bit like how you just assume gravity is going to be gravity without worrying about it in real life.

EggKookoo
2021-01-01, 02:02 PM
Again, it's about immersion. You're not going to suddenly be able to or not able to do a thing just because it's suddenly a "scene" where failure might matter. There's no magic moment where the director shouts "action" and then suddenly the world works differently (even rolling for initiative is nothing but a dramatically slowed down version of regular game time).

The intention behind the mechanic is that if you have plenty of time to get up the tree, you'll get up it assuming the tree is climbable at all. Even if it takes you five minutes. You could make a series of rolls, each representing an attempt. Or the GM could just say you get up there. Or maybe the GM will ask for a roll and use the result to describe how fast it took you. Unless the exact timing needs to be known, it's good enough to say you get up to where you want in a reasonable amount of time.

On the other hand, if you are in round-by-round play, your climb check represents a single attempt on your turn. If it fails, you can certainly try again but everyone else, including hostiles, get their chance to act before that. In that case, you must roll for each attempt. The actions of others may ultimately prevent you from getting up. You won't know until it all plays out.

Within the game world, there's no difference between these two scenarios. The tree is technically no harder to climb in either case (although an argument can be made that it is literally harder when an enemy is taking swings at you, but that's ultimately a matter of interpretation). The difference is how the players observe and interact with the game.

Ashiel
2021-01-01, 02:17 PM
The intention behind the mechanic is that if you have plenty of time to get up the tree, you'll get up it assuming the tree is climbable at all. Even if it takes you five minutes. You could make a series of rolls, each representing an attempt. Or the GM could just say you get up there. Or maybe the GM will ask for a roll and use the result to describe how fast it took you. Unless the exact timing needs to be known, it's good enough to say you get up to where you want in a reasonable amount of time.

On the other hand, if you are in round-by-round play, your climb check represents a single attempt on your turn. If it fails, you can certainly try again but everyone else, including hostiles, get their chance to act before that. In that case, you must roll for each attempt. The actions of others may ultimately prevent you from getting up. You won't know until it all plays out.

Within the game world, there's no difference between these two scenarios. The tree is technically no harder to climb in either case (although an argument can be made that it is literally harder when an enemy is taking swings at you, but that's ultimately a matter of interpretation). The difference is how the players observe and interact with the game.

Exactly. You'd just take-10 or take-20 as the case may be. If you can do it, you can do it.

I was responding to this:

Either it's a special tree with a special place in the world and it's do or die (and thus won't use the book numbers at all) or (much more likely) it's a relatively inconsequential part of something else. No substantial chance of failure, no particular interesting results of failure or success...why roll in the first place? Just narrate that you climbed the tree and move on.

The thing is, it might not be a special tree. You might not actually be able to climb it. If you've got a -7 check penalty because you're in splint mail, climbing the tree might just be out of the question for you, whether the tree is "of consequence" or not. This might be a good time to have one of your more nimble companions climb the tree and toss you down a knotted rope that you can climb while bracing against the tree (DC 0). Instantly you have immersive emergent gameplay, as you know that climbing the three is difficult but climbing a knotted rope with something to brace against is trivially easy, and you are naturally rewarded for your problem solving, without having to play "mother-may-I".

EDIT: As opposed to "you can just climb trees, until climbing trees matters, then you probably can't".

Quertus
2021-01-01, 02:31 PM
Any yet it is the only reason to play a pen-and-paper/table-top role-playing games over a computer game.

I'm serious, assuming I've got what everyone is talking about you need it. For all the stories about people taking it too far, GM's not being able to be consistent or playing favourites, without some ability to make decisions from fiction to mechanics instead of the other way around, what is the point? Even dialog choices are fixed, A, B or C, there is no "D, because I have a crazy idea" or even "B, but phrased differently because my character doesn't speak like that". You can have too much, but without a little you are just turning pages in a choose-your-own-adventure book.

Hmmm… I claim that it's the only reason to play an RPG over a war game.

But, yeah, the existence of things "outside the box" is a thing that has value.

The question is, does the existence of things *inside* the box have value?

My answer is "yes". More on why below.


A good system will provide guidance for the GM to determine it. Some systems outright list probabilities, but no list is without gaps, so in the end the GM may need to come up with something.

So long as "outside the box" thinking is allowed, it is pretty definitionally true that the rules cannot cover "outside the box". However, good rules will, IMO, enable players to successfully play the game entirely *within* the box, if they have the desire to do so.


You think the numbers put on paper by some third party are less arbitrary than a GMs? Please. Made up numbers don't become better by being written down. At best, you're hoping a writer did research where your GM didn't, but if you don't trust your GM to do their job, why are you letting them be a GM?


Numbers put on paper by a third party have a couple of advantages :

1) They are consistent. The numbers on the paper don't change but a GM hardly remembers all their rulings and difficulties over several sessions

2) Those third party people had time to think about those numbers and talk with each other about them as well while the GM has to decide on the fly to not bog the game down. That doesn't make all the numbers on paper better but on average, they are.

3) Players can know the numbers and plan accordingly. Misunderstanding and miscommunication about expected difficulties are far rarer.

Wow. That's almost exactly what I was going to say. Well, the same 3 points, at any rate - you just worded them better than I would have. So let's see if I can expand on what you've already covered.

I would emphasize the value of consistency between tables - how you don't need to relearn the rules of chess or Stratego just because you play with someone else. Some people only want to learn one game (as has been covered in other threads recently) - games with printed rules rather than "mother may I" are therefore advantageous to the hobby.

One big thing that's missing is, players can plan *away from the table*. With rules, it's easy to evaluate their plans; without rules, they have to call up the GM at 2 in the morning to go through their series of "how does this work?" questions in order to evaluate their plan. Or they have to waste hours at the table walking through all this with the GM. I really don't have to expound on how precious table time is, and how terrible this waste of time is, do I?

Another concern that was brought up was the difference between known and unknown rules, and the value of Exploration and Discovery. Believe me, I feel you. Numerous tables have been unable to understand why I didn't want to read the rules or the setting documents, didn't appreciate the value of Exploration and Discovery, how you can only have one first time and, after that, a lot of the mystery is gone.

Point being, you can still have your Exploration and Discovery with printed rules, as you can simply not read them! Easy peasy. Reading the rules and setting documents are for the second time through, after the novelty of Exploration and Discovery has worn off.

What else?

The larger the "box", the more likely that the given scenario will be covered, and the less likely that the GM will be called upon to produce a lower quality answer on the fly.

If you're looking at rules away from the table, you've got time, and, for a well-layed-out system, there is a near 100% chance that you'll find the rule, and be able to reference it during the game.

But let's say that the scenario comes up unexpectedly: the party breaks the dam, the flood waters are a thing, and the Wizard asks if he can use Stone to Flesh to turn someone to pumice, to use as a flotation device. Someone else wants to know if grabbing a tree (or pumice statue) can be covered by the grappling rules. A third character asks if they can use their flight under water. The fourth player wants to know about underwater visibility rules, for rescuing allies or locating and murdering / looting enemies.

If there's only a 50/50 chance for any given to remember any given rule, that's still almost a 97% chance that someone at the table can just immediately answer the question. Even with phones and Google, already knowing the answer is still the fastest resolution method.

And it's arguably similar 50/50 odds of remembering a previous ruling as remembering a given rule. And rulings are notoriously harder to research with phones and Google than rules are.

Rules provide value for speed, consistency, quality, portability, planning, comprehension… there's just no favorable comparison to be had for rulings for any variable that I can imagine comparing.

EggKookoo
2021-01-01, 02:31 PM
EDIT: As opposed to "you can just climb trees, until climbing trees matters, then you probably can't".

Well, literally it's "you can just climb trees, until climbing this specific tree within the next 6 seconds matters, then we'll see we'll see how it turns out."

I can do lots of things with a pretty high degree of success, that I would fail at if you pulled out a stopwatch and pointed a gun at my head.

Likewise, there are things I never seem to be able to do, but if you pointed a gun at my head I would find the resources to do. People who can "never climb trees" may learn that they can if a hungry bear is chasing them. Adrenaline masks a lot of scrapes and twisted joints.

Vahnavoi
2021-01-01, 02:36 PM
Tree-climbing is a good example of a skill I usually wouldn't bother to mechanize. The reason being: most people know what trees are, they don't need mechanical rules to intuitively understand their character can climb one, a GM describing a tree in any detail is enough to communicate difficulty of a task.

I suggest you pick another example. Preferably something that is reasonably easy to mechanize but isn't common knowledge, like ballistics. Or weather.

Pex
2021-01-01, 06:40 PM
I find that mechanics-heavy games cause way more jarring problems than they solve.

Take, for instance, that DC 15 "climb a tree" check. An average human child commoner 1 has at most a +0 to Climb. So they not only can't take 10, they fall out of the tree 70% of the time when climbing under any pressure.

Whereas in real life, kids climb trees all the time--falling out of them is the exception. Even under pressure. I'd say that child-me (who was anything but athletic) is a better climber than current-me. More coordinated, way less fearful, and most importantly a whole heck of a lot lighter.

So these mechanics claim to simulate reality...but instead make things worse. While at the same time introducing substantial overhead to every single interaction. Now the DM must either keep a table open (ugh, table lookups are a drag) or keep dozens of tables constantly in memory including interpolating between tables of modifiers. And no, the players can't take that load entirely because they don't (and can't) know all the details. Unless you only ever use "stock" elements (if it's not in the table, it doesn't exist). Which is bland and repetitive.

Beyond even that, why are we rolling to climb an average tree in the first place? Either it's a special tree with a special place in the world and it's do or die (and thus won't use the book numbers at all) or (much more likely) it's a relatively inconsequential part of something else. No substantial chance of failure, no particular interesting results of failure or success...why roll in the first place? Just narrate that you climbed the tree and move on. Maybe cost extra movement if you're under pressure and need to do it faster than someone else.

Edit: I will say that more "interpretive" games have other issues as well. Just different ones. So IMO, there's a balance to be struck. Call it "rules medium" or "rules as shared toolkit". The rules aren't in control, but they're building blocks for tables to use. You don't get the mathematical precision[1], but you also get turns that don't take 10s of minutes. You get the much better narrative fit, but you don't get the constant need to discuss how to translate a player action into a character action.

[1] which I'd say is mostly false and unrealistic--you can't pin down the success probability of most things beyond "these things I can always do (unless something radical intervenes", "those things I can often do" and "those things I can only do when I get really lucky"). People are bad with probabilities in real life. Horribly so. And most probabilities aren't even meaningful for things you do only a few times.

Some games are more realistic than others. Choose to taste.

We've been over this before. Different DMs have different opinions on how easy it is to climb a tree. You think there should be no roll. Climb a tree because you want to. Great. Another DM says differently. You have to roll and the DC is X. Another DM says you have to roll and the DC is Y. Why? Because they say so, and they're not wrong. They think climbing trees are more difficult than you do. With all these different opinions it would help if there was a unifying rule. The Game says climbing a tree is W, where W = DC Z and specifically and directly tell the DM the player doesn't need to roll unless it's a stressful situation like combat. Then a character can get a Power that says he doesn't need to roll even if it is a stressful situation. Depending on the game mechanics maybe at some point another character can increase his ability to climb stuff such that he can make DC Z on a Natural 1 as a feature. The character is just that good, took the effort to be so good, and now gets to enjoy the fruit of that labor.

Still, such a game system may still say a 4 year old can't climb trees like I did. For some people that's a deal breaker. They need absolute realism. That's fine. They can play another game. Some will look for a more mechanics driven game. Others may look towards interpretation.

Vegan Squirrel
2021-01-01, 08:33 PM
Some games are more realistic than others. Choose to taste.

We've been over this before. Different DMs have different opinions on how easy it is to climb a tree. You think there should be no roll. Climb a tree because you want to. Great. Another DM says differently. You have to roll and the DC is X. Another DM says you have to roll and the DC is Y. Why? Because they say so, and they're not wrong. They think climbing trees are more difficult than you do. With all these different opinions it would help if there was a unifying rule. The Game says climbing a tree is W, where W = DC Z and specifically and directly tell the DM the player doesn't need to roll unless it's a stressful situation like combat. Then a character can get a Power that says he doesn't need to roll even if it is a stressful situation. Depending on the game mechanics maybe at some point another character can increase his ability to climb stuff such that he can make DC Z on a Natural 1 as a feature. The character is just that good, took the effort to be so good, and now gets to enjoy the fruit of that labor.

Still, such a game system may still say a 4 year old can't climb trees like I did. For some people that's a deal breaker. They need absolute realism. That's fine. They can play another game. Some will look for a more mechanics driven game. Others may look towards interpretation.
Personally, I find it a feature that every table can rule differently, because the same mechanics may be a great fit for your table and a poor fit for mine. I trust the GM of each table to make the best decisions for their table, because each GM knows their own table best. And that's one way playing at a new table, with a new GM, can be a fresh and exciting experience. But I can see where you're coming from.

My first character, in D&D 3.5, was an avid tree climber, and I had to spend ranks accordingly and roll to climb trees regularly. Now that I have years of experience and familiarity with more systems, I feel like all of that detracted from the immersive experience. It was just a bunch of unnecessary rolling, and worse, time and build resources spent figuring out how to be able to do something that never significantly affected the game; the trees rarely mattered.

Now I strongly prefer more permissive GMing with fewer rolls, so that players can have the freedom to play their characters how they want to play them. I find that leads to players role-playing more freely instead of browsing their character sheet for options. The games are more enjoyable that way, at least at our tables.

So in the end, I agree with you. It's largely a matter of taste. What's important to each table, and each player, will vary, and that will even vary depending on the game situation. And there's plenty of middle ground between hard mechanics and loose interpretation.

Ashiel
2021-01-01, 09:24 PM
Tree-climbing is a good example of a skill I usually wouldn't bother to mechanize. The reason being: most people know what trees are, they don't need mechanical rules to intuitively understand their character can climb one, a GM describing a tree in any detail is enough to communicate difficulty of a task.

I suggest you pick another example. Preferably something that is reasonably easy to mechanize but isn't common knowledge, like ballistics. Or weather.

I don't believe you. There is a very large breadth of difference between the physical capabilities of different characters. When you factor in things like armor and/or how much characters are holding, I wouldn't know if a character could or couldn't climb a tree if there was no measure other than guessing.

As for another simple example, picking locks. I know that if my character invests 1 rank into Disable Device (Pathfinder) they can take-20 to open common locks, but nice locks are not something they are capable of handling. I know this because nice locks are DC 25 and 30 respectively, so my ex-street delinquent turned cleric can't break into those ones but can get into most peasant houses.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-01-01, 10:06 PM
I don't believe you. There is a very large breadth of difference between the physical capabilities of different characters. When you factor in things like armor and/or how much characters are holding, I wouldn't know if a character could or couldn't climb a tree if there was no measure other than guessing.

As for another simple example, picking locks. I know that if my character invests 1 rank into Disable Device (Pathfinder) they can take-20 to open common locks, but nice locks are not something they are capable of handling. I know this because nice locks are DC 25 and 30 respectively, so my ex-street delinquent turned cleric can't break into those ones but can get into most peasant houses.

And that guarantees that all common locks, everywhere in the multiverse, are identical difficulty. As are all the nice locks of their respective categories. Or that the DM is adding modifiers, which breaks the whole "I know I can do it".

For me, that homogenization ruins things. Within my own setting, no two locks are identical. But I don't have to worry about it, because anyone with the appropriate tools and proficiency (the only gated/untrained not possible check in 5e to my knowledge) can open any of the non-magicked ones given time. So unless there's a time limit (such as guards coming, or a trap, or whatever), the lock just doesn't matter. It's been reduced to a binary, without actually having to go through the process of caring about the exact difficulty. And if there's a time limit, the difficulty depends less on the lock and more on the circumstances--something easy to ignore for a bit might be DC 10 for a moderately complex lock, while a "we have to get it open in the next 6 seconds or we all die" case might be DC 20+ for a much simpler lock.

DCs, in my mind, should reflect the entire circumstances, not the isolated task. Otherwise you have the defeat-by-endless-rolling problem (roll Stealth for this step, now for the next step, etc, which guarantees failure).

Pex
2021-01-02, 12:07 AM
And that guarantees that all common locks, everywhere in the multiverse, are identical difficulty. As are all the nice locks of their respective categories. Or that the DM is adding modifiers, which breaks the whole "I know I can do it".

For me, that homogenization ruins things. Within my own setting, no two locks are identical. But I don't have to worry about it, because anyone with the appropriate tools and proficiency (the only gated/untrained not possible check in 5e to my knowledge) can open any of the non-magicked ones given time. So unless there's a time limit (such as guards coming, or a trap, or whatever), the lock just doesn't matter. It's been reduced to a binary, without actually having to go through the process of caring about the exact difficulty. And if there's a time limit, the difficulty depends less on the lock and more on the circumstances--something easy to ignore for a bit might be DC 10 for a moderately complex lock, while a "we have to get it open in the next 6 seconds or we all die" case might be DC 20+ for a much simpler lock.

DCs, in my mind, should reflect the entire circumstances, not the isolated task. Otherwise you have the defeat-by-endless-rolling problem (roll Stealth for this step, now for the next step, etc, which guarantees failure).

Why is all common locks everywhere being the same DC to open a problem but all non-magical platemail everywhere providing the same AC is ok? In any case, a lock doesn't know an orc is chasing you so it decides to be harder to open. That is what 4E did, the DC of a task is based on the level of the character doing it. It will always be of some difficulty defined by its quality. What's different is the person trying to open it. Because the orc is chasing you is why you have to roll. You can't take your time. This is where your skill in opening the lock matters. If there was no orc the lock opens because you're that good. Because you need to open it Right Now, you roll. Your skill determines your chance. You may be good enough that you open it automatically anyway. Could be a class feature of autosuccess during stressful situations. Could be you invested in Open Lock skill enough you make the DC on a Natural 1 when you have to roll.

Having defined target numbers can still allow no need to roll for every instance. It's been done. In 3E it is Take 10/Take 20. In 5E it is Passive score. You do not have to roll every round for Stealth or any skill in non-stressful situations. Some DM might ask for one roll and use it for the encounter. For example the party hears something. The scout goes looking. DM asks for a Stealth roll. The scout doesn't find what makes the noise until a gameworld minute later. The DM uses that Stealth roll when the scout looks for a place to hide and observe, not every round the scout moves to see if what made the noise hears/notices the scout. It is helpful for a game system to offer such an idea.

Ashiel
2021-01-02, 02:08 AM
Having defined target numbers can still allow no need to roll for every instance. It's been done. In 3E it is Take 10/Take 20. In 5E it is Passive score. You do not have to roll every round for Stealth or any skill in non-stressful situations. Some DM might ask for one roll and use it for the encounter. For example the party hears something. The scout goes looking. DM asks for a Stealth roll. The scout doesn't find what makes the noise until a gameworld minute later. The DM uses that Stealth roll when the scout looks for a place to hide and observe, not every round the scout moves to see if what made the noise hears/notices the scout. It is helpful for a game system to offer such an idea.
I would like to take this moment to mention that taking-10 as a GM is probably the best sanity and time saving thing for everyone, especially when dealing with things like Stealth and Perception.

EggKookoo
2021-01-02, 06:39 AM
Why is all common locks everywhere being the same DC to open a problem but all non-magical platemail everywhere providing the same AC is ok?

I'd like to point out that in 5e, more than a few creatures have AC values that are not calculated the same way as PCs. Especially those with the ill-defined "natural armor," which seems to be a term for "we wanted this monster's AC to be higher but not change anything else." It's hard to tell if natural armor is a bonus or a recalculation.

But here's a thought. What if locks had "pick points"? So you make a lockpicking check. If you succeed, roll a die and then reduce its current PP by the result, just like damaging a creature. When the lock reaches 0 PP, it's picked and you can open it. Then all (common) locks have the same DC, but a range of pick points. Is that just moving the same problem to a different location?


I would like to take this moment to mention that taking-10 as a GM is probably the best sanity and time saving thing for everyone, especially when dealing with things like Stealth and Perception.

Indeed, and 5e oddball cousin: passives.

Max_Killjoy
2021-01-02, 10:30 AM
I prefer the more mechanical system like D&D 3.x/d20, because IMHO it facilitates better roleplaying, because it provides a stable framework for what is reasonable, and as a direct result you can quickly learn how things relate to one-another. You can understand what you can do, why you can do it, and so on, and that allows you to engage in the world more as if you are living in it and have a more immersive experience.

A simple example I use most of the time when discussing topics like this is, in D&D if you understand that the DC to climb a tree is 15, and you have a +5 climb modifier, you can climb trees. You don't have to ask the GM if you can climb a tree. If the difficulty is higher, such as being heavily covered in wet moss (say a +2 to the DC), or someone oiled the tree by casting grease on the it (say +10 to the DC), you can easily understand why you can normally climb trees easily but this one is harder and understand how big a deal it is to be able to casually climb those trees relative to what you're capable of now. It also means that you might intuitively understand how to solve such problems: if there's thick moss grown on the tree, you might spend a bit using a shortsword to scrape the moss off as you're climbing it (effectively negating the +2 to the DC in exchange for climbing up slower) or attempt to foil the lubricant by patting the tree with crushed chalk or flour; for you understand why there is a difference and can interact with it naturally.

This leads to immersive emergent gameplay. If you're wandering through a forest with a thick canopy (dim light, things are difficult to see clearly) on the way to find a tower somewhere in the forest and you're not sure which way you are going, but you have a +5 climb modifier, you don't say "Hey GM, can I climb a tree to look around? If I get a better view from up there, will I be able to see any better? Will I...?". Instead, what you say is "I can climb trees, so I climb up a tall one and have a look around for the tower." You know that you can climb trees, and you know that getting clear line of sight in bright light above the canopy will allow you to see the tower without trouble and orient yourself. You have, naturally, intuitively, interacted with the world as if it were in a sense real and as a result makes it easier to roleplay without pauses, for both the player and the GM. The GM likewise benefits because s/he doesn't have to decide whether or not you can climb this tree and can instead focus on describing the results of your actions and further the story from there.

It opens avenues for more pro-active gameplay and decision making. Knowing how the world works allows you to act accordingly. Knowing that it's harder to see you at a distance (-1 penalty to Perception per 10 ft.) can influence your decisions when tailing a suspected spy through a city, as you decide whether or not you want to risk them getting out of sight because they are far enough away that they could turn a corner or two before you could see which way they went, or if you want to stay further back to ensure you aren't spotted in a crowd.

There is functionally nothing lost in a crunchy system since nothing is off limits if the GM and group wants it so. You can always simply ask if you can use a thing in a way not specified, but these sorts of considerations are actually made easier to handle for the players and GMs by a consistent framework that you can reference. For example, if your party is ambushed by some invisible stalkers or rogues with greater invisibility cast on them, you can ask to do something not covered by the rules such as "Can I scatter powdered sugar around the room to reveal the invisible people?" - "Sure, but it won't reveal them completely, and the cloud will make it hard to see anything in the room for a bit, so they'll loose invisibility and everyone in the room gains concealment 20% for...two rounds, then only the invisible people will have concealment as the dust settles".

In a similar vein, being able to compare things at different scales can help decide on things that aren't already covered in the rules. If you know that iron has hardness 10, you know you need to have a fire that's hotter than 10 points of fire damage (on average) after halving it to melt the metal, so if a minotaur bull-rushes a PC into the coals of a giant furnace, you can say "Oh, well that's probably at least 6d6 fire damage since it's gotta be hot enough to actually get the metal soft".

So I like the mechanical stuff because I find it supports roleplaying and doing interesting things more than flavors of "mother-may-I".


That is exactly the appeal of a system with good mechanics. I prefer the mechanics to be derived from what we want to model, and will put the fiction-layer ahead of the mechanics-layer when the rules give nonsensical results... but I still want the actual mechanics.

What I don't want is to have a long Q&A session with the GM every time I need to determine if an action is advisable, or possible, or which action to choose. My character should have a sense of that, and as a player I should have a sense of that, without spending 5+ minutes engaged in interrogating and then persuading the GM every time one of my action opportunities comes up.

One of the things that bugs me about "modern" system design is that if it's not mechanics-heavy in a convoluted way that doesn't accomplish the actual goal stated here for having mechanics (maybe trying to capture some OSR goal, or maybe because they have some novel resolution system they want to spotlight, or maybe something else), then it's flirting with being "Oberoni Fallacy, the RPG", stripped down to a small set of sparse mechanics that only function because of constant GM intervention fig-leafed as something positive.

Or, that obscured sense of the fiction-layer reality is presented as a "good thing", both because it "helps create challenges and dramatic twists" and because it "leaves room for shared narrative to form".

Max_Killjoy
2021-01-02, 10:34 AM
Why is all common locks everywhere being the same DC to open a problem but all non-magical platemail everywhere providing the same AC is ok? In any case, a lock doesn't know an orc is chasing you so it decides to be harder to open. That is what 4E did, the DC of a task is based on the level of the character doing it. It will always be of some difficulty defined by its quality. What's different is the person trying to open it. Because the orc is chasing you is why you have to roll. You can't take your time. This is where your skill in opening the lock matters. If there was no orc the lock opens because you're that good. Because you need to open it Right Now, you roll. Your skill determines your chance. You may be good enough that you open it automatically anyway. Could be a class feature of autosuccess during stressful situations. Could be you invested in Open Lock skill enough you make the DC on a Natural 1 when you have to roll.

Having defined target numbers can still allow no need to roll for every instance. It's been done. In 3E it is Take 10/Take 20. In 5E it is Passive score. You do not have to roll every round for Stealth or any skill in non-stressful situations. Some DM might ask for one roll and use it for the encounter. For example the party hears something. The scout goes looking. DM asks for a Stealth roll. The scout doesn't find what makes the noise until a gameworld minute later. The DM uses that Stealth roll when the scout looks for a place to hide and observe, not every round the scout moves to see if what made the noise hears/notices the scout. It is helpful for a game system to offer such an idea.

There's also a space between "all locks of X quality have identical DCs" and "all locks have a DC set by the GM in the moment".

A system could establish that each "category" of lock has DCs within a certain narrowish range, so that it's not all the same but it's also not entirely random and unpredictable.

Just a random thought.




Exactly. Two things are often argued together. One is the question of when and whether or not there should be a check, and the other is what the difficulty of the check should be. Both are left to the DM to decide, but the DMG repeats in a few places that the DM should only call for a check if there's an outstanding reason to. A DM that calls for a check to climb a tree when there's no duress or constraint is certainly free to do so, but that's not what the game encourages.

Given the above, the idea that there's a standard DC for any given check is invalid. If the DM is calling for a check because there's some constraint or threat on the player, then the nature of the constraint or threat informs the DC (just as much as the existence of the constraint or threat determines if a check is made in the first place).


The GM should of course be free to not require a roll, or require a roll for how long something takes or how well/poorly it's accomplished, instead of a pass/fail roll ever single time.

But that's not the same as "we only have rules for when things are challenging for that subset of individuals known as "PCs", nothing else matters or should be encoded." That approach gives a distorted picture and disconnects the mechanics-layer from the fiction-layer.





EDIT: As opposed to "you can just climb trees, until climbing trees matters, then you probably can't".


See also, the player who insists they can give their PC a 7 INT and no knowledge or intelligence based skills... but that doesn't mean the character is slow-minded or ignorant, as long as they can play the character smart and finagle their way out of ever rolling against it.

One of my pet peeves is when we see solid mechanics conflated with "mechanics first", and someone insists that the 7 INT just means the PC is bad at rolling on INT-based rolls -- and that the low INT is supposedly not representative of the character as a person being kinda on the stupid side.

EggKookoo
2021-01-02, 10:51 AM
That approach gives a distorted picture and disconnects the mechanics-layer from the fiction-layer.

For some of us, that disconnect is a feature instead of a bug.

Max_Killjoy
2021-01-02, 10:54 AM
For some of us, that disconnect is a feature instead of a bug.

To me it's a fatal flaw.

The disconnect means that the mechanics routinely produce results that don't match the expectations established in the fictional reality, and that I as the player cannot get the same broad sense of the probable, possible, unlikely, and impossible that my character has standing there inside the fictional reality. At "best", I can grind the game to a halt and engage with the GM at the table-level for minutes on end, interrogating and negotiating on what the results of an attempted action might be -- the game becomes less about the characters and setting and their actions therein, and more about my ability to interact with the GM and convince them of something.

EggKookoo
2021-01-02, 11:20 AM
At "best", I can grind the game to a halt and engage with the GM at the table-level for minutes on end, interrogating and negotiating on what the results of an attempted action might be -- the game becomes less about the characters and setting and their actions therein, and more about my ability to interact with the GM and convince them of something.

Sounds like any early session in any new campaign I run. I encourage these kinds of negotiations and discussions as long as they're in good faith. I want to know where you want to push the rules, or get clarification on the things that are important to you. Is tree-climbing important? Great, let's work out a process that satisfies you. Do you want to use spells in non-combat ways, like using fire bolt to light candles? Let's hammer out how you can do that without causing later imbalance. Just be aware that if we discover a problem later, we'll have to revisit it.

This kind of stuff happens at the start of many of my campaigns, especially with new-to-me players. It doesn't derail much -- I tend to play with people who also like this kind of rules-exploration. My long-running players and I have come around to a general understanding of how this stuff goes, so it's not like we have to revisit it constantly.

Quertus
2021-01-02, 11:40 AM
Some games are more realistic than others. Choose to taste.

We've been over this before. Different DMs have different opinions on how easy it is to climb a tree. You think there should be no roll. Climb a tree because you want to. Great. Another DM says differently. You have to roll and the DC is X. Another DM says you have to roll and the DC is Y. Why? Because they say so, and they're not wrong. They think climbing trees are more difficult than you do. With all these different opinions it would help if there was a unifying rule. The Game says climbing a tree is W, where W = DC Z and specifically and directly tell the DM the player doesn't need to roll unless it's a stressful situation like combat. Then a character can get a Power that says he doesn't need to roll even if it is a stressful situation. Depending on the game mechanics maybe at some point another character can increase his ability to climb stuff such that he can make DC Z on a Natural 1 as a feature. The character is just that good, took the effort to be so good, and now gets to enjoy the fruit of that labor.

Still, such a game system may still say a 4 year old can't climb trees like I did. For some people that's a deal breaker. They need absolute realism. That's fine. They can play another game. Some will look for a more mechanics driven game. Others may look towards interpretation.

"Like the real world, unless noted otherwise" - why can't people just accept that, if trees are DC 15 to climb, and that doesn't match their expectations, they need to either a) get the company to admit to their mistake, and errata it, or b) accept that this is one of the ways that the game world is different from the real world, and calibrate their expectations accordingly?


For some of us, that disconnect is a feature instead of a bug.

How can "Superman and Worf get KO'd every fight and come off as wimps" be a feature? :smallconfused:

NichG
2021-01-02, 11:46 AM
Why is all common locks everywhere being the same DC to open a problem but all non-magical platemail everywhere providing the same AC is ok?

Depending on the feel a campaign is going for, having armor made in different circumstances or by different levels of skill or knowledge vary could be useful. This is improvised plate mail cobbled together from different suits and has rusted in the rain: it's 3AC worse than you'd expect. This platemail has been optimized by a dwarven clan for centuries and grants an extra +1 AC to dwarves. This platemail was forged nonmagically by someone who was literally possessed by a deity of the forge at the time.

Unexpected variation encountered suggests that seeking variation may be worthwhile. It creates the question 'can we do better than the standard stuff?' while making discovery of the methods a subject of gameplay rather than a subject of rule diving.

As an aside, this is why I like there to be (rare) sources of permanent progression scattered around a setting in games with a leveling track. It breaks up the linearity and predictability of advancement, and suggests actions that ambitious characters could take in pursuit of power that are above and beyond just having your daily level appropriate encounters. Someone practices a certain kind of trick shot over and over, finally uses it to good effect in a life or death moment, and permanently picks up a +1 to hit in those circumstances that can't be explained by BAB or Feat or purposefully replicated by another character, but is just a bit of their history given weight.

EggKookoo
2021-01-02, 11:46 AM
How can "Superman and Worf get KO'd every fight and come off as wimps" be a feature? :smallconfused:

I don't think I'm following.

Quertus
2021-01-02, 12:50 PM
As an aside, this is why I like there to be (rare) sources of permanent progression scattered around a setting in games with a leveling track. It breaks up the linearity and predictability of advancement, and suggests actions that ambitious characters could take in pursuit of power that are above and beyond just having your daily level appropriate encounters. Someone practices a certain kind of trick shot over and over, finally uses it to good effect in a life or death moment, and permanently picks up a +1 to hit in those circumstances that can't be explained by BAB or Feat or purposefully replicated by another character, but is just a bit of their history given weight.

Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, has encountered, learned, developed counters for, and written about no fewer than 6 different methods for concealing magic. As just one example. Yeah, I'm a fan (of nonlinear permanent progression).


I don't think I'm following.

So, you said that a disconnect between the mechanics-layer and the fiction-layer is a feature. Granted, "being Worf'd" is usually an issue with the *narrative* taking precedence over the mechanics; still, regardless of the precision of the example, I am asking how creating dissonance by disconnecting the mechanics from the fiction can be viewed as a feature. To me, it's all, "yes, I'm Superman, but that doesn't mean I have a high Strength score" - what is it to you?

Pex
2021-01-02, 02:26 PM
There's also a space between "all locks of X quality have identical DCs" and "all locks have a DC set by the GM in the moment".

A system could establish that each "category" of lock has DCs within a certain narrowish range, so that it's not all the same but it's also not entirely random and unpredictable.

Just a random thought.



Devil is in the details, but I can work with this.

Telok
2021-01-02, 03:18 PM
I don't think I'm following.

It's the Worf effect. TvTropes has a page for it.

Essentially one of the PCs is a strong &tough fighter. Therefore any opponent who can one-hit KO that character is a serious combat threat, the corollary being that anyone who can't isn't a threat. Since the PCs must be threatened lots of fights start with a Worfing and that PC goes down for a nap. Suddenly it's a bad joke, most fights start with the strong & tough character going down in one hit and everyone else seems much "tougher" because it takes multiple hits to down them. The fiction says "strong enemy" and you repeatedly turn the "strong PC" into a glass jaw chump to enforce the fiction. The fiction and mechanics are at odds and in this case the fiction makes people who think they have a strong & tough character feel bad & unhappy.

You see similar things in a lot of games where everyone has a chance to both succeed and fail on all the mechanics. If you have a game where the smartest and most educated person has a 75% success rate and lobotimized illiterate has a 25% success rate you can just skip having them both roll and just drop a d8. On 1-6 the educated genius knows something, on a 7 nobody knows, and on a 8 the illiterate who is physically missing their frontal lobes knows the thing. Again, fiction and mechanical disconnect making the player who invested in a smart & educated character unhappy because the mechanics win over the fiction.

Now you can square the circle here by ignoring the fiction or mechanics any time they produce stupid or broken results. But that takes you back to why you should use those rules in the first place if the DM has to constantly fix things (before or after rolling). And for some people people that's OK, they don't mind running that and don't play with DMs have interpreted the rules as not needing to be fixed and that rolling for everything works fine.

The thing you're running into with D&D 5e is that the game has two modes, combat and not-combat. In combat the target numbers are all set by the system, the players know what they'll be rolling (attack, damage, saves), and the DM doesn't need to make lots of rules decisions. Basically all your combat target numbers are predefined by the system. Then you have the not-combat mode where there basically aren't all that pregenerated content and rules so the DM has to make everything up. You can really see the difference if you flip the modes. Use the combat rules for all the non-combat stuff (requires statting all non-combat challenges as monsters and defining PC non-combat gear like it was armor & weapons) and use the not-combat rules for combat (where there are no monster stat blocks and weapons & armor use the tool kit/proficency stats).

Some systems avoid that by having both combat and not-combat use the same rules. Others admit to the split and produce fully separate rules for both modes. It's just that D&D 5e is both currently common and doesn't make the mode split explicit and distinct, so some DMs interpret & run the not-combat rules like they were the combat rules.

EggKookoo
2021-01-02, 07:24 PM
So, you said that a disconnect between the mechanics-layer and the fiction-layer is a feature. Granted, "being Worf'd" is usually an issue with the *narrative* taking precedence over the mechanics; still, regardless of the precision of the example, I am asking how creating dissonance by disconnecting the mechanics from the fiction can be viewed as a feature. To me, it's all, "yes, I'm Superman, but that doesn't mean I have a high Strength score" - what is it to you?


It's the Worf effect. TvTropes has a page for it.

Ok, right, thanks. Yes, I'm familiar with the Worf Effect. But from what I understand, that arises from the conflict between an informed attribute ("Worf is a badass") and a demonstrated one (Worf consistently gets his butt kicked so the writers can demonstrate how tough the villain is, since "Worf is a badass"). But does that apply in a game? Is your high-athletics PC consistently failing athletics checks? How is that happening?

Re: Superman, even if he had a high strength score, in a game like D&D the dice can still have him lose a strength contest with someone considerably weaker once in a while. This is true whether you require checks for every attempt or only the "significant" ones.

Telok
2021-01-02, 08:33 PM
Ok, right, thanks. Yes, I'm familiar with the Worf Effect. But from what I understand, that arises from the conflict between an informed attribute ("Worf is a badass") and a demonstrated one (Worf consistently gets his butt kicked so the writers can demonstrate how tough the villain is, since "Worf is a badass"). But does that apply in a game? Is your high-athletics PC consistently failing athletics checks? How is that happening?

The answer to your questions was paragraphs 2 to 5 of the post you quoted from.

Essentially fiction-mechanic dissonance causes issues for many people when both fiction overrides and contradicts mechanics, or mechanics override and contradict the fiction. The solution of "don't use the mechanics when they fail" begs the question of "why use bad mechanics that require constant fixing" and brings about another problem when novices try to use the system and encounter repeated failures.

Quertus
2021-01-04, 11:56 PM
Ok, right, thanks. Yes, I'm familiar with the Worf Effect. But from what I understand, that arises from the conflict between an informed attribute ("Worf is a badass") and a demonstrated one (Worf consistently gets his butt kicked so the writers can demonstrate how tough the villain is, since "Worf is a badass"). But does that apply in a game? Is your high-athletics PC consistently failing athletics checks? How is that happening?

Re: Superman, even if he had a high strength score, in a game like D&D the dice can still have him lose a strength contest with someone considerably weaker once in a while. This is true whether you require checks for every attempt or only the "significant" ones.

1) none of this answers "how is this (having mechanics and fiction be discontented) a feature?".

2) yes, my high athletics character is failing athletics checks all the time: by being Worf'd by "this is a challenge", by Bounded Accuracy, by "you always fail on a 1", by DC treadmill. Depends on the system, but, yes, this happens all the time, for everything.

3) let's pretend that "moving a planet" is the top of Superman's game, and pretend further that, in 3e, doing so requires Strength 2,000,000,000. That's a +1,000,000,000 to opposed Strength checks. Opponent rolls a natural 20 on their +10 Strength, gets a 30. Superman rolls a 1, gets a 1,000,000,001. 1,000,000,001 > 30, Superman wins. Mechanics and fiction are aligned. Superman does not get Worf'd.

EggKookoo
2021-01-05, 08:40 AM
1) none of this answers "how is this (having mechanics and fiction be discontented) a feature?".

When I talk about keeping the mechanics and fiction separated/disconnected, I mean viewing the mechanics not as something that actually drives what's going on in the fiction as though the game rules are describing the laws of physics as (potentially) perceived by the characters, but instead as a set of rules the players use to help facilitate gameplay. The benefit of keeping the fiction isolated from the mechanics per se is that it improves the realism of the fiction. It's silly, or at least strange, to think that PCs actually possess game stats like levels, hit points, etc. I mean, that they literally possess these features. While some game mechanics might overlap with in-fiction properties, many do not, and many are outright disjointed (depending on which system we're talking about).

Put another way, creatures in a TTRPG are made up of the same basic building blocks of matter that you and I are. Their actions are not dictated by the crude probability-generation of rolled dice. They don't have physical attributes that divide neatly into 20 points of value, or whatever the system in question uses. They're flesh and bone and atoms and emotion and dreams and the spirit of life.

Every now and then someone asks a question along the lines of "would a wizard know about spell slots?" That question comes from an assumption that the mechanics and fiction are bound together. As long as that assumption is maintained, that question will inevitably lead to the conclusion that PCs know they're in a game. Don't get me wrong. A TTRPG where the PCs are aware they're PCs might be cool. But that would affect the fiction significantly. Like in the original Tron, where the Programs revere the Users, PCs in such a world would make decisions that incorporated their self-knowledge. Society as a whole would be built around it. It could be fun, but it wouldn't look much like Faerûn.

I've used this analogy before, but it'd really be no different than the characters in a movie being aware they're in a movie. The "mechanics" of a movie are things like scene cuts, camera angles, story structure (currently everpresent is the 3-act structure used for almost every Hollywood film), foreshadowing, theme, subtext, and so on. Do these things actually exist for the characters? Are the story mechanics and story fiction tightly connected?*

In a good film, no. Events unfold in the story as a natural result of what's going on. The characters in the story don't act as though they're aware they're in a story. They don't do things because the plot only makes sense if they do those things (again, we're talking about a good film). Storytelling mechanics, like jump cuts, Highlander-like scene wipes, split screens, dramatic tense music, etc., don't seem to matter to the characters. They're clearly there for the benefit of only the audience. Fiction and mechanics work in concert to create a greater whole, but they are disconnected.


3) let's pretend that "moving a planet" is the top of Superman's game, and pretend further that, in 3e, doing so requires Strength 2,000,000,000. That's a +1,000,000,000 to opposed Strength checks. Opponent rolls a natural 20 on their +10 Strength, gets a 30. Superman rolls a 1, gets a 1,000,000,001. 1,000,000,001 > 30, Superman wins. Mechanics and fiction are aligned. Superman does not get Worf'd.

It would be a ludicrous system that allowed one creature to have a strength of 2 billion and another to have a strength of 30. I'd call that broken. It's even more ridiculous if the system required a mechanical roll to resolve a strength check between them, especially if there was literally no way to get a successful result. DC's RPG did its best to get around that by having each point of strength correlate to twice the real-world value as the previous, but having combat work out in a linear fashion**. And even then, Superman was basically never going to lose to a normal human, although strictly speaking it wasn't impossible, unlike in your d20-based example.


* Interestingly, when they are tightly-bound, it usually is to the detriment of the film. Often bad movies are bad because of specific things that are just poorly conceived or implemented. But sometimes movies are bad because they "just don't work" or "don't come together." Many times it's because the writer is forcing contrivances out of laziness or ineptitude, which is another way of saying the story mechanics and fiction have been too tightly bound. Things happen because the plot said so, not because it made internal sense.

** So someone with a strength of 10 could lift twice as much as someone with a strength of 9, but 10 was only at most "one more" when working out the combat mechanics. Normal adult humans had a strength of 2. Superman had a strength of 25 (over 50 for the pre-Crisis version).

Morgaln
2021-01-05, 11:02 AM
I strongly dislike systems and/or GMs that tell me that I can't even attempt something because there are no rules to model it. My best example comes from a D&D game I was in once. It was my regular gaming group; usually we were playing W:tA with me being the storyteller but one of the other players wanted to do a game and I was happy to play for once, so we had a 3.5 game with him as the GM. One of the players had never played outside my group, so was very used to my more permissive style and also the less rigid WoD system.
We were in combat with an enemy she had a personal grudge against; so she manoevered behind him and said that she would take both her daggers and ram them into his back. She didn't have two-weapons-fighting; we were low level (3rd, I believe) so she certainly didn't have multiple attacks. She didn't even flank him for the sneak attack bonus. So she got to roll damage for a single dagger and rolled low to boot. Cue quite a discussion on how two daggers should deal more damage than one and how the specific maneuver should also be more effective than a regular attack.

In my opinion, characters should be able to attempt anything they are physically able to do. For example, a human character cannot fly unless they have something specific that allows them to fly (functional wings, a hoverboard, magic...) because humans are physically incapable of flying. But even the most unathletic city dweller can, say, attempt to row a boat, whether their character sheet specifically allows it or not. How successful they will be is of course another thing entirely and should be governed by mechanics.
I've got another example for that, from another game I was playing in. We were a group of various people who were at a castle during some festivities (I don't remember the exact occasion, might have been a wedding). As these things go, we found ourselves right into the middle of a coup and had to try and get out of there with our hides intact. At one point, two of the characters got themselves into a fight on a staircase, with them having the high ground. One of the players decided that it would be cinematically appropriate to somersault over the enemy. However, her character was an author; she was about as unathletic as they get. The GM pointed that out, but she insisted on that course of action, so she got to roll. It ended with her failing disastrously and injuring herself so she was handicapped for the rest of the escape, but ineptitude didn't prevent her from trying.

In general, this is the way I want my games and the way I GM them: a game should have mechanics; those mechanics should inform you how to do things, and also how to improvise things that aren't covered by the specific mechanics the game designers decided to include. What mechanics should not do, however, is telling you what you can do. That is part of the fiction layer, and it is part of the GM's job to use what mechanics there are to model whatever idea the players come up with.

Xervous
2021-01-05, 11:43 AM
She didn't have two-weapons-fighting.

Glossing over how you can use TWF without the feat (at -a lot) and how it probably was the movement that precluded the full attack (a hotly debated topic to this day, I personally have come to dislike excessive attack quantities...) this does stand in a certain light as an example of trying to fast talk the GM for favorable treatment.

InvisibleBison
2021-01-05, 12:13 PM
I strongly dislike systems and/or GMs that tell me that I can't even attempt something because there are no rules to model it. My best example comes from a D&D game I was in once. It was my regular gaming group; usually we were playing W:tA with me being the storyteller but one of the other players wanted to do a game and I was happy to play for once, so we had a 3.5 game with him as the GM. One of the players had never played outside my group, so was very used to my more permissive style and also the less rigid WoD system.
We were in combat with an enemy she had a personal grudge against; so she manoevered behind him and said that she would take both her daggers and ram them into his back. She didn't have two-weapons-fighting; we were low level (3rd, I believe) so she certainly didn't have multiple attacks. She didn't even flank him for the sneak attack bonus. So she got to roll damage for a single dagger and rolled low to boot. Cue quite a discussion on how two daggers should deal more damage than one and how the specific maneuver should also be more effective than a regular attack.

It seems to me that this player decided to describe her character inflicting a fatal blow (or at least a far more damaging usual attack) and then expected this description to somehow have mechanical weight. That's not at all how D&D works.

Morgaln
2021-01-05, 12:22 PM
Glossing over how you can use TWF without the feat (at -a lot) and how it probably was the movement that precluded the full attack (a hotly debated topic to this day, I personally have come to dislike excessive attack quantities...) this does stand in a certain light as an example of trying to fast talk the GM for favorable treatment.

I can see how you could interpret it that way, but the player in question didn't have the system knowledge to even realize this would be favorable treatment (and arguably, it's not favorable treatment if everyone is allowed to do it; it's a house rule then). It was more of a disconnect between fiction layer and mechanics layer. From a fictional point of view, if you walk up behind someone, it makes no sense that you could stab them with one hand but not with both, or that stabbing them with both would be considerably more difficult to do unless you had special training. From a mechanical point of view, D&D doesn't even let you walk up to someone from behind since there are no facing rules beyond flanking (that I know of, I admit that my D&D knowledge is limited).

EggKookoo
2021-01-05, 12:51 PM
In general, this is the way I want my games and the way I GM them: a game should have mechanics; those mechanics should inform you how to do things, and also how to improvise things that aren't covered by the specific mechanics the game designers decided to include. What mechanics should not do, however, is telling you what you can do. That is part of the fiction layer, and it is part of the GM's job to use what mechanics there are to model whatever idea the players come up with.

This is another issue with strongly-bound mechanics and fiction. When they're bound tightly, there tends to be a "rule for everything," which leads a lot of players to look at the system as permissive (at least in that regard). There are so many rules covering so many things, because the mechanics are driving the fiction-physics down to the last detail. So if there's no mechanic specifically for X, X can't be done. It's a player assumption more than a strict manifestation of the design philosophy behind the rules, but it's just human nature.

Adding more rule options can seem like it's adding more player choices, but it doesn't really. There needs to be enough mechanical structure to allow the players to extrapolate edge cases, for sure. But no more than is necessary and there should be an effort to keep it from creeping. "Necessary," is, as always, a matter of opinion...


From a mechanical point of view, D&D doesn't even let you walk up to someone from behind since there are no facing rules beyond flanking (that I know of, I admit that my D&D knowledge is limited).

It depends. D&D 5e does not use facing by default, although I believe it's described as an optional rule in the DMG (as is flanking). Regardless, D&D encourages the DM to work out a method of resolving anything the players want to do. If you want to sneak up behind someone, that sounds like some interpretation of stealth rules. I can think of a few ways I'd try to handle that at my table, although probably none with any great likelihood of success.

Xervous
2021-01-05, 01:01 PM
I can see how you could interpret it that way, but the player in question didn't have the system knowledge to even realize this would be favorable treatment (and arguably, it's not favorable treatment if everyone is allowed to do it; it's a house rule then). It was more of a disconnect between fiction layer and mechanics layer. From a fictional point of view, if you walk up behind someone, it makes no sense that you could stab them with one hand but not with both, or that stabbing them with both would be considerably more difficult to do unless you had special training. From a mechanical point of view, D&D doesn't even let you walk up to someone from behind since there are no facing rules beyond flanking (that I know of, I admit that my D&D knowledge is limited).

If this were a storytelling system and the GM narrated the results in a similar manner do you still see a similar protest in this hypothetical? The player announces an intended input to the story, the GM progresses the story and the player dislikes the results so the scenario wheels around to a back and forth of ‘convince the GM’. How does that end?

NichG
2021-01-05, 01:19 PM
From the promises and prompts point of view, once you've said you're going off-mechanics, you also lose ground to insist on particular outcomes. So the GM could say 'make a Bluff check. Failed? The enemy turns to follow you as you try to get behind them. They have a sword at guard, facing you. Still want to two-hand the daggers?' or 'Success? Okay, they're flat-footed but it's not an auto crit or anything like that. Take the normal penalties for dual wielding (-2/-6 or whatever)' or even 'As you're focused on the one enemy, you get behind them and automatically hit! But his friend uses an immediate action to take advantage of your hyperfocus to stab you in the back at the same time!' or whatever and I'd say fair.

If it goes beyond clarification to wheedling or negotiation, the response can be 'you went off mechanics and asked for a ruling; would you like to cancel that action and try something else?'

Tvtyrant
2021-01-05, 01:40 PM
I can see how you could interpret it that way, but the player in question didn't have the system knowledge to even realize this would be favorable treatment (and arguably, it's not favorable treatment if everyone is allowed to do it; it's a house rule then). It was more of a disconnect between fiction layer and mechanics layer. From a fictional point of view, if you walk up behind someone, it makes no sense that you could stab them with one hand but not with both, or that stabbing them with both would be considerably more difficult to do unless you had special training. From a mechanical point of view, D&D doesn't even let you walk up to someone from behind since there are no facing rules beyond flanking (that I know of, I admit that my D&D knowledge is limited).

Yeah but you can't "maneuver behind someone" very well in combat. If she did it out of combat she would get a surprise bonus in most editions, but the assumption that she is going to walk behind someone who is actively fighting her without hiding (the mechanic for doing so) is frankly ludicrous.

EggKookoo
2021-01-05, 01:50 PM
Yeah but you can't "maneuver behind someone" very well in combat. If she did it out of combat she would get a surprise bonus in most editions, but the assumption that she is going to walk behind someone who is actively fighting her without hiding (the mechanic for doing so) is frankly ludicrous.

It does bring up the question of what the player was hoping to accomplish, mechanically, by maneuvering around behind her target. Ok, say she does it. Was she expecting some kind of bonus? It seems doubtful if she didn't have enough system knowledge to expect favorable treatment. Two-weapon fighting aside, the DM should have just had her roll for an attack.

I've seen people get caught up in this a lot. It doesn't matter how you describe your flowery attack. It's still 1d20 + mod + prof. If you hit, it's still 1d8 + mod (or whatever the weapon does for damage). Doesn't matter if you just stab the guy or bring your shining blade around in a bright arc that ends where his shoulder meets his neck, delivering all of your fury in the form of razor-sharp metal. Roll a d20.

Quertus
2021-01-05, 04:04 PM
Yeah but you can't "maneuver behind someone" very well in combat. If she did it out of combat she would get a surprise bonus in most editions, but the assumption that she is going to walk behind someone who is actively fighting her without hiding (the mechanic for doing so) is frankly ludicrous.

Having watched a brilliant skirmish Fighter in action IRL¹, I can only say that this is not at all an unrealistic intended course of action².

¹ padded weapons, not real ones, thankfully.
² assuming that their opponent is using the different moves for fighting half a dozen people³
³ fighting gangs for local charities, that kinds of thing.

Telok
2021-01-05, 04:27 PM
It's weird. I don't even know what people in this thread mean by things like "disconnected mechanics" or "mechanics as physics" because its sounding like different people are talking about different things using the same phrases. Meh. I can't follow this any more, too much like semi-random word splatter.

Personally,
Good: system mechanics always work well when used, tells you how to deal with things not covered by rules, encourages players to have fun & try stuff, gives examples.
Bad: no examples and -> "can I grab his arm to stop him stabbing them?" "No, you can make a grapple roll to stop him from moving", "can i hit his leg to slow him down?" "No, make a regular attack roll", "how does the ranger's pet ID a magic rune my archmage can't?" "It rolled a 19, you rolled a 3, target was 15"

Tvtyrant
2021-01-05, 04:30 PM
It does bring up the question of what the player was hoping to accomplish, mechanically, by maneuvering around behind her target. Ok, say she does it. Was she expecting some kind of bonus? It seems doubtful if she didn't have enough system knowledge to expect favorable treatment. Two-weapon fighting aside, the DM should have just had her roll for an attack.

I've seen people get caught up in this a lot. It doesn't matter how you describe your flowery attack. It's still 1d20 + mod + prof. If you hit, it's still 1d8 + mod (or whatever the weapon does for damage). Doesn't matter if you just stab the guy or bring your shining blade around in a bright arc that ends where his shoulder meets his neck, delivering all of your fury in the form of razor-sharp metal. Roll a d20.

There's nothing keeping every character from doing it on every attack, and every opponent. It's extremely gamey to use flowery language to gain a free attack bonus IMO.


Having watched a brilliant skirmish Fighter in action IRL¹, I can only say that this is not at all an unrealistic intended course of action².

¹ padded weapons, not real ones, thankfully.
² assuming that their opponent is using the different moves for fighting half a dozen people³
³ fighting gangs for local charities, that kinds of thing.

I did SCA for years, it's not. The ways that it happens in real life are already coded into the game: Flanking, hiding, surprise attacks, Rogue SA. The player here is essentially asking for a free damage boost.

Morgaln
2021-01-05, 06:12 PM
Yeah but you can't "maneuver behind someone" very well in combat. If she did it out of combat she would get a surprise bonus in most editions, but the assumption that she is going to walk behind someone who is actively fighting her without hiding (the mechanic for doing so) is frankly ludicrous.

The enemy was a spellcaster who currently wasn't in melee with anyone. He was focusing his casting on someone else and she wasn't engaged in direct combat with anyone either, so this was basically moving towards him, then attacking while his attention was on another character. It is possible that she actively attempted to use stealth, this has been at least ten years ago and I don't remember exactly. But the main issue in the discussion was that she intended to stab the enemy with both daggers (again, narratively not an unreasonable action) and was told that this would be mechanically handled no different from using a single dagger.


If this were a storytelling system and the GM narrated the results in a similar manner do you still see a similar protest in this hypothetical? The player announces an intended input to the story, the GM progresses the story and the player dislikes the results so the scenario wheels around to a back and forth of ‘convince the GM’. How does that end?

Probably yes. There were multiple reasons why this led to a discussion; the GM didn't really narrate what happened; he just bluntly told her to roll damage for one dagger, so had he handled it with a bit more finesse, he could probably have avoided some of the argument. Part of it is also that the way WoD handles damage and defense very differently from D&D, and a single d6 certainly looks measly if you're used to a handful of d10, even though you have to consider them in the context of the system. Part of it was also that she didn't respect him as a GM the way she would have respected me. And a part certainly was that she was used to my particular style of handling fights. I find fighting purely for the sake of fighting boring; so my fight scense often contain additional objectives or small puzzles that can help with the fight, and I will reward out-of-the-box thinking and choices that make sense narratively with mechanical bonuses. So I certainly can't say that he system was the sole reason for the argument, but I certainly believe that less rigid systems provide better tools to handle that kind of situation to the satisfaction of both sides.

Chauncymancer
2021-01-05, 10:53 PM
I've seen people get caught up in this a lot. It doesn't matter how you describe your flowery attack. It's still 1d20 + mod + prof. If you hit, it's still 1d8 + mod (or whatever the weapon does for damage). Doesn't matter if you just stab the guy or bring your shining blade around in a bright arc that ends where his shoulder meets his neck, delivering all of your fury in the form of razor-sharp metal. Roll a d20.


There's nothing keeping every character from doing it on every attack, and every opponent. It's extremely gamey to use flowery language to gain a free attack bonus IMO.


I don't think that flowery-ness is really the variable here. Consider: In GURPS "I slash at his hand." "I punch at his face." and "I stab at his back." Are all equally brief, pedestrian declarations. All three of them are resolved differently because of how GURPS handles weapon types and armor. One is more likely to hit, another more likely to kill, and a third more likely to bypass armor. It's not exactly about level of detail, it's about how specific the detail you have to provide is to kick in the mechanics. Some people have an intuition that D&D is going to be like GURPS, and when it isn't they get very confused: Don't you have a real life preference between being punched in the bicep and the face? Shouldn't your character?

Pex
2021-01-06, 12:09 AM
A mechanics game can go too far with trying to have a rule for everything. Too far is subjective to the user, but a general pattern can emerge. 3E/Pathfinder was notorious for it by "You need a feat for that". Sometimes you can do something but there were so many penalties involved you didn't bother. You needed the feat to get rid of the penalties. Sometimes a feat let you do something no one else could but players thought everyone should be allowed to do it. Some people can get over it. Others can't and move on to other games.

Pathfinder did this. In one of the last splatbooks of 1E, they made a feat allowing a player to use Diplomacy to get an enemy to surrender in combat. There was such an uproar. Gaming groups have been doing this since forever, and now the game is telling them PCs can never do it again unless they have this feat. The mechanics would have been fine as a suggestion on how to do it as a guide for new DMs, but making it a feat ruined the moment. Everyone yelled and screamed, and the feat was universally ignored.

I still prefer the mechanics game. It is easier to get rid of rules that ruin the fun than to need rules but have nothing to go on.

EggKookoo
2021-01-06, 06:24 AM
Some people have an intuition that D&D is going to be like GURPS, and when it isn't they get very confused: Don't you have a real life preference between being punched in the bicep and the face? Shouldn't your character?

Yeah, D&D doesn't play out like that. It never has. I remember way back when a GM introduced a hit chart to our games. Great, some players thought. Now I can target body parts. Except the monsters could also now target body parts. One amputated PC hand later and we dropped the chart.

D&D uses specific features to handle targeted attacks, such as Sentinel (which could be used for the "arrow/blade through the foot" maneuver), and leaves things open to narrative description. You stab someone but roll a 1 on damage? The DM narrates it as a glancing blow. You roll max? You feel the brief resistance of muscle and sinew before your blade rends the flesh and penetrates deeply. You're down to 0 HP and make death saving throws. How badly are you hurt? You'll find out. If you make three successes before three failures, you weren't too badly hurt. If you don't, well, looks like you had taken a mortal wound. A lot of players don't like this ambiguity, but I find it takes the focus off the nitty gritty of the mechanics and puts it onto the narrative. Which is fine unless the nitty gritty is a big part of why you play in the first place.

kyoryu
2021-01-06, 11:17 AM
These threads are hilarious, because a subset of the mechanics/mechanics-first/rules people always insist that theirs is the only way games can possibly run without completely breaking down, and most everyone else agrees that both sides have their advantages and that you can have successful games either way, and that they've had successful games of both types, and that both preferences are valid.

Jorren
2021-01-06, 11:37 AM
These threads are hilarious, because a subset of the mechanics/mechanics-first/rules people always insist that theirs is the only way games can possibly run without completely breaking down, and most everyone else agrees that both sides have their advantages and that you can have successful games either way, and that they've had successful games of both types, and that both preferences are valid.

There is also the implication that somehow playing with bad or mediocre referees is helped by a strong mechanics-based approach; that somehow this will help them be better GMs in some way.

I have never found this to be the case. If anything I have found that bad GMs almost always prefer to use a detailed mechanics-first based system.

kyoryu
2021-01-06, 12:16 PM
There is also the implication that somehow playing with bad or mediocre referees is helped by a strong mechanics-based approach; that somehow this will help them be better GMs in some way.

I have never found this to be the case. If anything I have found that bad GMs almost always prefer to use a detailed mechanics-first based system.

One of the implications is that mechanics-heavy systems are better for bad players and GMs alike.

I haven't really found this to be true. Bad players tend to be bad players in all systems, and bad GMs can be bad GMs in any system. I think the thing that makes a system better for bad GMs is really strong procedures for GMs, more than anything else.

Some players will have problems that only show up for some types of games, that's true. But I don't think that's universally a case of mechanics-first games being better for bad players. Someone whose primary "badness" is rules lawyering, for instance, might not be a problem in a rules light game where there's fewer rules to lawyer. Same with people that really get off on looking for rules loopholes and exploiting them - rules light games don't offer as many in most cases.

Of course, players whose "badness" is "won't accept the opinions of others and argues unless there's an external thing to prove them wrong" will do horribly in rules light games. Most of those people do seem to just shift their annoyances to other things in other games, anyway.

Also, the "you don't have to ask the DC of the thing" doesn't really track for me, anyway. The only way to avoid that is to have everything on the map anyway, which is just doing the same thing.

EggKookoo
2021-01-06, 12:27 PM
I haven't really found this to be true. Bad players tend to be bad players in all systems, and bad GMs can be bad GMs in any system. I think the thing that makes a system better for bad GMs is really strong procedures for GMs, more than anything else.

Almost certainly it's that "players who prefer heavy systems don't enjoy lite-system games" and "players who prefer lite systems don't enjoy heavy-system games" and for conventional human nature reasons we tend to blame the system and/or players in an objective sense, rather than just seeing it as a case of not being able to please everyone.

kyoryu
2021-01-06, 12:51 PM
Almost certainly it's that "players who prefer heavy systems don't enjoy lite-system games" and "players who prefer lite systems don't enjoy heavy-system games" and for conventional human nature reasons we tend to blame the system and/or players in an objective sense, rather than just seeing it as a case of not being able to please everyone.

That's the case a lot of the time, for sure. And I do think understanding that people have different preferences is critical, especially for cases like players being inattentive or distracted.

But I've also dead with objectively bad players, that were destructive in literally any game they were in. It didn't matter if it was mechanics heavy or light, or what. They were just always disruptive. And a system not being your preference doesn't excuse actual toxic behavior (throwing dice, yelling, incessant arguing, etc.).

PhoenixPhyre
2021-01-06, 02:41 PM
One of the implications is that mechanics-heavy systems are better for bad players and GMs alike.

A) I haven't really found this to be true. Bad players tend to be bad players in all systems, and bad GMs can be bad GMs in any system. I think the thing that makes a system better for bad GMs is really strong procedures for GMs, more than anything else.

Some players will have problems that only show up for some types of games, that's true. But I don't think that's universally a case of mechanics-first games being better for bad players. Someone whose primary "badness" is rules lawyering, for instance, might not be a problem in a rules light game where there's fewer rules to lawyer. Same with people that really get off on looking for rules loopholes and exploiting them - rules light games don't offer as many in most cases.

B) Of course, players whose "badness" is "won't accept the opinions of others and argues unless there's an external thing to prove them wrong" will do horribly in rules light games. Most of those people do seem to just shift their annoyances to other things in other games, anyway.

C) Also, the "you don't have to ask the DC of the thing" doesn't really track for me, anyway. The only way to avoid that is to have everything on the map anyway, which is just doing the same thing.

A) I agree. Especially where there are guidelines and the bad DMs just don't even read them or disregard them without thinking. Adding more rules doesn't help that kind of badness--in fact it exacerbates it by making the interactions stronger so more care is needed.

B) Conservation of annoyance. Some people are just annoying by choice. I've found that those that are really disruptive crave the disruption itself. They'll rule lawyer if rules are detailed, cause arguments if the rules aren't detailed, etc.

C) Agreed as well. Unless everything you run into is marked and uses only the static values, you will always have to ask. Or, (shocking) you could act like your character would do without having full information about all the possible outcomes. I see it like:

Player: I want to <X>.
DM: That's a <difficulty> <check>. If you fail, <failure result> will happen. Is that what you want to do?
Player: [Yes | I want to do <Y> instead].
If (Yes) --> go to resolution
If (<Y>) --> goto top.

This basic flow is unescapable as long as there's a chokepoint for world access (ie a DM). The rules cannot encode enough information to do anything other than give bounds on what <difficulty> and <check> are. And that doesn't take fixed, per-task DCs--some games do it by saying "The default TN is 4"; 5e D&D does it by saying "Unless something's highly unusual, DCs are in the range of 10-20 and are likely 10, 15, or 20".

kyoryu
2021-01-06, 03:50 PM
B) Conservation of annoyance. Some people are just annoying by choice. I've found that those that are really disruptive crave the disruption itself. They'll rule lawyer if rules are detailed, cause arguments if the rules aren't detailed, etc.

Yeah. Usually it boils down to they're not getting their way. You can't get past that.


This basic flow is unescapable as long as there's a chokepoint for world access (ie a DM).

Well, you could theoretically do it by encoding everything into the map/whatever up front, but you're not really removing it, you're just requiring the GM write down everything up front, and implicitly forbidding things outside of what is written down. Even if you're minimizing the ask, all you're really doing is forcing the GM to either write down more of it up front, or removing modifiers.

Like in PbtA games, there's rarely modifiers on the roll. What can change is the results. But, yeah, realistically unless you have a very limited "model", you're not going to be able to encode enough into it to stop people from having to ask the GM for info. You can reduce it, though, for sure.

And it's kinda sad, because there are, I think really good reasons to use one or another that have nothing to do with preventing toxic behavior.

Quertus
2021-01-07, 11:01 AM
I played with two people for whom Candyland was too rules-heavy for them to comprehend.



This basic flow is unescapable as long as there's a chokepoint for world access (ie a DM).

And that's the point right there: make the rules primary, and the GM secondary, and you've escaped that chokepoint. If the GM introduces a Medusa, or a Leman Russ, or a tree, or Boccob, there are rules for that thing.

If you force the GM's plot to conform to the same rules everyone else is using, you force them to learn to make a plot that works, that has mechanical depth and can be interacted with reasonably. As opposed to Flamsterd level GM fiat of "assume he is immune to anything the PCs attempt to do". Or 5e level of "eh, pick a number".

GMs who cannot create a plot that behaves mechanically, who lack the ability to play Candyland, simply aren't capable of creating a plot worth interacting with. Making the rules primary - forcing them to learn this lesson - provides impetus for them to up their skills. Not unlike how a "git gud noob" attitude forces players to up theirs.

There are lots of different skills that one could improve. But at least with this particular skill, changing the rule set is a clear path towards encouraging that improvement.

Morgaln
2021-01-07, 11:47 AM
I played with two people for whom Candyland was too rules-heavy for them to comprehend.




And that's the point right there: make the rules primary, and the GM secondary, and you've escaped that chokepoint. If the GM introduces a Medusa, or a Leman Russ, or a tree, or Boccob, there are rules for that thing.

If you force the GM's plot to conform to the same rules everyone else is using, you force them to learn to make a plot that works, that has mechanical depth and can be interacted with reasonably. As opposed to Flamsterd level GM fiat of "assume he is immune to anything the PCs attempt to do". Or 5e level of "eh, pick a number".

GMs who cannot create a plot that behaves mechanically, who lack the ability to play Candyland, simply aren't capable of creating a plot worth interacting with. Making the rules primary - forcing them to learn this lesson - provides impetus for them to up their skills. Not unlike how a "git gud noob" attitude forces players to up theirs.

There are lots of different skills that one could improve. But at least with this particular skill, changing the rule set is a clear path towards encouraging that improvement.

I don't quite get this; how do hard-coded rules that disallow everything that isn't specifically mentioned in the rules turn anyone into a better GM? Someone who doesn't understand the rules for Candyland won't be able to understand the rules for an RPG either; more rules don't convey understanding, they just add to the amount that doesn't get understood. Or in other words: "you don't get the rules? Here are more rules, do you get them now?" will not work.
You often advocate that GMs shouldn't want anything and should have the lowest possible amount of interaction with the players so as not to spoil the players' fun with their own misguided attempts to participate in and enjoy the game (paraphrasing your arguments with some hyperbole here :P ); a system that forces the GM to give a hard no every time something comes up that isn't modeled in the rules has the complete opposite effect.

Also, you seem to be using the word plot very differently from how I understand it; to me, plot is the sum of events in a narrative. Mechanics can determine the outcome of an event, but they aren't what makes up the plot; the fiction layer does that. Can you define your usage of plot so I understand how mechanics create the plot in your eyes?

Telok
2021-01-07, 12:40 PM
I don't quite get this; how do hard-coded rules that disallow everything that isn't specifically mentioned in the rules turn anyone into a better GM? Someone who doesn't understand the rules for Candyland won't be able to understand the rules for an RPG either; more rules don't convey understanding, they just add to the amount that doesn't get understood

Take D&D 5e. Combat works well on the basic level as long as the DM follows as the rules, and D&D 5e has lots & lots of fiddly combat rules. But as soon as you get past combat everything gets really hand-wavy and DM-makes-it-up. People don't have much problem with the combat, other than boredom if the DM isn't fairly creative. And the combat rules always apply, it's never the case that an PC assassin makes two rolls & narratively kills a ogre chief with a poison arrow in the eye or gets imprisoned naked in a scorpion pit if they fail one of the rolls. It's also not the case that the DM just skips the rolls and narrates the combat success/fail when it's 8th level characters facing 6 goblins, but that's ok because the combat rules work ok even for below avarage DMs (well maybe some DMs do, I've never seen it happen when I played).

But there are quite a few posters who have had DMs make serious mistakes outside of the combat rules because they honestly don't know to (or forget in the heat of the moment) not use an ability roll for something, or they don't have a great grasp of probability and use a default DC 15 as their base & call for multiple checks. Having more non-combat rules & examples woudn't solve all the bad decisions, but it would help some DMs make decisions that are more in line with the D&D 5e playstyle assumptions the writers made. Having non-combat rules as robust as the combat rules would work because even a below avarage DM could turn bad decisions into not-great-but-ok results with them. And a good DM can always ignore the non-combat rules that get in the way of fun just as much as they ignore the combat rules that get in the way fun.

Quertus
2021-01-08, 05:13 PM
I don't quite get this;

Obviously. So let me try to be more clear.


how do hard-coded rules that disallow everything that isn't specifically mentioned in the rules

Huh. Well, here's the first disconnect.

So, the issue is that there are three states (a "false trinary", perhaps) being discussed. These states are:

#1 - Hard-coded box; outside the box does not exist / is not allowed. (Candyland, MtG, Battletech)

#2 - Big box; outside the box is allowed. (3e combat, 3e character creation)

#3 - Little box; outside the box is allowed (5e skills)

#4 - Spanish Inquisition special: no box.

Now, "big" and "little" are subjective as written above; however, I defined "big" as "adequate to play the game entirely within the box, without ever asking for a ruling". (I think. Darn senility)

#1 describes war games, card games, board games… but not really RPGs. Which is why I claim 4e isn't even an RPG.

So, afaict, this thread is really discussing the spectrum of games that includes #2 & #3.

And, what you are referencing here is you mistaking my description of (the effects of) #2 for #1.


turn anyone into a better GM?

The players having oversight to say, "this works this way" is what allows

A) the GM the opportunity to learn; and

B) the game to be run consistently and in accordance with expectations while the GM is learning how to play Candyland.


You often advocate that GMs shouldn't want anything and should have the lowest possible amount of interaction with the players so as not to spoil the players' fun with their own misguided attempts to participate in and enjoy the game (paraphrasing your arguments with some hyperbole here :P );

Pretend I didn't know the word "railroad" when I coined the phrase and claimed that "GMs wanting something" was the root of most RPG evil.

Of course, I still use that phrase to describe the *source* of the scourge known as railroading. :smallwink:


a system that forces the GM to give a hard no every time something comes up that isn't modeled in the rules has the complete opposite effect.

Even if that were what I was talking about, I think that this would still be wrong. No, your Rook cannot jump your Knight like in checkers… and that fact should not limit the ability to learn chess, or limit the ability of the game of chess to be coherent.


Also, you seem to be using the word plot very differently from how I understand it; to me, plot is the sum of events in a narrative. Mechanics can determine the outcome of an event, but they aren't what makes up the plot; the fiction layer does that. Can you define your usage of plot so I understand how mechanics create the plot in your eyes?

So glad you brought up my history of hatred for railroading - it means that you should have the background to understand what I'm saying. Apologies to the folks at home who lack this background, if this doesn't make as much sense.

First off, the operative phrase isn't "plot", it's "the GM's plot".

"The GM's plot" is… "the module". It's the campaign notes, including the intended outcome of certain elements. If their campaign notes say, "and then the tree runs 50' to block the door", no, that is not a valid move for a tree, even if the enemy sorceress has cast "Charm Monster" on it (which is itself *also* not a valid move).

When the rules are layed out, you can teach the GM how to play the game.

When the rules are not layed out, you are left with whatever nonsense makes sense to the GM… or whatever nonsense they choose to pull to force the encounter to stay on the rails.

Even rails as light as "but I wanted this to be a challenge".

InvisibleBison
2021-01-08, 05:48 PM
When the rules are layed out, you can teach the GM how to play the game.

Can you really, though? You seem to be assuming that the GM doesn't, or can't, know the rules before starting to play and must be taught over the course of the game by the players. But I don't think that assumption holds up. If the GM can't learn the rules before they started playing, how are the players able to know the rules before they start playing? GMs and players aren't fundamentally different creatures, after all. They're all just people. And if the players also don't know the rules, how can they teach the GM?

Telok
2021-01-08, 06:50 PM
Can you really, though? You seem to be assuming that the GM doesn't, or can't, know the rules before starting to play and must be taught over the course of the game by the players. But I don't think that assumption holds up. If the GM can't learn the rules before they started playing, how are the players able to know the rules before they start playing? GMs and players aren't fundamentally different creatures, after all. They're all just people. And if the players also don't know the rules, how can they teach the GM?

In my experience it's not uncommon for novice gms to only know parts of the rules. Especially in systems that mention critical concepts or details of common player actions once, halfway through the dmg. It also happens a lot in similar, offshoot, and different edition=new game systems.

Edit: Having thought more, some of us may be conflating "doesn't know any rules" with "doesn't know enough rules to run well" with "doesn't know some rules that come up sometimes".

Quertus
2021-01-08, 10:22 PM
Edit: Having thought more, some of us may be conflating "doesn't know any rules" with "doesn't know enough rules to run well" with "doesn't know some rules that come up sometimes".

It certainly doesn't help my clarity that I am using the same words to refer to any of the above :smallredface:


Can you really, though? You seem to be assuming that the GM doesn't, or can't, know the rules before starting to play and must be taught over the course of the game by the players. But I don't think that assumption holds up. If the GM can't learn the rules before they started playing, how are the players able to know the rules before they start playing? GMs and players aren't fundamentally different creatures, after all. They're all just people. And if the players also don't know the rules, how can they teach the GM?

If the GM doesn't knows that the Rook doesn't move like a checker, but a player does, that can be corrected, and the GM can learn.

There are usually 5+ (and, in my preferences, 10+) people sitting around the table, and, even if the GM *happens* to be the most knowledgeable of the group (a rarity, IME), that doesn't mean that they rolled well on their knowledge check for this particular rule. I still fondly remember the time that I corrected a particular GM who generally knew a particular system better than I did.

Also, I don't want to GM all the time - I want to get to play, too! If I hand 5e off to a 10-year-old, well, let's just say it won't look anything like chess, with their idea of what is "hard". Anything where the group can point to the Rules, to both lessen the amount that the GM has to learn up front, and to limit the damage that their inexperience can do to the game, is a plus.

Take that idea, and apply it to handing the reins off to any noob GM, and perhaps you'll grok the concept of the players knowing the rules, but the GM not, and the advantage of having rules in that scenario.

Morgaln
2021-01-11, 06:59 AM
Obviously. So let me try to be more clear.



Huh. Well, here's the first disconnect.

So, the issue is that there are three states (a "false trinary", perhaps) being discussed. These states are:

#1 - Hard-coded box; outside the box does not exist / is not allowed. (Candyland, MtG, Battletech)

#2 - Big box; outside the box is allowed. (3e combat, 3e character creation)

#3 - Little box; outside the box is allowed (5e skills)

#4 - Spanish Inquisition special: no box.

Now, "big" and "little" are subjective as written above; however, I defined "big" as "adequate to play the game entirely within the box, without ever asking for a ruling". (I think. Darn senility)

#1 describes war games, card games, board games… but not really RPGs. Which is why I claim 4e isn't even an RPG.

So, afaict, this thread is really discussing the spectrum of games that includes #2 & #3.

And, what you are referencing here is you mistaking my description of (the effects of) #2 for #1.


Alright, that distinction helps. I agree we should be discussing #2 and #3 and that #1 disqualifies a game for being considered a TTRPG.



The players having oversight to say, "this works this way" is what allows

A) the GM the opportunity to learn; and

B) the game to be run consistently and in accordance with expectations while the GM is learning how to play Candyland.


I'd argue that someone who can't understand Candyland isn't fit to be a GM in the first place and no amount of rules will change that. But to address your actual point, yes, a new GM will have a harder time making up rules for something that isn't predefined. It makes sense to minimize how many situations of that kind can arise during play in the first place. The solution for that doesn't have to be to create exact rules for everything in advance, however. It's probably more effective to make one very clear and simple rule that teaches you how to deal with that situation. So the solution is not more rules but broader rules.



Pretend I didn't know the word "railroad" when I coined the phrase and claimed that "GMs wanting something" was the root of most RPG evil.

Of course, I still use that phrase to describe the *source* of the scourge known as railroading. :smallwink:



Even if that were what I was talking about, I think that this would still be wrong. No, your Rook cannot jump your Knight like in checkers… and that fact should not limit the ability to learn chess, or limit the ability of the game of chess to be coherent.


Chess falls under our established #1 and doesn't count as an RPG. That doesn't change that in an RPG rules should be as consistent as in any other game, of course.



So glad you brought up my history of hatred for railroading - it means that you should have the background to understand what I'm saying. Apologies to the folks at home who lack this background, if this doesn't make as much sense.

First off, the operative phrase isn't "plot", it's "the GM's plot".

"The GM's plot" is… "the module". It's the campaign notes, including the intended outcome of certain elements. If their campaign notes say, "and then the tree runs 50' to block the door", no, that is not a valid move for a tree, even if the enemy sorceress has cast "Charm Monster" on it (which is itself *also* not a valid move).

When the rules are layed out, you can teach the GM how to play the game.

When the rules are not layed out, you are left with whatever nonsense makes sense to the GM… or whatever nonsense they choose to pull to force the encounter to stay on the rails.

Even rails as light as "but I wanted this to be a challenge".

I agree and disagree at the same time. If the rules are laid out, you can teach the GM how the mechanics works. Knowledge of the mechanics is certainly the baseline a GM needs to have. That doesn't necessarily prevent railroading, however.
What prevents railroading is the GM realizing a number of things that are divorced from mechanics:


The players are the protagonists
I consider this the most important rule I follow when GMing. Whatever happens, whatever story ideas I have, however much I love my NPCs, the story is fundamentally about what the players do. NPCs are allowed to have a story; they're allowed to do things, they can help or advise. But NPCs are not who solve problems and they don't decide where the story goes.

The GM does not provide solutions
As a GM, I throw my players into situations. I tell them what is currently going on around them; and then I pull back and let them decide how to deal with that situation. For a particular scene, I know how it starts, because that's what my job as a GM entails. But I don't know how that scene ends, because that depends on what the players do. Often, I don't even have a solution for a specific problem in mind. I'll see what the players come up with, consider what the result would be and roll with it.

No piece is irreplacable
No matter how important any NPC, villain or other part of the story is, if they get killed or removed any other way, the story still continues. This leads back to bullet point 1. It's the PC's story; if a specific villain gets killed "prematurely" (technically not possible, bullet point #2 already covers that I don't know for certain at what point the villain gets killed), then the story of that villain is over. But the villain wasn't the protagonist. The PCs are, and they are still there. As long as the PCs exist, we have a story. Just let them follow whatever plot hook they want, and if they don't like any that's already there, provide a few more. Or even better, consider what the villains death means for his underlings and/or associates and follow that direction.


I could probably come up with more guidelines, but I'd have to consider more deeply the things I do intuitively. But the point is, you can't teach this through mechanics, because none of it has to do with mechanics. It's the GM realizing that RPG is a collaborative effort, and that he is not required to control everything. A game I recently got a hold of (the Sentinels Comic RPG) calls the GM the "Game Moderator" for that very reason. They wanted to make clear that the GM is not the master of the game but just the arbiter who brings the pieces together.

Tanarii
2021-01-11, 09:13 AM
Or 5e level of "eh, pick a number"5e isn't any more "eh, pick a number" than any other system with a default TN and difficulty modifier.

I don't like that the default TN is DC 15 instead of DC 10, but that's neither here nor there,

Other rules that use a default TN with some kind with a difficulty modifier, off the top of my head:
Warhammer (FRP & 40k), Exalted, Mutant Zero / Forbidden Lands, Traveller

Rules that don't:
Palladium, pre-3e D&D, PbtA

EggKookoo
2021-01-11, 10:03 AM
Other rules that use a default TN with some kind with a difficulty modifier, off the top of my head:
Warhammer (FRP & 40k), Exalted, Mutant Zero / Forbidden Lands, Traveller

oWoD set a standard difficulty of 7 for its d10 dice pool system. The GM was allowed to modify it circumstantially as desired. In practice, when I ran my old Werewolf game, I almost never deviated from it because figuring out probability with that system was a major PITA.

The current WoD locks the difficulty at 6 for all tasks, and it's the number of "successes" (d10 results of 6 or greater) that is used as a situational modifier. It's better (at least on paper -- I haven't played it) but in the end it's still "eh, pick a number."

Pex
2021-01-11, 01:30 PM
5e isn't any more "eh, pick a number" than any other system with a default TN and difficulty modifier.

I don't like that the default TN is DC 15 instead of DC 10, but that's neither here nor there,

Other rules that use a default TN with some kind with a difficulty modifier, off the top of my head:
Warhammer (FRP & 40k), Exalted, Mutant Zero / Forbidden Lands, Traveller

Rules that don't:
Palladium, pre-3e D&D, PbtA



Upto a point. 5E does have defined DCs for many things, for everything except one particular subset of rules where it is "eh, pick a number".

Max_Killjoy
2021-01-11, 02:18 PM
oWoD set a standard difficulty of 7 for its d10 dice pool system. The GM was allowed to modify it circumstantially as desired. In practice, when I ran my old Werewolf game, I almost never deviated from it because figuring out probability with that system was a major PITA.

The current WoD locks the difficulty at 6 for all tasks, and it's the number of "successes" (d10 results of 6 or greater) that is used as a situational modifier. It's better (at least on paper -- I haven't played it) but in the end it's still "eh, pick a number."

I recall it being 6 back in the oWoD days, it may have become 7 for a while, then gone back to 6.

Will get out the books and look later.

EggKookoo
2021-01-11, 02:43 PM
I recall it being 6 back in the oWoD days, it may have become 7 for a while, then gone back to 6.

Will get out the books and look later.

It could have been, that was a long time ago. I have my W:tA book somewhere around...

But still, I think the difficulty was variable per the GM, whereas now the number of required successes is the variable. But again, I haven't played any nWoD.

Tanarii
2021-01-11, 07:56 PM
Upto a point. 5E does have defined DCs for many things, for everything except one particular subset of rules where it is "eh, pick a number".
It's TN 15 (Medium) modified for difficulty. Same as many other systems.

Quertus
2021-01-11, 11:27 PM
Alright, that distinction helps. I agree we should be discussing #2 and #3 and that #1 disqualifies a game for being considered a TTRPG.

Cool.


I'd argue that someone who can't understand Candyland isn't fit to be a GM in the first place and no amount of rules will change that. But to address your actual point, yes, a new GM will have a harder time making up rules for something that isn't predefined. It makes sense to minimize how many situations of that kind can arise during play in the first place. The solution for that doesn't have to be to create exact rules for everything in advance, however. It's probably more effective to make one very clear and simple rule that teaches you how to deal with that situation. So the solution is not more rules but broader rules.

… my concern is primarily, "can the entire game be played successfully with exactly 0 'rulings'?"; ie, is the body of rules sufficient to play the game.

Of secondary importance is, "how large is the area covered by the rules?".

Like, you could *technically* play (most of) 3e if only AC, HP, attack, and damage rules were covered, and everything else - movement, healing, spells, saving throws, DCs, CR, treasure, etc were all "eh, make something up".

Or you could replace "attack & damage" with "grapple", and still be able to play through (most of) 3e while sticking to choices entirely within the box.

In neither case would the game have much variety, though.

Whereas, if the only rules that were covered were… holding your breath, mounting and dismounting, threatened areas, and Attacks of Opportunity, and everything else were, "eh, make something up", you've still got 4 rules, but they stunt get you very far, and tend to only cover edge cases.

What's nice is when the rules a) cover everything necessary to play the game while remaining entirely "within the box"; b) allow depth of options within the box at certain key junctures. Maybe that's attack vs attack for subdual damage vs grapple vs all-out defense. Maybe that's attack vs bribe vs intimidate vs flee. Maybe that's attack vs sneak past vs go around. Maybe that's attack vs ignore vs hire someone else to deal with it. It depends on the game as to which will be more valuable to flesh out, and which can be more easily relegated to, "eh, that's outside the box thinking - make something up".


I agree and disagree at the same time. If the rules are laid out, you can teach the GM how the mechanics works. Knowledge of the mechanics is certainly the baseline a GM needs to have. That doesn't necessarily prevent railroading, however.
What prevents railroading is the GM realizing a number of things that are divorced from mechanics:


The players are the protagonists
I consider this the most important rule I follow when GMing. Whatever happens, whatever story ideas I have, however much I love my NPCs, the story is fundamentally about what the players do. NPCs are allowed to have a story; they're allowed to do things, they can help or advise. But NPCs are not who solve problems and they don't decide where the story goes.

The GM does not provide solutions
As a GM, I throw my players into situations. I tell them what is currently going on around them; and then I pull back and let them decide how to deal with that situation. For a particular scene, I know how it starts, because that's what my job as a GM entails. But I don't know how that scene ends, because that depends on what the players do. Often, I don't even have a solution for a specific problem in mind. I'll see what the players come up with, consider what the result would be and roll with it.

No piece is irreplacable
No matter how important any NPC, villain or other part of the story is, if they get killed or removed any other way, the story still continues. This leads back to bullet point 1. It's the PC's story; if a specific villain gets killed "prematurely" (technically not possible, bullet point #2 already covers that I don't know for certain at what point the villain gets killed), then the story of that villain is over. But the villain wasn't the protagonist. The PCs are, and they are still there. As long as the PCs exist, we have a story. Just let them follow whatever plot hook they want, and if they don't like any that's already there, provide a few more. Or even better, consider what the villains death means for his underlings and/or associates and follow that direction.


I could probably come up with more guidelines, but I'd have to consider more deeply the things I do intuitively. But the point is, you can't teach this through mechanics, because none of it has to do with mechanics. It's the GM realizing that RPG is a collaborative effort, and that he is not required to control everything. A game I recently got a hold of (the Sentinels Comic RPG) calls the GM the "Game Moderator" for that very reason. They wanted to make clear that the GM is not the master of the game but just the arbiter who brings the pieces together.

Sure. Less "teaches them to be a good GM", more "forces them to see some of the ways that they are a bad GM / need to up their game". It facilitates the conversation wherein you attempt to teach those lessons that you listed above (or others like them, at least - I doubt, for example, that I've ever used that specific list).

But having clear rules lets the game run smoothly *despite* their failings in those regards. And, more to my original point, teaches them that "and then the 0-level goblin kills 20 ancient dragons" or "and then the tree moves to block the door, because the Sorceress Charmed it" does not match the fiction.


It could have been, that was a long time ago. I have my W:tA book somewhere around...

But still, I think the difficulty was variable per the GM, whereas now the number of required successes is the variable. But again, I haven't played any nWoD.

IME, WoD (oWoD) had both DC and number of successes required be variable - leading to me really not wanting to roll in that system¹, because in *most* places, it was very poorly defined how those should be set.

¹ until the GM started giving free XP for any skill used, or something like that. Then I could pretend that it was worthwhile to pick up the (very traitorous²) dice.
² one of my charters technically died in their awakening, where they triple-botched a "stay alive" roll. And it didn't get much better from there³.
³ Except for the time that the GM called "diff 10", and I responded with "<roll> <roll> <roll> (hooray for exploding 10's)… 5 successes."

EggKookoo
2021-01-12, 08:11 AM
IME, WoD (oWoD) had both DC and number of successes required be variable - leading to me really not wanting to roll in that system¹, because in *most* places, it was very poorly defined how those should be set.

Looking back at it, the GM was also meant to add or remove dice from the player's pool to account for various situational modifiers. WoD had a lot of levers but it was never clear what they actually did.

Max_Killjoy
2021-01-12, 08:15 AM
I never changed number of dice, I only played with the difficulty sometimes. Some rules required additional successes to do certain things.