Do Mechanics Actually Matter for a Role-Playing Game?

[Easy e]

I know on this board we tend to lean toward wonkishness on game design and mechanics, but on the larger scale do they actually matter?

Now, before you go grab your pitch fork and torches, hear me out a bit.

All of the RPGs we play are using a process to generate an Outcome that we translate into a Result. Essentially there are the Inputs, the Process, and the Output the process generates. The Output is then applied to get the Results for the players.

As long as the Process gets the appropriate Result, does the actual mechanics of the process matter? Does it matter is you roll dice, flip cards, push Jenga blocks, flip a coin, consult a chart, use an equation, etc?

The key component for game purposes and for the player is the Result. Therefore, does the actual mechanic you use to generate that result matter? Does the mechanics chosen help a game meet its Design Goals? What other purposes can/do mechanics serve than getting a result for the game?

In short, do mechanics actually matter?

I look forward to a lot of interesting replies.

[MonochromeTiger]

Yes, but not always in obvious ways. Games with a clear mechanic for interacting with different aspects of the setting not only give a clearer measurement of success in those interactions that a GM/DM can then alter as they see fit but openly tell the players that those interactions are possible in the first place. Some players don't really engage unless they have that reassurance that they can and do actually base some of their character's personality around how skilled they are in those forms of interaction, for instance the many interpretations of low or high Charisma and skill points or proficiency in things like Diplomacy.

On the other hand there are rules light systems with very minimal detail on things like that, Dungeon World for example, where instead of mechanics saying how everything works your interactions boil down to "say what you do or how this works and if you pass it's true." In a way that's still relying on a game mechanic to say things work that way but even that difference between rules heavy and rules light can have a major impact on how players see and interact with the setting and the overall tone of the game. In my experience most games take a turn toward humor at some point even if it's usually very temporary, rules light systems where the mechanics are as simplistic and vague as possible usually replace those temporary turns with an immediate irreversible nosedive. The GM may have some grand story in mind but the mechanics of the game are absolutely not meant for that, they're there for quick silly games fueled mostly by "yes and" improv and trying to work against that is futile unless absolutely everyone is invested in the attempt because the mechanics make it so anyone going off on a tangent can have a permanent and official effect on the setting where a rules heavy system would go "no, that's silly and not how this works."

[InvisibleBison]

Game mechanics matter because they determine (or at least significantly influence) the experience of playing a roleplaying game. Playing through a given scenario in different games will feel different, even if you adopt the same approach and achieve the same results, because of the different mechanics.

[NichG]

The result isn't the important thing though. The important thing is the experience of figuring out how to achieve a desired result. What mechanics do is to provide a space that each person at the table can internally navigate (as opposed to needing to externally - e.g. through back and forth discussion - navigate), in order to try to figure out how things will go, how to achieve what they want, even to understand the world as presented.

I view written down mechanics as ways to promise things, so that players have the ability to act as if those things will be true, which is especially important if those things go against the player's own intuition about how things work. If you tell someone 'your character cannot die unless you raise the death flag' then that changes the situation from 'staying and fighting this hopeless battle is obviously dumb and pointless' to 'staying and fighting this hopeless battle may not give me a chance to win, but it won't be the end either - maybe I'll learn something, my character could be captured, who knows, but my character won't die'. Saying 'someone who studies the sword for 50 years can cut memories without injuring flesh' establishes something which it would be very unlikely that the players would just guess to be the case. Now if there's a mystery where a bunch of people have oddly spotty memory and there's an ancient swordmaster in town, well, its possible to connect those things together where if you just weren't told anything in advance you couldn't.

This is all about how you experience thinking through the world, rather than being about being told in the end 'you didn't die' or 'you figure out that the swordmaster did it'. Its part of what actually creates the feel of play.

[Satinavian]

I know on this board we tend to lean toward wonkishness on game design and mechanics, but on the larger scale do they actually matter?

Now, before you go grab your pitch fork and torches, hear me out a bit.

All of the RPGs we play are using a process to generate an Outcome that we translate into a Result. Essentially there are the Inputs, the Process, and the Output the process generates. The Output is then applied to get the Results for the players.

As long as the Process gets the appropriate Result, does the actual mechanics of the process matter? Does it matter is you roll dice, flip cards, push Jenga blocks, flip a coin, consult a chart, use an equation, etc?

The key component for game purposes and for the player is the Result. Therefore, does the actual mechanic you use to generate that result matter? Does the mechanics chosen help a game meet its Design Goals? What other purposes can/do mechanics serve than getting a result for the game?

In short, do mechanics actually matter?

I look forward to a lot of interesting replies.
Taking your own abstraction of Input-Process-Output-Result, what is the system here ? You write as if the system was only the process, the dice roll or whatever. But many ystem actually also cover how the output is translated into a result. And thus they very much give differents results based on that alone, which makes them very much matter.

But even if we were to ignore that, the process alone has influence on the output. That is pretty obvious. And as RPGs tend to include a lot of decision making, the possibilities for various outputs(and corresponding results) also feed back into inputs. Players won't do certain things when they know those likely won't work or are even impossible.

So yes, system matters a lot. Or are you comparing systems that give the same results for the same inputs ? In those cases it wouldn't matter which you use, but i don't know of any two systems where this is the case.

[Unoriginal]

I know on this board we tend to lean toward wonkishness on game design and mechanics, but on the larger scale do they actually matter?

Now, before you go grab your pitch fork and torches, hear me out a bit.

All of the RPGs we play are using a process to generate an Outcome that we translate into a Result. Essentially there are the Inputs, the Process, and the Output the process generates. The Output is then applied to get the Results for the players.

As long as the Process gets the appropriate Result, does the actual mechanics of the process matter? Does it matter is you roll dice, flip cards, push Jenga blocks, flip a coin, consult a chart, use an equation, etc?

The key component for game purposes and for the player is the Result. Therefore, does the actual mechanic you use to generate that result matter? Does the mechanics chosen help a game meet its Design Goals? What other purposes can/do mechanics serve than getting a result for the game?

In short, do mechanics actually matter?

I look forward to a lot of interesting replies.

Mechanics matter, because mechanics should reinforce the game's feels and themes.

Imagine a game that is about He-Man-style heroes battling hordes of monsters, powerful villains, and all the traps and hazards the world throw at them. But the main resolution mechanic is the player doing an action has to play the War card game against the GM, and if they win the action resolves in their favor.

There is a big disconnect between the feels and rhythm of what the game says it is about, ad the feels and rhythm of the resolution mechanic.

Alternatively, image a TTRPG like Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, where the world is supposed to be dark and highly lethal, but the resolution mechanic is "flip a coin, if you call right you succeed what you wanted to do", nothing further. Meaning a farmer with a pig stick has 50/50 chances of killing a Daemon Prince, which is the same chances that the greatest elven archmage has to succeed at casting their less impressive spell.

So yeah, mechanics matter, and they should fit the tone, rhythm, feel, themes, etc of the game and its lore.

[kyoryu]

Yes.

However, I tend to think that, for the most part, dice rolling mechanisms matter the least. What's generally more important are things like procedures, and other things that directly roll into what decisions a player makes.

Game mechanics can add things for players to make decisions about, emphasize or de-emphasize factors in decision-making, etc.

As a simple example, crossbows in D&D do laughable damage by themselves (especially with NPCs). So if you're a fighter with tons of hit points, and you need to get down a hallway, a crossbowman pointing his crossbow down the hallway is completely irrelevant.

In a system with a more realistic damage model where a crossbow will have realistic effects (or can), in that same situation charging becomes an extremely high risk maneuver - so, instead, you have to figure out a back way around the hallway, or a way to advance under cover.

The dice used to roll to figure out if he hits you? That's a lot less relevant than all of the other factors going into that decision.

[Grod_The_Giant]

However, I tend to think that, for the most part, dice rolling mechanisms matter the least. What's generally more important are things like procedures, and other things that directly roll into what decisions a player makes.
Agreed. The mechanics that are important are the ones that feed into the Input--adding new buttons to press, making some levers harder to pull than others, giving you a stick to flip switches that would normally be out of reach, that sort of thing.

[Errorname]

As long as the Process gets the appropriate Result, does the actual mechanics of the process matter? Does it matter is you roll dice, flip cards, push Jenga blocks, flip a coin, consult a chart, use an equation, etc?

The key component for game purposes and for the player is the Result. Therefore, does the actual mechanic you use to generate that result matter? Does the mechanics chosen help a game meet its Design Goals? What other purposes can/do mechanics serve than getting a result for the game?

I would reject any philosophy of design that understands process and result as extricable from each other

[Ignimortis]

I know on this board we tend to lean toward wonkishness on game design and mechanics, but on the larger scale do they actually matter?

Now, before you go grab your pitch fork and torches, hear me out a bit.

All of the RPGs we play are using a process to generate an Outcome that we translate into a Result. Essentially there are the Inputs, the Process, and the Output the process generates. The Output is then applied to get the Results for the players.

As long as the Process gets the appropriate Result, does the actual mechanics of the process matter? Does it matter is you roll dice, flip cards, push Jenga blocks, flip a coin, consult a chart, use an equation, etc?

The key component for game purposes and for the player is the Result. Therefore, does the actual mechanic you use to generate that result matter? Does the mechanics chosen help a game meet its Design Goals? What other purposes can/do mechanics serve than getting a result for the game?

In short, do mechanics actually matter?

I look forward to a lot of interesting replies.

Oh man, that presses a button.

Short reply: Yes. Yes they do.

Longer reply: Yes, they do, because the Process is the game, not the Result. If the Result mattered that much, and the Process did not, we could sit around a table and tell each other we won yet again and somehow draw enjoyment from that. In fact, the games small children get up to, with only their imagination being the limit, come close to this, with the common "I won, because my super laser beam is better than your mirror armor!" - "Nuh-uh, it's super-duper armor!" - "Well then it's a mega-giga-super laser beam!" argument.

Instead, we play games to have that uncertainty, but also rules that stop us from going "I win" at any moment. And mechanics are both the Inputs (because different games have different ways to affect situations) and the Process (in how those mechanics are resolved, not only in the sheer dice roll/card draw/coin flip, but in how resolution interacts with various Inputs and other methods of resolution). And the Result, if you employ such mechanics, tends to depend on both the Inputs and the Process, lending it more inherent validity than "yeah that works" in a Mother-May-I game.

So yes, I'd say mechanics matter. A lot.

[Vahnavoi]

As long as the Process gets the appropriate Result, does the actual mechanics of the process matter? Does it matter is you roll dice, flip cards, push Jenga blocks, flip a coin, consult a chart, use an equation, etc?

You're loading the question. When you name two different process as both getting an appropriate result, what do you mean? Do you mean they are capable of reaching the same output from the same set of inputs? Because even if they are equal in that way, one process can take less real time to get there than the other, be harder to understand, take more space to express etc.. And even if you can find some processes that are equal in every way, this rather obviously doesn't apply to all possible process. It is always possible to construct a process that, for the same inputs, does something else.


The key component for game purposes and for the player is the Result. Therefore, does the actual mechanic you use to generate that result matter? Does the mechanics chosen help a game meet its Design Goals? What other purposes can/do mechanics serve than getting a result for the game?

Different mechanics can, and do, have different limits for results they can generate. This is, in fact, what games do to separate themselves both from each other and real life. Different mechanics have different value for different design goals, which is what creates incentive to make more than one game. Asking "what other purposes" is dull, because game design goals aren't limited to just deciding a game state, they cover various broad motivations such as education. A different mechanic can be chosen simply because it teaches the player something different.

Understanding the above doesn't ever require considering mainstream tabletop roleplaying games. It can be in fact be more easily understood by watching children's games played in preschool to teach them elementary skills.

[Witty Username]

As long as the Process gets the appropriate Result, does the actual mechanics of the process matter? Does it matter is you roll dice, flip cards, push Jenga blocks, flip a coin, consult a chart, use an equation, etc?

I see some Free Kriegsspiel in this thinking.

I would say it depends on your target audience for your RPG, and what you expect what you need to model.

If your a seasoned military officer running a tactical war game for academy students, maybe you don't need rules at all, lived experience gets you most of the way.

Mechanics help boil down a complex problem, and make it more gameable the less of a knowledge pool the playerbase has on the subject.

Mechanics can also steer towards actions in more narrative games. Gaining XP for dramatic action doesn't make a great deal of sense but makes players less risk adverse for the high stakes heist games.

In short, it is less the mechanics and more what are they doing for the game. They are tools the game can use as needed.

[Pauly]

One of the factors is that mechanics, aka the level of crunch, reinforce what the designer wants the players to focus on.

If a game has highly detailed social
Rules but highly abstracted and simplifies combat mechanics then the mechanics are highlighting to the player that this game is supposed to be more about social than combat.

Mechanics also matter for ease of play. Well designed mechanics are easy to use and help the game flow. Poorly designed mechanics can do the opposite even if both mechanics lead to the same outcome.

Another consideration is whether the mechanics deliver the designed intention. I'll use a wargaming example. In DBM when you crunched the maths it was better for the Romans when fighting the Gauls to send their legionaries into the forest and the auxiliaries into the open fields. The game which was supposed to be about re-creating ancient battles rewarded players for doing the opposite of history.

[rel]

Even setting aside the wargaming roots of ttrpg's (which live and die by their mechanics), the other two big influences are improv acting and cooperative storytelling.
Both of these activities require ground rules (mechanics) to function.

Just as all the precursor activities need underpinning mechanics, so do ttrpg's.
Even if you are just sitting around a table playing roles and talking in funny voices, you still need a set of ground rules to constrain the activity.
These are mechanics, and they do matter.

[KorvinStarmast]

I know on this board we tend to lean toward wonkishness on game design and mechanics, but on the larger scale do they actually matter? Yes. There was an ongoing dialogue some years ago (IIRC, Forge?) about "system matters" that had a lot of merit.


All of the RPGs we play are using a process to generate an Outcome that we translate into a Result.
Essentially there are the Inputs, the Process, and the Output the process generates.
The Output is then applied to get the Results for the players. For a TTRPG, rather than a video game or a CRPG, the entire process can best be described as having a conversation. How that conversation is structured provides a particular feel and a particular effectiveness.

As long as the Process gets the appropriate Result, does the actual mechanics of the process matter? Does it matter is you roll dice, flip cards, push Jenga blocks, flip a coin, consult a chart, use an equation, etc?
Yes, for the simple reason for ease of play or "feel" of play.

The key component for game purposes and for the player is the Result.
That is overly reductionist.

Both of these activities require ground rules (mechanics) to function.

Just as all the precursor activities need underpinning mechanics, so do ttrpg's.
Even if you are just sitting around a table playing roles and talking in funny voices, you still need a set of ground rules to constrain the activity.
These are mechanics, and they do matter.Far better said than I was going to, so thank you. :smallsmile:

[OldTrees1]

As long as the Process gets the appropriate Result, does the actual mechanics of the process matter? Does it matter is you roll dice, flip cards, push Jenga blocks, flip a coin, consult a chart, use an equation, etc?

Yes the process mechanics (just like the resource mechanics) matter.

Dice vs cards: With cards your fate is already sealed despite being "unknown" to you. With dice you are introducing randomness to make the outcome undetermined and known.

Dice vs coin: How granular do you want to feel your skills? When an action uses a coin flip you know your character was not, a might never be skilled at that task. However the areas you are skilled in (aka those that did not provoke a coin flip) have 100% success/mastery. Dice, on the other hand, provide granularity between those, Thus you could be skilled and still fail.

Jenga: Dread's use of Jenga creates suspension and fear that complements the horror story. You know failure is inevitable and growing in probability. Even the collapse itself will either jump scare you or be seen in terrifying slow motion with you powerless to stop it.

The mechanics you use matter. You can use different mechanics, but the choice is a choice about how the game will feel to play.

[Vahnavoi]

Yes. There was an ongoing dialogue some years ago (IIRC, Forge?) about "system matters" that had a lot of merit.

Well, yes and no. Some Forge designers adopted the slogan, "System matters!", to push their ideas of how games work. The problem was (and is) that Forge theory (GNS, short for Gamism-Narrativism-Simulationism) isn't very good. So lot of the specific ideas Forge had for how and why system matters were (and are) dubious.

But, fortunately, one does not need idiosyncratic tabletop roleplayer theories to observe that system matters. The hard part is explaining how and why system matters, as that may require far more grounding in sciences than the average hobbyist has. Even professionals are often operating on trial-and-error.

[Kurald Galain]

I know on this board we tend to lean toward wonkishness on game design and mechanics, but on the larger scale do they actually matter?

Yes.

For example, if a party in D&D engages in combat, it is very likely that they win decisively, easily heal up again, and gain loot and XP.
If a party in Call of Chtulhu engages in combat, it is very likely that they suffer grievous and long-time injuries, lose sanity, and/or die messily.

Wanna bet that this influences the decision on whether or not to attack something? :smallamused:

[Easy e]

Thanks all, I was leaning the same way as you lot that it does matter.

However, I was listening to an interesting video about Wargame design that had the opposite contention. That your resolution method really wasn't that important.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfAsLn9d76A&t=88s

Considering Mike Hutchinson had written the very popular Gaslands rules, A Billion Suns, and a few other published works it made me think a bit more about the issue.

It maybe more of a Wargame Design thing than a RPG thing, because the action in a Wargaming space often is much more abstracted than when I have played RPGs.

[Zuras]

Of course mechanics matter. Any argument that they don’t is just changing the definition of what mechanics are to hide them behind the veil of “GM stuff”.

Even seemingly simple stuff like Shadowdark’s always-on initiative can significantly impact the way the game plays out. I honestly thought it was a minor rule till we played a session without it and the more exuberant players dominated discussions to an uncomfortable degree.

It’s an open question whether *fundamental* mechanics matter so much it’s worth switching systems to use a new mechanic, versus adjusting the mechanics of an existing system you’re familiar with. I’d be interested in how different The One Ring feels in 5e versus Year Zero, for example.

Even if you had a GM capable of making any system feel a given way or emulate a given genre, the amount of mental strain or additional preparation to do those conversions is not going to be equal.

[OldTrees1]

Thanks all, I was leaning the same way as you lot that it does matter.

However, I was listening to an interesting video about Wargame design that had the opposite contention. That your resolution method really wasn't that important.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfAsLn9d76A&t=88s

Considering Mike Hutchinson had written the very popular Gaslands rules, A Billion Suns, and a few other published works it made me think a bit more about the issue.

It maybe more of a Wargame Design thing than a RPG thing, because the action in a Wargaming space often is much more abstracted than when I have played RPGs.

Mike was saying the words "the dice system / the resolution system doesn't matter" but then they talked about finding the one that gelled with the other parts of the system. Later they gave the example of antiaircraft resolution and found a dice pool felt better for representing the ships rather than a d100 roll.

Glenn did put it a bit better as "It doesn't matter apart from when it really matters". This is true, and Dread is a great extreme example, but why it is true is a bit harder to clarify.

All mechanics have inherent gameplay feel / thematic /flavor consequences. However just because there is a difference, does not mean it is a difference that the specific players will have preferences about. There is a flavor difference between "I roll a die for each of my antiaircraft guns" vs "I roll a die for each of the planes I am targeting" however I have no preference between them, they both sound fun. On the other hand a dice pool does feel more fun for resolving this interaction than using a simple d100 unless the number of dice would grow too large (21+ dice).

[JellyPooga]

The mechanics of a game very much dictate the tone and style of play. From D&D tactical battle simulator, with lots of fun buttons to push and levers to pull, to Wushu's narrative storytelling system where what you say happens, with bonuses to resolution for descriptive actions, every game will guide its players down a particular play style with its use of mechanics. No amount of telling players that the game is a deadly, gritty, horror based investigation will stick if the mechanics are all focused on tactical combat with big flashy special powers. Imagine if the film John Wick was instead a My Little Pony style animated short; it might be entertaining, but it certainly wouldn't be the film we know; the medium being used to tell the story is just as important, if not more so, than the characters, locations and even the plot itself. Plenty of films and novels have been sold on a style or theme (look at Underworld or The Matrix) and it applies to RPGS too. Aces & Eights focuses on mechanics that evoke its Old West setting. Cyberpunk 2020 is a famously clunky system that is nonetheless popular because it's all about the "Cool Factor". FATE invites high player agency in a fast-paced, narrative focused environment, which is in almost stark contrast to GURPS, in which there's a rule for just about everything, which encourages a more GM-led, rules-focused style of play.

Mechanics are far more than just the Random Number Generator, too. Every detail matters, from what resources are available to the players to use (whether they be Fate points, character build points, Hit Points...the list goes on), to how the aspects on their character sheet interact with the game world. A game that has a Sanity stat, for example, is probably going to be dealing with themes that involve horror or mental trauma in some manner. A game that has few numerical statistics is likely to have a more narrative focus than one that has many. Some games don't use an RNG at all!

[kyoryu]

Agreed. The mechanics that are important are the ones that feed into the Input--adding new buttons to press, making some levers harder to pull than others, giving you a stick to flip switches that would normally be out of reach, that sort of thing.

Not just that, but also what the possibility space of those buttons is.

Let's take two possible games, and I'm going to a similar example here. They're both basically modern-ish military RPGs. In one, you have D&D-like hit points, and you can reliably survive multiple shots. In the other, you have D&D-like hit points so long as you're in cover (the HP in that case represents things more like stamina, fear, minor cuts and bruises, and trace hits). If you're not in cover, any successful hit goes directly to a small "wound" pool, making it likely to be incapacitated, have a wound that lowers your effectiveness, or outright kill you.

You can change nothing else about the games, give both games the same moves, and I can pretty much guarantee a typical battle will play out very differently in both systems.

[gbaji]

Yeah. Put me down on the "it matters" side of the issue as well. I'd even go futher and argue that how the game elements are constructed matters as well. How we describe and abstract the things we are trying to simulate (stats, hps, ac/ap, and a wild variety of effects, and how we count/calculate those) all affect how a game plays. Then we add in the mechanics which is about how we take those game objects and apply effects to them. Both are important, and make up the "skeleton" of a game system.

As some have observed, even minor seeming changes in mechanics can have signifciant effects on how the game is played. It's not just what physical mechanism we use to resolve unknowns (though there is certainly a lot of time spent on that part of things). It's also how things interact. We could take a basic arm wrestling contest, and ask "how do we decide who wins?". To do that, we need to have both the objects we are using (perhaps a strength stat for each party, but could be something else)), and a resolution method ("high str wins", or "compare strengths and generate odds of success", or "<something else>"). Then you apply some additional mechanic to generate the actual resolution based on that. If there is any "unknown" the system has to have a way to do that. Which is where dice rolls, con flips, card draws, jenga blocks, who can tell the best joke, etc... come in.

IMO, every layer of that process can make a huge difference in how a game plays and "feels". And absolutely, a good portion of that feel is going to be how smooth or rough things work, how crunchy or soft, etc. I don't know if there's any specific "best way" to do any of this (though I always have an opinion about "poor ways" to do things, but that's just me :smallcool:). But (also IMO), the method needs to match with the feel/theme of the game you are trying to run. And there's a whole lot of variety there.

[Unoriginal]

Thanks all, I was leaning the same way as you lot that it does matter.

However, I was listening to an interesting video about Wargame design that had the opposite contention. That your resolution method really wasn't that important.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfAsLn9d76A&t=88s

Considering Mike Hutchinson had written the very popular Gaslands rules, A Billion Suns, and a few other published works it made me think a bit more about the issue.

It maybe more of a Wargame Design thing than a RPG thing, because the action in a Wargaming space often is much more abstracted than when I have played RPGs.

If systems didn't matter, then Hutchinson wouldn't have written rules for Gaslands or any other works.

I'm sure he would be surprised to be invited at a Gaslands-playing event, but the person in charge decided that for this event the resolution mechanic would be "two people play Street Fighter 6, the one who wins decides the result".

[Vahnavoi]

@Easy E: I listened to the video, they pretty clearly don't come to the conclusion that system doesn't matter. Instead, when they talk about a resolution method "not mattering", they are largely talking about two things:

1) two methods being mathematically isomorphic - for example, two different dice rolling methods both being able to produce the same set of probabilities.

2) a game designer having several options for a resolution mechanic that all serve their needs equally well - in that case, it doesn't matter which one of the limited subset you pick.

They then spend a lot of time identifying aesthetic reasons beyond the math to explain why one pick would be preferable to another.

A simple example would be: you want a character to have a 1 in 4 chance in doing something. You can give the player a d4 and ask them to roll a 1. You can give them a d8 and ask them to roll a 7 or 8. You can give them a d12 and ask them to roll 3, 6, 9 or 12. Mathematically it makes no difference. Just pick a method. But maybe a d12 feels nicer in your hand or is easier for you to read than a d4 or d8. Those would be reasons to pick a d12 over the others despite not having anything to do with game state.

[Luccan]

I think your question is kind of answered in your own post. The form of the mechanics barely matter, but the output is exceptionally important because it informs our result. If you want to run a D&D game that feels like "anyone can die at any time" you'll find that easier with older editions of D&D or OSR material than 5e, 4e, or even decently optimized 3e because the output of the mechanics were significantly more lethal. But if you play an early enough version of D&D to do that, there are rules for playing without dice. The form (funky dice or paper chits in a cup) doesn't matter, but the output impacts expectations and tone.

[Quertus]

Shortest answer: yes, they matter.

Longer answer:


The key component for game purposes and for the player is the Result.

I reject your premise.

Felicitas in eternes est. Pardon my bad Latin (you’ve all seen Harry Potter, you’re all used to bad Latin, right?)

In the end, mortal races die. Does it matter what happens in between?

In Marvel faserip, you can have a character with, say, Excellent Reason, boosted by a power to Monstrous, rolling their Medicine skill at Unearthly ability on a cool color table. Comparing that to a Typical “average Joe”, and converting to a d20 system (AFB, but my maths probably right), you’d have a 14 Int, a +8 stat booster, and 1 skill rank in Heal. Both should give you a 45% better chance than an average, unskilled individual, and improve those odds for the same reasons. But (aside from the epic item), I doubt anyone here will find the d20 example as impressive as the Marvel faserip felt at the time.

Even things which are 100% mechanically equivalent can produce a different play experience, which is… more important than the result? Which is… part of the result? As a certain me used to say, “the ends may justify the means, but, if so, it’s only because the means are part of the ends.” Or, rather, only if you consider the means as part of the ends. So the result is “the same” only if the path to that result is the same.

Put another way, what if you had to kill something and read its entrails as your resolution method? Or what if, per… Amber(?), your resolution method was to create a whole new reality and observe the results? I’d like to believe that there’s a palpable difference in the play experience here, and that that may matter more than knowing if little Timmy’s rusty knife pierced the hide of the dead horse I’m likely beating at this point.

And that’s just for systems that are actually mechanically equivalent; don’t get me started on jenga towers. And never mind that most sets of mechanics make very different promises to the players, and two sets of mechanics where literally the only difference is that the player doesn’t know what the underlying mechanics are will produce very different results.

So, again, in short, yes, the mechanics matter, and in so many different ways beyond just “result”.

[Vogie]

I actually find that the result is the least important aspect of the game mechanics. Getting a good result is easy - as simple as a coin flip or as obtuse as bribing the game master. Any option can be used to get a result - your mechanics are there to give the players the proper feel of what they are doing.

The Jenga tower in Dread uses the visceral stress of the suspenseful fall of the tower to mechanically cause stress in the players. The moving of dice from the players to the storyteller in Ten Candles mechanically shows the luck running out for the doomed player characters. Roll-over systems are great for giving the feeling of overcoming difficulties set outside your control. Roll-under systems are great for the feeling of using your own skills and really feeling each tiny advancement. Contested Rolls mechanically show the conflict as a part of the resolution mechanic. Auctions and other bidding mechanics are an excellent way of providing both attrition and mystery

Single dice or d100 systems give a nice linear scales of results, with d100s giving the % chance of success right there on the tin. Paired dice create a bell curve of success. Dice Pools give a large variety of variables that a designer can twiddle with - the number of dice, the size of the dice, the number of successes required, which numbers are successes, which are fails, what designates a critical, what dice are added or subtracted. Decks of cards allow random results that have memories, and a giant collection of resolution mechanics devised by card and tabletop game makers over hundreds of years - number of cards to begin with, number of cards drawn or otherwise distributed, what cards matter, and potentially the additional variables of faceup/facedown.

The resolution system you choose can reflect on the game you're playing. How the percentages impact the gameplay. If you have a bunch of conflicts in your game against equals, contested rolls are excellent for that... but if it's a Western game, perhaps playing Poker gives a better feel. If you're in a wargame where there are a handful of units attacking each time, a dice pool makes sense to mechanically represent that group effort rather than abstracting it all into a single roll and modifier. If you're playing a game where there are markets or bartering, you aren't required to use auction mechanics, but it would makes sense to.

I recently was in a subreddit where someone was desperately looking for a mechanic for their game that is based on the S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
video game franchise, where a normal gameplay loop is trying to get through reality warping distortion and pinpoint an artifact. It's not really a skill in the game sense, but rather a little puzzle that is tied to those artifacts. In the game, you see those distortions and can toss bolt in various directions until you figure out where the artifact is hiding. While there are many ways you can resolve "find the thing", I suggested playing Mastermind - the code-breaking board game that gives the feel of figuring out a puzzle one bit at a time, narrowing onto the target over the course of a couple turns. You could probably do something similar to that with card or dice mechanics, too, but the mechanics for an existing game doing the same thing are right there.

[Kane0]

All of the RPGs we play are using a process to generate an Outcome that we translate into a Result. Essentially there are the Inputs, the Process, and the Output the process generates. The Output is then applied to get the Results for the players.

As long as the Process gets the appropriate Result, does the actual mechanics of the process matter?


Yes it does, because at the tabletop the process is carried out by one or more people, and different processes influence the results (both in what is possible and what is likely).

Then theres less tangible but still valid gamefeel aspects.

Dice pools, standard deck of cards, algorithm, counters, dice bellcurve, etc etc are all dfferent tools in the toolbox for a designer to use and each have their strengths and weaknesses. Those differences do matter.

[JellyPooga]

I suggested playing Mastermind - the code-breaking board gameOoh...I like that! I hadn't thought of using it as a resolution mechanic in an RPG, but I can definitely see it for investigations, social deductions and other long-form scenarios. Time limit and difficulty can be set by number of "guesses" allowed, number of pegs in the row and number of colours, so there's a ton of variables to play with. Colours could even be tied to characteristics or themes. I like it.

[Kardwill]

Ooh...I like that! I hadn't thought of using it as a resolution mechanic in an RPG, but I can definitely see it for investigations, social deductions and other long-form scenarios. Time limit and difficulty can be set by number of "guesses" allowed, number of pegs in the row and number of colours, so there's a ton of variables to play with. Colours could even be tied to characteristics or themes. I like it.

Mastermind is used (with a variety of other puzzles) in the Mansions of Madness boardgame to simulate the "unravel an enigma" parts, with the adjustments you suggested (each action spent gives you 1 attempt per point in your puzzle-solving skill, and harder challenge = more colors/funky eldritch symbols and more "pegs").
Find the combination of the safe? Solve a mastermind.
Examine the photograph in search of a clue? Solve a jigsaw puzzle.
etc...

It... kinda works? But mostly because that game has a hard turn limit, and losing actions is bad, so the need to quickly solve the problem gives it tension.

[Zalam]

I know on this board we tend to lean toward wonkishness on game design and mechanics, but on the larger scale do they actually matter?

Now, before you go grab your pitch fork and torches, hear me out a bit.

All of the RPGs we play are using a process to generate an Outcome that we translate into a Result. Essentially there are the Inputs, the Process, and the Output the process generates. The Output is then applied to get the Results for the players.

As long as the Process gets the appropriate Result, does the actual mechanics of the process matter? Does it matter is you roll dice, flip cards, push Jenga blocks, flip a coin, consult a chart, use an equation, etc?

The key component for game purposes and for the player is the Result. Therefore, does the actual mechanic you use to generate that result matter? Does the mechanics chosen help a game meet its Design Goals? What other purposes can/do mechanics serve than getting a result for the game?

In short, do mechanics actually matter?

I look forward to a lot of interesting replies.


I'm going to channel Greyview and say that no, none of this matters. When the final noogie falls, all other actions save getting treats matter not.

[Unoriginal]

I'm reminded of how the Like a Dragon video game franchise pivoted from 3d-beat-them-up-style fights into sorta-turn-based-CRPG-style fights.

YMMV, but personally I think the later style doesn't fit the "pulpy, hammy crime drama with over-the-top action scenes" genre of the franchise.

Would have been different if the games with the new mechanics had a different genre, but it isn't the case. It's the same kind of stories people are accustomed to... and then the combat starts and you're in a whole different system.

I know the turn-based-CRPG is justified as "the protagonist is obsessed with Dragon Quest, so this is how he perceives the fights", and it is funny when the protagonist of the pre-system change shows up and his special power is "ignore the turn-based CRPG stuff, you fight like in your own games", but still... to give a comparison, it'd be like a GM ran a campaign using the Powered By The Apocalypse system, in the same setting as a previous PbtA campaign ... except this time fights are run using GURPS.

[Vogie]

Mastermind is used (with a variety of other puzzles) in the Mansions of Madness boardgame to simulate the "unravel an enigma" parts, with the adjustments you suggested (each action spent gives you 1 attempt per point in your puzzle-solving skill, and harder challenge = more colors/funky eldritch symbols and more "pegs").
Find the combination of the safe? Solve a mastermind.
Examine the photograph in search of a clue? Solve a jigsaw puzzle.
etc...

It... kinda works? But mostly because that game has a hard turn limit, and losing actions is bad, so the need to quickly solve the problem gives it tension.

You know, we play Mansions of Madness all the time but I never made that connection. Interesting.

Also shout out to MoM on having what I think is one of the most interesting executions of a vitality/wound system I've ever seen. For those that haven't had the pleasure, damage is represented by cards that are dealt out that can be either face up or face down, with face down ones being able to be healed, and some effects turning face-down damage face-up. Some card faces have card values like "Shock - turn this face down" while others might be "Broken Leg, reduce your speed by 2, keep this face up". Then they have a sanity meter that acts in the same way. Utterly brilliant.

[Quertus]

I'm going to channel Greyview and say that no, none of this matters. When the final noogie falls, all other actions save getting treats matter not.

So, mechanics that involve getting treats are clearly different from other mechanics then, no? Enemy minis are treats; eat them when you defeat them. Resolve random outcomes by eating a treat blind, and guessing what it is (EDIT: “guess that snack”?). Etc.

[Magikeeper]

Long ago, I played in a very large (player count wise) play-by-post setting that had no resolution mechanic. It did have mechanics for gaining abilities, spells, etc, but although what powers/items a player possessed were carefully described, the end result of swinging your flaming sword against the bandit was free-form.

That system worked generally worked fine. But there are some things free-form resolution didn't do very well, such as:

-- Abilities that give small improvements to speed, strength, etc. It's very hard for humans to RP small modifiers without a mathematical resolution mechanic.
-- Having a faster reaction speed.
-- SPIW (So Powerful It's Worthless) abilities. SPIW abilities, like direct crippling-pain-creating mental attacks, suffered from being so cheap that everyone would always find the strength of will to push past them or whatever. Maybe if a quest-runner was running random mooks it'd finally do something. Some, self included, would still let it disrupt/hinder them for a post but even then likely not much longer than that. Such a mental attack actually be *stronger* if it created a lesser, more specific, penalty, as people would be far more likely to let such a power continually hinder them.

----

Anyway, you don't *need* resolution mechanics to have a fun game. Thus, the system you choose should be fun to use in its own right, help promote the theme/tone/feel/etc you're aiming for, and/or make stuff like small, incremental benefits viable.

People play single player video games after all, some of which offer very little besides just getting to play the game (no story, etc.). People can enjoy the mechanics just as much as they enjoy the RP aspects.

[Pex]

Yes because without them you eventually get "I shot you! No you didn't!" children playground arguments. We're also not professional comedians doing improv. Obviously there are lots of different mechanics to handle stuff. What people like and don't like is their personal preference. Complexity, simplistic, realistic, fantastical. All in different amounts and implementations. Play what you like.

[Vahnavoi]

Yes because without them you eventually get "I shot you! No you didn't!". children playground arguments.

Don't kid yourself. Majority of recurring arguments about mechanics are just variations of the same. Rules and mechanics don't save you from this, people who are capable of agreeing on rules and mechanics do.

Children's games have rules and mechanics, besides. For play-shooting, the typical rules are 1) I have to see the target, 2) I have to aim the pretend-gun at the target, 3) I have to make appropriate gun-like noise and, occasionally, 4) call out the name of the target. The mechanic by which this works is that the target 1) observes that the rules are followed, 2) agrees the rules are followed and 3) chooses to co-operate. Without these things, we wouldn't even be able to distinquish play-shooting from any other game.

[crimson_witch]

I think mechanics is a broader term than resolution system.

The list of skills / stats / whatever already gives style and atmosphere to a game, by emphasizing what's important (narrow, specific skills) and what's not really (vague, broad skills). Also the resolution system itself varies wildly in the ratio between randomness / player control, and that feels important for me, so it is, for me.

Obviously, everyone has their own preferences, but game mechanics have a strong steering function in a game. Not 100% decisive, but pushing the game style / mood in a direction.

Funny thing is, some games' mechanics don't correspond to the genre stated by the creators, which results in a rules system pushing the game in a different direction the creator wanted it to.