[Any] Let's talk about abstraction in RPGs...

[Aron Times]

When I first starting DMing, I didn't really understand the concept of abstraction. I played under the simulationist mindset of 3.0 and 3.5, not knowing that abstraction would vastly reduce my workload as a DM.

Here's a scene from one of my old 3.5 games set in Eberron.

Spoiler

Show

Me: You arrive at the gates of Sharn, and the guard asks you what your business is in the city.

*Party roleplays for a few minutes, stating their intentions for entering the city, etc.*

Me: Alright. You're now in the city. What do you do next?

Party: We head to the House Orien enclave, to meet with our employer/uncle/Baron.

Me: You go to the House Orien enclave to report to Baron Whatshisname. His secretary asks you why you want to see the Baron.

*Party tells the secretary that they have an appointment with the Baron, and she lets them in.*

Baron: You're here. What have you to report?

Here's how I would run the same scene today:

Spoiler

Show

You make your way to the House Orien enclave in Sharn to meet with your employer/uncle Baron Whatshisname.

Baron: You're here. What have you to report?

At some point in my DMing career, I realized that I could save a lot of time and effort by skipping past unimportant scenes. Roleplaying the scene with the gate guard and the scene with the secretary didn't really add anything to the story because the PCs actions didn't matter; they were going to be let in anyway since they had a legitimate reason to enter Sharn/talk to the Baron.

Discuss.

[Matthew]

I am not sure that is exactly an abstraction of events. To my mind, an abstraction would be more like "Roll 1d20, 11+ you pass the guards" versus interacting with them. I suppose skipping over the unimportant stuff is a kind of abstraction, but I think there is possibly a better word for it.

[edit] Looks like there are about a zillion different uses of abstraction. I was thinking most particularly of "distancing from events".

[Forever Curious]

Abstraction has it's pros and cons. It really depends on the scene.

For example, you could have made the guard "encounter" much more in depth, having the party roll Diplomacy checks to influence the guards attitude if he's liable to come up again. However, if you're goal is to move the party quickly to their destination, then abstraction is the perfect solution.

Personally I like to drag scenes out and get as much roleplay in as possible.

[CrazySopher]

Personally I like to drag scenes out and get as much roleplay in as possible.

I like keeping my PCs on their toes and in character. I love getting Roleplay out... but it needs to be in the form of an actual conversation. I actually have to sometimes employ Joe's version of "abstraction" to keep the party moving or else the pacing gets screwed up and what should be a simple conversation gets drawn out into an ordeal.

That said, I like abstraction in my campaigns... as long as I feel my PCs can handle it. If they've got a 3.0, 3.5 simulationist mindset Joe mentioned, and they're going into one of my campaigns where a large body of the work was instead done on the world, making sure that everything fits, that it's filled with ideas more esoteric and abstract then material wealth and the very real, very absolute religious system, then they're going to gloss over a large part of the effort and work I put into the campaign. Aside from personal, petty feelings that might arise, a player's simulationist feel for the campaign and the world involved might instead make it seem flimsy... and if I missed the mark on what my PCs want in their world, maybe it is.

[Paulus]

When I first starting DMing, I didn't really understand the concept of abstraction. I played under the simulationist mindset of 3.0 and 3.5, not knowing that abstraction would vastly reduce my workload as a DM.

Here's a scene from one of my old 3.5 games set in Eberron.

Spoiler

Show

Me: You arrive at the gates of Sharn, and the guard asks you what your business is in the city.

*Party roleplays for a few minutes, stating their intentions for entering the city, etc.*

Me: Alright. You're now in the city. What do you do next?

Party: We head to the House Orien enclave, to meet with our employer/uncle/Baron.

Me: You go to the House Orien enclave to report to Baron Whatshisname. His secretary asks you why you want to see the Baron.

*Party tells the secretary that they have an appointment with the Baron, and she lets them in.*

Baron: You're here. What have you to report?

Here's how I would run the same scene today:

Spoiler

Show

You make your way to the House Orien enclave in Sharn to meet with your employer/uncle Baron Whatshisname.

Baron: You're here. What have you to report?

At some point in my DMing career, I realized that I could save a lot of time and effort by skipping past unimportant scenes. Roleplaying the scene with the gate guard and the scene with the secretary didn't really add anything to the story because the PCs actions didn't matter; they were going to be let in anyway since they had a legitimate reason to enter Sharn/talk to the Baron.

Discuss.

Some people like simulation. Some people like "get to the good stuff", some people like kicking down the door to get the power up to win the game, and some like sweeping the princess off her feet and saving the world, and some like the pirate treasure being buried, some like the cannons firing into the hulls of your foes, some like the open steppe, fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair and some like To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women. Remember a scene is only as important as the Dm and Players make it!

if that isn't an abstract enough answer, I too lack understanding in abstractions.

[The Big Dice]

Those kind of abstractions are more a matter of player/GM style than anything, at least in my experience. Then again, I do tend to cut to the relevant scene, especially if setting has already been established. That said, I tend to think in terms of plot, incident and setting rather than Forge-inspired ideas.

What I find is, some games thrive on taking it easy and not rushing to the next combat encounter. Things like WoD, Pendragon and L5R tend to encourage a more laid back, take your time and enjoy the roleplay style. But any game can cope with a more roleplay and less rollplay approach. It's really up to the people playing to decide how they want to go about things.

[CrazySopher]

I'd agree that throwing in elements that make the world come alive are certainly very, very important (and often missed) aspects in making a really, really good experience, and that you require both the GM and the PCs involvement and combined effort to pull it off.

But before we even go that far, I wanna come back to something that Matthew said, about there being about a zillion different definitions of abstraction. If this is going to evolve into a serious conversation, we need to determine what abstraction is exactly, and how it pertains to the game world.

We know a few things from this conversation already, from the opening sentence; that Joseph thinks that whatever this abstraction is, it certainly isn't "simulationist." This sorta goes with a few articles I looked up real quick (no real detective work, just some perusal) that, I think, are all best summarized with "Reducing the information content about a concept or observable phenomenon", which is what appears to be Joe's definition.

I rather like the idea of being able to convey the certain way a city or locale feels through describing the conversation, a few descriptive sentences, and letting player imagination fill it up. If I can convey a sense of how these things look, smell, taste, etc. without actually giving flat out descriptions, I think that I've definitely done my job by making my PCs think and drawing them closer into the world.

Edit: White Wolf is supremely better at doing this than DnD, 3.5 in particular. In fact, I find that most campaigns other than DnD of any edition that I've been involved in tend to do better with less as far as description goes (GURPS being the exception, because hell, it's GURPS.)

[Vangor]

Roleplaying the scene with the gate guard and the scene with the secretary didn't really add anything to the story because the PCs actions didn't matter; they were going to be let in anyway since they had a legitimate reason to enter Sharn/talk to the Baron.

Detaching from this situation is useful, but I personally try to keep useless situations to a minimum if at all within my campaigns. If the guardsmen question you, the results may be waving you in with good checks or good reasons, being suspicious but still allowing entrance, noting being confined to certain sections of the town, or being barred entirely from entering. Those are useful times for players to ask guardsmen about goings-on which need questioning, or inquire elsewhere and perhaps link rumors.

Simplest example I can give would be the players entering a town much with the appearance of adventurers, for only a day or two later to find a political figure has been assassinated or kidnapped. Obviously, if the party came off as suspicious or worse, the guards might seek them out.

This is more what you were speaking of with simply ignoring, because without those campaign elements the guardsmen are worthless. Note the gatekeepers allow them entrance, and the secretary shows them to the Baron. However, this may be me in creating far more sprawling campaigns where every quest turns into two quests.

[BobTheDog]

Detaching from this situation is useful, but I personally try to keep useless situations to a minimum if at all within my campaigns. If the guardsmen question you, the results may be waving you in with good checks or good reasons, being suspicious but still allowing entrance, noting being confined to certain sections of the town, or being barred entirely from entering. Those are useful times for players to ask guardsmen about goings-on which need questioning, or inquire elsewhere and perhaps link rumors.

Simplest example I can give would be the players entering a town much with the appearance of adventurers, for only a day or two later to find a political figure has been assassinated or kidnapped. Obviously, if the party came off as suspicious or worse, the guards might seek them out.

This is more what you were speaking of with simply ignoring, because without those campaign elements the guardsmen are worthless. Note the gatekeepers allow them entrance, and the secretary shows them to the Baron. However, this may be me in creating far more sprawling campaigns where every quest turns into two quests.

I agree with Vangor on this one. If it is/may be important, it should have focus (if only for a second). Then again, if you give focus to any random thing, that thing might become important regardless of your intention. You put a roleplaying scene with the guards there, and suddenly one of the players is sure that the captain of the guards is hiding something, and wants to investigate.

I actually would phrase it like this: If you don't want something to be important, don't give it the chance.

(Says the DM who now has to decide if said Captain is indeed hiding something or not.)

[Jerthanis]

Life is too short to spend RPG time on frivolities, and interacting with bureaucracy is such a frivolity.

If the scene won't evoke anything interesting or worthwhile, won't spark character growth or introduce tension, it should always be skipped over.

This is an opinion not shared by my whole group. Some of them want to roleplay out every meal we eat, and will make special mention of when and where their character uses the bathroom. Portraying a surly security checkpoint operator hassling you before you get on the airplane is as important as the events that take place at the destination.

EDIT: I seriously get so annoyed at the scenes of our characters eating that I make tick marks of each time it happens at a session. One session had bloody 9 tick marks at the end of the night. Nine separate meals.

[Semidi]

It really depends on the system. D&D--nah. I don't think what the OP described works very well. WoD? Absolutely important, it's a system where the devil's in the details of how your character or supernatural interacts with his or her environment.

[CrazySopher]

EDIT: I seriously get so annoyed at the scenes of our characters eating that I make tick marks of each time it happens at a session. One session had bloody 9 tick marks at the end of the night. Nine separate meals.

I dunno if I'm gonna be so up front and immediate about keeping things within bounds, but it sounds like someone over there is crossing the line from "staying in character" to "God, I really wish I was someone else right now...."

[Stormageddon]

I don't know. Abstraction has its place. For example travel time, I hate roleplaying setting up camp, cooking dinner, ext. But for something like you descibed I would want to roleplay it. Just saying: "You walk through town and end in this really important persons office." seems like it would bore me.

[LurkerInPlayground]

A very good example of abstraction is the change in combat from 2e and older into 3e.

Rounds occurred in a "minute." An attack was often the culmination of much fighting and jockeying for a blow.

In 3e, a round is 6 seconds and include a lot more minutiae: power attacking, fighting defensively, withdrawing, quickened spells, attacks of opportunity, etc. etc.

Some would say that having quicker combat leaves more time for exploration, puzzle-solving and roleplaying.

Hit points are a kind of abstraction. It's much easier to subtract numbers than it is to tally up the exact nature of a character's injuries.

Abstraction works in places where you don't want to a spend a lot of time on. They're the "boring bits." An RPG sets its tone depending on where it decides to get really mechanically specific.

[The Rose Dragon]

A very good example of abstraction is the change in combat from 2e and older into 3e.

Rounds occurred in a "minute." An attack was often the culmination of much fighting and jockeying for a blow.

No, turns occurred in a minute. Rounds still occurred in 6 seconds.

[TheOOB]

I take kinda a middle ground. I don't spend time with things that are pointless. If it's noon, and the plot doesn't advance till dusk, I will ask "does anyone have anything they want to do today", and if everyone says no I will skip to the next important event.

That said, you do need to explain some things to create flavor and roleplay, if only so that your players don't realize that everything you explain is important.

You gotta think of D&D as a book or a movie. Now there are lots of styles of movies, and thus lots of styles of DMing, but every scene should be relevant, if only to develop the world and the characters.

[Glass Mouse]

I'd say you should only roleplay a scene if there is a chance the PCs will change the outcome. Regard this as a rule of thumb.

If it'll screw up your plans if they say something stupid to the guards, and the only reasonable response is to ban them from entrance, don't play the scene.
If failing to enter the city would set up some cool plot twist or an obstacle to overcome (that you are prepared to run), go for it.
If you'd like it to be a succes, but the party could use the roleplaying to establish inter-party roles or somehow further inter-party dynamics, go for it. But cross your fingers.

But yeah... Playing scenes (grey zone with plot exposition scenes) that can't be changed or influenzed gets dull, especially if they are a guaranteed succes (if it's guaranteed failure... then it's starting to smell of railroading).

[gdiddy]

What Glass Mouse said.

Seriously. I look at faces and look for drooping eyelids and open laptops. If people are getting bored with what's going on, abstract and gloss. If a player asks a question or hops into character to do something, be ready to RP.

But if there is anything that can't be screwed up, have it happen far the heck away from PCs.

[Totally Guy]

I played in a very frustrating game where these things just kept getting in the way of the game.

Firstly we were travelling between a lost cave and a city. The DM says "You travel all afternoon to get there..." and one of the other players say "As a lost cave I think it should be days away." And they agreed the cave was days away. But this started the ball rolling for some very boring game play.

"You're travelling between place 1 and place 2, what do you do?"
"What do we see?"
"There are landmarks."
"Then we continue travelling toward place 2."
"Ok... so you're travelling toward place 2. What do you do?"

And this went on everytime we wanted to go anywhere.

"Then when we'd get places and a player might suggest that we're not needed in place 2 afterall. "Well I think I would have said something on the journey. So we'll actually be in place 1 afterall."

And then someone would suggest "We could try pulling that lever?"
"Which lever?"
"The one in the place 2 main hallway. I pull it."
"But we're not there"

[Reaper_Monkey]

At some point in my DMing career, I realized that I could save a lot of time and effort by skipping past unimportant scenes. Roleplaying the scene with the gate guard and the scene with the secretary didn't really add anything to the story because the PCs actions didn't matter; they were going to be let in anyway since they had a legitimate reason to enter Sharn/talk to the Baron.

I tend to agree with this, insofar as I will skip over hours of trekking in forests/etc with a brief description of what it looked like and perhaps sounds and clues as to what might be around. It saves time if nothing else, and unless someone wants to do something/discuss something whilst travelling there really isn't any point in going through it in smaller chunks.

However, I've found that even events which should be guaranteed rarely are when I let my party talk to people. One character in particular tends to cause more harm than good when you let her talk to any important NPC.
In the example you gave above I'm sure on one of those two events she'd have done something spectacularly stupid which would make things far from straight forward. Even if she didn't, her interactions with the NPC's would give a good indication of what the town guards think of our would-be-heroes and add flesh to their character as well as the character of the place they are in.

I'd have to agree with many of the other posters here in that this is really only a playing style which may be appropriate for your group, and others, but isn't really a hard and fast rule for every group.
At the end of the day you find what works best and stick to it, if people like using their character skills instead of RPing (what I thought the abstraction you were referring to was in the first place) then go with it, it may not be perfect but if its fun then that makes it perfect.

[ericgrau]

I think you lose some immersiveness if you don't include at least some roleplaying. Skipping the guards when there's no reason for them to stop you is fine, but discussing the plot with more important NPCs is far better than "go do this". Anyway the guard is probably just as impatient as you are, making the scene more like this:

Guard: "State your business."
PC: "We have an appointment with the baron."
Guard: "Alright, move along."

I mean, remember the Lord of the Rings when Frodo wouldn't even reveal the matters he was involved in? The guard just let him in anyway after saying something like "I didn't meant to be nosy. It's my job to ask these kinds of questions. There's talk of trouble about." The PCs won't stop long unless they like making small talk, want to find out the major news of the city, etc.

[Saph]

Bear in mind that a lot of these "unimportant scenes" are how the players get to learn about the world they're playing in. A good GM will use these sort of scenes as a way of planting information.

Heavily abstracting has its place, but it also brings its own problems. I remember one Star Wars session where a couple of PCs were hanging around an Imperial base on the edge of a city. Now, due to the GM skipping over details, the players had interpreted "edge of the city" as meaning "suburbia", while the GM had meant it as "undeveloped empty plains".

This led to the following memorable conversation. To set the scene: The PCs have wandered up to within a hundred yards of the Imperial military base. The base is in the middle of a barren wilderness. The area is totally empty, and apart from the base, there's not a single sign of life for miles. Two stormtroopers march up to the PCs.

Stormtroopers: "Halt. What are you doing here?"
PC: "We're looking for a resteraunt."
Stormtroopers: "..."

[valadil]

I don't think of this as abstraction but as fast forwarding and summarizing. It's something I do depending on the game session. I'm more likely to play out scenes like this in a 12 hour weekend marathon than in a 3 hour work night session.

I usually play out the first interaction, but fast forward through the rest. Haggling with the innkeeper can be interesting once or twice. You shouldn't do it each and every session. Much too tedious. (As a side note I once knew a player who insisted that D&D was a bad system because someone he played with used to haggle with every innkeeper. I never found out why he thought that was a part of the rules, but he hated D&D because of it). Usually I'll just tell the players they get a room and negotiate the price down a little. Hmm. I guess I can see how you'd think of this as abstraction. Just declare all innkeeper haggling instances to be the same and you can rush past them.

Anyway, your extended conversation with the guards does serve purpose besides roleplaying. You can establish the guard and secretary as characters. And it establishes that the city is a) well guarded and b) a little bureaucratic. You could probably have just told them about the process to see the baron instead of playing it out. Playing out the guard and secretary has its merits though. Some players will jump on any NPC who has a name. They know that's where the plot hooks are and plot hooks lead to XP. If you make all the guards look alike by giving them all names/conversations, the players won't be able to single out that one guard who is obviously important because he's the only one with a name.

[Tyndmyr]

What to skip/summarize is something you learn with time. If it's going to involve a lot of mundane repetition, it's a good candidate. "you walk another thirty feet, you see more trees" gets old really quick.

As for haggling, I don't assume my players haggle for anything. If they want to pay less than list, they can either make an appropriate skill check, go into detailing their argument, or some combination of the above. If it's player driven, I don't need to worry about boring them. Frankly, for cheap stuff such as an inn for the night, they generally don't bother.

Flavor text is also a touchy area. Too little, and you risk either ommitting things, or simply pointing out everything important....since it's the only thing you describe in detail. I try to do a "once over lightly" approach, and list stuff rapidly, then describe in greater detail if players ask for it/examine something. It's not perfect, but it seems to keep things fast, and work decently well.

Of course, we also tend to play marathon sessions ranging from 6 to 9 hours at a shot, so details do get overlooked or forgotten at times. Remember that even if the player forgot or missed something, the character may not have. Try not to punish players much for missing a little detail, and they'll likely be on board with keeping things relatively brief unless they think something is important.

[Kurald Galain]

Firstly we were travelling between a lost cave and a city. The DM says "You travel all afternoon to get there..." and one of the other players say "As a lost cave I think it should be days away." And they agreed the cave was days away. But this started the ball rolling for some very boring game play.

Yeah. I used to have a game where whenever I (as the GM) asked "is there anything else you need to do tonight?" then yes, one or two players would step up and said that they had. On the one hand, nice roleplaying; on the other hand, it was always the same one or two players and it did on occasion slow the plot to a crawl.