RPG metric, simplified version

[NichG]

Which format decides is based on rules of the game as agreed upon and enforced by participants of a game contract. Failure to realize this, such as due to the mentioned equivocational fallacy, creates false analyses, such as the idea that freeform roleplaying has no rules because it's, well, free in format ( or rather, free-er, but that's an argument for another day). Or the idea that one format always takes priority regardless of game. Or inability to spot the paradox in "use character viewpoint fiction, not rules" when there are games where the rules enforce using the character's viewpoint fiction.

If you tell a person that the rules are that they should think about the rules a certain way which differs strongly from how they think, they will not execute that instruction. If you leave something unstated, people will organize their understanding according to what flows best to them. The rules aren't all powerful. You can't make a rule 'have fun' in order to make a game fun. This kind of way of thinking as if the game is a logic system in a vacuum leads to games that don't actually play well when they hit real tables.

You can tell people to play D&D but pretend as if they don't know the numbers on their character sheet or how hitpoints work or things like that, and it simply won't work because it ignores the reality of the people playing the game. Perhaps from the perspective of formal analysis you might say 'well they're just not playing the game we're analyzing in that case', but for the purpose of application - that is, analysis whose purpose is to aid in game design, not just to remain theoretical - what people actually do matters more than what the rules say they should do.

[GeoffWatson]

Looking over Quertus' metric again, it looks like it would be more dependent on the DM's style and preferences (and the players), rather than the actual rules.

[noob]

Looking over Quertus' metric again, it looks like it would be more dependent on the DM's style and preferences (and the players), rather than the actual rules.

That is kind of similar to what I said: the metrics gives results depending on the characters and the setting.
The characters depends on the players (you can not prevent that even if you hand out characters to the players they will have their own interpretation of those which will change the attempted actions) and the setting depends on the gm (his style and preferences will influence how the setting works and evolves).
So change the players and the gm (or the characters or the setting) and you change the score of the game: it is extremely subjective and the same game might go from 0 mismatch between rule and character fiction to 100% mismatch between rules and character fiction and it is the case of the vast majority of the "rpgs" dnd 4e included.

[Max_Killjoy]

If you tell a person that the rules are that they should think about the rules a certain way which differs strongly from how they think, they will not execute that instruction. If you leave something unstated, people will organize their understanding according to what flows best to them. The rules aren't all powerful. You can't make a rule 'have fun' in order to make a game fun. This kind of way of thinking as if the game is a logic system in a vacuum leads to games that don't actually play well when they hit real tables.

You can tell people to play D&D but pretend as if they don't know the numbers on their character sheet or how hitpoints work or things like that, and it simply won't work because it ignores the reality of the people playing the game. Perhaps from the perspective of formal analysis you might say 'well they're just not playing the game we're analyzing in that case', but for the purpose of application - that is, analysis whose purpose is to aid in game design, not just to remain theoretical - what people actually do matters more than what the rules say they should do.

Agreed.

If a theory about how a personal internal experience or activity supposedly IS and MUST BE contradicts my personal experience of and interactions... then I'm not going to take it seriously.

And a lot of RPG theorizing that people present as hard and fast and True, just doesn't line up with how I experience or engage with RPGs.

See "all RPGs are storytelling" or "rules uber alles". Or in this case, the thing you're replying to. Rules and fiction ARE separate things, based on all my experience. A measure of how well an RPG system works is how well the two synchronize -- but they're never the same thing.

[Vahnavoi]

If you tell a person that the rules are that they should think about the rules a certain way which differs strongly from how they think, they will not execute that instruction. If you leave something unstated, people will organize their understanding according to what flows best to them. The rules aren't all powerful. You can't make a rule 'have fun' in order to make a game fun. This kind of way of thinking as if the game is a logic system in a vacuum leads to games that don't actually play well when they hit real tables.

Do a word search for "unable or unwilling" in my posts. I've repeatedly made the point that not only are there real people unable to play any real game you can care to name, there are also games unplayable to any human. We're not in disagreement over the point you're making, and have never been. My point is about what things belong in the category of rules and what that means, not that rules are all powerful.

You can tell people to play D&D but pretend as if they don't know the numbers on their character sheet or how hitpoints work or things like that, and it simply won't work because it ignores the reality of the people playing the game. Perhaps from the perspective of formal analysis you might say 'well they're just not playing the game we're analyzing in that case', but for the purpose of application - that is, analysis whose purpose is to aid in game design, not just to remain theoretical - what people actually do matters more than what the rules say they should do.

If analysis results in "they're not playing the game we're analyzing", that's of immense practical use, because that's the kind of thing which actually delineates different games from each other! That IS the application, step one before step two of figuring out why. My repeated point is that you need to correctly understand which things belong in category of rules, or else the reason why ends up being that you never gave people the set of rules you wanted to analyze. Or, like you just said yourself: " If you leave something unstated, people will organize their understanding according to what flows best to them. "

Your D&D example is not wrong, the thing you're neglecting or forgetting is that a game, even variant of D&D, can genuinely make a rule about never giving players the numbers in the first place, meaning players genuinely never know them in normal play. This provably makes a practical difference, it's not some theoretical purism.

[KorvinStarmast]

Rules and fiction ARE separate things, based on all my experience. A measure of how well an RPG system works is how well the two synchronize -- but they're never the same thing.

IME they overlap, but the amount of overlap is open to question.

Your D&D example is not wrong, the thing you're neglecting or forgetting is that a game, even variant of D&D, can genuinely make a rule about never giving players the numbers in the first place, meaning players genuinely never know them in normal play. This provably makes a practical difference, it's not some theoretical purism.

If you give someone a hammer, they'll will eventually start looking for the nearest nail.

[NichG]

Do a word search for "unable or unwilling" in my posts. I've repeatedly made the point that not only are there real people unable to play any real game you can care to name, there are also games unplayable to any human. We're not in disagreement over the point you're making, and have never been. My point is about what things belong in the category of rules and what that means, not that rules are all powerful.

If analysis results in "they're not playing the game we're analyzing", that's of immense practical use, because that's the kind of thing which actually delineates different games from each other! That IS the application, step one before step two of figuring out why. My repeated point is that you need to correctly understand which things belong in category of rules, or else the reason why ends up being that you never gave people the set of rules you wanted to analyze. Or, like you just said yourself: " If you leave something unstated, people will organize their understanding according to what flows best to them. "

Again this seems backward to me. The goal isn't 'analyze these particular rules'. It's 'create a gameplay experience where players feel like reasoning from an in-character perspective'. If it turns out I give them rules A, they actually play by rules B, but it works, I don't care that they didn't actually play by rules A. Furthermore, if somehow it's the case that giving them rules B directly would reduce the degree to which this goal is met compared to them deriving rules B from misinterpreting rules A, then I should continue to give them A rather than to give them B or correct them about A.

Your D&D example is not wrong, the thing you're neglecting or forgetting is that a game, even variant of D&D, can genuinely make a rule about never giving players the numbers in the first place, meaning players genuinely never know them in normal play. This provably makes a practical difference, it's not some theoretical purism.

Addressed upthread where I explained that you can just look at what character behavior in a setting would be like if the person controlling each character did not screen their out of character knowledge about the game mechanics from their simulation of the character's decision process. If players don't know the numbers in the first place, that's not something you have to worry about screening or not.

Because I'm exploiting the distinction between hard mechanics and setting description, it becomes very easy to see that a freeform game with no hard mechanics or explicit resolution protocols outside of 'GM decides' automatically nearly optimizes this metric, as the players may not actually know anything OOC that their characters wouldn't know. The remaining effects are things driven by e.g. previous experiences with a specific GM such as being familiar with the genre conventions they like or knowing what sorts of plots they tend to run, as well as the screening the GM might need to perform to keep multiple characters separate in their head.

Edit: To be specific here, a freeform game where the only communication is in character discussion, 'I do X' types of declarations, and 'this is what (you perceive) happens' types of returns.

[Cluedrew]

I have said some things like GeoffWatson and noob in the past, but I got another one to add or another way to look at it: it is decided by approach. 4e definitely has a lot of support for a very tactical/mechanics/out-of-character approach but it also still has everything you need to immerse yourself in your character and role-play it up. On the other side, I believe the phase "theoretical optimization" predates 4e so it is not like it invented not role-playing in your role-playing game. I think every edition of D&D supports both and if you support the role-playing approach then I would call that a role-playing game.

Hit Points

As a concept, Hit Points (HP) match the abstraction of, "hit someone, and they get hurt; hurt them enough, and they die".

Just like 4e skill challenges, even pre-fix, match the abstraction of "multiple tasks, success in enough gives success over all, failure in too many means failure over all". Which is not to say I disagree with you (in this statement or the overall point of this section). But it also shows some of the issues I see with the metric of this thread.

So there are two common explanations for hit points. The simple one is "HP as meat" (although I like HP as toughness). The other is the official model, which uses a combination of factors -- such as: physical and mental endurance, luck, reflexes and the will to fight on -- to describe the same set of mechanics (does this one has a good short name). Incidentally, if we were judging it by the metric we would use the official explanation found in the books, but I want to focus on a simpler question: Why are their two of them?

There are two explanations because people can't agree which one works better. They have different issues and people don't all feel as strongly about those issues. I don't think either of the options is wrong, even though I know which one I like better, because it is a subjective preference, it varies by subject.

[Milo v3]

It is wack to me that this conversation even needs to be had in the modern day.

The 'metrics' given in the OP seem especially strange in a modern context, where RPGs that use more narrative abstraction in decision making is more common in game design.

[Faily]

It is wack to me that this conversation even needs to be had in the modern day.

The 'metrics' given in the OP seem especially strange in a modern context, where RPGs that use more narrative abstraction in decision making is more common in game design.

Even by old days of D&D it is a ridiculous and strange. Back then you didn't even have a lot of mechanics to back up things like diplomacy - you just had to roleplay it.

I've yet to see an RPG that explicitly prevents players from roleplaying. Some systems are more encouraging of it, and some enforce it more in a specific way that fits the game's narrative, but ultimately none of them (not even 4e) states "players cannot pretend to be their characters or make decisions based on what their characters would do".

[kyoryu]

I've yet to see an RPG that explicitly prevents players from roleplaying. Some systems are more encouraging of it, and some enforce it more in a specific way that fits the game's narrative, but ultimately none of them (not even 4e) states "players cannot pretend to be their characters or make decisions based on what their characters would do".

The contention isn't that 4e states that, it's that the game design demands it, by requiring decisions to be made that use information not available to the character.

(The most common response is "not enough more than most other games to move it into a separate category.")

[Max_Killjoy]

As a general thing, this is A reason why some prefer systems that have more sync between the setting and the mechanics -- so that to the degree practical, the rules/mechanics are telling the player the same things that the setting/circumstances at hand are telling the character.

[Willie the Duck]

As a general thing, this is A reason why some prefer systems that have more sync between the setting and the mechanics -- so that to the degree practical, the rules/mechanics are telling the player the same things that the setting/circumstances at hand are telling the character.

Oh, that there is a difference among games, and that one can prefer games that fit somewhere along the spectrum of how much, are pretty much obvious to the point of universal agreement. It really isn't until OP started declaring things outside their preference range not-an-RPG that things really became controversial.

[kyoryu]

Oh, that there is a difference among games, and that one can prefer games that fit somewhere along the spectrum of how much, are pretty much obvious to the point of universal agreement. It really isn't until OP started declaring things outside their preference range not-an-RPG that things really became controversial.

Bingo. "This is my preference" doesn't cause many eyes to get batted.

"This is an objectively true statement" gets pushback.

[NichG]

Even by old days of D&D it is a ridiculous and strange. Back then you didn't even have a lot of mechanics to back up things like diplomacy - you just had to roleplay it.

By this sort of metric, adding mechanics for diplomacy is going to decrease the ease of making decisions from a character level view, not increase it.

I think maybe some of the feeling of strangeness comes from a different interpretation of the word 'role'. For some people, I think playing a role means accurately depicting the attributes of a certain specified character - their competencies and weaknesses, their attitudes and beliefs, their abilities. For others, it's more about stepping into a character's circumstances - the world they live in, the job they have, the trouble they're in, etc.

From the first perspective, mechanics might give the benefit of creating the outcomes that feel like they're 'supposed to happen' given the informed attributes of the characters - the high Cha character persuades the low Wis character, etc. But when the way they do that conflicts with what the characters would perceive, it creates a conflict with the other interpretation of 'role'.

[Cluedrew]

On Genre: I found another issue in the construction in that genres are usually described by inclusion. If you take a strategy game and add platforming to it then it doesn't stop being a strategy game, it is now also a platformer. Up to some line of "a significant part of the experience" but I played 4e and we definitely had the role-playing part feel pretty significant. (Nor does 3.X stop being a role-playing game when the optimisers go to work.) We have maybe three people in this thread who have said otherwise so those seem to be the outliers. And it has that core one ended narration loop that most games we call role-playing games have.

To NichG: I have never really seen it called out like that but I've definitely seen "depicting" and "stepping into" (expression and experience?) used as goals for characters in role-playing games. Even the "making decisions in-character" view has variants in it, from true simulation to a broad archetypes. I probably couldn't list them all if I tried.

[TexAvery]

The notion that a decision is only in-character if it is informed purely by fluff is where the argument completely loses me (if I understand the argument correctly). The crunch is, for the character, an observable part of the universe. If I'm playing catch with my little 7-year-old niece, I can't gently toss the ball on a flat arc - physics doesn't work that way. I as a character won't think that that's possible and won't try; I'll gently toss a higher arc to her and throw it harder and flatter to my older cousin. If my hypothetical player had me try to throw the ball to my niece on a flatter arc, he'd be playing in a stupid way, not a good-fluffy-in-character way.

Characters, as has been commented before, know that they can suddenly cast a new level of spells. They can observe spells lasting longer as they level up. Acting appropriately per the observable rules of the universe (including all the crunch rules) is in character. There is no conflict between fluff and crunch for acting in-character.

None of which means I'd call 4e a great game or anything, but I'd classify it as an RPG.

It's also worth remembering that Moby **** has a length argument for why whales should be classified as fish.

ETA: Censorship is dumb.

[NichG]

The notion that a decision is only in-character if it is informed purely by fluff is where the argument completely loses me (if I understand the argument correctly). The crunch is, for the character, an observable part of the universe. If I'm playing catch with my little 7-year-old niece, I can't gently toss the ball on a flat arc - physics doesn't work that way. I as a character won't think that that's possible and won't try; I'll gently toss a higher arc to her and throw it harder and flatter to my older cousin. If my hypothetical player had me try to throw the ball to my niece on a flatter arc, he'd be playing in a stupid way, not a good-fluffy-in-character way.

At least for the form of the metric I'm proposing, it's only that decisions based on the fluff and decisions based on the crunch should be in agreement with one another.

[TexAvery]

At least for the form of the metric I'm proposing, it's only that decisions based on the fluff and decisions based on the crunch should be in agreement with one another.

Well yes, and if they aren't in agreement the problem is that the setting/ game is poorly written, not that the players should make "fluffy" decisions that make no sense in the game.

[NichG]

Well yes, and if they aren't in agreement the problem is that the setting/ game is poorly written, not that the players should make "fluffy" decisions that make no sense in the game.

Given that the point of making a design metric is to have guidance as to detecting and fixing design errors. E.g. to identify that 'the setting/game is poorly written', but in a more specific way which would let one, y'know, fix it. So given that, does the argument now make sense to you?

[TexAvery]

Given that the point of making a design metric is to have guidance as to detecting and fixing design errors. E.g. to identify that 'the setting/game is poorly written', but in a more specific way which would let one, y'know, fix it. So given that, does the argument now make sense to you?

No... the original goal as I understood it was to define an RPG, not to define a bad RPG. A bad RPG is still an RPG. And the definition of "not-RPG" was hung on the notion that player decisions based on crunch were not in-character in thus the game was not-RPG. My point is that decisions based on crunch are still in-character (as we all make decisions based on our understanding of the crunch for our universe all the time) and thus the entire angels-on-a-pin of "how many decision points..." is like arguing whether a three-legged dog is still a dog.

Now if the argument were "it's bad for a player to have to choose between making decisions on fluff and crunch because they disagree, and that means the game needs at least another draft" I'd agree. But that player is still making in-character decisions; the game just doesn't work as advertised.

[NichG]

No... the original goal as I understood it was to define an RPG, not to define a bad RPG. A bad RPG is still an RPG. And the definition of "not-RPG" was hung on the notion that player decisions based on crunch were not in-character in thus the game was not-RPG. My point is that decisions based on crunch are still in-character (as we all make decisions based on our understanding of the crunch for our universe all the time) and thus the entire angels-on-a-pin of "how many decision points..." is like arguing whether a three-legged dog is still a dog.

Now if the argument were "it's bad for a player to have to choose between making decisions on fluff and crunch because they disagree, and that means the game needs at least another draft" I'd agree. But that player is still making in-character decisions; the game just doesn't work as advertised.

I read the logic this way:

- If roleplaying means making decisions from the perspective of a character
- and the game provides two disagreeing views of reality when rendering the character's perspective
- then it will be harder in such a game to roleplay than in a game in which those views agree.

There's the additional 'and there's some particular degree of disagreement at which it stops being an RPG', but I don't think that's particularly productive so I won't try to defend it.

[TexAvery]

I read the logic this way:

- If roleplaying means making decisions from the perspective of a character
- and the game provides two disagreeing views of reality when rendering the character's perspective
- then it will be harder in such a game to roleplay than in a game in which those views agree.

There's the additional 'and there's some particular degree of disagreement at which it stops being an RPG', but I don't think that's particularly productive so I won't try to defend it.

I agree with your premise there. Th thread, though, was originally about that final disagreement. I was trying to step back from the back-and-forth of "number of fluff decisions" and uproot it as pointless navel-gazing. I believe Quertus even claimed that decisions based on crunch were explicitly not "from the perspective of the character" and used that as the predicate for why that made such a game not-RPG.

For an example, let's look at a football player. The fluff says football players like to party; the rules (of our universe) say a football player is more likely to win if he trains more. Some party more; some train more. We have a disagreement between the fluff of the universe and the crunch of the universe. The football player who spends more time in the weight room isn't being controlled by a min-maxer; he's sacrificing fluff for crunch. In real life. People do this sort of thing all the time.

[kyoryu]

I agree with your premise there. Th thread, though, was originally about that final disagreement. I was trying to step back from the back-and-forth of "number of fluff decisions" and uproot it as pointless navel-gazing. I believe Quertus even claimed that decisions based on crunch were explicitly not "from the perspective of the character" and used that as the predicate for why that made such a game not-RPG.

For an example, let's look at a football player. The fluff says football players like to party; the rules (of our universe) say a football player is more likely to win if he trains more. Some party more; some train more. We have a disagreement between the fluff of the universe and the crunch of the universe. The football player who spends more time in the weight room isn't being controlled by a min-maxer; he's sacrificing fluff for crunch. In real life. People do this sort of thing all the time.

And that's actually really interesting room for game design - ostensibly the goal is to "win games", but that's often not actually the goal of the individuals involved. I've long thought that having RPGs with different (sometimes conflicting) goals for the players would be interesting.

Like, imagine three classes:

PartyJock
ScholarJock
ProJock
EgoJock

PartyJock is motivated (and rewarded for) popularity, having girlfriends, going to parties, etc. For him, winning is a means to that end.
ScholarJock is motivated by getting a scholarship to his college of choice, which may not be a strong football school. So long as he gets that money, he's golden. He wants to be scouted by the right schools.
ProJock wants to be a pro athlete and has a chance at it. He is motivated by getting scouted for the best football schools
EgoJock is living his glory years. He's similar to PartyJock, but what he gets rewarded for is making individual plays on the field, regardless of the team result.

To a certain extent, all of their goals align, but not entirely. Your scenario describes PartyJock going out there and getting his "xp" from partying, while the other guy (ProJock maybe) is spending time increasing his performance. He doesn't get xp from partying, but a good performance can get him scouted, which does get him xp.

Or a scenario in a football game - EgoJock is just driven by his performance, so he makes a risky play that, if it works, will make him look like a star, rather than a play that will almost certainly work but won't put him in the spotlight. ScholarJock and ProJock get mad. PartyJock meanwhile figures out how he's going to leverage the loss into sympathy and use that to his advantage.

IOW, they only don't align because the crunch presumes too narrow of a focus.

Some of hte original Braunstein games did this too. One of the seminal stories was a guy that was a revolutionary and got points for distributing fliers... he spent the entire game masquerading as a CIA agent, and then got a helicopter .... which he used to mass-distribute fliers to the population, winning the game.

[NichG]

I agree with your premise there. Th thread, though, was originally about that final disagreement. I was trying to step back from the back-and-forth of "number of fluff decisions" and uproot it as pointless navel-gazing. I believe Quertus even claimed that decisions based on crunch were explicitly not "from the perspective of the character" and used that as the predicate for why that made such a game not-RPG.

For an example, let's look at a football player. The fluff says football players like to party; the rules (of our universe) say a football player is more likely to win if he trains more. Some party more; some train more. We have a disagreement between the fluff of the universe and the crunch of the universe. The football player who spends more time in the weight room isn't being controlled by a min-maxer; he's sacrificing fluff for crunch. In real life. People do this sort of thing all the time.

This sort of example is exactly why I suggested using consistency of decision rather than optimality of decision as the metric.

If the character is someone who plays football to get laid, the fluff says 'training helps you win games, parties help you meet people', and the crunch says 'training will give you +10% chance of winning the next game, winning a game gives you a +10% chance of hooking up, and your base chance of hooking up is 70% at each party' then going to parties instead of training is consistent for that character's motives. The person isn't sacrificing fluff for crunch, they're following both fluff and crunch to trade off one in-character motivation for another.

If the crunch says the training bonus is +50%, winning a game is worth +100%, and the base chance of a hookup for a football player is only 5%, then even a hedonist looking to hook up should be training rather than going to parties. If the fluff then presents other hedonist football players going to parties and successfully hooking up despite that math, you've got a conflict as a player - does your hedonist character fulfill their motive, or do they act out the stereotype even if it doesn't actually work?

[TexAvery]

This sort of example is exactly why I suggested using consistency of decision rather than optimality of decision as the metric.

If the character is someone who plays football to get laid, the fluff says 'training helps you win games, parties help you meet people', and the crunch says 'training will give you +10% chance of winning the next game, winning a game gives you a +10% chance of hooking up, and your base chance of hooking up is 70% at each party' then going to parties instead of training is consistent for that character's motives. The person isn't sacrificing fluff for crunch, they're following both fluff and crunch to trade off one in-character motivation for another.

If the crunch says the training bonus is +50%, winning a game is worth +100%, and the base chance of a hookup for a football player is only 5%, then even a hedonist looking to hook up should be training rather than going to parties. If the fluff then presents other hedonist football players going to parties and successfully hooking up despite that math, you've got a conflict as a player - does your hedonist character fulfill their motive, or do they act out the stereotype even if it doesn't actually work?

Is that different from people who, say, quit high-paid finance jobs to go be a chef, as happens? According to the fluff of our society, finance is the best job you can have, and quitting to be a chef materially harms your financial and social power. These conflicts happen in real life. And people constantly make choices that don't advance - and even harm - their stated goals.

Now, I'd probably not write a game attempting to create that situation (and if a game includes such thing, it should be aware that it does), but it's still an RPG.

Is this even different from, as in a thread somewhere around here, an elf being an assassin instead of a mage?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Is that different from people who, say, quit high-paid finance jobs to go be a chef, as happens? According to the fluff of our society, finance is the best job you can have, and quitting to be a chef materially harms your financial and social power. These conflicts happen in real life. And people constantly make choices that don't advance - and even harm - their stated goals.

Now, I'd probably not write a game attempting to create that situation (and if a game includes such thing, it should be aware that it does), but it's still an RPG.

Is this even different from, as in a thread somewhere around here, an elf being an assassin instead of a mage?

Yeah. "Optimality" is highly overrated. And actually fairly rare. People aren't really rational animals--they're emotional (and other forms of irrationality) with a veneer of rationality that mostly exists to justify their actions (which are chosen for other reasons). Am I a cynic? Yes. Absolutely.

[NichG]

Is that different from people who, say, quit high-paid finance jobs to go be a chef, as happens? According to the fluff of our society, finance is the best job you can have, and quitting to be a chef materially harms your financial and social power. These conflicts happen in real life. And people constantly make choices that don't advance - and even harm - their stated goals.

You're confusing the term 'fluff' with something like values here. An actual conflict would be something like someone saying 'the highest paying job you could have would be finance - you'll make way less money as a chef' and then when the person goes to apply for finance jobs they keep getting offered minimum wage positions only. To apply the metric, you need to have two sources of authoritative information about 'how things are', then ask how a single individual's decisions would differ if they were aware of the one source versus being aware of the other source.

Society saying 'finance is a good job' and the person saying 'no thanks, I don't want it' isn't a conflict between fluff and crunch because there's only one information source there.

[PhoenixPhyre]

You're confusing the term 'fluff' with something like values here. An actual conflict would be something like someone saying 'the highest paying job you could have would be finance - you'll make way less money as a chef' and then when the person goes to apply for finance jobs they keep getting offered minimum wage positions only. To apply the metric, you need to have two sources of authoritative information about 'how things are', then ask how a single individual's decisions would differ if they were aware of the one source versus being aware of the other source.

Society saying 'finance is a good job' and the person saying 'no thanks, I don't want it' isn't a conflict between fluff and crunch because there's only one information source there.

Note: the two things you say are contradictions both happen in real life. Yes, in most cases finance is higher paying than cooking. But a large number of finance jobs are miserable, low-paying scut work, just like some cooking jobs are celebrity chefs making $$$. They're both very bimodal distributions. I had a friend who was a banker and switched to teaching. He made more as a teacher (or at least the same amount).

In RPG terms, focusing too much on the central measures (median/average/mode) obscures the fact that the world being described is really really complex and has lots of surprising "edge" cases that come up quite frequently. All metrics only measure what they measure...at most. But most of what is measured isn't really useful. And there are rarely, if ever, clear-cut hard lines.

[kyoryu]

I think people are mostly rational. I think that have goals that, by the standards of others, are rational. However I believe that people are very very good at pursuing their goals in the vast, vast majority of cases.

They are often unclear of what their own goals are, as well.

But if you look at peoples' behavior over time, they are usually very consistent in what things they value and pursue.