RPG metric, simplified version

[NichG]

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.

Again, you'd have to identify two sources of information which are authoritative and see if there's a change in decision. It doesn't really make sense to apply this to real life because as people who are living, we don't have a second self that simultaneously has access to that distinct information stream. E.g. we're not in a position of actively trying to hide information from ourselves. It's not even that you couldn't apply the metric e.g. to someone who is being told one thing by their family and another thing by their friends, it would just sort of be a non sequitur. I mean, what are you going to do as a result, redesign reality?

The only place in real life where I can imagine it actually being 'useful' would be for someone like a spy, who has to act as if they only have access to some information while in reality they have access to a wider pool of information that they can't let on that they know. In which case the metric would be measuring the stress on their cover story imposed by different situations or something like that...

[PhoenixPhyre]

Again, you'd have to identify two sources of information which are authoritative and see if there's a change in decision. It doesn't really make sense to apply this to real life because as people who are living, we don't have a second self that simultaneously has access to that distinct information stream. E.g. we're not in a position of actively trying to hide information from ourselves. It's not even that you couldn't apply the metric e.g. to someone who is being told one thing by their family and another thing by their friends, it would just sort of be a non sequitur. I mean, what are you going to do as a result, redesign reality?

The only place in real life where I can imagine it actually being 'useful' would be for someone like a spy, who has to act as if they only have access to some information while in reality they have access to a wider pool of information that they can't let on that they know. In which case the metric would be measuring the stress on their cover story imposed by different situations or something like that...

I'm saying that in a properly complex fictional world (complexity approaching that of the real world), this metric fails to be useful. Which says that you can roleplay best in a flat world where everything's binary. Which is...odd.

Basically, it's a disease of metrics. Sure, you can measure things. But is there any meaning in those measurements? That's yet to be seen, at least in my judgement. "Hard metrics" aren't actually necessarily better than soft, subjective judgement calls. Things don't naturally fit into nice boxes, and trying to find hard division lines (or even scalar parameters) is generally futile, in my opinion.

[NichG]

I'm saying that in a properly complex fictional world (complexity approaching that of the real world), this metric fails to be useful. Which says that you can roleplay best in a flat world where everything's binary. Which is...odd.

In a fictional world you have a difference in knowledge between player and character. In the real world, there isn't such a difference, so the metric fails to be useful. That's not because of the complexity of the real world, it's because in the real world we don't have a player who knows things we don't know.

[PhoenixPhyre]

In a fictional world you have a difference in knowledge between player and character. In the real world, there isn't such a difference, so the metric fails to be useful. That's not because of the complexity of the real world, it's because in the real world we don't have a player who knows things we don't know.

Except that in the case stated, I don't see how either the player or the character would know. It's all distributions, not binaries. It's not "X > Y", it's "X > Y with probability P, under conditions Q, but you don't know whether you're in Q or not."

The character knows things the player doesn't. The player knows things the character doesn't. But which things, and how, and everything else is so fuzzy I'm not sure how any metric is supposed to give meaningful results.

[NichG]

Except that in the case stated, I don't see how either the player or the character would know. It's all distributions, not binaries. It's not "X > Y", it's "X > Y with probability P, under conditions Q, but you don't know whether you're in Q or not."

The character knows things the player doesn't. The player knows things the character doesn't. But which things, and how, and everything else is so fuzzy I'm not sure how any metric is supposed to give meaningful results.

So thats why the simple probe test - give permission for the player/GM to use their full out of character knowledge about the game mechanics and ask 'knowing this, would the character act differently?'.

If the player happens to be someone who makes irrational choices, they're allowed to be just as irrational knowing the mechanics and not knowing the mechanics. If they have different goals, they're allowed those different goals both knowing the mechanics and not knowing the mechanics. So its not trying to evaluate 'is this optimal' or 'is this rational'. If something is ambiguous or hard to reason through or complex, then as long as its the same way in the mechanics as in the fluff it shouldn't register as a difference.

[PhoenixPhyre]

So thats why the simple probe test - give permission for the player/GM to use their full out of character knowledge about the game mechanics and ask 'knowing this, would the character act differently?'.

If the player happens to be someone who makes irrational choices, they're allowed to be just as irrational knowing the mechanics and not knowing the mechanics. If they have different goals, they're allowed those different goals both knowing the mechanics and not knowing the mechanics. So its not trying to evaluate 'is this optimal' or 'is this rational'. If something is ambiguous or hard to reason through or complex, then as long as its the same way in the mechanics as in the fluff it shouldn't register as a difference.

That doesn't capture all the things the character knows that the player doesn't. Or the things that the player thinks they know that aren't so.

Beyond that, I question the utility of measuring anything about how people actually play (or even hypothetical people) when looking at games themselves. Because how they're designed and intended to be used and how they're actually played are two different, often diametrically opposed things. Just look at 3e D&D.

Yes, I don't find much value in "metrics" for soft squishy things. It all seems like the drunk looking under the lightpost for his keys because he can see better there. I'm perfectly happy with "is it an RPG? Does it sell itself as one? Does it have characters you can get in the role of? Does it (even notionally) have a fiction layer? Is it a game? Then RPG." Yes, this is imperfect and both over and under-inclusive. :shrug: Good enough.

[NichG]

That doesn't capture all the things the character knows that the player doesn't. Or the things that the player thinks they know that aren't so.

Things the player thinks they know are fine with this, because changing whether they allow mechanical information to seep into in-character decisions won't change that. So it'll be a net zero impact.

Things the character knows that the player doesn't could factor, yes, and that's a valid comparison to include. At the setting level, it can be somewhat evaluated, even if its harder to evaluate for a single PC (and in general I'm talking about evaluating the setting more than a specific PC anyhow). At the setting level you'd have to basically do an exercise of 'resolving' things that you abstracted and then seeing if the way you see those characters and their choices changes as a result.

Beyond that, I question the utility of measuring anything about how people actually play (or even hypothetical people) when looking at games themselves. Because how they're designed and intended to be used and how they're actually played are two different, often diametrically opposed things. Just look at 3e D&D.

That seems like a perfect example of why you should care about how people actually play, rather than a reason to conclude its not useful to measure. Design intent that doesn't survive contact with players was bad design. By measuring how people actually interact with designs, you can reduce that gap and express more of the actual intent.

[PhoenixPhyre]

That seems like a perfect example of why you should care about how people actually play, rather than a reason to conclude its not useful to measure. Design intent that doesn't survive contact with players was bad design. By measuring how people actually interact with designs, you can reduce that gap and express more of the actual intent.

It's a useful thing for designers to measure, but it's a formative measure, not a summative measure (to use education speak). That is, it's not an external way of knowing "did the designers create something that fits into <category>, defined by <external measure>." It's a useful way of knowing "hey, do these rules produce the effects we wanted them to?", generally on a narrow scale.

So I guess part of it may be that I've missed some topic drift--I'm saying it's not a useful measure to decide if something is an RPG. If that's not what's being discussed, my apologies and I'll bow out now.

My big point was just to poke at the example being used to say "man, real life is really weird some times."

[TexAvery]

In a fictional world you have a difference in knowledge between player and character. In the real world, there isn't such a difference, so the metric fails to be useful. That's not because of the complexity of the real world, it's because in the real world we don't have a player who knows things we don't know.

Where you're trying to draw a difference between player and character is where I'm pushing back - much of the "metagaming" complaints are about things that the character would know, such as spell effects and powers, which are observable in-game. The fluff is the lies the characters say and possibly think they believe, like "you get money through hard work", when my landscaper makes way less than I do for much harder work than I do.

No realistic character is going to utterly ignore the laws of the universe (the crunch) in favor of its description (the fluff). At the very least, not while being an alive adventurer.

Where I'd accept metagaming as an issue is the player knowing things from a published module, for example. Playing your character as if he knows the information on his character sheet ain't that, and certainly is role-playing.

[NichG]

It's a useful thing for designers to measure, but it's a formative measure, not a summative measure (to use education speak). That is, it's not an external way of knowing "did the designers create something that fits into <category>, defined by <external measure>." It's a useful way of knowing "hey, do these rules produce the effects we wanted them to?", generally on a narrow scale.

So I guess part of it may be that I've missed some topic drift--I'm saying it's not a useful measure to decide if something is an RPG. If that's not what's being discussed, my apologies and I'll bow out now.

It's where the thread started, but not the position I've been taking. Basically my position has been that Quertus happened upon a good idea about a thing to measure (whether or not in-character decisions could be made effectively based on the world-as-presented versus the world-as-implied-by-mechanics), but that the utilization of it to separate things into RPG vs non-RPG was a mistaken application of that idea. E.g. rather than concluding '4e is/is not an RPG', which is just a pointless edition war, one could say 'here are the elements of 4e where out-of-character understanding of the way the world is being simulated disagrees with in-character logic, and therefore if we want to make it easier to roleplay in that system then we should adjust those aspects...'

Where you're trying to draw a difference between player and character is where I'm pushing back - much of the "metagaming" complaints are about things that the character would know, such as spell effects and powers, which are observable in-game. The fluff is the lies the characters say and possibly think they believe, like "you get money through hard work", when my landscaper makes way less than I do for much harder work than I do.

No realistic character is going to utterly ignore the laws of the universe (the crunch) in favor of its description (the fluff). At the very least, not while being an alive adventurer.

Where I'd accept metagaming as an issue is the player knowing things from a published module, for example. Playing your character as if he knows the information on his character sheet ain't that, and certainly is role-playing.

Fluff isn't 'lies the characters say and believe'. It's things established about the setting in-place rather than being derived from the mechanics. If the setting description says 'King Moneybags controls the economy of the world because he owns the only functioning gold mine, and all nations need to go through him in order to mint their currencies. As a result, all of the King's vassals have diplomatic immunity everywhere in the setting' but the mechanics say that alchemical creation of gold is something that a character can do, then the statement 'all of the King's vassals have diplomatic immunity' isn't a lie, its just nonsensical.

If the fluff is 'vampires are driven by a strong urge to drink blood' but there's no mechanical penalties for a vampire not drinking blood, 'vampires are driven to drink blood' may not be a lie, but its not supported by the mechanics either.

If the mechanics say people can become demigods by spending 6 months farming rats, and the world is completely silent about that, then the fluff hasn't 'said anything' but it'd still pop up as an inconsistency since characters would behave differently if they understood the XP system.

[TexAvery]

Fluff isn't 'lies the characters say and believe'. It's things established about the setting in-place rather than being derived from the mechanics. If the setting description says 'King Moneybags controls the economy of the world because he owns the only functioning gold mine, and all nations need to go through him in order to mint their currencies. As a result, all of the King's vassals have diplomatic immunity everywhere in the setting' but the mechanics say that alchemical creation of gold is something that a character can do, then the statement 'all of the King's vassals have diplomatic immunity' isn't a lie, its just nonsensical.

If the fluff is 'vampires are driven by a strong urge to drink blood' but there's no mechanical penalties for a vampire not drinking blood, 'vampires are driven to drink blood' may not be a lie, but its not supported by the mechanics either.

If the mechanics say people can become demigods by spending 6 months farming rats, and the world is completely silent about that, then the fluff hasn't 'said anything' but it'd still pop up as an inconsistency since characters would behave differently if they understood the XP system.

The last is the egregious one, and would be a very bad system indeed. The first implies that King Moneybags is indeed powerful... but maybe the creation of gold hasn't gone on long enough to cause issues (yet!) or is harder and rarer for the total population than the creation of characters implies, as they can just "decide to be alchemists", while not everyone can. Ergo, the majority of the people in the setting believe KM is the source of all gold, but in reality he's not. Some might even know he's not, but is still powerful enough they lie. Or there's lots of gold, not just his, and he's a buffoon and people ignore him (slight tweak from your example, but also on the "lots of gold" front).

Your second is... well exactly. Fluff written that is about as meaningful as "men like to watch football", which lots of people say and believe but is not nearly always true. If the fluff doesn't match the crunch, the fluff is wrong, much like an alien writing about our world talking about how we believe the earth is flat.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Your second is... well exactly. Fluff written that is about as meaningful as "men like to watch football", which lots of people say and believe but is not nearly always true. If the fluff doesn't match the crunch, the fluff is wrong, much like an alien writing about our world talking about how we believe the earth is flat.

Or maybe the crunch is wrong. They're certainly in disagreement, but I disagree that we should prioritize crunch over fluff...especially since it's not really easy to tell the two apart. "Fluff", I've come to believe, means "those parts of the text I want to disregard right now" in most online discussions.

[Telok]

A current example of a fluff/crunch disconnect that I saw nail another player was the d&d 5e bard class fluff. The class description says something about bards mixing performance & spellcasting, the magic rules of course don't have any allowances for that. We had a player who read the class fluff first & didn't carefully parse the magic rules, plus a novice DM who played as close to RAW as possible with a very "if it doesn't explicitly say you can then you can't" view of things.

Naturally when the player wanted to try the "weave a charm person spell into a song" that the class fluff included them it backfired horribly. There's no concealing the casting without a sorcerer metamagic, several npcs made the arcana check to identify the spell, and the target having failed the save causing the bard snap from "random stranger" to "buddy & ally" shouted that they were being mind controlled (since the spell doesn't say that the target doesn't know they're charmed). Cue the lynch mob and the inevitable fluff/crunch debate.

Could it have been handled better? Yeah. DM could have house ruled or stopped to detail exact rules for the player. Player could have compared class description to magic rules to check for omissions or done online research in to the rules. But neither was a rules expert and the DM wasn't confident of their ability to house rule well. So everyone got kicked out rp mode into a rules discussion based on a fluff/crunch mismatch.

Now, as an isolated incident its not too big a deal. People & systems were just communicating imperfectly. It happens. But one result was that the player stopped using magic by the fluff and in the fiction. They started using magic as a pure rules structure because they got burned trying to go with the fiction of the magic system. After that every time spellcasting came up the player dropped all rp & went straight to "the rules say" (also had gone & very carefully read the PH magic section).

My understanding of the core idea of the start of the thread is that this effect of dropping the fluff/fiction because there are conflicts with rules & subsystems happens so often with D&D 4e and Quertus that they can't play 4e from the rp & fiction level, that they have to engage with the game on a rules level first before they can even attempt to apply any rp or fiction to it. Therefore the claim "4e isn't a rpg" comes more from having to play o the rules, then find a fiction to fit that instance, then attempt rp with that fiction. Where the statement "4e is a rpg" would be true if they could have a consistent fiction of sufficient verisimilitude that they could rp without having to stop and... re-fiction (ok, need something better there) to match what the rules allow.

I can see how it happens that a person can have a metric for "is/isn't a rpg" and how their experiences with D&D 4e could fall short. In our group rp in 4e was strictly out of combat (and we had dumped the skill challenges because the rules for them were borked, we'd failed some intentionally to get more easy fights for more xp & loot) because we didn't have a believable or acceptable fiction that matched the rules. We just accepted that there was (for us) an un-crossable gulf between the rules and rp. We didn't, and I don't, take any real stance on if 4e was or wasn't a rpg or anything since "role playing game" isn't really strongly defined.

I've seen people rp in those themed Monopoly re-skins, and I've seen the old Talisman board game categorized as an rpg.

[NichG]

Or maybe the crunch is wrong. They're certainly in disagreement, but I disagree that we should prioritize crunch over fluff...especially since it's not really easy to tell the two apart. "Fluff", I've come to believe, means "those parts of the text I want to disregard right now" in most online discussions.

Yes. From a design stance basically all it means is 'there's an inconsistency here, and if I want to resolve it I need to modify some things'. You could modify the crunch, modify the fluff, or modify both. The only thing that's excluded if you want to avoid that inconsistency existing at the system level is modifying nothing.

Though practically speaking, what often happens is that rather than resolving the inconsistency at the system level, it gets resolved at the table level - e.g. the players/GM are asked to ignore the inconsistency or navigate around it in such a way so that it never comes up or at least is never important, which then ends up placing a metagame cognitive burden on the players and GM. So another way of looking at this is trying to locate and minimize the creation of that kind of burden at the system design level, rather than just asking the table to absorb it.

[TexAvery]

Or maybe the crunch is wrong. They're certainly in disagreement, but I disagree that we should prioritize crunch over fluff...especially since it's not really easy to tell the two apart. "Fluff", I've come to believe, means "those parts of the text I want to disregard right now" in most online discussions.

I suspect you know the actual meaning of fluff and crunch, and how rather easy it is to tell apart "King Moneybags has the only gold mines" and alchemists having a lead-to-gold ability at level 3. You might not like that difference, but you know it. No one calls Wildshape fluff; no one calls the existence of Waterdeep crunch.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yes. From a design stance basically all it means is 'there's an inconsistency here, and if I want to resolve it I need to modify some things'. You could modify the crunch, modify the fluff, or modify both. The only thing that's excluded if you want to avoid that inconsistency existing at the system level is modifying nothing.

Though practically speaking, what often happens is that rather than resolving the inconsistency at the system level, it gets resolved at the table level - e.g. the players/GM are asked to ignore the inconsistency or navigate around it in such a way so that it never comes up or at least is never important, which then ends up placing a metagame cognitive burden on the players and GM. So another way of looking at this is trying to locate and minimize the creation of that kind of burden at the system design level, rather than just asking the table to absorb it.

In my experience, the inconsistency comes from one (or many! blame is not conserved, after all) of the following (plus probably others I've overlooked):
1. False advertising. Not at the marketing level, but at the ability level. I'm reminded of the 3e monk being billed as something like the best martial artist possible. It didn't live up to that. Or the 3e Toughness feat, which...stank. Anything that says "take this to be great at X"...but then doesn't do that. This is a system error.

2. Over-literal interpretation. Usually this comes from taking superlatives literally, instead of seriously. Sure, King Midas doesn't have a literal monopoly on gold from his one mine. He's got a strong monopoly, and the amount that alchemists can make is (relatively) small and inefficient, and alchemists who can do so are rare (PCs are special!). This one's shared--taking things literally literally is a bad way to read any document. People aren't computers. But designers shouldn't be so overblown and absolute about things. However, see Note 1.

3. "Bad" settings. Often as a result of long accretion (CF Forgotten Realms, which has the cruft of multiple editions causing dissonance daily), but also caused by setting writers who haven't read the rules (or vice versa) or DMs (many settings and incongruous setting elements are due to DMs adding them, not any kind of system design). Again, see Note 1.

4. Over-optimization. Where over in this case means "more than intended". Settings are designed around a certain vision of how things should work. As time wears on and optimizers optimize, they find "tricks"[2] and new writers publish more things, which inevitably causes creep. As optimizers optimize and push for more power, designers power creep in response. And it spirals. This happens at the smaller scale with DMs--when your party can routinely beat up on a (published) god, you need to start throwing more and more at them, which means that settings fall apart. Again, shared responsibility. But largely on the part of the tables to realize "this is more than the setting was designed for" and either design a new setting[3] or stop the spiral.

5. Motivated reading and people looking for inconsistencies. People find what they're looking for. If you read "carefully" enough and run it all through your logic chopper enough, you can find inconsistencies in anything. Real life very much included. This is entirely on the people doing the reading.

So in general, I don't think this is all (or even mostly) on the system designer's shoulders. A lot rests on the setting writers, who are usually DMs, because running a campaign is building a setting, whether you use a published one as a base or not, even if following a module. Unless you're railroading harder than the Western Union. And a lot rests on the people doing the interpreting in the moment, ie the players.

Setting a culture of reading for meaning and one that doesn't prioritize literal reading over everything is, in my mind, key. Because if literal reading (ie RAW) is king, then there's no chance of consistency. Any difference in mechanics or wording will get blown up; there can never be a "true" balance. Every "loophole" will get exploited, and no setting can survive that. Instead, read the text seriously, but not literally. Read in context.

Additionally, I have control over what I do. I don't have any influence over the designers. So I prefer to focus on things I can control, which are mostly not system-design issues. Unless I want to get off my lazy hind end and finish the rewrites of elements I've started...but no. That takes effort. (Not blue, because true).

[1] Any system that can stop either of these is a system I don't want to have anything to do with, because it has to be locked down incredibly tight. One setting, with all the pieces detailed with a fine-tooth comb, focus-grouped to oblivion. In fact, to really stop #2, you'd have to publish voluminous documents on how exactly to read each and every element. No thanks.

[2] most of which are...laughable...as far as honest interpretations go. Most rules lawyering you find on this forum would make lawyers (not exactly an easily-shamed group) feel ashamed to be associated with you. And would get you sanctioned by a court if you try it there. It's pure munchkinry, and no amount of careful writing can stop that. Because the actual words and meaning have little to do with any of it.

[3] because the way things break depends on the individual tables, so it's rather hard to do this more globally. Although you can publish a bunch of settings and carefully document their intended power ranges...if you can find a way to talk about such things in a comprehensible fashion. And someone will always find a way to break things.

I suspect you know the actual meaning of fluff and crunch, and how rather easy it is to tell apart "King Moneybags has the only gold mines" and alchemists having a lead-to-gold ability at level 3. You might not like that difference, but you know it. No one calls Wildshape fluff; no one calls the existence of Waterdeep crunch.

Sure, there are obvious ones. But strawmen are strawmen, easily set aflame. Most of the "fluff" vs "crunch" isn't exactly like that. It's the heap problem from a different angle--there's no clear dividing line, and most crucially no statement that there is a difference within the rules themselves. Nothing tells you to treat one piece of text differently than another[4]. So any attempt to do so is a change to the rules. Which is fine, mind, but we should be clear about what we're doing. Fluff and crunch (as much as they can be defined) are on the same level. It's all text; changing descriptions is just as liable to cause inconsistencies as changing numerical or dice stuff. More so, in fact. Which militates towards changing the numbers, not the descriptions, at least in my mind.

[4] except in 4e, with it's different typography and an explicit statement that stuff in italics in ability headers can be rewritten as desired. Oh, and I guess that monks can, with some range, call their monk weapons different things in 5e.

[NichG]

In my experience, the inconsistency comes from one (or many! blame is not conserved, after all) of the following (plus probably others I've overlooked):
1. False advertising. Not at the marketing level, but at the ability level. I'm reminded of the 3e monk being billed as something like the best martial artist possible. It didn't live up to that. Or the 3e Toughness feat, which...stank. Anything that says "take this to be great at X"...but then doesn't do that. This is a system error.

2. Over-literal interpretation. Usually this comes from taking superlatives literally, instead of seriously. Sure, King Midas doesn't have a literal monopoly on gold from his one mine. He's got a strong monopoly, and the amount that alchemists can make is (relatively) small and inefficient, and alchemists who can do so are rare (PCs are special!). This one's shared--taking things literally literally is a bad way to read any document. People aren't computers. But designers shouldn't be so overblown and absolute about things. However, see Note 1.

3. "Bad" settings. Often as a result of long accretion (CF Forgotten Realms, which has the cruft of multiple editions causing dissonance daily), but also caused by setting writers who haven't read the rules (or vice versa) or DMs (many settings and incongruous setting elements are due to DMs adding them, not any kind of system design). Again, see Note 1.

4. Over-optimization. Where over in this case means "more than intended". Settings are designed around a certain vision of how things should work. As time wears on and optimizers optimize, they find "tricks"[2] and new writers publish more things, which inevitably causes creep. As optimizers optimize and push for more power, designers power creep in response. And it spirals. This happens at the smaller scale with DMs--when your party can routinely beat up on a (published) god, you need to start throwing more and more at them, which means that settings fall apart. Again, shared responsibility. But largely on the part of the tables to realize "this is more than the setting was designed for" and either design a new setting[3] or stop the spiral.

5. Motivated reading and people looking for inconsistencies. People find what they're looking for. If you read "carefully" enough and run it all through your logic chopper enough, you can find inconsistencies in anything. Real life very much included. This is entirely on the people doing the reading.

So in general, I don't think this is all (or even mostly) on the system designer's shoulders. A lot rests on the setting writers, who are usually DMs, because running a campaign is building a setting, whether you use a published one as a base or not, even if following a module. Unless you're railroading harder than the Western Union. And a lot rests on the people doing the interpreting in the moment, ie the players.

Setting a culture of reading for meaning and one that doesn't prioritize literal reading over everything is, in my mind, key. Because if literal reading (ie RAW) is king, then there's no chance of consistency. Any difference in mechanics or wording will get blown up; there can never be a "true" balance. Every "loophole" will get exploited, and no setting can survive that. Instead, read the text seriously, but not literally. Read in context.

'Who it's on' isn't really a useful thing to me. 'What you can do' is more important. If people are actively looking for inconsistencies, find them, you're aware of that, and then you don't do something about it, then maybe it wasn't on you originally, but you certainly had options to deal with it which you chose not to take.

I think part of why these sorts of discussions become very tired and sour is that 'everyone needs to adapt and work together for game to function' (which is true) becomes overextended to 'I want to do my thing the way I want, and I want you to work to make my thing function' a lot of the time. That might not literally be the GM asking the players to always be the ones suspending disbelief, it could be someone who is a big fan of a system always asking other people to shore up the bad parts of the system or things like that.

That's why I prefer e.g. a culture of: 'if you find an infinite loop exploit, we'll patch it' over 'if you find an infinite loop exploit, please don't use it'.

Additionally, I have control over what I do. I don't have any influence over the designers. So I prefer to focus on things I can control, which are mostly not system-design issues. Unless I want to get off my lazy hind end and finish the rewrites of elements I've started...but no. That takes effort. (Not blue, because true).

I mean, I see anyone running a game as being fully empowered to act and relate to that game as a designer. Even better, everyone even playing a game should be empowered in that way, though that itself can have a cognitive load that players may not want. Yes, it takes some effort, but that becomes a choice of the effort you're willing to take versus the effort you're asking players at the table to make to conform to a dissonant system. I think it's completely fair for a player to say 'you know, I don't want to spend the effort to keep what the mechanics are telling me separate from what you're telling me about the system, so I'd like to find another campaign to join that asks less of me'.

Edit: I'm reminded of what happens in failing companies. There's a death spiral of 'okay, the way we're doing things isn't working as well as it needs to so we need everyone to put forward more effort, work overtime, etc', leading to people quitting, leading to even more stress on the people remaining, etc. Yes, it might be that the group can collectively put forward more effort to cover the extra cognitive effort and still roleplay, but that doesn't justify not spending the effort to fix it and reduce the effort of everyone at the table from that point on.

[PhoenixPhyre]

My point was more that the fixes tend to be setting or fiction side, not system side.

And there will always be discrepancies. The map is not the territory, the UI isn't the thing being controlled. So mostly a culture of not sweating the small stuff works just fine. And not looking for discrepancies, especially with an eye to exploit them.

[Max_Killjoy]

I'd blame poorly-written rules and the writers of those rules, for poorly-written rules.

Not a laundry list of excuses.

And the solution is to fix the rules, not to ask everyone else to "be better" at something.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'd blame poorly-written rules and the writers of those rules, for poorly-written rules.

Not a laundry list of excuses.

And the solution is to fix the rules, not to ask everyone else to "be better" at something.

How can changing the written rules fix
1) people who didn't read the rules
2) people who did read the rules, but interpreted them in screwy ways
2.5) people who read the rules and decided they wanted to change something for whatever reason
3) people who read the rules and intentionally interpreted them in ways that cause contradiction
4) people who built settings that conflicted with the rules, if read in a particular way
4.5) DMs who decided that something would be cool, but not being omni-historians and omni-experts, left a loophole that someone searching for contradiction could jump on and yell about[1]
5) people who read the rules, but didn't apply them to the game in exactly the same way you thought they should, thus creating an "inconsistency" in the shared fiction
6) people who are using rules as weapons to get what they want instead of talking about them like rational adults
6) etc?

All of these are the primary (in my experience) sources of inconsistencies. Actual inconsistencies between elements of the printed rules? Not a big deal. They occur, sure, but they're lost in the sea of other ones that the developers have absolutely no control over. No one can control how others use their printed rules. Even if you had the most railroaded, locked-down system imaginable. As soon as it gets out into the hands of real people, they'll start using it in ways you never dreamed of and have absolutely zero control over. And in fact, if you lock things down real tight you'll get more inconsistencies and broken stuff in real use than a more low-precision, "loose" system would. Tight definitions necessarily cause fragility.

Ability-to-change analysis is not making excuses. It's figuring out who can make the necessary changes. And it may not be changes to the printed rules (but it may be).

Realizing this fact--that no amount of rules can fix "bad games" or "bad dms" or "bad tables", because those are generally bad for reasons completely separate from the printed rules themselves--is key. Understanding that all functional tables have trust between the DM (if one exists for that system) and the players and between the players themselves, and that most of the operational rules are set at the table, not by the developers means that you can actually write systems that do their job to help people have fun. The solution to malicious people is not playing with them. Not trying to force them back in line via the ruleset. The solution to inconsistencies is generally one of "ignore them, they're completely irrelevant to what we're doing and certainly don't go looking for them" or "understand your ruleset (including non-written rules) and its effect on the content you're trying to build". Or both.

Heck, I'm reading a book on interface design that stresses that you shouldn't design around malicious or incompetent actors. Design for the people who are using things honestly, with intent to do the right thing. And then help them do so. Sure, don't put exposed edges where it's easy to get at (don't intentionally lay traps for users), but don't assume malice or incompetence. From a technical standpoint in interface implementation, you have to put safeguards against malicious actors and data corruption. But those safeguards are secondary from a design standpoint. You don't assume that your users are malicious or incompetent and try to correct them. Warding off malicious actors is for your authentication and authorization system; once they're on the other side of the air-tight hatch, you can't really do much anyway. So don't make your real users' lives harder unnecessarily.

[1] which, being cynical, seems to me like the dominant source of "inconsistencies" on the forums--people looking for loopholes so they can point out flaws in others' work. Ie nitpicking.

[Willie the Duck]

I don't think it is an either-or situation. Games, like any other human creation, are imperfect. They have flaws, limitations, constraints -- some of which are remediable (better editing, thinking through combinations and downstream consequences), and some of which aren't (player base has divergent and incompatible demands on system, initial premise has inherent contradictions, etc.).

How much this is a problem that ought to be solved is also something of a balancing act. Purity of game experience is a goal that must be weighed against the opportunity costs. There are games that, within to confines of a specific (stated or otherwise) goal, are relatively pure and free of contradiction (at least as well as they can be, given some of the bad-actor effects PhoenixPhyre mentions). GURPS, with all the bells and whistles and all the charts and modifiers, does a pretty solid job of creating a game experience with relatively strong real-world-sim vibe and realistic combat-lethality (so if that's the game you want to play, it works) without a lot of contradictions. That way of playing GURPS*, however, is pretty darn cumbersome** and lots of people end up not really enjoying it. Same with many other 'purely ____' games like Fate or Dramasystem. In the (checks math, good lord!) 35 years of online gaming discussions I've done, I've run into dozens of dozens of people's attempts at making games that were absolutely pure in one regard or another, and even the best of them usually ended up in the 'innovative, but I wouldn't really want to play it for long' category. Purity; playability; appeal; and of course time to design, test, and write all seem to be competing needs when it comes to making an RPG.
*GURPS, in total, is a perfectly good game to play, but it usually involves paring it down to what works for you, in which case the purity/non-inconsistency value of the system varies wildly.
**you have 1-second rounds where characters do nothing but recover their axe swings, or the like

There seems to be sweet spot in the messy middle that makes a saleable game. West End Star Wars was a solid top-5 most popular game during it's heyday, and is a good example in my mind of that spot. There are plenty of contradictions and sometimes people even had 'I can't create the thing that the fiction of the game world suggests I should be making' moments, but overall audiences could work through the kinks and keep on trucking with it. Something like Shadowrun (perspective from:1e or 2e), OTOH, was very much in the 'we'll play it for a while because the premise is so nifty, but complain bitterly about the rules the whole time.' And then there's D&D, of course, which is an ur-example of the dichotomy -- yes it has some problems (both to the core, and each edition's immediate foibles), but much of that runs into the divergent and incompatible preference on how to fix issue.

[kyoryu]

I would say that Fate exists mostly in that messy middle, at least as written. Many people over-emphasize the "fate point economy" stuff, but really 80% of the game or more works like any trad game.

Dramasystem is far, far more pure in that regard (as would be Fiasco).

Fred even said he considers Fate to be a argument against GNS theory.

[kyoryu]

Realizing this fact--that no amount of rules can fix "bad games" or "bad dms" or "bad tables", because those are generally bad for reasons completely separate from the printed rules themselves--is key. Understanding that all functional tables have trust between the DM (if one exists for that system) and the players and between the players themselves, and that most of the operational rules are set at the table, not by the developers means that you can actually write systems that do their job to help people have fun. The solution to malicious people is not playing with them. Not trying to force them back in line via the ruleset. The solution to inconsistencies is generally one of "ignore them, they're completely irrelevant to what we're doing and certainly don't go looking for them" or "understand your ruleset (including non-written rules) and its effect on the content you're trying to build". Or both.

Heck, I'm reading a book on interface design that stresses that you shouldn't design around malicious or incompetent actors. Design for the people who are using things honestly, with intent to do the right thing. And then help them do so. Sure, don't put exposed edges where it's easy to get at (don't intentionally lay traps for users), but don't assume malice or incompetence. From a technical standpoint in interface implementation, you have to put safeguards against malicious actors and data corruption. But those safeguards are secondary from a design standpoint. You don't assume that your users are malicious or incompetent and try to correct them. Warding off malicious actors is for your authentication and authorization system; once they're on the other side of the air-tight hatch, you can't really do much anyway. So don't make your real users' lives harder unnecessarily.

[1] which, being cynical, seems to me like the dominant source of "inconsistencies" on the forums--people looking for loopholes so they can point out flaws in others' work. Ie nitpicking.

Did we just become best friends? Seriously, all of this.

Any sufficiently large (especially crunchy) system has millions of possible interactions. There's almost no way something that would be reasonably considered an "exploit" won't slip through the cracks in some way (and some of them also require specific interpretations that may not be objective).

Even if you could bulletproof the game sufficiently, doing so would require a lot of hard constraints that would reduce the possibility space a ton. Just saying "no, don't do that" is really an easier option at a table that is cooperative and trust-based. Competitive games are another story entirely, of course.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Even if you could bulletproof the game sufficiently, doing so would require a lot of hard constraints that would reduce the possibility space a ton. Just saying "no, don't do that" is really an easier option at a table that is cooperative and trust-based. Competitive games are another story entirely, of course.

And I don't want to play an RPG at a table that's not cooperative and trust-based. No <game> is better than bad <game>. I don't competitive, so that's completely outside my desired set. Too often, people import concepts that are fundamentally based in competitive games into cooperative ones. And bad things result.

[Max_Killjoy]

Did we just become best friends? Seriously, all of this.

Any sufficiently large (especially crunchy) system has millions of possible interactions. There's almost no way something that would be reasonably considered an "exploit" won't slip through the cracks in some way (and some of them also require specific interpretations that may not be objective).

Even if you could bulletproof the game sufficiently, doing so would require a lot of hard constraints that would reduce the possibility space a ton. Just saying "no, don't do that" is really an easier option at a table that is cooperative and trust-based. Competitive games are another story entirely, of course.

Unfortunately, what I see too often in these discussions is using the fact that no rule system can be perfect, that no system can solve actively bad tables or players... as a sort of backhanded assertion that no rule system should therefore be held accountable for itself being actively bad... or as an assertion that bad rules don't need to be fixed.

As if the function of the mechanics of the game was ONLY to constrain characters or their players.

It's a combination of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and the Rule Zero Fallacy.

[kyoryu]

And I don't want to play an RPG at a table that's not cooperative and trust-based. No <game> is better than bad <game>. I don't competitive, so that's completely outside my desired set. Too often, people import concepts that are fundamentally based in competitive games into cooperative ones. And bad things result.

I suspect some of that is due to playing with people that are intentionally or not bad actors.

Even if someone has the best of intentions, being closed to ideas from others can make them a bad factor at the table, doubly so if they're the GM.

Like a lot of "railroading", I'm convinced, is by GMs who don't believe they are. They just don't see how anything except for what they came up with could work, and so make it not work, rather than going "huh, okay, how could this work?"

So I think you either get players that can't accept other input (no, your idea doesn't work in this case), or ones that have dealt with GMs like this, and so have learned to not trust, and so want more and stricter rules to control these bad factors - even when they don't know they're bad.

Unfortunately, what I see too often in these discussions is using the fact that no rule system can be perfect, that no system can solve actively bad tables or players... as a sort of backhanded assertion that no rule system should therefore be held accountable for itself being actively bad... or as an assertion that bad rules don't need to be fixed.

As if the function of the mechanics of the game was ONLY to constrain characters or their players.

It's a combination of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and the Rule Zero Fallacy.

I mean I don't disagree with that at all.

Is the "bad" rule some combination of edge cases? Or is it something core? I'm okay with patches and "don't do that" for the first, but not the second.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Unfortunately, what I see too often in these discussions is using the fact that no rule system can be perfect, that no system can solve actively bad tables or players... as a sort of backhanded assertion that no rule system should therefore be held accountable for itself being actively bad... or as an assertion that bad rules don't need to be fixed.

As if the function of the mechanics of the game was ONLY to constrain characters or their players.

It's a combination of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and the Rule Zero Fallacy.

Accepting reality is important. Accepting that yes, imperfections will exist, is important. And that those imperfections, generally, aren't important as long as people trust each other.

I'm really tired of people claiming that X rule is bad, when what they generally mean is one of "I don't like X rule" or "X rule doesn't do what I want." This thread and the core "metric" that started it? Is entirely that. Someone's subjective taste being presented as an objective fact. To be clear--although this is utterly impractical and won't happen, I would strongly prefer if people retired the words "bad" and "good" when talking about RPGs that aren't FATAL or that Racial Holy War crap. Because those smuggle in assumptions of objectivity where no such thing exists.

Sure, we should fix bad things. But first we have to agree that the thing is actually bad, not merely not to someone's taste. Because lots of what people here call "systems being actively bad" are just that. Matters of pure taste.

Oh, and claiming you want developers to fix bad systems is one of the most pointless things you can do on a forum. Because they don't read and don't care, and most of the systems in question are completely abandoned and even if they did change things, that won't change a darn thing about how people actually play.

I suspect some of that is due to playing with people that are intentionally or not bad actors.

Even if someone has the best of intentions, being closed to ideas from others can make them a bad factor at the table, doubly so if they're the GM.

Like a lot of "railroading", I'm convinced, is by GMs who don't believe they are. They just don't see how anything except for what they came up with could work, and so make it not work, rather than going "huh, okay, how could this work?"

So I think you either get players that can't accept other input (no, your idea doesn't work in this case), or ones that have dealt with GMs like this, and so have learned to not trust, and so want more and stricter rules to control these bad factors - even when they don't know they're bad.

I used to be like this. Then I realized that doing so (trying to control bad actors by rules) ended up just spiraling and either not fixing anything and just kludging up the game for those who weren't bad actors or even made more bad actors by creating a culture of nit-picking and rules-lawyering and loophole-hunting. Can't solve an OOC problem with IC rules.

I also realized that lots of what I was thinking of as "bad actors" or "bad rules" were really just "people not acting like I wanted them to" or "rules that weren't to my taste." In which case the solution is the same--find or start a group with people who do act in ways I enjoy and with rules that are to my taste. Not try to change them, because they were having fun with their ways and it was I that was being disruptive.

[Satinavian]

My point was more that the fixes tend to be setting or fiction side, not system side.

I generally find changes on the system side easier. Making houserules is not that difficult and sudden changes to the setting are usually more difficult for the collective imagination and the running campaign than just changing rules.

So mostly a culture of not sweating the small stuff works just fine. And not looking for discrepancies, especially with an eye to exploit them.

It is always a tradeoff. Correcting some inconsistency is work, usually requires discussion with the whole group and then people have to remember the change. That work is not always worth it.

Aside from that there are a lot of actually bad rules out there. Most of them are bad because they don't achieve what they were intended for. Others are bad because people always disagree what they actually mean or because they directly contradict other rules of the same level. I would be more reluctant to call systems bad, but rules ? Rules can be bad.


Now towards inconsistencies. Inconsistencies are rarely the result of bad rules. Most often they are the results of rule designers and setting designers not working together or not particularly caring for each others work.
The second common problem is scaling. Rules have to be easy to use and can't be mathematically too complex but that comes at the price of a relatively narrow margin of situations with reasonable results. It is like describing the world with linear approximation only and then complaining that the numbers don't match.

[Willie the Duck]

Unfortunately, what I see too often in these discussions is using the fact that no rule system can be perfect, that no system can solve actively bad tables or players... as a sort of backhanded assertion that no rule system should therefore be held accountable for itself being actively bad... or as an assertion that bad rules don't need to be fixed.

Well sure, that shows up a lot in discussions. And then conversely there's often you or an equivalent individual wanting to make sure people know they think the rules are bad and that the people who designed them should feel bad. Both exist and are appropriate for the discussion, depending of course on what exactly the purpose of the individual discussion actually is. It takes all kinds and all kinds of positions and arguments and the boards are richer for having them all.

Accepting reality is important. Accepting that yes, imperfections will exist, is important. And that those imperfections, generally, aren't important as long as people trust each other.

I don't necessarily disagree, but again I think both can be true. Reasonable gamers working together usually can make any system work, while at the same time one can wish for better systems (or a given system to work better.

I'm really tired of people claiming that X rule is bad, when what they generally mean is one of "I don't like X rule" or "X rule doesn't do what I want." This thread and the core "metric" that started it? Is entirely that. Someone's subjective taste being presented as an objective fact. To be clear--although this is utterly impractical and won't happen, I would strongly prefer if people retired the words "bad" and "good" when talking about RPGs that aren't FATAL or that Racial Holy War crap. Because those smuggle in assumptions of objectivity where no such thing exists.

Sure, we should fix bad things. But first we have to agree that the thing is actually bad, not merely not to someone's taste. Because lots of what people here call "systems being actively bad" are just that. Matters of pure taste.

There absolutely is a lot of this kind of behavior on these boards. No argument. Pissing matches are fun and territory defending is fun and nuanced arguments are hard. Not helping is that our hobby has a hegemon game system that doesn't serve a number of preferences all that well, yet people feel compelled to keep using it. Also compounded by an edition of that game (to which the OP has issue) being a wild divergence which suits a Venn group which doesn't greatly overlap those suited to the totality of that hegemon system. That does not mean that there are never times where System X (positioned to serve game style Y) doesn't have rule-system Z which doesn't serve Y as well as it should, and this all is great fodder for discussion).

Oh, and claiming you want developers to fix bad systems is one of the most pointless things you can do on a forum. Because they don't read and don't care, and most of the systems in question are completely abandoned and even if they did change things, that won't change a darn thing about how people actually play.

Everything here is pointless. We are spinning our wheels no matter what we discuss here. The entire board (well, the gaming sections of it) are people who like silly little elfgames and want to spend more time thinking about silly little elfgames more than they can really devote to playing silly little elfgames and thus come here to bask in the presence of other people with the same passions towards no particular end. The developers are not here and honestly that's a mark in their favor in my book. Them coming here and thinking that we were representative of their general buyer-base would be reckless on their part (and I deeply suspect some of the miss-steps 4e development took, in terms of what their base wanted, was thinking that the complaints levelled at 3e on Wizards.com were representative). So yes claiming or even calling for the developers to change things here (certainly as opposed to organizing write-in campaigns before the next survey release, or similar) is pointless, so is everything else here. We're still going to do it because this is our passion.

[kyoryu]

I used to be like this. Then I realized that doing so (trying to control bad actors by rules) ended up just spiraling and either not fixing anything and just kludging up the game for those who weren't bad actors or even made more bad actors by creating a culture of nit-picking and rules-lawyering and loophole-hunting. Can't solve an OOC problem with IC rules.

EXACTLY.

I also realized that lots of what I was thinking of as "bad actors" or "bad rules" were really just "people not acting like I wanted them to" or "rules that weren't to my taste." In which case the solution is the same--find or start a group with people who do act in ways I enjoy and with rules that are to my taste. Not try to change them, because they were having fun with their ways and it was I that was being disruptive.

I think there's really four groups of "bad actors":

1. People that want different things. Compromise/negotiate, one side agrees to try the other's thing (I think of it almost as a separate game), or don't play together.

2. People that are closed to input. These people are frustrating because if it's not what they want/expect, IT'S WRONG. These are obnoxious as players and can be deadly as GMs, unless the group is okay with being railroaded. Lots of times these GMs don't realize they're railroading, which adds complexity. This is hard as it's almost a cognitive bias kind of thing that has to be dealt with.

3. Behavioral issues. These are people that are acting in good intent, but really have some behavioral issues that need to be addressed - mild anger, over-arguing rules (which can overlap with group 2), creepy behavior, etc. If it works, set firm guidelines and give them the "you are welcome, but your behavior isn't" speech. If that's not possible (their behavior is driving others away), then give them a boot, explain why, and suggest you may be opening to playing with them in the future with a different group provided they follow the behavioral guidelines laid out.

3. Actual bad actors. People literally disrupting the game, severe anger issues, people trying to ruin it for others, etc. Just boot them.

For "bad rules", I've always used the heuristic of "once you can argue for it, you're in a good position to change it." Especially with major-ish games, flat out broken rules are pretty uncommon. It's more often "this isn't the way I want it to work", as you've said.