In praise of Heroic power-scale play

[Telok]

I've been in enough games, both D&D-like and not, to know that if the GM wants you to be murderhobos with no agency beyond going somewhere and killing something, they will do so. It's just that other games can maybe probably sometimes have tools for you to try and break the mold.

Funny thing, I think murder-hoboing comes about equally from bith directions. The DM can quash or force it for sure (most systems), but players often seem to go out of their way to avoid anything remotely involving talking to NPCs if it isn't buying gear or "that quest dude in that one town". Yeah, I really had a player say that one time in a sandbox game with very few defined "quest' situations. I couldn't even figure out what he was talking about becaise he couldn't point to a town on a map or name/describe an NPC.

Generally if the game lacks any sort of reputation or social bearing/status rules & effects I find that most non-DM players who are long term mainly 3e & later D&D, will only un-hobo if the DM actively pushes something in the setting that does it. They'll go around killing a dozen major dragons, but only ever talk to NPCs to buy/get more gear & maybe find the next dragon. They pop back into a city they left 6 months and 12 levels ago now decked out in a fortune of magic items, sleep in a cheap inn on the edge of town, buy potions & diamonds & ****, then fade back into the wilderness. It goes down in history as "this year a bunch of dragons on the continent died and all their treasure disappeared" and the PCs are... murder hobos.

Be sure, a lot is with how the DM runs the setting too, but that's leading into some ideas I have for a different thread.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Funny thing, I think murder-hoboing comes about equally from bith directions. The DM can quash or force it for sure (most systems), but players often seem to go out of their way to avoid anything remotely involving talking to NPCs if it isn't buying gear or "that quest dude in that one town". Yeah, I really had a player say that one time in a sandbox game with very few defined "quest' situations. I couldn't even figure out what he was talking about becaise he couldn't point to a town on a map or name/describe an NPC.

Generally if the game lacks any sort of reputation or social bearing/status rules & effects I find that most non-DM players who are long term mainly 3e & later D&D, will only un-hobo if the DM actively pushes something in the setting that does it. They'll go around killing a dozen major dragons, but only ever talk to NPCs to buy/get more gear & maybe find the next dragon. They pop back into a city they left 6 months and 12 levels ago now decked out in a fortune of magic items, sleep in a cheap inn on the edge of town, buy potions & diamonds & ****, then fade back into the wilderness. It goes down in history as "this year a bunch of dragons on the continent died and all their treasure disappeared" and the PCs are... murder hobos.

Be sure, a lot is with how the DM runs the setting too, but that's leading into some ideas I have for a different thread.

Oddly, I've had exactly 1 murder hobo. And he lasted one session. I've never had any issue with players not buying into the setting. In fact, they often buy in way more than I expect them to. I've had a lot of rather brutal characters, but they definitely interacted with NPCs and the ongoing narrative and world. They just had no compunctions about murdering the "bad guys" in lots of horrific ways. But shopkeepers? Nah.

Maybe I've just lived a charmed gaming life?

[kyoryu]

That's largely orthogonal to the question of power level, though. You can have real chances of failure even at very high levels of power. The Avengers (at least, ones like Doctor Strange or Thor) are more powerful than most people who talk about "gritty" games want D&D characters to be. But they lose at the end of Infinity War, and they lose hard. And, sure, we all knew that would get rolled back in Endgame, but the superheroic setting still produced a story where people lost. If you look at Elseworlds-type stuff that's of more limited scope, you can find even more direct examples. And you can have stories about characters who are not very powerful but still never face any real stakes.

Well, yes, that's my point. I think that gritty/etc. isn't really about "power level" directly.

[Ignimortis]

Funny thing, I think murder-hoboing comes about equally from bith directions. The DM can quash or force it for sure (most systems), but players often seem to go out of their way to avoid anything remotely involving talking to NPCs if it isn't buying gear or "that quest dude in that one town". Yeah, I really had a player say that one time in a sandbox game with very few defined "quest' situations. I couldn't even figure out what he was talking about becaise he couldn't point to a town on a map or name/describe an NPC.

Generally if the game lacks any sort of reputation or social bearing/status rules & effects I find that most non-DM players who are long term mainly 3e & later D&D, will only un-hobo if the DM actively pushes something in the setting that does it. They'll go around killing a dozen major dragons, but only ever talk to NPCs to buy/get more gear & maybe find the next dragon. They pop back into a city they left 6 months and 12 levels ago now decked out in a fortune of magic items, sleep in a cheap inn on the edge of town, buy potions & diamonds & ****, then fade back into the wilderness. It goes down in history as "this year a bunch of dragons on the continent died and all their treasure disappeared" and the PCs are... murder hobos.

Be sure, a lot is with how the DM runs the setting too, but that's leading into some ideas I have for a different thread.

That's an extremely rare experience for me, but I've heard enough reports about it.

However, in my experience, players generally get disinterested in the setting when it does not mesh with their expectations from the game. My first two 5e games back in 2014-2018 were set in a setting loosely based on medieval Europe dynamics, except south was China instead of Africa, and while the DM provided long descriptions of cultures, historical events, slightly grimderp politics, even gave us our small domain in campaign 2, etc - except nobody really cared about that stuff aside from one player. That player took center stage, and everyone else kinda tagged along trying to have fun in their own way. We weren't murderhobos, but we did have an attitude of "that guy in that city" towards things, except we were polite enough to remember the names - in part because 90% of named NPCs ended up on our hit lists for being smug and unpleasant to deal with, and you need to remember what exactly you want to shank a guy for.

I can honestly say that by 2017 onwards I mostly showed up for sessions due to a sense of obligation and unwillingness to inconvenience the DM (my character technically did have a major part in the story, but I didn't really feel able to interact with it).

The next setting the very same DM made in late 2018 was noticeably more fantastical, and by that time he was less annoyed by requests for stuff that would be derided by him as "anime BS" back in 2015. So it garnered a much warmer reception from most players (funnily enough, the player who used to be center stage left soon after the switch), and has been a mainstay ever since.

During the same time (2015-2018) I was also in a long-running VtM game with a different GM, and let's just say that the D&D DM scarcely believed me to be capable of initiative I've showed in VtM by my own description, but it was later confirmed to him by the VtM GM that I wasn't exaggerating.

[Pauly]

Well, yes, that's my point. I think that gritty/etc. isn't really about "power level" directly.

If we take Warhammer 40k, the game that literally invented the term ‘grimdark’ as an example. PCs in 40k can be some of the most overpowered and extreme characters in all of gaming. Yet if a world is burned to ashes and every soul consumed by demons, in 40k that’s a pretty quiet Thursday. You have to be changing the fate of sectors involving hundreds of worlds before you even get to the footnotes of the daily briefings.

It doesn’t matter if you’re playing a veteran space marine captain in full terminator armor or a guardsman with a lasgun, the world is gritty.

[gbaji]

I don't know if I'd define "gritty" based solely on the risk of loss/death. At least, not specifically to the PCs. I usually define gritty based on how dangerous the environment itself is to the PCs. If just basic background stuff is dangerous, then it's gritty. That stuff could be random encounters, animals wandering around threatening people, roving bands of <whatever>, etc.

Basically, if the same stuff that is a threat to, but not instantly/automatically fatal to, normal everyday people in the world is a threat to the PCs, then the game is "gritty". To me, it's about how much more capable the PCs are then just any random person in the area, if they were to pick up a weapon and fight (or even/especially in settings where there's some ever present threat and *everyone* has weapons and fights, or dies).

The Avengers? Doesn't matter that they can lose a fight, even a big one. That's never ever gritty. They are the heroes precisely because they are so much more powerful than the normal person walking down the street, that they are in an entire different level. Anything that's a threat to them at all, is something a "normal" person can't hope to manage via any means. That's heroic. Same deal with most D&D parties once they reach even 5th level or so. They are so much more powerful than a 1st level commoner, that the gap between what is a threat to one and a threat to the other is just too high to really run "gritty" well.

You *can*, but you basically have to constantly move up the level of threats to the PCs, and move them into constantly more challenging and dangerous environments to do it. And honestly, I also don't see "gritty" as including the PCs moving easily/constantly on to "new more challenging things". If your PCs travel back to where they started at 1st level, and the things that were threats then are no longer threats to them now? Not gritty. Now, if there is nowhere to go back too, or the whole world has gotten destroyed and/or more dangerous? You could pull that off (think days of future past type worlds). There are exceptions to every rule.

[RandomPeasant]

How about a dystopian hell-hole with small enclaves trying to survive millions of those 1 hp, 1 dmg, only hit on a 20... I dunno, call them demon-rats or something. Mr. Fighter, by dint of D&D being pretty well screw job on all base warriors, can rule one tiny enclave and personally battle & die from being swarmed by demon-rats while struggling to get enough of a meager harvest in that only old poeople & small children die of hunger this winter. Mythic?

I think that's getting too caught up on the specifics of the numbers and missing the broader point. Suppose we have a 3.5 Fighter, who simply cannot be damaged by low level characters, because he has DR from various sources that is larger than the amount of damage low-level opponents are capable of dealing (or that we're playing some version of the game where a natural 20 isn't an auto-hit and he has an AC of 35 or something). That guy can just walk around killing everybody. And he can do so forever.

actually powerful immortal D&D creatures in the monster manual being on cosmic cleanup duty.

But that's just admitting that you are in a Mythic setting, you're just not allowing the PCs to be mythic.

Generally if the game lacks any sort of reputation or social bearing/status rules & effects I find that most non-DM players who are long term mainly 3e & later D&D, will only un-hobo if the DM actively pushes something in the setting that does it.

Honestly, I don't find that all too surprising. Of course people will follow their incentives. If there's no social status to be gained, people won't do anything to gain social status.

If we take Warhammer 40k, the game that literally invented the term ‘grimdark’ as an example. PCs in 40k can be some of the most overpowered and extreme characters in all of gaming. Yet if a world is burned to ashes and every soul consumed by demons, in 40k that’s a pretty quiet Thursday. You have to be changing the fate of sectors involving hundreds of worlds before you even get to the footnotes of the daily briefings.

It doesn’t matter if you’re playing a veteran space marine captain in full terminator armor or a guardsman with a lasgun, the world is gritty.

It goes both ways though. In 40k, you can save the world. You can take a world that is full of demons daemons and orcs orks and clean it up and install democracy and improve standards of living and reignite the light of science and end the persecution of mutants. And that's a Mythic victory if you do it in a D&D campaign. It's just that you can run a campaign where you do that every day for a hundred years and still not have fixed even half of the worlds in the Imperium. That doesn't lessen those accomplishments, it just means that 40k exists at a scale that breaks people's brains. The Imperium has been decaying for longer than writing has existed in the real world. It will continue decaying for even longer before things come to a head.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Honestly, I don't find that all too surprising. Of course people will follow their incentives. If there's no social status to be gained, people won't do anything to gain social status.

Oddly enough, my players do it all the time, even without mechanical incentives or in fact anything other than it being "what their character would do." And the reverse--the high-charisma paladin in my Saturday game told off the guards and the head general after (justifiably, but unknown to him) killing his aide and lover in front of him, even ignoring a bona-fide assassin who was demonstrably attempting to kill a member of the royal family. Why? Because that's who he is. Despite knowing that it would be dramatically sub-optimal.

I find people who are motivated primarily by "what can I get out of it mechanically" to be people I'd rather not play with. It's a style I don't like (not something inherently wrong, mind).

[Mechalich]

It goes both ways though. In 40k, you can save the world. You can take a world that is full of demons daemons and orcs orks and clean it up and install democracy and improve standards of living and reignite the light of science and end the persecution of mutants. And that's a Mythic victory if you do it in a D&D campaign. It's just that you can run a campaign where you do that every day for a hundred years and still not have fixed even half of the worlds in the Imperium. That doesn't lessen those accomplishments, it just means that 40k exists at a scale that breaks people's brains. The Imperium has been decaying for longer than writing has existed in the real world. It will continue decaying for even longer before things come to a head.

Scale is definitely an element of this. The bigger a setting is, the more difficult it becomes to have impacts at setting scale, and the more power needed to be heroic or mythic. If there's a setting with millions of settled planets, then 'saving a planet' can still be a gritty goal, especially if there are planet destroying weapons that can come along an eliminate all life on that planet on a random Tuesday. The real problem is that because Sci-Fi Authors Have no Sense of Scale, most stupidly huge settings don't actually function and don't have institutions strong enough to hold something so absurdly massive together. This creates incongruities because the players (or their enemies) might do truly astounding things and yet have it not actually mattered, or they might do something absurdly modest and yet somehow it changes the fate of the galaxy.

[RandomPeasant]

I find people who are motivated primarily by "what can I get out of it mechanically" to be people I'd rather not play with. It's a style I don't like (not something inherently wrong, mind).

The mechanics are the game telling you what is important. If the game doesn't tell you that the social stuff matters, you really can't fault people who don't care for it. If you want social stuff to matter, make it matter.

Scale is definitely an element of this. The bigger a setting is, the more difficult it becomes to have impacts at setting scale, and the more power needed to be heroic or mythic.

But is impact "at setting scale" really what those things are about? The idea that a mechanically identical story stops being "mythic" if you add an "even bigger" to contrast it with doesn't really hold up. If a guy says that he doesn't want Thor in D&D because he thinks Thor is beyond the "heroic" power level he wants, he's not suddenly going to change his mind if Marvel releases a "Mega Thor" movie next week which reveals that there are even more powerful Norse-looking aliens out there. The objective power level does matter. It's not the only thing that matters, but it does matter.

What scale (in the specific way that 40k does it) is give you replayability. You can do a campaign where the PCs save this world, then you can do another one later in what is recognizably the same setting without needing to explicitly roll back what they did in the previous one. Because there are an infinity of problems to solve, you can keep solving problems without ever fundamentally changing the setting. It's a bit like how cop shows set in the real world work. No matter how many crimes you solve, there's always going to be another crime, so you can always keep going.

most stupidly huge settings don't actually function and don't have institutions strong enough to hold something so absurdly massive together.

Well, with 40k, that's the point. The Imperium doesn't hold together. It's just that it is so large, and takes such a long time dying, that you can have stakes that are larger than any "mythic" D&D campaign and still not alter the balance of power. A game like that isn't "not mythic" just because you can do another one like it next year.

[Drakevarg]

Think there's some trouble defining terms here. People are trying to simultaneously define the power scale of both the system, the setting, and the story and coming into conflict because it's relatively easy to find examples that don't line up on all three simultaneously.

I don't think anyone would really debate that as a setting, WH40K is gritty. It literally codifies grimdark and even if you had a mythic quest to save an entire world, another nightmare factory could steamroll the place literally the very next day and nobody in the wider setting would even notice.

That doesn't mean that you couldn't pull the camera in and tell that mythic story from the point of view of the boots on the ground for whom the stakes actually do matter, and tell a mythic story in the gritty setting.

By contrast, I don't think there's much debate that Star Wars is a fairly heroic setting, what with it being a big sweeping space opera/western/samurai/swashbuckling/pulp/war story. And yet, Rogue One is a story about the desperate struggle of a bunch of freedom fighters who all die just to give someone they don't even know a fighting chance at saving the day. And the one person from the bigger heroic setting who shows up stars in what is essentially a one-minute-long slasher film from the perspective of the normies he's up against. Pretty gritty, particularly in contrast.

You're never going to fit anything into some sweeping theory that sums up every facet of it into a single word. So a better set of conditions might be called for here.

[Psyren]

Heroic is my cup of tea as well. Having said that, I enjoy PF1's approach to Mythic - i.e. it's a temporary and plot-based power boost that you can grant to the players for a period, and then remove as needed without needing to massively rework their sheets.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Think there's some trouble defining terms here. People are trying to simultaneously define the power scale of both the system, the setting, and the story and coming into conflict because it's relatively easy to find examples that don't line up on all three simultaneously.

I don't think anyone would really debate that as a setting, WH40K is gritty. It literally codifies grimdark and even if you had a mythic quest to save an entire world, another nightmare factory could steamroll the place literally the very next day and nobody in the wider setting would even notice.

That doesn't mean that you couldn't pull the camera in and tell that mythic story from the point of view of the boots on the ground for whom the stakes actually do matter, and tell a mythic story in the gritty setting.

By contrast, I don't think there's much debate that Star Wars is a fairly heroic setting, what with it being a big sweeping space opera/western/samurai/swashbuckling/pulp/war story. And yet, Rogue One is a story about the desperate struggle of a bunch of freedom fighters who all die just to give someone they don't even know a fighting chance at saving the day. And the one person from the bigger heroic setting who shows up stars in what is essentially a one-minute-long slasher film from the perspective of the normies he's up against. Pretty gritty, particularly in contrast.

You're never going to fit anything into some sweeping theory that sums up every facet of it into a single word. So a better set of conditions might be called for here.

I was mostly talking about game styles. As in "how does this particular table play. And what kinds of stories and settings do they use." Not of systems (although some systems do some styles better than others as a general rule). And certainly not fictional stories as a whole. Or even settings as a whole.

And I've given up on grand unifying theories. These were more of definitions so I could sum up the things I like in a few words. Loose conversational shorthand, if you will.

The mechanics are the game telling you what is important. If the game doesn't tell you that the social stuff matters, you really can't fault people who don't care for it. If you want social stuff to matter, make it matter.

This is exactly the mechanics first and foremost attitude I dislike. For me, mechanics are helps. Tools to make some actions you're doing a lot easier. A shared language. Not anything truly indispensable or necessary. Just useful at times. And ignorable the rest. Games that try to force the mechanics into primacy, that demand that they be played in certain ways are games I dislike. Don't tell me, Mr rule designer, how I must play. Give me a box of tools, some prefab toys I can use or not, a framework to agree on, and then get the heck out of my way. I and my table will decide what matters to us. We don't need the rules to butt in and try to force us one way or another.

[Drakevarg]

Heroic is my cup of tea as well. Having said that, I enjoy PF1's approach to Mythic - i.e. it's a temporary and plot-based power boost that you can grant to the players for a period, and then remove as needed without needing to massively rework their sheets.

Y'know I've looked at that book once or twice, and honestly could never wrap my head around what it was trying to do.

I was mostly talking about game styles. As in "how does this particular table play. And what kinds of stories and settings do they use." Not of systems (although some systems do some styles better than others as a general rule). And certainly not fictional stories as a whole. Or even settings as a whole.

And I've given up on grand unifying theories. These were more of definitions so I could sum up the things I like in a few words. Loose conversational shorthand, if you will.

I think that's a much more useful context to express the terms in. I just feel like the conversation's bounced back and forth as to the scope under discussion and as a result kind of lost the basic thread.

[RandomPeasant]

I don't think anyone would really debate that as a setting, WH40K is gritty. It literally codifies grimdark and even if you had a mythic quest to save an entire world, another nightmare factory could steamroll the place literally the very next day and nobody in the wider setting would even notice.

Even that, I think, is a matter of perspective. There are people who are (in various iterations of the continuity) trying to save the whole setting, and who could plausibly succeed at it. There are win conditions out there for the various factions, some of which you might even argue are win conditions by the standards of sane humans. And the key (in terms of the discussion "gritty/mythic/heroic" is being used for) is that if you were to do that story, it would not involve characters who were that much more powerful than the ones who save a specific world. A story where the victory screen is "and then the Emperor woke up and fixed the Imperium" is, to a first approximation, a million times more impactful than one where the victory screen is "and then you made this particular Imperial colony a good place to live". But the protagonists aren't a million times more powerful.

This is exactly the mechanics first and foremost attitude I dislike. For me, mechanics are helps. Tools to make some actions you're doing a lot easier.

Yes, exactly. The things a game makes easy are the things that game is signaling to be important. You're not doing some noble or important thing by asking people to roleplay when the game doesn't provide any mechanical support for social interactions, you're using a bad tool to do something it wasn't designed for. You can use a flashlight as a hammer. I've done it, and I've assembled perfectly serviceable IKEA furniture that way. But having an actual hammer is better even if all you care about is the furniture and not whatever philosophical value you might place on using things for their intended purpose.

[Theoboldi]

Yes, exactly. The things a game makes easy are the things that game is signaling to be important. You're not doing some noble or important thing by asking people to roleplay when the game doesn't provide any mechanical support for social interactions, you're using a bad tool to do something it wasn't designed for. You can use a flashlight as a hammer. I've done it, and I've assembled perfectly serviceable IKEA furniture that way. But having an actual hammer is better even if all you care about is the furniture and not whatever philosophical value you might place on using things for their intended purpose.

Why does this have to be philosophical? If some people prefer certain parts of their roleplaying to be handled in freeform, while wanting more guidelines for others, that is a mere matter of preference and personal enjoyment. Insisting that a system that does not provide in-depth mechanics for an aspect of play is inherently unfitting for a game that features this aspect of play prominently has no meaning when rules are not desired at all.

To expand on your metaphor and give an example, I can roleplay a conversation with no mechanical help whatsoever, and often do so because it is fun to me. But I cannot ram a nail into a wall without the use of a tool. Treating the two scenarios as though they place equal importance on the presence of a tool does not work, because it brings in an assumption that already is contrary to what the less mechanically inclined side wants.

[Psyren]

Y'know I've looked at that book once or twice, and honestly could never wrap my head around what it was trying to do.

Short version is that it creates an entirely tangential leveling progression and powerset that you can bolt onto characters of any level, and take away again as needed. It is unlocked purely by plot and lasts until the plot removes it. You can also use it as a post-20 Epic-style progression.

For example, you could have a mid-level party be enlisted to defend a sacred grove in the Feywild First World from fiendish incursion, and the archfey there share some of the grove's fruit with the party. While in the grove, they get a massive power boost (Mythic) that they then lose once the threat has been rebuffed. This will allow the party to punch way above their weight class temporarily without you needing to hand out new character sheets to them.

Some of the Mythic abilities really should have been baseline (particularly for martials) - e.g. "I can charge past allies to reach an enemy!" or "I can use an enemy I'm grappling as a human shield!" And some of them were even baselined in 5e, e.g.: "I can share the space of a creature two sizes larger than me" and "I can move up to my speed between all my attacks" etc. But some are truly worthy of the title like being able to ignore hardness/DR when sundering things.

[Quertus]

I was mostly talking about game styles. As in "how does this particular table play.

How does that differ from “Challenge” from “8 kinds of fun”?

[PhoenixPhyre]

How does that differ from “Challenge” from “8 kinds of fun”?

Entirely. Because it's about the characters, not the players. Challenge, as a fun style, is about the real people feeling challenged.

Heroic vs gritty vs mythic is orthogonal to that. All the characters are being challenged. Or not. The question is how, and by what, and are the challenges amenable to fixes solutions that persist even if the characters move on.

[Telok]

Why does this have to be philosophical? If some people prefer certain parts of their roleplaying to be handled in freeform, while wanting more guidelines for others, that is a mere matter of preference and personal enjoyment. Insisting that a system that does not provide in-depth mechanics for an aspect of play is inherently unfitting for a game that features this aspect of play prominently has no meaning when rules are not desired at all.

Well it came out of the stuff about if it was the setting, game, or GM making things grit/hero/myth. Sort of semi-tangential since some people were describing PCs with social status using that to hero/myth with characters that were mechanically in grit.

Basically if the game mechanics lack or punish stuff then the GM may override that or insert anything that crosses their mind. Some GMs may do it as a matter of course or habit, others on a case by case basis, others may want to follow the rules. Players learn from that and tend to develop habits based on early experiences. Playing with less experienced GMs & players who were introduced to gaming from video games there is, in my experience, a tendency among most to start from a point of using and trusting the rules first.

And this ties back into the original point I made: That games with weak or no social rules or structures are dependent on the GM to make that stuff matter. D&D, being these days a game generally lacking such rules for the players to engage with, rewards murder-hobo style play with more time spent on combat and more powerful pizza characters because less freeform GMs will more often nope or ignore stuff outside the core rules.

Anyone can chime in with "well i dont play like that and players at my table dont either", but that just means they're a GM who uses freeform rp to reward the players or have homebrewed something to use instead of the weak/missing rules. This applies to any game and to and missing rules or obscure optional rules subsection.

I noted that in my area the majority of muppets & GMs are comfortable following a game's core rules, uncomfortable modifying game state based on freeform rp, and have negative opinions of homebrew & optional rules as things like "too op" or "too fiddly". Its taken years to get some of these people to start trying more rp stuff that's not codified in the rules in games I GM, and I can sometimes tell when another GM in another game has slapped them down for trying to go outside the rules. Therefore, if the games doesn't mechanically enable something and the GM isn't proactively pushing for that thing, then players revert to the things they can count on being rewarded by the game mechanics.

[Psyren]

Well it came out of the stuff about if it was the setting, game, or GM making things grit/hero/myth. Sort of semi-tangential since some people were describing PCs with social status using that to hero/myth with characters that were mechanically in grit.

Basically if the game mechanics lack or punish stuff then the GM may override that or insert anything that crosses their mind. Some GMs may do it as a matter of course or habit, others on a case by case basis, others may want to follow the rules. Players learn from that and tend to develop habits based on early experiences. Playing with less experienced GMs & players who were introduced to gaming from video games there is, in my experience, a tendency among most to start from a point of using and trusting the rules first.

And this ties back into the original point I made: That games with weak or no social rules or structures are dependent on the GM to make that stuff matter. D&D, being these days a game generally lacking such rules for the players to engage with, rewards murder-hobo style play with more time spent on combat and more powerful pizza characters because less freeform GMs will more often nope or ignore stuff outside the core rules.

Anyone can chime in with "well i dont play like that and players at my table dont either", but that just means they're a GM who uses freeform rp to reward the players or have homebrewed something to use instead of the weak/missing rules. This applies to any game and to and missing rules or obscure optional rules subsection.

I noted that in my area the majority of muppets & GMs are comfortable following a game's core rules, uncomfortable modifying game state based on freeform rp, and have negative opinions of homebrew & optional rules as things like "too op" or "too fiddly". Its taken years to get some of these people to start trying more rp stuff that's not codified in the rules in games I GM, and I can sometimes tell when another GM in another game has slapped them down for trying to go outside the rules. Therefore, if the games doesn't mechanically enable something and the GM isn't proactively pushing for that thing, then players revert to the things they can count on being rewarded by the game mechanics.

Depending on the GM to make any of the pillars matter isn't a good or bad thing, it's just a design decision. D&D relies heavily on the GM for the social and exploration pillars, and less for the combat pillar, because they (I would argue correctly) determined that combat is where newcomers to the genre would need the most help with crafting exciting challenges.

I'd further argue that it's not D&D's job to repair player trauma with bad GMs. Simply creating the space to encourage unlisted actions and checks, as D&D 5e does, is enough - eventually players will feel comfortable exploring this space with a GM who is fine with it, so long as said GM cares about their fun.

[Quertus]

Entirely. Because it's about the characters, not the players. Challenge, as a fun style, is about the real people feeling challenged.

Heroic vs gritty vs mythic is orthogonal to that. All the characters are being challenged. Or not. The question is how, and by what, and are the challenges amenable to fixes solutions that persist even if the characters move on.

That’s… huh. I guess I can see how you could read it that way. So you’re describing something I’ve always* viewed as a component of “Challenge”. Which… hmmm… while it maybe helps cement what you mean, it’s probably best to discuss your words, as “Challenge” has some strange cruft around it.

As far as “the level of challenge the game provides the characters”? I hate all three styles given. I want a mix of difficulties, that represents the character’s abilities. I want them to automatically overcome some things (like, say, the werewolf ranger finding food in a forest where game is plentiful), automatically fail at some things (said Ranger getting on the prissy Princess’s good side by carrying the dead deer back into camp while naked and covered in blood), and have various levels of challenge at other tasks (like investigating a murder, playing cat and mouse with another werewolf, or fighting a vampire).

I want different members of the same party to live at different points on the “Challenge” scale for the same encounter (the academia mage, for example, couldn’t find food in said forest, for example, but might at least have a shot at befriending rather than alienating or terrifying the Princess).

Does that response match the words you’re using, as you intend them to be used?

* or at least since that article - further back than my senile mind can safely be trusted to remember.

[NichG]

As much as I dislike describing tabletop things in terms of story, I do think at least for this gritty/heroic/mythic breakdown, 'story' is the most closely aligned place for it to reside rather than things like 'system' or 'rules' or 'character' or 'setting' or even my usual go-to words for describing a bundled tabletop experience 'game' or 'campaign'.

That's why you can't really cleanly point to a game system or a setting and say 'this is a gritty setting' without someone finding an exception that actually feels like an authentic exception. Because in the end, the setting can be subjectively gritty or mythic from different points of view. Yet its also not inherently the character either. And it depends so much on the level of abstraction used...

[Theoboldi]

Well it came out of the stuff about if it was the setting, game, or GM making things grit/hero/myth. Sort of semi-tangential since some people were describing PCs with social status using that to hero/myth with characters that were mechanically in grit.

Basically if the game mechanics lack or punish stuff then the GM may override that or insert anything that crosses their mind. Some GMs may do it as a matter of course or habit, others on a case by case basis, others may want to follow the rules. Players learn from that and tend to develop habits based on early experiences. Playing with less experienced GMs & players who were introduced to gaming from video games there is, in my experience, a tendency among most to start from a point of using and trusting the rules first.

And this ties back into the original point I made: That games with weak or no social rules or structures are dependent on the GM to make that stuff matter. D&D, being these days a game generally lacking such rules for the players to engage with, rewards murder-hobo style play with more time spent on combat and more powerful pizza characters because less freeform GMs will more often nope or ignore stuff outside the core rules.

Anyone can chime in with "well i dont play like that and players at my table dont either", but that just means they're a GM who uses freeform rp to reward the players or have homebrewed something to use instead of the weak/missing rules. This applies to any game and to and missing rules or obscure optional rules subsection.

I noted that in my area the majority of muppets & GMs are comfortable following a game's core rules, uncomfortable modifying game state based on freeform rp, and have negative opinions of homebrew & optional rules as things like "too op" or "too fiddly". Its taken years to get some of these people to start trying more rp stuff that's not codified in the rules in games I GM, and I can sometimes tell when another GM in another game has slapped them down for trying to go outside the rules. Therefore, if the games doesn't mechanically enable something and the GM isn't proactively pushing for that thing, then players revert to the things they can count on being rewarded by the game mechanics.

And all of these are fair points! But acting as though all preference for certain elements to be handled in this more freeform manner comes from a place of ignorance or trauma is not, and I chafe at the suggestion that it is.

Likewise, I'm always fundamentally going to disagree with the idea that a system which does not provide tools for some pastime is automatically a bad tool in and of itself for that very pastime. It comes in with the assumption that a tool is necessary or desired, which simply is not the case for a sizeable amount of players and GMs.
And, I do wish to point out, I actually am a huge fan of systems that provide softer tools for these sorts of activities. Things like random tables for rolling up social scenarios and characters, GM advice on how to run them, etc. There's plenty of alternatives to having fully fleshed out rules, most of which even trend towards being system agnostic.

There's also an argument to be made that there's a difference between mechanics that run counter to an intended activity and mechanics that don't or only loosely interact with an intended activity. Plus, even in the former case, there are multiple degrees of difficulty that a system can cause, any of which could be ultimately dismissed by the individual player or GM for other perfectly valid reasons of preference.

I would also question whether players who are hesitant to RP and try things outside the codified rules are really going to be fixed by codifying more things, but that's a pretty large discussion that I don't think I'll have the time to really delve into. My main issue was with RandomPeasant's idea that somehow a preference for a lack of rules stems from a purely philosophical point of view.

[Telok]

And all of these are fair points! But acting as though all preference for certain elements to be handled in this more freeform manner comes from a place of ignorance or trauma is not, and I chafe at the suggestion that it is.

Please do note that I'm never trying to say my experiences are somehow universal, just that its a distinct trend among the majority of gamers I've played with for the last 20 years or so. And I don't suggest that preferring or disliking more or fewer rules on something is based in ignorance or trauma or chocolate. I'm saying I've observed some people acting these ways based on those experiences and situations, and its been most notable & pronounced in D&D and with people who mainly play D&D.

[Theoboldi]

Please do note that I'm never trying to say my experiences are somehow universal, just that its a distinct trend among the majority of gamers I've played with for the last 20 years or so. And I don't suggest that preferring or disliking more or fewer rules on something is based in ignorance or trauma or chocolate. I'm saying I've observed some people acting these ways based on those experiences and situations, and its been most notable & pronounced in D&D and with people who mainly play D&D.

Which is quite true! Though I honestly would blame that phenomenon on D&D being the most typical entry point for casual roleplayers, and it having a lot of common with the video games they are used to. We as human beings tend to stick to what we already know in behavior, after all.

I'm glad, anyhow, that you're not painting people with such a broad brush. And I do apologize if I came across as accusing you of such. My issue really was mainly with the original poster I responded to, and I saw your words more as giving legitimacy to their words in an incidental way.

[Quertus]

As much as I dislike describing tabletop things in terms of story, I do think at least for this gritty/heroic/mythic breakdown, 'story' is the most closely aligned place for it to reside rather than things like 'system' or 'rules' or 'character' or 'setting' or even my usual go-to words for describing a bundled tabletop experience 'game' or 'campaign'.

That's why you can't really cleanly point to a game system or a setting and say 'this is a gritty setting' without someone finding an exception that actually feels like an authentic exception. Because in the end, the setting can be subjectively gritty or mythic from different points of view. Yet its also not inherently the character either. And it depends so much on the level of abstraction used...

As usual, I feel like you’re saying something smart, but I can’t quite manage to follow it. So… why can’t you use the word “campaign”? What does “story” entail, to you, that “campaign” does not?

And, for my own take, if I said I wanted a story/campaign to be none of the above, to be a mix of gritty, heroic, and mythic, would you opine that I’m saying something incoherent?

[NichG]

As usual, I feel like you’re saying something smart, but I can’t quite manage to follow it. So… why can’t you use the word “campaign”? What does “story” entail, to you, that “campaign” does not?

And, for my own take, if I said I wanted a story/campaign to be none of the above, to be a mix of gritty, heroic, and mythic, would you opine that I’m saying something incoherent?

Well, one important thing is that a story is told - the same set of events could be described in different ways, with different levels of detail. In that sense I can envision borderline cases the exact same sequence of events with the exact same characters could be told in a way that makes the difference between mythic and heroic feels. Did the author say 'he waved his hand, the crops grew, and the famine ended'? Or did the author spend three pages describing the ritual magic, the reagents that needed to be gathered, the logistics of getting the food to the people who needed it, etc?

That can happen at the level of system or game in the sense that you can have a system that lets someone do something as an atomic action. But it's also dependent on how the GM interfaces with that, etc. Importantly, I think, it can depend on how the GM interfaces with it as a storyteller more-so than the way the GM interfaces as an adjudicator or game designer or player at the table. That isn't to say that GMs who don't try to tell a story would be running games that couldn't be described well by these adjectives, but I think the 'story' element of the play experience - organic story or intentional one - is the most aligned with what feels like these words are being used to describe, to me.

A system won't guarantee grittiness or mythicness or heroicness. Neither will a setting. Neither will a character sheet build. In order for something like grittiness to actually be guaranteed and not just emergent, you would have to start from the conclusion and work backwards. Not only that, but you have to actually view the events subjectively from a certain stance. I could believe that a player could for example play through a gritty campaign but relate to it as though it were a mythic one, and that may well disrupt that experience from actually being well-described by gritty. That's not really something that exists at the campaign level, exactly. It exists at the level of the interpretation of the campaign as a story.

Anyhow, mixes and transitional stories that cross between levels and so on can all certainly be identifiable. I think 'incoherent' would be mistaking a measure for a metric...

[RandomPeasant]

To expand on your metaphor and give an example, I can roleplay a conversation with no mechanical help whatsoever, and often do so because it is fun to me. But I cannot ram a nail into a wall without the use of a tool.

Ah, but that's breaking the metaphor. When I assemble IKEA furniture, the goal isn't to do the assembly, it's to get a piece of furniture that does some particular task. But all those tasks are doable without furniture. I don't need a bookshelf to store my books, I can just put them in a pile. It may even be that I prefer the pile to a bookshelf that is sufficiently badly designed or assembled with sufficiently lacking tools. But the idea that such a situation negates the need for bookshelves is simply inaccurate. The goal of roleplaying is to produce a compelling story. It may be that you don't trust designers to do a better job framing that story than you expect to do by making things up. But the things you're making up are still rules. They're just rules that aren't tested very well and aren't predictable or accessible to other people.

Anyone can chime in with "well i dont play like that and players at my table dont either", but that just means they're a GM who uses freeform rp to reward the players or have homebrewed something to use instead of the weak/missing rules. This applies to any game and to and missing rules or obscure optional rules subsection.

It's the difference between Linux and Windows. Yes, you can get your system to do what you want really exactly with Linux. I've done that. But most people don't do that. I don't even currently do that. What most people do is use Windows, and maybe try to tweak the settings it exposes to make things more like how they like, then give up if they can't. That means that what you are really asking for when you say "leave it up to the DM" is "most people don't get to do that". I am sure freeform social mechanics work for you. But the result of leaving social mechanics to be handled freeform is that most tables don't get any social mechanics. And that is, again, because the mechanics a game includes are its way of signaling what it considers to be important. When someone doesn't roleplay because the game doesn't give them hooks to do it, they're not failing, they're being failed.

I'm always fundamentally going to disagree with the idea that a system which does not provide tools for some pastime is automatically a bad tool in and of itself for that very pastime.

Imagine saying this about any other subject. Is a printer that only prints standard 8.5x11 sheets not a bad tool for printing business cards? Is an oven that doesn't include a broiler not a bad tool for broiling? Is a table that can only support 50lbs not a bad tool for supporting 500lbs? Certainly, freeform play is a valid form of play, but it is one that every game includes, and indeed one no game can exclude. If you want to do freeform Chess or Magic: the Gathering, you can. Including fixed mechanics doesn't take that away from you, it just makes things easier for people who are not as willing as you are to play freeform.

[Quertus]

I think 'incoherent' would be mistaking a measure for a metric...

Dagnabbit, I was with you until this part.

I like the idea that the story told about the events can be gritty, heroic, or mythic. And that the story is related to the experience. And I definitely prefer my RPG experience, and somewhat my RPG stories, to be a mix of all three.

Imagine saying this about any other subject. Is a printer that only prints standard 8.5x11 sheets not a bad tool for printing business cards? Is an oven that doesn't include a broiler not a bad tool for broiling? Is a table that can only support 50lbs not a bad tool for supporting 500lbs? Certainly, freeform play is a valid form of play, but it is one that every game includes, and indeed one no game can exclude. If you want to do freeform Chess or Magic: the Gathering, you can. Including fixed mechanics doesn't take that away from you, it just makes things easier for people who are not as willing as you are to play freeform.

Yes, custom-tailored clothing fits so much worse than items bought off the rack. Rules - ones simple enough to play with, at any rate - impose limitations on the fidelity of such complex systems as are better handled by freeform. That’s the inescapable truth you seem to be attempting to escape.