The Forge Archives

OK, of course I think system matters, and a lot. But...I just wanted to do a reality check for a moment on this.

Looking at, say, my HQ IRC play, I see a very coherent game. But HQ's rules are not coherent, particularly. People play it a lot of different ways, and I think that it takes a lot of careful interpretations to get it to play the way I get it to play. Or any other coherent way.

For instance, I actively interperet the resolution system in the game as conflict resolution, and, moreover, as pretty player optional. That is, I actually ask the players if they want to do particular contests or just get "automatic successes." This is technically by the rules as I make the decisions as the narrator. But the technique in question isn't in the book, nor even implied at it's most "about story" moments. I'm out on a limb with this particular technique.

To say nothing of all of the good Sorcerer technique that I employ - Bangs, relationship maps, etc. And other techniques that I've picked up here or playing with other Forgerinoes, etc. These things are all layered on the system.

Now, Ron's point from the original essay is that the system can be informative. But...at the point that you become more or less completely aware of how these things work - and at the risk of sounding arrogant, I'll say that I think I have a grasp of it - is the system really doing anything any more?

I mean, I have this notion that I could run a game of Hero System these days, a system that doesn't at all promote narrativism you'd think, and yet get narrativism. As the essay says, this would just be "swimming upstream." But...I don't think it's even upstream any more. Yes, even withtout drifting. And even using all of the HS rules and having complicated combats.

Maybe I'm just kidding myself.

But here's the question. Is a design like Dogs in the Vinyard really systematically promoting narrativism, or is it just that everybody who plays is a "narrativist?" OK, not the greatest example, but...I get the feeling that there are designs out there that don't really support X or Y much at all. But are touted by the crowd who plays this sort of game, simply because they've tried them successfully. The question is, if Ron plays a game and it goes off well, is it because Ron was playing, or the system is really helping? With Ron playing, can we really know?

John Wick once said to me, "You haven't really playtested a game until you've had stupid players play it."

If Ron is the only one who's tested it, or other well-informed people, is this really a good test of what the system produces? I found even Ron's play of D&D to be highly ideosyncratic from the AP posts. Despite his claim to be playing it in a way he claims is not his typical style. Even if so, since he knows the difference, if he's getting that does that even say that D&D is doing a good job with gamism? Or is it just Ron again?

Is my HQ game just me? Or is it the system in some way?

Again, this is a reality check to chew on for Thanksgiving. How much are the shared techniques we have here dominating the play of the games we play? And how much of it is "really" system?

Unfortunately most non-Forge tests of RPGs are by "experienced gamers." When one of these plays Universalis in a gamism manner (as in one disasterous actual play example where the system broke badly), we tend to blame it on them being inculcated to play the game incorrectly? Is that true? What would the objective case be? We often say that it's putting the game in front of a non-gamer, and seeing what happens. But how often do we get such tests? Maybe more importantly, are they important, seeing as this may never become an actual market for RPGs?

Put another way, if there's just us and them, and we play how we do, and they play how they do, no matter what's presented to them... does system matter?

Mike

Hi Mike -

This looks sort of like a theory thread to me.

I wonder if you're conflating system-as-play-procedures and system-as-explicit-mechanics. The latter are a subset of the former, one which most games spend virtually all their text and game designers virtually all their sweat on.

As a result most traditional RPGs don't have much system, or only a broad-brush implied system in the first sense in the rules. Where I think DitV, Trollbabe, and some others do noticeably better here is not in their unique solutions to mechanical problems but in their telling you what to do when you play. Which sections many trad gamers don't even bother to read because they're either not there or extraneous to play or useless or harmful in traditional game texts. And then they ask those questions where someone here has to answer politely or not "um, on page 3 I say this completely straightforward thing that answers your question or renders it superfluous."

For just this reason you're right in a sense that when you understand why system matters you also become free-er to run a lot of  traditional games in a lot of different ways, through drift. And this in turn helps to point to why so many people thought system didn't matter (like, say, me, before I found the Forge) for a long time, even though from another point of view it obviously does - because the old games are really just sets of techniques and ephemera, mechanical resolution systems and schemes for getting a limited and non-decisive set of imaginative elements into play - and as a result you can put just about any 'system' in the broader and essential sense you want on top of them, tweak the mechanics to taste, and run them with the CA of your choice. If you know or have guessed how to do it. The DM is the only one who has the power to implement these essential elements of system, so 'you have to have a good DM'. And so on.

That's my take on the issue you're bringing up anyway. It's probably the case that starting in the late eighties traditional designs get harder to do this with, but I'm not going there.

Quote from: Mike Holmes on November 22, 2006, 04:31:43 PM
For instance, I actively interpret the [HQ] resolution system in the game as conflict resolution, and, moreover, as pretty player optional. That is, I actually ask the players if they want to do particular contests or just get "automatic successes."
...
is the system really doing anything any more?
...
Is a design like Dogs in the Vinyard really systematically promoting narrativism, or is it just that everybody who plays is a "narrativist?"

I played HeroWars after a break of about a decade of RPGing, which had previously mostly been RuneQuest. HeroWars changed the way I played and, I think, the way the other people I played with played. I didn't know about the Forge or any of its ideas. Now, our gaming group is not yet "narrativist", but we will be soon. The Pool was another influential game for us, I think. Quite simply, a particular set of games have changed the way we played, so I'd say those games (those systems) have done something.

Mike, are you not conflating "system" with "rules as written".

We all know, you especially, that "rules as written" is just one piece of "system".  So "System Matters" does not mean "Rules as Written Matters".

The difference between good design and bad design is IMO how much those two align with each other.  HeroWars / Quest suffers from the twin problems of 1) initially being a joint Greg / Robin design where neither vision was fully realized and 2) caving in to the vociferous demands of the RuneQuest grognard types.  As such I view it as one of the great moments of gaming history which all aspiring designers should be intimately familiar with...as much for all the things it did wrong and the lessons learnable in how NOT to design a game as for all the wonderful things it did right.

If Greg had decided to issue HeroQuest second edition and was determined to see the game designed properly he could have just handed the design reigns over to you and we would have finally gotten a look at HeroQuest the way it should have been done.  As it is now, we'll never get to see that, and HQ (as a printed rules set) will forever be one more wistful "what might have been".

But none of that has anything to do with "system mattering" because "system" is what you do when you play, not what we read in the book.

Hello,

In addition to what Ralph said (that System is wider than Rules) I'd like to add that I run into this confusion a lot with people when I discuss the idea of Reward Cycle.  They seem to think that I'm talking about training a behavior in a player.  They seem to think that if I take a die hard D&D Dungeon Crawler who loves to customize his feats to find a better "build" and then throw him at Dogs in the Vineyard that the System will somehow MAKE him play Narrativist.

Uh, no.  What I'm talking about is when you take a player who is already looking for Narrativism and you give them a system like Dogs it will make it easy for them to match-up the game (i.e. rules, dice, etc) decision with the fiction decisions.  The town creation rules make it EASY to create morally complex scenarios.  The choice of whether to resort to violence is embeded in the rules.  The ability to flavor your actions with your character is embedded in the rules.  The ability to immediately identify the character impact of a conflict is in the rules.  It makes all the stuff a Narrativist wants to do easy and explicit rather than in addition to or despite the presence of other rules that have nothing to do with addressing a Premise.

That's why System Matters.

Jesse

I recently had this discussion while developing the game I'm currently working on. In a fit of pique I wondered aloud if it was worthwhile having a system at all. In many cases, the answer for me is no. Most of my convention gaming has been systemless with a die roll thrown in here and there for dramatic tension. Many of the games I have read over the years offered nothing compelling that made them a better choice than a narrative flair, creative players and a D6 or two. The games that got my attention were the ones that offered mechanics that helped create a unique gaming experience. I'm still catching up on what's out there now but back in the day systems like Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon and Paranoia encouraged a play style that suited the setting. You can tell a CoC story without a system but mechanics like the Sanity roll added something special to the experience so I prefer to use them.

Is part of the issue the extent to which the CA of the game is facilitated by the rules as written, versus the extent to which it must be facilitated by other factors? The success of the rules as written in facilitating the CA is likely to be a matter of degree. But perhaps even if the rules as written perfectly support the intended CA, this is still not a sufficient condition for that CA being achieved in play. There are other factors which are also necessary conditions.

I have never played HeroQuest, but based on Mike's description, it sounds like there is some incoherence in its design. If this is true, then the rules as written are partially working against a Narrativist CA, in which case the other elements may become relatively more important in trying to attain that CA. But in that case it still seems like system (in the sense of rules as written) matters--they are a road block that the players have to leap over.

I suspect the heart of the debate, though, is just how much the rules as written matter with regard to achieving CA, in comparison to the other techniques that have been mentioned. Someone might think that the rules as written do matter, but still think that they are hardly ever the most important issue when trying to produce functional play.

Jon

Quote from: Mike Holmes on November 22, 2006, 04:31:43 PMBut here's the question. Is a design like Dogs in the Vinyard really systematically promoting narrativism, or is it just that everybody who plays is a "narrativist?"...I get the feeling that there are designs out there that don't really support X or Y much at all. But are touted by the crowd who plays this sort of game, simply because they've tried them successfully. The question is, if Ron plays a game and it goes off well, is it because Ron was playing, or the system is really helping? With Ron playing, can we really know?

Unfortunately most non-Forge tests of RPGs are by "experienced gamers." When one of these plays Universalis in a gamism manner...we tend to blame it on them being inculcated to play the game incorrectly? Is that true? What would the objective case be?

Mike,

I get what you're saying here. Here's my take on a sort-of answer: how much of this is a failure by games to define "How to Play This Game" in the text?

I've noticed many designs are more-or-less like the automotive guide you get with your car, which tells you all about the various parts of the vehicle you have and their function, and even how to use them, but doesn't state anywhere in the text how to actually drive the car. They assume you know how to drive, or that how to drive will be obvious from the function of the parts, but neglect/assume the rules of the road.

Frex, Ron has stated in the past that Sorcerer does not tell you "how" to play the game, because it was written for a group of people he assumed was already looking for the experience Sorcerer's rules provide, and so would know what to do with it when they used it. I like Sorcerer a whole lot, but that design decision has caused me numerous headaches over the years, because I am not the target audience -- my "rules of the road" assumptions are different than those assumed by the text.

Of course, this is all part of System. If System matters, we should be paying more attention to this aspect of it in the design, and not just the crunchy rules-bits that help support our play goals.

I'm going to simplify things a little bit and talk about why I think "rules as written" have a major impact on the way I play. Lets take, Dungeons and Dragons as a for instance, when I play D&D I'm playing in a world where things work the way they say they do in the book. If I ignore, for instance, that mechanically my character's scythe is inferior weapon to some other character's long sword, yet I want to portray my character as a competent fighter, than all of the sudden my character concept has come in conflict with the world. This is to a great extent because D&D's rules are not based on anything but older additions of D&D rules and to lesser extent, real life and various fantasy tropes, but power level, ability to function in such-and-such way, etc... do have an effect on character concepts that incorporate ideas that clash with the game's ruleset. Now, if I were playing Tri-Stat, where I build my attack's characteristics from the ground up, than my scythe can be as potent as the points I'm willing to expend.
Maybe that's a little off topic, but things like that seem to make a big difference. In a very real sense, to whatever extent your gaming group agrees to use the Rules as Written, the rules of a game make up the "physics" that the character has lived with and experienced all their life. Its often frustrating to try to ignore these things to be more "in character" because ignoring them may well clash with your ideas on how effective your character is in various fields.
Also, some games explicitly or through implication, have character motivation built into their mechanics. We are told in no uncertain terms that are characters primary motivation in Pendragon is to achieve Glory. In Dungeons and Dragons, mounds of text imply that are motivation is to amass power, and its partner, wealth. In the most "narrativist" of games it seems that the emphasis is being placed most firmly on firmly establishing the goal of the game, be it specific (like in My LIfe with Master) or more simply, to tell a good story.

Mike,

I haven't played your version of HQ nor observed the actual play, but from the discussions I've seen on Indie Netgaming I get an impression that given what you change/omit, you could just as well write your variant down (including the "driving instructions") and call it a separate game.

As for the issue of rules supporting play, I remember sessions of traditional systems in which we had loads of fun despite doing exactly the opposite of what the designers would want us to do (e.g. our L5R 3rd edition sessions that boiled down to constant combat, creating mechanical comboes that were absurd in the context of the setting, and ignoring the whole cultural and political depth the game is supposed to have, setting consistency and even *gasp* character's honor issues - it's almost hard to believe we could have had fun with so heretical play ^^). Although "indie" games tend to be more focused than the traditional ones, it doesn't change the fact that the same rules set can often support different kinds of play depending on its interpretation. Actually, even with the "driving instructions" followed, I don't believe two groups can play the same game in exactly the same way and get exactly the same results - it's more about the degree of variance from the designer's goals, and how much of it can still be considered playing that particular game.

Reading Forge and related sites, I sometimes have a feeling people are kind of paranoid about the whole "playing by the book is bound to produce such and such effects" concept, to the point of ignoring other possibilities that the book gives. I think sometimes going against the designer's vision can produce fun and fully functional play.

System Does Matter - that's for sure. But it's not only about following the rules as written, and not even about sticking to the "driving instructions".

Everyone,

Um... which system are we talking about? Are we talking about the mechanical rules system in the book, or the lumpley principle system around the table?

Because the whole "System (including but not limited to 'the rules') is defined as the means by which the group agrees to imagined events during play" falls right into what Mike is talking about.

While well designed rules are a help, and a great one, I think one of the points Mike is driving towards is that under that lumpley definition of system YOU are part of the system. So when Mike plays HQ, or Sorcerer, or Dogs... Mike is part of the system. Sometimes, even in well designed and coherent games, Mike may well be the biggest part of the system.

So, on one hand I agree with everything that Jesse says about Dogs. OTOH, I've heard of Dogs play in the local area that didn't get anything close to Nar play (or even fun play) because the folks at the table had such a different idea of what gaming was in their head that they were unable to get that point where the rules in the book and the system at the table line up and produce celestial harmony.

Or, even more pointedly, Ron has sometimes said that HQ (or Hero Wars?) is one of the systems that best supports Nar play. However this hasn't always been my experience, and certainly hasn't been the experience of a lot of thie historical simmers that I know who use HQ rules. I would say that HQ opens the door to lots of types of play and then Ron, for example, fills that door with his GrandMaster level Nar-fu and thus the lumpley principle system at the table becomes perfectly Nar supporting.

None of which is an argument against making good, coherent rules. Those are still neccisary for good design. But there also comes a point at which I think we have to step back and admit that no matter what we design the game is not a system until people around a table are doing things with it. And at that point they are more part of the system than anything we wrote. All we can do is support them as best we can.

Hiya,

Brand, I'm getting pretty tired of people invoking my name as a club or power-word, whether to support their argument or to signify how they're defying mine - especially when what they call "Ron says" is made up by them.

Here's what I've really said: Hero Wars strongly supports (-ed) Narrativist play, and that HeroQuest is distinctly incoherent in comparison, despite its superior organization. For anyone who's interested in why, compare the text passages from HQ I used in my Narrativism essay with the examples of resolution in the same book; they don't work well together. I don't think saying "People play HQ all Simmy so Ron is wrong that it's Narrativist," and flagging it by saying "more pointedly," is either honest or decent.

Mike, I think this thread suffers from two things.

1. You pose a question in the title which leads people to want to answer it. But then you answer it in the first sentence or two of the post, which is confusing especially since it's a "yes." Why not start with saying "System does matter, I agree," instead of this backwards thing? It's like positioning yourself against so-called Forge dogma to get attention, then saying "oh but I agree" when people are paying the attention.

2. There's just not about enough actual play. What actually happened in a game, or across games, that leads you to ask or assert something? And what is that something actually? 'Cause what you say after that seems to be clearly resolved by distinguishing between "rules as written" and "system as played."

Finally, I don't know what to make of what appears to be a tacit attack. Are you're saying that I, specifically, have been consistently uncritical of assessing the rules-set vs. assessing my own imposition of my preferences onto it? 'Cause that ain't so. Whether I've been successful or not in keeping them separate in my mind or presentation on-line, I flatly say "you're wrong" if you are saying I've been inattentive to that issue.

Best, Ron

Quote from: Ron Edwards on November 23, 2006, 10:59:53 AM
Here's what I've really said: Hero Wars strongly supports (-ed) Narrativist play, and that HeroQuest is distinctly incoherent in comparison, despite its superior organization.

Good to know. That's why I put in the question mark -- I thought I remembered you saying something to that effect, but couldn't find the thread in question.

QuoteI don't think saying "People play HQ all Simmy so Ron is wrong that it's Narrativist," and flagging it by saying "more pointedly," is either honest or decent.

That isn't what I was saying, so that's okay.

I was saying that even games that support Nar play (an important point that many people miss, games are not Nar, they just support Nar) can be played non Nar. This is true even of games that do an excellent job of supporting Nar play, because in the end the system that actually comes out has a lot to do with the players at the table and not just the rules set.

Which in no way means that you mididentify your play, nor what the ruleset supports. It means, however, that I think that when you say "this game strongly supports Nar play" you are saying a different thing than others when they say "this is a Nar game."

In short, I think that a lot of people still say "system matters" without understanding that the "system" isn't just the thing in the book.

P.S. Ron, you're right that I shouldn't have brought your name in as an authority appeal. I could have made the point just as clearly another way. So, sorry on that point.

Believe it or not, I rewrote the original post three times trying to get it right. And I knew it was a disaster even when I posted it. But what's gone on above, will help me restate at least so maybe we can get something out of this.

First, Ron, it's not an attack on you, but perhaps on the process of analysis. It's like the Heisenberg principle (or the similar media observation) that a thing observed is affected by the observation. Is it even possible for you to remain unbiased about your own reporting of your own play. In any case, I used you merely as a well-known example. I could have talked about Vincent just as easily. Again, not saying that anyone is being in any way inattentive. Just that the conclusions may be incorrect.

Such conclusions being stuff like, "The rules of DitV support narrativism." And I'm not saying that this statement is incorrect, either. Just that I question whether or not in the cases in question we can trust the validity of the reports when I know that the ephemera and techniques of how people like you, me and Vincent play have a strong effect on the results of play.

Further, I'm really only looking for how much effect these things may have in proportion to each other. That is, if you're comfortable saying that the rules that we use are...50% of what causes the styles of play that occur to occur, I'm fine with that. That's what I'm asking.

Ralph, I'll assume that your post is about clarifying this thread for others, because I know that you know that I know that system isn't just textual rules.

But let's try to state it more clearly. Yeah, the thread title was just to grab some attention, and it's not the question at hand. The question is:

Given a group using a system, which is informed by many things - including the textual rules of the game as they've adopted them, and the techniques and ephemera that they bring to play that are not informed by the text (two things amongst potentially many more) - which of those things is most important in forming the creative agenda for how the group plays? Do some things overshadow others? Can we as designers create text that makes a difference to how people play in terms of agenda, or does previous play experience, tradition, preference, and knowledge of particular techniques tend to overshadow even that which we do adopt from the written text?

Now, there's another part to this. I'm glad we had some new posters, and I'll ask them to follow up on the next part:

If you're cognizant of these issues, especially if you're very cognizant of them like I am, does this understanding tend to make it more likely that your personal proclivities will come through?

A lot of Ron's most effective work has been in creating and enumerating the use of techniques that work to reinforce the narrativism agenda. And I've studied them a lot. So if I'm taking and using them to create narrativism in play, to what extent can the rules that I use from the text be said to be causing the effect, if at all?

Filip, my first instinct is to reject your claim whole. In point of fact, I'm a bastard stickler for sticking to the rules of HQ. I have maybe three house rules that I have that contradict the text. Maybe. A problem in figuring this out is that I do a lot of "interpretation" of the text so that the play that I do can be seen to be following the rules as written. I do this in part because if, in fact, I was really playing a completely different game, then it would be hard for me to help other people who play HQ - something I enjoy doing a lot. Now we can say that if my interpretations of the text are creative enough that I'm actually making up new rules. That's fair. But, the interesting fact is that even when I tried to say that my ideas might be heretical, I was told by Greg to post the ideas and say that they are not, in fact, heretical. You can read what I mean here: http://www.glorantha.com/support/na_heresies.html

Now, the problem with this is that Greg's notion here may not be so much that my interpretations are correct, but that everybody's interpretations are correct, so long as they work. So this might invalidate my case to some extent if you claim that HQ is incoherent, intentionally so, nobody knows the intent of the rules, so everyone is playing HQ as long as they're saying they are (well, you get the point, anyhow). The thing is that I think that most RPG texts are pretty "interperable." You can read most of them to say most anything you want with regards to agenda I think.

And this is the "problem," I think. Consider that almost all RPGs have substantial amounts of player judgment calls as part of the flow of play. For instance, in framing a contest in most RPGs there's first an all-important question of when a contest should be called. Most RPGs give guidance like, "Don't roll if it's just crossing the street, or tying your shoes." First, that's just advice, and doesn't really preclude rolling in those cases. But even if dilligently followed, one still has so much leeway on when to do contests that just in that alone, one can adjust the CA tremendously.

For instance, it probably isn't a violation of many RPGs rules to not do a contest if you don't feel it's dramatically important. It might be pushing the example a bit far, but I think I've even seen D&D advice saying it's OK once in a while to skip a combat if it's not an important one. Well, that could be interpereted as "Important" meaning "dramatically important." And you're off and running towards narrativism. Though there's still a ways to go, if you keep on making this sort of interpretation I think you'll get there.

Maybe even more importantly is the effect of the Golden Rule - even where it's not actually in a game text, I think that lots of people assume it's part of all RPGs. HQ is interesting in that I once ranted against MGF (Maximum Game Fun) as a Golden Rule, and was told that it's not such. In other words, the HQ text is interperable either as having the golden rule or not. Any game that says "The GM is final arbiter or the like is asking for such interpretation."

Now, of course we have texts like MLWM. Which are far more rigorous. But even then I've seen room to go in multiple directions. I can imagine very gamism versions of the game being played - heck, I felt I was doing that at times myself.

Sean hit on this with the "good GM" observation. It's non-controversial that with an incoherent set of rules that the techniques used by a GM to make it coherent are what's really creating the CA. The question is whether or not there is any rule set that actually can be more important than the role of the players in using their techniques and such. Or even informative? Especially if the group is already, well, informed?

Any clearer?

So, for an actual play example to ensure both adherence to forum policy, and for good reality checks, let's look at my HQ play (if it's not going to have the same problem I state above about self-refreretiality). In HQ, the rules state that there's three kinds of contests:

1. Automatic Success
2. Simple Contest
3. Extended Contest

The difference between the latter two is irrelevant for the example, it's the automatic success rule that I'm interested in here. The rule states that it's an automatic success if the situation is one in which "no self-respecting hero would lose." Talk about your leeway.

Now, I do this all the time, but to give a specific example, in the last session of play I asked Chris Weeks whether or not he wanted to have a paricular contest, and he said no. Sorry, can't remember more details. Chris? In a similar case I recall more about, Chris Wotton was trying to have his character mind-control Fred Volke's character, and things Fred said then at previously set off alarms in my head that he was definitely not cool about this sort of PVP seeming operation. So I asked Fred if he was OK with it, ready to say that he Automatically Succeeded with his resistance, if he said no. And I can argue that it's within the rules because I could be sure that Fred would back me on it bieng a contest that "no self-respecting hero would lose."

Basically I interperet that rule so "loosely" if you will, that I can get in a ton of narrativisim supporting technique (or whatever it is, let's not argue that at this point). Now, I'm also quite sure that I'm one of a handful of people who play HQ this way. Far more people playing the game interpret it in a much more standard format meaning something precisely equivalent to the whole "Shoestrings and Street Crossings" method of determination of when to use contests you see in most games. And I can't say that they're wrong and I'm right. Oh, I can point to a lot of advice for narrators that makes me think that it's the right thing to do as a corollary to said advice. But I'm also pretty darn sure that Greg and Robin don't play the way I do, but much more like the traditional method. So I can't even rightly be said to be playing to the intent of the rule in question. Just the letter of it, if that.

That's the point, however. If the text in presenting itself as rules can be so...maleable...in interpretation, can these "rules" ever have an effect comparative to the strength of technique, and just player preference?

Two things, this is just one example of the sort of problem - there are many others. Let's not get hung up on IIEE as the only place that texts have problems transmitting CA. Second, as we've mentioned it could be HQ's designed incoherence, so let's also think about examples from MLWM play and games like that which are, "better" as somebody said above. I mean, playing that game I've reported more than once feeling that I was competing with the other players to "win" by getting to kill the master first. Not Pauls intent, I don't think, but I think an interpretation of the rules that's not at all misreading the rules.

Mike

Hiya,

As far as I can tell, all of this is pretty consistent with my standard caveats through my reviews and essays and play-posts. So if anyone finds this difficult or weird to understand, well, consider it a learning experience. Mike's right, but I don't see it as a problem. It's only a problem for people who think I (for instance) take out my little label-gun and go, "ker-chunk! you're a Narrativist game!, ker-chunk, you on the other hand are a Gamist game!" I'm pretty tired of dealing with invented versions of what I do, think, or say, so I'll stop with any judgments of such concepts right now.

So Mike? I figure my answer is ... 75%, for myself. That's based on the looks of annoyance I got from Ralph and Jake when I insisted we keep using the written rules of a game we were playtesting, after they had decided those rules were ass.

Best, Ron

Quote from: Mike Holmes on November 24, 2006, 05:58:23 PMGiven a group using a system, which is informed by many things - including the textual rules of the game as they've adopted them, and the techniques and ephemera that they bring to play that are not informed by the text (two things amongst potentially many more) - which of those things is most important in forming the creative agenda for how the group plays? Do some things overshadow others? Can we as designers create text that makes a difference to how people play in terms of agenda, or does previous play experience, tradition, preference, and knowledge of particular techniques tend to overshadow even that which we do adopt from the written text?

I've always got a crap metaphor or analogy:

You've got a cake in front of you - does that force you to have tastebuds? What if you were a robot - could the cake be made tasty enough that it would create tastebuds in your mechanical jaws?

QuoteIf you're cognizant of these issues, especially if you're very cognizant of them like I am, does this understanding tend to make it more likely that your personal proclivities will come through?

You having tastebuds tends to make you gravitate toward the sweet parts of the cake and not the parts which (for some reason) are made of crude oil.

I reckon more actual play account on 'using all the rules' would be good. I mean, it's possible to use all the rules, but at the same time player take certain options which only lead them into certain parts of the game rules, so other bits don't ever get use. It's not throwing the rules to the wind, but by tactically avoiding certain rules through the options given, it has a similar effect.

QuoteA lot of Ron's most effective work has been in creating and enumerating the use of techniques that work to reinforce the narrativism agenda. And I've studied them a lot. So if I'm taking and using them to create narrativism in play, to what extent can the rules that I use from the text be said to be causing the effect, if at all?

It's a bit dysfunctional, but can you imagine a male player using the game to chat up a female players character, as a way of establishing something to build on in real life between them? Would that have been created by the rules? No, it's an entirely metagame thing brought into the game even as the game facilitates it.

I've liked Ron's description of exploration being a wooden platform, and then nar or gam being an entirely alien subtance on top, like aluminium or plastic. My hypothesis is that nar and gam are exactly as alien as the chat up from above - it's just that the hunger for nar or game can be ignited by basic exploration play. But since basic rules use/basic exploration awoke it, it doesn't feel alien from basic rules use/basic exploration. It just doesn't seem the same as meta game flirting.

This also means that the rules have no effect at this level, really. The rules can't make you want to flirt with another player. And the rules can't make you want nar. A situation they help to generate might, on the off chance,  ignite the hunger in you 'Oh my god, my PC would rather die than let the lich awake! I quench the death flames with my body!!!'. But I think that hunger was more like a landmine the game trod on, rather than an explosion the game caused.

Well, Callan, that's a completely opposite idea than what I think Ron is saying above. He's saying that in his play something like 75% of the CA comes from the rules, and only 25% from his techniques and such. You're saying it's at a different level, and there's no doubt in my mind that it is. But the question is how much the CA is informed by the rules used. Like, for example, if there's an EXP reward system for killing monsters, does it cause you to change your decision-making process from "Should I kill the monsters - is it morally right?" to "How should I best kill the monsters?" (as with all such examples, it's meant to be informative, not definitive here). If so, that's the rules informing CA. If the GM frames the scene like, "The pitiful looking orcs will be easy to slay, and their children look on with sad eyes realizing that their parents may be mowed down momentarily...do you swing your swords?" And if this then causes you to go back to making decisions based on the moral conundrum, then this is technique (perhaps ephemera) informing CA.

Now, if you're saying that somebody can force their CA on the game, well, that's been in Ron's essay from day one. We know this can happen. Now if what you're saying is that the rules never inform CA, that the player always puts his CA on top of the rules no matter how they inform...well that's sorta my hypothesis here. But I would think that it's unlikely that the rules never have any effect.

And, to be clear again, we're talking about the "rules played" here. Ron's saying, I believe, that when he's testing a game out, he's playing the rules as close to the what he figures the text means, even if there is agreement that the rules are bad. So it can't be said that what we're talking about in this case is drift. That's not to say that I'm only looking at cases where drift hasn't occured. It means that, if drift has occured, then the question becomes how much do the new drifted rules affect CA as compared to the techniques used?

The only problem with drifted rules sets, is that in those cases we can't comment about how the text is affecting play. Since, by definition, the rules have been altered from those in the text to fit the CA.

Mike

The only thing I have to add is that the rules text is much more informative in showing CA than just the rules themselves are.  I was recently rereading DITV and sure the rules themselves may have a narrativist bent but it's more the explanation of how to use the rules and examples of them in action that show what CA Vincent was going for.

That's a good observation. And an interesting one. See, I and others have contended that such text doesn't really do much in terms of delivering CA. Sure, as you say, it explicates CA. But it's only advice, not rules. And, as such, it's only going to do anything if the player takes the advice. Which, I contend, they often do not. If they do, I think that it's likely that they were intent on creating the intended CA anyhow.

The question is also whether or not the rules, once in use, will push one towards a CA, even if one doesn't understand what CA they are intended to inform the player to produce. Yeah, I'd agree that most players won't (and probably shouldn't) bother to analyze this, and that it's often not clear at all on simply reading the rules. But once they're in play, the argument goes, they tend to have a specific effect on CA, even if the people involved aren't aware that it's having that effect.

Mike

Does the text of the game inform CA?

Well, how do you think your players will play the most recent game you've picked up together if the text includes comments like:

"By the way, the clever reader may have noticed that combining this ability with a certain other ability from Chapter 5 results in an extremely powerful combination... we'll leave that as an exercise for you. If you figure it out, try it, but don't tell your friends; instead, see their faces when you pull it out in that climactic scene!"

Or more subtle, like:

"Your character will face deadly threats in the game, so be prepared to see a hero die now and then. However, this might happen less often once you get familiarized with the Character Creation rules. It might not hurt to read over them more than once."

I think that Narrativist flavor text and game examples may have a very similar impact on play, or at least on how play is viewed.


Cheers,


Paul

Paul,

I've always thought that text like that actually has very little effect on play. First, there are no rules there to be adopted. It's just advice. Meaning that people are free to ignore it, and not be violating the social contract to be playing by the rules of the text. Meaning that, in practice, I think that most RPG players will just go about their business as usual.

For example with the "be prepared for deaths" part, the already narrativism playing player will just look at that and scoff, "Given that I use the technique where death is never a stake in this game, that's never going to happen."

Rules are far more informative for several reasons I think. But my hypothesis here is that even rules aren't as important as the techniques carried in that are not from the text.

Mike

I'm really not sure where you're going with this Mike.

It almost sounds like you're saying that groups are going to play how they play and attempting to write solid rules test is pointless.

I can't imagine that's what you're saying, but if not, I can't figure out what you're point actually is.


I personally think rules texts are supremely important.  Sure, you're going to have players who play every game they encounter the same way as they play d20 (or their game of choice) regardless of what the texts says...but that's not a reason to not write good text. 

I believe in writing text that exactly outlines how the rules are supposed to be used.  Some folks do very little hand holding in their rules relying on people who "get it" to not need it.  To me...that's exactly the mentality that got us into the mire to begin with.  When all those poorly written old school texts were written, they were targeted at people who "already got it" too.  Thing is, most of the folks playing those game didn't "get it" and we spent decades flailing around with crappy rules. 

10 years from now are gamers going to be encountering our indie games and stuggling with crappily written "Conflict Resolution" and "stakes" text the same way as we now mock The Impossible Thing?

I advocate doing as much hand holding as needed so that someone who is paying attention to what is written can play the game as close to how the designer plays the game as its possible to get.  If they choose to ignore that text that's their privilege, and of course we as designers will have greater or lesser success at it, but not even trying to write it is IMO a cop out. 

Quote from: Paul T on November 27, 2006, 07:55:55 PM
I think that Narrativist flavor text and game examples may have a very similar impact on play, or at least on how play is viewed.

Yes, but if and only if the flavor text and game examples mesh up seamlessly with the rules. 

Here's a thought experiment: imagine that Vincent published Dogs in the Vineyard in a D20 version.  Dogs D20! Imagine reading that.  You'd have all this great GM'ing advice and flavorful descriptions of conflict, and it would be hanging out in a vacuum because there would be no support in the ruleset for it.  It would be just another game promising the Impossible Thing and delivering the same-old same-old. 

Danny

Ralph you're making an extension of my hypothesis that's not anything I intended. I think the only way a designer can affect play is through his rules (other text, as I've said, is less relevant).

But let's put it this way, then. What percentage of players are going to, as you put it, "play every game they encounter the same way...?" Rather my question is, given that most people coming to a RPG come from previous play, to what extent will the techniques that they must neccessarily bring to the game to fill in the gaps be more important to establishing their CA than the rules? On average.

You can draw whatever conclusions you like from the data, I'm only interested in the question at hand. And it's a hypothesis, not a claim. If your answer is "techniques don't mean squat as compared to rules" that's a fine answer.

Mike

Hi Mike,

The trouble with that issue is thirty years of tradition that says "ignore the book," and furthermore, of single-person centralizing regarding the majority of the creative work of the process. What I observe in many, many groups is that someone says "Hey, let's play game X," and goes to all kinds of work to internalize and express stuff from game X, but everyone else just shows up and figures out how to shoehorn doing what they always do into the process. And that's the positive version of events. Under those circumstances, as well as the negative versions, we can talk about rules and text and CA until we die of starvation, and nothing we say will mean a damn thing.

I'll say this: I have no confidence that hobby role-playing as currently constructed, both socially and commercially, will attain even the most basic relationship between text, rules, and play that even the easy-kiddy card games have. Not across the board, not as a phenomenon in the sense that you seem to be asking about. So if you are saying, "do text and rules consistently promote the CA that they purport to do (when that even applies," then the answer is to shrug and say no, on the average, they don't. There's thirty years of tradition that says not to and an embedded subculture which is determined to avoid any such thing.

My unit of interest is the individual and the operative game group who'd prefer to buck that trend. Considering the sea of blah-fumble-mutter that many people seem to be playing within, procedurally speaking, if one person, or one group, is unhappy with it and gets some benefit out of what's been worked out here at the Forge, then fantastic. That's value added. I have no interest and see no point in the question you're asking.

---

I will now extend that concept to an immediate concern. You haven't discussed actual play at all. That means that if I don't see some immediately, the thread shuts down.

I also want you to tell me straight-up whether any of this arises from some third-party discussion that you haven't mentioned.

And finally, if that's the case, I am specifically asking, is this all about the age-old, absolutely stupendous bullshit that Forge theory has something to do with telling people they play wrong?

Best, Ron

Hi Mike,

I have a specific AP request, but I requires a little explanation and an AP of my own.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'inform' when you say CA is informed by the rules. Are you working along the lines that the only thing rules do is bring out a CA, and now your thinking they don't even do that?

To use another analogy; I don't know if you ever ate raw pastry when you were a kid, but I did. It was pretty tasty. It didn't cause me to sprout taste buds, but never mind that. However, tasty as it was, when it was cooked it became something else, something that would never be experienced had I just kept to eating raw pastry.

Do any AP accounts come to mind where you delt with an game world issue or topic - but you felt that perhaps it could have been taken futher?

A quick example from my own play, where I'd made up the wizard of this dangerous area in Rifts (for a group I don't play with anymore) - he was supposed to be pretty powerful and his power would mean doing a bunch of other activities in the area was supposed to be more viable than simply attacking him head on (what activies I didn't know exactly - that was supposed to be fun to find out in play). I tell you, the player had a shit load of attacks (side note; he actually forgot the total and kept doing extra attack rolls  every so often - it really frustrated me that not only was he killing the opportunity but at the same time he was giving a piss poor performance at even remembering his resources).

It was supposed to be gamist, but think of my life with master - can you just attack the master straight away? From what I know of the rules, no. So that 'bakes' the situation, letting you explore things/taste things you wouldn't get to if you just ate the raw pastry/attacked him straight away, so to speak. So there's a quick AP example, do you have one similar?

Quote from: Ron Edwards on November 28, 2006, 05:19:23 PM
So if you are saying, "do text and rules consistently promote the CA that they purport to do (when that even applies," then the answer is to shrug and say no, on the average, they don't. There's thirty years of tradition that says not to and an embedded subculture which is determined to avoid any such thing.

OK, that's a great answer.

Now to extend on that. From the actual play examples which I've given, would you say that I am playing somehow by the rules of, say, Hero Quest? Or am I using technique in order to look like I'm playing by them while actually drifting them to achieve the sort of play I like.

More generally, how

QuoteMy unit of interest is the individual and the operative game group who'd prefer to buck that trend.

Great point. My question may be interpreted then as "How many people really fall into this category. Even amongst those who are here at The Forge?"

Or, rather, it seems to me that it could be that even amongst players who are intent on following the rules that, because technique has to come into play to fill holes, that the technique that's used is really what's causing the CA.

How many players come to a game with no preference extended this way? Willing to allow the rules to inform how they use the techniques, rather than using the techniques to mold the rules around to play the way that they want?

It's not so much a willingness to ignore the rules, as finding the "wiggle room" that rules leave, and filling that gap with techniques that guide play to be what the players expect.

That's not the same thing as saying that, given a player who has no such pre-selected agenda, that the rules won't promote him to go to some place. I think the rules do have the ability to promote in such a case. I just think that case might be rare to non-existant.

QuoteI will now extend that concept to an immediate concern. You haven't discussed actual play at all. That means that if I don't see some immediately, the thread shuts down.

I thought I had with a couple of examples of how I've used IIEE techniques in my IRC game to create a CA. Given the room that it seems to me that the rules leave. These are not fictitious, but actual examples (I'd like to hear from Fred what he thinks of the mind-control case in particular, because in actual fact he refused to decline the contest - which seems to me to be him employing his own preferences for CA to counter mine).

But let me give another example. In play on Monday night, I had set up a very typically sim situation where the players are presented with a base that they have to infiltrate to destroy the bad guys. Heck, it could be taken as a gamism dungeon, as it happens. In fact I was really disappointed in what I'd done, because it was such a fallback to earlier technique. The previous session I'd introduced Ruin House as the place where the bad guys hang out, and where all the plots that ail them seem to emanate from. Classic Shadowrun style mission set up - go in there and clean house.

Now my intent had been to run them through this dungeon and to set up some bangs when they got inside. But I didn't even have to wait, Thomas Robertson, being the veteran narrativism hawk he is, simply has his character walk up to the front door and knock on it. Very James Bond of his character to simply waltz into the danger. Here he'd taken what was a potentially very gamism or sim looking set up, and just circumvented all of that, and placed things very quickly back on the narrativism track. Immediately I grabbed hold of what he'd given me, and presented one of the characters with a bang that involved one of the house servants, sent to poison them, turning out to be beholden to the PC for her life, and informing them of the poison. After which she was dragged away by the guards for "pestering" the PCs.

Even the players here are using their simple control of their characters to create narrativism producing situation (just narrativism to decide to do the tactically unsound but cool thing to waltz in). One of the players who is new to the group. Charlotte, and has, I suspect, a more traditional background had her character gawk at the audacity of the plan. I suspect this was in in-character way of saying that she thought that Thomas was crazy for doing this tactically ridiculous thing. This is just further evidence of the nature of Thomas' decicsion.

Now, we could speculate that this is because HQ has shown Thomas that this is the right sort of action to take. And I've touted that HQ makes failure fun in the past, so maybe that's the case. But knowing Thomas as I do, and recalling the first sessions of HQ I played with him, he'd have done this whether or not he'd ever played HQ before, or had a chance to understand what the system promotes.

Now, the case is problematic in a way, because we could say that this is a case of not being able to determine if the rules are promoting anything, because what they promote, and what his preferred agenda are, happen to coincide. Except I'm not sure at all that the HQ rules really promote this sort of thing all that much. (And, again, all of these cases are problematic, given that HQ is probably incoherent).

But, unfortunately, these are the most common and recent examples I have.

A more telling case is the actual example I've cited many times before of the last time I played D&D. To recount quickly, a friend of mine who plays with me regularly (mostly in my sim games of old), and I joined up with another group of our friends who we wargame with regularly, in their weekly D&D game. When creating characters, we just couldn't get ourselves to engage with the 3E tactical choices, and instead ended up deciding that we were "slavers" by profession. He with his warrior specialized in mancatcher, and me with my wizard with spells like charm person, and sleep.

Our use of character choices and techniques strongly made our play sim or nar. To the extent that the other players, who's regular game was very gamism oriented classic D&D play, really had no idea what to do with us. The GM, to his credit, rolled with it, understanding that somehow what we were doing was allowed under the purview of player control of their characters. But not understanding how it was that we were playing D&D, really.

Now, I'm willing to be tossed into that culture of people who are determined to avoid having the rules tell us how to play. If that's what this example is. I'll even admit that, knowing what I was doing when I did it, that it may have been a tad irresponsible. But I don't think I'm all that unusual in this, even amongst the many players who might claim to be about following the rules most of the time.

QuoteI also want you to tell me straight-up whether any of this arises from some third-party discussion that you haven't mentioned.

Nope. It's been something rattling around in my brain for quite a while, an observation that I've made watching lots of play at Indie-Netgaming, and at GenCon and other conventions.

For example, I played The Princes' Kingdom at Origins with Clinton (great game), and I think he may have been exhibiting some of what I'm talking about there. It's hard for me to comment, because I'm not familiar with the DitV rules all that well, actually. And, more complexly, I'm pretty sure that Clinton is following Vincent's general advice from the book about how to play (is "Say yes or roll" a "rule" per se, or advice?). But consider his use of framing techniqe. He uses classic "scene framing" technique.

As an actual example, I recall at one point, when confronting the villain, our characters were saying how bad he was, and he was protesting, and Clinton flashed us over to a new scene in which he was showing our characters how the technology that he'd brought to the island was saving a woman's life (leading to Brendan's character getting the trait "Sometimes Bad People Do Good Things" subsequently). This was done, I believe, without asking player permission to move the characters to this different location where the woman was. Just a kick in the gut move using a lot of GM authority.

I'm pretty sure that's not in the book. Great narrativism reinforcing technique, because it moved us right along to an escallation of the quandry back from being "he's bad, we're good" to something more morally grey. But I doubt that there's any specific rule in TPK that allows him the power to do this. It's an exploitation of an area of GM judgment left open by the rules.

Rather another player from a more traditional play history would probably not play it this way. They'd probably have said, "Now he asks you to move along so he can show you something. Do you go?" This technique, in conjunction with ones like it especially, can be strongly sim supportive. So even if the player in question is intent on following what the rules promote, might his training in the generalities of RPGs not lead him back to a more familiar style of play in this case?

Or will the rules make that technique unimportant because of the reward cycle of DitV style games, and make play narrativism even with that technique in play?

Now the latter case is not actual play, but fictitious. I'd also accept it if you say that such a player will probably alter his techniques to fit the rules better. But I think that's unlikely, no?

QuoteAnd finally, if that's the case, I am specifically asking, is this all about the age-old, absolutely stupendous bullshit that Forge theory has something to do with telling people they play wrong?

No.

Mike

Following up on the above reply to Ron...

Callan,

I'm making no such claim that the only thing that rules do is to promote CA. I'm saying that the claim is that they do this amongst other things, and I'm trying to get a feel of how often, and to what extent, they really do affect CA, and how often they are made irrelevant to the CA by people's use of techniques and understandings of decision-making procedures brought in from sources other than the rules.

As for the request for similar AP experiences to yours...I'm not sure what quality the example you give is supposed to show, so I can't give you a similar experience. In fact your example leaves me wondering whether the wizard was a PC of yours with you as player, or an NPC with you as GM, a PC for another player with you as GM, or something else. It's very confusing just what you're describing, much less what it's supposed to illustrate.

Mike

I have a friend who's a pretty serious amateur game designer and long-time gamer who doesn't participate here but has bought and read a lot of the games and talked about them with me at length. His take on the designs here and the theoretical breakthrough he finds most impressive is the way that the designers here are able to talk about, articulate, engineer, and address something he and I call "play-procedures". That is, the mechanics, a lot of them he thinks are cool and all, but what he thinks is really unique about the kind of games coming out of here are their extreme clarity about play-procedures.

I've found that many, but not all, of the Forge play procedures can, with some thought and effort and sometimes with a certain amount of patch ruling - but less than one might suppose - be transferred to mainstream games. For example, the Dogs adventure prep guidelines are transferrable to many traditional systems. You lose some things - the way the Dogs character progression system ties into escalation and imbues conflict choices with additional danger and moral weight, etc. - but in fact you can run the 'come in to the fucked up town and pass judgment' adventure very successfully for a D&D party led by a paladin, or a classic Champions superhero group, just for example. To do that you need the Town Creation guidelines, the advice about having NPCs just spill stuff, and a few other things, but you don't need the whole system.

This is where some of what I've thought hooks up with what I think Mike is getting at here. A really well-designed game will integrate play-procedures with mechanics with how-to-play text in a way that the whole thing functions well. But one surprising discovery, for my friend and I, that's come out of our interaction with some local designs and theory, is that just as mechanics are often portable as patch rules, play-procedures are also often portable.

This portability also explain why you get such widely disparate play in traditional games: some people doing extremely well at recognizably Narrativist play with a traditional system that doesn't particularly support it. My theory, which I think dovetails with Mike's, is that these people have learned or hit upon play-procedures that direct the mechanics towards that kind of play, one way or another. They often don't know how to say what they are because articulating what we do is actually very difficult for human beings where there's not a preexisting language and because of some gaming traditions; and even if they do know how to say it other people often don't know how to translate it into their own experience.

I don't see myself as disagreeing with Ron or Mike here but this is how I navigate between the various issues being discussed. Play-procedures are the most dominant aspect of system and because many early games are bags of resolution mechanics, disparate techniques, and color they can be turned in a lot of different directions.

Mike's additional point I think with the example of Clinton's GMing is that there are a very big arsenal of portable techniques that go from game to game for which it's unclear how they interface with the concept of 'system' as game-specific play-procedures.

Mike, I think a real issue here is that different games provide different levels of explanation for these informal or soft rules/techniques/advice---which I DO consider to be official rules if they're written in the book. In other words, I believe different games have a less or more number of "holes" that have to be filled in. And because of this, I believe the answer to your question is going to vary from game to game.

Like, I'm currently running DitV (which I think is one of the better games in this regard). I really don't feel like I've pulled in many techniques from other games. I'm really trying to follow the advice given in the book and communicated to me by Vincent and various threads on the game... Maybe I've been pushing the moral ambiguity of the situation, rather than make it obviously good & evil, but... but I thought that was kinda the point, to give the players something to judge... Maybe there's a little but of my own interpretation in there, but I don't feel it's very much.

Contrast that with... The Mountain Witch. The system has an inherent flexibility to it, in how players how can create their own Fates as well as choose how & when to bring them out. Also, I didn't do quite as a good a job as Vincent, so players kinda have to pull from past play to fill in the content for bangs and such. So play of tMW can easily be drifted either towards Nar or Gam, though I think it's skewed towards Nar (I haven't readily recognized Sim play of tMW yet, but I don't see why that shouldn't be possible). I've posted about this a number of times.

I think another issue here is that we as a community and as individuals are still trying to get a firm grasp on how to communicate these play procedures. We've definitely made good headway, but I think we still have a ways to go. I think to really answer your question you'll need to wait another couple years and see how look then. I really don't think your argument/theory is very rigorous if you use a bunch of texts that have been recognized as incoherent or "hole-y", like HQ. To really answer your question you need to use texts that are very clear about play procedures, and we don't have very many of those right now.

Hi Mike,

I'm having a hard time understanding the question. I know you've tried to narrow the question for folks like two or three times now, but I'm still having a hard time. Let me state what I think I'm hearing. You seem to be asking what part of system promotes creative agenda, the game master and players or the rules? You also seem to be asking more generally does system actually, in truth, support creative agenda? I'm going to risk looking silly and go forward from that assumption. *grins*

So we can play Dogs in the Vineyard as a game where we go to towns (dungeons), we fight with the bad guys (monsters), we take their sentences, and get stronger. I can imagine doing this even with the say yes or roll rule, it really just requires a group who wants to engage in this play-style. Now we could look at this and come to the conclusion that Dogs doesn't support Narrativist play. I think that would be a mistaken conclusion. Dogs does support Narrativist play very well, it's just that creative agenda is more decided by the folks playing than the rule system. This helps to explain things like drift, freestyle gaming, or finding support in Heroquest by interpreting the rules in a specific way to support CA. So how much of CA is the players? Most of it, all of it, or very little of it, depending on the people playing. That's a hard question to quantify in absolute terms. So does system reinforce CA? I think you would be hard-pressed to find an actual case where it doesn't at least a little, but conceptually it doesn't have to. 

Quote from: Clyde L. Rhoer on November 29, 2006, 07:51:58 PM


So we can play Dogs in the Vineyard as a game where we go to towns (dungeons), we fight with the bad guys (monsters), we take their sentences, and get stronger. I can imagine doing this even with the say yes or roll rule, it really just requires a group who wants to engage in this play-style. Now we could look at this and come to the conclusion that Dogs doesn't support Narrativist play. I think that would be a mistaken conclusion. Dogs does support Narrativist play very well, it's just that creative agenda is more decided by the folks playing than the rule system.

You are basically changing the color in Dogs and saying that due to the game taking place in a dungeon it would no longer support nar play and that just ain't so.

Hi Judd,

I'm not talking about color, even though my description can be read as a changing of color. I am saying that I could play Dogs with a Gamist agenda, or a Simulationist agenda if that was the type of play my group was looking for. The Gamist agenda would be easier using the rules of the book, Simulationism might work best with drift or freestyle. The color was a funnier way to state the last sentence, and get the point across... so I thought. I was saying in essence it could be played like D+D, you know? Go in the dungeon, kill the monsters, take their sentences. I've played it Dogs once with some friends and it went much like the way we used to play D+D. Other times it has been a moral examining, shooting up, dramatic game, but that was different folks, and different CA.

Think of it this way, before coherent games you would have had to unconsciously force your groups creative agenda on a game. Likely this was a reason incoherency wasn't something that was even considered, i.e. it had no verbiage, as it was expected that folks would use parts of the game to support their style of gaming. Therefore... Rule Zero.  However that's entering a whole other area of discussion....

Am I making better sense now?

Clyde, I'm not denying that system can have an effect. That's actually a given here. The question is whether or not system ever pushes people playing the game from using techniques like making Dogs into a dungeon crawl to playing the game in another way. Or do the skill sets and preferences we bring in always end up being the most important part of the equation?

I mean you have a set of players, who've never played anything but D&D, say. And they like their D&D play as a good wargamey set of player challenges. This is what they're used to RPGs being, and know that they like (which isn't the same thing as saying they dislike other things, it's all they know). And they come to play DitV. Will they end up playing the game as Vincent intended? Even if they intend to play by the rules of the game as written?  

My hypothesis is that the rules of an RPG won't actually have much effect in this case. Because the rules actually leave huge amounts of lattitude that has to be filled in with player techniques and ephemera that they have to either create on the spot, or bring in from previous play. And that, in employing this, they'll fall back on what they know in terms of CA.

And that with people who know about CA, and how to manipulate it with technique that this is at least as common, if not more common. The hypothetical group above might actually have a better chance of playing DitV as it's intended, because not knowing that there's another way to play, they won't be working to prevent it, or reinforce their own play.

This is not evidence of the hypothesis, since the hypothetical is not actual play. I only include it to try to explain the hypotbesis.

Mike

Quote from: Mike Holmes on November 30, 2006, 12:57:14 PM
Clyde, I'm not denying that system can have an effect. That's actually a given here. The question is whether or not system ever pushes people playing the game from using techniques like making Dogs into a dungeon crawl to playing the game in another way. Or do the skill sets and preferences we bring in always end up being the most important part of the equation?

By way of an potential answer, let me tell you a little bit about my recent Fate game.

I've been running a fantasy genre mashup game using the new version of Fate from Spirit of the Century. We had one player, who shall remain nameless, who was absolutely obsessed with the minutiae of his character's personal activities, tactics, gear, timetable, and other habits gained from what I'm guessing is a ton of tournament-style D&D when he was a teenager.

So there were a lot of situations in the game where he wanted to do something cool, and I'd be like, "Okay, awesome, roll for it," and before he'd do that, he'd spend a whole lot of time gearing up on his specific description of tactics and maneuvers. "Right, so I want to sneak into the building, but as I'm coming up the street I change my posture to make me look like a denizen of the neighborhood, and I have my climbing gear ready, and I'm not moving too fast so as to not seem suspicious." And I'd nod and go, "Okay. Roll your Burglary."

Now, in Fate, all that kind of stuff really doesn't mean jack from a mechanical standpoint, but I never discouraged him from doing it because it was good narrational color. But it never *mattered* the way he wanted it to. And I could tell he was frustrated by that, just as I could tell he was frustrated when other people would say, "I do X," with little to no elaboration, and I'd say, "Okay, roll," and they'd perform just as well.

End of the story? This dude is no longer playing with us.

Enter his replacement. Same gaming background, mostly D&D with some smatterings of GURPS and SAGA Marvel play. He has a scene where he's exploring a temple for their stockpiles of food, helping out a village of estranged people in exchange for assistance with his own goals. He makes one Burglary roll to get in unseen, a Stealth roll to get past the six dudes camped in there, another Burglary roll to silently pick the lock on the trapdoor to the basement, and another Stealth roll to get out. Only time any of the description colored the roll mechanically was that on the way out, he had a sack of foodstuffs on his back and was more encumbered.

We had some description between each roll, and he had to invoke some aspects to stay on top of it, but the bottom line is, he made them all. And I said to him, "Awesome. Your character succeeded flawlessly." And he replied, "Awesome."

Now, here's the thing - the type of stuff he was saying in his description was pretty much the same as the stuff that Player #1 would say, except he had no problem with that stuff serving its proper systemic role in explaining the results of the roll instead of trying to influence said roll.

***

So, my answer? Yes, sometimes system can push people into using different agendas, but I don't think it can trump strong, inflexible preferences on the part of the individual. I think that's one of the reasons why we talk about system as supporting one agenda or another - it suggests a continuum where on one end, the rules basically mandate one CA to such a degree that playing with other agendas means you don't really have any fun, and on the other end, where the rules minimally support any agenda and your own preferences and local techniques must take the forefront.

Like, I can't imagine anyone with hardcore Gamist preferences wanting anything at all to do with Primetime Adventures. However, on the other end, I know a schlock-ton of gaming groups who are absolutely convinced that ignoring the rules is the only valid way to get a Narrativist payoff, to the point where they regularly tout GURPS as a game that actively supports storytelling. And when I say this, I'm not talking about 'story-oriented with no story' play like Ron's described before, but real Narrativism, where only roleplay and a desire to push for conflict are used as the means to address Premise. In such play, I've even seen definitive, unconscious signalling devices (like setting aside the dice and character sheets) used to tell everyone "hey, it's Premise time!". I'd go further to say that there's a lot of Nar play out there like this.

Taking it back to my AP example, I really felt bad for Player #1, because I could tell he was in absolutely the wrong game, and that the system (including my desire not to stray from the text) would never give him what he wants. The other part of that is, I knew that his preferences were so inflexible that he'd never deviate from them, and that the most clearly written ruleset that didn't account for those preferences wouldn't do him any good. Contrast that against his replacement, who has been doing something different for a few game sessions now and is totally cool with the newness.

There's that tired adage about leading a horse to water. I think that designers are obligated to point the way to their particular water with huge neon signs. But in the end, no, you'll never really make 'em drink. Part of that's tradition, like Ron said, but in the absence of that tradition, I think it'd still be this way to some degree.

Mike,

I basically agree with the response that the current language, i.e. system "supports" or "facilitates" a certain CA, sounds pretty much spot on. The GM and players will play, trying to satisfy some sort of Creative Agenda, and they may have more or less trouble depending on the ruleset they've chosen. Specific techniques (like Kickers and Bangs), I think, can't really be considered to be separate from the system they're using. They are effectively rules or procedures from other rulesets that are being added on to the rules they're using from the book to make up their total System in play.

But this is where what I was saying in my previous comes in:

The way the rules are written can have a strong impact on this whole thing. How? Well, I think that if you're aiming for a certain CA, and the game makes that easy, you'll get fast results. A well-written game, therefore, might "sell" a certain way of playing so strongly as to make the players want to play it that way. If reading the "flavor text" of that game you bought makes you want to play a game with that approach, you might end up playing it that way.

So, if the book describes how cool it is to come up with interesting combinations of abilities, or the flavor text really makes you want to play out a fictional story of that sort, you might try to play the game that way. I've always found that examples of play in rulebooks that grab my interest make me want to try to create similar types of things when I play the game. Don't you think that has something to do with why so many people bought Vampire: the Masquerade? Do you think they picked it up, read it, and then started thinking about how they might make the most powerful character, or which handgun was the most effective for its price? I suspect that people imagined some sort of terrible angsty, Premise-laden stories, and tried to do that. If the rules didn't provide them with the tools to achieve that goal, of course, their desire to do so might not last very long.

So, the way the rules are written might (despite the fact that, obviously, they don't have any authority over the players) help "aim" the reader at a certain CA. In that way, the text can influence what play of the game will look like.

Of course, that's just my best guess, my opinion. I don't have any research to back it up or anything like that.

Oh, the other side of the coin:

Do some techniques require a certain learning curve from the players? For instance, will scene framing and stake setting improve certain types of play for anyone who uses them, or only those who can learn to use them to their advantage?

Secondly, does that mean that we should encourage all the players (not just the GM) to read the text of any game they're going to play?

Best,


Paul

Hi Mike,

Thanks. I understand better now, but want a further clarification because I still see a couple of meanings. It's your use of skill-sets that's giving me consideration. Are you basically asking if it's system that can force that moment when someone "learns" a new creative agenda, or if that moment is more caused by things outside the system, like these boards, talking with friends about how to play, etc?

I would like to chime in, because some of the things that were said in this thread made me recall the difficulties I had to understand nar games until I tried DitV  [I hope I don't make too many errors, English is not my native language]

Some post above, Clyde said that you could play DitV with a gamist agenda.  Well, I don't think so.

OK, let me explain: I know that EVERY game can be played with every creative agenda. CA are "what we want from this game", in a way, reinforced by social pressure, and you can play DitV "wanting" a Gamist Agenda.  But there are games who make this so difficult to force you to change the system or change the creative agenda. Case in point: I TRIED to use DitV with a gamist agenda.  It happened more that one time. Narrativist is a "new trick" for me, I played gamist for a long, long time, and sometimes when I was tired, or the GM (who has gamist tendencies himself) tried to "beat" my character, I fell back on the old skill and played "to win".

I understand that I am using the word "gamist CA" incorrectly above. It was not social and not for a full unity of play. It was more something like me (and the GM) playing like "in the old days" trying to beat each other, for half a game session. Something so usual and "normal" for us and the other players that wasn't the group pressure that every time stopped us and made we think about what we were doing. No, it was the system.  Because, every time, it didn't support that style of playing. The system, every time, crashed down. Because it you play DitV "to win", you can NEVER LOSE. You can always get another dice, using every object you can think about. You can always call for a different follow-up conflicts. At the end, it became ridiculous and stopped the game cold.
You can't play DitV "to win" because there isn't a shadow of a chance that you could lose, if losing is the worst you can think that it could happen and you do everything you can to avoid it. You can lose (making the game run and not stop cold) only when you accept that you CAN lose and it's not that bad for you.

This helped me to understand nar games immensely. Because every other time I tried before some "nar game", I fell back on my old idea about "what is a rpg" ignoring the "advices" in the book (without wanting to do so. Every time I really tied to play "by the book" but every time I read what I wanted to read, not what it was written really on the page. And played at the end always in the "old way".  Before DitV I tried to play Dust Devils (a couple of one shots as the GM, but I didn't really understand how to play and the games fizzled), tRoS (one one-shot at a convention, where I played "to win" all the time. I liked very much the strategic elements of the game), and some other indie games at various con. I read all the Sorcerer Books, but I had a hard time trying to understand some points of the game, and I didn't understand what was so innovative about it.

But when I tried DitV, it was different. Because it's a hard-line game. It don't give you "advice", it tell you "in this game you have to play like this, and shut up", and when you try to play in a different way it crashes. And when you play it like it's written, even if you think that is a strange, difficult and rather stupid way to play...  at the end it works and you realize that it wasn't really stupid after all...

One example of this is the famous "say yes or roll the dices". It's givens as a RULE, it's not "advice". There is no doubt that if you don't do it that way, you aren't playing the game as written. I tried to play it, it worked REALLY well, and now I think that I will "say yes or roll the dices" in every rpg I will ever play (this from my old game style who could be phrased something like "say no, or roll the dices and still say no")

AFTER I played for months at DitV (with a gaming group that for more than half is not interested in theory and that is now playing nar without ever talking with everybody about creative agenda, but only with the playing of the game), I re-read the indie games I have. And I discovered that I already read "say yes or roll the dices" before. It's in Sorcerer. In the "playing the game" chapter. It's not written with these words, or in so forceful manner. But it says to permit every action and let the consequences (the results of the roll) happen. In another place say to don't roll for something without importance. At the end, all in all, its another way to say "say yes or roll the dices".

But I read Sorcerer years ago, I agreed with that "advice" ("very good advice, yes, but I already do that, no? I say NO only when I really have to say no, after all...") and continued to say "no" all the time.

I really NEEDED a game that told me "no, it doesn't mean that you have to do this most of the time, or that you should try to do this more often. It say that you have to do this EVERY TIME"

I think that a game text CAN teach a different way to play. A different Creative Agenda. (there is a blog post, from Ben Lehman, I believe  - I'm not sure and I have bad memory, so excuse me if I get the writer or the content wrong - that argued that the only really successful indie games - in sales - are the games that do that). It happened to me. To do so, It must:
1) Be really clear about HOW you MUST play the game. Hard rules, not simply advice.
2) SHOW you very soon that these rules WORK.

This would not work if the reader has no reason to trust the game author, and he is used to changing the rules before playing the first time with all the games he play. But about this, don't underestimate the social pressure. DitV has got a kind of "pressure" because is known as a "different" game, and people who try it already know that they are about to play some "strange thing".  And the community around the forge has a similar form of "pressure" to "try the games like they are written".

And a game can call from a different kind of "pressure", from different experiences: for example, Primetime Adventures: just using words like "producer", "budget", "fan mail", "issue", etc, I have seen it "force" (gently) a different agenda on people who would not have played in the same way if "fan mail" were called "power points" and "issue" were called "flaw"...

PTA is another game that, like DitV, can (in my experience) change the way people play, easily.

Quote from: Mike Holmes on November 30, 2006, 12:57:14 PM
I mean you have a set of players, who've never played anything but D&D, say. And they like their D&D play as a good wargamey set of player challenges. This is what they're used to RPGs being, and know that they like (which isn't the same thing as saying they dislike other things, it's all they know). And they come to play DitV. Will they end up playing the game as Vincent intended? Even if they intend to play by the rules of the game as written?

My hypothesis is that the rules of an RPG won't actually have much effect in this case.

Last night I finished my fifth session of Dogs in the Vineyard with a group like you describe in the quote above. I can tell you that Dogs' rules definitely help you nail down the CA. I have detailed our trip of learning how to play story now games, by writing a detailed AP of our game, but unfotunately it is in Swedish.

Last night it finally clicked for all the players, they understood why Dogs is so cool, why it supports stories better than D&D. They actually talked about D&D being more of a board game, and perfectly described gamerism, without knowing what that is. It was way cool!

I am 100% sure that rules can push and teach CA,

Yoki

I think there are two separate issues here.  The first is, CAN a system teach/convey/recquire a CA.  The second is, WILL such a system actually do so.

I think he answer to the first question is yes and that the second depends upon the players, which is to say, if we are talking about players who are already experienced and confident and not actively seeking to change their style of play, then mere text probably will not cause or prompt them to do so.

Arguably, how much of a given text does an experienced gamer actually read anyway, I wonder?  I suspect we "know" what we are looking at, what things we need to get a grip on.  So there may be cases where a system would have had an effect IF it had been read properly, but the assumption was that there was nothing much to be learned.

There are too many variables to expect that mere access to a text will change behaviour.  I think it CAN do so but not that it WILL do so.

Mike,

Suppose you're designing a game.  And you're under the impression that the people who play your game will do it EXACTLY as you've intended if only you can communicate that well enough.  And you write some clear, inspired text, that really ought to get all players on the same page, using the CA, Techniques, every aspect of system, every style of exploration that you had in mind.

Okay.  Now, suppose you discover that most role-players come loaded with their own preferences on every detail of how to play a game, will drift and ignore your rules and advice when they feel like it, and generally have no interest in how you think the game ought to be played.

How does this awful revelation affect your design choices?

It's easy to envision three different responses:
1) Give up on designing a game for play by anyone other than you and the people you already play with.
2) Design, but give less than your full effort in communicating how you think the game should be played, expending effort only on setting material or gimmicky spellcasting rules or some such.
3) Not change a thing.  Make the game for the .001% of gamers who will follow your intentions.

If you have a more interesting and complex answer than one of the above, I'd love to hear it (and that would make more sense of this thread's purpose in my mind).

Thanks,
-David

So we have an actual play experience from Brother Blood that seems to validate system does matter without any ambiguity.  I think the question is answered, make rules that actively support one agenda and not others and the system matters.  You cant prevent someone ignoring rules or changing them but you can create rules that support an agenda. The only question left is one for designers, are my rules clear enough to show what I'm going for?

Three pages to get to that? That seems like where we all started from.

Mike, I'm trying my very, very best. I do see some value to some of the points you've raised, given that a person was laboring under various misunderstandings. But if the person is not, then what you're saying isn't doing anything. It's as if we were all standing on the ship, and you jumped off and froze your ass in the icy sea, and then clambered back on, to tell us, "Stay on the ship!!" I'm kind of looking at you oddly ... yeah, uh, we knew that.

Caldis' post indicates to me that your thread title and instant reversal are posing insurmountable problems for readers. This thread isn't about system mattering or not mattering. You keep saying "system" when clearly you mean rules-texts. So this thread is about texts and gamer culture. It has everything to do with what I've been calling the murk, and especially about what a bunch of concurrent threads are dealing with, incoherence.

I also have a hard time relating to IRC play of any kind, and I consider that in Big Model terms, it's a lot like playing blind and partially gagged. So any observations or critique, for that matter, about anything I've ever written about, doesn't really yank my "must attend to" chain if it comes from IRC play. That's my own limitation of understanding, perhaps, so I'm trying not to let that interfere with my judgment about this thread. I'm stating it here to be up-front about my difficulties.

Regarding your examples, I don't know what to tell you. They don't illustrate anything to me about what "system" does or doesn't do. They seem to me to be about two things. First, about how rules-texts, if they don't match up to what people want or are familiar with, they get ignored. They also seem to me to be about taking a text and inferring what pieces might be missing, given what pieces are present, and adding them. Is that a crapshoot? Sure. It also totally applies to HeroQuest as a text, specifically; I consider any play of that game as written as a bit of a CA-crapshoot requiring a fair amount of inference and addition (or reduction of certain things).

So. I don't know what to do with this thread, as moderator. As discourse, it's not a disaster, but it is definitely a two-spined mutant with a misleading face. I also respect your desire to address something important that you've been thinking about for a long time. I'm strongly tempted merely to say, "start over, with up-front statements about exactly what you mean, and no leading questions." I'm going to leave it up to you, though. I'm good with letting this one continue if you're OK with where it's gone and what to do next with it, and I'm also good if you want to close it here and start a new one.

Best, Ron

Hello,

The Forge is getting interesting with these threads about the gaming "condition" instead of just the gaming "words".

I think that system does matter. The word "system" seems to be ambiguous here, but that's ok. After reading the pages of posts, I understand the system of a game to include the rules, style and agenda. The agenda of a game seems to be the hardest thing to validate. I've played many board games, RPGs, cards, etc. and many of them use descriptive, theme-based phrases to give you a sense of what the game experience will be. Most fail for me because I've been misled.

System matters because it has to appeal to me. I have to get something out of playing the game using the defined system as it is described. And not all systems are the same. Possibly, most systems aren't defined and somehow are secretly embedded in the text. Two games could use the exact same rules (d20 anyone?) but each system could evoke completely different experiences.

Greyorm made a good point about most games not telling us how to play the game. The automobile manual and skill in driving was a very good analogy.

I have not played most of the games listed in the posts. Most sound fun and others don't interest me. The rules were not listed although some brief examples of play were given. Also, enthusiasm about games will gain my interest. I think I would enjoy DitV because it supports my type of creativity. I love stories!

I agree with Ron in that the word "system" could be defined properly for this thread, and tell us why system does or doesn't matter to you.

Troy

Before I knew about the Forge, I used "system" to mean, alternately, "any textual rules" or "the sum of all textual rules."

Then I came here and found this great principle: "the means by which the group agrees to imagined events during play".  Wow!  Excellent!  But its name?  "System"?  Hello, open door for semantic confusion!  (And I think that having an actual name, "the Lumpley principle", for this definition is insufficient to solve the confusion.)

It's been my observation in academia that any specifically-defined concept that bears the name of a familiar other concept winds up fighting an uphill battle.  You take two philosophy classes, a sociology class, and a literary criticism class and find four definitions of the word "intentional", and spend half your discussion time floundering because of it.  At that point, I become a fan of adopting a longer, clunkier, but more descriptive term.

The best I can come up with here is "SIS-Creation Method" (less accurate, but needs no acronym) or "Method of Imagined Event Agreement" (MIEA).  Then Mike could have said in this thread, "Does Textual MIEA matter?" and Forge veterans and newcomers alike could have proceeded to discuss this without confusion.

Sorry I couldn't come up with a more elegant term, and no disrespect intended to anyone who thinks "system" is excellent as is.  Just one guy's opinion...

-David

Mike,

I think the last round of posts illustrates that the thread title has overriden any post or point you've tried to make. I gotta close this one down and urge you to start a new one.

Folks, no more posting here please.

Best, Ron

You're right, Ron. I may try to repost this with a better written hypothesis at some point.

Mike

It's settled, then.

No more posting to this thread, please.

Best, Ron