Ratings vs In-game reality -- Help!

[Hobbitboy]

(which almost gets me off on my in-game/metagame rant - a really high strength ability doesn't neccessarily mean that the character is strong at all)

Actually I wish you would because I'm really struggling with this concept (or it's consequences at least).

In the Introducing Narrativism to your Players thread Mike said...

The other typical problem with "converting" to narrativism, is getting the players to buy into the idea (which Chris hinted at) that the ratings aren't entirely meant to reflect some in-game reality.

Won't having to try and explain this to prospective players (on top of all the other new and/or unusual HQ features) be the straw that breaks the camel's back and sends them scuttling back to the comfort of D&D? Or do I hold off on this aspect until it arises then spring it on them?

... Consider the following, as an extreme example meant to see if you can wrap your head around the concept in question. You could have a character described as being a huge strong guy, who doesn't have a the ability Strong at all.

So far I've been led to believe that information on a character's character sheet is a manifestation of the character concept as defined by that particular game's mechanics. I don't understand how 'Strong 17' (or whatever) can appear on a newly-created character sheet without there being some aspect of the character concept to justify it's presence.

If there is such a justification (or if it has been added later during play) then I suppose this discussion is moot but if there isn't why would the strong rating be allowed at all?

... Then you could have a small guy who would be described in-game as much weaker who has Strong 5W. In many games this would mean that the little guy was the stronger of the two. In fact there'd be some chart that would list how much each can carry or the like.

There is no such chart in HQ, and for a reason. Because the ability Strong doesn't neccessarily reflect the strength of the character. Instead it represents how often the character will be able to resolve conflicts favorably using strength.

So if 'strong 17' doesn't mean that the character is strong hasn't the attribute been given the wrong name?

... Again, in our example, if the two guys lift stones larger and larger to see who can lift the larger stone, in a situation that's not a conflict, the big guy will win.

How do you know? (Remember that both of them are characters.) Is it because the narrator has decided the contest isn't important so awards the contest to the stronger character or is it because the narrator has decided that the players haven't placed any importance on the contest? Do the players get a say? What distinguishes a contest from a conflict?

... But, say the big guy is trying to pound the little guy into the ground. The little guy will likely win the contest (all else being equal), due to his Strong abilty.

Doesn't that make him stronger? No, it doesn't. The narration of the win could be something like, "Despite being much weaker, Skinny Guy manages to maneuver to get some good leverage and make his muscles work well to cut off the Big guy's windpipe, knocking him unconscious."

If the same conflict occurs on several different occasions (with presumably the same results) does the narrator reuse the same explaination over and over again or does (s)he have to come up with different ones each time?

... The skinny guy wins because of his strength, yes. but not because he's stronger. But because the game statistics said that the story should go such that he will win this way more often.

Does that make any sense?

The only way I can come to grips with this is by assuming the following process:

[*]Character concept involves being strong and the character sheet has a rating for strength: The character is physically strong and knows how to use it to his advantage.
[*]Character concept involves being strong and the character sheet has no strength rating: The character is physically strong but doesn't know how to (or can't) use his strength well when it really matters.
[*]Character concept doesn't mention strength and the character sheet has a rating for strength: The character is no stronger than average but knows how to use what little strength he has effectively.
[*]Character concept doesn't mention strength and the character sheet has no strength rating: The character is no stronger than average and it shows.[/list:u]
but somehow I have the feeling I've missed the point and it still requires that the character sheet contain elements that are not part of the character concept or vice versa.

... Now, what usually happens is that everyone makes things easy to grasp, and matches pretty closely the ability descriptions to the in-game descriptions. So the above circumstance doesn't often (ever, even) occur. But it could,

And it's my inability to conceive how it could that is at the root of my unease.

... and it would be valid. Understanding this is key in figuring out how things work in a game like HQ.

Where am I going wrong? It's like I must have some mental block or lack of understanding which is preventing me from seeing how to get my mind around this vexing topic.

Thanks,

HB

[Bankuei]

Hi HB,

This is a great question. Here's the key point to look at in this game, ratings don't necessary measure the quality itself, they measure the "cinematic" power of the quality over the outcomes in play.

So, to pull an example; Luke Skywalker pretty much "hears" about the Force from Ben Kenobi, does a couple of drills, and basically sucks.  Yet his "Force" rating is high, because it does a lot for helping him blow up the Death Star.  There is no question that his ability actually sucks, but cinematically, it is powerful enough to count when he needs it.  A player could have chosen to make the Force rating very high, even before the character "knew" about possessing such abilities.

Why look at things this way instead of Strength X= X strong?  Well, consider the contest between Agnar the Strong attempting to pummel his brother Bedor the Persuasive who is trying to calm him down.  Agnar is using his strength, and Bedor is using his persuasion, and they both happen to be equal(after all is said and done).  How can persuasion be as "powerful" as strength?  Easy, we're measuring the rating's power over the outcome of the story, not a simulation of reality.

Of course, if you want, you can measure everything literally, at which point, you have to deal with two problems:

-Relationships-

So, if Love Wife is 17 as a normal rating, what is Love Wife 5W4?  Is that the kind of love that can only be had by higher beings?  Is it obssessive?  What kind of love can add a massive +8 to strength or other traits in a contest?

-Augmentation-

Also, if it becomes easy to augment from +10 to +50 with enough traits firing off, what does that say about your reality for traits like strength?  "I'm really motivated today, I could take on a giant... literally!!!" ?

When you approach ratings as a measure of story power, and not in game causality, these issues disappear, and you can play without having to dive deep into DoubleThink to rationalize things away.  "If he sucks, why is his Force high?"  "Because he's the hero, and it's his schtick"  "Oh, ok."

Thoughts?

Chris

[Thor Olavsrud]

Hi Hobbitboy,

I'm not going to speak for Mike, but I'll offer my own interpretation. The disconnect you're having is probably stemming from viewing the rules as the "laws" of the world. I think that, according to Mike's take, you need to look at ability ratings as expressions of story potency. They are a character's ability and power to interact with the story in certain ways.

The guy who's described as strong, but who doesn't have the Strong ability, may be the strongest guy around but his strength is not going to be a focus of his story.

I'm not positive I agree with that, but I'm not sure I disagree with it either. I haven't had the opportunity to run or play the system yet (though I hope to soon), so I'm not really qualified to make a judgment yet.

[lightcastle]

I'm going to agree with the rest that the ranking really rates the story importance more than the physical reality.

I think if you do this, then, you need to remember to tailor NPCs and such in relation to the characters, and not by some standard scale. Thus if someone is strong, you should make your giants strong in relation to that.
It then becomes about how Strong the giant is in relation to the Strong person.  I think the problem is when you are trying to decide the physical world's resistance to something. i.e. I think you have to avoid giving rocks "Heavy 5W" as an ability in this version. It's only Heavy in relation to how difficult it is for the player to lift.

Also, this explains why "Loathes Olaf 17" still means you hate Olaf more than "Dislikes Olaf 5W".

I like this, but it does require thinking a new way about things. I think you can play HQ with the numbers being a straight description of reality (although you then have to think about putting in limitations on Strong, or Love, or what have you to explain why they shouldn't go up to 15W4 or some such).

I do think most players avoid this by mentally making it a scale so that someone with Strong 15 is weaker than someone with Strong 1W.

Like Thor, I get this, and I don't dislike it, but I'm not sure I like it either.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Probably the simplest way to articulate the idea is that while in a normal game "Strong" means "this character in the imagined world is strong", in HQ and other such systems it means "we the players want this character to solve his problems with his strength". Add a number to the qualifier and it becomes "we the players want this character to solve his problems with his strength this much."

HQ is fundamentally different from world-simulating systems in this regard; you the player do not manipulate the game world at all through manipulating the numbers on the character sheet. The numbers themselves do not say anything about the game world. Instead, you manipulate the negotiation between players. By getting a high Strength for your character you're effectively saying that you want to tell scenes and stories where your character's strength counts. The rules are there to give a structure to the negotiation: instead of actually talking about it with others you just need the GM's permission for the trait and the rules will tell you how much story importance you can put in the trait at this time.

Yes, the above means that the traits need not have any real connection to the actual things of the game world. The overwhelmingly commonest interpretation of "Strength 2W" is "this character is stronger than those around him, and it shows", but this is not the only possibility. Example: my character, Olaf the unlucky, has "Strength 3". He is however just as strong and robust as others in his village. It's just that every time he tries to do something dramatic or interesting with his strength, he seems to stumble, or twist his ankle, or face the wrong direction. In effect he's learned not to solve things with brute strength, and only rarely even tries. His "Strenght 3" is interpreted as "I don't want Olaf to rely on strength, but that's because he doesn't believe in himself, not because he's actually weak".

Everything in HQ rules is predicated on this largely unspoken difference from world simulating systems. There's no simulation in the conflict rules, or magic rules, or experience rules, or anything at all in there.

[soru]

Everything in HQ rules is predicated on this largely unspoken difference from world simulating systems.

In ForgeQuest yes, HeroQuest not so much.

That's not how the game is explained in the rulebook, it is not how many people play it, it is just a set of interpretations and house rules that have grown up around this site.

No problem with that, until you get people slipping from promoting that way of playing into saying that is the one true way to play HQ, that any other way is bad fun, and if you don't like it, go play GURPS.

In HeroQuest by the rulebook, someone in the game world who is strong has a high Strong rating, as appropriate to the sample resistances on page 4 of the Game Aids pdf (http://www.glorantha.com/support/GameAids.pdf).

This works because the game world is Glorantha, where someone who started as a normal farm-boy can become literally and physically, in-game-world, as strong as a giant. And thats what the rules are written to say and do.

In other words:

in HeroQuest the game world changes to support the story as represented by the rules. If you spend HP to increase you strength rating, you get slightly stronger in the game world, and if you don't think that is plausible (and are worried about plausibility), you shouldn't spend the HP.

in ForgeQuest there is no mapping from the game rules to the game world, there is only the story and the rules. Consequently there are no problems with spending HP to increase any ability, the narrator will just adjust the ability ratings of future opponents appropriately.

soru

[lightcastle]

in HeroQuest the game world changes to support the story as represented by the rules. If you spend HP to increase you strength rating, you get slightly stronger in the game world, and if you don't think that is plausible (and are worried about plausibility), you shouldn't spend the HP.

in ForgeQuest there is no mapping from the game rules to the game world, there is only the story and the rules. Consequently there are no problems with spending HP to increase any ability, the narrator will just adjust the ability ratings of future opponents appropriately.

I've gotta side with Soru on this. There's a difference between HeroQuest as written and ForgeQuest. (cute name, btw *grin*)

I think if I was going to play ForgeQuest, I would have a long talk with the players about what we understood that to mean. Then I think it would play perfectly well. As soru mentions, the narrator just adjusts as necessary.

I think most people play the game with some mix where the numbers do track to some actual element more than just "story importance".  The game book practically necessitates that if you look at magic, for instance. But a lot of the very neat relationship things seem to be best described thinking in terms of story importance. So I suspect a social contract (explicit or implicit) ends up being formed between narrator and players of what this all means and then people just, you know, play.  (grin)

[Eero Tuovinen]

Everything in HQ rules is predicated on this largely unspoken difference from world simulating systems.

In ForgeQuest yes, HeroQuest not so much.

Yeah, good point. We're indeed talking about what Mike alluded to in the other thread - the book itself is much more ambivalent. Whether the rules-to-setting interpretation is supportable in all particulars is debatable, but I don't doubt that it can be used in practice. I myself always read the samples to mean suggested scale, but then, if anybody thinks that the mutable in-game reality is easier to swallow, then go for it.

[Bankuei]

Hi folks,

The divide between the two views really comes into place based on the nebulous idea of "realism".  

In the Glorantha setting, yes, it is possible for Farmer Schmoe to love the princess 15W6, and yes, it can provide a +14 bonus to strength and everything else.  It IS mythic.  In this sense, everything on the sheet can map to reality, and yes, you had better accept that with sufficient augments, someone can hop up a mastery or two by that alone.  Realism will be very loose, ala Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

If you either A) cannot accept the wide variance reality, or B) want to play in another setting, you either have to artificially set limits to scores or else divorce the resolution from in game modelling.

I'm quite cool with it either way.  The key point being brought up here in the Forge is that you can work it however works for your plausibility needs.  The numbers exist for you at the table, not for Habbar the Wise.  

The question then becomes; are you going to accept the in game reality created by the HQ system that it models, Glorantha, where the strange and wonderous happens everyday?  Or are you going to modify that?

Chris

Sidenote:

The other thing to be aware of is that the rulebook pushes Nar goals and even advice in play, but all the examples are pretty Sim...

[soru]

Example: my character, Olaf the unlucky, has "Strength 3". He is however just as strong and robust as others in his village. It's just that every time he tries to do something dramatic or interesting with his strength, he seems to stumble, or twist his ankle, or face the wrong direction. In effect he's learned not to solve things with brute strength, and only rarely even tries. His "Strenght 3" is interpreted as "I don't want Olaf to rely on strength, but that's because he doesn't believe in himself, not because he's actually weak".

It seems to me that if you wrote 'Physically clumsy 17' or 'Uncoordinated under stress 17' or something on your character sheet, you would be matching your visualisation of the character more directly.

Any reason not to do that? With all the freedom of making up your own ability names, it seems strange to have to resort to overloading ones that usually mean something else entirely. Remember, you can add flaws at any value for no HP cost.

Obviously, you can do whatever you want in your own game, but  if I saw NPC characters in a published scenario written up as

unarmed fighting 3 (footnote: character is actually reasonably skilled at ninjutsu, but also extremely cowardly so will run away rather than fight)

Then I'd be thinking why didn't they just write:

Ninjutsu  15
Extremely cowardly 10W

Say what you mean when you write stuff on the character sheet, and 90% of interpreation problems go away.

soru

[Mike Holmes]

1. I'm not advocating actually disconnecting the in-game description of things and the mechanical description. And I never have. Read my posts again. What I've said is that, if somebody did this, it would work fine. I've also said that nobody does do this in the way I describe, so the point is moot. The reason I brought this up is because the exercise of thinking of it this way helps people to see the important part. Which is how to successfully make appropriate contests and apply the HQ mechanics given the intent of the design.

In fact, I play particularly "sim" if you will compared to a lot of people around here (Chris, for instance), and require a lot of adherence of ability description to in-game "reality." I just realize that it's a choice, and something that one can play around with a lot.

This is not new, it's what Scott, you and I, Soru, all agreed to in the thread from a while back about the same subject. In any case, in play it's not an issue.

2. This is not just my own local interpretation, or some "Forge" interpretation. Just to be sure, when sitting down with Greg Stafford and Robin Laws at Origins just a couple of weeks ago, I asked them point blank what the intention of the design was. And they confirmed what I'm saying. Now, I'm breaking Ron's rule about knowing Greg being off limits as a topic, but I did this purely in the name of targeted research. Moreover, you don't have to believe me, you can read these posts from Robin himself: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HeroQuest-rules/message/604
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HeroQuest-rules/message/4665

Also you can read the statements in the book in the narrators section that say the same things. Soru, I put it to you that you are reading in interpretations about how things in the game work from your play of other games. If you disagree, then please show me where it is that the text supports your ideas. Because I can't find it anywhere.

Even more importantly, however, I've also never said it was the one true way to play HQ. That is, I agree with you that you can play HQ without this interpretation, and have never said otherwise. All I've said is that if (and I stress, if) you have problems with how HQ works as written, that you can be rid of all of the problems by using the dramatic interpretation of ability levels. And in the threads in question, the posters asked how to play with narrativism, and for that, this is a particularly direct answer. There's been no attack on your mode that you need to defend it from.

LC, actually magic is particularly dramatic in HQ, and I could go on as to the necessity of why this is so. The whole mundane/magic resistance problem speaks to the issue.

3. Lastly, I'm on record as saying that one should rarely, if ever, discuss this sort of thing with players. It's actually often counterproductive. All one has to do is to play this way themselves, and players will follow along. Or what LC said.


Is that any more clear?

Mike

[soru]

I don't think we would actually play all that differently. I am not so much disagreeing with you as with some of the people who think they are agreeing with you.

But:

2. This is not just my own local interpretation, or some "Forge" interpretation.

wealth and standard of living, page 30
sample resistances, page 61
healing resistance, page 81
Follower reluctance table, page 86.
creatures section, starting page 206
sample resistances page, 274

All of those are in the HQ rulebook, and all imply a fixed scale (I think they weren't in hero wars, and were added to the book to help with some of the problems people had running HW successfully). By the book, if you have 10W2 wealth, you are, in game, as rich as a duke (though certainly not of the same social standing, if all your money is in coins and not land). I don't think that can be reconciled with the 'rating implies nothing about the gameworld' view.

Someone who is mysteriously able to buy anything they want without any of the other implications that would follow from having that much money should take some other ability ('intimidate shopkeepers', 'massively in debt', 'loved by merchants', anything else that summarises what you see the character as being or doing). There is little danger of running out of short english language phrases, so I see no reason to ever use one that is misleading or tricksy.

On the other hand, if you, say, augment your wealth with your bargain, then _that_ doesn't mean you become richer, merely more successful at buying expensive stuff. Maybe that's the source of the confusion?

soru

[Alai]

By the book, if you have 10W2 wealth, you are, in game, as rich as a duke (though certainly not of the same social standing, if all your money is in coins and not land). I don't think that can be reconciled with the 'rating implies nothing about the gameworld' view.

Perhaps the Obvious Compromise here (if that's the phrase from the myth fragment I'm thinking of) is that ratings "imply no _one_ thing about the gameworld".  To think it meant "nothing" in an absolute sense I think is to teeter from "Narrativism" to "Narrativism!", in a sense described some time earlier...

Cheers,
Alex.

[Mike Holmes]

Again, of course these things say something about the game world. At the very least, in the most radical of cases, they say that when things occur that would require the ability in question, these things will tend to come out more favorably for the side that has the higher rating. Not that anyone in the game world knows this, this is just for the players. We all agree on that, right? Nobody in the game world thinks, "Gee, I'm glad I'm Strong 17."

Nobody has said at any time that this linkage does not exist. The many "example" resistances imply that these would be good resistances to use to represent contests that are dramatically appropriate. Yes, this is due to the numbers being plausible representations of the in-game state. Again, nobody has said that plausibility should go out the door. The question is whether or not the viewpoint of what these represent is some direct representation of some "physics" model of the game (or, rather, an attempt to simulate mechanically the way that things would work in the game), or an attempt at modeling the dramatic reality of things. That is, does the Duke have a 5W2 rating (or whatever is appropriate) because that models a duke well, or because if I'm in a contest with that Duke competing against him to buy some object, that this is likely a dramatically appropriate level to set the resistance?

The nice thing is that you really don't have to answer the question (Alex, you're right, most of the time it's not a problem). That is, again, most of the time you can reconcile each of these views with each other. Abilities can represent both of these things in most situations. Or, rather, we buy into the idea of an objective existence of the game world in order to feel the character's conflicts more powerfully in some way.

The only question is what implications each viewpoint has when it comes to certain applications. For instance, the book says that HP spending mostly occurs between adventures, and you only get HP then, and further that if you want to develop any ability more than one, you have to pay extra to do it (at a prohibitively costly upward trend). One could interperet this as an attempt to ensure that characters only learn things at a "realistic" rate. Which would imply that the mechanics are representing the in-game reality.

But there are several problems with this. First, HP can be spent for things that explicitly and only have to do with story pacing. Most obviously the idea of cementing items. If you don't cement an item, the text implies that the narrator can use dramatic license to take them from a player. This can have nothing to do with "realism" it can only have to do with character balance in terms of the ongoing story.

I believe that the slow development methods that are in the book are actually intended to produce some drama in terms of making the use of HP more momentous, and the expanding costs are intended to give players a reason to spend on a wider variety of abilities which is more interesting than just "stacking" on one. I have no evidence from the sections on development directly (with the above exception of the item drama rules). But, given that the sections on examples, and development, etc, don't say how these things are intended to be used, I think that the parts in the narrator's section intend to speak to all of these situations.

That said, I would also agree that the designers just didn't take a whole lotta stance on this at all. Making it possible to interperet the game either way. And, again, it does just fine in either mode for lots of people (in fact it plays better in either mode than most games play in any one mode).

This all said, the people who are agreeing with me play just like I do, I think. That is, the rhetoric that we use to get people to see this viewpoint may have you convinced that they play some radically different version of the game. When, in fact, it's just meant to get people to consider that there may be another viewpoint by which one can play.

If that causes confusion, which I admit it might in some cases, that's the price that sometimes has to be paid to break people from being locked down by their traditional viewpoints. That doesn't make those viewpoints bad, it just makes it hard for some people to understand ours.

Mike

P.S. If you want an example of a "Forge" drift, which would be to say that I am the Forge, which is ridiculous, but if you wanted an example: I give out HP between every session (I don't have "adventures" per se, so I have to have some interval), I allow players to spend HP to cement or increase abilities during play or whenever they like, and I don't charge extra for "Stacking" all the time. Occasionally. Depends. These changes are more radical, and I'd only suggest people using them at all if they consider the ramifications first, and agree with what the changes accomplish. Which is to completely dissociate HP from the idea that they measure "realisitic" advancement at all, and place them cognatively firmly in the players mind as a dramatic device. Which still doesn't mean that you chuck plausibility, just that any dramatic device will suffice for plausibility's sake in this case. For instance, the old, "Well, I always knew how, but you just didn't know I knew," excuse is valid in my game.

[soru]

Again, mostly agreed.

except:

That is, does the Duke have a 5W2 rating (or whatever is appropriate) because that models a duke well, or because if I'm in a contest with that Duke competing against him to buy some object, that this is likely a dramatically appropriate level to set the resistance?

I'd turn that round. I'd say the rules suggest that if it is dramatically appropriate for the other bidder in an auction to have a 5W2 wealth rating, then that rating should be explained by them being something like a duke.

Story first, then mechanics, then explanation. Just like you set up the conflict (story), roll the dice and get a minor victory (mechanics), and then describe what that means (explanation).

soru