Drama, Fortune, Karma -- Still valid? [split]

[greyorm]

Actually, the problem I have with DFK as a classification system is that the categories are completely arbitrary.

Arbitrary: Determined by chance, whim, or impulse. To quote a famous movie, "I don't think that word means what you think it does." The categorizations are not arbitrary, since they are split up according to the method used to obtain a result, and those methods are very clearly different as methods of resolving an action. I'm not sure how "arbitrary" can even be applied to describe them.

If they are arbitary, despite my inability to understand that, then please answer this question: what's the alternative? How do you make them less arbitrary? That might explain the problem to me better.

It's very similar to the Stance split: Actor/Author/Director.  No single question can tell you the full story, for example: Is there a randomizer involved?

Well of course no single question can tell you the whole story! That's not a problem with categorization, though. That's like complaining defining a computer as a PC or a Mac is a bad categorization scheme because it doesn't tell you everything about the computer. Or complaining that the taxonomic categorization scheme for biological entities is broken because the Class or Order levels don't tell you everything you want to know about the Species level. Is that what you are complaining about here?

Well, here's the thing. I'm not sure I see the need for a classification system here. Just as we don't really need to classify Stances.

Unfortunately, I can't understand that at all. Why don't we need to classify them when they are different? It seems pretty obvious when you have different things, whatever those things are, that one would label them different things, rather than ignore that they exist as different entities at all.

Seems to me folks are looking for some mystical "ho wow!" revelation here regarding classificiatons, that the differences will enlighten them and cause them to fall to the floor weeping with sudden understanding of a greater cosmos, when what we are doing is talking about a pretty basic facet of human existance: describing how things are different from one another. It's not going to be mystical.

I have to ask what's next? Complaining that fish are different from dogs, but calling them fish and dogs is an arbitrary and useless classification scheme, something completely unnecessary? I don't get it.

[The God of the Machine]

Is this DFK thing supposed to be a system of classification, or is it supposed to be a model to describe how games are played?  I do agree that as the former it doesn't work, since pretty much every RPG I can think of involves all three (Amber being the one exception).  As a model, however, it works beautifully, since it does describe the three things which differentiate one character action from every other character action.

[Andrew Morris]

Okay, let me sum up my thoughts here, to make it clear what I was looking for when I started this thread:

1) I think DFK is still a valuable tool for game designers.
2) I think DFK needs some work (which I talk about here).

What I want to know is who agrees with me on either or both points. If you don't, why? Many people have stated their thoughts, so let me make it clear I'm not saying I haven't heard that. I just want to make sure that if this thread continues, it doesn't drift off target. If you want to discuss some other element of DFK, start a new thread, and I'll join in the discussion.

Why throw out DFK? Why not simply make it DFKS?

Personally, I'm with you on this.

Is this DFK thing supposed to be a system of classification, or is it supposed to be a model to describe how games are played?

According to the Provisional Glossary, DFK is "Short for Drama, Fortune, and Karma, referring to the Resolution mechanics of a given System, which may include any combination or blending of the three. Terms originally presented in the game Everway; altered in current usage." The fact that there are combinations or hybrids in games doesn't make identifying the categories without value, just as identifying the primary colors isn't useless simply because most colors are some combination of them.

[The God of the Machine]

The fact that there are combinations or hybrids in games doesn't make identifying the categories without value, just as identifying the primary colors isn't useless simply because most colors are some combination of them.

Except that you sometimes see red, at least.  You'll NEVER see just one of these things in use in an RPG, and like I said, only one RPG to my knowledge has just two.  The rest use them all.  Is that a valuable tool?

Whatever makes you happy, I suppose.

[Valamir]

Alex, why does it matter at all whether there is a game that just uses 1 of these things?  Why is that even important?  The purpose is to be able to identify classes of mechanics that will be used in some combination in a game in a manner that makes it quick and easy to compare similiarities and differences.  

Dice, and cards, and picking random words out of a hat are all Fortune based mechanics.  The similiarities of what a fortune based mechanic brings to a game vs. a karma or drama mechanic allows us to recognize that while dice and picking words from a hat may seem radically different that they can, in fact, serve much the same function in a game.  If someone says that to hit and damage rolls are driven by Karma mechanics in a game, I know that combat will play differently than one driven by Fortune mechanics and in what ways even before getting into specific rules.

They, like most other jargon around here, have some very important and specialized uses that I recommend you familiarize yourself with before attempting to critique them.

A little more conversation and constructive discourse and a little less effusive ranting and opinion dumping would be appreciated in your posts.

[LordSmerf]

Arbitrary: Determined by chance, whim, or impulse. To quote a famous movie, "I don't think that word means what you think it does." The categorizations are not arbitrary, since they are split up according to the method used to obtain a result, and those methods are very clearly different as methods of resolving an action. I'm not sure how "arbitrary" can even be applied to describe them.

If they are arbitary, despite my inability to understand that, then please answer this question: what's the alternative? How do you make them less arbitrary? That might explain the problem to me better.

Arbitrary was perhaps an unfortunate choice of words, but it's pretty close to what I am trying to say.  Perhaps what I should have said is that the categories are tautological.  That is, when you ask "What is the classification system based on?" the only answer is "Well, on whether it involves Randomizers, and if it doesn't whether it involves comparing fixed values or not."  Same thing with Stances: "Well, it's about whether you are controlling just characters or more than that, and if it's just characters what level of information you are using to make decision."

Being tautological, they are of extremely limited use in actual design.  They don't describe anything other than themselves.  Are they useful?  Yes, I think they are useful in the way I indicated earlier: they point out that there are different ways of doing things.  However, beyond that I don't see them being useful beyond that.

Well of course no single question can tell you the whole story! That's not a problem with categorization, though. That's like complaining defining a computer as a PC or a Mac is a bad categorization scheme because it doesn't tell you everything about the computer. Or complaining that the taxonomic categorization scheme for biological entities is broken because the Class or Order levels don't tell you everything you want to know about the Species level. Is that what you are complaining about here?

Well, yeah, I would say that classifying all computers as PC or Mac is, perhaps not "bad", but definitely limited.  You'll notice that this is also a tautological distinction.  It's not a classification based on "What OS does it run natively/ship with?"  And it's not "Is it MacOS or not?"  Though it's sort of close to those.  That's a limited classification scheme for computers though...  Useful for discussion?  Sure.  Useful for theory and design?  I think not.

Unfortunately, I can't understand that at all. Why don't we need to classify them when they are different? It seems pretty obvious when you have different things, whatever those things are, that one would label them different things, rather than ignore that they exist as different entities at all.

Seems to me folks are looking for some mystical "ho wow!" revelation here regarding classificiatons, that the differences will enlighten them and cause them to fall to the floor weeping with sudden understanding of a greater cosmos, when what we are doing is talking about a pretty basic facet of human existance: describing how things are different from one another. It's not going to be mystical.

I have to ask what's next? Complaining that fish are different from dogs, but calling them fish and dogs is an arbitrary and useless classification scheme, something completely unnecessary? I don't get it.

All sarcasm aside...  Yes, it turns out that often conceptual classifications are revelatory in nature.  You suddenly realize that this concept you had of "Resolution" is actually made up of smaller sub-concepts.  That can be a "ho wow!" moment, and denigrating the use of categories for this purpose seems silly.

Why not just classify them because they are different?  Sure, I'm cool with that, let's just do it in a way that's not tautological.  DFK is tautological, so if we want classifications that do something aside from point out that there are different sub-sets of this big thing then let's figure out what we're classifying based on...

Andrew, hopefully this answers your question as well.  I don't see DFK as being useful away from the fact that it highlights the fact that "Resolution" is a complex concept made up of other concepts, and that it is further deconstructible.  So DFK, as a classification system, doesn't just need work, it probably needs total reconstruction.

EDIT: Crossposted with Ralph, I don't think I have anything to add to this post from his comments.

Thomas

[Valamir]

Thomas, I'm not sure what you're getting at.  By your useage one could call the definitions of the color spectrum tautological because Red is defined simply as being everying between this wavelength and that wavelength and everything else is not-red.

Yet such definitions are infinitely useful because they allow me to tell you what color a car is and have you know (within a range of possibilities) what I'm talking about.

They then give you a nice box to put related things in.  Noting that cops have a tendency to pull over red cars for speeding more often than other colors is possible only because we have a box called "red" to put such observations in.

Noting the effects on the social dynamic of a game that choosing a fortune mechanic over a karma mechanic has (as I did in the other DFK thread) is possible only because there's a box labeled Fortune and one labeld Karma to put such observations in.

If I'm looking to foster a specific social dynamic in my game I can flip through my collection of observations on the effects different DFK mechanics have and select the combination that guides me to my desired experience.  This is possible because I know what DFK means, I can identify DFK at work in various games, and I can interpret the social impact each has from observations of actual play.  I can thus judge which combination of DFK I want to use for my game.  I'm not seeing how you conclude this isn't useful for design.

[LordSmerf]

Ralph, sort of, but not really.  Let me try this again...

If we're talking about what color something is, then we have a category to utilize.  "What color is it?" and then we go to a selection menu.  If you want a car description you might want more detail: Color, Make, and Model?  Red Toyota Camry.  But each thing augments the other, none of them are over-ridden.

Perhaps what I'm getting at is that I like categories where a single element doesn't override all others.  In Stance it's "Are you controlling something other than the Player Character?" in which case, no matter what other factors are involved, you have Director Stance.  In DFK it's "Is there a randomizer?" in which case, no matter what other factors (fixed values, temporary values, dramatically appropriate values, whatever) it's Fortune.  Something about this just really hits me wrong.

Does that make sense?  I think it's a valid complaint, but it may not be... thoughts on that?

Thomas

[M. J. Young]

Perhaps what I should have said is that the categories are tautological.  That is, when you ask "What is the classification system based on?" the only answer is "Well, on whether it involves Randomizers, and if it doesn't whether it involves comparing fixed values or not."  Same thing with Stances: "Well, it's about whether you are controlling just characters or more than that, and if it's just characters what level of information you are using to make decision."

That's the second time I've seen you say that the first question in distinguishing DFK is whether or not it uses randomizers; and I don't think that's correct at all. It just happens to be one way to do it.

Your two questions are 1) does it use randomizers and 2) if not, does it rely on fixed value comparisons. But I could restructure that to two different questions, 1) is it subjective (which makes it drama) and 2) if it is objective, does it rely on fixed or variable values. With some thought, I could probably come up with the question that distinguishes karma from the other two as well--here it is: 1) does the best score always win and 2) if not, is the winner picked by a randomizer or a person's choice.

The question that determines in which category a mechanic is what is the essential nature of the resolution.

I am seeing an argument for adding skill to the triumvirate. GotM's argument against skill-based resolution (that it is terribly gamist) is neither correct nor compelling, and amounts to saying that you could use them but he wouldn't like it personally--which means yes, it's a category. (It's also not really specifically gamist, and I think GotM needs to get a better foundation in creative agendum concepts.)

The argument has been raised that you never see just one resolution system in any game. That's not true. I've seen freeform role playing that used drama only. I didn't think it worked well, but that was primarily because there was no control over player participation, and therefore people with very different agenda were in open conflict over what should happen--but in a group with focused agendum I think it could work quite well. I've also seen games that are not role playing games which are fully fortune or fully karma. In fact, Universalis is, I think, one hundred percent resource-driven--a single resolution mechanic for everything (although not having played the game I hesitate to say what that is--drama, I think, although at first I was going to say karma--Mike and Ralph, any thoughts on that?). There are games that are single-type. They're just rare.

More to the point, within any particular game you're going to have some mechanics that are purely one or another, and others that are strongly leaning toward one or another. Just because a game as a whole does not have a single unified approach to resolution does not mean the categories are useless in relation to individual mechanics within it.

Concerning Thomas' complaints about Stance, Theory 101: System and the Shared Imagined Space went up at Places to Go, People to Be this week, and it deals with stance as a definition of general approaches to the distribution of credibility. It may help to look at that. Again, I don't think that there really is this "one question" that comes first in this area--it's much more a matter of which question you find most helpful to ask first.

I hope this helps.

--M. J. Young

[LordSmerf]

That's the second time I've seen you say that the first question in distinguishing DFK is whether or not it uses randomizers; and I don't think that's correct at all. It just happens to be one way to do it.

Your two questions are 1) does it use randomizers and 2) if not, does it rely on fixed value comparisons. But I could restructure that to two different questions, 1) is it subjective (which makes it drama) and 2) if it is objective, does it rely on fixed or variable values. With some thought, I could probably come up with the question that distinguishes karma from the other two as well--here it is: 1) does the best score always win and 2) if not, is the winner picked by a randomizer or a person's choice.

<snip>

I'm not sure that this is true at all.  If you were to ask "is it subjective?" and the answer was yes, but it involved a randomizer somewhere, I'm virtually positive that it would be classified as a Fortune mechanic.  Now, I might be wrong, but that's what I'm thinking.

Also, this may not be pertinent, but "subjective" seems to be an awfully fuzzy criteria...

Thomas

[greyorm]

Thomas,

So, you are describing a mechanic where the randomizing factor makes a method you think is Drama into a Fortune method when you believe it should not be -- or rather, that it is the latter when it could be the former without the latter. That seems to be the basis for your complaint, correct, that the categorization is confusing based on a situation like this?

In other words, if I say, "I swing my sword and cut him in half," that is Drama, correct? Are you saying tha if I make that statement, and then roll a die to determine if that statement is true, the DFK classification system is broken because it is clearly Drama being subverted to Fortune and thus confusing the issue of what sort of resolution is occuring?

For me, the solution is really simple and not problematic: if it has randomization, then even if other numbers/comparisons are involved, if other statements are involved about what happens, then if the method to resolve what happens is based on the random result of some event, it is Fortune. It is not Drama, even if you make a statement about what you want to happen, and whether that occurs or not relies upon the outcome of a Fortune mechanic.

I'm not sure how/why that's problematic or confusing or non-utilitarian? (or even if I've guessed your complaint correctly)

[John Kim]

Noting the effects on the social dynamic of a game that choosing a fortune mechanic over a karma mechanic has (as I did in the other DFK thread) is possible only because there's a box labeled Fortune and one labeld Karma to put such observations in.

Eh?  Well, that's tautological (i.e. obviously you can't compare "Fortune" with "Karma" without defining those terms).  And I'm not against all vocabulary by any means.  However, I can say that on rec.games.frp.advocacy, I had plenty of good discussion of the effects of including dice within objective resolution systems -- and the effects of having objective mechanics.  I didn't feel discussion was at all impeded by lack of DFK vocabulary.  We easily were able to express our thoughts by distinguishing "diced/randomized" vs "diceless", and "mechanical" vs "freeform".  

So, no, I don't see that having the special jargon of "DFK" particularly gains you.  There are definitely plenty of innovations on the Forge -- like the term "Shared Imaginary Space" makes for clearer discussion than just using "in-game", "meta-game", and "out-of-game".  

I don't know if this DFK framework is a very good tool, since pretty much every RPG has to have all three in order to work, although I don't know why Tweet called something as obvious as "Characteristics" or "Statistics" "Karma".

To be fair to Tweet, he wasn't naming these to be a classification system of all RPG mechanics.  These were the rules for a specific fantasy game.  The Rule of Karma was there for flavor -- in the same way that the attributes are Air, Earth, Fire, and Water.

[The God of the Machine]

Because I don't know what "tautological" means, does that make me a bad person?  

:(

[M. J. Young]

Because I don't know what "tautological" means, does that make me a bad person?

No.

But you could easily have found out from Dictionary.com or some other resource, and kept up to speed.

Tautological means that something is defined redundantly. It is inherently true because it doesn't actually say anything meaningful. In this case, it is suggested that the statement amounted to "Knowing what fortune, drama, and karma are enables you to know what fortune, drama, and karma are." Obviously, if you know what they are, you know what they are--it's a tautology. It's like an equation in which A=A, but expressed in such a way that we didn't realize that's what we said.

Helpful?

--M. J. Young

[rrr]

1) In a hypothetical boffer LARP, the only mechanic is that if you are hit with a weapon, your character is dead. This is way more simple than most boffer LARPs, but it'll do for discussion.

Hello all.  This thread seems to keep slipping away from Andrew's initial question:  How's about the addition of Skill to the DFK triumvirate?

My feelings:  Andrew is absolutely right.  To me DFK is a valuable model for the different methods of resolution mechanic employed in Rolelaying Games, but in as much as the fourth category proposed: "Skill" is distinct from the initial three then perhaps it should be formally added.  Indeed it is not only distinct in a theoretical sense, but also as used in practise, and as such needs to be part of the model if the model is to accurately represent reality.

Andrew's hypothetical LARP example is not so hypothetical... it is in actual use.  I am a regular player in a large UK LARP system which uses primarily "Skill" mechanics.

1) combat: all weapons do one point of damage.  If you hit someone with a weapon they lose one hit.  The combat mechanic is based entirely upon the skill of the Player, not the Character.  This does privilege Players who are skilled in combat.  For example one player is a championship fencer.  He fights with a light, sabre style sword, that (as close as a LARP weapon can) matchs a fencing sabre.  He is understandabley feared as one of the best fighters in the system.

2) "Knowledge" Skills:  we have frequently come across coded texts from enemies forces.  How do we break the code?  There is no "code breaker" skill, and no help given from refs.  The players have to simply sit down and attempt to break the code for real.  This takes hours, but is routinely done.  Certain playes have the skill and patience for this.  they are valued as code breakers.  Real life aptitude determines in game effect.

3) Magic is a blend of Karma and Skill.  you have to purchase the "magic" skill but this simply enables to to cast X amount of spells per day (karma).  The actual casting of the spell is not a given, however.  You have to correctly and clearly recite the appropriate spell verbals for the spell to take effect.  Casting will fail if the verbals are not pronounced correctly.  I.E player skill in memory and verbal delivery are the determiners of success.

Infact in the light of the DFK model I just realised that most of the mechanics use this same mix of Karma and Skill.  The ability itself is purchased at chargen, along with a number of uses per day (karma) but the actual execution of the skill is almost always down to player Skill.  Fortune is used for certain mechanics (foraging for herbs: the ranger picks colour coded balls out of a bag, representing different ingredients)

I find this "Skill" idea particularly interesting, actually as it very much relates to LARP:

One issue that table-toppers often have when coming to LARP for the first time is the fact that the skills of their character are in a sense the skills they have as a player.  Many table toppers find this scary.  They don't like the fact that Player "Skill" is the primary determinant of their character's effectiveness.  It messes with their notion that RP should always facilitate the player's desire to play whatever character they want.  Every year a couple of table-toppers come along, proudly declaring their character as "a mighty warrior" only to complain when they get beaten by an unarmoured guy weilding a dagger who just happens to have spent 6 years learning to knife fight.  

They haven't realised that "skill" is the primary resolution method in use.

Next time I'm talking to a newbie about this and explaining that saying "I'm a mighty warrior!" will only cause them embarrassment I'm going to introduce the DFK concept, and then point out that this LARP system uses "Skill" as a mechanic.  (the standard response from more seasoned players is "Don't say you're a mighty warrior, play a warrior and try and be mighty..."  Whilst this conveys the meaning somewhat, I think the clarity of DFK with the addition of a "Skill" category is clearer for the noob.)

Drew

(wow, my first proper post!  Hope I've understood the terms correctly (I have read most of the material but you never know), and also hope the post was of some interest!)

edited for a couple of mis-spelt words... there's probably more!  :)