How do you make rulings on social interactions?

[TristramEvans]

You guys should stat up this argument as a Burning Wheel social combat to decide who wins.

 

[Fenris-77]

If you are specifically designing obstacles for the PCs, then the obstacles actually have to be…obstacles, yes? As in somehow within their capability to overcome, or perhaps realize in a way that isn’t a TPK? Roughly accomplishable things, in other words challenging encounter design.

If you were reading all my posts like you say I should yours, then you know that saying my way is better is YOUR strawman.
My way is different, in a way that I don’t think you comprehend or believe, and so constantly end up telling us we’re doing something we’re not. So it’s not better, but it does in fact, exist.

Living World design absolutely escapes encounter design because Living World design does not design encounters, not mechanically, and not according to Game Design Theory.

You certainly *could*, you just as easily *could not*, and I know for a fact some of the people in the LW crowd absolutely do not.

Ahh, so you're claiming you don't design encounters. There's no hint of the G in your RPG. I call bullshit. Your pretentious desire to elevate how you play over how other people play the same games is somewhat tiresome. Of course you design encounters, even if you do it on the fly. If your players decide they want to investigate a warehouse one of the first things you decide is how difficult that will be and insert NPCs and other props accordingly. Sure, there's a big soupcon of what's reasonable there, as there should be, but you're still doing it. If one of your players decides to question the innkeeper about nefarious activity in his neighborhood the first thing you decide is what he might know what why or why not he might be willing to relate that information. Etc etc.

 

[Fenris-77]

You guys should stat up this argument as a Burning Wheel social combat to decide who wins.

I have all the circles.

 

[CRKrueger]

Everything I've described is manifestly true of your games, whether you like it or not.

Thank you for finally admitting that.

You can distain the idea of challenge levels (which I agree with), but challenge or obstacle is still why you include watchmen, or bribable civil servants, or gregarious innkeepers - you don't just write them into your game because it's what makes sense, they have game effects too - obvious game effects.

No, we don’t, really. There are not guards at the bank to provide challenge for the PCs, there are guards at the bank because…wait for it…banks have guards.

If I’m designing a scenario where the point is a bank heist, then the guards and security are very much going to be part of the design space mechanically, because I’m selling a module that GMs can run as is, that should be fun to play. The constraints require purpose-built design. Form follows function.

None of my current Hyborian characters have even mentioned a single word about stealing from a bank. But there is a bank in Kordava owned by a joint venture between a Zingaran noble family and a Messantian guild family. I’m not expecting a bank robbery, but the bank has security appropriate to the wealth and power of the people involved. Looking at a web of connections between people and factions, one of the characters has a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend way to probably make such a heist possible, but I sure didn’t design it that way, the character’s Lifepath is highly random, and I doubt the player would even think of it, the PCs not the type.

Those NPCs exist, for some value of their existence, to interact with the PCs and provide obstacles and challenges. It doesn't actually matter if you want to admit that this is true because it's obviously true. Game rules require gameable elements to resist them. NPCs are a core class of that thing. You trying to deny that fact is nonsensical.

It’s not nonsensical at all. As I’ve said for years, it’s a completely different paradigm of looking at things. The game part does not matter as much as the setting. Entire sessions go by without anyone invoking a mechanic or rolling a die and no one thinks it was a waste of time or wasn’t productive.

The players choose method A to accomplish X, it will require lots of skill rolls and may be quite challenging.
The players choose method B to accomplish X, it may be such a good plan that they don’t even know what the obstacles were because they not only went outside the box, they didn’t even know there was one.

The fact that we’re playing a game isn’t the point of what we’re doing. The fact that we’re pretending to live our PCs lives in a world that we pretend is real, not “fiction” is the point of what we’re doing. The mechanics simply exist because this isn’t a full Cyberpunk simsense/braindance/Matrix experience, so we have to have something to fill in for luck, happenstance, and physics.

The fact that anything I decide about the campaign may have a game or mechanical effect at some point, doesn’t mean in any way, shape or form that I am adding it specifically to include that game effect. Is it that those are two separate things really that hard to accept?

 

[CRKrueger]

You guys should stat up this argument as a Burning Wheel social combat to decide who wins.

Bah, we’ll be using the Mythras Social Combat rules, of course.

I’ll have to admit, using argument by argument types of logical approaches and fallacies that are defined in real life as different techniques and having rhetorical moves and defenses to try with varying short term and long term effects does appeal to me.

If you can accept the premise (which I haven’t completely and don’t know if the table will), it looks like it could be fun as fuck.

EDIT: Breaking it out for every single thing characters buy in a Souk, not so much.

 

[TristramEvans]

I'm always caught between the game designer urge to codify things with rules and the practical/improvisational GM that knows most rules aren't necessary and end up detracting from a game over common sense judgements. This is why 99% of the rules I wrote for Phaserip ended up in the trash once exposed to playtesting, and the reason why "social conflict" rules I prefer to keep as basic as possible - "what is each side trying to accomplish, and what advantages or disadvantages are they facing in trying to achieve that?".

 

[CRKrueger]

Ahh, so you're claiming you don't design encounters. There's no hint of the G in your RPG. I call bullshit. Your pretentious desire to elevate how you play over how other people play the same games is somewhat tiresome. Of course you design encounters, even if you do it on the fly. If your players decide they want to investigate a warehouse one of the first things you decide is how difficult that will be and insert NPCs and other props accordingly.

Nope. I absolutely guarantee you that the warehouse and whether it’s guarded or not and by who is loosely in place before the PCs even know there is one.

Lost the quote here, will redo.

Sure, there's a big soupcon of what's reasonable there, as there should be, but you're still doing it. If one of your players decides to question the innkeeper about nefarious activity in his neighborhood the first thing you decide is what he might know what why or why not he might be willing to relate that information. Etc etc.

Nope. I currently have 43 different neighborhoods in Kordava both above and underground, and I know the watch schedules, with several key characters, what crimes are controlled by what gang (with many key characters), where the prominent noble families live, how the docks work, etc. etc. Although many of them will return to Kordava, I don’t expect any PCs to set foot in the city for the rest of this year. I do it for fun.

Anything in the city may enter the game at some point, but I haven’t planned a hideout thinking “Man the PCs are gonna have a tough time, this is gonna be good.” I planned it thinking “How are these guys going to defend their hideout?” Maybe their rep is so bad, and they’re so brutal, they don’t even bother. It is what it is.

Here’s the weird part though,

I know exactly what you’re talking about and what you’re doing, and even agree that for some things it’s absolutely required. I’m just pointing out, it is *possible* to do something different.

You say not doing what you do is impossible, not credible, total bullshit, I’m lying or fooling myself, etc.

Yet, *I’m* the one being superior and pretentious? Really?

 

[Exploderwizard]

I’m not saying you’re stealing my precious, I’m to point out, that I always do, that what you find not credible, is not only credible, it’s standard operating policy.

Any full-blown World in Motion GM has given up long ago trying to decide what is challenging or not for the players, or trying to guess what they do. We prep as much as possible so we know the world and the NPCs in it, at least in a given area, and construct that area accordingly. For some players and PCs that area will be Fantasy Fucking Vietnam. For other groups of players and PCs, that area will be a day at Disneyland. Others might come to own the place or leave it a smouldering ruin.

There’s things my players could do that probably wouldn’t be worth their time and there’s places they shouldn’t even dream of going. They might do both. The thing is, they know I didn’t design specifically for any purpose or reason other than that’s what should likely actually be there in the world, in my opinion. That’s why they like it and why they keep coming back.

It’s not scenario design, it’s campaign design.

Scenario- a postulated sequence or development of events.

Without writing part of a movie script or novel, scenario design can only be considered completely without player involvement. You can set up a scenario involving a band of goblins that have moved into an abandoned mine that now use it as a base to raid farms and towns in the area. This is how older TSR modules were constructed. The scenario is clear and presupposes no action of any kind by the players. This can also be expressed as the default status quo. Once players arrive in the area the status quo goes into limbo. It may change drastically, in minor way, or not at all depending on the actions of the players. Many DMs fall into the trap of re-writing the scenario presupposing certain player activity. The player characters may interact with the goblins or may not. Either way, the original scenario stands.

A scenario should never assume any activity of the PCs. NPCs in a living world are part of that overall scenario or status quo. The npcs simply live and pursue their goals. Some things may change due to player interaction but that simply happens as it comes. The players may hear rumors that the goblins have a nice bit of loot stashed up at that mine. The desire to obtain that loot might turn the goblins into obstacles. Lets say the PCs decide to go and do something else. The goblins are not obstacles to the players in pursuit of this other goal but they are still npcs that continue to follow the rules for npcs.The goblins will continue to make life miserable for the humans in the area which may change the status quo of the region. When the PCs return from their other endeavors, they may find the region different from when they left. The world remained in motion while they were away.

 

[David Johansen]

I wrote social rules for Galaxies In Shadow and The Arcane Confabulation. They mostly run along the same lines with skill checks and modifiers for relationships with relationship levels shifting. The Arcane Confabulation has a variety of social defense skills while Galaxies In Shadow has optional modifiers for personality conflicts. Galaxies In Shadow also has politcical rules and sports and entertainment career rules which are essentially social mass combat. I often think about unifying the two systems but Fantasy and Science Fiction have different needs.

 

[gruagach]

You guys should stat up this argument as a Burning Wheel social combat to decide who wins.

Bah, we’ll be using the Mythras Social Combat rules, of course.

Feels more like y'all are using The Comae Engine's social conflict rules, honestly.

 

[CRKrueger]

Feels more like y'all are using The Comae Engine's social conflict rules, honestly.

You mean Baby Mythras?

 

[robertsconley]

So you don't actually design scenarios or locations or anything else with any thought at all given to game play?

No.

I can't say I find that statement credible.

It is easy to understand what I do, I imagine how the locale would exist and write it up accordingly.

Living World isn't some kind of magic version of TTRPG play that gets to ignore the G.

As been trying to explain to you in my earlier post, the focus of what I do is to bring the setting to life. The wargame I use to describe characters and adjudicate with is a tool to help make that happen. However, it is not the focus. And how the system works as a game is always subordinate to what a character can do in the setting given their descriptions and the circumstances.

Not sure why this is so hard to understand.

The only reason I designed, wrote and played the Majestic Fantasy RPG is because I finally understood enough of the early history of RPGs and D&D to understand where its mechanics came from. How Gygax, and Arneson used it to handle when the players said "I would like to X as my character".

With that knowledge I was able through play figure out a way hit points, levels, armor class, saving throws to handle the things I was handling with GURPS. But be aware the MW RPG is not some recreation of something that was played at the dawn of RPGs. I am sure that most of my tweaks would be viewed as "crazy" or "broken" by Gygax and other gamers of the time.

Just in the same way I am fighting in my current campaign the expectations of a bunch of 5e gamers over how 5e works in my setting.

My Majestic Fantasy rules for 5e or OD&D are not designed as games first with everything having a particular function. They are a description of how my setting works in the form of a game. This is why I was pushing back when you asked about the function of a NPC. In how I run things, NPCs don't have a game function, they are there because they exist within the setting.

Hope that clarifies things.

 

[Fenris-77]

Thank you for finally admitting that.

No, we don’t, really. There are not guards at the bank to provide challenge for the PCs, there are guards at the bank because…wait for it…banks have guards.

And the function of those guard is, should the PCs decide to try and rob the banks is what exactly? Oh, right, exactly what I said it was. As I've said several times, 'what makes sense' often overlays issues of function.

If I’m designing a scenario where the point is a bank heist, then the guards and security are very much going to be part of the design space mechanically, because I’m selling a module that GMs can run as is, that should be fun to play. The constraints require purpose-built design. Form follows function.

But that same moment applies to living world encounters/moments/scenes that you come with on the fly. Function is part of the program. Of course it needs to make sense though - function without verisimilitude is bloody useless.

 

[Fenris-77]

No.


It is easy to understand what I do, I imagine how the locale would exist and write it up accordingly.

So, to start, and as I mentioned to CRK, nothing I'm saying here has particularly much to do with how you guys specifically run games, and I've actually gone out of my way to praise you style more than once in this thread. I'm going to take your no at face value, but I'm also going to suggest that your no might, possibly, be a product of your immense experience. I think its possible that you've spent so much time designing and running games that the gameability of what you do happens without you needing to give it any actual consideration. Where I'm going with this is that for GM with less experience than you it might actually be necessary to give specific attention to gameability in addition to portrayal because I really don't think that it comes naturally and easily to everyone.

As been trying to explain to you in my earlier post, the focus of what I do is to bring the setting to life. The wargame I use to describe characters and adjudicate with is a tool to help make that happen. However, it is not the focus. And how the system works as a game is always subordinate to what a character can do in the setting given their descriptions and the circumstances.

Not sure why this is so hard to understand.

The only reason I designed, wrote and played the Majestic Fantasy RPG is because I finally understood enough of the early history of RPGs and D&D to understand where its mechanics came from. How Gygax, and Arneson used it to handle when the players said "I would like to X as my character".

With that knowledge I was able through play figure out a way hit points, levels, armor class, saving throws to handle the things I was handling with GURPS. But be aware the MW RPG is not some recreation of something that was played at the dawn of RPGs. I am sure that most of my tweaks would be viewed as "crazy" or "broken" by Gygax and other gamers of the time.

Just in the same way I am fighting in my current campaign the expectations of a bunch of 5e gamers over how 5e works in my setting.

My Majestic Fantasy rules for 5e or OD&D are not designed as games first with everything having a particular function. They are a description of how my setting works in the form of a game. This is why I was pushing back when you asked about the function of a NPC. In how I run things, NPCs don't have a game function, they are there because they exist within the setting.

Hope that clarifies things.

It's not hard to understand. I am keenly aware of how you run games and have nothing but enormous respect for it. I do think that you might be in a place where it's no longer immediately obvious how much of what you do without thinking is things other people might have to learn how to do. So for those people (and for my own edification) I'm talking bout how the sausage gets made.

TTRPGs are mostly complete shit at communicating rather a lot of things about what it actually takes to design and run good games. Some are better than others, but vanishingly few are actually good. A whole lot of what many good GMs do is inherited wisdom and experience. I don't think that that side of the game needs to be such a black box. However, you do have a tendency sometimes to wave aside these halting learning steps that newer people might have which, and don't take this as a criticism, is sometimes less than helpful. I only say that because the TTRPG space is full of all manner of games run by all manner of GMs and the living world approach isn't the only road to success at the table. Some people do need to chunk things down and look at all the pieces before they put the engine back togther.

 

[robertsconley]

So, to start, and as I mentioned to CRK, nothing I'm saying here has particularly much to do with how you guys specifically run games, and I;ve actually gone out of my way to praise you style more than once in this thread. I'm going to take you no at face value, but I'm also going to suggest that your no might, possibly, be a product of your immense experience. I think its possible that you've spent so much time designing and running games that the gameability of what you happens without you needing to give it any actual consideration. Where I'm going with this is that for GM with less experience than you it might actually be necessary to give specific attention to gameability in addition to portrayal because I really don't think that it comes naturally and easily to everyone.

Do know how insulting this is? You just patted me on the head and mansplain to me that I am soooo experienced that I just naturally add in the gamability.

Stop it and take what I said at face value. As unusual or mind blowing as it may be too you, it is exactly what it is as I described it. In fact just got done writing and kickstarted a book that spells out part of what I do. And nowhere in that book do I describe how a NPC functions or how any of it works as far as a game goes.

Rather it about building an imaginary fantasy world with enough details to bring it to life. I paint the broad sketch first and show the reader how to fill in the lines and make it all hang together with the interconnections and conflict that will lead to adventures.

My book and the How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox series is one part of how to take a complete novice and teach them to do what I do for my campaign.

Again cut out the mansplaining

TTRPGs are mostly complete shit at communicating rather a lot of things about what it actually takes to design and run good games.

TTRPGs are complete shit at explaining how to design good games because they are not a game in the first place. Rather they are a way to play Let’s Pretend in a way that is fun and interesting even for adults. A way of using pen and paper to create a virtual reality to experience another world and other lives.

A war game focused on what individual characters happens to be a crucial tool to make this happen. But it is not the point of the exercise. Creating and experiencing imaginary worlds and lives is the point. Which is why many good RPGs make for shitty wargames.

Some are better than others, but vanishingly few are actually good. A whole lot of what many good GMs do is inherited wisdom and experience. I don't think that that side of the game needs to be such a black box.

Kinda spend two decades teaching folks how to do what I do and why I do it. Maybe you heard of it? Even give you a link.

Bat in the Attic

A blog on 40 years of gaming and Sandbox Fantasy.

batintheattic.blogspot.com

However, you do have a tendency sometimes to wave aside these halting learning steps that newer people might have which, and don't take this as a criticism, is sometimes less than helpful. I only say that because the TTRPG space is full of all manner of games run by all manner of GMs and the living world approach isn't the only road to success at the table. Some people do need to chunk things down and look at all the pieces before they put the engine back togther.

Oh? I guess 15 years of work breaking stuff down in my blog is me waving aside the halting learning steps.

As for other ways to success at the table there are dozens that work and work well. The problem I have with you at the moment is you are claiming that I really do consider gamability when I don’t. That I pay no consideration to how novices can get up to speed when I do.

What I think is that you don’t understand what I do. That instead of trying to understand you take bits and pieces of what I write that you find useful for how you do things. Which is fine. I expect folk doing RPG stuff in other ways will find some use for my materials. In fact this so much the norm that I shy away from creating any type of omnibus work and instead focus one a specific issue.

My How to Make Fantasy Sandbox is laser focused on creating a hex crawl formatted setting. Doesn’t say much how to run a sandbox campaign. That will be for a later book.

Until you accept that I truly design my rules, setting, and run campaign without consideration to how things work as a game. Then we are at a impasse in this conversation.

 

[yosemitemike]

It doesn't seem all that complicated to me. NPCs are just all of the people in the setting that are not the PCs. The PCs go to a place. Who would you expect to find in such a place? I don't think that figuring this out requires any immense experience. It's mostly just common sense. the great majority of them are just who you would expect them to be and want just what you would expect them to want. I'm not sure what gameability even means in this context.

 

[CRKrueger]

Hell, I would even think it possible that you do stuff enough, your brain puts it on automatic and the subconscious just handles it. By definition though, I don’t know what my brain decides to put on autopilot unless I find out later (like wondering where the last half hour went while driving).

But…I know what it’s like to design encounters and create NPCs for specific needs in a campaign, particularly for a small area. I know what’s it like to think “hmm, I need another way to give the PCs info, I’ll create this NPC do it.” I’ve had “say my line and leave NPCs” and the players don’t know the difference. It’s not an issue of performance.

I don’t do that anymore, though. I’ve found that if I come at it from the “this is a real place” side, and design for that, all the function or purpose-built stuff takes care of itself. To paraphrase Gibson “PCs find uses for things.”

One of the things that blew my mind apart was A Rough Night at the Three Feathers. It’s a famous WFRP1 adventure about a bunch of people at an overly busy night at a coaching inn. The place is a madhouse, and over the night, there will be seven different series of events that are going on as the NPCs get embroiled with conflicts with each other and the PCs, depending on where they are and when, getting caught up in some or all of them.

I’ve run that thing so many times and it’s always different and no group ever finds out everything that’s happening. Somewhere in there I realized that what made the whole mess run better was not looking at NPCs that I had to maneuver into different places at different times to make their plot (or function) work. I got the best personal results by Roleplaying the fuck out of the NPCs, even bringing a friend who went through it before to RP an NPC or two.

If I Roleplay them naturally, then the list of happenings just becomes a Plan. One that may very well change completely based on what else is going on. The place has become a bloodbath, one time it burned down. It’s always different and it’s always amazing. I just put aside the NPCs essence as being within the game and went with their essence at being in the world. That was my first step on the Road to Hell/Path of Enlightenment/Just another way of doing shit.

In any case, I highly recommend A Rough Night at the Three Feathers. There was a time I thought that was the most complicated adventure ever to run. Then Power Behind the Throne said “Halte Mein Bier.”

 

[TristramEvans]

Nastassia's Wedding was another WFRP adventure with a similar approach.

 

[Skarg]

Of course it only goes so far, I completely agree. Not every NPC has a discrete obvious function like I described. Many of them do from the get go, others maybe acquire a function relative to how they are interacted with. How to handle those functions isn't something we've spent a lot of time on here, but it comes back to using whatever stat block and rules that have been produced for that NPC to gate information, or access, or whatever.

I think you'd be ard pressed to find examples of NPC turning into players as an actual mechanic (outside of retainers), but I'm sure it's the case somewhere. When that happens the nature of the NPC is changed radically, it's no longer an NPC and is now something completely different.

What do you mean by "outside of retainers"?

Again, this comes down to portrayal not function. I am 100% behind the idea that NPCs should be as 3d as possible. That just doesn't change their underlying game construct nature. The two things are not mutually exclusive at all.

Can you explain/define what you mean by "function" and "game construct"? And perhaps explain why you frame your thinking about RPGs that way?

I get the feeling I must just not understand what you're talking about, because it isn't making sense to me, and clearly it seems to make sense to you in ways that I think I must not be understanding what you mean very well at all.

 

[CRKrueger]

Nastassia's Wedding was another WFRP adventure with a similar approach.

Graeme Davis loves those types of adventures. He made a supplement for WFRP4 called Rough Nights and Hard Days. It has a 4e version of RNatTF and NW as well as three more adventures like it. Another module It’s Your Funeral is one he made with the audience while giving a talk on how he made RNatTF.

 

[Fenris-77]

Do know how insulting this is? You just patted me on the head and mansplain to me that I am soooo experienced that I just naturally add in the gamability.

Stop it and take what I said at face value. As unusual or mind blowing as it may be too you, it is exactly what it is as I described it. In fact just got done writing and kickstarted a book that spells out part of what I do. And nowhere in that book do I describe how a NPC functions or how any of it works as far as a game goes.

Rather it about building an imaginary fantasy world with enough details to bring it to life. I paint the broad sketch first and show the reader how to fill in the lines and make it all hang together with the interconnections and conflict that will lead to adventures.

My book and the How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox series is one part of how to take a complete novice and teach them to do what I do for my campaign.

Again cut out the mansplaining

Good Lord. This is what happens when I compliment people. Fine forget the compliment. Why don't you try approaching what I have to say from any perspective but how you personally run games? I'm trying to talk about games in general. And if you want to call it patronizing fine, but I do think your commentary is completely overlooking most novice gamers playing most games aside from your advice about how to play your way. New gamers, and even not new gamers moving to new system need all the info they can get about how to run a good game. So while you might not address NPCs in your sandbox book (which ids great btw) that doesn't mean that there aren't people who do need to break things down on the rules side.

TTRPGs are complete shit at explaining how to design good games because they are not a game in the first place. Rather they are a way to play Let’s Pretend in a way that is fun and interesting even for adults. A way of using pen and paper to create a virtual reality to experience another world and other lives.

TTRPGs are indeed games. Maybe not in the same way as Yahtzee, but they are games. It's right in the name. Unless you're talking about FKR they all have rules to put boundaries, limits and direction in place. And even without those rules and just FKR play they are still (setting your style aside because I don't want to argue about it) games where challenges are presented and obstacles overcome. I'm not sure why it's important to you to claim that Roleplaying Games aren't games, but I don't think it's an easy sell. I'm not convinced anyway, but that's just me.

 

[Fenris-77]

What do you mean by "outside of retainers"?

In a lot of OSR games retainers, who start as NPCs quite often turn into PCs.

Can you explain/define what you mean by "function" and "game construct"? And perhaps explain why you frame your thinking about RPGs that way?

I get the feeling I must just not understand what you're talking about, because it isn't making sense to me, and clearly it seems to make sense to you in ways that I think I must not be understanding what you mean very well at all.

I feel like I'm not doing a good job explaining myself frankly, given some of the feedback in other posts. I'll try to be pithy. RPG play has two streams in play, for some value of that description. You have the roleplaying bit, where people are talking in character and the GM is delivering evocative descriptions and all that wonderful. This is where RPGS live and almost all the cool shit happens here. Running underneath the RP part are the game rules, which get referenced in most cases as little as possible or just when they are needed. So the visible part of NPCs, the RP part, is all about creating a living breathing character. The game construct part, which is where function lives, is the role NPCs also play as objects upon which various player actions and skills are executed via rules and mechanics.

 

[AsenRG]

you don't just write them into your game because it's what makes sense, they have game effects too

Care to give an example? I assure you I'm trying to understand but I suspect there's something I might be missing.

OK, Asen is adding a gregarious innkeeper to his game...
What is he hoping to accomplish, as a game effect? Why would he abstain from adding one?


Because I'm actually writing him just because it makes sense. What the game effect would be is unpredictable to me, and honestly, largely of 0 interest, too...

 

[Lychee of the Exchequer]

To me, it's obvious that RPGs are games.

I tried playing with some friends without game rules - a purely narrative game, one could say - because those friends were interested in proving to me (and anyone interested, I guess) that RPGs are a serious affairs and not games with silly dice. Yeah: those friends are snobbish intellectual types, and we're all French to boot, so that was some high flying brain wank fest here - but I love them anyway :-).

I was not convinced, because as a player I had the unpleasant sensation of being trapped in the grotesque phantasms of another psyche (the GM's psyche). Plus, it lacked rythm and was ultimately booooring.

How RPGs are games would be an interesting topic. I think RPGs emerged from wargames precisely because of their mechanics and simulationist approach: i.e there's no RPG without constraint in narration - an RPG setting is nothing but constraint on a narration. Come to think of it, player characters are also constraints on narration.

 

[Imaginos]

Jumping in way late and way too many posts to read through, so just diving in with my thoughts on the OP.

I used to have a player who did this. Charisma was their dump stat. But the player was forceful and tried to bulldoze the DM/GM with force of personality, and say that should count for their character.

I look at it like this. What does that do for the player who didn't dump-stat Charisma, but instead built into it? Their dump-stat is Strength or Dexterity (or Combat). If they continually describe really cool attack moves, are you going to just hand-wave aside the penalty to their rolls, or the attack roll entirely? Of course not (for 99% of the GMs out there). In that case, you shouldn't do it for the person who can speak more eloquently.

Alternate take, the player who takes a really high intelligence. Do you have them solve a quadratic equation in order to successfully figure out the puzzle or memorize the spell?

It is definitely a situation where I have to explain to the player the whats and whys and therefores. Maybe the player will stop just using Charisma as a dump stat.

 

[Exploderwizard]

And the function of those guard is, should the PCs decide to try and rob the banks is what exactly? Oh, right, exactly what I said it was. As I've said several times, 'what makes sense' often overlays issues of function.


But that same moment applies to living world encounters/moments/scenes that you come with on the fly. Function is part of the program. Of course it needs to make sense though - function without verisimilitude is bloody useless.

Bolded emphasis mine. Living worlds do not have enconters/moments/scenes planned out. The world runs. Everything is where it is and yes the PCs will encounter some of it depending on where they go and what they do. Specific encounters are something the DM has decided will happen. Scenes are elements of a story game. Not sure what a moment is in gaming terms. None of that has much of a place in a living world game.

 

[AsenRG]

Jumping in way late and way too many posts to read through, so just diving in with my thoughts on the OP.

I used to have a player who did this. Charisma was their dump stat. But the player was forceful and tried to bulldoze the DM/GM with force of personality, and say that should count for their character.

I look at it like this. What does that do for the player who didn't dump-stat Charisma, but instead built into it? Their dump-stat is Strength or Dexterity (or Combat). If they continually describe really cool attack moves, are you going to just hand-wave aside the penalty to their rolls, or the attack roll entirely? Of course not (for 99% of the GMs out there). In that case, you shouldn't do it for the person who can speak more eloquently.

Alternate take, the player who takes a really high intelligence. Do you have them solve a quadratic equation in order to successfully figure out the puzzle or memorize the spell?

It is definitely a situation where I have to explain to the player the whats and whys and therefores. Maybe the player will stop just using Charisma as a dump stat.

I agree...but then over 60% of the PCs attacks in last session got bonuses due to description!

 

[Skarg]

Ok, so equipped with that explanation, when I re-read this:

Of course it only goes so far, I completely agree. Not every NPC has a discrete obvious function like I described. Many of them do from the get go, others maybe acquire a function relative to how they are interacted with. How to handle those functions isn't something we've spent a lot of time on here, but it comes back to using whatever stat block and rules that have been produced for that NPC to gate information, or access, or whatever.

I think you'd be ard pressed to find examples of NPC turning into players as an actual mechanic (outside of retainers), but I'm sure it's the case somewhere. When that happens the nature of the NPC is changed radically, it's no longer an NPC and is now something completely different.

Again, this comes down to portrayal not function. I am 100% behind the idea that NPCs should be as 3d as possible. That just doesn't change their underlying game construct nature. The two things are not mutually exclusive at all.

I still wonder about the part of why you keep focusing on NPC functions. That seems to be a big part of where your mindset is very different to those of us who don't tend to think about NPCs that way.

That is, the main gameplay being in "the roleplaying bit", in that "stream", the game "function" you are talking about, does not (much?) exist.

In the game-mechanics "stream", the games I tend to play (TFT/GURPS) say the rules for PCs/NPCs are almost entirely identical. They DO offer a few game mechanics for how some types of NPCs may tend to interact with PCs in certain relationships and social situations, such as jobs, trials, patrons, informants, Allies/Enemies, and this thread's original topic: manipulation skills and reaction rolls. (However, even those aren't entirely exclusive to PC/NPC interactions.) Those however tend to be just starting point suggestions. When such interactions warrant enough attention, those mechanics actually tend to get partly or even entirely replaced by roleplaying interactions.

 

[AsenRG]

The example I like to use is a soccer penalty shot. You have to succeed because if you fail you miss the goal entirely, but just being on target isn't enough. The opposition goalkeeper has a chance to save the shot, and you only get the goal if they fail it.

I forgot to answer that...

Sure, that works, but my players aren't big into soccer. If anything, the combat systems that we all know, would be a more familiar comparison!
But then why, if we all know what an opposed roll is? Most of us have worked out the "you need to succeed better than the opposition" part, and if they don't seem to grasp it, the other players are ready to tell them this verbatim.

I guess I should remember the comparison in case I introduce new people that like soccer to RPGs, though that's not highly likely at this stage of my life.

 

[thebigh]

I figure even people who aren't big into sportsball know basically what penalty shots and goalkeepers are.

 

[Skarg]

The quote below, seems pretty clear to me, and seems to me as clearly as untrue, as you seem to be saying here that it is definitely true.

That too, is mysterious and interesting to me, and again, I feel I must be missing something, because it doesn't make sense to me that you can assert the things I quote below.

Hopefully it's useful if I try to explain why, a bit:

[...] challenge or obstacle is still why you include watchmen, or bribable civil servants, or gregarious innkeepers - you don't just write them into your game because it's what makes sense, they have game effects too - obvious game effects.

Except, yes, "because it's what makes sense" really is why I include those kinds of characters, particularly when I'm running a serious campaign game.

It's also what the first quote of Steve Jackson from The Fantasy Trip's core book In The Labyrinth says to do - put people/monsters/things in your adventure locations based on what makes sense, based on logic from what your campaign world is like.

And so, similarly, I don't put guards in places where it makes sense there wouldn't be guards. Even if there's something valuable that the PCs may very much want there.

As several others and I have said before, we see our job as GM, as creating a self-consistent game world, and letting players explore it through their PCs. And that means having what's there make sense. It does not mean putting in challenges to whatever the PCs want to do. Our job isn't to provide challenges. If there are challenges to what the PCs try to do, it's because it makes sense those things would be there, and not because we think we need to put obstacles in the way of PCs.

Those NPCs exist, for some value of their existence, to interact with the PCs and provide obstacles and challenges.

Does "for some value of their existence" include even if it's only a logical side-effect of them being there?

As others have also written, I tend to have quite a few NPCs who exist because I'm thinking of what people would logically exist in my game worlds. That's mostly why I develop most NPCs. Because that's who lives there, or because an NPC lord would employ someone to do X job, and this seems like the sort of person they'd've found to do that. Nothing to do with PCs or my guesses nor current info about what the PCs may plan to do next.

Very often, it's the PCs' choices which determine how or whether they end up interacting with particular NPCs, and it's very often not what I would've guessed, if I'd tried.

It doesn't actually matter if you want to admit that this is true because it's obviously true. Game rules require gameable elements to resist them. NPCs are a core class of that thing. You trying to deny that fact is nonsensical.

Well, a PC can attack, or attempt to seduce, or rob, or befriend, any NPC they can get close enough to. The rules provide for that, and the world is full of people. "Require"ment satisfied. But so what?

 

[SavAce]

It's such a common thing in these discussions to conflate the two main senses in which RPGs can be games. For me personally, the most important way RPGs are games are in the "game of make believe" sense. A certain school sees the rules of RPGs as only existing to act as a collection of useful tools to help adjudicate what happens in the make-believe, instead of relying on a GM to just come up with it all themselves. Maybe the rules also have other intentions, like helping players make interestingly differentiated characters or something. It's not like a board game or video game, or a competitive game built to present a fair play arena where winning and losing can occur. Children don't play "house" to win. The whole endeavor is unlike the other sense in which we mean "game." Some people are all about using RPGs to play this kind of game. Others are gonna prefer the other main sense I use it, and a lot of folks like a little peanut butter with their chocolate. Anyways, in my opinion, if an RPG does not contain game in the sense I describe above, it is not an RPG to me.

The other sense of game is the board game/video game/card game sense. An RPG with a set of rules, you can look at the rules and determine the most optimal ways to succeed using the mechanisms described in the rules. You can be interested in playing a Rogue with a spiked chain and a couple feats that let him really control the battlefield, and take satisfaction in how you're kicking ass. Maybe next time you play a Sorcerer who has this spell from Frostburn and a way to use touch spells at range to drop dragons to 0 Dexterity (yeah, all of my char-op memories are from D&D 3.5 era). Char-op or power gaming doesn't have to come with this play-style, but a game with a set of rules that you can utilize and explore the workings of, and through which overcome challenges is the appeal. As my signature indicates, I'm a big fan of the old White Wolf Street Fighter RPG, and it has this going on in a very fun way for me in its combat system. The dungeon turn structure of Basic D&D has it. I think a lot of RPGs are worse at this than they'd like to believe.

When it comes to creating scenarios and challenges for players and all of that... it's possible to do so in both senses of "game", but I think it is optional to include these things in the "make believe" game, while it is necessary for folks seeking more of the 2nd kind of game. Like, situations and challenges will almost certainly naturally come up in the "make believe" game, but the game elements are not there primarily for the same reason they may be in the RPG focused on the game in the 2nd sense. It feels like Fenris-77's position is that the primary function of NPCs is to serve as obstacles or game pieces in play in this 2nd sense of game, with the "make believe" functioning as a kind of auxiliary thing that comes along with it, whereas others see the primary function as being there to support the "make believe", and should the course of play lead to conflict requiring rules adjudication, etc., well I guess it turned out the NPC will serve that role at that time, it just so happens. These both seem legitimate to me, and I can't see why one would insist one is correct and the other not? I feel like I've played in both kinds of games. Games that were just talking and things happening, and maybe a roll to drive a car through the snow or something. Other games that were a little bit of talk & RP leading up to 2 hours of "D&D 5e Combat Encounter", with a lil bit of PC chat and overland travel after.

 

[robertsconley]

How RPGs are games would be an interesting topic. I think RPGs emerged from wargames precisely because of their mechanics and simulationist approach: i.e there's no RPG without constraint in narration - an RPG setting is nothing but constraint on a narration. Come to think of it, player characters are also constraints on narration.

RPGs developed because wargamers were looking to up their game. Wargames and miniature wargames took off because they allowed you to take some situations that happened in history and put you in that situation to see what you could have done differently. Refight Gettysburg, D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, Waterloo and so on.

However like all game at the time, the 50s/60s, wargame consisted of two or more sides with everybody seeing all the pieces. Some players were not satisfied with that as that not how it happened in history.

As documented in Playing at the World and Hawk & Moor, somebody stumbled across books on military wargaming like Totten's Strategos. The military was wrestling with the same problem and they introduced a referee with the players separated from each other. Only the referee knew the entire situation the players only knew what they would know and what a commander would know in similar circumstances. And had to rely on proper placement of recon units like cavalry.

Miniature wargamers quickly found out that having a neutral referee was useful for other things like running campaigns. Starting with Wesely who developed the Braunstein, a referee could allow for scenarios with dozen or more players controlling armies, small groups, and individuals. Each player had their own list of goals to achieve. The outcome of these games could have multiple winners as well as losers. And the path to the end was crazy nuanced with players making all kinds of deals. Also helping this was Diplomacy a wargame by Avalon Hill that was designed around making and breaking deals.

Finally, folks started running campaigns of Braunstein games like Jenkins Wild West along with scenarios and campaigns where everybody was playing individuals like Roman Gladiators. Dave Arneson was known for his excellent refereeing and skill at running Braunstein decided to make a campaign called Blackmoor.

At first it would be what we would consider a wargaming campaign despite the focus on player playing characters. The campaign was about the forces of Law and Chaos fighting over the land of Blackmoor with each player making their way through the conflict. Also while Dave had some neutral he handled that could be recruited, both the good guys (Law) and the baddies (Chaos) were players.


First Fantasy Campaign Page 4

But it is apparent from all the accounts that Dave was the type of referee that pretty much said yes provided it made sense to anything that the players came up with. And if they were interested in something about Blackmoor even if it took away from the wargaming, the wheeling and dealing, he would go along with it and referee it.



He created the Castle Blackmoor dungeon and the players had a blast exploring it. Soon it became the dominant part of the Blackmoor campaign over the wargaming stuff. To the point where Dave wrote this



How all this got to the rest of us is when Dave went down to Lake Geneva to run a session of Blackmoor. Apparently the actual campaign made use of a lot of minis and terrain, so he took with him the most portable thing about Blackmoor, the dungeons underneath Castle Blackmoor.



Gygax was hooked and was inspired to write his own Castle Greyhawk Dungeons, and to write his own rules after quizzing Dave about how he handled things. Eventually, this was published as Dungeons and Dragons and started spreading from there.

The most crucial thing that Dave taught Gary was how to referee this type of campaign (it didn't have it own name yet). The players described what they were doing as their characters, and the referee adjudicated the results. Sometimes by fiat, sometimes by using a set of rules. With Dave the account made it clear there was no rulebook. Instead, Dave had a binder full of charts, references, and memory aids. Those in the Twin Cities who ran their own campaign largely figured it out by watching what Dave did and asking him for help or for copies of crucial charts.

Gygax who was an experienced author and writer of wargames wrote a ruleset before starting out and continually made new versions as the Greyhawk campaign unfolded. Eventually publishing it as three books of OD&D. Dave gave crucial feedback at multiple times but it was Gary who organized it and wrote it.

Sure D&D reads like a game, however the crucial element that turned it into an RPG was the whole player describe, referee adjudicate feedback cycle.

Also right at the beginning, we see two of the (many) poles that have since come to define the hobby. We have Dave Arneson a seat of your pants referee willing to figure out stuff if something didn't cover what the players said. Then we have Gygax who has a more formal way of handling the campaign that grounded in a firm set of rules.

But be clear both were in the same ballpark. Dave was willing to come up with some very elaborate rules if need be, and Gygax was open to his players trying stuff that wasn't covered.

However, as the Elusive Shift book document, there was a sense both before and after D&D release that this whole thing was something very different from your usual type of game. Not just the Blackmoor and Greyhawk campaigns but the other closely related campaigns like Jenkin's Wild West that was being run. For example, there was no real "end" where you can say things were done.

Another was the lack of constraints compared to traditional wargaming. If a referee was willing then players can easily propose to do things not covered by the rules. Because the rules were mostly focused on resolving what individual characters could do, it was often easy for a referee to extrapolate a consistent ruling. Oh you need to fix that wagon wheel? OK roll a d20 under your strength. But if a player was to say "My character flaps their arms and starts flying." without something supernatural they would get shot down by the referee.

The only constraints were those imposed by the setting and how the character was described (mechanics, or notes).

Ever I started playing D&D in 1978 it has always been a thing that you had groups that only played rules as written and groups where anything could go. As for me, I generally follow rules as written if something is covered. If it wasn't and made sense I would figure out a ruling. This is because you had to be flexible as the goal of my early campaigns is players to establish kingdoms or becoming powerful figures.

 

[Endless Flight]

But if a player was to say "My character flaps their arms and starts flying." without something supernatural they would get shot down by the referee.

 

[TristramEvans]

The Hoff is excluded from such banal rules, obviously

 

[Scuba Steve]

The Hoff is excluded from such banal rules, obviously

View attachment 70975

 

[BedrockBrendan]

I definitely think RPGs are games. But I do think there is always a danger they veer too deep into feeling like a board game or video game. I want the dice there for certain things. Generally social interactions I think can be handled, and for me are best handled, without them, but like I said before you have to adapt to people at the table and most of the people I have played with tend to have a preference of some kind for that. However on encounters, for me this depends on the campaign I am running. In a place like Ravenloft or another horror setting, I think planned encounters work well. In a more freeform explore the world type thing, I do tend to avoid them but I am often relying on things like encounter tables. And I still am not too worried about disrupting the naturalism by injecting excitement or challenge when it is needed. I found going too far in search of a place that feels real, can sometimes lead to feeling like you are just exploring a place in real life (which can be fun but isn't as exciting as I expect in an RPG). I want things to happen and do want the game to have some sense of momentum. That might come from things the players are doing, things NPCs are doing or just encounters that crop up for whatever reason. I try to have as much of this be directed by NPC motives and goals. But I am also not tracking every cow herd and patrol of soldiers (and sometimes you do just need to throw in something that fits for the moment)

 

[Silverlion]

The fact that we’re playing a game isn’t the point of what we’re doing. The fact that we’re pretending to live our PCs lives in a world that we pretend is real, not “fiction” is the point of what we’re doing. The mechanics simply exist because this isn’t a full Cyberpunk simsense/braindance/Matrix experience, so we have to have something to fill in for luck, happenstance, and physics.

Interesting to see this is how I generally run things, with the expectation of focusing on the 'in character' experience of a person and I make the world follow similar presumptions, that this is a world that operates under genre-appropriate elements but is an ongoing space, that lives without the PC's, sure the PC's direct major changes to the world that might not occur without them the world breathes. Example: If the heroes don't stop Baron Fear from creating his fear machine to control the world, the world will end up controlled. Because it continues on without them. (To a certain degree, I don't go writing that happening, or bothering with it unless players are playing the actual game )

 

[KrakaJak]

I once had a situation where players could not agree on battle plan for around 90 minutes of real time. I had them make an opposed roll against each other using character skills, either conversation or tactics to decide whose plan goes through. I don't know of I would do that again....definitely some resentment at the table for that call...but I really wanted the game to move on.

 

[thebigh]

That sounds really frustrating. I'd want to get the game moving again too.