I sometimes think that someone could write rules --- properly designed and streamlined to the level of a lightweight board game --- for such things (persuade a convincible person via debate or conversation; overland travel and scouting through hazardous terrain; investigation of a crime scene; exploration of an enclosed space full of traps and puzzles; etc.) and make some real money in the TTRPG space. Not for everyone, but some people (game runners and players both) might really like and appreciate that.
There's some RPGs doing (or trying at least) this, L5R come to mind
It seems like the sort of thing one could find in the indie/narrative-focused RPG scene, though they tend toward simpler mechanics.
It's definitely a thing one could do in FATE -- the combat mechanics are explicitly generalizable to any domain of conflict, so you can have a psychic or social damage track in addition to (or instead of) the physical. Persuasion would be just another one there, though it'd be an odd game where it's standard. The other examples would be a bit more of a lift there, because there's no embodied opposition.
(I'm sure there are other games that'd fit the bill, but I'm only loosely aware of that scene.)
SandeebaRezYouri - That is not the point the above user is making. That is the point you are trying to make, but you do not get to just decide to insert your own points into another user's post because it fits your narrative.
1
I will also note that, once again, you are being inconsistent to the point of being hypocritical in your posting--after all, you ranted in another post about how 5e leaves too much up to the DM (which you said could result in inconsistent rulings or confusion)... and are now trying to justify your love of earlier editions by saying that DMs could just translate things into DM-contrived mechanical terms (resulting in the very same problems you said 5e had).
2
There's some other nonsense you write, like your trying to say "encounters did not need to be combat" as if that was a unique feature of earlier editions not existent in 5e... even though 5e explicitly makes the non-combat encounter a clear part of the game.
3
Your anecdotes, your inconsistency in articulating your own points, and your clear lack of understanding of 5e are, however, are helpful.
3.b
In an earlier post, I said your problem seemed to be a lack of understanding of 5e--after all, the near totality of your posting on 5e has demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of 5e's rules and systems, as nearly every single person on this thread has pointed out to you.
4
I realize now that I was wrong--your problem is not that you do not understand 5e; it is that you do not seem to fundamentally grasp any edition of D&D.
5
At its core, your anecdotes about prior editions of D&D share a common thread - a dedication to using the "Rule of Cool" instead of looking up the rules. It is pretty clear you played earlier editions fast and loose with the official rules, confusing your lackadaisical approach to the game for how the game was designed to be played. Perhaps that was because you were younger and the rules were less important in your youth; perhaps it was because you did not really understand the rules; perhaps it was because your group just wanted to do what they thought might be cool, rules be darned. No matter the reason, it is clear you gained an anarchistic view of earlier editions that is not really supported by the reality of those editions' rules, many of which were far more intensive than 5e's.
Naturally, if you go from a game system where you decided not to learn the rules and do whatever you want, assuming without verifying there were no rules to support your Rule of Cool philosophy and start looking at 5e in terms of the rules... well, of course you are going to think 5e is stifling. But, here's a little tip for you - if you and your friends who ignored most of the 3.5 rules want to ignore most of the 5e rules, you are welcome to do that in 5e as well.
6
Now, there is nothing wrong with playing by Rule of Cool as the superseding authority. I certainly would not want to play at your table--but that is the joy of D&D. As long as you find a table that is a good fit for you, there is no true wrong way to play.
1 Look it should be very clear by not that I am not good at explaining things. I am not being inconsistent, I am bringing up different facets of the same issue, looking at it from multiple perspectives. And you taking my words to mean not quite matching what I'm saying does not help. I never said that 5e leaves to much to the DM. Nor have I claimed that problems come from having mechanics.
What I said is that a lack of mechanics for resolving something is not greater freedom than when mechanics exist but are merely guidelines and aids instead of being explicit "this is how must do it." And I mentioned that because, just like with 4e, people claim the lack of mechanics is somehow greater freedom. DM contrived mechanical terms Well, how do you expect guidelines, play aids, and mechanical but mere suggestions to be used? No matter your answer the result can easily be called DM contrived mechanics. You claim that these DM contrived mechanics lead to issues, while I'm saying they don't have to, but it seems like people naturally have a limited outlook on the mechanics and as a result can only see how to use mechanics in a way that does.
2
There is a ton of stuff that 3.x explicitly states that no one knows about. Just because something is explicitly part of the game, doesn't mean anyone does it. Now granted there is always going to be a minority, but we aren't really discussing that.
As for non-combat encounters, I stopped encountering those years ago. Heck, I stopped seeing encounters end without enemies fighting to the death well over a decade ago. Enemies these days are almost exclusively run like the AI in videogames, where enemies always fight to the death, eve when they are supposed to be bandits simply looking for an easy payday by stealing from random travelers. Why is these bandits don't run away the moment they realize they are in over their heads? Because that is not how anybody at the table is thinking about them. The same is true for non-combat encounters. Sure they are supposed to exist, but I haven't seen them. I haven't seen the mindset that would allow them, except perhaps one or two people in this very thread, but never in a game I played or watched in many years.
I'd like to also mention, that my comment was not simply that encounters could be noncombat, but that you get encounters with evil humanoids like orcs, goblins, or even just simple bandits, and it not be a combat encounter. Most players these days just go "oh it's a bandit, kill it." As though what it is makes it automatically an enemy and that somehow being an enemy is automatic justification for wholesale slaughter. You've heard the term murderhobo. Where do you think it comes from?
3
Firstly, I said I played the 5e playtest and haven't gone back. But I have seen players play. The issue I've been discussing is not specific to 5e. I even said that I could play 5e in my style, but I dumped it after the playtest because the mechanics were more of a problem than a help. Attaching my complaints exclusively to 5e is a mistake. 5e is kind of a focus here because it is the big popular one, but it is not the issue.
Similarly, 3.5 is not the solution. Heck, I've mentioned multiple times that players haven't been playing 3.5 in the manner I'm discussing. So in both cases, 5e and 3.5 are serving as examples, but are not themselves important.
3.b much of my understanding of the situation is not about the specific mechanics, it is about the mindset. How do I know the mindset? I watch a lot of gaming content. Not very much of it is 3.5 these. I listen to videos while I work, so I go through hours of media every day. A huge portion of which is gaming related, everything from Mr Rhexx lore videos to Grungeon Master to Ginny Di.
And speaking of Ginny Di, there is an excellent example of the mindset. Consider her discussion of the new DMG 2024. Balancing encounters. She discusses how the new DMG has advice on how to balance encounters and make sure they aren't too difficult nor too easy. This concept is antithetical to certain ways of playing, including the one I promote. It is a concept built entirely on this mechanical view of playing the game. It leaves zero room for the old ways of encounters coming in a broad varieties of difficulty ranging from very easy to very difficult to "you should run away before you end up TPK." 3.5 had the latter. It even gave advice on how often you should have the various difficulties if you needed some advice on that, and guess what, the variety of difficulties actually serves a purpose, it isn't just about "realism." Various difficulties allows players to see the change in their character's power, the goblinsthey had trouble with early on become very easy to deal with later, and this makes the goblins a meterstick, as when players go from being terrified of too many goblins to wishing more were around to wet their blade, that gives a much truer sense of power growth than a few numbers on a sheet. And 5e just flat out doesn't do that.
Also, lets look at her video on warlocks. The entire concept of a warlock is the pact with a patron. That should be a major element of one's background. But in 2024, choice of patron is changed to be third level. Why? For purely mechanical reasons, which are held so central, that they completely override the very obvious narrative problems with the idea. Sure, it can work to have a player not know what kind of patron they have, but why limit the game to only warlock stories that don't know their patron? And even if a player doesn't know their patron, then the discovery of knowledge about their patron should in that instance be a character arc of discovery with hints and clues, not just suddenly one day the player choosing it.
These things tell me a lot about the mentality involved, even without my deep knowledge of 5e's mechanics.
4, see above. Seriously, I really question how much thought you really put into that sentence. I suck at communicating, especially through writing. Downside of autism I guess.
5. Here is where your lack of understanding the spectrum of playstyles and the various editions of dnd really shows. The 3.x DMGs literally say to have a wide variety of encounter difficulties, and even gives some guidance and the spread, yet when the earliest official modules came out following those very official guidelines, the community pushed back against the "lack of balance" in the encounter designs. This is literally the community lacking understanding of the system. and it's expectations. Have you read a 3e era DMG cover to cover? What about 2e? I have read the 3.5 in total, and much of the 3.0 when my 3.5 is unavailable, and I've listened to a cover to cover reading of the 2e DMG, and have been making my way through it myself when I get the chance.
I also have studied the issue of gamestyles, because I am literally trying to be the first professional grade scholar of RPGs (in the same way professionals study music and know a whole lot more than common listeners of music). I'm certainly not there yet, obviously, but I'm also not some idiot that claims everything wrong just because it match my desires and preferences.
My studies in psychology also have hammered home the fact that people in general have an extremely limited understanding of themselves, despite a very common belief that one is intimately familiar with themself.
So you might want to be careful about making such broad accusations of not understanding any version of DnD.
Further, I don't do the rule of cool and play loose with the mechanics. Firstly, I am very about about the action needing to make sense within the realm of the narrative milieu, jumping a 60' gap certainly sounds cool, but it is also completely implausible, regardless of mechanics. Second, I don't play loose with the rules, as that implies the idea that one is supposed to be following the rules. My description of 3.5 has always that the mechanics do not exist to be followed as some sort of "how to play" law, but rather that they are a language, and I certainly use the mechanics as a language, without much playing loose with them as a language, and that just looks very different from playing the mechanics.
6
An absolutely correct statement, of course, finding a table to play with can be a problem for those not on board with the 5e/pf2 playstyle.
Whenever someone decries the death of role playing because there’s skills for social encounters all I see is people trying to gatekeep certain classes based on who the player is. Why should only charismatic players get to play charismatic characters? Not everyone is silver tongued and able to come up with elaborate conversations on the fly so what, they should never get to play out their fantasy of being exactly that type of person? They should never get to play a Bard, a Warlock or a Sorcerer? Why stop at just social skills if you’re following that logic? Sorry, you can’t play a Barbarian unless you’ve got anger issues. Want to play a Fighter? Get down and give me 200 pushups or I won’t let you have a decent strength score. It’s an idiotic and exclusionary train of thought. Let people play how they enjoy playing
I'm going to step in here and counter this.
The difference between a charismatic person person and a not-charismatic person is in delivery and allure. Having an uncharismatic player play a charismatic character is rather easy for a gm to arbitrate even without dice at all. They simply consider the argument or concepts presented by the player and consider how receptive the listener would be to it if it had been presented better. Boom, done. But nowadays, people just kind of assume that without mechanics players would need to be charismatic in order to roleplay a charismatic character and that is entirely false. Further, the point of a social skill check is almost always because you are trying to get something from the character, and that means arguments need strategy as well as delivery, and the strategy of such conversations can still be considered even under the idea that a character has the talent to present themselves better.
But nowadays, people just kind of assume that without mechanics players would need to be charismatic in order to roleplay a charismatic character
This statement is not borne out by the evidence.
That is, while some players may do that, it is not all and it is not a majority, and it is not an effective generalization.
Further, the point of a social skill check is almost always because you are trying to get something from the character, and that means arguments need strategy as well as delivery, and the strategy of such conversations can still be considered even under the idea that a character has the talent to present themselves better.
This is a playstyle difference, not something that is "the point", merely one person's idea of how to do that.
That approach is not better or worse than any other approach, and it is not more correct or less correct than any other.
A point of a social skill check may be:
to get something out of the character
to distract the character
to entertain the character
to explain something to the character
to give something to the character
to prove something the to the character
and more.
A social skill check may not
need strategy
need tactics
need an argument
need talent
Since these conditions can occupy a broad range of possibilities, keep in mind that the outcome of a check can vary, as well (with success, partial success, or failure).
It is entirely possible for someone to "roll-play" all social encounters. some social encounters, or not to "roll-play" them at all.
This is no different from those who want to role-play all social encounters, some social encounters, or not role-play at all.
Neither approach is better" or "worse', and neither approach is "good" or "bad". Neither approach is determined by the rules, mechanics, or even the intent or design of the rules or mechanics. They are entirely factors of the players themselves deciding how to utilize the tools the rulebooks give them.
Pointedly, the intent of the design is to enable both -- and that goes back to 0e. In every edition.
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i do think in terms of rules. It is a game, and other than Calvinball, games have rules. All games. Indeed, the nature of games is predicated on the basis of rules — so anyone who is talking about games is talking about rules, fundamentally, and thus even you think in terms of rules.
2
you also forgot: the cleric did have a tool to disarm traps. And could have used it. So the question you asked is, again, still answers by the same response. Throwing sandbags to trigger spike throwers, lifting, hauling, positioning, and using a log — these all still had mechanical tests and challenges.
3
as for a narrative choice, everything in the books is a narrative choice, including the use of the mechanics or not using them. The narrative choice bit of the clothing is no different from my player’s deciding “that looks like a trapped area, let’s solve that problem” and then doing it. All of that was narrative, improvisational, and creative. So, again, no distinction and an empty argument.
4
The meta textual influence you reference requires specific evidence to use as an argument, though. I am aware such things exist, but I am also aware of how they operate, explicitly, and so I would need to have some concrete examples in order to accept that argument. How, specifically, do they teach looking at the game as a game of chess in terms of maximizing and optimizing?
1) This is not really true, which is part of my point. Do you solve problems in the real world by wondering which rules are the right ones to apply? Do you encounter spilled flour and wondering which mechanic will pick it up? Do authors have their characters act according to a set of rules?
In some sense the real world has rules, they are called the laws of physics, but people don't start picking out laws of physics to solve their problems.
Indeed, for me, I have always had an issue with calling RPGs "games" for this very precise reason, because the style of RPG I got into was not about rules. It was not built on rules. We used mechanics as aids, but you could've easily taken them away and our game would not have slowed down. We would probably get more frustrated at times and suffer more miscommunications, but fundamentally, we could play without rules.
Sure you might argue that a character having a particular personality is "a rule" but that is truly bending things away from the argument and I'm pretty sure you're smart enough to know that. There is a massive difference between a writer giving a character a consistent behavior vs a player of chess choosing their next move.
2) A tool is not a mechanic, and you use the right tool for the job. Thieves tools are like lockpicks and pliers and such. You mention having players make mechanical challenges to move a log into position, and I really got to wonder why. The only thing that comes to my mind is that you felt there needed to be some sort of test, otherwise, why have the trap?
For me, there are three reasons to have a trap, the first is because it makes for a trap to be there and you want to show the trap being there because of what it communicates to the players, whether it be showing detail of the world to build verisimilitude or because it might be a clue or it might provide insight into something up ahead. The second is to make a scene where the players need to make a meaningful choice, which could be taking a risk or spending resources or impacting the life and livelihood of other characters. Third is to make them think creatively.
Where is the risk in moving a log? Where is the expenditure of resources? Mechanical challenges here do not seem to do anything other dictate whether they need to come up with a different plan. Not much risk, not much cost, not much impact. Rolling dice challenges here do not add a significant amount in any of these terms. What it does do is reward the meta play of game mechanics, not character build nor character personality.
3) Narrative choice in the sense I'm discussing it, is exclusively the choices within the context of the narrative milieu. There is a difference between looking at the mechanics, picking the best option and then building up story around that choice, vs making a choice based on the character you are playing and their perceptions and knowledge, then representing it with mechanics. Do you not see how the outcomes of these two alternatives are different?
4) I'm not the one that brought up minmaxing. Such subtleties in influence are generally difficult to get right because they are something that happens on a holistic level. You generally can't pin them down to "they made this particular mechanic like this so that players would be like that." There are exceptions but outside of gaming is easier to find some.
When a store puts snacks right next to the register, it is making it easy to give in to an impulse purchase which easily leads to a habit of giving in to impulse buying. Similarly, companies pay stores to put their product at a particular height because it makes it stand out and most people will take the easy solution and given a choice between an easy reach and reaching to the lowest or highest shelf. Yes, that has a significant impact on sales that absolutely makes it worth buying particular shelves. The same is true for the anti-trap skill. In 3.5 and pf1, the anti-trap skill exists, and that makes it easier to just use the anti-trap skill than to figure out an alternative not involving mechanics. This builds a habit of looking at mechanics first, which then drives creativity and problem solving to look first and foremost at mechanics. Subtle psychological tricks that matter.
The witch class. There is a sort of witch class in the core rulebooks, but DMs wouldn't allow it, even if they had homebrew, because to them it was somehow not legitimate, and that was important to them. Why? Because they have a certain reliance on the mechanics for how they think and resolve issues, and allowing the witch class makes them uncomfortable because it breaks the underlying assumptions they don't even know they are making.
Another example is flipping a table over for cover. Players won't do this. It's a trope we see in movies many times, and while players rarely have an issue with the idea, they never think of it themselves. The simple case of having a bunch of mechanics puts them in a mindset of thinking in terms of the mechanics, which means options not explicitly available in the mechanics tend to not be thought of. Most of the players I know that are not this limited, play freeform or some very rules light system that has mechanics more for story control rather than "what the character can do," and even then they usually limit themselves when playing in a "crunchy" system.
Indeed, the very fact that DnD mechanics are about what a character can do, instead of players having narrative control of outcomes, shapes the way they think of solutions and make plans. In fact, have you noticed that dnd homebrew is basically never a homebrew mechanic about narrative story control? I've never seen a dnd homebrew mechanic like "roll X, and on these result, the player gets to succeed and they get to come up with an additional boon, but this other value means that even though they succeed the GM gets to add a problem or complicaion, and this other value means they fail but they still get to come up with some advantage..." It is something that doesn't really fit with DnD mechanics so it doesn't get homebrewed in even though it is a fundamental and well used mechanic elsewhere. It is a contradictory mechanic. I can see that, yet I'm not really sure how to put into words the reason it is a contradictory structure.
1 - Factually, it is true. I am a sociologist and psychologist by training, vocation, and field of science.
Do you solve problems in the real world by wondering which rules are the right ones to apply? - Factually, yes, people do this every day. there's an entire concept called Structure and Agency for this.
Do you encounter spilled flour and wondering which mechanic will pick it up? - Factually, yes, people do this every day. The mechanic is a broom and a dustpan --and there are options.
Do authors have their characters act according to a set of rules?- Factually, yes, authors do have a set of rules relating to character actions. Multiple sets, in fact.
...the real world has rules, they are called the laws of physics... - There are far more rules than just the physical ones.
... people don't start picking out laws of physics to solve their problems. - But they do -- and they access them by using tools.
I have always had an issue with calling RPGs "games" ... - This is a personal problem, not one for the rest of the world. They are games by the normative definition, your personal one is only applicable to you, personally. [This became obvious in the next response, and shifted the way I can address you. See below.]
There is a massive difference between a writer giving a character a consistent behavior vs a player of chess choosing their next move. -- No, factually, there is not. Consistency is part of the rules of a writer that dictate what a character can and cannot do, and chess only has rules for moving pieces and a victory state, which delineate what a piece can and cannot do. Do not confuse the tactical and strategic approaches to chess with the rules of chess.
2 - A tool is a mechanic. Both in the game and in the real world. This highlights a problem. First, you have a different definition from the rest of the world about what a game is. Now it is obvious you have a different definition from the rest of the world about what a mechanic is -- and you previously noted that you think of mechanics as separate from rules, when the rest of the world in general does not.
if we cannot agree on what a mechanic is, we cannot discuss mechanics.
if we cannot agree on what a rule is, we cannot discuss rules.
if we cannot agree one what a game is, we cannot discuss games.
This is not because of any lack of good faith or desire, it is because we would be talking across each other and neither understanding the other, and it would be bad faith to attempt to do so knowing that we do not share common ground from which to communicate.
I can tell you that I will not operate in a space that is dictated solely by your terminology, nor will I do so in a space that is dictated solely by mine. I am willing to compromise on terminology, but not wholly shift to either, as that would be unseemly.
I leave it to you to proffer a middle point and we can begin to negotiate from there. Until we reach that consensus that is acceptable to both sides in terms of what those things are, I cannot in good faith continue with this discussion on these terms because it would not be conducive to being willing to change perspective or improv knowledge, which would make it a bad faith effort on my part. Even in my most sarcastic and nasty moments, I still operate in good faith.
3 - See point 2, above, and add "narrative" and "narrative milieu" to the list of terms needing rapprochement.
4 - Factually, you can do that. Specifically, factually, even in games, you can generally them down to "they made this particular mechanic like this so that players would be like that." Oddly enough, your example of chess, from earlier, is a prime example of this.
I cannot address any further aspects in your response because we are speaking about different things with the same words.
I don't particularly care about terminology beyond reaching common understanding. One thing I do know however, is that most people don't use terms properly, and I have had to learn multiple definitions for a great many things precisely because how most people understand a particular word can be very different from what the dictionary has to say. For the most part, I've given up looking at dictionaries because it is so rare to talk to someone that has actually read one.
So, now I think it is time to find some common terms we can use, though as I'm sure you must be aware, the way people conceptualize things can be very different from other people. I find it difficult to believe that most people would think of their broom as a law of the universe, regardless of what is technically correct.
So mechanics, rules, and games.
We must consider a field or space of interaction between people. When playing chess, there are the interactions that are considered part of the actual interaction we call playing chess, such as moving a pawn, then there are the interactions outside of that, such as the small talk and conversation and gestures that are not part of chess. We may consider the "game" of chess as being a space of interaction within another somewhat larger space that encompasses common interactions that surround chess but are not explicitly part of chess.
Mechanics: mechanical or functional details or procedure
Mechanical: done as if by machine : seemingly uninfluenced by the mind or emotions
Mechanics here are the explicit methods of interaction, the stuff that details that a pawn can only make certain moves and what those moves are as well as the consequences, such as when a pawn reaches the back row. Now if that is a bad term for it, then I really don't know what else to call it. That is what most people tend to understand of mechanics, but if you have a better definition, then by all means, share.
Rule: a prescribed guide for conduct or action
Prescribe: to specify with authority
So rule can be this: a guide for conduct or action as specified with authority
Rules, as a word is commonly interchangeable with mechanics for most people I've heard speaking about RPGs, but even then it does have certain connotations in my experience, such as the notion that rules are to be followed. This notion of "rules" existing to be followed is why I was making a distinction, because I do not feel that the explicit writings of 3.x are to be explicitly followed, and I don't just mean whether homebrew is allowed. We can probably get by without finding some common term for this.
Game: activity engaged in for diversion or amusement . But as that would include a lot of things incomparable here, for the purposes of our discussion it is probably best here to think of a term for a defined system of interactions between people via some intermediary. Chess for example is a system of well defined actions that can be taken and how those choice of actions progresses and what consequences there are.
What I see as a difference between RPGs and any other "game" I've encountered, such as card games, boardgames, wargames, etc, is that in RPGs, or at least in some playstyles of RPGs, is the open ended nature that is straight up contradictory to how the other "games" work. Sure, you can play a RPG like you would a board or card game, but you can also play in ways for which card and board games simply have no comparable options.
In chess, you can not take any actions not explicitly defined as valid. Now in chess, we don't define every gamestate and the valid following gamestates, but we do define several functions, or moves if you will, that we can use construct valid gamestates and the valid gamestates to progress to. In a RPG however, you have two categories of playstyles that differ in this regard. The first simply allows implied actions as valid. There is no explicitly defined action for how to turn over a table make it suitable for cover, but there is the implication that a character should be able to do so. This allowance of implied actions being valid means that it is a non-computable problem to try and define the gamestate and following gamestates.
The second is that the explicit definitions listed are not defining valid actions, but are a common set of descriptors, a language, to communicate about the space in which the interactions are taking place where any action is only implied as allowed or not and implied based not a set of explicit writings about allowable actions, but instead what is allowed is implied by a common understanding of a fictional world.
In chess or similar, there is a written set of rules that one looks at for a listing of available actions. In a RPG, the players can also look at a fictional milieu for possible actions and not rely on only explicitly written actions, and in some playstyles, players only look at the fictional milieu for valid actions.
This is why I question whether RPGs should be called games, as they do not have to share the trait that any other "game" has where every gamestate can be computed as valid or invalid according to well defined methods. Now I grant that you have game theory, a scientific field of study in which decisionmaking is studied. Perhaps we can find a better definition there, not for the term"game" but perhaps a term that better fits what most people would consider a game to be, those things sold in stores and online as "games" such as chess and poker, which are a distinctly identifiable category that is a subset of what the scientists studying game theory would call a game.
Narrative: having the form of a story: of or relating to the process of telling a story.
Milieu :the physical or social setting in which something occurs or develops. Nothing prevents this from referencing a fictional setting.
Thus narrative milieu would be the physical or social setting in which a story occurs.
I have no idea if any of this is making sense, but I am absolutely willing to work with you in coming up with a common set of terms and definitions. In fact I look forward to it. I am tired right now though, so I'll have to come back to this later. I'm tired and this not my best post, but I hope it gets us moving in the right direction.
Whenever someone decries the death of role playing because there’s skills for social encounters all I see is people trying to gatekeep certain classes based on who the player is. Why should only charismatic players get to play charismatic characters? Not everyone is silver tongued and able to come up with elaborate conversations on the fly so what, they should never get to play out their fantasy of being exactly that type of person? They should never get to play a Bard, a Warlock or a Sorcerer? Why stop at just social skills if you’re following that logic? Sorry, you can’t play a Barbarian unless you’ve got anger issues. Want to play a Fighter? Get down and give me 200 pushups or I won’t let you have a decent strength score. It’s an idiotic and exclusionary train of thought. Let people play how they enjoy playing
I'm going to step in here and counter this.
The difference between a charismatic person person and a not-charismatic person is in delivery and allure. Having an uncharismatic player play a charismatic character is rather easy for a gm to arbitrate even without dice at all. They simply consider the argument or concepts presented by the player and consider how receptive the listener would be to it if it had been presented better. Boom, done. But nowadays, people just kind of assume that without mechanics players would need to be charismatic in order to roleplay a charismatic character and that is entirely false. Further, the point of a social skill check is almost always because you are trying to get something from the character, and that means arguments need strategy as well as delivery, and the strategy of such conversations can still be considered even under the idea that a character has the talent to present themselves better.
The problems with the arguments in this thread are really a textbook example on sample bias.
You give an example of a charismatic and non-charismatic person and then postulate that "nowadays, people just kind of assume that without mechanics players would need to be charismatic in order to roleplay a charismatic character." Using that as part of an example of how views of social interaction has changed with the newest edition. But that doesn't match what other people have seen. Or the fact that the mechanics for Diplomacy/ Persuasion haven't significantly changed in the last 20 years.
I've been playing for three decades, during which time I participated in multiple organized play programs and attended several local and international gaming conventions plus local game days. I have conservatively sat down at a table with well over 175 different gamers. Possibly as many as 250 fellow nerds. I can pretty comfortably say that I've seen many instances of people playing variations on 3.X, who have a low Cha character but are roleplaying like they were a Shakespearean protagonist. And almost as many people who run a bard and say "I convince the orcs not to attack us. I rolled a 27." I've seen no significant change in this between 3e and 5e. (4e was different as those kinds of tasks would be a Skill Challenge and were layered behind more explicit mechanics.)
Once again, I would strongly reccomend you actually spend some time with people who play 5e. Find a local D&D club and sit in on some games. Go in with an open mind and play the game.
This is why I question whether RPGs should be called games, as they do not have to share the trait that any other "game" has where every gamestate can be computed as valid or invalid according to well defined methods. Now I grant that you have game theory, a scientific field of study in which decisionmaking is studied. Perhaps we can find a better definition there, not for the term"game" but perhaps a term that better fits what most people would consider a game to be, those things sold in stores and online as "games" such as chess and poker, which are a distinctly identifiable category that is a subset of what the scientists studying game theory would call a game.
As you probably know, the game aspect of RPGs predates the role-playing aspect. Since the first sessions began as an asymetrical wargame with most players controlling a single character rather than a team or unit. It was only later that someone added role-playing.
RPGs are a game because the success and failure of narratively actions are determined by rules, often accompanied by some form or random element. This is typically dice, but could also be tokens drawn from a bag, cards drawn from a deck or played from a hand, blocks drawn from a tower of wooden blocks, or even engaging in rock-paper-scissors. Without these rules and game elements, it's just an exercise in narrative storytelling. An improv jam session. A round-robin story.
It's also worth remembering that not all games are sold in stores or have physical components. Tag is a game and is free and requires no props. What makes it a game is the agreed upon rules and code of conduct.
RPGs are a type of game. But they are a unique type of game as they possess both codified rules and the adoption of a role other than your own and improvised storytelling. Take away one of those elements and it ceases to be an RPG. Remove the rules and it's just improv. Remove the storytelling and it's just a board game. Remove the role and... okay, I'm not sure what that would be.
RPGs are a type of game. But they are a unique type of game as they possess both codified rules and the adoption of a role other than your own and improvised storytelling. Take away one of those elements and it ceases to be an RPG. Remove the rules and it's just improv. Remove the storytelling and it's just a board game. Remove the role and... okay, I'm not sure what that would be.
There is some things we can learn from old-school gaming philosophies on this topic. One of the main "thesis" behind what a role-playing game is from the old guard is that they are by design free-form theatre in which the core of the rules of the game apply to the DM responsibility to be executed honestly and authentically. It's something that exists in modern gaming on some levels, but it was quite specific in old-school games like 1st edition AD&D and 1st edition B/X where the bulk of the rules of the game were targeting the DM. At least as a gaming approach, these designs have largely been sort of dropped without replacing them with anything either as rules or philosophy as the concept of "free-form" began to apply more and more to the DM.
For example, there were adventure exploration, wilderness exploration and Waterborne exploration rules. An actual procedure for tracking things with steps on when and how to execute things like tracking time, tracking timed elements like torches and food, random encounters and so on. There was something called "an exploration action" for example. These were quite explicit.
You also had rules for things like the processes for encounters in which the DM would make checks like "reaction rolls" to determine the mood and hostility level of whatever you were encountering, you had elements like morale that would define the response to events over the course of a combat or interaction with the player characters.
There were rules that governed how cities were built with hard lines like how much gold a city of X size would have, how much defenses it had and all sorts of world-building rules for maintaining the structure of the universe the players occupied.
The point of these rules was to make sure that the "free-form" role-playing part of the game applied to the players, it did not apply to the DM, the DM was actually very restricted by tons of rules that defined "this is how you the DM game must run the game to maintain the integrity".
These rules however were contradicted by the philosophy the very rulebooks that included these often eschewed, which is why I think a lot of these sub-systems of governance where ultimately abandoned by most DM's. If you give a rule to the DM that says "follow this procedure" and then sub-text that rule with "if you want", the game loses its integrity because there is no point in creating a rule for a game, if you are then instructed not to use it or use it optionally. Not to suggest you can't have optional rules, but if everything is an optional rule and the whole thing is optionally free-form, then you don't actually have a game, it becomes this weird kind of theatre and in a way modern gaming is sort of the result of that. All of these structures have been abandoned and don't even exist as optional rules anymore, so there is not much to hang your hat on even if you wanted to.
When I run old school 1e D&D, I use these rules to the letter and they do work and they do create a specific type of playstyle and D&D does become more of a game as a result. I think these rules work, but the problem is that they take away the "creative" power of the DM, because many of them are procedures and structures for things that in modern gaming we think of as "storytelling". When do players fight? Well when the story makes sense for that to happen... Not so in old school gaming, you fight when a timer hits a certain point after taking X amount of exploration actions and I roll a random encounter die and something comes up. Thats when you have an encounter. What is the mood of that encounter, how do the monsters act... you roll for that to and that interaction with Orcs might not be hostile at all because how hostile they are is not a foregone conclusion or a story element, is governed by rules that the DM follows.
I'm not saying that this is what should be implemented, just pointing out that this idea that there are no rules for social or exploration encounters was not always true, originally the game had many rules that governed these parts of the game, we just don't have them anymore in modern games, not even as optional rules.
As such you are left with a truly DM fiated system, what happens, when it happens, how it happens, these are all DM decisions not governed by any rules and by that measure, yeah, D&D is not a game anymore, not really. Its theatre with a central storyteller governing the main story and the players playing a theatrical role through their characters. Sure there are rules... you can make skill checks and "make decisions" but how much that actually matters, is entirely up to the DM. In modern D&D players have very little impact on the outcome of anything, its all pretty much decided by the DM.
This is however why I always question anyone who thinks modern gaming is about "ROLL-playing". That is silly, the rules of modern games barely have any impact on anything, they are so insufficient when it comes to running D&D as a game... it's a free-form theatre show with some frivolous skill checks thrown in to sell the smoke and mirror magic show, but nothing in modern D&D happens unless the DM decides it does. At best, modern gaming might boil down to a story-negotiation game where players and DM negotiate the outcome of the story, but even that really doesn't change the execution as much. Combat is the only real gamist system in modern D&D that is the exception to the rule.
Here is the kicker. This is exactly why D&D 5e is as popular as it is. Its actually this part, this idea that the game is a sort of theatre show with story's being negotiated between DM and Player... that is at the heart of why people like the game. That and fighting monsters is fun and is "The Core Game". So players know that ok... we are in a fight.. its game time...this is where character abilities, leveling up and all the decisions you made about spells, equipment, powers etc.. matter. Outside of that, its theatre. People like that and while it might not be "a game" in the truest sense, i don't think anyone actually cares. The goal for most gaming groups is to find a good DM that runs a good story and creates fun, memorable outcomes for them that feel like they were driven by player decisions and actions. Aka, a good smoke and mirror show.
RPGs are a game because the success and failure of narratively actions are determined by rules, often accompanied by some form or random element. This is typically dice, but could also be tokens drawn from a bag, cards drawn from a deck or played from a hand, blocks drawn from a tower of wooden blocks, or even engaging in rock-paper-scissors. Without these rules and game elements, it's just an exercise in narrative storytelling. An improv jam session. A round-robin story.
It's also worth remembering that not all games are sold in stores or have physical components. Tag is a game and is free and requires no props. What makes it a game is the agreed upon rules and code of conduct.
RPGs are a type of game. But they are a unique type of game as they possess both codified rules and the adoption of a role other than your own and improvised storytelling. Take away one of those elements and it ceases to be an RPG. Remove the rules and it's just improv. Remove the storytelling and it's just a board game. Remove the role and... okay, I'm not sure what that would be.
Pretty sure there are narrative-focused games that have come out of the indie scene that don't actually have the players adopt roles. Microscope might be one.
Alternately, it could be the card game Once Upon a Time, which is a game of competitively telling a fary tale, with each player trying to shape it to reach the ending they've been dealt.
(On a technical level I don't consider D&D to be a game, because it has no defined resolution. (I also don't consider Candy Land to be a game, for different reasons.) But that's the sort of definition that you have to be pretty far into the weeds for it to be useful. Colloquially, D&D is a game, and plenty of other people's definitions agree with that.)
RPGs are a type of game. But they are a unique type of game as they possess both codified rules and the adoption of a role other than your own and improvised storytelling. Take away one of those elements and it ceases to be an RPG. Remove the rules and it's just improv. Remove the storytelling and it's just a board game. Remove the role and... okay, I'm not sure what that would be.
There is some things we can learn from old-school gaming philosophies on this topic. One of the main "thesis" behind what a role-playing game is from the old guard is that they are by design free-form theatre in which the core of the rules of the game apply to the DM responsibility to be executed honestly and authentically. It's something that exists in modern gaming on some levels, but it was quite specific in old-school games like 1st edition AD&D and 1st edition B/X where the bulk of the rules of the game were targeting the DM. At least as a gaming approach, these designs have largely been sort of dropped without replacing them with anything either as rules or philosophy as the concept of "free-form" began to apply more and more to the DM.
You also had rules for things like the processes for encounters in which the DM would make checks like "reaction rolls" to determine the mood and hostility level of whatever you were encountering, you had elements like morale that would define the response to events over the course of a combat or interaction with the player characters.
OD&D and 1e definitely had this obfuscation of the rules. IIRC the 1e DMG even advocated for DMs not to let players read that book, so the rules would be mysterious. Only the DM was meant to understand the rules and see behind the screen. It was a very different philosophy that didn't really last long.
As such you are left with a truly DM fiated system, what happens, when it happens, how it happens, these are all DM decisions not governed by any rules and by that measure, yeah, D&D is not a game anymore, not really. Its theatre with a central storyteller governing the main story and the players playing a theatrical role through their characters. Sure there are rules... you can make skill checks and "make decisions" but how much that actually matters, is entirely up to the DM. In modern D&D players have very little impact on the outcome of anything, its all pretty much decided by the DM.
In my opinion, as long as the result of actions can be determined by the dice or other gamist element, it is a game. If the story is impacted and informed by the dice rolls, it's a game. An RPG game, but still a game. If you speak in-character and make decisions based on what "my character would do" during a game of Clue or Battletech those are still games. If you prologue a skirmish in Warhammer 40k with a narrative set-up—an interactive cutscene if you will—it's still a game.
Really, the story and narrative has played an increasing role in D&D, with "the story" really becoming spotlight officially as early as Dragonlance in 1984.
This is however why I always question anyone who thinks modern gaming is about "ROLL-playing". That is silly, the rules of modern games barely have any impact on anything, they are so insufficient when it comes to running D&D as a game... it's a free-form theatre show with some frivolous skill checks thrown in to sell the smoke and mirror magic show, but nothing in modern D&D happens unless the DM decides it does. At best, modern gaming might boil down to a story-negotiation game where players and DM negotiate the outcome of the story, but even that really doesn't change the execution as much. Combat is the only real gamist system in modern D&D that is the exception to the rule.
It's also worth noting that many early players stuck to the more rules lite BECMI sets, choosing more DM fiat and story over regimented rules. With more opportunity for roleplaying and social interaction. Opposed to more modern games where social encounters could entirely be handled by dice. Starting with 3e, you could just dungeon delve and never speak in-character with even negotiation being reduced to a dice roll.
Here is the kicker. This is exactly why D&D 5e is as popular as it is. Its actually this part, this idea that the game is a sort of theatre show with story's being negotiated between DM and Player... that is at the heart of why people like the game. That and fighting monsters is fun and is "The Core Game". So players know that ok... we are in a fight.. its game time...this is where character abilities, leveling up and all the decisions you made about spells, equipment, powers etc.. matter. Outside of that, its theatre. People like that and while it might not be "a game" in the truest sense, i don't think anyone actually cares. The goal for most gaming groups is to find a good DM that runs a good story and creates fun, memorable outcomes for them that feel like they were driven by player decisions and actions. Aka, a good smoke and mirror show.
I think streaming shows and stuff like Critical Role has made this a more common part of the game. Sticking in-character and having longer "scenes" of social interaction. More emphasis on backstory and goals and personal drama.
But I also don't think this is remotely new. I'm old enough to remember the heyday of Vampire the Masquerade LARPing in the '90s and early 2000s, when you were fully in-character and the theatrical was the core part of the experience. 5e is just slightly more rules lite than 3e and 4e, so that aspect of play is more encouraged. But that's also a return to a more OSR/ BECMI style of gameplay where there is more fiat and less regimented rules.
Mechanics: mechanical or functional details or procedure
Mechanical: done as if by machine : seemingly uninfluenced by the mind or emotions
Mechanics: the explicit methods of interaction, the stuff that details that a pawn can only make certain moves and what those moves are as well as the consequences, such as when a pawn reaches the back row.
Rule: a prescribed guide for conduct or action
Prescribe: to specify with authority
Rule: a guide for conduct or action as specified with authority
Narrative: having the form of a story: of or relating to the process of telling a story.
Milieu: the physical or social setting in which something occurs or develops. Nothing prevents this from referencing a fictional setting.
Thus, narrative milieu would be the physical or social setting in which a story occurs.
Game: activity engaged in for diversion or amusement . But as that would include a lot of things incomparable here, for the purposes of our discussion it is probably best here to think of a term for a defined system of interactions between people via some intermediary.
Mechanics: the method of operation for accomplishing a task.
Rules: the explication of the terms and conditions of the game, inclusive of Mechanics.
Narrative: we agree on this.
Milieu: we agree on this to an extent.
Narrative Milieu: So long as we can acknowledge that the social setting's context is not specific to the individual table, but that it includes the wider world around that table and the participants, we can agree here. This is necessary because we are not speaking about a single table, but about the larger milieu.
Game: A game is an activity engaged for educational, social, developmental, work, art, and healthcare or other purposes that has certain traits:
Goals / Objectives - which provide the purpose
Rules / Mechanics -- which provide a limiting context
Challenges / Problems - which provide the basis
Interactions / Exchanges - which engage the players
Feedback / Rewards - which encourages further play
Independent Decision Making by participants - which defines the role(s) of the players.
I removed aspects of commentary in order to reach the specific points in concern. While commentary is of value in explaining why we have a personal definition, the aspect here is to achieve something other than a personal definition. Consensus can be dependent on those explanation, but we have to first achieve parity in order to be able to effectively express ourselves in order to be able to understand what the other is speaking.
5e, as a systemic and structured game that is part of a tradition of similar games under the same brand and relying on the same core information, meets the necessary criteria -- as do other games, which may be described as freeform rpgs, as well as chess, or checkers, or football, or solitaire, or Poker, or slot machines, or tag, or hide and seek, or making money in the stock market or engaging in politics of government or interpersonal exchange.
The same applies to all prior versions of the game, as well.
In every edition of the published game, there has been some effort made to point out that, ultimately, the rules are a starting point, a baseline. They can be added to or subtracted from, altered or modified, used or ignored, as is seen fit by the Players, so long as they arrive at a mutually satisfactory set. This has been expressed variously in forms such as "rule of cool", "make it your own", "DM fat", and assorted others, as well as explicit statements.
As with any game, there is a certain degree of social expectation that if one moves from one "table" to another, there will be certain commonalities among the same game. it is socially expected, for example, that if you can play a Wizard at this table, you should be able to play one at the next table. Circumstances where that is not possible are and remain edge cases, outliers that require a different approach, even though they may otherwise be the same game, on the part of the player.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
In every edition of the published game, there has been some effort made to point out that, ultimately, the rules are a starting point, a baseline. They can be added to or subtracted from, altered or modified, used or ignored, as is seen fit by the Players, so long as they arrive at a mutually satisfactory set. This has been expressed variously in forms such as "rule of cool", "make it your own", "DM fat", and assorted others, as well as explicit statements.
I'm not sure all the D&D systems over the years have had good baseline mechanics. I mean, what does 1e AD&D RAW look like? Has anyone ever actually managed to run AD&D 1e this way? Is it even possible? 2e was closer, 3e I think wasn't clear enough, almost a fall back to 1e AD&D days. 4e was super clear, but really only covered combat exclusively.
Like when you really think about it. 1e B/X and 5e are really the only two systems I can think of that actually have a baseline with full coverage. Like, I could run 5e with a DMG, MM and Players Handbook with 0 prep and using dice mechanics exclusively create an adventure and run. You could quite literally run the entire game using systems and dice checks with ZERO role-playing if you wanted to. It was the same with B/X. To me that is the mark of a good baseline.
Not saying anyone did or should run the game that way, but this is a good measure of a solid system baseline, where you always have a dice option for something you don't want to play out. Don't feel like creating a dungeon? No problem, roll for it. Don't want to do a social interaction, no problem.. roll for it.
Well, I was avoiding insertion of too much opinion in my response, which is why I didn't talk about what makes a "good" baseline or a "bad" baseline -- the rules are simply a baseline.
AD&D had freaking rules for what seemed at the time like everything. Of course, at the time, we didn't have anything to compare it to. But when Wizards talks about their "three pillars", I have to say that none of their editions has really had a handle on all those three elements like both 1e/2e and, especially BECMI had on all three.
And yes, I do know someone who has run AD&D completely "RAW", without homebrew: me. Imagine my shock when I played at GenCon with Gary and even he didn't use all the rules.
My personal gripe with the Wizards era is that it has shifted from the DM focused TSR era to the layer focused one at present, and I am seeing some course correcting there.
Funny thing, though: during the 25 years that we stuck to 2e, out of unreasonable hate for 3.x and a "cool but meh" feeling about 4e, wee also realized we had more than three of those pillars, because we had played together so much and for so long that stuff became dry to us, so we added stuff to do.
As a result, when 5e came out, we jumped because we saw how it could work for all that other stuff, with some fairly simple conversions and additions.
Our pillars are: Role Play, Character Growth, Exploration, Discovery, and Combat. Hell, we hadn't heard terms like "West Marches, Sandbox, Player-Driven" and such until after we made the switch to 5e -- and were shocked because we already were doing all those things, and had been doing them since the earliest days.
But the thing that is key for us is the Character Growth thing -- we actually have little systems to give meaning to stuff like "you learn a new skill" and we do rolls and have interactions and all that. Downtime for us is when the PCs are sleeping, basically. Not a simulation, but something to mark the point and make these "special abilities" of the new 5e style seem like they have a point and a purpose and to make us understand their value.
I've ben doing some tweaking with the other DMs as we prep for the new DMG, and one of the things that hit us was that in 2014 5e, the way the game is designed is to enable a PC to go from 1st to 20th level in slightly over a month of in-game time, if the DM uses the budget system for an Adventuring Day.
For us, that's supposed to be a lot longer (and, because we do that growth stuff, it usually is). We could do that in 1e/2e, but that's because there were rules for stuff like that.
We snagged the strongholds, err, bastions, set up and quickly hammered out our own system for it because we missed that from the 1e days (not 2e, which cut that out). Even though 5e already had rules for that kind of thing, it wasn't really developed -- and that was a big thing about 5e that we do like: it has the "stubs" for things, and all we have to do it bolt on our own stuff.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Like when you really think about it. 1e B/X and 5e are really the only two systems I can think of that actually have a baseline with full coverage. Like, I could run 5e with a DMG, MM and Players Handbook with 0 prep and using dice mechanics exclusively create an adventure and run. You could quite literally run the entire game using systems and dice checks with ZERO role-playing if you wanted to. It was the same with B/X. To me that is the mark of a good baseline.
Not saying anyone did or should run the game that way, but this is a good measure of a solid system baseline, where you always have a dice option for something you don't want to play out. Don't feel like creating a dungeon? No problem, roll for it. Don't want to do a social interaction, no problem.. roll for it.
Question, what is your conception of the opposite of that? What would you call that opposite?
Like when you really think about it. 1e B/X and 5e are really the only two systems I can think of that actually have a baseline with full coverage. Like, I could run 5e with a DMG, MM and Players Handbook with 0 prep and using dice mechanics exclusively create an adventure and run. You could quite literally run the entire game using systems and dice checks with ZERO role-playing if you wanted to. It was the same with B/X. To me that is the mark of a good baseline.
Not saying anyone did or should run the game that way, but this is a good measure of a solid system baseline, where you always have a dice option for something you don't want to play out. Don't feel like creating a dungeon? No problem, roll for it. Don't want to do a social interaction, no problem.. roll for it.
Question, what is your conception of the opposite of that? What would you call that opposite?
The opposite would be free-form or near free-form. For example, there are games where there is just a simple mechanic in place to figure out if anything (anything being a generic concept applicable to everything) is true or false. Dungeon World I think would be an example.
Narrative Milieu: So long as we can acknowledge that the social setting's context is not specific to the individual table, but that it includes the wider world around that table and the participants, we can agree here. This is necessary because we are not speaking about a single table, but about the larger milieu.
Okay, so we do not agree on narrative milieu.
In an RPG session, there are two milieus. There is the one you just described, with the players here on Earth, living breathing people. Then there is the milieu of the fiction, where the characters see themselves existing, not the players, the characters. Places like Fearun or Eberron are not real, they are not part of the real world milieu (though obviously they are referenced), they contain independent milieus of their own.
Perhaps we can use the term Fictional Milieu.
Fictional: : of, relating to, characterized by, or occurring in fiction: invented by the imagination
There is then an interaction between the fictional milieu and the players. Largely the point of the game is in one way or another about the interaction between the players and the fictional milieu. There are a number of ways one can look at, understand, or conceptualize that interaction.
So lets have a hypotheitical situation. To start, we have several players and a GM playing freeform RPG, no mechanics, no rules (about the activity of playing the RPG I mean, the otherwise normal behavior rules of decent and cultural human interaction don't count here). The GM builds the fictional milieu, tells the players what their characters perceive and know about the fictional milieu, and the players in turn tell the GM what their characters do in the fictional milieu, to which the GM responds with how the fictional milieu and those who inhabit it respond to the player's characters. Consider for a moment, how players might conceptualize this activity, in particular, how do they decide what to do, and what they can possibly do. (The more I see of your descriptions about your table, the less I think you can use your table as a generally representative example of "most players.")
I contend that the inclusion of mechanics and rules often leads to changes or differences in the conceptualization of the activity and in particular, changes the way players make decisions about what their characters do, what they look at, what considerations they take into account. More than that, it also changes the expectations players have about how the fictional milieu responds and with it the desires of the players.
In fact, it seems to perhaps lead to a third milieu, or something similar to a milieu, that of the mechanics and rules related to this interaction between the players and the fictional milieu.
From all I have seen, this change heavily results in players, especially those making videos and commenting on such videos, but also those I've watched play or have played with, where they make the fictional milieu fit the mold of the mechanics, instead of making the mechanics fit the mold of the fictional milieu.
For example, instead of making mechanics that reflect the fictional milieu and accepting that any "simple enough to be both enjoyably and usefully used" mechanic will inevitably fail to perfectly represent the fictional milieu and thus need correction sometimes, they instead make the mechanics like a machine and built to fit parameters primarily outside the fictional milieu, such as making mechanics "balanced" for some definition of balanced, and then they shape the fictional milieu to fit the mechanics. Do you see the dichotomy here of how the mechanics relate to the fictional world? Do you see how the choice of making all classes get a subclass at level 3 is a decision that has nothing to do with representing the fictional milieu?
Narrative Milieu: So long as we can acknowledge that the social setting's context is not specific to the individual table, but that it includes the wider world around that table and the participants, we can agree here. This is necessary because we are not speaking about a single table, but about the larger milieu.
Okay, so we do not agree on narrative milieu.
In an RPG session, there are two milieus. There is the one you just described, with the players here on Earth, living breathing people. Then there is the milieu of the fiction, where the characters see themselves existing, not the players, the characters. Places like Fearun or Eberron are not real, they are not part of the real world milieu (though obviously they are referenced), they contain independent milieus of their own.
Perhaps we can use the term Fictional Milieu.
Fictional: : of, relating to, characterized by, or occurring in fiction: invented by the imagination
There is then an interaction between the fictional milieu and the players. Largely the point of the game is in one way or another about the interaction between the players and the fictional milieu. There are a number of ways one can look at, understand, or conceptualize that interaction.
So lets have a hypotheitical situation. To start, we have several players and a GM playing freeform RPG, no mechanics, no rules (about the activity of playing the RPG I mean, the otherwise normal behavior rules of decent and cultural human interaction don't count here). The GM builds the fictional milieu, tells the players what their characters perceive and know about the fictional milieu, and the players in turn tell the GM what their characters do in the fictional milieu, to which the GM responds with how the fictional milieu and those who inhabit it respond to the player's characters. Consider for a moment, how players might conceptualize this activity, in particular, how do they decide what to do, and what they can possibly do. (The more I see of your descriptions about your table, the less I think you can use your table as a generally representative example of "most players.")
I contend that the inclusion of mechanics and rules often leads to changes or differences in the conceptualization of the activity and in particular, changes the way players make decisions about what their characters do, what they look at, what considerations they take into account. More than that, it also changes the expectations players have about how the fictional milieu responds and with it the desires of the players.
In fact, it seems to perhaps lead to a third milieu, or something similar to a milieu, that of the mechanics and rules related to this interaction between the players and the fictional milieu.
From all I have seen, this change heavily results in players, especially those making videos and commenting on such videos, but also those I've watched play or have played with, where they make the fictional milieu fit the mold of the mechanics, instead of making the mechanics fit the mold of the fictional milieu.
For example, instead of making mechanics that reflect the fictional milieu and accepting that any "simple enough to be both enjoyably and usefully used" mechanic will inevitably fail to perfectly represent the fictional milieu and thus need correction sometimes, they instead make the mechanics like a machine and built to fit parameters primarily outside the fictional milieu, such as making mechanics "balanced" for some definition of balanced, and then they shape the fictional milieu to fit the mechanics. Do you see the dichotomy here of how the mechanics relate to the fictional world? Do you see how the choice of making all classes get a subclass at level 3 is a decision that has nothing to do with representing the fictional milieu?
Point of Order in relation to the "spoiler" marked sections: We have precisely two things we have agreed one thus far: Narrative and Milieu. We cannot proceed without acknowledged agreement on "Game", "Mechanics", and "Rules" as well as the part we are still in contention on relating to the concept of Narrative Milieu. With a small exception covered in a moment, until we reach agreement on all of those elements, good faith discussion involving them is not possible.
Narrative Milieu:
In this discussion and an RPG being played, there two Milieus:
The Social Milieu, which includes the players and the world they live in
The Game Milieu, which includes the setting of the game and the rules of the game (which include the mechanics).
They cannot be separated in practice -- the game rules, the game setting, and the place of the setting are all dependent on the larger world around them and in which it takes place. One can abstract the concept of "just the world" or "just the rules" or "just the Players" or whatever, but the effects of the real world around the players will always inform and shape the nature of the imagination employed, in particular the language, cultural norms, and breadth of knowledge of the collective individuals drawn fro their personal experiences and their larger shared world.
The rules of a game, themselves, are inherently shaped by that same force. That force is called Structure, in the sciences, and is omnipresent in all things. The rules of the game, themselves, are a form of Structure, and commonly reflective of it. This is why things like "racial bonuses" can be seen for their inclusion of racism -- the fact that it is an imaginative space is irrelevant since the people playing the game are not, and we know that racism even in that format has a specific, measurable degree of harm in the physical sense -- real world harm from imagination.
Thus, even the Game Milieu can have real, measurable effects in the Social milieu, and this is an operation that function both ways (for that is how did the racism got into the game in the first place -- from the real world.)
Hence the pointed bit about inclusion of the larger world in discussion of the Social Milieu -- none of this happens in a social vacuum. To do so is to invite logical fallacy, and to provide cover and service to harm done to people since the game's inception, excusing it. Which is in part why it is a non-negotiable aspect for me when discussing the Social aspects of the game; I will not countenance such.
That said, when you say "Largely the point of the game is in one way or another about the interaction between the players and the fictional milieu.", I do not disagree. It is the focus of the moment of play and interaction, but it is still not devoid of the larger actual reality and its impact.
So, while I can speak to the particulars of the setting and the imaginary environment therein, it is not a space that is unaffected or indeterminate in relation to the world and reality in which that imagining is ongoing. It would be dishonest for me to not acknowledge that, but I can settle for this:
Fictional Milieu: the place and space comprising the fictional world, characters, and situations that are present as part of the Game Milieu, in relation to the Social Milieu.
Hopefully that will work for you.
Exception noted above
When you say "More than that, it also changes the expectations players have about how the fictional milieu responds and with it the desires of the players." you do so within the context of a comment about Rules, Mechanics, and Game, and we have not agreed on this terminology and so cannot speak to that part. THis is even more critical when you note that my definition of a game requires there to be rules -- and it is notable that my definition of game is derived from 300 years of scientific study on games, and what comprises a game, specifically. Format may be different, but it is summation of that scientific basis as it stands today.
Spoilers
As described, without acknowledgement of and agreement on terminology, we cannot fully understand each other, and so arguments based on that, such as the immediate preceding statements around the exception, cannot be addressed in good faith at this time. The hypothetical would, for example, need to be reframed in order to be answered, because it is dependent on the understanding of those three concepts still in contention.
Your entire closing paragraph would have no basis to be asked if we used my definition of a game or rules or mechanics, for example -- which is why I said we had to find some other place to speak from. Good faith requires that we be willing to change our minds, and if we cannot understand the other well enough to give the points raised the due consideration, we would fail to achieve that, even if we otherwise acted in good faith simply because we never understood the other well enough to give the position good, honest consideration.
This is why I spoilered the remaining portions -- they would all be something we can come back to down the road, once we can think about things in a more equitable space.
Once we can hammer out agreement on the remaining terms, we can move into the parts you described, though you'll have to respond after re-evaluation in light of the new terminology.
Thus far, I can think of two non-negotiables:
Social Milieu being inclusive of the larger reality (due to real world harm)
A game must have rules -- without rules, it is not a game (due to science-based fact).
However, rules do not have to be concrete, or even written down. They merely have to be understood by all the participants.
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First, recognition of physical traits is not and never will be discriminatory except for when people are using it as a basis for their social treatment of others. Hating on orcs because of their strength is discrimination, but recognizing and acknowledging that orcs are physically stronger than others is not discriminatory because it is not social treatment.
Second, while such issues are terrible to commit in the real world, the best stories are built on conflict, and things such as discrimination are great sources for conflict. Can't have good guys defeating bad guys when there are no bad guys. Not everyone will be comfortable dealing with any particular issue, but when moral issues become complete taboo to even discuss much less allow in our stories, art, and games, that is a marker for the breaking of society as it inevitably leads only to war, suffering, and death. As a sociologist and psychologist, you know this, you know what such things do to societies. I know you know because I myself have studied those fields of science. The right of free speech is the first amendment for a very good reason.
Now that we established a few moral boundaries of our discussion, we need to establish the ideas of what can or can not be discussed as separate things. An engine is fundamental to a car, yet we can still discuss it as a separate thing from the car it is a part of. A car can't go without it's motor, but the motor is still distinct.
"The Game Milieu, which includes the setting of the game and the rules of the game (which include the mechanics)."
This is a problem. The central point of everything I am trying to point out, has it's source in the distinction between "the setting of the game" and "the rules of the game (which include the mechanics)." If you can not separate those two in your mind, that would literally prove my core point better than anything I could ever say.
But I honestly would find it weird if you were unable to comprehend such a distinction when simply writing it out that way requires recognizing that a distinction is there.
Additionally, the connection to the Social Milieu as you put it, is irrelevant to the core principles of what I want to convey. I'm not saying these things do not have influence. I'm just saying that not everything being brought up is relevant to the concepts I want to convey and discuss. So we can leave that out of further discussion.
"A game must have rules -- without rules, it is not a game (due to science-based fact)."
Aye, but how those rules relate to the rest of the game, whatever the definitions you want to give those terms, can only only be discussed when we can speak of them as separate parts.
So,
Mechanics: the method of operation for accomplishing a task.
Rules: the explication of the terms and conditions of the game, inclusive of Mechanics.
See, mechanics and rules are distinctly separate, one may be part of the other, yet it remains distinct.
A player of an RPG has a character, and will at times be making choices about what that character does. There are a variety of methods for making that decision, and a number of things that can be considered or dismissed, which will be different for different players. However, a set of infinite possibilities can still be broken down into groups. One group of the infinite possibilities for how one chooses actions for their character can be defined by taking the mechanics of a game into massively stronger consideration than other aspects such as the fictional world, characters, and situations. Likewise, another group might be defined by dismissing the mechanics from that consideration and using the mechanics only after the decision has been made for what the character will do.
Like when you really think about it. 1e B/X and 5e are really the only two systems I can think of that actually have a baseline with full coverage. Like, I could run 5e with a DMG, MM and Players Handbook with 0 prep and using dice mechanics exclusively create an adventure and run. You could quite literally run the entire game using systems and dice checks with ZERO role-playing if you wanted to. It was the same with B/X. To me that is the mark of a good baseline.
Not saying anyone did or should run the game that way, but this is a good measure of a solid system baseline, where you always have a dice option for something you don't want to play out. Don't feel like creating a dungeon? No problem, roll for it. Don't want to do a social interaction, no problem.. roll for it.
Question, what is your conception of the opposite of that? What would you call that opposite?
The opposite would be free-form or near free-form. For example, there are games where there is just a simple mechanic in place to figure out if anything (anything being a generic concept applicable to everything) is true or false. Dungeon World I think would be an example.
Aye, now consider the notion of playing the game like it is a freeform game, but use mechanical terminology like that found in other games as a shorthand, and have various things things written down to make communication clearer an easier.
For example, how strong is "very strong?" You could have a discussion over whether that is like the strongest man at the local gym kind of very strong, or if it means being like the incredible hulk kind of very strong. Or you can have a chart with various numbered rows describing different levels of strength and simply using the number for the appropriate row to very quickly establish a common understanding of just how strong you mean.
we need to establish the ideas of what can or can not be discussed as separate things. An engine is fundamental to a car, yet we can still discuss it as a separate thing from the car it is a part of. A car can't go without it's motor, but the motor is still distinct. "The Game Milieu, which includes the setting of the game and the rules of the game (which include the mechanics)." This is a problem. The central point of everything I am trying to point out, has it's source in the distinction between "the setting of the game" and "the rules of the game (which include the mechanics)." If you can not separate those two in your mind, that would literally prove my core point better than anything I could ever say. But I honestly would find it weird if you were unable to comprehend such a distinction when simply writing it out that way requires recognizing that a distinction is there.
Bolded part is correct. We can speak to the parts thereof, but we cannot lose sight that it is still a part of a larger whole -- there is no abstraction that will happen..
Additionally, the connection to the Social Milieu as you put it, is irrelevant to the core principles of what I want to convey. I'm not saying these things do not have influence. I'm just saying that not everything being brought up is relevant to the concepts I want to convey and discuss. So we can leave that out of further discussion.
it is only irrelevant as long as the core principles, as you understand them, are not in conflict with it. We, however, have not established that yet, We are only seeking agreement on terminology.
"A game must have rules -- without rules, it is not a game (due to science-based fact)." Aye, but how those rules relate to the rest of the game, whatever the definitions you want to give those terms, can only only be discussed when we can speak of them as separate parts. So, Mechanics: the method of operation for accomplishing a task.
Rules: the explication of the terms and conditions of the game, inclusive of Mechanics.
See, mechanics and rules are distinctly separate, one may be part of the other, yet it remains distinct.
It means that they are still able to be referenced and discussed individually while being part of a larger whole, like we can speak of rock and still speak of the constituent elements and atoms that make up that rock. None of which changes the fact that it is still a rock.
Much of this seems to stem from the leap to conclusion you made about there being a problem due to something you opted to read into what I wrote, even though you already knew I didn't write any of what you leapt towards (hence the bolded part).
A player of an RPG has a character, and will at times be making choices about what that character does. There are a variety of methods for making that decision, and a number of things that can be considered or dismissed, which will be different for different players. However, a set of infinite possibilities can still be broken down into groups.
One group of the infinite possibilities for how one chooses actions for their character can be defined by taking the mechanics of a game into massively stronger consideration than other aspects such as the fictional world, characters, and situations.
Likewise, another group might be defined by dismissing the mechanics from that consideration and using the mechanics only after the decision has been made for what the character will do.
This is all true, but we still haven't had acknowledgement and agreement on the terms in use.
From this, it appears that you are agreeing to use my definitions for Rules and Mechanics in further posts. However, that is only an appearance and not an acknowledgment or agreement.
If you do agree to use that terminology -- by which you would need to explicitly state so -- then that means we have the following terms in agreement:
Mechanics: the method of operation for accomplishing a task.
Rules: the explication of the terms and conditions of the game, inclusive of Mechanics.
Narrative: having the form of a story: of or relating to the process of telling a story.
Milieu: the physical or social setting in which something occurs or develops. Nothing prevents this from referencing a fictional setting.
That, however, still means we need to agree on the terminology for: Narrative Milieu and Game. And if you do not agree to the terms for rules and mechanics above, then we still need to finish with them.
So those remain in contention to my knowledge as of this moment. I have proffered two of my own for that so far:
Game: A game is an activity engaged for educational, social, developmental, work, art, and healthcare or other purposes that has certain traits:
Goals / Objectives - which provide the purpose
Rules / Mechanics -- which provide a limiting context
Challenges / Problems - which provide the basis
Interactions / Exchanges - which engage the players
Feedback / Rewards - which encourages further play
Independent Decision Making by participants - which defines the role(s) of the players.
Narrative Milieu:
The Social Milieu: which includes the players and the world they live in.
Fictional Milieu: the place and space comprising the fictional world, characters, and situations that are present, in relation to the Social Milieu.
The Game Milieu: whichis the combination of the Social and Fictional Milieus, in relation to each other.
If these are all acceptable to you then we can move forward and begin to discuss the things that you have mentioned previously once more.
As for the rest:
First,
I am not here to re-litigate a fact about the game. If the fact that the use of racial modifiers is racist bothers you, that is a you problem, not an I problem.
Second, ...>snip<...Can't have good guys defeating bad guys when there are no bad guys.
Factually, this is incorrect.
The right of free speech is the first amendment for a very good reason.
Given this right is the Right of Freedom of Expression, and is a limitation placed on governments, I have to note this is irrelevant. The government is not involved in this. Ergo, the right of freedom of expression is not germane to any of the points raised.
And no, you do not have a right to be free of censorship by anyone else -- only the government.
Now that we established a few moral boundaries of our discussion,
We have notdone this. Not even here.
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It seems like the sort of thing one could find in the indie/narrative-focused RPG scene, though they tend toward simpler mechanics.
It's definitely a thing one could do in FATE -- the combat mechanics are explicitly generalizable to any domain of conflict, so you can have a psychic or social damage track in addition to (or instead of) the physical. Persuasion would be just another one there, though it'd be an odd game where it's standard. The other examples would be a bit more of a lift there, because there's no embodied opposition.
(I'm sure there are other games that'd fit the bill, but I'm only loosely aware of that scene.)
1 Look it should be very clear by not that I am not good at explaining things. I am not being inconsistent, I am bringing up different facets of the same issue, looking at it from multiple perspectives. And you taking my words to mean not quite matching what I'm saying does not help. I never said that 5e leaves to much to the DM. Nor have I claimed that problems come from having mechanics.
What I said is that a lack of mechanics for resolving something is not greater freedom than when mechanics exist but are merely guidelines and aids instead of being explicit "this is how must do it." And I mentioned that because, just like with 4e, people claim the lack of mechanics is somehow greater freedom. DM contrived mechanical terms Well, how do you expect guidelines, play aids, and mechanical but mere suggestions to be used? No matter your answer the result can easily be called DM contrived mechanics. You claim that these DM contrived mechanics lead to issues, while I'm saying they don't have to, but it seems like people naturally have a limited outlook on the mechanics and as a result can only see how to use mechanics in a way that does.
2
There is a ton of stuff that 3.x explicitly states that no one knows about. Just because something is explicitly part of the game, doesn't mean anyone does it. Now granted there is always going to be a minority, but we aren't really discussing that.
As for non-combat encounters, I stopped encountering those years ago. Heck, I stopped seeing encounters end without enemies fighting to the death well over a decade ago. Enemies these days are almost exclusively run like the AI in videogames, where enemies always fight to the death, eve when they are supposed to be bandits simply looking for an easy payday by stealing from random travelers. Why is these bandits don't run away the moment they realize they are in over their heads? Because that is not how anybody at the table is thinking about them. The same is true for non-combat encounters. Sure they are supposed to exist, but I haven't seen them. I haven't seen the mindset that would allow them, except perhaps one or two people in this very thread, but never in a game I played or watched in many years.
I'd like to also mention, that my comment was not simply that encounters could be noncombat, but that you get encounters with evil humanoids like orcs, goblins, or even just simple bandits, and it not be a combat encounter. Most players these days just go "oh it's a bandit, kill it." As though what it is makes it automatically an enemy and that somehow being an enemy is automatic justification for wholesale slaughter. You've heard the term murderhobo. Where do you think it comes from?
3
Firstly, I said I played the 5e playtest and haven't gone back. But I have seen players play. The issue I've been discussing is not specific to 5e. I even said that I could play 5e in my style, but I dumped it after the playtest because the mechanics were more of a problem than a help. Attaching my complaints exclusively to 5e is a mistake. 5e is kind of a focus here because it is the big popular one, but it is not the issue.
Similarly, 3.5 is not the solution. Heck, I've mentioned multiple times that players haven't been playing 3.5 in the manner I'm discussing. So in both cases, 5e and 3.5 are serving as examples, but are not themselves important.
3.b much of my understanding of the situation is not about the specific mechanics, it is about the mindset. How do I know the mindset? I watch a lot of gaming content. Not very much of it is 3.5 these. I listen to videos while I work, so I go through hours of media every day. A huge portion of which is gaming related, everything from Mr Rhexx lore videos to Grungeon Master to Ginny Di.
And speaking of Ginny Di, there is an excellent example of the mindset. Consider her discussion of the new DMG 2024. Balancing encounters. She discusses how the new DMG has advice on how to balance encounters and make sure they aren't too difficult nor too easy. This concept is antithetical to certain ways of playing, including the one I promote. It is a concept built entirely on this mechanical view of playing the game. It leaves zero room for the old ways of encounters coming in a broad varieties of difficulty ranging from very easy to very difficult to "you should run away before you end up TPK." 3.5 had the latter. It even gave advice on how often you should have the various difficulties if you needed some advice on that, and guess what, the variety of difficulties actually serves a purpose, it isn't just about "realism." Various difficulties allows players to see the change in their character's power, the goblinsthey had trouble with early on become very easy to deal with later, and this makes the goblins a meterstick, as when players go from being terrified of too many goblins to wishing more were around to wet their blade, that gives a much truer sense of power growth than a few numbers on a sheet. And 5e just flat out doesn't do that.
Also, lets look at her video on warlocks. The entire concept of a warlock is the pact with a patron. That should be a major element of one's background. But in 2024, choice of patron is changed to be third level. Why? For purely mechanical reasons, which are held so central, that they completely override the very obvious narrative problems with the idea. Sure, it can work to have a player not know what kind of patron they have, but why limit the game to only warlock stories that don't know their patron? And even if a player doesn't know their patron, then the discovery of knowledge about their patron should in that instance be a character arc of discovery with hints and clues, not just suddenly one day the player choosing it.
These things tell me a lot about the mentality involved, even without my deep knowledge of 5e's mechanics.
4, see above. Seriously, I really question how much thought you really put into that sentence. I suck at communicating, especially through writing. Downside of autism I guess.
5. Here is where your lack of understanding the spectrum of playstyles and the various editions of dnd really shows. The 3.x DMGs literally say to have a wide variety of encounter difficulties, and even gives some guidance and the spread, yet when the earliest official modules came out following those very official guidelines, the community pushed back against the "lack of balance" in the encounter designs. This is literally the community lacking understanding of the system. and it's expectations. Have you read a 3e era DMG cover to cover? What about 2e? I have read the 3.5 in total, and much of the 3.0 when my 3.5 is unavailable, and I've listened to a cover to cover reading of the 2e DMG, and have been making my way through it myself when I get the chance.
I also have studied the issue of gamestyles, because I am literally trying to be the first professional grade scholar of RPGs (in the same way professionals study music and know a whole lot more than common listeners of music). I'm certainly not there yet, obviously, but I'm also not some idiot that claims everything wrong just because it match my desires and preferences.
My studies in psychology also have hammered home the fact that people in general have an extremely limited understanding of themselves, despite a very common belief that one is intimately familiar with themself.
So you might want to be careful about making such broad accusations of not understanding any version of DnD.
Further, I don't do the rule of cool and play loose with the mechanics. Firstly, I am very about about the action needing to make sense within the realm of the narrative milieu, jumping a 60' gap certainly sounds cool, but it is also completely implausible, regardless of mechanics. Second, I don't play loose with the rules, as that implies the idea that one is supposed to be following the rules. My description of 3.5 has always that the mechanics do not exist to be followed as some sort of "how to play" law, but rather that they are a language, and I certainly use the mechanics as a language, without much playing loose with them as a language, and that just looks very different from playing the mechanics.
6
An absolutely correct statement, of course, finding a table to play with can be a problem for those not on board with the 5e/pf2 playstyle.
I'm going to step in here and counter this.
The difference between a charismatic person person and a not-charismatic person is in delivery and allure. Having an uncharismatic player play a charismatic character is rather easy for a gm to arbitrate even without dice at all. They simply consider the argument or concepts presented by the player and consider how receptive the listener would be to it if it had been presented better. Boom, done. But nowadays, people just kind of assume that without mechanics players would need to be charismatic in order to roleplay a charismatic character and that is entirely false. Further, the point of a social skill check is almost always because you are trying to get something from the character, and that means arguments need strategy as well as delivery, and the strategy of such conversations can still be considered even under the idea that a character has the talent to present themselves better.
This statement is not borne out by the evidence.
That is, while some players may do that, it is not all and it is not a majority, and it is not an effective generalization.
This is a playstyle difference, not something that is "the point", merely one person's idea of how to do that.
That approach is not better or worse than any other approach, and it is not more correct or less correct than any other.
A point of a social skill check may be:
A social skill check may not
Since these conditions can occupy a broad range of possibilities, keep in mind that the outcome of a check can vary, as well (with success, partial success, or failure).
It is entirely possible for someone to "roll-play" all social encounters. some social encounters, or not to "roll-play" them at all.
This is no different from those who want to role-play all social encounters, some social encounters, or not role-play at all.
Neither approach is better" or "worse', and neither approach is "good" or "bad". Neither approach is determined by the rules, mechanics, or even the intent or design of the rules or mechanics. They are entirely factors of the players themselves deciding how to utilize the tools the rulebooks give them.
Pointedly, the intent of the design is to enable both -- and that goes back to 0e. In every edition.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I don't particularly care about terminology beyond reaching common understanding. One thing I do know however, is that most people don't use terms properly, and I have had to learn multiple definitions for a great many things precisely because how most people understand a particular word can be very different from what the dictionary has to say. For the most part, I've given up looking at dictionaries because it is so rare to talk to someone that has actually read one.
So, now I think it is time to find some common terms we can use, though as I'm sure you must be aware, the way people conceptualize things can be very different from other people. I find it difficult to believe that most people would think of their broom as a law of the universe, regardless of what is technically correct.
So mechanics, rules, and games.
We must consider a field or space of interaction between people. When playing chess, there are the interactions that are considered part of the actual interaction we call playing chess, such as moving a pawn, then there are the interactions outside of that, such as the small talk and conversation and gestures that are not part of chess. We may consider the "game" of chess as being a space of interaction within another somewhat larger space that encompasses common interactions that surround chess but are not explicitly part of chess.
Mechanics: mechanical or functional details or procedure
Mechanical: done as if by machine : seemingly uninfluenced by the mind or emotions
Mechanics here are the explicit methods of interaction, the stuff that details that a pawn can only make certain moves and what those moves are as well as the consequences, such as when a pawn reaches the back row. Now if that is a bad term for it, then I really don't know what else to call it. That is what most people tend to understand of mechanics, but if you have a better definition, then by all means, share.
Rule: a prescribed guide for conduct or action
Prescribe: to specify with authority
So rule can be this: a guide for conduct or action as specified with authority
Rules, as a word is commonly interchangeable with mechanics for most people I've heard speaking about RPGs, but even then it does have certain connotations in my experience, such as the notion that rules are to be followed. This notion of "rules" existing to be followed is why I was making a distinction, because I do not feel that the explicit writings of 3.x are to be explicitly followed, and I don't just mean whether homebrew is allowed. We can probably get by without finding some common term for this.
Game: activity engaged in for diversion or amusement . But as that would include a lot of things incomparable here, for the purposes of our discussion it is probably best here to think of a term for a defined system of interactions between people via some intermediary. Chess for example is a system of well defined actions that can be taken and how those choice of actions progresses and what consequences there are.
What I see as a difference between RPGs and any other "game" I've encountered, such as card games, boardgames, wargames, etc, is that in RPGs, or at least in some playstyles of RPGs, is the open ended nature that is straight up contradictory to how the other "games" work. Sure, you can play a RPG like you would a board or card game, but you can also play in ways for which card and board games simply have no comparable options.
In chess, you can not take any actions not explicitly defined as valid. Now in chess, we don't define every gamestate and the valid following gamestates, but we do define several functions, or moves if you will, that we can use construct valid gamestates and the valid gamestates to progress to. In a RPG however, you have two categories of playstyles that differ in this regard. The first simply allows implied actions as valid. There is no explicitly defined action for how to turn over a table make it suitable for cover, but there is the implication that a character should be able to do so. This allowance of implied actions being valid means that it is a non-computable problem to try and define the gamestate and following gamestates.
The second is that the explicit definitions listed are not defining valid actions, but are a common set of descriptors, a language, to communicate about the space in which the interactions are taking place where any action is only implied as allowed or not and implied based not a set of explicit writings about allowable actions, but instead what is allowed is implied by a common understanding of a fictional world.
In chess or similar, there is a written set of rules that one looks at for a listing of available actions. In a RPG, the players can also look at a fictional milieu for possible actions and not rely on only explicitly written actions, and in some playstyles, players only look at the fictional milieu for valid actions.
This is why I question whether RPGs should be called games, as they do not have to share the trait that any other "game" has where every gamestate can be computed as valid or invalid according to well defined methods. Now I grant that you have game theory, a scientific field of study in which decisionmaking is studied. Perhaps we can find a better definition there, not for the term"game" but perhaps a term that better fits what most people would consider a game to be, those things sold in stores and online as "games" such as chess and poker, which are a distinctly identifiable category that is a subset of what the scientists studying game theory would call a game.
Narrative: having the form of a story: of or relating to the process of telling a story.
Milieu :the physical or social setting in which something occurs or develops. Nothing prevents this from referencing a fictional setting.
Thus narrative milieu would be the physical or social setting in which a story occurs.
I have no idea if any of this is making sense, but I am absolutely willing to work with you in coming up with a common set of terms and definitions. In fact I look forward to it. I am tired right now though, so I'll have to come back to this later. I'm tired and this not my best post, but I hope it gets us moving in the right direction.
The problems with the arguments in this thread are really a textbook example on sample bias.
You give an example of a charismatic and non-charismatic person and then postulate that "nowadays, people just kind of assume that without mechanics players would need to be charismatic in order to roleplay a charismatic character." Using that as part of an example of how views of social interaction has changed with the newest edition.
But that doesn't match what other people have seen. Or the fact that the mechanics for Diplomacy/ Persuasion haven't significantly changed in the last 20 years.
I've been playing for three decades, during which time I participated in multiple organized play programs and attended several local and international gaming conventions plus local game days. I have conservatively sat down at a table with well over 175 different gamers. Possibly as many as 250 fellow nerds.
I can pretty comfortably say that I've seen many instances of people playing variations on 3.X, who have a low Cha character but are roleplaying like they were a Shakespearean protagonist. And almost as many people who run a bard and say "I convince the orcs not to attack us. I rolled a 27." I've seen no significant change in this between 3e and 5e.
(4e was different as those kinds of tasks would be a Skill Challenge and were layered behind more explicit mechanics.)
Once again, I would strongly reccomend you actually spend some time with people who play 5e. Find a local D&D club and sit in on some games. Go in with an open mind and play the game.
The 2014 Basic Rules and 2024 Basic Rules are free, so there's no cost involved.
As you probably know, the game aspect of RPGs predates the role-playing aspect. Since the first sessions began as an asymetrical wargame with most players controlling a single character rather than a team or unit. It was only later that someone added role-playing.
RPGs are a game because the success and failure of narratively actions are determined by rules, often accompanied by some form or random element. This is typically dice, but could also be tokens drawn from a bag, cards drawn from a deck or played from a hand, blocks drawn from a tower of wooden blocks, or even engaging in rock-paper-scissors.
Without these rules and game elements, it's just an exercise in narrative storytelling. An improv jam session. A round-robin story.
It's also worth remembering that not all games are sold in stores or have physical components. Tag is a game and is free and requires no props. What makes it a game is the agreed upon rules and code of conduct.
RPGs are a type of game. But they are a unique type of game as they possess both codified rules and the adoption of a role other than your own and improvised storytelling. Take away one of those elements and it ceases to be an RPG. Remove the rules and it's just improv. Remove the storytelling and it's just a board game. Remove the role and... okay, I'm not sure what that would be.
There is some things we can learn from old-school gaming philosophies on this topic. One of the main "thesis" behind what a role-playing game is from the old guard is that they are by design free-form theatre in which the core of the rules of the game apply to the DM responsibility to be executed honestly and authentically. It's something that exists in modern gaming on some levels, but it was quite specific in old-school games like 1st edition AD&D and 1st edition B/X where the bulk of the rules of the game were targeting the DM. At least as a gaming approach, these designs have largely been sort of dropped without replacing them with anything either as rules or philosophy as the concept of "free-form" began to apply more and more to the DM.
For example, there were adventure exploration, wilderness exploration and Waterborne exploration rules. An actual procedure for tracking things with steps on when and how to execute things like tracking time, tracking timed elements like torches and food, random encounters and so on. There was something called "an exploration action" for example. These were quite explicit.
You also had rules for things like the processes for encounters in which the DM would make checks like "reaction rolls" to determine the mood and hostility level of whatever you were encountering, you had elements like morale that would define the response to events over the course of a combat or interaction with the player characters.
There were rules that governed how cities were built with hard lines like how much gold a city of X size would have, how much defenses it had and all sorts of world-building rules for maintaining the structure of the universe the players occupied.
The point of these rules was to make sure that the "free-form" role-playing part of the game applied to the players, it did not apply to the DM, the DM was actually very restricted by tons of rules that defined "this is how you the DM game must run the game to maintain the integrity".
These rules however were contradicted by the philosophy the very rulebooks that included these often eschewed, which is why I think a lot of these sub-systems of governance where ultimately abandoned by most DM's. If you give a rule to the DM that says "follow this procedure" and then sub-text that rule with "if you want", the game loses its integrity because there is no point in creating a rule for a game, if you are then instructed not to use it or use it optionally. Not to suggest you can't have optional rules, but if everything is an optional rule and the whole thing is optionally free-form, then you don't actually have a game, it becomes this weird kind of theatre and in a way modern gaming is sort of the result of that. All of these structures have been abandoned and don't even exist as optional rules anymore, so there is not much to hang your hat on even if you wanted to.
When I run old school 1e D&D, I use these rules to the letter and they do work and they do create a specific type of playstyle and D&D does become more of a game as a result. I think these rules work, but the problem is that they take away the "creative" power of the DM, because many of them are procedures and structures for things that in modern gaming we think of as "storytelling". When do players fight? Well when the story makes sense for that to happen... Not so in old school gaming, you fight when a timer hits a certain point after taking X amount of exploration actions and I roll a random encounter die and something comes up. Thats when you have an encounter. What is the mood of that encounter, how do the monsters act... you roll for that to and that interaction with Orcs might not be hostile at all because how hostile they are is not a foregone conclusion or a story element, is governed by rules that the DM follows.
I'm not saying that this is what should be implemented, just pointing out that this idea that there are no rules for social or exploration encounters was not always true, originally the game had many rules that governed these parts of the game, we just don't have them anymore in modern games, not even as optional rules.
As such you are left with a truly DM fiated system, what happens, when it happens, how it happens, these are all DM decisions not governed by any rules and by that measure, yeah, D&D is not a game anymore, not really. Its theatre with a central storyteller governing the main story and the players playing a theatrical role through their characters. Sure there are rules... you can make skill checks and "make decisions" but how much that actually matters, is entirely up to the DM. In modern D&D players have very little impact on the outcome of anything, its all pretty much decided by the DM.
This is however why I always question anyone who thinks modern gaming is about "ROLL-playing". That is silly, the rules of modern games barely have any impact on anything, they are so insufficient when it comes to running D&D as a game... it's a free-form theatre show with some frivolous skill checks thrown in to sell the smoke and mirror magic show, but nothing in modern D&D happens unless the DM decides it does. At best, modern gaming might boil down to a story-negotiation game where players and DM negotiate the outcome of the story, but even that really doesn't change the execution as much. Combat is the only real gamist system in modern D&D that is the exception to the rule.
Here is the kicker. This is exactly why D&D 5e is as popular as it is. Its actually this part, this idea that the game is a sort of theatre show with story's being negotiated between DM and Player... that is at the heart of why people like the game. That and fighting monsters is fun and is "The Core Game". So players know that ok... we are in a fight.. its game time...this is where character abilities, leveling up and all the decisions you made about spells, equipment, powers etc.. matter. Outside of that, its theatre. People like that and while it might not be "a game" in the truest sense, i don't think anyone actually cares. The goal for most gaming groups is to find a good DM that runs a good story and creates fun, memorable outcomes for them that feel like they were driven by player decisions and actions. Aka, a good smoke and mirror show.
Pretty sure there are narrative-focused games that have come out of the indie scene that don't actually have the players adopt roles. Microscope might be one.
Alternately, it could be the card game Once Upon a Time, which is a game of competitively telling a fary tale, with each player trying to shape it to reach the ending they've been dealt.
(On a technical level I don't consider D&D to be a game, because it has no defined resolution. (I also don't consider Candy Land to be a game, for different reasons.) But that's the sort of definition that you have to be pretty far into the weeds for it to be useful. Colloquially, D&D is a game, and plenty of other people's definitions agree with that.)
OD&D and 1e definitely had this obfuscation of the rules. IIRC the 1e DMG even advocated for DMs not to let players read that book, so the rules would be mysterious. Only the DM was meant to understand the rules and see behind the screen. It was a very different philosophy that didn't really last long.
In my opinion, as long as the result of actions can be determined by the dice or other gamist element, it is a game. If the story is impacted and informed by the dice rolls, it's a game. An RPG game, but still a game.
If you speak in-character and make decisions based on what "my character would do" during a game of Clue or Battletech those are still games. If you prologue a skirmish in Warhammer 40k with a narrative set-up—an interactive cutscene if you will—it's still a game.
Really, the story and narrative has played an increasing role in D&D, with "the story" really becoming spotlight officially as early as Dragonlance in 1984.
It's also worth noting that many early players stuck to the more rules lite BECMI sets, choosing more DM fiat and story over regimented rules. With more opportunity for roleplaying and social interaction.
Opposed to more modern games where social encounters could entirely be handled by dice. Starting with 3e, you could just dungeon delve and never speak in-character with even negotiation being reduced to a dice roll.
I think streaming shows and stuff like Critical Role has made this a more common part of the game. Sticking in-character and having longer "scenes" of social interaction. More emphasis on backstory and goals and personal drama.
But I also don't think this is remotely new. I'm old enough to remember the heyday of Vampire the Masquerade LARPing in the '90s and early 2000s, when you were fully in-character and the theatrical was the core part of the experience.
5e is just slightly more rules lite than 3e and 4e, so that aspect of play is more encouraged. But that's also a return to a more OSR/ BECMI style of gameplay where there is more fiat and less regimented rules.
Mechanics: the method of operation for accomplishing a task.
Rules: the explication of the terms and conditions of the game, inclusive of Mechanics.
Narrative: we agree on this.
Milieu: we agree on this to an extent.
Narrative Milieu: So long as we can acknowledge that the social setting's context is not specific to the individual table, but that it includes the wider world around that table and the participants, we can agree here. This is necessary because we are not speaking about a single table, but about the larger milieu.
Game: A game is an activity engaged for educational, social, developmental, work, art, and healthcare or other purposes that has certain traits:
I removed aspects of commentary in order to reach the specific points in concern. While commentary is of value in explaining why we have a personal definition, the aspect here is to achieve something other than a personal definition. Consensus can be dependent on those explanation, but we have to first achieve parity in order to be able to effectively express ourselves in order to be able to understand what the other is speaking.
5e, as a systemic and structured game that is part of a tradition of similar games under the same brand and relying on the same core information, meets the necessary criteria -- as do other games, which may be described as freeform rpgs, as well as chess, or checkers, or football, or solitaire, or Poker, or slot machines, or tag, or hide and seek, or making money in the stock market or engaging in politics of government or interpersonal exchange.
The same applies to all prior versions of the game, as well.
In every edition of the published game, there has been some effort made to point out that, ultimately, the rules are a starting point, a baseline. They can be added to or subtracted from, altered or modified, used or ignored, as is seen fit by the Players, so long as they arrive at a mutually satisfactory set. This has been expressed variously in forms such as "rule of cool", "make it your own", "DM fat", and assorted others, as well as explicit statements.
As with any game, there is a certain degree of social expectation that if one moves from one "table" to another, there will be certain commonalities among the same game. it is socially expected, for example, that if you can play a Wizard at this table, you should be able to play one at the next table. Circumstances where that is not possible are and remain edge cases, outliers that require a different approach, even though they may otherwise be the same game, on the part of the player.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I'm not sure all the D&D systems over the years have had good baseline mechanics. I mean, what does 1e AD&D RAW look like? Has anyone ever actually managed to run AD&D 1e this way? Is it even possible? 2e was closer, 3e I think wasn't clear enough, almost a fall back to 1e AD&D days. 4e was super clear, but really only covered combat exclusively.
Like when you really think about it. 1e B/X and 5e are really the only two systems I can think of that actually have a baseline with full coverage. Like, I could run 5e with a DMG, MM and Players Handbook with 0 prep and using dice mechanics exclusively create an adventure and run. You could quite literally run the entire game using systems and dice checks with ZERO role-playing if you wanted to. It was the same with B/X. To me that is the mark of a good baseline.
Not saying anyone did or should run the game that way, but this is a good measure of a solid system baseline, where you always have a dice option for something you don't want to play out. Don't feel like creating a dungeon? No problem, roll for it. Don't want to do a social interaction, no problem.. roll for it.
Well, I was avoiding insertion of too much opinion in my response, which is why I didn't talk about what makes a "good" baseline or a "bad" baseline -- the rules are simply a baseline.
AD&D had freaking rules for what seemed at the time like everything. Of course, at the time, we didn't have anything to compare it to. But when Wizards talks about their "three pillars", I have to say that none of their editions has really had a handle on all those three elements like both 1e/2e and, especially BECMI had on all three.
And yes, I do know someone who has run AD&D completely "RAW", without homebrew: me. Imagine my shock when I played at GenCon with Gary and even he didn't use all the rules.
My personal gripe with the Wizards era is that it has shifted from the DM focused TSR era to the layer focused one at present, and I am seeing some course correcting there.
Funny thing, though: during the 25 years that we stuck to 2e, out of unreasonable hate for 3.x and a "cool but meh" feeling about 4e, wee also realized we had more than three of those pillars, because we had played together so much and for so long that stuff became dry to us, so we added stuff to do.
As a result, when 5e came out, we jumped because we saw how it could work for all that other stuff, with some fairly simple conversions and additions.
Our pillars are: Role Play, Character Growth, Exploration, Discovery, and Combat. Hell, we hadn't heard terms like "West Marches, Sandbox, Player-Driven" and such until after we made the switch to 5e -- and were shocked because we already were doing all those things, and had been doing them since the earliest days.
But the thing that is key for us is the Character Growth thing -- we actually have little systems to give meaning to stuff like "you learn a new skill" and we do rolls and have interactions and all that. Downtime for us is when the PCs are sleeping, basically. Not a simulation, but something to mark the point and make these "special abilities" of the new 5e style seem like they have a point and a purpose and to make us understand their value.
I've ben doing some tweaking with the other DMs as we prep for the new DMG, and one of the things that hit us was that in 2014 5e, the way the game is designed is to enable a PC to go from 1st to 20th level in slightly over a month of in-game time, if the DM uses the budget system for an Adventuring Day.
For us, that's supposed to be a lot longer (and, because we do that growth stuff, it usually is). We could do that in 1e/2e, but that's because there were rules for stuff like that.
We snagged the strongholds, err, bastions, set up and quickly hammered out our own system for it because we missed that from the 1e days (not 2e, which cut that out). Even though 5e already had rules for that kind of thing, it wasn't really developed -- and that was a big thing about 5e that we do like: it has the "stubs" for things, and all we have to do it bolt on our own stuff.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Question, what is your conception of the opposite of that? What would you call that opposite?
The opposite would be free-form or near free-form. For example, there are games where there is just a simple mechanic in place to figure out if anything (anything being a generic concept applicable to everything) is true or false. Dungeon World I think would be an example.
Okay, so we do not agree on narrative milieu.
In an RPG session, there are two milieus. There is the one you just described, with the players here on Earth, living breathing people. Then there is the milieu of the fiction, where the characters see themselves existing, not the players, the characters. Places like Fearun or Eberron are not real, they are not part of the real world milieu (though obviously they are referenced), they contain independent milieus of their own.
Perhaps we can use the term Fictional Milieu.
Fictional: : of, relating to, characterized by, or occurring in fiction : invented by the imagination
There is then an interaction between the fictional milieu and the players. Largely the point of the game is in one way or another about the interaction between the players and the fictional milieu. There are a number of ways one can look at, understand, or conceptualize that interaction.
So lets have a hypotheitical situation. To start, we have several players and a GM playing freeform RPG, no mechanics, no rules (about the activity of playing the RPG I mean, the otherwise normal behavior rules of decent and cultural human interaction don't count here). The GM builds the fictional milieu, tells the players what their characters perceive and know about the fictional milieu, and the players in turn tell the GM what their characters do in the fictional milieu, to which the GM responds with how the fictional milieu and those who inhabit it respond to the player's characters. Consider for a moment, how players might conceptualize this activity, in particular, how do they decide what to do, and what they can possibly do. (The more I see of your descriptions about your table, the less I think you can use your table as a generally representative example of "most players.")
I contend that the inclusion of mechanics and rules often leads to changes or differences in the conceptualization of the activity and in particular, changes the way players make decisions about what their characters do, what they look at, what considerations they take into account. More than that, it also changes the expectations players have about how the fictional milieu responds and with it the desires of the players.
In fact, it seems to perhaps lead to a third milieu, or something similar to a milieu, that of the mechanics and rules related to this interaction between the players and the fictional milieu.
From all I have seen, this change heavily results in players, especially those making videos and commenting on such videos, but also those I've watched play or have played with, where they make the fictional milieu fit the mold of the mechanics, instead of making the mechanics fit the mold of the fictional milieu.
For example, instead of making mechanics that reflect the fictional milieu and accepting that any "simple enough to be both enjoyably and usefully used" mechanic will inevitably fail to perfectly represent the fictional milieu and thus need correction sometimes, they instead make the mechanics like a machine and built to fit parameters primarily outside the fictional milieu, such as making mechanics "balanced" for some definition of balanced, and then they shape the fictional milieu to fit the mechanics. Do you see the dichotomy here of how the mechanics relate to the fictional world? Do you see how the choice of making all classes get a subclass at level 3 is a decision that has nothing to do with representing the fictional milieu?
Point of Order in relation to the "spoiler" marked sections: We have precisely two things we have agreed one thus far: Narrative and Milieu. We cannot proceed without acknowledged agreement on "Game", "Mechanics", and "Rules" as well as the part we are still in contention on relating to the concept of Narrative Milieu. With a small exception covered in a moment, until we reach agreement on all of those elements, good faith discussion involving them is not possible.
Narrative Milieu:
In this discussion and an RPG being played, there two Milieus:
They cannot be separated in practice -- the game rules, the game setting, and the place of the setting are all dependent on the larger world around them and in which it takes place. One can abstract the concept of "just the world" or "just the rules" or "just the Players" or whatever, but the effects of the real world around the players will always inform and shape the nature of the imagination employed, in particular the language, cultural norms, and breadth of knowledge of the collective individuals drawn fro their personal experiences and their larger shared world.
The rules of a game, themselves, are inherently shaped by that same force. That force is called Structure, in the sciences, and is omnipresent in all things. The rules of the game, themselves, are a form of Structure, and commonly reflective of it. This is why things like "racial bonuses" can be seen for their inclusion of racism -- the fact that it is an imaginative space is irrelevant since the people playing the game are not, and we know that racism even in that format has a specific, measurable degree of harm in the physical sense -- real world harm from imagination.
Thus, even the Game Milieu can have real, measurable effects in the Social milieu, and this is an operation that function both ways (for that is how did the racism got into the game in the first place -- from the real world.)
Hence the pointed bit about inclusion of the larger world in discussion of the Social Milieu -- none of this happens in a social vacuum. To do so is to invite logical fallacy, and to provide cover and service to harm done to people since the game's inception, excusing it. Which is in part why it is a non-negotiable aspect for me when discussing the Social aspects of the game; I will not countenance such.
That said, when you say "Largely the point of the game is in one way or another about the interaction between the players and the fictional milieu.", I do not disagree. It is the focus of the moment of play and interaction, but it is still not devoid of the larger actual reality and its impact.
So, while I can speak to the particulars of the setting and the imaginary environment therein, it is not a space that is unaffected or indeterminate in relation to the world and reality in which that imagining is ongoing. It would be dishonest for me to not acknowledge that, but I can settle for this:
Fictional Milieu: the place and space comprising the fictional world, characters, and situations that are present as part of the Game Milieu, in relation to the Social Milieu.
Hopefully that will work for you.
Exception noted above
When you say "More than that, it also changes the expectations players have about how the fictional milieu responds and with it the desires of the players." you do so within the context of a comment about Rules, Mechanics, and Game, and we have not agreed on this terminology and so cannot speak to that part. THis is even more critical when you note that my definition of a game requires there to be rules -- and it is notable that my definition of game is derived from 300 years of scientific study on games, and what comprises a game, specifically. Format may be different, but it is summation of that scientific basis as it stands today.
Spoilers
As described, without acknowledgement of and agreement on terminology, we cannot fully understand each other, and so arguments based on that, such as the immediate preceding statements around the exception, cannot be addressed in good faith at this time. The hypothetical would, for example, need to be reframed in order to be answered, because it is dependent on the understanding of those three concepts still in contention.
Your entire closing paragraph would have no basis to be asked if we used my definition of a game or rules or mechanics, for example -- which is why I said we had to find some other place to speak from. Good faith requires that we be willing to change our minds, and if we cannot understand the other well enough to give the points raised the due consideration, we would fail to achieve that, even if we otherwise acted in good faith simply because we never understood the other well enough to give the position good, honest consideration.
This is why I spoilered the remaining portions -- they would all be something we can come back to down the road, once we can think about things in a more equitable space.
Once we can hammer out agreement on the remaining terms, we can move into the parts you described, though you'll have to respond after re-evaluation in light of the new terminology.
Thus far, I can think of two non-negotiables:
However, rules do not have to be concrete, or even written down. They merely have to be understood by all the participants.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Mechanics: the method of operation for accomplishing a task.
Rules: the explication of the terms and conditions of the game, inclusive of Mechanics.
See, mechanics and rules are distinctly separate, one may be part of the other, yet it remains distinct.
A player of an RPG has a character, and will at times be making choices about what that character does. There are a variety of methods for making that decision, and a number of things that can be considered or dismissed, which will be different for different players. However, a set of infinite possibilities can still be broken down into groups. One group of the infinite possibilities for how one chooses actions for their character can be defined by taking the mechanics of a game into massively stronger consideration than other aspects such as the fictional world, characters, and situations. Likewise, another group might be defined by dismissing the mechanics from that consideration and using the mechanics only after the decision has been made for what the character will do.
Aye, now consider the notion of playing the game like it is a freeform game, but use mechanical terminology like that found in other games as a shorthand, and have various things things written down to make communication clearer an easier.
For example, how strong is "very strong?" You could have a discussion over whether that is like the strongest man at the local gym kind of very strong, or if it means being like the incredible hulk kind of very strong. Or you can have a chart with various numbered rows describing different levels of strength and simply using the number for the appropriate row to very quickly establish a common understanding of just how strong you mean.
it is only irrelevant as long as the core principles, as you understand them, are not in conflict with it. We, however, have not established that yet, We are only seeking agreement on terminology.
This is all true, but we still haven't had acknowledgement and agreement on the terms in use.
From this, it appears that you are agreeing to use my definitions for Rules and Mechanics in further posts. However, that is only an appearance and not an acknowledgment or agreement.
If you do agree to use that terminology -- by which you would need to explicitly state so -- then that means we have the following terms in agreement:
That, however, still means we need to agree on the terminology for: Narrative Milieu and Game. And if you do not agree to the terms for rules and mechanics above, then we still need to finish with them.
So those remain in contention to my knowledge as of this moment. I have proffered two of my own for that so far:
Game: A game is an activity engaged for educational, social, developmental, work, art, and healthcare or other purposes that has certain traits:
Narrative Milieu:
If these are all acceptable to you then we can move forward and begin to discuss the things that you have mentioned previously once more.
As for the rest:
I am not here to re-litigate a fact about the game. If the fact that the use of racial modifiers is racist bothers you, that is a you problem, not an I problem.
Factually, this is incorrect.
Given this right is the Right of Freedom of Expression, and is a limitation placed on governments, I have to note this is irrelevant. The government is not involved in this. Ergo, the right of freedom of expression is not germane to any of the points raised.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds