Blog Book Club 59: Proceduralism

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Welcome to the Blog Book Club. This week we are reading Proceduralism by Brendan S of Necropraxis.

Next week we are reading Towards a Taxonomy of ‘Trick’ Monsters by Gus L from his old blog Dungeon of Signs.

You can see a list of previous blog club posts here.

This blog post defined a procedure as “the degree to which a game directs your actions as a player or referee”. What I often see discussed online is more like a sequences of rules that influence outcomes of a game in a thematic direction.

This blog post was a good read, but I was left wanting more and this just felt like a starting point. So I set out to explore the blogosphere and get a better handle on what the hell we are talking about. I like this one by Warren of Prismatic Wasteland: What even is a procedure.

I’ll now attempt to detail my recent interactions with procedures.

In my 5th edition D&D days I didn’t have much to do with procedures outside of combat. Overall I found the play culture resistant or indifferent to procedures. Its part of what makes this game feel like a free for all to me. However, there was a decent amount of GMs I knew homebrewing 4e style-skill challenges into their games. That’s definitely a procedure. By contrast, my experience running OSR-inspired games feel more structured moment to moment. Instances of classic OSR procedures I regularly employ are: reaction rolls, morale checks, random encounters, and dungeon turns.

There are other procedures that are more hotly debated. Let’s take Shadowdark. What people notice off the bat are its procedures aimed at centering the dungeon crawl experience. 1 hour real time torches and the always-on round table initiative are two of the most apparent (and divisive) procedures. I think people who already know how to run and play dungeon crawls sometimes chafe at these, and don’t need the structure. I’ve found these procedures help newcomers channel their energy in productive directions (looting the dungeon). I state this to say that procedures can be a help or a hindrance depending on your point of view. I am generally a proponent that groups should adjust games to suit their needs. We should add procedures to campaigns when things aren’t working as intended and remove existing ones that get in their way.

Recently, I’ve been running Mothership and I’ve observed that its procedures support an effective gameplay loop. The game involves more dice rolling than I am used to after several years of OSR training, but its all in service to the horror genre. Moments of tension and failure build up stress scores of characters. Horror movie moments lead to panic checks that are worse the higher the character stress levels are. Shore leave mechanics help transfer this trauma into resiliency providing an upgrade mechanic while allowing players to relieve their stress and allow cycle to begin anew. I approve of how one procedure flows into the next.

At the end of his post, Brendan mentions a procedural axis and I find it strangely echoes Old School D&D alignment. Some people are aligned with law; they want a procedure for everything they feel is important, some seek balance aimed at load bearing procedures with minimal rules overhead, finally others revel in chaos and want as few procedures as possible to guide gameplay.

What do you think? Either about the original blog post or your own interpretations of what a procedure is.

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I’m a fan of procedures. I think game systems should offer up procedures for all major parts of play. This is for the simple reason that offering that support for the GM communicates what sort of experience the system intends. The procedure works step-by-step through an aspect of play and highlights all the parts the designer intends to provide the feel, the flavor, of the system. The GM can absorb that and then add and subtract details to fit needs at the table. I view it as first learning the chord progression of a song before improvising alternate harmonizations.

Melee in AD&D, for example, got much smoother for me after I worked through the steps deliberate a few times and go my mind wrapped around it. Then rereading the texts discussing it brought bits to light that I’d not remembered and I was able to work those into the procedure because I already had a structure I didn’t have to think about to use.

Perhaps an easier to understand way to frame it is to offer up procedures as training wheels. They teach GMs and players alike what sorts of details are considered important and how they all work together. Before long, all can ride without them.

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I enjoy games like Errant, which describes itself as “rules light, procedure heavy”. I haven’t run it as written, but I like stealing pieces from it for other games. I also like when games have procedures for things other than combat. On the other hand, I find the procedures of many games under the PbtA umbrella too constraining.

This is similar to what pladohsghost said, but ultimately I think procedures help establish a consistent game experience, encouraging a particular tone and feel, across tables.

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How do you play outside of combat?

Why I’m asking is that we all use procedures, but they are unspoken instead of outspoken. Everything is played with scenes, but few games actually call it out.

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Good call! I hadn’t thought about scenes as procedures. I think because I’ve dabbled in some acting and directing over the years I hadn’t thought about any of the stuff I brought over from theatre as game procedure. Scenes definitely do help organize and allow for efficient transitions between parts of the game. I feel that the procedures in that game just ultimately didn’t support the type of experience I was seeking! That’s okay.

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I recommend @GusL’s “Slouching towards proceduralism” for those who want a longer look at this topic.

This presents a problem because any Procedures that the designer doesn’t share in the rules book will be invented anew by each table that plays the game, based on that table’s idiosyncratic understanding of the game’s purposes, and their preferred or learned culture of play. Procedures also matter because when they’re a mismatch for the play style and Mechanics of a game they become discouraging, and the system often becomes incoherent. For designers this makes transmitting the intended Procedure of a game important to sharing an intended style of play or experience with others. Yet many RPG designers, especially those with a limited grasp of Procedure’s importance, or limited exposure to multiple styles of play don’t provide examples of play or codified procedure, relying that their game will only be played by tables that more or less share their play culture and aim for the same play style.

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I recently wrote an article series about looking at games as interaction models. I present a process in the article, and a loop is merely a procedure that is looped.

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I got the idea of procedures from Daniel Cook’s skill atom but it’s been brewing over a decade, as I now finally cracked why some sessions was amazing with everyone being in flow and engaged. It felt like it happened at random, but now I discovered the process to great engagement.

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Hmm, Huizinga? That kind of procedures is slightly different, as it’s more conventions (how/when to use rules), which roleplaying games sort under “techniques”. I tend to use “structures” as an umbrella term for mechanics and techniques.

Because, from how I see it, techniques are unspoken structures, and mechanics are outspoken. Roger Caillois, in his work Man, Play and Games, which was based on Huizinga’s, talked about paidia (free fantasy) and ludus (play with rules). In TTRPG circles, we recognize this as improvisation vs prep or even ruling vs rules. However, in Theory of Fun, it’s said that these are the same things. Improvisation uses structures, just that it’s drawn from the user’s own experience, where rules are printed.

And as stated: these are unspoken and outspoken; that’s the only real difference between them.

And that’s why I talk about “structures” instead, to lift techniques as important as rules when it comes to affecting the session. It helps me formulate both of them better.