I think I misread your statement here - the focus on Rules, in the same broad sense as posted above, that support players for a style of “story” as instead a style of “play”. I read you as drawing a distinction between rules as fences or perils to be avoided and rules as supportive, or which actively encourage a type of play (what I took to be mayv’s point) - as in (to use very old examples) “Level Drain is a Rule that encourages avoiding melee combat with a certain types of monsters” vs. “XP for treasure is a Rule that encourages seeking treasure”.
My argument was that positive and negative encouragement to a play style are still encouragement, so a definition built around the sense in which story games are more focused (and I think they often are) intentional design to facilitate a style of play (basically a distillation of the System Matter argument) seemed a bit reductive.
The use of genre is something I do to draw a distinction between “story” as a term for adventure or narrative as a description of play style, and focus on the aspect of games that seek to emulate either a distinct structure of narrative (i.e. the folktale’s structure per Propp) or the aesthetics of broad type of story. Basically I’m saying you one part of “winning/enjoying” an Classic/OSR adventure by solving its puzzles/challenges while one part of “winning/enjoying” in story game adventure by maintaining fidelity to the type (aesthetic and maybe structure) of the story. For example the goal of Trophy Dark is to play out the story of “doomed fantasy adventurers”, so to succeed in playing it you want to slowly lose your character in properly gruesome fashion to the horrors of the grimdark setting. The rules are set up so this will happen, the question is do you do it in style, or tell a good doomed fantasy adventurer story while you do it?
I think The advantage of a specific term like “ludo-narrative dissonance” is that it avoids these multiple meanings. It’s got a lot of baggage specifically, so I can see avoiding it but we might want something a bit more defined and unique?
I totally agree that encouragement can come in both positive and negative forms. You are also correct that that was not what I was talking about.
Okay, cool. So if I understand correctly, you wanted to use genre to specifically draw attention to the structure of the story. That makes sense. To me, I thought “style of story” did this, but I will concede that it was not clear and perhaps we can use, “supports the structure of a specific style of story”.
I am not sure I agree. I don’t think this necessarily avoids multiple meanings.
To me, “minimize ludonarrative dissonance” is kind of a meaningless phrase. To over simplify it is “minimize specific bad thing”.
It is similar to “minimize breast cancer”. Sure we can all be behind the effort to minimize breast cancer, but that doesn’t exactly tell us what we are for and what we want. Probably everyone here is for minimizing breast cancer, but that doesn’t exactly tell us about we why we are actually here.
To me, “minimize ludonarrative dissonance” is likely true every game with a narrative, whether it’s a TTRPG or another type of game (like a video game). Every game with a narrative wants to minimize the discomfort felt when the gameplay does not match the narrative. This is true of Classic and OSR and Post-OSR games too.
Now “gameplay” does not equate to “rules” I am specifically talking about how people are interacting when playing. The gameplay and the fictional outcome (narrative/story) should be consistent and there should be no discomfort or dissonance.
To me, this feels like we could say OSR tries to maximize ludo praecepta dissonance, or more plainly, “maximize the discomfort when rules are needed”. I guess it could be true, but it feels like a really weird and strange way to try to classify OSR.
Sure. I agree that it is not the best description of story games overall. I was just using that definition in relation to OSR.
Maybe maximizing ludo-narrative consonance is a better way to put it. Story games provide rules that aid the player in achieving the story they want to tell.
OSR texts, while not opposing the notion above, focus on providing rules to challenge the player. This results in certain win/lose states in OSR games that do not really exist in story games. Gaining treasure is a win, dying from a dragon is a loss, you generally want to avoid it. Much like a videogame.
Failure in story games isn’t a failure of a challenge. The term “fiction forward” was/is used widely to refer to “moving the narrative forward, even if your character fails a specific task”. That to me is an effect of the play culture’s focus on making rules that aid the story. Resolution systems with a mixed success are only becoming more popular. It has even overflown into OSR play culture, with failed rolls being interpreted more as mixed successes than strict failures.
So an overlap in play between the two cultures is definitely possible. When I’m dying from that dragon breath attack, I might be more informed by the story game culture to play out a not-so-heroic scene.
Imho, when combining the two in a game text the main friction point would be keeping both the challenge and story progression elements. The aforementioned Trophy Gold has neglected the former for the latter (in the form of progression tokens). Some games divide the challenge and story into parts, Lancer for instance.
I’m not saying that it is impossible to combine the two. I’d love to see it done well!
Hope that my definitions make sense. I’m always happy to delve deeper into the topics if needed.
Totally agree. In general I totally agree that your conclusion, that it would be difficult to combine the two playstyles together in a game text is accurate.
I still disagree with your assessment of story games.
I disagree. To me, “fiction forward” is because failing and stopping and having a nothing result is boring. It has nothing to do with aid the story. It is more targeted at the player (like “Challenge the player”) than it is at the story. If anything, the plain English way I would say that is, “Make sure the results of dice rolls are all interesting to the player”.
Eh, let’s just drop the Latin entirely, it’s not needed. I think the plain English is closer to what makes sense to me, but it’s still off.
Story games provide rules that aidsupport the players in achieving the structure and style of story they the game text (could be “designer/author” here instead) wants to tell.
So to me, we are left with two directives:
Challenge the player
Support the players in achieving the structure and style of a specific type of story
To me, I think both of those things are possible in both play and in a game text. I think it might be hard for a variety of other reasons that are related to both of these two cultures of play. But I don’t think the problem is in these directives.
I think that this discussion may be conflating two different things:
I think that the fact most people sitting down to play a story games and most people sitting down to play an OSR game have different purposes in play (exploring theme or genre vs challenge) is a different issue than the respective subcultures’ conventions and expectations regarding written rules texts. Which is to say that both groups, at the table, need use procedures (which I use broadly to include both mechanical instrumentation — rolling dice, drawing cards, comparing a number on your sheet to a table in the book to see how much you can lift — as well as non-mechanical procedures like the delegation of responsibilities of preparation and scene framing), but a significant cultural difference is that by and large one group wants all of those procedures laid out in a given text and the other tends to keep a lot of the non-mechanical procedures out of the text, trusting to its readers to access that information through a separate oral/written tradition. (I’m drawing this split broadly thought there are lots of exceptions: The Pool, for example gives you much of what you need to play, but assumes you know what a GM is supposed to do to make that kind of game work).
I keep pointing to this because I do think that this semantic issue represents a major fault line in communication between members of these two groups. I’m idealistic/naive/delusional enough to think that if this semantic issue were overcome, communication between the two cultures would be less fraught and more fruitful.
I absolutely agree that when we try to combine these two play styles into a game text there will be issues. I hope that they are solvable, but I am not sure.
I think this is one of the biggest issues. I do think it is solvable. I think it is entirely possible to put all the info that is in the OSR oral tradition into a game text. Some of it has already been written up, like the Principia Apocryphal.
To me another issue is, “rulings not rules”. I see absolutely no problem making rulings in story games and customizing them for how your table wants to play. That’s great, I think all groups should make the adjustments they need to in order to enjoy their game.
But, to me, there is a difference in the approach, priority, and attitude towards rules. To me, story game players start with the assumption that the rules will do what they want and to use them as is, at least to start. Perhaps they will modify and change them as they go, but it starts with rules as written.
To me, some OSR players also start this same way, but some do not. For many OSR campaigns, sessions, tables, instances of a game, the initial starting rule set is not any one singular published rule set. It is an amalgamation of rules from various sources which may be similar but perhaps not exactly like any other rule set in existence. This in itself is great. I am thrilled people are playing the way they want. But, as a story gamer, I would be absolutely frustrated to be told, “We’re playing X game” only to find out we’re playing 50% X game, 20% Y game, 10% Z game, 10% from this one blog post, and the rest is blend of non published house rules. My expectations do not match the results I was given.
I think this is a solvable problem. I think it is a lot of communication about what is actually going to occur and happen and what rules are going to be used. Solvable, but not necessarily easy as that type of communication is work, and depending on the customization, work that needs to be done continuously.
Another issue I want to bring up was something more mentioned above,
This is absolutely against my design principles. Having expansive rules to cover lots of different things is very much against my desire. For me, story games are focused. They are focused on a specific type of story. By all means have rules that cover that type of story, but when you start expanding the rules set to include other types of story that becomes a failure in story game design. As a story gamer, I would choose a different story game to tell the other type of story. Or if I just wanted a piece of another type of story in the current campaign, I would work with all the other players and create a ew customization to have that new type of story included in out rule set. But having expansive rules covering many types of story seems contrary to the desire for focus and support sought by story game design.
You all wrote a lot today.
I’m trying to reply to EVVVERYTHIIIING so forgive me if in some points I might seem a bit brash or patronizing, I’m just really trying to express my personal knowledge and opinions.
Also, forgiveth me father, for I have wall-of-texteth
…
When I say “rules” I mean all the procedures, mechanics and instructions Players and GMs use in order to achieve play. With this in mind…
Allow me to dot some eyes.
Let’s not mix up PLAY culture and DESIGN culture (aka design philosophy/school).
What you describe (in the words I quoted) are not 2 different “goals”.
The first is a design philosophy… HOW to do something.
The second is a specific design goal… WHAT you want to achieve.
You can easily achieve whatever goal (challenge based gameplay) through different design techniques and methods.
For example Agon, by John Harper, is a modernly designed challenge based rpg. The GM is even called the Adversary, and has the aim of defeating the player-controlled Heroes. This is made fair by the fact that the GM can’t just say whatever, but has a limited pool of resources, to be used according to specific procedures, which are replenished every time the Heroes take a (mechanically defined) rest.
For example Three Sixteen, by Gregor Hutton, aims at expressing a politically critical message about society… but does so through a very deadly and challenge based gameplay, where player-controlled “space marines” have to face, planet invasion after planet invasion, against threats from both without and within.
The ludo-narrative dissonance (LND) thing is cool, but inaccurate.
LND is a feeling of disconnect between what you do and how you do it. It’s an interesting and important element of game design, but it’s not what modern design is about.
Modern design is about the idea that the rulebook is the only communication tool the game author has to teach how to play the game they wrote. Here the rules are the main, but not only, element that can shape Player behaviour.
As a consequence, what the rules should model, and how they could do it, are both an open topic of exploration and experimentation.
Again, a perfect example is awarding XP for treasure rather than for killing stuff.
Or having dungeon doors “magically” close for the PCs while open for NPCs.
Or the usage die from the Black Hack, or the slot inventory from Knave … ways to make the rules model a desirable element of the target play experience (having to deal with encumbrance) in a way that the GM and Players will actually use and lean on, instead of forgetting or ignoring.
It doesn’t matter?
You need a piece of a game…
In the first instance you know what to do.
In the second one you don’t and are forced to come up with something to avoid the game crashing.
In the first you have a method, tried and true, to produce quality results no matter your level of “rpg wisdom” is. Just follow what the rulebook says and you are good to go.
In the second one you have to learn by mimesis, or by trial and error, or by finding an “oral” source of “wisdom” among the many contradictory voices available. Reading not only the core rulebook, but an encyclopedia worth of “culture” surrounding it. And in the end you still need to literally design your own game hoping it works.
The only instance when “it doesn’t matter” is if you confront any modern game (say, AW) with how a single specific group handles the game they are running since years.
THIS is comparable.
THIS doesn’t make a difference.
You have a printed rulebook on one side, and a a bundle of tribal traditions on the other. Both are relatively clear and binding and allow participants to say “This is exactly how we play this game”.
And while I concede that both methods “work”… I see the second one as impossibly more wasteful of everyone’s time and effort, and conductive to so many “bad habits” and “table problems” (the ones Players and GM bitch about since the dawn of the hobby).
Paradoxically, OSR and especially FKR games have less problems because their “culture” is much more focused and stricter than the Trad one… they basically have an invisible oral rulebook that most agree upon, where Trad games have not the same clarity of purpose and intent.
This is a specific way to design challenge in an RPG, and it is typical of Classic game design.
But for example other existing games that are challenge focused (like the ones I mentioned earlier) don’t work like this.
But but for example the modern game I am designing relies on the same exact structure and core design choices, because it strives to match a Classic game experience (although it’s gmLess, so how one understands “adjudication” can’t be the same as “the GM knows best” )
See my previous comments.
Could you elaborate?
I’m not sure I understand what you mean.
I mean that for a group that has gotten both games going at the table, once they are going, it doesn’t matter if one group found all the procedures in a single rule book and the other found most of their procedures from Chris McDowall’s blog (or wherever).
What follows in your post is a series of value judgments and preferences: my goal here is to push the idea that while it is all fine and good to have preferences one way or the other, and while it is true that by and large the two cultures differ in the general preferences in this regard, there isn’t a difference — at the table, in games that are working — between the attitude/approach to the procedures they are using. That is: the important difference is not in attitudes towards procedures as they are used in successful play, but rather in attitudes towards how the entirety of the procedures should be transmitted/communicated.
(If I may editorialize for a moment: a significant portion of people participating in the discussion about these issues at The Forge and then at the Strorygames forum got very committed to the idea of the importance of playing the “rules as written” in a way that I think ended up being overly inflexible and unhelpful when thinking more generally about play. That they developed some of this inflexibility for understandable reasons — reacting against bad game designs that tried to paper over their badness with “rule zero” — doesn’t make the inflexibility any less of a hinderance when trying to have these cross-sub cultural discussions).
Edited to add: I was inflexible about it too for several months in 2006/7, but started to change my mind once I got back into playing B/X regularly.
Good point!
Although I still see no problem in challenging Players, rather than Characters, through modern rules.
I mean, every single boardgame does it
But now I would be curious to analyse Agon to see exactly whether it challenges Players or Characters, and how exactly
I might agree with this
It’s what I’ve been wondering about since I started understanding “old school” games as radically different beats than their Trad descendants.
Board games are a good example of challenge based play actually! They provide tools for the players to make interesting decisions, but not so much to tell a compelling story.
For sure! During my own period of inflexibility around this issue, I would argue that if we played Primetime Adventures using strict rules-as-written, we would have a completely problem-free gaming experience. Also, I would argue that because playing strictly by rules-as-written was not part of the play culture of people playing, say, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition, our play experience would be fraught with difficulty because we wouldn’t have clear textual support for everything we were doing.
Why wasn’t this helpful?
For one thing, it blinded me to the very real and meaningful differences that people may have (even when all operating in good faith) in interpreting rules-as-written, even in a text that tries to be comprehensive (like Primetime Adventures). After I experienced a number of Primetime Adventure sessions where my interpretation of the rules (or, rather, how I wanted to use the procedures) clashed with those of fellow players, I realized I had been over zealous in the claims I had earlier made.
And on the other side, after I started playing a lot of B/X (again after a break of many years) and OD&D (for the first time), I saw that it was actually fairly easy much of the time to get on the same page as people with regard to how we would handle all of the procedures that aren’t strictly in the texts, but are part of the oral tradition of how to play these adventure games.
So, the inflexibility in me trying to hang onto the importance of playing rules-as-written, and looking for rules text that contained ALL the procedures for play without any offloading or outsourcing, prevented me from appreciating or anticipating possible problems in play of a certain set of games and also led me to be overly concerned/anxious about problems that ended up being rather trivially solved for a different set of games. Does that make sense?
I think that the crux of the “problem” is something I had to wrangle with myself. There are many interesting cultural phenomena that happen when going from Trad gaming to a different culture of gaming, be it Modern or Classic or OSR.
In particular, when going from Trad to Modern this “inflexibility” is, to me, one of them. Interestingly, it’s an element of the culture and not a part of the design philosophy.
Let me try to explain how I see it…
I see the problem
If one plays the rules as written, one gets to play the X game as intended by the author. Nothing more, nothing less.
Maybe the author did not do a very good job in the first place, so even perfect understanding and application of the rules-text will yield problematic results. But what I noticed is, coming from Trad culture, the very concept of “trusting the rules” tends to be such a mind-blowing novelty that it is relatively common to over-inflate it to mean what you described: the rules can’t fail!
This contrasts the (mostly) Trad culture of ignoring/modifying rules out of the box, on general principle, and paving over any issue encountered during play (especially the initial learning phase) with GM fiat, rather than trying to check if you got the rules correctly.
Which in turn spawns the rules lawyer phenomenon, which I think is not existent in Modern culture. But that’s a different topic.
Let’s remember though, this is important to acknowledge, that such attitude is justified by the “quality” of the rules found in the average Trad game: incoherent, murky, and that intentionally offload important design decisions on the GM’s shoulders
You learn that “rules don’t matter” because those rules make your game-life difficult and require the GM to intervene for the game to work in an enjoyable way.
It is even sold as a feature! This game is intentionally incomplete to allow you the freedom and flexibility to make it whatever you want. As if having rules that actually deliver what they promise had the power to stop anyone from doing with them whatever they like. Just look at the extremely thriving culture of “hacking” present in Modern game circles.
I… don’t love… the Trad rhetoric and approach… let’s leave it at that
OSR culture looks back at Classic designs, but emerges out of decades of Trad cultural dominion. No wonder the basic assumption is a hardline “rulings not rules”
Also, there is A LOT to say about something I only saw being considered in the past 5-10 years: the quality of technical writing.
The most brilliant rules are literally worth nothing if the end users are unable to understand them
Most Ron Edwards games have genius concepts and mechanics, but are written in a very obscure way. It took my group a whole campaign (8 sessions) and numerous trips to expert forums to finally say “Yes, we are playing SPIONE as intended”
Other games, like Paul Czege’s The Clay that Woke, are so artsy they almost take pride in how hermetic and unintelligible they are
Not to mention some clever marketing choices, like with Vincent Baker’s Apocalypse World. That game’s text is written in a cool but intentionally murky way, on the assumption that you want your game to be misunderstood and hated by a minority, clearly understood and loved by another minority, and largely misunderstood but liked by the remaining majority.
(there’s a RopeCON video where he states this clearly)
I get that. But I also kind of resent it. And have witnessed how so many subsequent PbtA games, not knowing about this “feature”, ended up producing very poor texts and some genuinely problematic rules because they unwittingly copy-pasted the original “defects” along with the legit game structures.
The Veil is an amazing PbtA cyberpunk game. It has so many brilliant rules and ideas. But it’s all written so poorly that it makes me cry. I can’t play that game. Every single bit of it requires extensive table negotiations to navigate the most basic things: is this move triggered? how? how is the effect supposed to work? do we agree?
Such a pity
So yeah… playing the rules as written is a good attitude… but is the text clear? understandable? unambiguous?
Your mileage may vary.
This is exactly what usually happens.
The novelty wears off. Actual hands-on experience with the game kicks in. And as a result the over-zealousness recedes in favor of a more practical and pragmatic approach
Except in online discussions with Trad players claiming that all rpgs are the same and rules don’t matter anyway. Then the little inflexible zealot rears its head and goes to town
What I have witnessed as being the “norm” within the Modern play culture looks as follows…
Say we try to play a new game. At some point you and I disagree on how Rule-X should work.
What now?
If we “inflexibly” try to impose our personal vision, we indeed reach an impasse. Problem!
(small note: some games do have explicit rules to smoothly prevent/solve this kind of situation)
So what do we do?
We make a ruling (ironic, I know ) to get us to the end of the session, then we tackle the problem with more time and calm.
We play next game using one interpretation. Then the subsequent session we use the other. And then see what works best for us.
And/or we get to the end of the session, and before the subsequent one we take to the interwebs and try to research the issue. Is there an official statement? Or a most common opinion? Is this a bug in the rules or our lack of understanding?
In the end, once we have done the possible to know what the rules mean, we do whatever we please. Ignore them. Change them. Change game.
The point is to use spontaneous rulings only as a quick temporary fix in case of problems, not as THE way to play. And then to make decisions about what to do with our game starting from a place of knowledge and understanding, rather than of prejudice and blind habit.
And since most mechanics only reveal their true purpose and breath when used in practice within a full instance of play (meaning a full campaign) (which for most modern games means just 1-5 or 8-12 sessions) the common wisdom is to play a first “vanilla” instance… and only then try to alter the game however we see fit. Or to play a different game altogether.
At least, this has been my experience
What do you think?
I agree with your post overall, as well. I have more to say, as you open up a lot of areas for further discussion, but I’m still working out the best way to say some of it (and may end up taking some topics to their own post). I wanted to reply now though just to let you know that I’m reading you and nodding along. I think we have had a similar experience and similar take on this issue. (Although I like the way Ron writes his games ).
Hey, I just watched a video in which a guy tries to explain what different kinds of storytelling often gets used in RPG’s. He’s adapted it from a theory or explanation about computergames, but I think that he touches on some stuff that is useful here in our discussions in “what type of game” we’re playing by talking about “what kinds of storytelling” we’re doing.
These are the four types he posited: Embedded Narrative (Box text, NPC Monologues, Lore, Setting, character backstory), Emergent Narrative (sprouts and grows when players interact with the world, results from the actions of the players), Evocative Narrative (player aids, maps, background music, miniatures. Enhancing the player experience.) and Enacted Narrative (Renegotiating or changing the rules by which players can negotiate the players’ space. Leveling up, gaining or losing abilities, …).
I don’t know if this helps navigation how to talk about/categorize games, but I thought I’d share it here.
)
)
).