Whats the obsession with pink ponies?

 DAmn!! Its like a furry obsessed person started yakking.

Look - D&D  is roleplaying game. Its the most famous RPG, but its still a game.  Its also most widely played.

 So the hell what if players wind up in a beatles-inspired land with plasticene porters with looking glass ties, marmelade skies, Kaleidascope eyes, cellophane flowers towering over your head, and...and ... pink ponies .... etc...

Its Still D&D to me .

 (Quick!! somebody get Billy Joel to do a FILK version of "ITs still Rock & Roll to me" - but call "Its still D&D to me" )

- Ed C.

Koltar, historically, that's absolutely how things happened, and it's still basically right, as a refutation of Mr. Narmical's maximalist "system matters" argument.

That is: even when game rules do get mutated, changed, added, it's through an organic process that can't be compared to simply picking up the notional final product off a shelf and playing it. When a group modifies the written rules of D&D, they're doing it in the context of a social dynamic: when this process is successful, the notional "rules" of the game and social context bend to fit one another. You can try to write the rules changes down, but you can't easily port the social context from one group to another.

In my opinion this is why many Forge games don't really work outside a narrow culture: they depend on specialized understandings, techniques, and habits that the designers take for granted, or at best struggle to explain through informal guidelines. They're not very robust across a variety of social environments.

Narmical: you simply have a flawed understanding of roleplaying games. You arrive at faulty conclusions based on faulty premises. I think the relevant part is the following:

Quote from: NarmicalThe MDA framework states that the mechanics are wholly responsible for how the game is actually played at the table.

Using DnD as an example, its mechanics are focused on the elements of hack n' slash. For example, combat, leveling, loot tables, monster combat stats.

However, people do use DnD to play games focused on the other style.
I assert that this is because the players actually modify the game mechincs to support there desired play style. They are no longer playing DnD but rather there own home made variant.

You are applying your tools to games which are not analogous to the games the MDA framework was invented for. I propose that it is not possible to correctly understand a roleplaying game from the perspective of traditional games (board games, most war games and computer games), because they have a different scope. Traditionally understood games are "closed", in that they have a finite and usually immutable ruleset which determines the sort of actions players are allowed to undertake. In chess (the most common example brought up in gaming arguments - including this one), you may not invent new moves, nor can you arbitrarily redefine the goals during action. You may invent your own variant, but when you formally establish your house rules, they become sacrosanct for further games.

Roleplaying games, on the contrary, are open, a combination of "play" and "game". The innovation of RPGs was not only the ability to control a character in a fantastic environment described and "dynamised" by a non-impartial (!) referee, but also a sort of fluidity in their rules. A traditionally understood RPG is not a "game"; it is an intuitive framework to make up your own game based on referee/player calls, the needs of participants or plain "what if?" whimsy. Playing "outside the rules" is also a general feature; the game doesn't intend to restrict your moves to a limited set. Original D&D explicitely declared both of these to be fundamental parts of the game in its afterword, and subsequent editions hewed fairly close to the formula - even though a lot was codified and formalised later on. Moreover, other games, and other roleplayers, instinctively understood them to be a fun and interesting feature of roleplaying in general. Even very stupid people got this simple concept!

The only ones who didn't get it were some game theorists, who believed more in their imaginary constructs than the reality of gaming. They first discarded much of gaming-in-practice as irrelevant, and then tried to analyse games through methods that didn't take RPGs' basic features into account. And afterwards, they wrote off most of gaming as "dysfunctional", because it didn't conform to their theories. And they called this "research"! If I were doing this kind of "research" - rejecting reality in favour of an aesthetically attractive theory - I would be fired from my freaking job!

If you argue from the standpoint that only the formal rules matter, you are Not Getting It. You are thinking in the terms of non-RPG type games - and since you mentioned you were taking game design classes in the original thread, I suspect this is where you got the error in your thinking. As someone who enjoys designing fan-made levels for the (excellent and very enjoyable) Thief: the Metal Age computer game, I am struck by how restricted players are even in its fairly emergent environment. Things I take for granted as a participant in a roleplaying game are unavailable to me; in fact, the only thing I possess is a very limited set of moves supplemented by a few exploits (like stacking impossibly high crate towers to access unavailable locations). Even its "open" environments take several months to design and fine-tune for playing. In contrast, even a poorly run RPG gives me comparatively unlimited ability to invent new moves, move outside the GM's established world, or even the formally set rules - at the drop of a hat. If I tried to understand RPGs while thinking in the paradigm of Thief, my conclusions would be irrelevant and erroneous.

Your conclusions are irrelevant and erroneous, and will continue to be as long as you wilfully or accidentally disregard matter-of-fact features almost all popular roleplaying games possess. Mechanics are emphatically  not wholly responsible for how the game is actually played at the table. That's a fact, Ace, and there is no way around it.

Quote from: Narmicalcould you give an example of a game that is successfully at entertainment at the defiance of formal analysis?

Roleplaying games which evolved organically through incremental improvement; which is to say, all the popular ones. And, of course, I mean "at the defiance of formal analysis that has nothing whatsoever to do with the reality of roleplaying games".

Quote from: Elliot WilenIn my opinion this is why many Forge games don't really work outside a narrow culture: they depend on specialized understandings, techniques, and habits that the designers take for granted, or at best struggle to explain through informal guidelines. They're not very robust across a variety of social environments.

That's one of those insightful things which is obvious once someone else says it.

You should post to your blog more often so we can read this interesting and useful stuff.

Thread closed.

I once ran a thief guild based D&D campaign were the players spent most (if not all) of their time plotting in the shadows, backstabbing their enemies and engaging in a Undeclared War with other guilds. I rewarded roleplaying & "silent kills" . Apparently I was not playing D&D because any kind of house rules detracts from the original design intent of the game. This is what Narmical's argument boils down to. Houseruling = incoherency.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David RHouseruling = incoherency.

Then my last D&D game was incoherant because I had to decide what the effect of a cleric letting a succubus kiss him when his character had a mouth full of holy water would be. For damn sure that particular situation was never covered in any D&D related book or magazine I've read.

And we all still had fun.

Quote from: jeff37923Then my last D&D game was incoherant because I had to decide what the effect of a cleric letting a succubus kiss him when his character had a mouth full of holy water would be.

That fucking rocks.

How did you handle it?

Quote from: NarmicalYou are correct; ignoring all the other rules of DnD would be a mistake. However my interpretation of what dynamics are is not based on the combat rules alone. Rather from play experience and anecdotes of other's experiences.

Do you mean to say that hack n' slash style of play is not how many people play DnD?

The danger with using personal experience and anecdote is that people generalize the way they choose to play and assume

a) it's how everyone plays or...
b) it's the only way to play and somehow the only set up validated by the rules

That's simply not the case with traditional games. People can choose to play them hack n' slash if that's what they enjoy... they can choose to play them with strong humor elements (I do D&D in this mode quite a bit; not joke campaigns per-se, but with strong comic relief elements).

They can even, yes, choose to ride horses.

I invite you to examine your experience with D&D -- if you think through it carefully, you'll note at some point that someone at the table made a choice to bring in any element that existed.

Example: If there was combat then

a) The GM made a choice to put in adversaries for which physical violence was an acceptable solution
b) The PC chose to engage (or the GM forced an ambush -- either way, it's the choice of the people at the table)

Absent these choices the game would have been different.

It wasn't the rules or the rule books... it was the folks sitting around the room.

Quote from: NarmicalI think you missed what my intention for the pink ponies example was.

If i were to take the DnD rule book and replace the front cover with a picture of Pink Ponies. The title now reads "Pretty Pink Ponies RPG" and the back "A game about Love Happiness Pinkness and Most of all PONIES!". And i lave the rest of the book alone.

If i play this game, am i playing DnD or am i playing something different?

I say you still playing DnD.(This is what i was getting at. Now on to what you're talking about)

If I as GM invoke rule zero to give all my players pink ponies to ride on. The ponies are identical to heavy war horses in every way except that they are pink and pretty. Am i still playing DnD?

Yes

If i as GM use rule zero to give all my players pink ponies. AND pink ponies can rub there buts together to create beautiful smells. And when ponies smell beautiful smells they generate love points. Which can be spent on the adventureres to give them happness which keeps them from turning into uglys.

Am i still playing DnD?

I say not. The Mechanics have changed now.

Bringing the examples back to narrative elements in DnD

The First Example would be like running a dungeon crawl campaign. This is clearly set of dynamics supported by the unaltered book.

The Second Example would be like adding in narrative elements to make the game more than just "you start at room one, do you go left or right after beating the kobolds". Events get strung together by dialogs and quests, but basically boils down to the same things as the dungeon crawl does.

I may be confused by what you're calling Narrative elements... let's try a less surreal example:

Let's say I run a game where there's court intrigue -- the PC's have arrived at the Lord's castle and various political factions are vying for control with very little physical combat.

The game consists of the PC's talking to various NPCs as they figure out what's going on (who the sides are, what they like, etc.) and then, based on their decisions and values, take sides and act decisively (win a key tournament, etc.-- the decisive action may involve some combat, but -- again -- is not exclusively combat-related).

Throughout most of the game no dice are rolled; when they are rolled it's mostly for non-combat stuff (e.g. sneaking around).

I would say the character interaction and the heavy emphasis on setting / characterization / etc. are all 'Narrative' elements introduced by me -- the DM.

No new rules, no new mechanics. This is just as much D&D as a dungeon crawl. The narrative elements are part of the story and fully supported by the game.

Quote from: NarmicalThe Third Example would be like focusing on character motivations and goals. Awarding experience points for completion of goals or significant steps to completion. I then reward players for good roleplay, interesting dialog or compelling narration with easer completion of said goals. I in essence tie agency to subjective judgments of roleplayng rather than objective judgments of character stats.

In the third example am i still playing DnD?

I say no. because the mechanics have changed at that point.
The dynamics that come from example three, would those then be dynamics of DnD?
I say no, they are dynamics of "Narmical's DnD Variant"

Here you're back to making up rules -- technically it's still D&D (rule 0), but most people would see this as a house-rules variant. There's nothing to stop you from house-ruling D&D, but formalizing experience point schedules is, in my experience an unnecessary rule creation:

Most D&D players, though, who wanted good roleplay and dialog would simply -- and this is getting redundant, no? -- simply choose to play that way without the necessity of creating any structured framework.

They would, for example, select a group that has those same values and they would describe their character's behaviors in a manner consistent with their character's defined background, goals, etc.

This happens all the time -- many, many groups have no need of special incentives to re-enforce good roleplaying. There are people and groups who do; folks who prefer to act (for example) for the maximal tactical advantage and who (therefore) de-prioritize (for example) fidelity to character.

This is simply a choice; it's not baked into the rules. It's not part of D&D. D&D  (agnostic ally) supports whatever priorities the players bring to the table.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: Consonant DudeThat fucking rocks.

How did you handle it?

Cleric's Bluff skill check vs the succubus Sense Motive skill check to fool her into getting close enough. An oppossed grapple check with a +4 bonus for the cleric since the move was unexpected and he had beaten her Sense Motive with his Bluff. Reduced the base damage of the holy water from 2d4 to 1d4 because the cleric couldn't hold that much in his mouth, but made the result double damage since it would be internal. And I gave the cleric and party a surprise round afterwards against the succubus since it was a genius move by the player.

Quote from: Kyle AaronMostly it seems to come from the MARP games crowd. If your experience of roleplaying games is much more reading them and discussing them in mailing lists, and very little playing of them with other people, it's quite natural that you'll think system is very important - it's most of what you're experiencing.

Whereas if you're playing once or twice a week with a bunch of people and having a good time, you're going to be naturally inclined to think that the people are more important.

While I do ultimately believe the people are more important, rules still play a significant role in my fun.  I found "system" impinging on my fun in 3.5 long before I ever was on the internet or even thought about other game systems. Every time I wanted to play a non-canon type of player (like a pacifist cleric or a retired fighter who wanted to become an herbologist), I ran into rigid rules that limited my capacity to play the character I wanted.  Either stupid levels or combat dominance made it very frustrating to me, and this was with a great GM and a good group.  It's just that when all you know is D&D, you really try to follow the rules.

This propelled me to start looking around for other options.  I found GURPS, a system where I could play any character I wanted.  And that made me realize that the system does indeed make a difference.

QuoteWalkerdude said:  (like a pacifist cleric or a retired fighter who wanted to become an herbologist),

I apologize, but the knee is jerking.

Both of those can be pretty easily done using GURPS - just depends on how much detail you decide to go for.


- Ed C.

That was exactly the point of my post.  I was able to create any kind of PC in GURPS and that was the first thing that made me realize that system can make a difference.

So we agree on the three examples that i gave and what is playing DnD as written and what is a rules Variant.
Is this correct?

Quote from: -E.Example: If there was combat then

a) The GM made a choice to put in adversaries for which physical violence was an acceptable solution
b) The PC chose to engage (or the GM forced an ambush -- either way, it's the choice of the people at the table)

Absent these choices the game would have been different.

It wasn't the rules or the rule books... it was the folks sitting around the room.

That is true, but the mechanics of combat and the way they relate to the other mechanics in the game. Like primarily discussed way of advancing your character is through combat. Encourages combat in actual play. Its not required but encouraged.

Its like in Settlers of Catan. You can trade resources. You could chose to or chose not to. But the other mechanics of the game (the number of resources and the difficulty in being able to produces them all)encourage you to trade and in turn bargain.

Quote from: -EMost D&D players, though, who wanted good roleplay and dialog would simply -- and this is getting redundant, no? -- simply choose to play that way without the necessity of creating any structured framework.

They would, for example, select a group that has those same values and they would describe their character's behaviors in a manner consistent with their character's defined background, goals, etc.

This happens all the time -- many, many groups have no need of special incentives to re-enforce good roleplaying. There are people and groups who do; folks who prefer to act (for example) for the maximal tactical advantage and who (therefore) de-prioritize (for example) fidelity to character.

This is simply a choice; it's not baked into the rules. It's not part of D&D. D&D  (agnostic ally) supports whatever priorities the players bring to the table.

Cheers,
-E.

Its not simply a choice at that point. If you get a group of DnD players together to play a gave where they "wanted good roleplay and dialog". An agreement to be in the game is an agreement to play in that manner. This agreement then becomes a mechanic of the game.

In the idea of mechanics put forth by MDA is more broad than just what people usually consider "game rules". Do you consider setting a game rule? MDA considers it a Mechanic.

I mentioned this in another thread.  You don't need ANY system to roleplay.  A GM and some players can roleplay anything they can imagine with no system at all.  In that respect, System doesn't matter.

However, a game system can either get in the way of that roleplay or do things to encourage it.  

If a single round of combat requires dozens of math calculations, buckets full of dice, and about an hour of real time -- players might think twice before getting into combat compared to a system where combats are resolved in a matter of minutes.  Similarly if the system mechanically encourages or discourages certain player choices -- that will affect how they end up roleplaying in the game.

A system can also enhance the roleplaying by adding randomness and unpredictability, as well as providing a structure for players to make choices about risk and reward for their characters.  Players with characters in a highly lethal combat game will roleplay differently than those in a game where there is little risk to their characters, or more emphasis on other areas.  Roleplaying situations based on actual risk / reward in the game can be more interesting and exciting.

System doesn't matter.  System does matter.