I've been seeing a lot of games lately that are heavily structured around very specific arrangements of scenes. First you have a Dramatic Scene, then a Fighting scene, then an Intermission scene, then back to a Dramatic Scene...


Ok, so obviously I'm not singling out any particular game with that really bad dramatization of the structure, but you get the picture. I've commented somewhat lightly on this in the past with Burning Empires, which I think was my first exposure to this sort of structured play (that was... ten years ago, more or less??), and since then I had mostly seen it in Japanese RPGs, which admittedly appear to be mostly translated and introduced to American game markets by Storygamers, so perhaps some selection bias.


But I'm seeing it more, and at last I think I have better grasp on why this irritates me so much. 


Its regressive.


This is one of those 'big' innovations in game design that the story-games crowd loves to pull, but its not an innovation at all. Its not a 'new thing' its a step back, an old, largely forgotten thing... not unlike the barter-gift economy that is supposed to replace money in Eclipse Phase. Good job wiping out thousands of years of social development in the name of progress!


This isn't so drastic as all that, but perhaps I should start at the beginning.


Games, as you probably know, evolved from Wargames, from the players of said Wargames, to whit EGG and Dave Arneson and co. looking at their armies with their cool hero-leaders and deciding to explore 'what if I just had this one dude and how did he get his cool sword'...  and the very first iteration was very true to its wargaming roots. I'm not familiar with Chainmail itself, but I know it is more wargame than RPG, and I can assume that it had a strict turn structure like a wargame.


By the time we get to D&D, and in what appears to be parallel development, Traveller, RPGs were absolutely not Wargames. Turns structure combat, almost by necessity, but play virtually no other role in teh game.


And it worked. It works still.  One of the fundamental appeals of this sort of 'open' game design is that it allows you to... oh god, I'm going to use an ideologically corrupted word... Immerse yourself in the world.  You might expect to delve into dungeons, but you know... if you don't and you still have fun, that's actually cool too.


Like a vast number of gamers, I was introduced to D&D via the mechanism of a Tavern, an old guy in a hooded cloak, and a short trip to a cave that turned out to be the entrance to a dungeon. Its a cliche, but like so many players, I lived it long before i knew it was a cliche.  But no where in the rules did it say I needed to visit the old guy in teh tavern to get the dungeon quest. THat's video game logic, which RPGs never needed, because they ran with human imagination as the primarly operating system.


I have had many game sessions, as a player and more rarely as a GM, where 'nothing happened', and yet the group had fun. I recall joining a game and one of the very first sessions we just hung out in town, in one of the PC's monastery, doing shopping and chilling 'in character'. A bit weird, I suppose, certainly not an ideal game session, but no one was upset.  More recently, in my first 5e game, shortly after leaving the dungeon the rest of the session was spent hiring a donkey cart to go back and retrieve a cool looking statue I'd seen there.  Half the party decided to join in, while the other half did.. stuff.. in town.   No one was upset or bored, and these were players who had only just moved on from pure League style play and were still getting their traditional gamer legs.


Now, a defense of rigidly structured scene 'play' was that you can DO all of that with the rigidly structured scenes. Maybe the statue recovery is a 'downtime scene' (EP 2e actually has that, the only scene structure in the entire game, I belive...).


And sure, you CAN do stuff like that with a highly structured format... but why should you have to 'make it work'? 




My point is that this 'innovation' is first, a return to the wargaming structure that was abandoned for good reasons when the game became 'roleplaying' instead of 'warplaying'. 


And second that it amounts to forcing the GM and the Group to adopt a play style that is probably artificial for them. THe more coded into the rules this play style is, the less flexible the game is by nature.  It trying to force 'advice' into 'laws', and that sucks on general principle.


Structuring everything into scenes, and having a schedule for the scenes to follow, isn't necessarily a bad idea in and off itself. There are many groups and many GMs that can benefit from having a format to follow. Its training wheels for them, and some people really do benefit from having training wheels.  But when you force everyone to use the training wheels they become an obstacle, in some cases for the actual game itself, and I think increasingly that experienced players and groups will start avoiding games that force (with rules) this structure on them, simply because it increasingly gets in the way, but maybe I'm being optimistic.




THe most interesting element of all of this, to me, is that to design a game where every single moment of play is structured and codified, where every possible action must be accounted for in a flow chart of action, rather than simply allowing players to interact freely and organically with open ended tools, must actually be harder to design. It provides an additonal point of failure in the design, an additional way for the game to go wrong. It is extra work for no real return other than the twisted satisfaction of controlling how complete anonymous strangers play your game.

Have you expressed similar criticisms regarding 10 minute turns in AD&D?

It is necessary to divide games into discrete units of play for the same reason novels are divided into paragraphs. Those units could be turns, rounds, phases, encounters, innings, downs, etc. Your problem is that some games use scenes as their unit of play, but do you have a problem only with that specific kind of unit?

Quote from: Cave Bear on September 26, 2020, 01:59:43 AM
Have you expressed similar criticisms regarding 10 minute turns in AD&D?

It is necessary to divide games into discrete units of play for the same reason novels are divided into paragraphs. Those units could be turns, rounds, phases, encounters, innings, downs, etc. Your problem is that some games use scenes as their unit of play, but do you have a problem only with that specific kind of unit?

I distinctly recall referencing D&D turns in said essay. In thirty five years I have never played a game of D&D where a GM has said to a player "Ok, you are shopping this turn, now I'm going to focus on the Monk for what he is doing this turn'.  That sort of thing only comes up in Combat, and tends to include the whole party, and is arguably unavoidable.


I cut out the desire to use an example of traveller re-written in this sort of 'scene' based game design, where you would perforce have to include a Jump Scene in every session, implying that PCs were going to Jump from one star system to another in ever single game session, which is unnatural and possibly unpleasant.... and unfortunately not at all an exaggeration of how some of these 'scene' based games tend to be written.

Quote from: Spike on September 26, 2020, 01:40:53 AM
By the time we get to D&D, and in what appears to be parallel development, Traveller, RPGs were absolutely not Wargames. Turns structure combat, almost by necessity, but play virtually no other role in teh game.

And it worked. It works still.  One of the fundamental appeals of this sort of 'open' game design is that it allows you to... oh god, I'm going to use an ideologically corrupted word... Immerse yourself in the world.  You might expect to delve into dungeons, but you know... if you don't and you still have fun, that's actually cool too.

Turns are not immersive at all for me. Too boardgamey.

Quote from: Spike on September 26, 2020, 01:40:53 AM
Like a vast number of gamers, I was introduced to D&D via the mechanism of a Tavern, an old guy in a hooded cloak, and a short trip to a cave that turned out to be the entrance to a dungeon. Its a cliche, but like so many players, I lived it long before i knew it was a cliche.  But no where in the rules did it say I needed to visit the old guy in teh tavern to get the dungeon quest. THat's video game logic, which RPGs never needed, because they ran with human imagination as the primarly operating system.

Quantum caves.

Quote from: Spike on September 26, 2020, 01:40:53 AM
I have had many game sessions, as a player and more rarely as a GM, where 'nothing happened', and yet the group had fun.

If a memorable story comes from such a session, that is great stuff.

The thing I don't like about such a structure is that it forces the players into a particular approach.  In a good RPG, the gamemaster presents the situation and the players decide what type of encounter it's going to be.  It might be a fight, social interaction, a chase, a stealth encounter, comedy relief, high drama and tragedy, whatever.  If the game is structured as you described, the approach is chosen for them, greatly limiting player agency and hence (for most players I know) limiting the fun.

Quote from: Mishihari on September 26, 2020, 03:54:40 AM
The thing I don't like about such a structure is that it forces the players into a particular approach.  In a good RPG, the gamemaster presents the situation and the players decide what type of encounter it's going to be.  It might be a fight, social interaction, a chase, a stealth encounter, comedy relief, high drama and tragedy, whatever.  If the game is structured as you described, the approach is chosen for them, greatly limiting player agency and hence (for most players I know) limiting the fun.

Yep. I understand the need for structure in gaming, but it's possible to have too much structure, or to use a structure that doesn't fit what's happening in the game. I think the idea of beating the game into a specific type of storytellng scene is that.

If I try to find an upside (or at least a non-down side) to this I think about two examples.

First, framing a session or series of sessions like scenes in a movie or TV show is one way to look at how to structure an adventure. It doesn't make any sense for random dungeon crawls or spur of the moment in-game shopping, but it might make some sense for a quest-type, mission-based, or other targeted adventures. And if I think of older examples of this TV/movie/novel structure, the play examples and published adventure supplements for West End Games Star Wars D6 used movie language. Published adventures from first and second editions had a 1 page Adventure Script which the GM was expected to customize to suit their group. The adventure was structured into numbered episodes. Episodes included specific events (analogous to scenes). And the suggestions to the GM in the rules and other published materials framed the GM's task as making the game session like the movies. Even film techniques like the cutaway was suggested or provided. So it's not as if literary/film structure for adventure design is a brand new thing.

That's the most benign light I can put on the sort of structure you describe. A lot of the time the WEG structure works for Star Wars. It would probably work about equally well for similar mission based adventures where play was expected to emulate some sort of media. It's probably not a coincidence that James Bond 007 and WEG Star Wars D6 were among the earlierest examples of games that used a type of meta currency benny. I imagine that many, if not most, of the modern games targeted at structured media genre emulation also use some type of meta currency.
From experience and preference, using some kind of framing, some of the time works for me. But it doesn't work all of the time. Mandating a specific framing, all of the time would really annoy me to the point where I just wouldn't do that or GM a game that needed me to do that for the game to work.

Secondly, a rigid mandated adventure structure reminds me of the way D&D has evolved into a game where the designers attempt to explicitly describe all attributes of spells and combat maneuvers and where a 5' grid is expected, almost necessary, to fully use some of the feats, abilities, and spells that characters have in combat. 5E, far more than any other RPG I've read, is written in an attempt to rule out ambiguity and uncertainty. The rules try to define all of what is allowed, rather than suggesting what is allowed and describing what is forbidden and relying on the DM to handle any corner cases and anything not defined. And that's not new to 5E. From what I've heard, 4E was similar and similarly expected combat to be grid-based. A grid may be helpful. I find some type of map is always helpful. Having some notion of scale on the map is also helpful. But necessitating a rigid grid structure for combat to function is something I don't see as helpful in a roleplaying game with a human GM. It's too rigid and it just encourages (almost forces) the GM to restrict locations for combat to a previously drawn or selected grid. That's something that I find too restrictive as a mandate.
I have no particular opinion on whether any of these differences are progress or regress. I just know what do and don't I prefer.

Quote from: Bren on September 26, 2020, 03:36:13 PM
If I try to find an upside (or at least a non-down side) to this I think about two examples.

First, framing a session or series of sessions like scenes in a movie or TV show is one way to look at how to structure an adventure. It doesn't make any sense for random dungeon crawls or spur of the moment in-game shopping, but it might make some sense for a quest-type, mission-based, or other targeted adventures.

I agree. In fact I just reviewed Shinobigami, which makes use of this sort of structure to its advantage, though weakly.


But by its nature it is also restrictive.  Burning Empires, where I first really saw this sort of structured play, was about fighting alien body-snatchers, building defenses and alliances. The problem there was that you could only really play it the way the writer wanted you to, adversarially and as a long-term, season based game.


Now, from what I know, Pendragon makes excellent use of just this structure.


On the other hand, I've got the second edition of Part Time Gods, and I find the abstraction and scene structure, while less rigid than, say, Shinobigami, actually interferes with the core premise of the game. Its an artificial imposition on immersion, and creates a point of failure that otherwise wouldn't exist... and in PTG... it fails. Not miserably, not with a bang but a whimper... but it failed, whereas more 'naturally' structured play might have served to reinforce the theme of the game.

Quote from: Spike on September 26, 2020, 05:35:16 PM
But by its nature it is also restrictive.  Burning Empires, where I first really saw this sort of structured play, was about fighting alien body-snatchers, building defenses and alliances. The problem there was that you could only really play it the way the writer wanted you to, adversarially and as a long-term, season based game.


Now, from what I know, Pendragon makes excellent use of just this structure.

I can't speak to those other games. Pendragon does tell you to use a structure with only one adventure per season, or even per year. There's nothing mechanically preventing the group from trying to play more adventures than that. Of course if the knights take damage, slow rates of healing may prevent the group from succeeding in playing out any more adventures per season as some of them are spending weeks healing up.

The only structural rigidity is that the experience increase occurs during Winter season (which could be easily changed) and domain economics and family events are decided over the Winter season. Altering both of these might alter the tone away from the generations of Mallorean Knights of the Round Table that the game tries to emulate. And there really isn't a very compelling reason in the setting to determine economics and family events at shorter intervals of time. After all you are trying to be Knights of the Round Table, not Clerks of the King. 

Quote from: Bren on September 26, 2020, 11:38:08 PM... of Mallorean Knights of the Round Table ...

"Mallorean" ... is that a David Eddings reference, or is there some meaning to the word that I don't know?  That's an honest question, not a snide remark, just to be clear.

Quote from: Mishihari on September 27, 2020, 03:50:10 AM

Quote from: Bren on September 26, 2020, 11:38:08 PM... of Mallorean Knights of the Round Table ...

"Mallorean" ... is that a David Eddings reference, or is there some meaning to the word that I don't know?  That's an honest question, not a snide remark, just to be clear.

I assumed it was a reference to Thomas Malory and Le Morte d'Arthur.

Quote from: Naburimannu on September 27, 2020, 05:07:40 AM

Quote from: Mishihari on September 27, 2020, 03:50:10 AM

Quote from: Bren on September 26, 2020, 11:38:08 PM... of Mallorean Knights of the Round Table ...

"Mallorean" ... is that a David Eddings reference, or is there some meaning to the word that I don't know?  That's an honest question, not a snide remark, just to be clear.

I assumed it was a reference to Thomas Malory and Le Morte d'Arthur.

Your assumption is correct. 

I would also postulate, that removing initiative from earlier editions of D&D also makes combat more immersive.

Quote from: Nerzenjäger on September 29, 2020, 05:24:05 AM
I would also postulate, that removing initiative from earlier editions of D&D also makes combat more immersive.

Or from any edition of any game. "Initiative" is the most unnecessary rule in RPG history, and one of the biggest sacred cows. It's clunky, unrealistic and you don't actually need it to run combat, so it doesn't even serve a purpose from a strictly "it's a game" point of view.

You can just declare order of actions based on readiness and character proximity to their target (or whatever "makes sense" based on circumstance), and just resolve enemy actions at the same time that PCs attack them (assuming that they're ready/able to counter-attack the PCs), treating all actions from ready combatants as roughly simultaneous. And combatants that need to make preparations (slow reloading weapons like crossbows, getting into position before attacking, etc.) may have their actions interrupted by combatants who were ready at the start of the round (fast loading weapons like bows, melee already in melee reach, etc.).

That eliminates one useless roll at the start of combat and ensures everyone pays attention rather than look at their phone while their character is frozen in time waiting for their "turn".

"Roughly simultaneous" works fine in an inflating hit point system like D&D where PCs aren't usually going to end up with a simultaneous kill of PC and NPC combatant.

Roughly simultaneous doesn't work very well in a fixed hit point system. That's one reason early Runequest used a strike rank system. (Apologies if you meant a strike rank like mechanical means of figuring out who hit first when you said, "just declare order of actions." Totally with you though on the oddity of systems using any form of freeze-tag initiative.)

And roughly simultaneous totally sucks ass in a game like Boot Hill where the point is to play characters like Wild Bill Hickok or The Man with No Name* where you can gun down three bad guys before they've finished clearing leather.



* Actually his name is Joe.