The Seven-Sided Die

You might have heard this rhetorical question in a thread about competing D&D editions or on a post about some new indie game – I’ve certainly heard it many times on the front lines of the edition wars. With the open playtest for “D&D Next” coming and the verbal wrestling the fanbase will be doing over how to do it “right”, I’m sure we’ll be hearing it even more often.

The question, “who needs rules to tell them how to roleplay?” is intended to shut down the opposition. It says that they other side is being ridiculous for wanting mechanics for every damned thing that you do, at best. At worst, it says that these people clearly can’t roleplay their way out of a paper bag if they need rules for how to do it.

Like most fronts in edition wars, though, it’s really a statement of not understanding the position of the other side.

When you really break it down, a roleplaying game is just a bunch of people saying stuff. It might be saying stuff about what's in your head. It might be saying stuff about what someone else just said. It might be saying stuff about the resting state of a platonic solid after ballistic motion followed by several elastic collisions with a level surface.

In the end, roleplaying is all just saying shit.

System is the procedures you're using to determine when you have to say shit, when would be a time to consider saying some shit, and what things can have shit said about them. There's a lot of wiggle space in there, because few to no systems cover all possible opportunities to open one's pie hole to embellish the evolving player[1. Where "player" includes the GM, of course.] dialogue.

Where system matters is in what it requires you to say.

Some systems make this requirement by simply demanding it: "When the roll comes up boxcars, tell the players that they've failed the Extended Contest. They should then roll a d7 against the So Your Character Is In Deep Shit table, and tell you the consequences they've suffered by the failure."

Some systems require you to say things simply because they need you to say something, otherwise the game is going to be really boring if you don't. "So Pat, the Astorian Enforcer levels its lasing appendage at you and demands to see your papers. What do you do?" Silence would be pretty lame right about now!

System vary a lot in what they demand you say, but they vary even more in what they need you to say but leave as an exercise to the reader to figure out.

We can compare games (ad hoc—this post isn't going to sprout a bunch of categories now) according to what they leave un-demanded that needs to be said. Two games might be similar in how they need the GM to tell the players what their dice rolls mean even after they know the number they've rolled. Other games make the meaning of the roll obvious, whether through the rules or through things that the game demanded the GM say before the roll.

And here we come to the inspiration for this post: I'm tired of needing to say certain kinds of things in games I GM. Partly this is because of shifting tastes on my part, partly because I just don't have time to develop (i.e., prep) all of the things that the game needs from me in order for it to leave the region of "suck" and have a hope of approaching the exalted realms of "awesome."

One of the best reasons for not updating a roleplay-gaming blog is being too busy with the actual hobby—busy roleplaying—to have time to update.[1. I suppose I should make a post about what I've been up to, at some point. The short of it: Google Wave; reading a pile of new games; playing Diaspora; playing Savage Worlds/Shaintar; adapting Shaintar to Burning Wheel.] One of the not-so-best reasons is that I used to blog when my son napped and he's stopped doing that. Tonight is one of those rare nights where I'm not gaming or prepping for a game, I've slept well the night before, and I have a post in mind that shouldn't take more energy to write than I have left but is still worth posting.

So, on with it.

Greywulf wrote a post on why the D&D 4e Powers system is good. I didn't find myself agreeing, but he wrote a follow-up comment that illuminated a dynamic between the Powers system and player creativity that I hadn't thought about before. One commentor was unhappy with the way players seem to prefer invoking powers over creative tactics. In part j_king wrote (emphasis mine):

It seems that whenever my players get into a combat, their most difficult choices are: where to move and which power to use. And perhaps whether to use an action point once in a while. I find that it’s rather rare that they think of clever ways to gain the advantage over a monster; especially if the encounter is balanced so that the party is likely to win. More often than not, once an encounter gets past the 15 minute mark it devolves into “Great cleave, 18 — hits, 12 damage. Marked.”

Could just be uninspired players. However, I think the system could do more to encourage more imaginative thinking rather than purely tactical.

To which Greywulf replied:

4e does rather hand it to you on a plate, doesn’t it? I think the key is for the GM to present situations that can’t be solved using their Powers alone – a 100′ chasm or trap’n'monster setup, for example which just begs for the players to stretch their imagination a notch. Once they get the hang of using their brains rather than just what’s written on their character sheet, it will soon become second nature.

The parts I emphasised are about the role the character sheet has as a tool for creative play. A character sheet has a lot of stuff on it, and what that stuff is varies tremendously from system to system. Often enough most of it is just pre-crunched math that is collected on the sheet for easy reference. Increasingly in the games I read and play I'm seeing another category of stuff present on the characters sheet, things I'm going to call levers.

Moving the world

Levers are things that a player can look at on their character sheet and yank on for effect in the game, often (but not necessarily) as a response to a problem that needs a solution. One of the most common types of lever is the skill. How often, as a GM or player, have you seen a player confronted with a crisis immediately look down to their character sheet to scan their list of skills for the magic bullet that will solve the problem? The player is looking for a lever—something they can yank to make the game do what they would rather it do.

Skills aren't the only kind of lever that show up in systems. An example of a lever that has mixed mechanical and story effects are Aspects in FATE. These are short phrases like "Twitchy as a ferret" that can be called on to influence a roll in the player's favour, or to bribe the player into making a choice that's probably not in their character's best interest for the sake of a more interesting story.

Power are a major type of lever in D&D 4e. Powers are the primary mechanic through which characters can have significant effects on the world and through which players can have significant mechanical impact on the game system. There are a lot of options, and the character advancement system is set up so that Powers are a large part of defining and refining a character. For any given situation in combat it's likely that the character has (or could have taken) a Power that would optimally exploit or solve the situation. Need to whack a badguy but you're a bit low on hit points? If you've got a Power that strikes and lets you use a healing surge, that's a lever you can pull to solve that dilemma.

Creative impulses

It might be obvious by now what I think this has to do with creativity. When you've got a problem on the one hand and a lever that fits the problem on the other, the obvious choice is to pull it. In a game with few or no levers there are few or no ready-made answers to the game situations, while in a game with many and varied levers there is always going to be one or more that are good enough to apply to the situation.

Whether pulling that lever results in a creative addition to the game or not depends greatly on the game system that lever is part of, and I think this is part of why the Powers system in 4e leaves me cold. Not only does it give a player many levers to pull in combat, but the system doesn't ask anything more of the player after the lever is pulled. You can get creative with the use and description of a Power, but you don't have to in order to make the game's engine run.[1. To be sure, this is a benefit in other ways. For instance, the tactical aspects of combat run very smoothly because you only have to make a choice of Power and then the mechanics follow smoothly from that choice.] 4e provides lots of levers, which makes it easy to just pull a lever. Of course this could be waved away as an example of lazy play—but who's going to stop that lazy player, and haven't we all been that player at some point?

So levers can be creativity inhibitors.[6. One of the most uncontroversial examples of a lever that greatly inhibits creativity is Diplomacy in D&D 3.x. Part of why that skill is so reviled is because, as written, it short-circuits any roleplay that is about conflicting PC and NPC interests. With a high enough Diplomacy, any time the player wants they can pull that lever and make the game instantly less interesting to everyone else.] Given a choice between McGuyvering up a solution to the challenge and using a Power that is obviously going to do the trick, pulling that Power's lever is going to win out for most players in most circumstances.

That's not to say that levers are inherently bad. They're not. A system can also provide levers as a kind of story bribe: "Here, you can pull this thing for powerful effect, but before it does its magic you have to add a bit to the story yourself…" Levers of that sort work as a bribe for the player to add to the ongoing story because their in-game effect is partly undefined and needs that bit of player storytelling in order to have a defined effect.[2. How levers can require story in order to work is a matter of their mechanics. In Burning Wheel for example, in order to earn Artha (an important fate-point currency) the player has to make decisions that further their character's goals and beliefs. In order to pull a lever like the belief "I am the greatest swordsman alive" so that it pays out in Artha, you have to do things like challenge the king's champion to a duel. You don't get the mechanical effect of the lever until you create some story, because the act of creating that bit of story is what pulls the lever. I'm sure there are more and better examples, but forgive me my blogging rustiness.] Levers like that have a coin slot—you can pull the lever, but you have to pay into the story before the lever will let you effect the game.

Which leaves the other way that levers can encourage players to be creative: by not existing. A lever that isn't there is a lever that doesn't offer a short-cut to solving the problem. Are you an untrained schmuck with a rusty sword and nary a stealthy skill to your name peering down on the four bugbears guarding the cave entrance you need to get into? Without a skill or a fighting chance there are no levers to provide obvious solutions, so you have to get creative.[3. I'm not saying sneaking past the bugbears or slaughtering them is a badwrongfun thing here—I love me some steathly characters and enjoy the more fighty parts of this hobby fine—just that not having the two most obvious answers of "fight" or "sneak by" available means that an unorthodox solution is the only option left.] Shoving boulders onto them from above, luring them away with a clever strawman silhouetted against the moon, or some other unorthodox solution is going to be fun to play and memorable after the game.

Full circle

Which brings me back to the insight that j_king and Greywulf's exchange gave me. The abundance of easy levers on a D&D 4e character sheet don't prevent creative play, but by being there they make it easy to just pull a lever rather than get creative, and the system doesn't make up for that damping effect on creativity by making those levers require creativity after pulling them. Since I'm personally not interested in the tactical combat side of D&D 4e, the abundance of purely mechanic levers in 4e explains why as a system it doesn't excite me.

Greywulf's suggestion to j_king that the way to solve that is to set up situations where Powers aren't the answer to the challenge is a good one for people who already like 4e but want more opportunities for creative problem-solving. From my perspective, the Powers system is what makes 4e different from the stacks of other games I own—having to write scenarios to work around that core of the game seems to me like a reason to use a different system. As I wrote in my comment on Greywulf's post, the core system of a game shouldn’t be an obstacle to creativity that needs to be GMed around to make the gameplay good, and the contents of the character sheet should be inspirational rather than creativity-damping.

There are a lot of other half-formed thoughts bumping around in my head about how the lever metaphor can be used to understand what makes different games tick, but those will have to wait.[4. Now I remember why I haven't been posting. This took the better part of three hours to write, link, and shoddily proofread. Three hours used to not seem like a lot, but now that it's my entire post-toddler evening it seems like a lot more.]

This is the post I should have written about the Rust Monster. Reading a comment by Chgowiz that he left at the Gamer Dome last month made me realise that I am too forceful when I write about 4e. I tend to write in reaction to the most inflammatory and content-free boosters of 4e rather than the reasonable, even-keeled players of the latest edition of D&D; unsurprisingly my own writing on the subject reflects that inflammatory rancor. It feels justified when compared to the bile-spewing commentors and bloggers, but it's petty and childish when measured by the standard set by the more gracious bloggers. Besides which, swilling that venom for the amount of time it takes to write a blog post can't be good for my well-being.

I'm going to try for analysis instead of trying to viciously savage 4e as if it kicked my dog. (Feedback on where I fail or succeed is welcome.) This won't be opinion-free, because the reason to analyse 4e is to better understand why I like the games that I do and what about 4e makes it not a game I like.

The version of the Rust Monster in 4e is a significant divergence, mechanically, from earlier versions. This is largely because there is no niche within 4e that the old Rust Monster could usefully fill. The way that the creature was rewritten reveals something about the design space that 4e has delimited. Certain things that existed in previous versions simply don't fall within those borders anymore; because the Rust Monster had to be brought from outside the design space to inside, how it has changed in the process reflects the borders of that design space.

In 3e and earlier, the Rust Monster represented a certain amount of risk. It's mere existence in the Monster Manual put characters at risk of losing good magic items since it could ambush them at any moment. If the DM wasn't a dick and used the Rust Monster in a way that made it a clear danger that could be engaged or not, it still presented a risk: give up on whatever the the Rust Monster is blocking or risk having your precious stuff eaten.

4e's Rust Monster eliminates its role as a source of risk. It's a specialised debuff that only works on PCs already benefitting from certain kinds of buffs. Its mere existence in the game canon presents no more risk than any other creature that can temporarily reduce the effectiveness of the PCs. Actually encountering a Rust Monster is not so much a threat as it once was. Fleeing is certainly not going to be the first and smartest choice in 4e. In fact, if there is an item that a PC wants to disenchant, there's incentive for engaging the Rust Monster in combat and deliberately getting that item eaten.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this does not make the Rust Monster a risk. Certainly there is some risk, but it's only the risk of a temporary debuff, which is a run-of-the-mill thing in 4e. Comparing that Rust Monster to previous versions, I'm going to call a temporary debuff no risk at all.

For how I want to play, risk is a necessary ingredient. Risk provides the opportunity to make meaningful choices that distinguish one character from the next. There are other kinds of choices in 4e, especially in character building and optimisation, but those sub-games aren't why I play roleplaying games. Those choices don't reveal anything about the character, just about the player. What is this character willing to risk, to get what they want? What ideals do they (or don't they) choose to fight for? What do they fear so much that flight is the only reasonable course of action? Are they willing to risk the Winged Plate of Acoden meeting an ignoble end in the belly of a Rust Monster in order to pursue their destiny like a hero? Or will they run like a mercenary? Are they willing to backtrack, stash their metal equipment in another room, and risk meeting something nastier than a Rust Monster or having their gear discovered by enemies before they reclaim it?

Risk also makes rewards meaningful. Part of what doesn't suit me about 4e is that reward is assumed. A PC is owed rewards for the mere fact of surviving. They don't have to make good decisions, take risks for a chance to get lucky, explore beyond the obvious, or try clever things. As long as they find and kill badguys, the treasure will be placed in front of them where they can't miss it. "Reward" that is guaranteed, that is not earned, is no longer a reward for anything.

The Rust Monster is another expression of this philosophy that treasure is a right for adventurers, not something that is earned. The old Rust Monster made sense in 2e and earlier because treasure wasn't a right, but something earned by playing a smart adventurer and as easily lost through poor play. 3e was an interesting wrinkle by that measure. It retained the idea of rewards being something earned, given that there were nasty Rust Monsters and that it was possible to "miss" finding all the treasure, but also assumed that the PCs would have access to a certain amount of magical items according to their level. 3e was really a hybrid game, harking back to its roots in AD&D but also foreshadowing what was to come in 4e.

In the end, risk-free entertainment isn't something I'm interested in. I don't think it makes for a very good roleplaying game, although I can see how it can be straight-up entertaining in its own right. There's a certain amount of sense to the idea that it's not fun to have your vehicle for enjoying the game seriously hampered, but that does assume that the audience isn't interested in choices and consequences, just the raw entertainment of following a hero with a manifest destiny. I prefer that my choices make a difference in the destiny of my characters, for good or ill. That is what I find entertaining.

This is something I've been kicking around for a while now. I've referenced the idea in a few posts already, but I haven't really developed the idea anywhere yet. I started writing another post and realised that I needed to write this one first.

I realised the importance of how a ruleset positions itself relative to the fiction from playing D&D 4e. (Don't worry, this won't go into rant territory, especially since this subject is what made me realise that my not liking 4e is a matter of my own temperament rather than due to any faults in the game itself.) I didn't like what was happening in that campaign, and my understanding of how we were playing and of how the ruleset interacted with our preferred play styles has been slowly developing since.

4e's attitude to the fiction is that it's interchangeable. The fiction might not be interchangeable to the players, but the rules will smoothly function pretty much regardless of what fictional fluff you dress them up in.[1. This is an advantage of the system to some people. I'm not saying they're playing wrong, only that it's a disadvantage for how I want to play, as we'll see.] I know that many people object to the term "fluff", and I tend to agree with them, but in this case I think the term is accurate. 4e makes a hard distinction between crunch and fluff, and they only intermingle during the design process, whether that is the original design of the class Powers or the process of homebrewing new stuff.

For my own enjoyment I prefer a system that has a constant and fluid exchange between the fiction and the mechanics during play, with fiction getting the first shot at defining the game reality. In order to do that the system has to let me make choices based directly on the fiction rather than on the mechanics. The mechanics of such a system support and help adjudicate those fiction-based decisions. In short, I must be able to make reasonable decisions based on my character's understanding of the world they inhabit, and know that the mechanics will support my choice.

In contrast, there are systems that require rules handling before the player can decide on a course of action. 4e is the nearest example to hand. In combat, you can't say, "I close with the troll and hack off the arm holding its victim!" Actually, you can say that, but I doesn't mean anything yet. You still have mechanical decisions to make after such an announcement: whether that's a normal move, a shift, or a charge; which squares your character will pass through (possibly triggering traps or opportunity attacks); and which Power will be used for the attack. Similarly, drinking a healing potion isn't a decision that can be made absent of mechanical considerations in 4e: you have to have healing surges left for a healing potion to have any effect.

In such a system, there is no direct and unambiguous translation between a fictional declaration and the mechanical implementation of the action. The way the system works, my focus on making a statement of fiction does not move the game forward, but actually slows it down.

Sometimes the mechanics of such systems actually contradict the fiction, such as in the case of the healing potion. At those times my decision cannot be based on the fiction, as the healing surge mechanics have priority over the fictional "truth" that drinking this magic potion will heal wounds.[1. Some of you may have houseruled this already. That's great, but my point still stands: There are systems—4e is one of them—that put mechanics before fiction.] I have to reference the mechanics first in order to make a "good" choice about whether I should use the potion now or later. The fiction is secondary, and possibly irrelevant to making the choice.

...

Having written all that, I saved it and left it alone to simmer before I wrote the conclusion only to quite serendipitously discover a post of Joshua's from two months back on the very same subject. In RPG Rules and the Direction of Causality he describes how causality can flow either from the game world to the rules, or from the rules to the game world. It can never be both at the same time, although play styles may switch back and forth and a single system can contain both rules that respect the game world and rules that insist on superseding it.

As usual, Joshua cuts right to the heart of things while I beat around the bush, so go read his post. Essentially, I'm saying here that I prefer that causality flow from the fiction to the rules, and that I prefer systems that have a majority of rules that support that style of play.

There's no pithy term that I can extract from that article, unfortunately. Scott of A Butterfly Dreaming wrote a post entitled The Rules Gap in response to Joshua's post, in which he coined the terms "game fits the rules" and "rules fit the game" to describe the distinction. I find that ambiguous, and I think that ambiguity is why I disagree with where he goes from there. I suppose I'll stick with "fiction first", or just addressing causality explicitly.

Last year I wrote that skill systems aren't always a good idea. That piece primarily advocates the old-school approach to handling character interaction with the environment, in which the players' descriptions of what their characters try to do determines what they find, rather than the result of a roll. Since I wrote that I've left behind the D&D ghetto[1. "D&D ghetto" isn't supposed to be derogatory in this use, just descriptive. mxyzplk describes the D&D ghetto well and fairly: "It’s the only game they know, or the only game they’ve played, or the only game they can find a group to play. ... As a result, many different groups try to get their favorite jones – deep immersion, or gritty realism, or cinematic cool, or gamist challenge – using it." The upshot is that many people "know" that D&D does their play style just fine and can't imagine it being flawed, or that there could be any point to using any other system. I know—I speak from experience!] and have used different systems, most of which include skill systems. Many of these I've enjoyed, and I've found that the inclusion of perception- or search-type skills haven't harmed the immersion I aim for or dissuaded players from creatively interacting with the environment. I wasn't able to put my finger on the difference between "bad" uses of skill systems and "good" uses, and it's been nagging at me for a while.

Randall's post Old School Gaming and Skills at the RetroRoleplaying Blog made me realise what the difference is. The key is what I call a "fiction first"[1. The term "fiction first" is clumsy. Coming up with pithy names has never been my strength, but I haven't been able to find an established term for it. If anyone knows of a good set of terms for games that use the mechanics to represent the fiction, and games that treat the mechanics as the "physics" that determines the fiction, I'd love to read about it.] approach to gameplay: the player describes what their character is doing in ficitonal terms, and only then does the GM call for an appropriate check. The difference between old-school play with and without skills is just in how the GM follows-up the player's narration. In a system with skills, a skill roll can be used to decide where the game goes next; in a system without skills, the GM follows up with additional information, and questions that refine how the character proceeds in their intent.

What made it click for me is that defining the fictional actions first, and only then figuring out what skill(s) to use and how hard it will be, is a central and system-critical feature of how the Burning Wheel's skill system functions. I realise now that much of the "bookkeeping" feel of my last session of Burning Wheel was due to my missing this point. We didn't tend to describe the really high-level events of that session that spanned months, instead just figuring out what the next step in the plan was and sorting out the mechanics to get it done. It felt like bookkeeping sometimes because at those points we were just handling mechanics without any related narration. Although it's not an old-school system, the danger that skipping narrative opportunities presents is the same in that it relies on the narrative just as much—if in a different way—than old-school play does.