your response is sort of what I mean.  Take, for instance, Lord of the Rings.  The fellowship seems like a classic group of adventurers, but there is a huge gap in power between the hobbits and the human warriors, between the humans themselves and the dwarf and elf, and then they are all miles behind Gandalf.  This might not matter much if you are trying to make a good story.  But there aren't many players who would volunteer to play Boromir, to have a few dramatic, great scenes, and then die one third of the way through the story, and let the rest of the players play it to conclusion.

There are groups that play that sort of thing, but in my experience that relies a lot on trust between players who know each other and know that they aren't going to get screwed, and are trying to make the game fun for everyone.  That is something that is sadly very rare on RPOL.  Most players simply don't know each other well enough to care if the game isn't fun for someone else, and are usually out to make the game as fun for themselves as they can.  Because when things stop being fun, many, many players and GMs on this site just quit.

You might look at the variety of "story games" that are out there.  I'm not super familiar with the details of a lot of them, but I think some of them utilize mechanics that aren't about straight up "winning and losing" in the traditional sense, but rather getting to a predetermined scene outcome, with any mechanics dictating how that outcome is achieved rather than if it is.

Something along those lines seem to be more about what you seem to be describing over the more "traditional" RPG.

I think that collective storytelling vs open-world board-game is a fascinating continuum (and I do think it's a scale rather than two polar destinations). Building my own ruleset I'm experimenting with tricks like rewarding failure, but never success, with experience, and encouraging players to take more agency with generating and describing bonuses and penalties to tests - letting them decide when they can afford to fail, when they really want to succeed, but never taking that random element of dice out of the game.

However even that sort of method of using familiar tools to push towards an unfamiliar philosophy seems to confuse people.

Ultimately I've always felt that player agency and the ability to influence setting, rather than mechanics, is the strength of a pen and paper RPG, so I think this is the direction you've got to move in to legitimately celebrate the places where the medium performs better than, say, a more stratified and strategic board-game, or a more streamlined and fast paced video game. The freedom to tell a story reactively and collectively is what pen and paper (and especially PbP) does better than any other format, so I totally get the urge to celebrate and empower that function.

That said, letting PCs choose to face defeat isn't the same as divorcing them from the role of a single character. I think that if you reduce it down so far that you just have a room (or game) full of GMs you just end up with a too-many-cooks situation. What makes RPGs work as a form of collective storytelling is the clear delineation of roles and responsibilities within telling a collective story. Personally I think it's more about shifting the boundaries of those roles than eliminating them to achieve a more plot-focused game.

But again, its utterly alien to most players who are used to a "game" being something you try to win. The term "game" is actually more problematic than "role-playing" in that purely semantic sense. And I do think the appeal of non-games is much narrower.

I'm not a massive fan of Fate in play (though I've never GMed it) but I will say it's the closest example of functionally and popularly embracing a more collective-story focused game I've encountered.

If you look deeply at the mechanics of DnD, they are designed to played in a game where the goal is the expression of character agency.

No one does that in dnd either.

Playing for theme is something more recent, but I've only seen it in games like fiasco. I personally don't like playing for theme because most of the time it means acting brainless, not just stupid but acting without really thinking, and I don't like that.

I don't really care for the common way of playing either though.

You could play dnd according to the rules in a variety of ways and while they each would superficially look the same, playing each of those ways would be very different experiences.

Thus the thing I dislike the most though is the notion that a system can be played in only a very limited number of ways, and I believe this notion is the reason behind a lot of issues, arguements, and complaints about rpgs.

I think D&D in particular has a lot of aspirations that it doesn't directly encourage through its mechanics, so that if you forget that you read those more philosophical paragraphs and just become experienced that playing the game, it's at its most effective modelling that more traditional, competitive, gamey mode of play. Yes, it's robust enough that the system itself is a tool for many modes of play, but it also heavily rewards narrative progress and paints the DM (even by implication of title) as a "master antagonist" figure. Intentionally or not there's a lot of encouragement at a fundamental level to approach what we're calling "traditional" play.

That said, 5e really starts to put its money where its mouth is in beginning a gentle shift towards that more shared-plot-centric approach.

I don't know Fiasco, but I'd love you to unpack where you see character agency as a focus on a mechanical level in D&D a little more - I might be missing something there.

Edit: No sarcasm there - I'm genuinely interested. It's hard not to sound smarmy in type.
This message was last edited by the user at 04:12, Wed 02 Aug 2017.

I guess my point was that a novel is done for a "distant" reader, while a game is for the players.  Watching another person's game can be very dull, because you're not invested in the characters that much.
What you're suggesting is a game that's meant for spectators, one that's more exciting to watch than to play, essentially.

And I'd argue that games set in Star Wars and Middle Earth isn't about players recreating "those stories", it's more about "what we'd do if we were characters in those universes".
Many of us would like to be Han Solo, Boromir, Galdalf, and other characters, but we don't want to make the same mistakes they would.
Sure, we can play a conflicted character, but we turn on other characters or flee from battle "because that's what happened in the movie", then we're just annoying the other players.



Alternatively, have you tried the Smallville Roleplaying System?  It's a game system that plays like a tv drama, and gives bonuses for causing conflict and having issues with other player characters.

I think this is largely reliant on the players, regardless of the game.  Yes, some games have mechanics that encourage it to a higher degree...but if the players aren't into it, the game's not going to last.  And I've been in several groups with people who were quite willing to play the fool, or have things go wrong and just roll with it, because that was what the setting made them feel was appropriate.

I'm in a freeform game right now...some of the players are very good about fitting the theme of the game, regardless of whether or not it means their character looks good.  Others are...not so good at that.  Personally, I like it when my character doesn't always sail through stuff easily and things have to get a little grim and gritty.  I'm the kind of guy that a GM could hand Boromir to, and say, "Okay...he's a good guy, but a little bit of an ass...but I want you to make sure he ends up being a hero, okay?  Even if it kills him..."  I love stuff like that.

I love that philosophy, but I' tweak it and say I'd love a player to come to me and say "Okay...he's a good guy, but a little bit of an ass... but I want you to give him an opportunity to be a hero.  Even if it kills him..."

Then we'd have a discussion about the character he'd have waiting in the wings, and how/when to introduce the next person that player's invested in.

I'm not keen on killing characters because it's realistic. But if that's a satisfying end to a character arc, and it's at least partially the player's call as to when and how, then I think it's deeply satisfying for all involved. And I think if a player portrays a character, then it only follows that that player dictate his/her character's arc - be that heroic or tragic.
This message was last edited by the user at 04:55, Wed 02 Aug 2017.

All of this revolves around trust between the players and the GM.  I think you can play great version of this sort of game if you all trust each other and that's what you want.  The difficulty comes from not knowing if the other players and the Gm will live up to their end of the bargain, so to speak.

It would be crappy to be Boromir, only to discover there wasn't a good way to get you back into the game, and the rest of the players had two more books to play through.

Agreed, but trust's always going to be a component of any collective creative project. I suppose the question becomes do you think we can mechanize a game in such a way that it gives the player some form of assurance that they can trust a GM to be their ally on that sort of character journey, rather than take advantage if it?

Edit: Is it (for instance) appropriate for a player to say "this is the story I want to tell" to the GM during character creation, and for both individuals to agree that they will cooperate to tell that story while the GM weaves the overarching tale. If their aspiration for that character changes then it's up to the player to reach out to the GM and say "new plan... is that okay?"
This message was last edited by the user at 05:06, Wed 02 Aug 2017.

that's a good question, and honestly if I knew a sure fire way to do it on rpol, I'd tell you.

As others have suggested, this sounds similar to freeform collaborative storytelling. I've tried and enjoyed both styles of play, but I agree that finding RPG players who are willing to play a role in the manner of a stage/movie actor is difficult.

I've seen many 'Int 5 Barbarian Fighters' coming up with strategic master plans, and there are very few players who would play a 'Boromir', destined to exit in Act 1. RPG players want to write their own destinies. As you say, they are as invested in their game character as they are invested in their RL selves, and they usually play a game to WIN.

There are a few people I've met here who might want to collaborate on writing such a story theme, but for most gamers, playing a tragic loser is anathema to their escapism. They lose out to enough impossible odds in RL; often, they come here to don a role in which they can win for a change.

With the right choice of player (player = actor, rather than player = contestant), and an up-front agreement of the intended outcome of the enterprise, I'm sure it could be done, and probably done well. However, I suspect you should be recruiting your 'players' from an actors guild rather than from a role-playing game site, and in my experience dice games and acting games attract different players.

If you want to create a sculpture, you recruit a sculptor, if you want to create a painting, you recruit a painter. They're both valid works of art, but they need a different skill set and mindset.

So the sentiment is that mechanics (let's call them 'dice') bring a variability that is supposed to complicate the success/failure model, and storytellers seek to provide that complication themselves, whereby invalidating the dice?

Valid.

What if we reframed the role of dice as being "to inspire the storyteller away from cliché, with the intent of making plot and the journey to a predetermined conclusion more reactive and unpredictable"?

That way each player (including the GM) has a destination they're guiding the game towards, and mechanics simply make that journey unexpected an interesting rather than inevitable and time-consuming.

Assuming that's the best way we can phrase that aspiration (and I'm certain it's not) then what mechanics would best achieve that? And how can we communicate that aspiration for play without pontificating to the point of alienating our players?

Because I think the fact that so many people are already mourning the impossibility of this kind of play demonstrates a desire (or aspiration) for it amongst a group of (presumably regular) hobbyists.

A few things I've tried (with very limited success):

Award Experience for Failure Only: The only way to get character experience is to fail a test. This happens every time you fail a test. The more voluntary the failure the greater the reward. This means that success becomes its own reward, but there are different rewards for failure too.

Require Character Arcs in Generation: Ask players to tell you what the character's story is during character generation. Agree that if you approve this then this is a contract that you will use your agency as GM to honour. Provide examples that focus on character development rather than mechanical development. This makes players think about their character's story as something to actively portray, not statically experience or cater to in their backstory.

Let Players Manage their own Variables: I use a system with a D&D 5e-like system of situational Advantage and Disadvantage. I encourage players to define both, introducing new elements to a scene (in a manner similar to Fate). This encourages players to take some agency with the world, encouraging them to expand the borders of their perceived prerogative.

Again, success in the stated aspiration has been middling, but not wholly negligible.

The opening post basically describes Torchbearers in a nutshell.

Torchbearer uses a combination of nonlethal afflictions, fail-forward mechanics, and carefully designed rules regarding stakes and consequences in conflicts in order to enable scenarios where the PC group gets badly bludgeoned, but can largely be expected to survive.  (In fact, as GM, if you don't explicitly state that death is on the line at the outset of a test or conflict, you don't get to kill the PC.  But, as the game says, "death is the easy way out.")

Your goal, as adventurers, is to scrape up enough cash to rent a room at the inn to sleep off the hard knocks, so you can survive the next adventure to scrape up cash.

However, the advancement mechanics, the system of checks and recovery, the expectation of fail-forward, the condition system, and the overall theme and tone of the game make failure and enduring setbacks a really intrinsic part of the game.

Torchbearer rewards you for using your traits against yourself.  A warrior with Heart of Battle can use the trait to gain bonus dice for fighting fiercely.  But she can also use the trait against herself - for instance, being eager to jump the gun when she thinks she's spotted, thus spoiling a Stealth check, or diving too deep into a crowd of enemies for her allies to help out.  Using those traits against yourself generates really important resources that you use to recover when you camp or go back to town, or that you can use to help your character advance in skills.  Crucially, you can also hand those resources around to the rest of the group, making your failed roll not a zero sum for the rest of the PCs.

My players were incredibly jealous of one player who I gave the "one-eyed" trait, after his face got chewed off by a rat.  Because One-eyed is so easy to work into a flaw, it was really easy for him to use against himself (running into trees, getting blindsided, scaring the locals) and stack up a lot of checks...
This message was last edited by the user at 07:00, Wed 02 Aug 2017.

Torchbearers sounds interesting. Is it not a bit of a demoralizing slog when increasing difficulty is facilitated by decreasing capability? How does it model non-dungeon-crawl experiences?

Thanks for all the responses. This is the conversation I was hoping to have. I probably won't respond to everyone directly, as that would probably become annoying.

I about smacked my head when Nintaku mentioned Fiasco. Yes, that's it exactly, and if I still kept those books around, I might have remembered. Fate comes close, but when I've played it it still devolved into "survival optimization" for the most part, with fate points standing in for hit points. Fiasco is hard to run well, because it's not easy to see how things tie together, but it's the sort of "here's where my character should have a Very Bad Problem because I (or the rest of the table) think that's appropriate to the genre" concept I'm aiming for. And Fiasco could clearly give me that, so I have my answer, but this is still fun to discuss.

Trust: yes, this is key. Also: buy-in, which is the mindset behind deciding something makes sense even though it doesn't make objective sense, which is the overarching basis of most fiction.

The Fellowship: The go-to example is Boromir. He's awesome, almost betrays everyone, and then goes out in a blaze, and the question is: who would decide that for themselves, especially if that means being taken out of the game. Well, what if it didn't? Characters do die in games, despite all the fudging we know goes on, and arrangements are made to keep players involved. Yes, trust comes in here, but a GM can explain up-front the provisions for replacement characters. If LotR were a game, it seems like Boromir's player would immediately step into Éomer's shoes.

Boromir's the go-to, but what about Gandalf? He's mainly the example of the high-side of the power disparity but he bites it even sooner than Boromir, in an even cooler scene. Even if there wasn't immediately another slot for that player (or if the promise was of bringing the character back in a few sessions), that's a pretty fun scene to be in the middle of, and I think we could find takers. Trust would have to be high, yes, my point is just that it doesn't seem too unreasonable to imagine players being willing to have their character go out with a bang.

I haven't done it yet, but I've considered adding a step to character creation for my players: Please answer the question "How does your character die?" Yes, there would be bugs to work out in terms of keeping suspense (though as is pointed out in this thread, death isn't the only way to lose), but the point would be that the player get to decide how they want to see their character go out, and if we can bring that about, then we do. If not, that character keeps going, possibly only wishing for death rather than what it's currently enduring in the adventuring life. And if the circumstances arise, it's not binding; maybe the player comes up with another preferred way to die, or maybe the circumstances will come up again.

Playing for theme meaning being brainless: That's only really true of stuff that's not well done, the stuff that people tend to mock, and it further assumes that the players only get to decide things for their character, which is standard but not a hard limit. We roll our eyes at the horror characters who investigate the strange noise in the dark: they're "brainless." We cheer Ripley as she says "Take off and nuke the site from orbit." Of course, that's brilliant, that's what any sane person would do.

But the movie doesn't end there. Most people wouldn't want the movie to end there.

We know how the movie ends. If that happened to someone in a game, if their smart idea got scrapped by GM fiat (assuming here that there's nothing the group could have done to prevent what happened; why didn't they call to warn the others? Oh, well.) I think we can all imagine the complaints. But that kind of scene is very important for adventure films: something has to go wrong. In the dumb films, it's a dumb thing that shouldn't have happened. In a smarter film, it's not anyone's fault, exactly, if just needed to happen to keep the stakes in place, and to keep the movie interesting.

That's what I'm after. While players love finding the solution that kills an encounter, nukes it from orbit, that's only one specific kind of theme. Another theme is "Here's the smart thing to do, but something prevents that, because the smart thing is less interesting." In real life, smart cops wait for back up, and it's generally not cool when they don't. In (good) fiction, we all nod our heads at the reason the cop can't wait for backup and we're glad for the scene or scenes that ensue because they didn't.

I'm suggesting that the game is meant for spectators, but for a very specific group of spectators: the players at the table who, yes, are also participants. The ideal is a game that is not only fun to play (to solve and over come problems) but is also fun to watch as it's unfolding, with things happening to keep the tension up, despite the best laid plans. Sometimes game are both boring to play through and boring as a story. Beating up on the last sad kobold from an ambush is, for me, one such example. As a GM and even as a player prefer to simply gloss over such a foregone conclusion and move on. But if someone could offer me an interesting alternative, such as the kobold slipping away in its desperation, resulting in a chase that leads to a momentary splitting of the party, but an amazing chance discovery or opportunity, then I'd play that scene out to the hilt.

I've thought about what nuric said, about us wanting to play characters in our favorite stories, but not make the same "mistakes." I get that that's a drive for many fans: they want to see a slightly different story, which would make more sense to them, or just have a different outcome. That's similar to the issue of having to be "brainless" to make certain stories work, and I don't think that's necessary. I think the challenge in this kind of a playstyle is to find ways to allow a cool situation to unfold without anyone feeling like they dropped the ball. That will vary for everyone, but anyone who can think of an adventure character they think does the best they can and still gets into trouble can, I think, do this in their games.

(As a side issue, I'm okay with the Int 5 barbarian coming up with strategic master plans. I'll admit that it's easier if the player is consistent, but if they want to start out being able to strategize, that's fine with me. Just because they can't cast a spell to save their life and don't know their history books, doesn't mean they can't strategize.)

I like the idea of experience for failure, and a few systems have handled that well. I believe Call of Cthulhu's system only let you test to advance a skill if you had failed at it, with the balance to that presumably being that the failure has to mean something when it happens. I believe Dungeon World gives experience on a failure too, and in that game the meaning of failure is completely in the GM's hands - though at the same time, players can offer or ask to roll against Bonds to help bring failure about, if someone happened to want more experience that badly. No, I've never seen that done.

Glad to hear about Torchbearer. I'll look into that, if I have a chance.

I feel I've been skirting this, but I haven't said it: in addition to trust and buy-in, I'm assuming another element. That element is narrative control by the players, the enabling of the players to establish elements of the setting and the fiction, and even the immediate circumstances. Fate uses points to offer limited control, such as deciding some detail is present. I'm talking about that scale of things, not of having multiple GMs at the table, at least not simultaneously, and certainly not at odds with each other. I'm talking about the means to add to a situation (not simply negate or deny it) in a way that brings it around to something worthwhile. Back to Boromir: as raw a deal as he gets, it would be worse if Aragorn came upon him dead from some stray arrow. The player, or any player, could and one hopes would establish that there are many of his slain foes around him, that's it looks like one arrow but is really many, and that he has time for some awesome last words. In other words, ideas from the table that make everyone say "Yes, that's what this scene needed."

Thanks again. This was a jumbled reply, and I welcome more responses.

I notice that so many of the systems we're pointing to as successes are so specifically targeted at one kind of story. Perhaps when we talk about 'mechanics' that encourage this we're talking about plot-focused specificity rather than systemic flexibility?

I encourage players to think about how their story ends. I've been plotting with one of them in my main campaign for another for how their faction becomes unplayable for some time and

---

Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
I'm about to kill of the main persona for another quite soon

---

Several players have swapped the main persona for their factions in the name of the plot.

What's made this feasible for us is making it less about the characters and more about the cultures (it's a domain campaign), but I've tried to have conversations about how players die, or retire, or experience epiphany in more character-focused campaigns too

It can be, but that's part of the theme.  Characters (especially starting characters) in Torchbearers fail a lot of rolls, and get pretty banged up.  Even returning to town is no guarantee that you'll start the next adventure fresh.  (My PC group spent a lot of their hard-earned cash to hire a physician who then proceeded to fail every roll and make them even worse.)  Torchbearers is all about pushing your luck, testing the limits of your resources, and knowing when to cut your losses and run, and when to sit back and rest.

The game is very clearly designed for dungeons and dungeon-adjacent environments, and has a very specific arc of play that is actually broken down into named phases (Adventure, Camp, and Town).  It is, at its heart, an adventure game about adventure and adventurers, and you have to contort it quite a bit to do a game focused on, say, courtly intrigue or cattle rustling.  However, it works fine in an outdoor exploration environment, as long as the GM knows how to handle defining rooms/areas, mapping, and navigation.

But aside from gushing about Torchbearers, I think what Torchbearers brings to play is solid game theory. Players are rational creatures.  They want the best outcome.  They have the impulse to succeed.  They want their characters to take actions that will let them succeed.  In most games, failure is a strict negative.  Sure, you might get a Hero Point or some other token currency to assuage you, but you still fundamentally failed.

Torchbearers turns this entire incentive structure on its head.  In Torchbearers, the default assumption is that any roll a player makes is assumed to succeed to some degree.  If you roll Dungeoneering to swing across a chasm, you either make it, or you make it BUT!  You swing across, BUT your pack rips open and spills out some of your gear!  You swing across, BUT you faceplant on the other side and everyone laughs at you (and you get the ANGRY condition)!  The least likely outcome is that you swing across, fall into the chasm, and die.  Failure is still absolutely possible (and encouraged!), but the GM has an enormous array of options to keep the PCs failing forward rather than stonewalling on failed rolls, and those other mechanics (and the need to announce Death Is On The Line before you can kill someone on a failed test) will encourage players put their hand in the bear trap.  And, as a GM, you can save those "No" moments for moments of truly tragic failure, where not succeeding actually advances the story or the narrative.

Additionally, you need failure.  You need to get Checks to make recovery tests in camp.  You have to leverage your traits against yourself to get those checks.  You have to acknowledge your failures and stumble occasionally. Playing tightly, efficiently, and minimizing the flaws that your traits represent is actually modeled in the system as the character pushing himself too hard, and as anyone with a job knows, operating at peak effectiveness over a long time in stressful situations is exhausting, and the game lets you know this by making your character's debilitating conditions stick.

You also essentially can't advance without failure.  Skills in Torchbearers can't go up without a number of both passed AND failed rolls.  If you always succeed, the game posits, you're never actually pushing your boundaries and learning new things.  With your skills being the core of your character's capabilities, as a GM, you actually see players trying to fail rolls to get their last advancement check!

That combination of softening the impact of failure; encouraging failure as a resource generator; and requiring failure to advance your skills creates an environment where failed rolls are normalized.  They aren't just setbacks that make you roll again, or siphon off your HP.  Failure becomes a part of the game and a part of the narrative in a really intrinsic way, and the suffering of your characters is seen as a crucible in which they are forged, rather than the slings and arrows of cruel fate that keep them from accomplishing their goals.

The fundamental thesis of game theory is that everyone wants to get something from the things they do, and, given rational behavior, they'll do the thing that gets them the most or the best.  Game designed around flawed player characters who are expected to fail need mechanics like Torchbearer's (or at the very least, like Hero Point).  Otherwise, you are counting on your players being either invested in a prewritten narrative, or on them being willing to spontaneously martyr themselves to make a good scene.  Seeding the other side of the "success/failure" spectrum of character actions with genuine rewards changes the very definition of success for the player, eliminating the dissonance between a narrative that isn't a boring string of uncontested victories, and player's rational reward-seeking behavior.

In short, if you want the players to get punched in the face occasionally, make them want to get punched in the face occasionally.
This message was last edited by the user at 17:44, Wed 02 Aug 2017.

I have a serious disconnect with this thought process. I play RPGs to be larger-than-life heroes or vile villains whom either save the day or take over the world. If I wanted degrees of success or failure, I would just continue to live my life. I have no problem with failure if I made a bad choice or the dice fail me. The occasional story-driven failure is also okay, especially if it pushes the plot toward a more favorable outcome (even if it means the death of a beloved character on my part).

To actually crave failure in a game makes it less of a game and more a cooperative writing venture. Tandem storytelling and free-form RPGs are definitely geared toward this type of narrative. While they can be fun they are not really games, more of a "reality t.v." take on the role-playing spectrum. Since I detest reality t.v. in all its myriad forms, I believe that is why this entire concept is so unappealing. To each their own, however...:-)

So... this is an advertising campaign for Houses of the Blooded then?

Jokes aside, HotB (as it's sometimes known) hits on pretty much every point I've seen brought up, and possibly a few more. Houses is about a party of nobles who are living their lives, but their lives are based off of High Drama and Fantasy. Labyrinthine houses, sorcery, betrayal, romance, duels, orcs, intrigue, and always Blood. Blood and Tears. The world is undefined, but tameable, and it is self-described as the "Anti-DnD RPG."

Mechanically, players roll not to figure out if they won or lost, but to gain narrative control over the result of their risk. If you want to leap across the roof and you succeed on your roll, you can still decide that you fall short, but maybe you land on a balcony. Or maybe you do succeed and that helps you to escape your pursuers, but you leave behind a clue. If you lose your roll, the Narrator (the GM) decides the result instead. They can let you win or lose as they see fit, just like you can. The mechanics allow for each success (and you can have multiple successes on a single roll) to determine any one thing about the results of the roll, and in a contested risk (one where more than one person is rolling) both sides can have successes and they trade off adding details.

Moreover, characters are designed to fit with the theme. This is true in many games (e.g. DnD is designed so characters become heroes), but in Houses the theme is practically a character itself. Much like Fate (in fact, part of the rules are based on the FATE system, as I recall) your character has Aspects. Aspects are defining characteristics which can be anything from "I know how to hurt you" to "One-eyed." Aspects can be Invoked by the player to gain bonus dice for themselves, Tagged by another player so that player can gain dice, or Compelled by anyone, forcing the character to act in a way consistent with that Aspect. A One-Eyed character might be able to Invoke his aspect to trick an enemy into letting his guard down, Tagged because he has a blind spot, and Compelled to drift into memories of how he lost that eye. This is all decided by the player in advance, but (as you can see) the narrative of that player is at least somewhat shared by everyone, helping the theme of the game along.

To just pound it to dust, players also have Style points (similar to Fate's system) which they can use to simply decide on certain conditions or events, and they are constantly being traded between players. Someone does something you think is awesome? Hand them a Style point. Someone Tags your Aspect? They give you a Style Point. Be thematically appropriate? Style Point. Style points can be used to negate certain effects too, like denying your Compel, or to outbid someone for an Aspect of the scene (yes, you can give Aspects to a scene).

The world is likewise defined by the players. There is no map, and the basic setting is defined socially, but not geographically. Players and the GM work together to build the world as they explore and expand. Along they way they have adventures, which might be a dungeon crawl one day, and a lavish party in the next. Each circumstance is still controllable by the players and the Narrator, and they can work through the problems they encounter in ways that fit both character and theme, because the two are linked.

The system is, obviously, built on trust (a point which the author hammers home repeatedly), but it's also mechanically backed enough that it encourages people to play in the way engine has been describing (assuming I didn't read too much/too little into it). It isn't for everyone (Nothing is), but it's a game where players can play to win, or to lose, or everything at once and the system encourages that. There are even two distinct playstyles the author suggests: Friendly (where players share openly and try to help each other with telling a grand story), and the Cut-Throat (where players are out to win for their character. People will die. It will probably be you. Deal with it). Both are entirely valid ways to play the game, and can satisfy players looking for whatever experience suits them and their table.

It is, in my opinion, John Wick's truest masterpiece when it comes to TTRPGs (and I say this as someone who loves L5R and 7th Sea), and it certain fits on that end of the spectrum this conversation has been about.

If I may though, a short aside, but I read the line (not an exact quote, going from memory) "playing to theme runs contrary to what an RPG is about, which is playing a character" and I couldn't possibly disagree more. If your character doesn't fit the theme of the game, then you're just being That Guy^TM. Your character is always, always tied to the themes of the game, and how you play should reflect that. Whether it's a dungeon crawl in D&D, or a whispered coup in VtM, or answering phone calls in that one RPG about being a Call Center Employee, if you don't play to the idea the game is going with then you shouldn't be at that table. What I believe was meant (and I may have missed if this was clarified, I was skimming) is that many games run with a theme that don't lend themselves to loss being desirable. If this was already addressed, please just ignore me.

Anyways, that's my advertisement for HotB two cents on the matter. Hope it helps.

Speaking of ALIENS, on the downloads page for Torchbearer, there appear to be rules for playing a game involving Colonial Marines.

Yes, this is true. I think the existence of this and other such games speak to the fact that some people do want punches to the face more often than will occur if they are also doing their best to avoid such punches. So, while I'm glad such games exist, I am coming to see that it's very much about the players, as more or more than it is about the rules.

(I heard a story about Fate from a designer along the lines that the fate point economy started to fall by the wayside for their group after a while. It seems that they got into the rhythm of the game, into the theme.)

The use of terminology was meant as a heads-up that this wasn't about RPGs as normally thought of.

It's not merely about success and failure. It's about success and failure that are both interesting. Laying waste to a group of kobolds who tried punching too far above their weight is success, but it's not interesting, at least not for very long. Watching the enemy obliterate your homeworld with their superweapon is failure, but it's interesting and now a major aspect of your character's (and their universe's) background.

Focus on this then, if you're interested in understanding what I mean. I mention Ripley's "failure" at being unable to take off and nuke the xenomorphs, which could be player error but is probably more "story-driven." She can take off and nuke the site, because if that happens there's no movie (or no game).

Or perhaps that's a further disconnect. If you agree that it wouldn't work thematically, or narratively or whatever for Ripley's very smart plan to be allowed to work, then you might agree, on some level, that it would be appropriate for someone playing the Ripley character to say (if only to themselves) "Well, here's what my character thinks we can and should do, and I think we should do it, but be prevented somehow." Perhaps you also agree that the player could even suggest aloud how that plan could be prevented.

Because "favorable," to some degree, needs to mean "favorable to the interesting continuation of the game for the players."

It's fascinating to see someone more focused on the "game" side of the designation, rather than the "roleplaying" side.

Anyway, it's not all or nothing, as the several examples here of such games shows. Even in games not of this type, players have preferences about game worlds and even moment to moment events. I've often heard players say "Aw, I was hoping the butler was a vampire" or something. That player clearly thinks that a little more trouble in a particular way would be interesting or thematic. At the most basic level, players want antagonists and challenges, even though those make things harder and present the possibility of failure. Without those there's no "game" at all.

It's always a pity when a game feels the need to be "not" or "anti" D&D. Oh, well.

That aside, what you describe is largely what I'm talking about, and I'll look into it further. A question or two:

You say a player can decide to fail when they acquire narrative control. Is there an incentive for that other than playing to theme or character-arc (like the show-off making a jump and failing, but crashing instead through the balcony door of a boudoir, hilarity ensuing)?

I agree that every game involves adherence to theme to some degree. D&D, which seems to want to try to be everything to everyone, touches on it in the material for dungeon masters.

I don't mean for this to be entirely focused on mere failure, though overcoming personal failure is key to many story concepts and so, to the degree we are emulating stories (either good fiction or self-aggrandizing Mary Sue stuff), there's a pull for failure to rear its head. But theme is somewhat more than that, tying into both immediate features of a scene (a piano player in the Old West saloon scene, a magic-user behind the dastardly plot of the fantasy story), and the game background of the game world.

While I'd be up for trying some other games, I'm also interested in any advise anyone has on encouraging players to contribute to theme, or to make it clear that such players are sought for a game. I've had some minor success with a strongly themed D&D game.

Thanks again for the responses. They are helping.

If I may... Why?

D&D represents, and mechanically supports, a certain style of play and a certain set of ideas that many people would rather not be or get behind. Anti-D&D is also a degreed term, where people might use it to describe any number of different sentiments that would be Not-D&D. D&D isn't inherently good or bad, and nor is being anti-D&D, but it does help to immediately focus a person's expectations. How many people have you met who think D&D is the only roleplaying system out there? Or that, if you brought it up, would think that World of Darkness was the same thing? It's a line, and a recognizable one, that people draw because it is so noticeable and can make a big impact on a potential player.

Now, as to whether or not there are better ways to define yourself as "Not D&D" is debatable, but it's also not the point of this thread. Just had to ask/explain.


Style Points are the most obvious one (like Hero points), but Houses also makes it about a lot more than that. As your example with Ripley, it might be that failure is the way that keeps the story going. Or in a Cut-Throat game you might also use it to distract or mislead someone, or to gain another advantage or Aspect through that failure. And then, of course, there's always setting yourself up for future successes with it.

For example on the last one, landing on the balcony might lead you into a boudoir, or it might lead you into an armory. Now you have a weapon, and there are bars you can put over the window to block your pursuers. Or no bars, but you can stage an ambush for them when they follow, so you don't only escape, but eliminate a threat. You might intentionally fail what you originally set out to do because, and this is important, the balcony might not've been there before you rolled. You just decided that it should as the dice fell and added it in as one of yours successes. That can save you Style, while also making you looks cool and possibly gain more Style.

It's a world that gets created as you go, so Houses tends to reward the kind of thinking that might turn one thing into another. ^_^

Sure! I'll try not to go on too long about it.

For one thing, my issue with it is that D&D, at this point is many things to many people, and many of those things are entirely contradictory. To summarize a game as "anti-D&D" tells me nothing, because I don't necessarily know what that designer is railing against. Whatever it is, it's probably something that a significant percentage of D&D tables already don't do. It might even be a misunderstanding or a highly uncharitable interpretation about the game. I'm not saying D&D is perfect, but lots of people oppose it for things that, largely, aren't true (or, if they are true, are more about the players than the game itself). In short, it doesn't actually tell me anything.

For another thing, it's just sad for me to think that the designer's thinking might have been limited by the goal of just not being some other thing. I've seen games make seriously bad choices, rather than do what D&D did. There are games that don't define themselves in terms of D&D, and succeed or fail on their own merits, not whether they do or don't do what another game does. Even if those games aren't any good, and even if they don't entirely get out from under the shadow of D&D, at least they made an effort to strike out on their own, without a parting shot at another game.

Sorry for taking so long to reply to this, but I've been busy and haven't had much time for writing.
I'm not sure how well it is written, but I hope it answers your question.



Much of my belief that character agency is the goal isn't from what any particular mechanics, but rather comes from a holistic view of the system, advice in the core books, and from the writings of Gygax and a few others (such as a firsthand account od the first dungeon delve, using chainmail at the time). Also, I don't believe that DnD is more supportive of traditional gameplay, rather it's simulationist nature works against traditional gameplay, yet because of the all the mechanics, people tend to see it as being a flawed game geared for traditional play.

To start in unpacking this, we need to first look some terms. I would place some general catagorizations to the various styles.

Gamist style, or perhaps Munchkin style might be a better name, is focused on having mechanical growth (whether from a single unit gaining power, from gaining more units/resources, or from arranging resources in an advantageous way), and overcoming clearly defined obstacles, aka winning.

Narrative style, or collaborative storytelling, is focused on telling a good story, and often involves the players wanting to have as much say in how the story goes outside the characters as the GM, even presenting ideas for things that happen to their characters that the characters themselves would not choose, especially often making choices based on what sounds good story-wise and would never intentionally make a choice that brings the story to a premature end.

Agency style is where the focus is on what the character knows and making decisions that the character would make. This is like pretending to be someone else for a day. If you were a [something], what would you do? This is also about exploring things from another's point of view. This is also the most like an interactive book. The gm plays destiny (as in "you meet your destiny on your way to avoid it.") and the players don't know what is happening beyond what their characters know and simply have their characters respond to wha tthey percieve (something both munchkin and narrative styles lack, as munchkin has a major focus on using metagame knowledge to make decisions, even if avoiding metagame knowledge about the story, and narrative has the player standing back and having a say in what happens to their characters).

Social style, the focus is less on the game or handling the game in a particular way, but rather having something to do while joking and messing around with each other. The beer and pretzels games, like Kobalds ate my baby, fit here.

Supers style, this is all about doing cool things (like swinging from chandeliers) and/or feeling powerful. In this style the focus is on feeling cool and powerful based on what happens in the game. casting a spell and having an army keel over dead make sone feel powerful, and players will seek and desire to do things that make them get that feeling of power or that makes them feel cool. Cinematic action basically.

These are of course not discrete, but rather points on a continuum. Traditional gameplay style is mostly munchkin with some supers style.

Now that we have some terms to reference, we can address a core misbelief. It might even be a fallacy of some sort.

I've been told by many players something to the effect of "if you want a game about the story, play free-form." These players are equating the mere existance of rules with a focus on munchin/supers play.

This is however an unfair association and is based on a false belief. The false belief is the idea that if story trumps rules then rules become meaningles and therefore should not be included (excluding table rules, rules baout behaviour at the table).

Rules can be beneficial for any style of play as play aids, even when not essential to the game itself. For collaborative and agency styles of play, rules fill the purpose of aiding in communication, understanding, maintaining consistency, and providing a shorthand for descriptions.

I.E The system gives a shared method of describing just how strong a character is that gives all the players similar expectations about how strong any particular character really is. Without the system for that, you are left with each player trying to describe a level of strength with every player having different ideas about what "very strong" means.

This means the system makes it easier to discuss characters and actually have everyone on the same page about what each character can do. It also means that the GM can use terms and values defined by the system to make it easier to describe aspects of the world or situation, particularly for information that the players wil always want to know, which leaves more time for for describing the purely fun stuff and adding the appropriate thematic feel to the descriptions with less worrying that someone might get the wrong idea about somethig essential (which will happen, but the system reduces this).

In fact, agency and narrative style play can benefit from rules but are actually distinct from the rules entirely, allowing you keep playing even as rules change or even as changing from one system to another (though different systems can be used with differing levels of ease). The rules in these cases are mere play aids and nothing more.

One thing some players may mention is how much the rules focus on combat, implying that the game is obviously about combat since there are so many rules for it. Modern game design has some understanding of the fact players will be affected by prompting from the rules (as in, if the rules say how to do A, but not B, then players will almost always pick A even if B is available or even superior). Psychology is a major factor in life, and games can be designed with psychology in mind (for evil and terrible results as much as good). DnD and many other games though were not designed with an understanding of psychology, thus even simple things like "more rules = focus of game" can be mistaken.

The rules of DnD has more rules on combat for many reasons, one of which is certainly the history of the rules being based on wargaming rules, but also because combat is one case where agency comes to fore (in your choice of tactics, whether you fight directly with honor, fight dirty, fight smartly, or fight just enough to get away) in a way that is easily handled mechanically yet also requires more depth to remain interesting.

How do you make generic rules for resolving social conflict, convincing a merchant to give a discount, win a court case, sell your product to the king, etc. Much more difficult than mechanically handling combat, and even when it is done, it takes away from the roleplaying of those things and also, many of the benefits of using mechanics (such as consistency) do not apply to such social circumstances. Many players take this to mean that DnD is all about combat, but that isn't true.

There are many types of balance. Mechanical balance is often the most discussed and most recognized, but other kinds of balance exist as well. DnD has more naturalistic balance, which indicates that munchkin style is not a core design goal, as munchkin style almost requires mechanical balance, and given the birth in wargaming, if mechanical balance was a goal (as it would have been if munchkin style was a goal), then Gygax et. al. would have had much better mechanical balance and not naturalistic balance.

Interestingly, the DMG mentions balance, but it isn't really balance in the normal sense, rather it is mentioned as three things, 1) making sure that no one character dominates over the others, 2) having characters not be too powerful for the threats they face, and 3) not be hopelessly overmatched. Of course, these don't require mechanical balance, and in fact, I'd say that being able to step away from mechanical balance would be important for these aspects. I have played characters several levels behind others without feeling underwhelming or like a mere squire or servent to the other characters. Being too weak or powerful for encounters doesn't require facing all equal level encounters either, and in particular, the player's combat styles are important here, for example, if a player is awesome against single targets, ganging up on them should be a weaker encounter mechanically because they have less ability to handle multiple foes, and when they face a single foe, having the foe be higher level might be required for them to actually be challanged.

While I don't know much of older editions, there are some things I know of that were not popular and thus altered, but they give insight into the thinking of the designers. The biggest of these was xp = gold. This was a really good concept (though I'd like to think I've done better). The idea behind this is not that picking up gold is worthy of giving you xp, but rather that the xp represents everything you went through to get that gold. This is actually very good because it doesn't distinguish how you got the gold, therefore giving you freedom to play through the game according to character and/or player preference without feeling like you are losing out on xp because you sneak around enemies or escape a fight rather than kill.

Killing for xp is a step backwards because it only rewards winning a fight rather than rewarding reaching the goal. However this is in place most likely because of the negativity around gold = xp rule, which I hear many believe to be very stupid.

A major part of my thoughts on the system though come from a holistic view of the system, rather than discrete parts, particularly since the books don't seem to have been written very well. In fact, there are several points where the author's descriptions are so poor as to seem like they contradict the rules, though in restrospect, the line of thinking can be usually be found. Alignment is an example of this (lawful is about unwavering dedication and being methodical). This means care must be taken to consider the different possibilities of what the author could have meant by their descriptions.

Random character stats is another point against munchkin and supers styles. Munchkin style is fairly competative, hence the need for point buy to make certain that all players start equal and thus rely more on player skill and ability. On the other side, random character stats provide unknown talents and weaknesses to a character, promoting character exploration and providing interesting obstacles to overcome and interesting talents to take advantage of.

The gm's and player's role are also laid out, discounting the collaborative story telling style, as it is the GM's job to set the scene and describe the action, while the player dictates the character's personality and decisions. Importantly, to quote "be true to your character."

The biggest consideration however, in why DnD is about agency is several paragraghs that generally get ignored and remain unused (and likely unknown to anyone who hasn't actually read through the entirety of the core books, mostly the dmg). These paragraphs are the ones scattered around encouraging the bending, breaking, and rewriting of rules based on characters and circumstances (as distinct from fixing things you think are wrong/bad/boring). For example, the gm is encouraged to allow a paladin to swap out their mount for a different ability if their character concept doesn't include a mount or would rarely benefit from that ability. There are many spots encouraging not houserules, but gm rulings that allow things breaking the normal rules to fit the situation.

This is an essential point, because this encouragement actively works against the traditional style of play.

A particular quote that can't be said enough "The GM defines the game." I always consider the GM to be the single most important part of the game because they control the experience. If it's bad, it because the GM was bad. If it was great, it is because the GM was great. The fact that the DMG specifically states this means the authors recognized this. Strangely enough, I have met more than a handful of players who don't know this yet, surprising as that may be.

On the same page of the DMG is this quote "You are the master of game - the rules, the setting, the action, and ultimately the fun." Emphasis mine, but notice that the rules are specifically called out as the GM's domain, not the domain of the game.

The GM is also told to make the world feel alive so that the players feel a part of the world instead of separate from it. Traditional gameplay often breaks into the meta side of things (particularly for hardcore players that think arcane casters are for idenfying potions). Narrative, and Munchkin play in particular, are both styles where the player is heavily in the metagame, watching their characters yet distinctly divorced from their characters on some level.

Another example is that the book has the GM have the players think in terms of the game world, using the example of a trap in a dungeon existing for a reason and having served a purpose and thus to encourage players to think about why that trap exists and thus how it might be bypassed.

Railroading is called out as being bad, but when it comes to munchkin or traditional style games, they usually run better when railroaded, as the focus is on the metagame of winning rather than story changing choices, and therefore, those styles lend themselves well to a GM running players through a railroaded story, much like playing through a linear or semi-linear video game (The Halo series, Pokemon, RTS campaigns, FPS campaigns, well just about any video game really, even Mass Effect and Fable, both games targetting the concept of player choice are rather linear railroads with choice being illusory and maintained through minor details). This is actually probably the best style to target for a GM that wants to tell a story. (far too often do I see a GM want to GM so they can tell their awesome story only to get frustrated as the players constantly break the story.)

But for a style centered on character agency, railroad is the worst as it removes the primary focus of the style.