The controversial part of the Big Model is the part that suggests that Creative Agendas don't mix. I would strongly suggest reading the previous blog post first. It contains all of the non-controversial parts of the Big Model. Cutting to the controversial part of a technical theory is one sure way to misunderstand what is being said.
The problem with controversies, is they are fun. We like to define ourselves by controversial ideas, it helps us find like minded people to agree with, or challenging people to argue with. The problem with the Creative Agenda controversies is they also appear to define us. It is impossible to read about categories of game without placing ones own own gaming experiences into the mix. It is difficult to read about preferences and tendencies in gaming without out reflecting on ones own.
These problems and controversies amount to the vast majority of things that people talk about when they address the Big Model. That contrasts with the fact that the Creative Agenda concept is actually not very controversial or even the main body of the theory. Most of the theory is about how to put together games or analyse gaming behaviours, or how the various parts of gaming fit together and work.
Because the Big Model is based on observation and behaviour then the categorisations of Creative Agenda are are based on looking carefully at each game that is working well and identifying the type of game it is. Any categorisation process is by definition seeking to understand what is categorically different about things and working out which of these different categories something fits into. That is what a category is.
The Big Model theorists have identified three categories of Creative Agenda, this was a long and disputed process, and no one is certain that it is over. One of the biggest problems with the early discussions was working out why the main body of gaming all felt similar but couldn't be as clearly categorised as two more easy to define categories. It didn't feel helpful to define them as being anything that didn't fit the other two. That isn't a category, rather it is a lack of category. It took a long while to work out what exactly constituted that big category and to be sure that it was a single category. The theorists have settled on three categories and so far any witnessed or imagined game that works well (what my previous article described as a Winning Formula) seems to fit into one of those three categories.
Some of the controversy comes from people looking at the categories and thinking that their game doesn't fit into only one. There are three possibilities here, it is either in a new category, one of the three categories or won't fit because it isn't one of the things being categorised.
The categories are successful games that achieve a winning formula, it is possible that a game never actually manages to achieve a winning formula, and as such cannot be categorised. However, that isn't the same as saying a game that doesn't easily fit into one category must not have a winning formula. If you can't work out the category of your successful game that is not the same as it not fitting into a category. Those that understand the categories will classify it as one of the three existing ones, or possibly create a new category for it. Successful games are what the categories sort, so a successful game by definition requires a category. They may need to study it very carefully and identify some unspoken things that everyone that is playing expects from the game before they categorise it.
Incoherence
It shouldn't be controversial that there are unsuccessful games out there. Many of us have played in games where no one seemed to get along or agree. In those games the categories don't apply. We have defined the categories as collections of successful games. Unsuccessful games are useful because they help us work out why certain components work together well and why some pull in different directions.
The real tricky games to categorise are the ones that use lots of components. A large game with lots of techniques being employed, with lots of conflicting ephemeral detail and a complicated social contract that ties all of those disparate parts together. It just so happens that a large number of games do this, which is why it took a long while to settle on the categories.
The clear cut games are easier to categorise, ones that have all their components working in a coherent manner (unified and logical) clearly show us what kind of game they are. The incoherent games are tricky, they take a lot of careful observation to decide where they fit. An incoherent game is not the same as a game without a winning formula, it just takes a lot of effort to maintain the unstable equilibrium. It requires practice or the understanding gained playing it over a long period of time.
Agenda Clash
The other side of this equation is games that don't work. What the theory is good for is looking at all of the game components and helping them pull together in a more coherent manner. Some of those components are at a social level, they are either ephemeral detail or techniques that help the social activity of play, or they are in the Social Contract. Whether or not a game is working for everyone is at the fundamental level of 'why they do it', it properly belongs at the Social Contract level of play. If everyone agrees on what they want out of the game, and what counts as enjoyment, then you can look at the Exploration involved or the Techniques and Ephemera and get them working together to support that. However if you cannot agree on 'that thing you are doing together' then it is far harder, if not impossible, to make the game coherent.
A lot of focus has been placed on Social Contract for this reason, the Creative Agendas are named after the type of Social Contract a group may have. That is not to say the Creative Agenda is specifically about the Social Contract. Just that it is more noticeably at play at that level. If you define clearly what the group wants in the Social Contract then you have less need to work things out through trial and error in play. A clash of expectations is more easy to identify than a clash in a group that cannot clearly identify those expectations.
The controversy that emerges here is whether individual members can have different expectations of a single game and still make it work. There is a tendency to focus on the expectations part of that sentence, but I propose it is more helpful to focus on the working part. What does it mean if we say a game works? My previous article is all about that, it means that we have reached a winning formula. A winning formula can be reached even if different people want different things. It involves everyone actually having fun doing the same thing on a fundamental level. They must compromise to find the winning formula, but they do so willingly in order to have fun within the group.
Remember, we defined Creative Agenda as the mutually exclusive categories of all fun games. You can't escape that definition within this theory. It's a circular argument that different people can have fun regardless of their expectations, as long as they conform to the group's enjoyment and adapt to its expectations. They may not do it consciously but the theory is constructed around that happening. That precise thing has been observed many times when the categories were being formed. Coherence is meaningless outside of the framework of the theory. It doesn't mean anything to look at a successful game and identify multiple Creative Agenda expectations unless you want to use them to help the game to run more smoothly.
13 Oct 2014
The Big Model: From Play to Theory.
When a Roleplaying game is going well everyone knows it.
Each player is psyched as game night approaches, when everyone has arrived
there is no delaying getting down to things. Drink or snack breaks are filled
with chat about what is happening or what might be going on. At the end of the
evening everyone wonders where the time went, or wonder how they will get home
because they just missed the last bus.
While playing, the group engagement is tangible, it is
sometimes elusive but once we experience it we seek it out again. A good GM
might reflect on those times it all went well and try and make plans to
recreate the experience consistently. A thoughtful player may consciously
decide to continue playing the same way, and encourage those around (including
the GM) to do the same.
Sometimes the group will start to notice that parts of what
they do together work better than other parts, and they will adjust their
behaviour to better suit their enjoyment. They will emphasise some parts of the
rule book over others, be mindful over exactly when they need to roll the dice
or look up charts, recognising that sometimes it works and sometimes it gets in
the way.
If they play more than one system they may consciously play
them in a similar way, and adjust the rules and procedures of play to suit
themselves. They may import the house rules that already work in the other
games and just ignore the differences.
If they have different GMs for different games they may play
a little differently with each. The difference may be as subtle as knowing when
to speak or when to pick up the dice. The play may be as radically different as
constantly speaking in character or using figures and a hex map. Some GMs might
combine both seamlessly while others keep them separate or exclude one
altogether.
A secondary GM might notice differences in behaviour and
either consciously push the game towards this new group fun, or might adjust
things to better match the other GM’s style.
Very often a group that stays together over a long period of
time will stick to a single winning formula or a couple of distinct formulas
that work for them. Why wouldn’t they? There is no logical reason to innovate once
everyone is having fun. By a process of feedback they have worked out how to
play. The group may recognise that this winning formula takes work, but as long
as the result is rewarding then the work is worth it.
Roleplaying is a reasonably standardised behaviour, most of
the components are recognisable. To a non-gamer all table-top games look pretty
much the same. If a single player joins a different game that has also settled
into a winning formula, the player will notice some things are different and
some are the same. It is self-evident that the easiest way for that player to
fit in would be to adapt their behaviour to that of the group. However, human
behaviour is fascinating in its diversity, and a group will probably also adapt
to accommodate the new player. There is a good possibility that the group will
find a way to pull together and reach a new winning formula.
Everyone in the game knows what works and what doesn’t. They
know which things to do and when to do them. They know some things that they do
work better at specific times. They may even find that some things they would
like to do would only work when a particular GM is running the game and reserve
that particular behaviour to those times. This situation, where everyone is
taking part in a group experience that just works is a coherent game. Coherent
as in consistent, orderly and unified. The group is unified by that winning
formula which consists of orderly behaviour: when applied consistently these
behaviours will succeed.
If we are really lucky this description of roleplaying
groups is complete in our experience. We have always been part of groups that
get along or eventually found ways to get along, and over time those groups
have always hit on a winning formula.
Controversy
There is a word that is used to apply to a list of ‘things
to be done’ in order to achieve a particular aim. It has become a controversial
word in roleplaying. The word is Agenda, and it is used by a controversial
group of theorists that model game behaviour with reference to a theory called
The Big Model.
You might wonder, if you only read everything above
neutrally, without prejudice, why this would be controversial. You might think
maybe the controversy comes from how the word agenda is used? Language can be
twisted or pointed. This accusation could perhaps be made to some of the
language in The Big Model. Indeed its name could be taken to task in this
manner.
It is called The Big Model because it tries to incorporate
everything that happens at the table from the largest most obvious behaviours,
to the smallest trivia. It is not called
The Big model because it seeks to encompass all other theory, or be the only
theory. A single theory to explain everything is logically impossible, there
are always new ways of looking at things. Some theories are large and complex
perspectives some are simple but all-encompassing ideas. In the big sweep of
theories about gaming The Big Model it is probably not the biggest by any
definition. It is called The Big Model because it is trying to gain a
perspective of the ‘Big Picture’ from a specific perspective. Indeed from the
perspective I have mainly used in this writing: behavioural. I may have talked
about feelings and enjoyment, but my main focus was observable behaviour in
ourselves and others.
Another thing I have consciously done is to use some of the
language in a subtly different manner to that of the theory. A Big Model theorist
would probably take me to task on how I use the words Coherent and Agenda
because they are used in the theory very specifically. However, I am not
theorising here, I am just introducing the concepts using my own language.
Jargon
When people theorise about big and complex things, language
can get in the way, someone might use the word Roleplay to refer to the whole
process of play, and another might mean identifying with their character and
acting consistently with that identification. They could end up arguing about
the definition of something else and because they didn’t specify what they
meant by Roleplay they might be agreeing or talking about two different things.
The best way to avoid this needless argument is to be very specific with the
language used. To mutually agree what we mean when we use a particular word,
and to introduce a different word when we have two meanings. We might even
discard the most common word and instead use two separate specific terms to
describe it.
For example we might say the overall roleplaying process is
called Exploration, and that consistent behaviour based on identification with
character is called Actor Stance. This way we will know when we are referring
to one and not the other. If we find ourselves using the word Roleplay to mean
something else we can define it as distinct to the other two and add a new
term.
The flip side to jargon is the barrier to entry. In order to
participate in the discussion you need to know the terms and how to use them.
This two pronged outcome of jargon happens in every walk of life where people
need to communicate about technical issues. Some consider it unfortunate, but
let’s face it, the alternative would be an education system that focused on
specific technical definitions of everything. “The domesticated feline
individual lowered herself semi-recumbently on the floor surface insulation
material of discrete size” instead of “The cat sat on the mat”. We would be a
weird species with logical formulaic language and dictionaries that spanned whole
libraries.
Applying The Jargon.
Techniques: When we are following our winning formula there
are specific things we are doing that are identifiable parts of the game. The
things that help us achieve success like playing games with character classes,
the type of dice mechanics or the way that scenarios are prepared. These are
the identifiable big things we see in games that help us define which game we
are playing. The things we most readily think of when someone asks us to
describe our game in relation to other roleplaying games.
Ephemera: The smaller components of technique, like whether
we speak in character at a particular moment, or who says what happens at any moment
in time. Maybe even trivial things like when you check your phone or when to
congratulate other players. They are the nuts and bolts of the winning formula,
all the moment to moment occurrences.
Social Contract: Part of that winning formula that leads to
a consistent experience is the agreement about how we do things and in what way
we do them. When we meet, who is the GM, how many players we need, which
techniques we will employ and the kinds of ephemera that are acceptable. Rarely
is this an actual written or spoken contract, but it is usually a mixture of
clear rules of play and subtle allowances or exclusions. Even if a contract is
written down somewhere, like a constitution, it won’t cover everything and can’t
hope to describe what really happens.
Exploration: This is the main activity of roleplaying,
sitting at the table talking about what is going on and what our character is
doing. The Social Contract is regulating this activity, and the Techniques are
a part of this activity. At a moment to moment level we are engaged in Ephemera.
You will have noticed we haven’t really defined Agenda yet,
but that is the part that everyone usually points to first. In many ways that’s
because it is less a defined thing. When the Exploration is going well and all
the other parts are supporting that Exploration the Creative Agenda is
Coherent. We need to put everything together to really understand this.
Putting it all Together
Our Social Contract defines how we get together and what we
will be doing, it includes the type of Exploration we want and what the
Techniques are. While playing we are engaged in moment to moment Ephemera which
is all adding up to meaningful Techniques that support the Exploration in a
manner compatible with the Social Contract. We have a coherent Creative Agenda
if this all adds up to our winning formula.
Creative Agenda is a kind of unstable equilibrium, which can
survive a bit of shaking but not too much. No specific thing will break the Creative
Agenda nor does it fully support it. For example, we might agree in our social
contract that character alignments like “Lawful Good” help us explore a richly
populated world. If sometimes we speak out of character we can probably cope.
If sometimes we don’t quite understand our character’s worldview the rest of
the Exploration might help inform it.
On the flip side, if we never bother to look at things from
our character’s perspective, then even speaking in character won’t amount to a
recognisable alignment, and the Exploration of the world will become
unpredictable. We won’t achieve the thing we sought in our Social Contract.
A winning formula does not amount to a Creative Agenda. If
it was there would be thousands of Creative Agendas. At least as many as the
number of fun games being played. There are numerous winning formulae, and each
one is unique, but they can be categorised.
Within each category different combinations of Ephemera and
Technique build to allow certain types of compatible Exploration, governed by
specific kinds of Social Contract.
To put it another way when we categorise Creative Agendas we
can begin to put together the parts of a game in a constructive manner. We can build
a winning formula through more than trial and error. Not only that, when a group
has found a winning formula we can identify the Creative Agenda they are
following.
Indeed within the theory the Creative Agenda is often used
in sentences to mean a kind of winning formula, but we must always remember
that it is a category.
25 Aug 2011
HQ is a toolbox, just use the parts you want to
Two answers to this one.
1) Thank goodness it is, I can stop worrying about the rules that make HeroQuest so unreliable as a Narrativist game. It just so happens a lot of these rules are the Glorantha specific ones that some may not even recognise as part of the rules.
2) This is again a bit of a traditional gamer perspective, places like the Forge were created to do away with this kind of vague unreliable treatment of game rules. With this kind of approach you can drift any game into the type of game you always play, which results in a group having a house style and being convinced that systems are interchangeable. Nothing wrong with this, but HQ was very clearly a different and powerful game, I have no interest in turning it back into RuneQuest with a bit of narrational colour. And, I firmly believe the tenant that system does matter.
1) Thank goodness it is, I can stop worrying about the rules that make HeroQuest so unreliable as a Narrativist game. It just so happens a lot of these rules are the Glorantha specific ones that some may not even recognise as part of the rules.
2) This is again a bit of a traditional gamer perspective, places like the Forge were created to do away with this kind of vague unreliable treatment of game rules. With this kind of approach you can drift any game into the type of game you always play, which results in a group having a house style and being convinced that systems are interchangeable. Nothing wrong with this, but HQ was very clearly a different and powerful game, I have no interest in turning it back into RuneQuest with a bit of narrational colour. And, I firmly believe the tenant that system does matter.
Your Glorantha may Vary
Hell yes, but in Narrativist play this variation isn't even an important consideration. Narrativist groups are not concerned with building up situation from a solid background and rules, they generate situation from character and the here-and-now situation the characters are in.
My Glorantha isn't really in focus most of the time, it may or may not vary, it has little to say about why my Orlanthi has a feud with the Ernaldan Priestess because that feud is more informed by my character description and the GMs portrayal of the priestess than by how Ernaldan Priestesses are described in the books.
My Glorantha isn't really in focus most of the time, it may or may not vary, it has little to say about why my Orlanthi has a feud with the Ernaldan Priestess because that feud is more informed by my character description and the GMs portrayal of the priestess than by how Ernaldan Priestesses are described in the books.
You are trying to have the positives without the negatives
More fully expressed: by de-emphasising things like cult or community obligations you are just trying to max out a character without the negatives.
This concern is an expression of the Simulationist/Narrativist divide. In Simulationist play disadvantages are mainly enforced by the GM to ensure they are brought into play as a form of balance.
In Narrativist play it is mainly the player of a character that would be driving this kind of issue. A player in a narrativist game only needs the number on the sheet and perhaps a bit of a reminder that it is there. It is about the GM and the players bringing these negatives into play as interesting elements of exploration for their own sake not a matter of enforcement or balance.
This concern is an expression of the Simulationist/Narrativist divide. In Simulationist play disadvantages are mainly enforced by the GM to ensure they are brought into play as a form of balance.
In Narrativist play it is mainly the player of a character that would be driving this kind of issue. A player in a narrativist game only needs the number on the sheet and perhaps a bit of a reminder that it is there. It is about the GM and the players bringing these negatives into play as interesting elements of exploration for their own sake not a matter of enforcement or balance.
HQ2 is the best version of Greg Stafford's intention
Every version of RQ/HW/HQ has been approved as a better representation of Greg Stafford's Gloranthan fiction and or vision.
This is mainly a marketing stance. Who would buy the new game if the consensus was that it was less like Glorantha? Some things appeared to line up well and some things seemed to be a bit forced, but on the whole I think this statement is meaningless.
More than this I don't really care. World setting is part of the game and as such there will always be differences in presentation of the world in each game but the world as envisaged is not a game. It would be better if the designers could acknowledge this innate separation of the game, the setting and the inspiration for the setting.
This is mainly a marketing stance. Who would buy the new game if the consensus was that it was less like Glorantha? Some things appeared to line up well and some things seemed to be a bit forced, but on the whole I think this statement is meaningless.
More than this I don't really care. World setting is part of the game and as such there will always be differences in presentation of the world in each game but the world as envisaged is not a game. It would be better if the designers could acknowledge this innate separation of the game, the setting and the inspiration for the setting.
Augments were a key part of the system from the start
For a start the text of HW wasn't quite finished, such that there was still evidence of a previous version of the game where there was a distinction between skills that could be used only for augments and those that could be used as both skills and augments. This distinction remained as a part of the magic system, based on what level you were in a cult.
Augments were presented as a part of the extended contest rules and were not very well defined, provoking a lot of discussion on-line. The on-line community very quickly drifted augments and they became more flexible, were used in simple contests and often used in pairs, with a physical and a non-physical augment often advocated. The biggest change got placed into the early supplements, the idea of automatic augments. something I believe was a very bad precedent even though it seemed like a time saver at the beginning.
It seems to me they have always been problomatic, with problems rooting back to the play test. I have never been a fan of anything being treated as augment only, and I don't like the way they can lead to prejudicing the narration of a conflict before you even roll.
I prefer augments as presented in HQ2 but not as presented in the magic system or in the Sartar Book.
Augments were presented as a part of the extended contest rules and were not very well defined, provoking a lot of discussion on-line. The on-line community very quickly drifted augments and they became more flexible, were used in simple contests and often used in pairs, with a physical and a non-physical augment often advocated. The biggest change got placed into the early supplements, the idea of automatic augments. something I believe was a very bad precedent even though it seemed like a time saver at the beginning.
It seems to me they have always been problomatic, with problems rooting back to the play test. I have never been a fan of anything being treated as augment only, and I don't like the way they can lead to prejudicing the narration of a conflict before you even roll.
I prefer augments as presented in HQ2 but not as presented in the magic system or in the Sartar Book.
Occupation and Magic Keyword character traits have always been there
Yes, and they are a really great and fully functional part of the game, but look closely. The emphasis was originally on choosing and playing a particular type of character. You didn't for instance have to select cult or culture traits that you were not interested in. Your relationship to the cult or culture wasn't seen as a limitation of effectiveness, or as a specific character driver. It was instead seen as a stat used to represent how easy it was to use that relationship to solve problems just like any other skill. Yes there were entry requirements for cult levels but it was easy to start as a devotee, so this wasn't exactly a limiting factor. Early on it was even possible to be an initiate of one cult and a devotee of another, and pantheon worship was emphasised. Things drifted very rapidly soon after because these things were apparently not correct.
HeroWars wasn't designed to be Narrativist
Well I think it was, but it wasn't expressed well in the text, and controversially I don't think Robin Laws fully understands Narrativism, some of his comments on the subject seem plain wrong.
But, even if it was an accident of design, HW was rapidly picked up as a poster child for Narrativist style roleplaying. This wasn't some kind of co-incidence or because of some misunderstanding of the Narrativist crowd, it was because lots of elements of the mechanics actively support this style of play. The Fortune-in-the-middle system; the use of Hero-points in contests; the bidding system in Extended Contests; the grabby and situation heavy 100 word character generation; the universal conflict system, specifically the equality of relationships and character traits to more standard skills; all aid and support a Narrativist agenda.
But, even if it was an accident of design, HW was rapidly picked up as a poster child for Narrativist style roleplaying. This wasn't some kind of co-incidence or because of some misunderstanding of the Narrativist crowd, it was because lots of elements of the mechanics actively support this style of play. The Fortune-in-the-middle system; the use of Hero-points in contests; the bidding system in Extended Contests; the grabby and situation heavy 100 word character generation; the universal conflict system, specifically the equality of relationships and character traits to more standard skills; all aid and support a Narrativist agenda.
My Own Devil's Advocate
This is an inherently tricky exercise, but sometimes objections like my previous post don't make any sense without some kind of cross examination. So to act as my own devil's advocate I will present some arguments against my point of view in the next few posts, they are possibly Straw Men, but I hope they help me make my point more clearly
HeroQuest 2 - Off the path again!
I have been putting a lot of thought into HQ2 in the last couple of years, but I haven't played it anywhere near as much. Partly for health reasons and partly due to becoming very disillusioned with it as a game.
The Reason for this disillusionment is partly the published material. There has been a stubborn pattern in HW/HQ, which naturally leaves my preferred style of play in the minority.
It first happened with HW, the style of play advocated in the rule book had a clear focus on using the conflict systems provided. It was all about Conflict Resolution and story logic. It promised a style of play that wasn't hindered by the complex world of Glorantha, but instead used its inherent narrative potential as a springboard for your own games.
Then the Gloranthan material started to emerge. The rule books themselves contained some of this material, in fact the main part was even available online as part of the free preview. This material, focused on examples of how the game could be used with the cults in the setting and didn't seem to detract too much from the core. The cults just felt like examples of how to use the new system. Extra rules crept in for bezerkers and undead almost unnoticed.
The next material to be published was a strange hybrid, it was partly a continuation of the examples in the core books and partly a reassertion of the setting as king. This was subtle, and in many ways to be expected. Glorantha has a long publishing history and the material has gone out of print on a regular basis, such that a new Glorantha RPG was expected to reproduce this material.
The problem was the presentation of this new material was old school in disguise. It had all the trappings of a new revolutionary RPG, but it kept drifting from a game that allowed grabby situation to emerge to a game that suggested that the key to providing the situation was all about building situation from the world up using rules. For the best part of two decades RuneQuest had followed this logic. Make the world a real and vivid place and integrate the rules at this level, and slowly build up into situation.
An example of this was the new presentation of key NPCs as a funky cool looking map of relationships to followers and community. It looked good, it had lots of complex information presented in a new and easy to understand way and it emphasised the idea that everyone was part of a community and that relationships were reciprocal.
The GM could use this to help create grabby player character focused situation, but there was a strong emphasis on situating characters within the rigid structures of cult and community obligations. This was technically a retreat back into old school ground up play. It felt right and useful for players used to RuneQuest, which was full of details of cult oblations expressed in percentages, and limits on how high a skill could progress based on such things.
It felt very wrong to me, I couldn't express it clearly, but it felt like a betrayal of the freedom presented in the core rules. The problem was that if you talked to anyone involved in the presentation of this material it became a discussion about how no man is an island, and that there was a clear social expectation that you spent 30% of your time in cult based activities. It was more about not getting something for free, and ensuring players understood their character's social situation.
It was about 'realism'. It was impossible to explain to a wider community trained in RQ that it was equally possible to have stories that acknowledged relationships and maintained a very real sense of setting without having to worry about this kind of detail. The HW character sheet had a space for relationships and an abstract number, it didn't need extra details like percentages of time working for the cult. The type of story emergent from the grabby situations implied by the character creation system and the way the rules interacted with them wasn't about this kind of detail. This game didn't rely on gritty realistic modelling of a world.
This was just the beginning of bringing in rules disguised as setting. Before long we had a massively detailed write-up of Orlanth and Ernalda, which placed a great emphasis on exactly how a person in the world interacted with the cult and what was required to enter the structure and move within it. Again this was a bid for detailed 'realism'. It was a description of how Glorantha worked, and it equally missed the point. Yet again it was setting/rules built from the ground up, yet again it provided no real enhancement to grabby situation based on character concepts.
Overall, the experience of character creation was initially a highly creative process full of situation and relationships that felt natural and grabby redolent with heroic action. But then, the process slowly became about fleshing out the interaction with a 'realistic world' slowly and effectively tying down and stifling the character concept.
By the time we got to HeroQuest we had this institutionalised into the rules. Now, character creation was all about using templates that provided this background. The creative process of character creation was still there, but the detail was sneaking in through the keywords relating to community and cults. Even these played lip-service to a dynamic style by each template containing a number of reasons to have left home, but as soon as the character started to be fleshed out in magical terms it became a process of situating the character into a social structure with requirements and obligations.
It was like writing a detective novel and making a high percentage of the story all about the tedious paperwork and the drudgery of detailed investigation and limiting legal advice, in the interest of realism.
HQ was also guilty of messing with the core mechanics as well. It changed Simple Contests, which originally were a straight forward expression of Conflict Resolution with no distractions, into a detailed exploration of the conflict through augments. After all if the character sheet has all of this rich detail, which often amounted to a page worth of skills extrapolated from multiple sources, then you may as well find a way of using them within a conflict. So now instead of a Simple Contest focusing on a goal with the skill selection being a mixture of character emphasis and colour, it became a detailed list of skills employed, often with a complex narration to justify the augment choices. This not only missed the point of Simple Contests, it started an emphasis on front loading the narration. Effectively killing the strength of the core mechanics.
As an interesting side effect, augments became so ingrained into the mechanics there was a collective amnesia regards the HW rules. Everyone forgot that you were not allowed to augment simple contests before. Most of the community was convinced that augments made things better anyway.
For a number of political reasons some of the changes made to HQ were reversed for HQ2. Augments were effectively turned into a discrete contest, detailed lists of sub-cults and magics were de-emphasised, for all the world it looked like things were moving back in the right direction. Back towards dynamic character and situation focused play. But then the drift began again.
At least this time I was expecting it, and I even managed to slip a few bids for freedom into the game text itself. But before we knew it there was bottom up world building baked into the game world through yet more subtle mechanics. The cult requirements again have their expression in limiting player characters, but at least this time it isn't done by forcing detail onto the character sheet. Now it is about naturally behaving like the gods through runic affinity. The added rules for runes include behaviour and personality guidelines complete with advice for imposing these by the narrator. All in the interests of 'realism' and ignoring the fact that the system encourages exploration of these issues without the need for such guidelines.
The creeping in of bottom up world design is hardly surprising in a game designed primarily for an established world that evolved from a traditional RPG. But it is really f*%king annoying for someone like myself that continually sees the promise of the rules system. The dangling carrot of a truly dramatic and character centric game within a wonderfully realised world, ideal for grabby situation. That carrot is just there, but there is this almost invisible 'stick and rope' of added rules and subtle world building concerns keeping the carrot out of reach unless you are prepared to forge your own path.
The Reason for this disillusionment is partly the published material. There has been a stubborn pattern in HW/HQ, which naturally leaves my preferred style of play in the minority.
It first happened with HW, the style of play advocated in the rule book had a clear focus on using the conflict systems provided. It was all about Conflict Resolution and story logic. It promised a style of play that wasn't hindered by the complex world of Glorantha, but instead used its inherent narrative potential as a springboard for your own games.
Then the Gloranthan material started to emerge. The rule books themselves contained some of this material, in fact the main part was even available online as part of the free preview. This material, focused on examples of how the game could be used with the cults in the setting and didn't seem to detract too much from the core. The cults just felt like examples of how to use the new system. Extra rules crept in for bezerkers and undead almost unnoticed.
The next material to be published was a strange hybrid, it was partly a continuation of the examples in the core books and partly a reassertion of the setting as king. This was subtle, and in many ways to be expected. Glorantha has a long publishing history and the material has gone out of print on a regular basis, such that a new Glorantha RPG was expected to reproduce this material.
The problem was the presentation of this new material was old school in disguise. It had all the trappings of a new revolutionary RPG, but it kept drifting from a game that allowed grabby situation to emerge to a game that suggested that the key to providing the situation was all about building situation from the world up using rules. For the best part of two decades RuneQuest had followed this logic. Make the world a real and vivid place and integrate the rules at this level, and slowly build up into situation.
An example of this was the new presentation of key NPCs as a funky cool looking map of relationships to followers and community. It looked good, it had lots of complex information presented in a new and easy to understand way and it emphasised the idea that everyone was part of a community and that relationships were reciprocal.
The GM could use this to help create grabby player character focused situation, but there was a strong emphasis on situating characters within the rigid structures of cult and community obligations. This was technically a retreat back into old school ground up play. It felt right and useful for players used to RuneQuest, which was full of details of cult oblations expressed in percentages, and limits on how high a skill could progress based on such things.
It felt very wrong to me, I couldn't express it clearly, but it felt like a betrayal of the freedom presented in the core rules. The problem was that if you talked to anyone involved in the presentation of this material it became a discussion about how no man is an island, and that there was a clear social expectation that you spent 30% of your time in cult based activities. It was more about not getting something for free, and ensuring players understood their character's social situation.
It was about 'realism'. It was impossible to explain to a wider community trained in RQ that it was equally possible to have stories that acknowledged relationships and maintained a very real sense of setting without having to worry about this kind of detail. The HW character sheet had a space for relationships and an abstract number, it didn't need extra details like percentages of time working for the cult. The type of story emergent from the grabby situations implied by the character creation system and the way the rules interacted with them wasn't about this kind of detail. This game didn't rely on gritty realistic modelling of a world.
This was just the beginning of bringing in rules disguised as setting. Before long we had a massively detailed write-up of Orlanth and Ernalda, which placed a great emphasis on exactly how a person in the world interacted with the cult and what was required to enter the structure and move within it. Again this was a bid for detailed 'realism'. It was a description of how Glorantha worked, and it equally missed the point. Yet again it was setting/rules built from the ground up, yet again it provided no real enhancement to grabby situation based on character concepts.
Overall, the experience of character creation was initially a highly creative process full of situation and relationships that felt natural and grabby redolent with heroic action. But then, the process slowly became about fleshing out the interaction with a 'realistic world' slowly and effectively tying down and stifling the character concept.
By the time we got to HeroQuest we had this institutionalised into the rules. Now, character creation was all about using templates that provided this background. The creative process of character creation was still there, but the detail was sneaking in through the keywords relating to community and cults. Even these played lip-service to a dynamic style by each template containing a number of reasons to have left home, but as soon as the character started to be fleshed out in magical terms it became a process of situating the character into a social structure with requirements and obligations.
It was like writing a detective novel and making a high percentage of the story all about the tedious paperwork and the drudgery of detailed investigation and limiting legal advice, in the interest of realism.
HQ was also guilty of messing with the core mechanics as well. It changed Simple Contests, which originally were a straight forward expression of Conflict Resolution with no distractions, into a detailed exploration of the conflict through augments. After all if the character sheet has all of this rich detail, which often amounted to a page worth of skills extrapolated from multiple sources, then you may as well find a way of using them within a conflict. So now instead of a Simple Contest focusing on a goal with the skill selection being a mixture of character emphasis and colour, it became a detailed list of skills employed, often with a complex narration to justify the augment choices. This not only missed the point of Simple Contests, it started an emphasis on front loading the narration. Effectively killing the strength of the core mechanics.
As an interesting side effect, augments became so ingrained into the mechanics there was a collective amnesia regards the HW rules. Everyone forgot that you were not allowed to augment simple contests before. Most of the community was convinced that augments made things better anyway.
For a number of political reasons some of the changes made to HQ were reversed for HQ2. Augments were effectively turned into a discrete contest, detailed lists of sub-cults and magics were de-emphasised, for all the world it looked like things were moving back in the right direction. Back towards dynamic character and situation focused play. But then the drift began again.
At least this time I was expecting it, and I even managed to slip a few bids for freedom into the game text itself. But before we knew it there was bottom up world building baked into the game world through yet more subtle mechanics. The cult requirements again have their expression in limiting player characters, but at least this time it isn't done by forcing detail onto the character sheet. Now it is about naturally behaving like the gods through runic affinity. The added rules for runes include behaviour and personality guidelines complete with advice for imposing these by the narrator. All in the interests of 'realism' and ignoring the fact that the system encourages exploration of these issues without the need for such guidelines.
The creeping in of bottom up world design is hardly surprising in a game designed primarily for an established world that evolved from a traditional RPG. But it is really f*%king annoying for someone like myself that continually sees the promise of the rules system. The dangling carrot of a truly dramatic and character centric game within a wonderfully realised world, ideal for grabby situation. That carrot is just there, but there is this almost invisible 'stick and rope' of added rules and subtle world building concerns keeping the carrot out of reach unless you are prepared to forge your own path.
7 Jul 2009
Reflections on my HeroQuest Journey
The HeroQuest Core Rules (HQ2) were officially released on 1 July, early reviews are hitting the net, and I find myself reflecting on a decade of playing with this game in its various forms. This is partly due to realising it was ten years ago when I first encountered a playtest version of HeroWars (HW).
My Roleplaying is radically different now, due in no small part to this game. I would love to be able to say that as soon as I took up that first proto-character sheet, instantly the scales fell from my eyes. But instead it was a long painful process that took years of background reading and trying out other games. And, in my weekly game, as a group we are not quite at the end of the road.
Is there anything inherently difficult about HeroQuest? I note that this question has already been asked and answered in the fan community with a huge NO, with only a few dissenting voices, but my truthful answer is, I don’t know. I can only look back at my experiences and cannot read the document with truly fresh eyes.
The new book, the draft version of which I have had for around ten months, takes huge strides towards being a game that achieves its now more clearly stated aims:
And much of the advice and rules streamlining is steering play specifically towards this aim. For example, we have a clear move away from stats for monsters or equipment, instead guidance is given as to how to describe such things depending on genre, and examples include textual descriptions like the flying speed of a griffin with no attempt to represent the creature in game mechanical terms.
If you read carefully between the lines in HW and HQ1 you can just glean a way of playing the game that relies purely on the Narrator selecting an appropriate resistance, instead of having pre-prepared stats. This is not to say that those games were meant to be played this way, indeed there are examples and advice directly contrary to this, but many of us noticed the potential and our games adapted accordingly.
Playing this way, with resistances left up to the Narrator, is a liberating and interesting idea, that on the flipside has many pitfalls and potential problems. Because earlier versions of the game did not espouse this method, the guidance and advice was lacking. Instead we had to find our own way through along the path less travelled and seek advice from those who had been this way before. For me this advice was mainly centred on the Forge HQ Forums before it was ceremonially removed from that place for dabbling with third party publishing!
Of course, taking the road less travelled is inherently more difficult, the majority of the community was walking down another path. A path that more clearly followed the examples in HQ1. For me the first point of diversion was when the HW line included Anaxil’s Roster. Suddenly we had a book that attempted to construct the creatures, monsters and inhuman races into PC like game mechanics. Somewhere along the way I took a few steps in another direction. I started to have doubts about what attribute stats like strength and size actually meant in this game, and by the time HQ1 was published, complete with a Creatures section ported from Anaxil’s Roster, I realised that I was off of the map.
It was around this time I had stumbled into the Forge forums and my early views on this issue can still be seen, still frustrated by how my version of the game seemed to be different to everyone around me, and how the new rules were making things worse! It was up to my group to find our way along this divergent path, and we slowly and surely did, with many of the wider HQ community also finding their own ways off of the main path espoused by the published rules.
The new rule book has thrown the rules onto a new path, and now a whole other group of players are bound to be startled. That new path heads towards those less travelled paths that so many of us had started to explore, and it is easier for us to step right back on the main path again and see where it takes us. But for those who had followed the examples and played by the established book, this new direction is going to seem weird or just plain wrong.
The new rules do a very good job of explaining the principles of the game, and how it is supposed to work. It has some minor elements that in my opinion will still create cognitive dissonance in groups using this game as a route map into uncharted territory. In other words, the game still has pitfalls all of its own, and I expect to occasionally fall into some, but at least it is leading in a direction that I want to go now.
My Roleplaying is radically different now, due in no small part to this game. I would love to be able to say that as soon as I took up that first proto-character sheet, instantly the scales fell from my eyes. But instead it was a long painful process that took years of background reading and trying out other games. And, in my weekly game, as a group we are not quite at the end of the road.
Is there anything inherently difficult about HeroQuest? I note that this question has already been asked and answered in the fan community with a huge NO, with only a few dissenting voices, but my truthful answer is, I don’t know. I can only look back at my experiences and cannot read the document with truly fresh eyes.
The new book, the draft version of which I have had for around ten months, takes huge strides towards being a game that achieves its now more clearly stated aims:
“Although there’s no right or wrong way to play the game, a certain story based logic does underlie the entire system.”
And much of the advice and rules streamlining is steering play specifically towards this aim. For example, we have a clear move away from stats for monsters or equipment, instead guidance is given as to how to describe such things depending on genre, and examples include textual descriptions like the flying speed of a griffin with no attempt to represent the creature in game mechanical terms.
If you read carefully between the lines in HW and HQ1 you can just glean a way of playing the game that relies purely on the Narrator selecting an appropriate resistance, instead of having pre-prepared stats. This is not to say that those games were meant to be played this way, indeed there are examples and advice directly contrary to this, but many of us noticed the potential and our games adapted accordingly.
Playing this way, with resistances left up to the Narrator, is a liberating and interesting idea, that on the flipside has many pitfalls and potential problems. Because earlier versions of the game did not espouse this method, the guidance and advice was lacking. Instead we had to find our own way through along the path less travelled and seek advice from those who had been this way before. For me this advice was mainly centred on the Forge HQ Forums before it was ceremonially removed from that place for dabbling with third party publishing!
Of course, taking the road less travelled is inherently more difficult, the majority of the community was walking down another path. A path that more clearly followed the examples in HQ1. For me the first point of diversion was when the HW line included Anaxil’s Roster. Suddenly we had a book that attempted to construct the creatures, monsters and inhuman races into PC like game mechanics. Somewhere along the way I took a few steps in another direction. I started to have doubts about what attribute stats like strength and size actually meant in this game, and by the time HQ1 was published, complete with a Creatures section ported from Anaxil’s Roster, I realised that I was off of the map.
It was around this time I had stumbled into the Forge forums and my early views on this issue can still be seen, still frustrated by how my version of the game seemed to be different to everyone around me, and how the new rules were making things worse! It was up to my group to find our way along this divergent path, and we slowly and surely did, with many of the wider HQ community also finding their own ways off of the main path espoused by the published rules.
The new rule book has thrown the rules onto a new path, and now a whole other group of players are bound to be startled. That new path heads towards those less travelled paths that so many of us had started to explore, and it is easier for us to step right back on the main path again and see where it takes us. But for those who had followed the examples and played by the established book, this new direction is going to seem weird or just plain wrong.
The new rules do a very good job of explaining the principles of the game, and how it is supposed to work. It has some minor elements that in my opinion will still create cognitive dissonance in groups using this game as a route map into uncharted territory. In other words, the game still has pitfalls all of its own, and I expect to occasionally fall into some, but at least it is leading in a direction that I want to go now.
Is the new HeroQuest Narrativist?
Is the new HeroQuest Narrativist?
Of course the simple and most correct answer to this question is no. Narrativism, as situated within The Big Model is about the agenda of a group around the table for a particular game, not about the rules chosen or the techniques used.
Does HQ2 support Narrativism?
Yes, in so far as there is a clearly stated aim to focus on story. This in itself can cloud the issue, as story is a value laden term, but yes, there are specific mechanics that support narrativist play in HQ2.
What about the game supports Narrativism?
Primarily, the fortune in the middle mechanic allows for a player based decision on the outcome of the conflict, and as such whether you succeed or fail is heavily weighted towards how important the conflict is to the player.
How this aids narrativism is by allowing the players to make decisions on consequential outcomes, but of course it is still dependent on the Narrator to allow this to happen. Note that this mechanic has always been present since HW.
Fortune in the Middle, what is that?
Fortune refers to the randomising dice mechanic. The Middle part is related to where the randomising factor occurs in relation to the resolution of the conflict.
In HQ2 the player and the narrator will agree on a conflict, then the player will decide on a goal and the narrator will decide on the opposing goal of the opposition. The conflict is then resolved by a mechanic that allows the player to influence the outcome in his favour if he wishes to spend his limited Hero Point currency. Sometimes the dice will dictate the outcome, but usually the outcome can be swayed by Hero Points. The key here is that finalising what actually happened, how the conflict was resolved, is ascertained by this Hero Point expenditure mechanic. You get to make decisions about relative success or failure after the randomiser.
Consequential Outcomes, explain?
In order for a game to be Narrativist, players must be able to influence how the story is being told. If decisions about story structure and pacing are informing the usage of Hero Points then there is a good chance that the game is being played with a narrativist agenda. In other words, if the outcome of the conflict has story related consequences, and that the responsibility for these outcomes is distributed amongst the group and not in the hands of the narrator, then the conflict mechanic can support a narrativist agenda.
This all sounds non-committal, can HQ2 be narrativist or not?
When you boil it down, HQ2 has loads of advice about story telling in games, but the advice is not aimed towards making the game narrativist. There is lots of advice directly compatible and even supportive of narrativism, and some that may detract or work against it. It would appear that Robin Laws does not adhere to the Big Model, so HQ2 can never be a narrativist toolkit. Indeed much of the advice, such as its approach to pacing with the Pass Fail cycle, could easily lead the well meaning group far away from a narrativist agenda if it didn’t already have this agenda firmly established.
The book clearly addresses narrative story methods, surely this is narrativist?
In some places yes, and in others no. The advice is often geared towards collaboration over the story and the narration, but I think it is important to have in mind when reading this advice that collaboration over such issues as narration can be used as a technique in any agenda.
Pass, Fail Cycle?
A chapter of HQ2 is given over to advice on story structure based on keeping track of how successful the players have been, and adjusting the current conflict’s resistance based upon a loose negative feedback loop. (A run of success leads to stiffer resistance for instance.) This system is geared towards using success and failure as a model for story structure.
Does the Pass, Fail Cycle work against Narrativism?
No, but it could have the potential to do so. A Narrator that is clearly trying to facilitate a group responsibility for story structure will possibly find that the Pass, Fail Cycle models a system very similar to their instincts. The danger may be for those Narrators who use the Pass Fail Cycle to enforce structure rather than help inform it, taking story structure out of the groups hands.
Of course the simple and most correct answer to this question is no. Narrativism, as situated within The Big Model is about the agenda of a group around the table for a particular game, not about the rules chosen or the techniques used.
Does HQ2 support Narrativism?
Yes, in so far as there is a clearly stated aim to focus on story. This in itself can cloud the issue, as story is a value laden term, but yes, there are specific mechanics that support narrativist play in HQ2.
What about the game supports Narrativism?
Primarily, the fortune in the middle mechanic allows for a player based decision on the outcome of the conflict, and as such whether you succeed or fail is heavily weighted towards how important the conflict is to the player.
How this aids narrativism is by allowing the players to make decisions on consequential outcomes, but of course it is still dependent on the Narrator to allow this to happen. Note that this mechanic has always been present since HW.
Fortune in the Middle, what is that?
Fortune refers to the randomising dice mechanic. The Middle part is related to where the randomising factor occurs in relation to the resolution of the conflict.
In HQ2 the player and the narrator will agree on a conflict, then the player will decide on a goal and the narrator will decide on the opposing goal of the opposition. The conflict is then resolved by a mechanic that allows the player to influence the outcome in his favour if he wishes to spend his limited Hero Point currency. Sometimes the dice will dictate the outcome, but usually the outcome can be swayed by Hero Points. The key here is that finalising what actually happened, how the conflict was resolved, is ascertained by this Hero Point expenditure mechanic. You get to make decisions about relative success or failure after the randomiser.
Consequential Outcomes, explain?
In order for a game to be Narrativist, players must be able to influence how the story is being told. If decisions about story structure and pacing are informing the usage of Hero Points then there is a good chance that the game is being played with a narrativist agenda. In other words, if the outcome of the conflict has story related consequences, and that the responsibility for these outcomes is distributed amongst the group and not in the hands of the narrator, then the conflict mechanic can support a narrativist agenda.
This all sounds non-committal, can HQ2 be narrativist or not?
When you boil it down, HQ2 has loads of advice about story telling in games, but the advice is not aimed towards making the game narrativist. There is lots of advice directly compatible and even supportive of narrativism, and some that may detract or work against it. It would appear that Robin Laws does not adhere to the Big Model, so HQ2 can never be a narrativist toolkit. Indeed much of the advice, such as its approach to pacing with the Pass Fail cycle, could easily lead the well meaning group far away from a narrativist agenda if it didn’t already have this agenda firmly established.
The book clearly addresses narrative story methods, surely this is narrativist?
In some places yes, and in others no. The advice is often geared towards collaboration over the story and the narration, but I think it is important to have in mind when reading this advice that collaboration over such issues as narration can be used as a technique in any agenda.
Pass, Fail Cycle?
A chapter of HQ2 is given over to advice on story structure based on keeping track of how successful the players have been, and adjusting the current conflict’s resistance based upon a loose negative feedback loop. (A run of success leads to stiffer resistance for instance.) This system is geared towards using success and failure as a model for story structure.
Does the Pass, Fail Cycle work against Narrativism?
No, but it could have the potential to do so. A Narrator that is clearly trying to facilitate a group responsibility for story structure will possibly find that the Pass, Fail Cycle models a system very similar to their instincts. The danger may be for those Narrators who use the Pass Fail Cycle to enforce structure rather than help inform it, taking story structure out of the groups hands.
12 Jan 2009
The Necessity of Questions in Conflicts
The adoption of Conflict Resolution by many games in recent years has focused on asking questions on the nature of the conflict. For instance, 'Why are you doing that', 'What are you trying to achieve', 'What do you want to happen'.
In traditional games these questions often went unasked, and were implied in the usage of the skill chosen. Combat was mostly about a series of attacks and defences, and most other skills were defined in detail, usage and scope within the rules. It is not necessarily true that the question was not present or implied, but it was rarely dwelt upon. Indeed in some groups, questions that pulled one into the meta-game were suspect at best.
There were however mechanics that supported Conflict Resolution, an example that comes to mind would be the Resistance Table in RuneQuest, which sought to provide a percentage chance of succeeding against any value of passive resistance. A heavy object would resist passively and the character had to cross reference his skill against the resisting skill to discover the chance of lifting it. The idea that the passive resistance was acting was hard-wired into the rules.
RuneQuest also grappled with that perennial situation getting past the guard.
In RQ2(1979) which itself was but a polished version of the 1978 first edition a sneak would be accomplished by Move Quietly, which on a successful roll would surprise an opponent unless he rolled a successful Listen. Listen is described as taking precedence over Move Quietly
Here we have some elements of conflicting interests. The guard is naturally watching and listening as part of his roll, and we have two opposing rolls. Boiling it down the player will only be successful if he succeeds and the guard fails. If he fails then the guard need not roll and if the guard succeeds then a success will not be enough.
However, this was frequently house ruled to take into account the Fumble and Critical rules, which led to an actual mechanical Conflict Resolution, as both results were necessary for a description of the result. RQ3(1984) had us subtracting the stealth skills from the guards skill which did away with the need for the house rules and made the rolls more task focused again, but only by adding a distinction of active listening, which brings the interests of the opposition to the fore.
As soon as games began to allow skill names that were not chosen from a set list but made up to suit, it became far more difficult to define rules that handled such issues because you could no longer have detailed skill descriptions. And, more to the point, it became possible for misunderstandings over intent. Couple with this the prevalence of universal resolution systems and you have issues of scope and skill application to handle.
Asking questions to pin down exactly what is about to be resolved becomes necessary.
In traditional games these questions often went unasked, and were implied in the usage of the skill chosen. Combat was mostly about a series of attacks and defences, and most other skills were defined in detail, usage and scope within the rules. It is not necessarily true that the question was not present or implied, but it was rarely dwelt upon. Indeed in some groups, questions that pulled one into the meta-game were suspect at best.
There were however mechanics that supported Conflict Resolution, an example that comes to mind would be the Resistance Table in RuneQuest, which sought to provide a percentage chance of succeeding against any value of passive resistance. A heavy object would resist passively and the character had to cross reference his skill against the resisting skill to discover the chance of lifting it. The idea that the passive resistance was acting was hard-wired into the rules.
RuneQuest also grappled with that perennial situation getting past the guard.
In RQ2(1979) which itself was but a polished version of the 1978 first edition a sneak would be accomplished by Move Quietly, which on a successful roll would surprise an opponent unless he rolled a successful Listen. Listen is described as taking precedence over Move Quietly
Here we have some elements of conflicting interests. The guard is naturally watching and listening as part of his roll, and we have two opposing rolls. Boiling it down the player will only be successful if he succeeds and the guard fails. If he fails then the guard need not roll and if the guard succeeds then a success will not be enough.
However, this was frequently house ruled to take into account the Fumble and Critical rules, which led to an actual mechanical Conflict Resolution, as both results were necessary for a description of the result. RQ3(1984) had us subtracting the stealth skills from the guards skill which did away with the need for the house rules and made the rolls more task focused again, but only by adding a distinction of active listening, which brings the interests of the opposition to the fore.
As soon as games began to allow skill names that were not chosen from a set list but made up to suit, it became far more difficult to define rules that handled such issues because you could no longer have detailed skill descriptions. And, more to the point, it became possible for misunderstandings over intent. Couple with this the prevalence of universal resolution systems and you have issues of scope and skill application to handle.
Asking questions to pin down exactly what is about to be resolved becomes necessary.
11 Jan 2009
Why Scope and Stakes cloud Conflict Resolution
My reason for posting these ideas on Conflict Resolution is that many definitions of the term seem to focus on the scope and or stakes of the conflict, see for instance Vincent Baker:
or this Glossary:
as opposed to the The Forge Glossary (which still clouds the issue by contrasting 'components'):
or the far more succinct definition by Tim Kleinert:
In my opinion the key is in assigning opposing interests. Where confusion has arisen is in ideas of scope and stakes, seeing conflict resolution as deciding on the outcome of the overall conflict as opposed to the individual tasks in the conflict, and using the question 'why' to decide on the scope and stakes, in the process de-emphasising the clash of interests.
Where this becomes most apparent is in games like our two earlier examples Dogs in the Vineyard and HeroQuest. Both attempt to define the contest using conflict resolution and then allow the contest to be broken down into individual actions.
I would argue, just because these games focus on the individual actions, this does not mean that they move towards task resolution. The conflicts are still defined in a context of conflicting interests, and outcomes of individual rolls are interpreted within the overall conflict.
Both of these games can confuse players more used to task resolution, because component actions can easily be misinterpreted as tasks. If you fall into this trap in HeroQuest, you find yourself playing a game of point scoring which feels like a sub-game removed from the conflict at hand, and in Dogs, you end up playing a competitive dice game which becomes a battle over the stakes, instead of a conflict over the importance of the stakes to the characters or players.
In conflict resolution, what's at stake is why you're doing the task. "I crack the safe!" "Why?" "Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!" What's at stake is: do you get the dirt on the supervillain?
or this Glossary:
A Forge term for a resolution mechanic which depends on the abstract higher-level conflict, rather than on the component tasks within that conflict.
as opposed to the The Forge Glossary (which still clouds the issue by contrasting 'components'):
A Technique in which the mechanisms of play focus on conflicts of interest, rather than on the component tasks within that conflict.
or the far more succinct definition by Tim Kleinert:
Conflict Resolution is when the dice decide whether a character/player's interest is realized, most often in contrast with another character/player's opposing interest.
In my opinion the key is in assigning opposing interests. Where confusion has arisen is in ideas of scope and stakes, seeing conflict resolution as deciding on the outcome of the overall conflict as opposed to the individual tasks in the conflict, and using the question 'why' to decide on the scope and stakes, in the process de-emphasising the clash of interests.
Where this becomes most apparent is in games like our two earlier examples Dogs in the Vineyard and HeroQuest. Both attempt to define the contest using conflict resolution and then allow the contest to be broken down into individual actions.
I would argue, just because these games focus on the individual actions, this does not mean that they move towards task resolution. The conflicts are still defined in a context of conflicting interests, and outcomes of individual rolls are interpreted within the overall conflict.
Both of these games can confuse players more used to task resolution, because component actions can easily be misinterpreted as tasks. If you fall into this trap in HeroQuest, you find yourself playing a game of point scoring which feels like a sub-game removed from the conflict at hand, and in Dogs, you end up playing a competitive dice game which becomes a battle over the stakes, instead of a conflict over the importance of the stakes to the characters or players.
10 Jan 2009
Conflict Resolution and Agendas
I will discuss the javelin example again in order to illustrate Conflict Resolution as I have defined it in my previous post.
There is no other character involved, so there is no inherent conflict. I think there are three possible options, an external conflict (with the elements or the world), an internal conflict (with himself), or an internalised external contest (with his non-present father).
The Forge Glossary suggests that the world should be seen as having interests even if abstracted, so the external conflict could be the breeze attempting to push the javelin away or the target itself appearing small distant and un-hittable.
An internal conflict needs to contain a conflict of interest, part of the character must either have an interest in failure (he wants to miss because he is uncomfortable with the symbolic patricide), or contain a potential for failure that can be abstracted as an interest(he has never managed to hit this target before and so his own doubt seeks to cause him to miss).
The non-present character option is a kind of internal conflict asserted upon the character by external forces. So we might have our character remembering his fathers scolding dialogue which serves to make him miss. We could use his fathers disapproval skills here even though he is not actively using it here and now.
In any of these cases it is necessary for the opposing agenda to actively oppose the character during the mechanical resolution so that we can decide on the outcome. So in HeroQuest we would have the resistance be the opposing interest in order to have two dice to compare, and in Dogs in the Vineyard we would use the Demonic Influence as the opposing dice pool.
There is no other character involved, so there is no inherent conflict. I think there are three possible options, an external conflict (with the elements or the world), an internal conflict (with himself), or an internalised external contest (with his non-present father).
The Forge Glossary suggests that the world should be seen as having interests even if abstracted, so the external conflict could be the breeze attempting to push the javelin away or the target itself appearing small distant and un-hittable.
An internal conflict needs to contain a conflict of interest, part of the character must either have an interest in failure (he wants to miss because he is uncomfortable with the symbolic patricide), or contain a potential for failure that can be abstracted as an interest(he has never managed to hit this target before and so his own doubt seeks to cause him to miss).
The non-present character option is a kind of internal conflict asserted upon the character by external forces. So we might have our character remembering his fathers scolding dialogue which serves to make him miss. We could use his fathers disapproval skills here even though he is not actively using it here and now.
In any of these cases it is necessary for the opposing agenda to actively oppose the character during the mechanical resolution so that we can decide on the outcome. So in HeroQuest we would have the resistance be the opposing interest in order to have two dice to compare, and in Dogs in the Vineyard we would use the Demonic Influence as the opposing dice pool.
9 Jan 2009
Deemphasising the ‘Why’ of Conflict Resolution
I have been concerned for some months about the categories of Conflict and Task Resolution.
The problem is in how the ideas have been explained. It is common to break them down into Task = What and Conflict = Why, which I don't believe is a correct interpretation.
It is probably better to define them thus:
Task resolution is concerned with the individual action that a character is performing and deciding whether that action is successful.
Conflict resolution is concerned with a character's interests in opposition to, or at least interacting with other interests, leading to a description of the resulting outworking of that clash.
This is not a new definition and is broadly in line with the Forge glossary which emphasises “conflicts of interest”.
The idea that the difference is in the 'what' and 'why' seems to be born from the concept of agenda taking a central role in the latter, but an over emphasis of this as the key difference leads to all kinds of confusion. The key difference is in how the GM defines the opposition.
Lets think of a really simple example, target practice with a javelin.
Task resolution simply requires the player to roll his javelin skill to determine if he is successful. He could have a reason and it could be emphasised heavily in the narration but that reason does not inform anything at the mechanical level.
Conflict resolution needs an opponent, we could abstract an opponent as the physics of the universe having a conflicting agenda that reflects the difficulty of the shot, or we could take the current context of the action to determine the opponent.
They may appear similar take this example that appears to fall between the two:
I would argue that this is task resolution. Yes we have a why, and yes we even have an idea of the opposing force, but there is no actual mechanical opposition, we only resolved the task at the mechanical level. I think this kind of example illuminates a current confusion inherent in the What/Why definitions and the current state of Task/Conflict theroy.
The problem is in how the ideas have been explained. It is common to break them down into Task = What and Conflict = Why, which I don't believe is a correct interpretation.
It is probably better to define them thus:
Task resolution is concerned with the individual action that a character is performing and deciding whether that action is successful.
Conflict resolution is concerned with a character's interests in opposition to, or at least interacting with other interests, leading to a description of the resulting outworking of that clash.
This is not a new definition and is broadly in line with the Forge glossary which emphasises “conflicts of interest”.
The idea that the difference is in the 'what' and 'why' seems to be born from the concept of agenda taking a central role in the latter, but an over emphasis of this as the key difference leads to all kinds of confusion. The key difference is in how the GM defines the opposition.
Lets think of a really simple example, target practice with a javelin.
Task resolution simply requires the player to roll his javelin skill to determine if he is successful. He could have a reason and it could be emphasised heavily in the narration but that reason does not inform anything at the mechanical level.
Conflict resolution needs an opponent, we could abstract an opponent as the physics of the universe having a conflicting agenda that reflects the difficulty of the shot, or we could take the current context of the action to determine the opponent.
They may appear similar take this example that appears to fall between the two:
Player: I throw my javelin at the target.
GM: OK, but why are you even doing this now?
Player: To let out my frustration with my father!
GM: OK, so you visualise the target as your father and throw your javelin, make the roll.
Player: I get a critical!
GM: The javelin sails straight at the centre of the target and impales itself deeply with a satisfying thud, and you have to put all of your strength into pulling it out again leaving you exhausted but relived of frustration.
I would argue that this is task resolution. Yes we have a why, and yes we even have an idea of the opposing force, but there is no actual mechanical opposition, we only resolved the task at the mechanical level. I think this kind of example illuminates a current confusion inherent in the What/Why definitions and the current state of Task/Conflict theroy.
3 Oct 2008
Humakti on the Marsh Edge : Intro
Dogs in the Vineyard, Glorantha style
We started playing my DitV variant last week, which I originally ran at Tentacles Fumble 2008.
When I started reading about DitV, I imagined Humakti PCs fitting with the play style so I was quite keen to give it a go. Humakti have a strong honour code and an interestingly stark outlook on life, but their values are rarely challenged in RuneQuest. Besides, death magic wielding teenagers with family issues is just too tempting to ignore.
I didn't want a thinly disguised Utah setting, so rather than make an exact Dogs parallel I chose an area where Humakt is very prominent (near Delecti's Marsh) and where a number of taboos and superstitions would develop over death. And, rather than a list of religious strictures I have laid down some flavoursome local customs to help highlight how the people think, and some religious restrictions, which could be seen as unworldly or overly pious by outsiders or non-cultists.
I have maintained the idea of being sent away for training. In this case a military training and initiation camp, which gives us plenty of options for accomplishment conflicts. I also wanted to really focus in on the community level, so the game is set in the characters' home village, and plays on the fact that the characters have been away and will not be sure if it's the village that has changed or their own mindset. A year having taboos and injunctions force fed to young minds is bound to confuse and change perspectives.
Death Magic replaces Gunfire, and conveniently Humakti would consider wielding a sword death magic. Cult Runes replaces Coat, The Unquiet Dead replaces Demons and Necromancy replaces Sorcery. This is not to say that the whole area is crawling with necromancers so much as in a Humakti world view necromancy would include any magic or practice that deliberately contravenes their black and white attitude to death (at least in this game which I acknowledge has an extreme interpretation).
I will post a story overview and also focus in on some of the key conflicts. I am recording the game for this purpose but the recordings will not be published as I would not gain permission to record if I was to do so. I do find the reflective insights that spring from being able to listen back after a few days invaluable. The nuances of what people say are often missed in the moment, including the effects of my own wording on the game. Listening back to the tricky parts and thinking 'how could I have made that better' is a great way to reflect and learn for me.
We started playing my DitV variant last week, which I originally ran at Tentacles Fumble 2008.
When I started reading about DitV, I imagined Humakti PCs fitting with the play style so I was quite keen to give it a go. Humakti have a strong honour code and an interestingly stark outlook on life, but their values are rarely challenged in RuneQuest. Besides, death magic wielding teenagers with family issues is just too tempting to ignore.
I didn't want a thinly disguised Utah setting, so rather than make an exact Dogs parallel I chose an area where Humakt is very prominent (near Delecti's Marsh) and where a number of taboos and superstitions would develop over death. And, rather than a list of religious strictures I have laid down some flavoursome local customs to help highlight how the people think, and some religious restrictions, which could be seen as unworldly or overly pious by outsiders or non-cultists.
I have maintained the idea of being sent away for training. In this case a military training and initiation camp, which gives us plenty of options for accomplishment conflicts. I also wanted to really focus in on the community level, so the game is set in the characters' home village, and plays on the fact that the characters have been away and will not be sure if it's the village that has changed or their own mindset. A year having taboos and injunctions force fed to young minds is bound to confuse and change perspectives.
Death Magic replaces Gunfire, and conveniently Humakti would consider wielding a sword death magic. Cult Runes replaces Coat, The Unquiet Dead replaces Demons and Necromancy replaces Sorcery. This is not to say that the whole area is crawling with necromancers so much as in a Humakti world view necromancy would include any magic or practice that deliberately contravenes their black and white attitude to death (at least in this game which I acknowledge has an extreme interpretation).
I will post a story overview and also focus in on some of the key conflicts. I am recording the game for this purpose but the recordings will not be published as I would not gain permission to record if I was to do so. I do find the reflective insights that spring from being able to listen back after a few days invaluable. The nuances of what people say are often missed in the moment, including the effects of my own wording on the game. Listening back to the tricky parts and thinking 'how could I have made that better' is a great way to reflect and learn for me.
17 Sept 2008
The De-emphasis of Numbers in HeroQuest
One way of examining a game's mechanics is to focus on the numbers, specifically the dice used, their relative probabilities and what they represent in the game. HeroQuest is not easily analysed in this way, and even when it is, it confounds normal expectations. Indeed it is often accused of being broken, the D20 cited as having a flat probability curve, or the break points around 20 and 1W being strange and non-linear. Alternative dice are even suggested to fix these problems.
However, for me these issues fade into the background, and more radically I believe the numbers to mean very little within the context of the game as a whole.
To explain this let us imagine a situation within a game, and for simplicity's sake the game is structured around simple contests and makes use of a formal scene framing technique, with only a few key rolls per scene focused on areas that shape the story.
---
The story so far:
Our hero the prince has fought his way through the monstrous and shadowy thorn bushes surrounding the castle and has found his way through the maze like corridors to at last find himself in the bedchamber of the comatose princess.
Imagine that this story is unfamiliar to the player and that it need not progress inevitably to the conclusion that we all know from childhood.
The Scene:
A once regal bedchamber with a thick layer of settled dust everywhere and old heavy cobwebs hanging from every available object. Draped in these cobwebs like a funeral veil is an apparently dead young lady. Our hero is exhausted following some narrow successes and some setbacks.
Some HQ2 Stats:
The GM is selecting resistances based on story judgement and wants the hero to face a climactic challenge in this scene but also has planned that the beauty of the princess should play a major role in this. Letting the player take the lead he asks what the Prince's first move is and the player goes straight for "I part the cobwebs from her face".
The GM sees the opportunity for a nice heavy resistance and states "the Princess's unsurpassed beauty holds you paralysed and you find yourself unable to do anything but stare at her, as if your whole quest was leading up to this moment, and there is nothing else to surpass this, and if you want to do anything else at all you must resist her beauty". He has in mind a 'Very High' resistance (Base +9) which is 3W for a game of three sessions or less.
The Player decides this is the ideal time to go for The Good Fairy's Prophesy 17 and states that he is driven to action by the prophesy which has been described as "a prince will one day liberate a forgotten princess from within the dark thorny forest, lift the 100 year curse and they will wed".
This is probably the ideal skill selection in terms of the story and is an assertion that the prophesy applies to his character at this crucial moment, which is interpreted as a specific bonus so gains +3 to the skill taking it to 20 v 3W. The Player rolls 15 and the GM rolls 8 gaining a marginal defeat.
The GM narrates this as "You contemplate the prophesy whilst held by the princess's beauty and you find yourself lost in a fantasy of your future together which like a waking dream seems real to you, as if you have passed this point and moved on. It is only when a spider crosses your face halfway through spinning a new web between you and the princess do you realise that you are still trapped in her beauty and that your fantasy was but a naive dream of what could have been if you had had the courage to act".
---
This example is designed to highlight the subtle forces that work to make the numbers part of an abstract game in HeroQuest. At first glance it is a straightforward examination of the basic mechanics of HQ as expressed in skill numbers, resistances and modifiers, but there are many places where the story elements and subjective judgement start to de-emphasise these.
There is the GMs initial vision of the story arc, and the current position within that trajectory, in this case he has sought to make some of the earlier scenes difficult and physical to make any victory sought feel hard earned. He has an arc for the player in mind, possibly playing on the virginity and inexperience of the character by drawing out the overtones of loss of female innocence that lie in the sleeping beauty story. He has the power to frame the scene to present a suitable situation for a particular resistance level and specifically draw out the attitudes of the player via the character to the situation.
The player has the ability to choose skills that best reflect his character, which in turn will have an impact on skills rolled on and modifiers gained, in this case he is emphasising the alignment of his fate with that of the prophesy and so emphasising in the story that he is seeking either an ending that gets the girl or perhaps an ending that shows how he is naive to believe he is the one. He can tip the results in his favour via use of Hero-Points. With his choice of skill he is also negotiating with the GM over skill applicability and modifiers and to some extent resistances and future story trajectory.
The GM is then casting the narration to direct the narrative arc towards another challenge or situation which while paying heed to the result subtly re-interprets the failure to suit his plans and tie into the planned themes and the character's issues.
The numbers are at the heart of it all, and by far the easiest part to discuss and explain, but the subjective aspects that surround these are using the numbers in far less direct ways and de-emphasising them at every turn.
However, for me these issues fade into the background, and more radically I believe the numbers to mean very little within the context of the game as a whole.
To explain this let us imagine a situation within a game, and for simplicity's sake the game is structured around simple contests and makes use of a formal scene framing technique, with only a few key rolls per scene focused on areas that shape the story.
---
The story so far:
Our hero the prince has fought his way through the monstrous and shadowy thorn bushes surrounding the castle and has found his way through the maze like corridors to at last find himself in the bedchamber of the comatose princess.
Imagine that this story is unfamiliar to the player and that it need not progress inevitably to the conclusion that we all know from childhood.
The Scene:
A once regal bedchamber with a thick layer of settled dust everywhere and old heavy cobwebs hanging from every available object. Draped in these cobwebs like a funeral veil is an apparently dead young lady. Our hero is exhausted following some narrow successes and some setbacks.
Some HQ2 Stats:
- Adventurous Prince 5W (Keyword)
- Heirloom Sword 18
- Valiant 3W
- The Good Fairy's Prophesy 17
- Virginal Naivety 2W
The GM is selecting resistances based on story judgement and wants the hero to face a climactic challenge in this scene but also has planned that the beauty of the princess should play a major role in this. Letting the player take the lead he asks what the Prince's first move is and the player goes straight for "I part the cobwebs from her face".
The GM sees the opportunity for a nice heavy resistance and states "the Princess's unsurpassed beauty holds you paralysed and you find yourself unable to do anything but stare at her, as if your whole quest was leading up to this moment, and there is nothing else to surpass this, and if you want to do anything else at all you must resist her beauty". He has in mind a 'Very High' resistance (Base +9) which is 3W for a game of three sessions or less.
The Player decides this is the ideal time to go for The Good Fairy's Prophesy 17 and states that he is driven to action by the prophesy which has been described as "a prince will one day liberate a forgotten princess from within the dark thorny forest, lift the 100 year curse and they will wed".
This is probably the ideal skill selection in terms of the story and is an assertion that the prophesy applies to his character at this crucial moment, which is interpreted as a specific bonus so gains +3 to the skill taking it to 20 v 3W. The Player rolls 15 and the GM rolls 8 gaining a marginal defeat.
The GM narrates this as "You contemplate the prophesy whilst held by the princess's beauty and you find yourself lost in a fantasy of your future together which like a waking dream seems real to you, as if you have passed this point and moved on. It is only when a spider crosses your face halfway through spinning a new web between you and the princess do you realise that you are still trapped in her beauty and that your fantasy was but a naive dream of what could have been if you had had the courage to act".
---
This example is designed to highlight the subtle forces that work to make the numbers part of an abstract game in HeroQuest. At first glance it is a straightforward examination of the basic mechanics of HQ as expressed in skill numbers, resistances and modifiers, but there are many places where the story elements and subjective judgement start to de-emphasise these.
There is the GMs initial vision of the story arc, and the current position within that trajectory, in this case he has sought to make some of the earlier scenes difficult and physical to make any victory sought feel hard earned. He has an arc for the player in mind, possibly playing on the virginity and inexperience of the character by drawing out the overtones of loss of female innocence that lie in the sleeping beauty story. He has the power to frame the scene to present a suitable situation for a particular resistance level and specifically draw out the attitudes of the player via the character to the situation.
The player has the ability to choose skills that best reflect his character, which in turn will have an impact on skills rolled on and modifiers gained, in this case he is emphasising the alignment of his fate with that of the prophesy and so emphasising in the story that he is seeking either an ending that gets the girl or perhaps an ending that shows how he is naive to believe he is the one. He can tip the results in his favour via use of Hero-Points. With his choice of skill he is also negotiating with the GM over skill applicability and modifiers and to some extent resistances and future story trajectory.
The GM is then casting the narration to direct the narrative arc towards another challenge or situation which while paying heed to the result subtly re-interprets the failure to suit his plans and tie into the planned themes and the character's issues.
The numbers are at the heart of it all, and by far the easiest part to discuss and explain, but the subjective aspects that surround these are using the numbers in far less direct ways and de-emphasising them at every turn.
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