Examples of good non-combat resolution mechanics?

[Mistborn]

Have you read or played the actual shit ?

Yes I've read that shit and it only makes me think less of you as a person for shilling for it.

[Whipstitch]

It's kinda funny that whenever Apocalypse World comes up silva rants at us for blindly getting all up in frank's taint but yet he apparently expects us to just accept on faith that Apocalypse World's magical tea is totes empowering.

So what if the char will scratch his knee on the rock, or slip his feet and fall, etc. while climbing down a cliff ?

You realize this is kind of my point, right? Falling is a pretty obvious potential outcome of a botched or mediocre roll on a climbing stunt but AW is a MTP game so when the MC checks his asscheeks for treasure falling may not even be on the table at all because he thinks that is boring and predictable. He may be all like "Wouldn't it be way more awesome if like, you dislodged a rock and woke up a bear instead!? I'm a genius. This isn't rail roady at all. Ignore the fact that our last three adventures had bear fights and that bear fights are a thing that I do to players."

[silva]

The Moves structure is the most player-centric ever

No it isn't fuckass, a "player-centric" system would at no point say "something happens to you, consult your MC's ass for details", it would have instead a transparent set of rules that generate outcomes.

Oh sure! In no other game does this happens, right ????

Except no. In 90% of traditional games out there the GM creates the whole story from start to finish ("look! Its GM Magical Tea Party! Run for your lives!" ) while the players only fill in the little details ( = how do we kill the monsters the GM preped for us in point A; how do we talk our way out the goons GM preped in point B, how do we find the treasure the GM hide in point C... etc). Now THATS what I would call a GM-centric game, and SURPRISE! most games we grew up are exactly like this, from Vampire "cronicles" to Shadowrun "Missions" to D&D3 "adventures".

Now compare that to Apocalypse World, where are the players who "create" the whole story from start to finish, and thats the GM who fill in the little details ( = how my character´s old rival is translated into a tangible threat [which the game happens to call a "Front" for those who don know it]; how the GM reacts and adapts to the direction the group takes the adventure to; etc).

Which model is the player-centric and which one is GM-centric ?

Which model is more dependent on the GM for "magical tea party" ?

Which model is the sandbox and which one is the railroad ?

[Chamomile]

Silva, magical tea party is not the same thing as railroaded. It is absolutely possible to have a sandbox game that is also heavily reliant on MTP, and that is, in fact, the kind of experience that AW delivers.

[silva]

Ok. What exactly is magical Tea party again ?

You realize this is kind of my point, right? Falling is a pretty obvious potential outcome of a botched or mediocre roll on a climbing stunt but AW is a MTP game so when the MC checks his asscheeks for treasure falling may not even be on the table at all because he thinks that is boring and predictable. He may be all like "Wouldn't it be way more awesome if like, you dislodged a rock and woke up a bear instead!? I'm a genius. This isn't rail roady at all. Ignore the fact that our last three adventures had bear fights and that bear fights are a thing that I do to players."

This dont make sense, sorry Whip. Thats not how the moves mechanics work. Again, the GM have a definite (and somewhat narrow) focus for improvising, which is informed by the character intention in a given context. So, if character A is trying to climb a cliff wall, the Fail roll should be a fall (or worse - fall AND have a rock slide above him ). At least this is what the principles and agendas strongly suggest ("follow contextual logic and causality"). A HAlf-sucess would make things more muddy, I agree, but a straight Fail wouldnt. In other words, yeah, GM have room for improv, but it is conditional to the declared intention of the character trying the action, and the context at hand.

Further, most moves have explicit options built-in, where the player just pick what he wants from a list. Just a minority rely on improv by the GM.

[tussock]

MTP is conflict/drama resolution by sitting around and having a nice chat about what is good in this world with one's imaginary tea and crumpets.

Or, less metaphorical, it's what you have to do when the rules don't cover what you're trying and people don't instantly agree with what that means. Figure something out and go with it. The antithesis of rules. Though you can also have rules that direct you to use MTP, but that's just to save you from looking for an actual rule in that book.

[Whipstitch]

Normally I'd roll with the classic Picard face palm here but honestly at this point I really feel more like Ron Burgundy. I'm not even mad, the whole thing is just amazing.

Strictly speaking, silva is correct in saying that most move types are fairly specific. That fine distinction is less important than it initially sounds, however, due to the way Acting Under Fire gets its fingers into so many pies. Consequently hard bargains and ugly choices are like obscenity, freedom or common sense--seeming champions of consensus, but once everyone actually starts comparing notes you find that all your friends are crazy people.

Anyway, yeah, when people describe a game as Magic Tea Party it often indicates that the game is sufficiently rules light that the outcome of any given scenario is rarely repeatable from group to group because ultimately you are making shit up as you go rather than playing according to Hoyle. When it is fun at all, it's usually because there's a tacit agreement to run it more or less like improv--people just roll with whatever the hell anyone else suggests doing, and nobody is really out to treat the game as a problem solving exercise. Bad and good answers don't really exist, stuff just happens, and the fun is in the fluff reactions to those things, not in trying to hit certain win conditions.

Such games tend to run afoul of the den for two major reasons:

1. MTP really only requires an agreeable group of people and maybe an impartial resolution mechanic in case someone gets cranky during your game of Cops & Robbers and starts saying "Nuh-uh, I shot you first!" instead of just agreeing to switch to the role of Aggrieved Widow. As such, you better be providing a bunch of shit hot setting material that is worth reading just for its own sake, because if you don't, we're all going to start wondering where you get off charging actual cash money for it, because we sure as hell aren't paying you for the rules.

2. Mini-games can be fun ways to spice up a session whose story events just aren't hitting on all cylinders for whatever reason. Meanwhile, MTP just doesn't have mini-games at all.

[ishy]

He may be all like "Wouldn't it be way more awesome if like, you dislodged a rock and woke up a bear instead!?

This dont make sense, sorry Whip. Thats not how the moves mechanics work. Again, the GM have a definite (and somewhat narrow) focus for improvising, which is informed by the character intention in a given context. So, if character A is trying to climb a cliff wall, the Fail roll should be a fall (or worse - fall AND have a rock slide above him ). At least this is what the principles and agendas strongly suggest ("follow contextual logic and causality"). A HAlf-sucess would make things more muddy, I agree, but a straight Fail wouldnt. In other words, yeah, GM have room for improv, but it is conditional to the declared intention of the character trying the action, and the context at hand.

Not sure I understand. How is dislodging a rock and waking up X not following contextual logic and causality?
It is something that I can definitely see happening if I climb stuff and actually happens quite often in films too.

[Omegonthesane]

He may be all like "Wouldn't it be way more awesome if like, you dislodged a rock and woke up a bear instead!?

This dont make sense, sorry Whip. Thats not how the moves mechanics work. Again, the GM have a definite (and somewhat narrow) focus for improvising, which is informed by the character intention in a given context. So, if character A is trying to climb a cliff wall, the Fail roll should be a fall (or worse - fall AND have a rock slide above him ). At least this is what the principles and agendas strongly suggest ("follow contextual logic and causality"). A HAlf-sucess would make things more muddy, I agree, but a straight Fail wouldnt. In other words, yeah, GM have room for improv, but it is conditional to the declared intention of the character trying the action, and the context at hand.

Not sure I understand. How is dislodging a rock and waking up X not following contextual logic and causality?
It is something that I can definitely see happening if I climb stuff and actually happens quite often in films too.

I think he's mocking the idea that the GM would actually try to cause bear attacks to happen in every situation as a priority.

[Username17]

I cannot conceive of a context in which your declared intent would not leave "bear attack" as a negative consequence.

-Username17

[Chamomile]

I cannot conceive of a context in which your declared intent would not leave "bear attack" as a negative consequence.

-Username17

So if someone tries to eavesdrop on a conversation between two powerful warlords in the middle of a densely populated area, you think "bear attack" is a reasonable and logical consequence for failure? If you say yes, you are lying.

[Koumei]

I cannot conceive of a context in which your declared intent would not leave "bear attack" as a negative consequence.

If you're playing as Putin, you want as many bear attacks as possible, so you can take your shirt off and fight it in unarmed combat.

Edit: this negates the negative part of "negative consequence".

[Drolyt]

I cannot conceive of a context in which your declared intent would not leave "bear attack" as a negative consequence.

-Username17

So if someone tries to eavesdrop on a conversation between two powerful warlords in the middle of a densely populated area, you think "bear attack" is a reasonable and logical consequence for failure? If you say yes, you are lying.

Dude, that isn't even a hard one. The warlords have trained bear guards. Try again.

[silva]

Anyway, yeah, when people describe a game as Magic Tea Party it often indicates that the game is sufficiently rules light that the outcome of any given scenario is rarely repeatable from group to group because ultimately you are making shit up as you go rather than playing according to Hoyle. When it is fun at all, it's usually because there's a tacit agreement to run it more or less like improv--people just roll with whatever the hell anyone else suggests doing, and nobody is really out to treat the game as a problem solving exercise. Bad and good answers don't really exist, stuff just happens, and the fun is in the fluff reactions to those things, not in trying to hit certain win conditions.

THanks Whipstitch for explaining whats MTP again. Yeah, I think AW may have some MTP. But the problem as I see is that the way you guys use "MTP", it actually accomodates (I think) two things that, for me, are separated/different: "conflict-resolution" and "shared narrative/authorial rights". While both could be viewed as different degrees of the same thing, I would argue they generate sufficiently distinct outcomes in play that they should be treated separatedly. So, using the POLAR BEAR ATTACK! example,

1. In a conflict-resolution based game (Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World, Dogs in the Vineyard, Mountain Witch, etc), its mandatory that 2 things are made clear before the roll:

A. player´s intention
B. whats at stake

So, in this case, if the GM produces a POLAR BEAR ATTACK! following a.. say.. botched negotiation between 2 brazilian coconut-dealers in Copacabana beach, he is being as nonsensic as if he produced the same POLAR BEAR ATTACK ! as a consequence of fumble/critical failure for your BRP/GURPs spy trying to sneak inside nazi- supply camp in north afrika:

Player: "My british spy want to get inside the camp"
GM: "Ok. roll stealh to get past the sentry"
Player: *critical failure*
GM: "POLAR BEAR ATTACK!!!!!"

TL;DR: there is an expectation, in this mode of resolution, that yes the GM will produce things from his ass, BUT everything he produces should be restricted/conditional to the players intention for the situation. Also, and equally important, whats at stake should be made clear (or the more clear as possible) before the roll.

2. In a shared-narration / authorial-power resolution based game (Houses of the Blooded, Polaris, etc) the "shackles" are much much looser on what to produce on each situation. So that a spy succeeding in sneaking inside the nazi-camp, could not only get inside it, but also coincidently find exactly the intel-room he was looking for AND (what a luck!) where commander Rommel happens to be sleeping AND the ancient eldrytch rock for calling Cthulhu is being guarded! (in fact, many games let you add more details the greater your sucess margin).

(though, to be frank, I think the POLAR BEAR ATTACK! would be out-of-place even in this second style, except if the players are aiming for purposefully humourous game).

- - -

If I got it right, you guys equal both methods as "Magical Tea Party", right ? If so, my apologies (:hehehe:). I understood that was the case only with the second method.

[spaceLem]

For all the hatred against MTP, it's also the one thing that differentiates an RPG from a board game or a computer game.

Also, in the right hands (disclaimer about bad GMs etc.) MTP, where you never need to refer to a rulebook after character gen because you trust your GM to do a good job, can provide some of the best roleplaying experience to be had.

Sadly, two several year long campaigns ended last night that were very much in the right hands, and very much MTP. One was a home brew system where there is no rulebook, and yet that campaign was miles above any D&D campaign I've ever been in, because the GM rocks.

[DSMatticus]

For all the hatred against MTP, it's also the one thing that differentiates an RPG from a board game or a computer game.

MTP doesn't refer to flexibility in creating a scenario or an environment (which is what separates an improvisational medium like TTRPGs from a scripted medium like videogames) - no matter how tight the rules system is, someone still has to decide whether you're attacked by bears or not. MTP refers to a lack of rules for governing the outcomes of actions a player might take.

When I make an attack roll in D&D, I know what the possible outcomes are (I can miss, I can hit) and their rough likelihoods and I can use all that information to assign values to actions and make decisions based on their value to me. D&D's stealth system isn't... the greatest, but it's there, and I can do the same thing with it. The decisions I make are informed by the consequences.

When I try to attack or sneak by something in Apocalypse World, the possible outcomes of my actions are not known. Some of them are more specific than others, but the the failure state especially is usually totally made up on the spot. If I, as a player in AW, am trying to assess the merit of sneaking past the sentries, I am immediately fucked because I cannot possibly know the outcomes and how much they will hurt me.

Silva is arguing that that's not MTP, because
1) he is an idiot, and
2) "because you can guess based on the context what some of the negative consequences could be, and a guess you just pulled out of your ass about what someone else will think is an appropriate negative consequence is totally just as good as knowing straight up what the negative consequence actually will be."

He is wrong. Apocalypse World is full to fucking hell of MTP. And that makes it very bad as an objective-oriented game in which you play as a character who is out to go accomplish things (because you can never really tell how much closer any given action will take your character to his goals). That does not make it bad for a game in which you sit down with a bunch of friends and try to create an interesting story, treating your character like a piece on a board that you move around and have do things that are narratively interesting in relation to the story.

[hogarth]

For all the hatred against MTP, it's also the one thing that differentiates an RPG from a board game or a computer game.

The issue is not so much that people hate MTP; it's when a game has pages and pages of rules that could be summed up by four words -- "just make something up" -- that people tend to be scornful.

[spaceLem]

MTP doesn't refer to flexibility in creating a scenario or an environment (which is what separates an improvisational medium like TTRPGs from a scripted medium like videogames) - no matter how tight the rules system is, someone still has to decide whether you're attacked by bears or not. MTP refers to a lack of rules for governing the outcomes of actions a player might take.

I get that, but a board game or computer game can still only give you predefined consequences to your actions, whereas MTP allows you to use a human brain to interpret the outcome, and specifically come up with outcomes that you had not predicted. IMHO, this is a feature, not a flaw.

You could, in theory, try to come up with rules to describe every single possible outcome, but the rules for such a system would come in 2000 page tomes and be totally unplayable. For a simpler system, you abstract away the complexity, and then you're limited to creative descriptions of what it means to lose 5 HP or score a critical: the description may vary, but the outcome is the same. With MTP, the description actually matches what happens.

When I make an attack roll in D&D, I know what the possible outcomes are (I can miss, I can hit) and their rough likelihoods and I can use all that information to assign values to actions and make decisions based on their value to me. D&D's stealth system isn't... the greatest, but it's there, and I can do the same thing with it. The decisions I make are informed by the consequences.

When I try to attack or sneak by something in Apocalypse World, the possible outcomes of my actions are not known. Some of them are more specific than others, but the the failure state especially is usually totally made up on the spot. If I, as a player in AW, am trying to assess the merit of sneaking past the sentries, I am immediately fucked because I cannot possibly know the outcomes and how much they will hurt me.

This boils down to you not trusting your GM to come up with a result that is consistent (which is BS anyway, see chaos theory), or not blatantly unfair ("so I rolled a 20 on an attack, that shouldn't mean I cut my own arm off"). Obviously you still need something coherent to back the GM up (Rock-Paper-Scissors is not going to be a satisfying resolution mechanism no matter how good your GM). You still need to have reasonable expectations about the outcome, even if they're not exact (you need to know what you're good at, and that missing by 2 is not a worse outcome than missing by 10). But you have to leave that room for human interpretation, or you're just playing a board game where the GM chooses the cards.

Ultimately, the proof of the game is in the playing. In my personal experience, I've had much better D&D with a game that was 90% MTP, than I ever did when I spent most of my time worrying about whether some combination of feats affected an outcome and let me be somewhere else on a grid. In our game, when a character fumbled a summoning spell, he got a fire god lodged in his head, who became a major NPC with a voice like Brian Blessed, who took over when the player couldn't make the game, and ended up created a volcano to protect a city from dragons. It was an interesting, entirely unpredictable, campaign changing event from a single fumble when casting magic. In fact almost every single time a fumble was rolled in that campaign, the GM came up with creative, memorable description of what happened, with real consequences. I'm always going to remember that game.

The times I remember from playing D&D are the bits that were pure player improv, mostly in 1e/2e, or the time in the 3e game when the half-orc barbarian was the only one standing after the boss fight, and woke us up with breakfast. We asked "where's the paladin", she said "I don't know, eat your meat". We asked "what kind of meat is it?", and she replied "good meat". Or the time I threw a large d20 across the table in frustration during a 4e game, when I couldn't use a mundane power to shift a skeleton one square because it was technically dead, and therefore an object not a target, even though it was lying on a pad that would raise it the next round.

Okay, not every GM is that good, and if they had just said that you hacked your own leg off when you fumbled, but only gave your friend a -2 penalty when they did the same, then it would suck just as much as rolling on a fumble table and being told you drop your sword. Again. YMMV, I'll take the MTP thanks.

[Mistborn]

Ultimately, the proof of the game is in the playing. In my personal experience, I've had much better D&D with a game that was 90% MTP,

No one here cares about that time you had fun playing MTP. In case you haven't noticed TGD is primarily a forum about designing games and AW's resolution mechanic is badly designed. Your personal anecdotes are irrelevant to this.

For those of you who haven't gotten the skinny on why TGD is so down on MTP.

MTP is usually used in the context of "that's just MTP". Magical Teaparty is the first RPG element. It's free. And we can use it to mind caulk anything. That's not revolutionary, and the results aren't predictable.

So when someone says they have a cool system of handling something, and that "system" is MTP, it would not be unusual at all for someone on the Den to say "That's just MTP." And even though tone doesn't carry over text on the interwebs terribly well, I want to assure you that the sentence would be absolutely dripping with scorn. But it wouldn't be dismissive and contemptuous because MTP is inherently bad, it would be such because the delivered product would be literally the equal of what a five year old could do.

If a five year old does a stick figure in crayon, it is charming and goes on the fridge. If a grown man does one and asks why I don't want it on my fridge, I don't think that needs a reasoned response. It deserves a dismissive and cruel comment. And I am sure that it would get one.

But what MTP is, fundamentally, is worse than every single other rule in your game. At least, it fucking better be. Because MTP is free and takes up zero space. So absolutely any rule you write that isn't better than MTP is something you should cut in editing. Which doesn't mean MTP is "bad" or that it doesn't have a place. It just means that every single rule you include in your game is supposed to be better than MTP.

-Username17

[spaceLem]

No one here cares about that time you had fun playing MTP. In case you haven't noticed TGD is primarily a forum about designing games and AW's resolution mechanic is badly designed. Your personal anecdotes are irrelevant to this.

Probably not, but there was more to my post than just anecdotes. I haven't played AW, so I can't comment, but designing your system so there is no room for MTP is a mistake, and should be left to board games and computer games.

But what MTP is, fundamentally, is worse than every single other rule in your game. At least, it fucking better be. Because MTP is free and takes up zero space. So absolutely any rule you write that isn't better than MTP is something you should cut in editing. Which doesn't mean MTP is "bad" or that it doesn't have a place. It just means that every single rule you include in your game is supposed to be better than MTP.

I almost entirely agree with this, except to say that you've got to know when to stop, and know when adding more ingredients to your pie is not making it any better.

[Chamomile]

Dude, that isn't even a hard one. The warlords have trained bear guards. Try again.

And no one noticed the trained bears while sneaking in? No one had heard that these guys had trained bears while scoping out the mission or during any of the previous interactions they may have had with the warlords leading or their henchmen leading up to the mission? You could have the negative consequence of any given action be "bears are beamed down by passing aliens" but that doesn't mean it isn't completely inappropriate to the context of the situation.

Trying to make the argument that predicting future events is totally impossible in a game that runs on more MTP than D&D is absolutely wrong, because it is totally possible to predict future events even in completely freeform RPGs where everything is 100% MTP all the time. In the same way that I can make educated guesses about how things will turn out in real life even though I can't hope to calculate an exact percentage or even a ballpark estimate (barring rare cases where someone has conveniently done a scientific study on the outcome of the exact behavior in which I'm engaging), you can do the same for a game that runs on large part on MTP. While it is certainly possible that the GM could make the result of all failures ever a bear attack if he outright ignores all the rules in the book telling him not to run the game that way, he could do the exact same thing by ignoring all the rules with numbers attached in D&D. AW makes it extremely clear that the rules in the GM section are still meant to be rules and not guidelines even though they don't have any numbers.

[Username17]

Dude, that isn't even a hard one. The warlords have trained bear guards. Try again.

And no one noticed the trained bears while sneaking in? No one had heard that these guys had trained bears while scoping out the mission or during any of the previous interactions they may have had with the warlords leading or their henchmen leading up to the mission?

Did you fucking ask how many trained guard bears those warlords have? You didn't fucking mention how many guard bears the warlords had when you described the scenario, so they could plausibly have any number between zero and many.

When your game is freeform bullshit and your world is not particularly detailed, that works both ways. A player can announce that they toss the ticking bomb into a nearby mailbox because no one mentioned how far the nearest mailbox was. And the MC can have the warlord call in their trained guard bears because no one mentioned how many guard bears were on hand. Anything undeclared can be declared. Even guard bears. Especially guard bears.

-Username17

[spaceLem]

And the MC can have the warlord call in their trained guard bears because no one mentioned how many guard bears were on hand. Anything undeclared can be declared. Even guard bears. Especially guard bears.

Sorry, what does "MC" stand for? I keep thinking master of ceremonies, but that doesn't seem quite right for an RPG somehow.

[Username17]

And the MC can have the warlord call in their trained guard bears because no one mentioned how many guard bears were on hand. Anything undeclared can be declared. Even guard bears. Especially guard bears.

Sorry, what does "MC" stand for? I keep thinking master of ceremonies, but that doesn't seem quite right for an RPG somehow.

MC just stands for MC. The origin of the term has to do with the Czechoslovakian knockoff of D&D called "Dračí doupě". Their translation of "Dungeon Master" is "Pán Jeskyně" (PJ). This would be funny enough, but that translates back to English as "Mister Cavern". Because the "Pán" honorific means both "Mister" and "Master" (and obviously is more commonly used as the former), and they happened to translate "Dungeon" as their word for cave, rather than their word prison (Vězení).

I don't think I have to explain how finding out that the DM was called "Mr. Cavern" in another language caught certain peoples' imaginations.

-Username17

[spaceLem]

I don't think I have to explain how finding out that the DM was called "Mr. Cavern" in another language caught certain peoples' imaginations.

Heh, fair enough!