The definitive notion of Magical Tea Party

[Rick]

I've lurked long enough to be intrigued by the game design notion of "magical tea party."

The crowd here seems to use it for non-crunchy game conflict resolution.

If I had to guess at a definition, I would say, "When the players and the GM try to persuade each other without using explicit rules, that's Magical Tea Party conflict resolution."

For an example, I would speculate that a (1981 Erol Otus Red Box) Dexterity 13 fighter trying to do a somersault-attack in a dungeon with a low ceiling would be a perfect case for Magical Tea Party. The rules simply don't discuss somersaults, the DM would not have foreseen it, and the player isn't agile enough to do a somersault in real life.

However, I would be interested to read other folks' definitions and examples.

[Doom]

Actually, I would just resolve that with a Dex roll (probably with a bad penalty), and I imagine most others would do something similar.

MTP usually refers to how social encounters are resolved: everyone sits around and play-acts, without any formal rules, much less dice-rolling.

[Koumei]

It's the same as the actual magical tea parties children have: there are no rules (or you don't use them), and it's all just made up on the spot. Talky stuff is the biggest example of this, in just about all games.

[Chamomile]

Half of all my good memories of roleplay come from Magical Tea Party. Sometimes it's not exactly MTP, since there is one roll at the end of ~15 minutes of conversation, but it's pretty close. So I literally have just as much fun with MTP as with mechanics.

[Kaelik]

Half of all my good memories of roleplay come from Magical Tea Party. Sometimes it's not exactly MTP, since there is one roll at the end of ~15 minutes of conversation, but it's pretty close. So I literally have just as much fun with MTP as with mechanics.

And we hate you for it you bastard.

But more seriously, as Frank has said many times:

Cops and Robbers is a fun game, sure, but I wouldn't pay money for it.

[Wesley Street]

I've lurked long enough to be intrigued by the game design notion of "magical tea party."

The crowd here seems to use it for non-crunchy game conflict resolution.

<snip>

However, I would be interested to read other folks' definitions and examples.

For this crowd, coining MTP was originally a reaction against bad game development practice, such as Paizo's faux play test of Pathfinder - where Paizo was more interested in tweaking the indefinable game experience rather than crowdsourcing corrections for badly written rules and poor math.

For some it's rolled over into a condemnation of story-driven drama within the RPG setting, as emotion conflicts with well-defined goal conditions (what it takes to "win").

[Leress]

For this crowd, coining MTP was originally a reaction against bad game development practice, such as Paizo's faux play test of Pathfinder - where Paizo was more interested in tweaking the indefinable game experience rather than crowdsourcing corrections for badly written rules and poor math.

Umm, no that is nowhere near the origin of the usage of that phrase here.

For some it's rolled over into a condemnation of story-driven drama within the RPG setting, as emotion conflicts with well-defined goal conditions (what it takes to "win").

I have yet to see someone here say that.

[Draco_Argentum]

For this crowd, coining MTP was originally a reaction against bad game development practice, such as Paizo's faux play test of Pathfinder - where Paizo was more interested in tweaking the indefinable game experience rather than crowdsourcing corrections for badly written rules and poor math.

It predates that significantly. Its also not intended as a slight on resolving stuff by just talking. When used as a negative its because a game designer copped out and wrote a bunch of stuff that cold be summarised as MTP. Its also used as an insult for any game whose mechanics are worse than just MTPing.

[Wesley Street]

It predates that significantly.

Statement withdrawn. It's the first time I remember seeing its use.

Its also not intended as a slight on resolving stuff by just talking. When used as a negative its because a game designer copped out and wrote a bunch of stuff that cold be summarised as MTP. Its also used as an insult for any game whose mechanics are worse than just MTPing.

I'm confused. Bad game mechanics are bad game mechanics but lumping a designer's poor math and game balance skills under the banner of MTP strikes me as disingenuous. Bad rules are still rules, even if Player A has an advantage over Player B or whatever the end result is. That's not MTP, that's a bad game. And not every bad game is an MTP.

Removing situations like Paizo/Pathfinder and D&D Diplomacy/GM-Fiat-of-NPC-Dispositions from the table, is there a typical mainstream RPG rules set that falls under MTP? Something that says, "that is classic MTPing at its finest"?

[Archmage]

Removing situations like Paizo/Pathfinder and D&D Diplomacy/GM-Fiat-of-NPC-Dispositions from the table, is there a typical mainstream RPG rules set that falls under MTP? Something that says, "that is classic MTPing at its finest"?

Most White Wolf games actually contain extensive rules, but they are so badly-written and unusable that gaming groups throw them out the window and make everything up instead. Sometimes dice get rolled in oWoD to preserve the illusion of impartiality, but the fact that the MC decides target numbers more or less on the spot means that success or failure happens entirely based on their whim.

Addendum: The system itself in this case is not MTP, it is "worse than MTP"--the MTP "system" is "make shit up as you go." MTP is not a bad game, but any rules set you pay money for should be better than that.

[Quantumboost]

I'm confused. Bad game mechanics are bad game mechanics but lumping a designer's poor math and game balance skills under the banner of MTP strikes me as disingenuous. Bad rules are still rules, even if Player A has an advantage over Player B or whatever the end result is. That's not MTP, that's a bad game. And not every bad game is an MTP.

You are indeed confused. MTP isn't a slight against games that are actually MTP, since those are free and often fun. It's a slight against games or subsystems that obfuscate the fact that they basically boil down to "make shit up" and then expect you to pay money for them. Or are even worse than "make shit up" and expect you to pay money for them. The latter could be better described as "default to MTP", since the common practice is to junk the subsystem and replace it with Magic Tea Party.

It's true that not every bad game is an MTP - they have to be so bad that you're better off tossing the rules outright and playing make-believe. Their value as a ruleset has to be actually negative for their intended purpose.

[Wesley Street]

Their value as a ruleset has to be actually negative for their intended purpose.

Ahhhh, I see. That qualifier clears it up for me. Thanks.

[Grek]

Magic Tea Party is basically cops and robbers, or a magic tea party where each character represents one other character. Disagreements over the outcome of a given action are resolved by pursuading the other players towards your viewpoint until a consensus is reached. The MTP 'system' fails when the players are, for whatever reason, unable to reach a consensus consistantly. This often comes up in combat situations, ie. the player of the cop claims that the robber was shot and the robber claims that the cop missed. It also fails when one player is significantly more/less persuasive than the others and either dominates the narrative or is treated as a door mat. This leads to people adopting impartial rules which, ideally, produce fair outcomes that people will be satisfied with. It is possible to come up with a rule which is consistantly worse than whatever MTP would result in, ie. the cop hits every even numbered shot and misses every odd numbered shot.

[Draco_Argentum]

The MTP 'system' fails when the players are, for whatever reason, unable to reach a consensus consistantly.

Or sufficiently swiftly.

[RobbyPants]

...or when you have to pay for it.

[tzor]

Note that you can easily stabilize most problems with Magical Tea Party with a simple stochastic determinator. Magic Tea Party with Rock Paper Scissors for conflict resolution handles the simple two-party conflict of interest. It’s still highly unstable, but as long as no one deliberately tries to break the system (by making an unreasonable conflict that doesn’t make sense to resolve 50/50) it works.

[TheFlatline]

Note that you can easily stabilize most problems with Magical Tea Party with a simple stochastic determinator. Magic Tea Party with Rock Paper Scissors for conflict resolution handles the simple two-party conflict of interest. It’s still highly unstable, but as long as no one deliberately tries to break the system (by making an unreasonable conflict that doesn’t make sense to resolve 50/50) it works.

For an example, see small groups from original Live Action Theater from White Wolf. Very simple RPS system slapped on top of Magical Tea Party to resolve a situation as quickly as possible and keep the game moving.

Where the game bogs down is when you actually rely on the mechanics to drive the game (mass combat, uber-skills/disiplines/magical spheres, the horror of retests, whatever...)

My best memories of RPG experiences tend to be MTP-heavy. I never remember the time I needed to roll a natural 20 to survive and I managed to hit it. I remember the time that I had a 20 minute in-character argument/philosophical discussion of the nature of sin and repenting as a vampire with another vampire who shared a fundamentally different viewpoint. Or the first session of gameplay I ever was in where we didn't roll a single die the entire night (in a Shadowrun game no less, having played almost an entire run diceless).

I *do* remember bad mechanics and having to half-ass rules and getting into rules arguments with rules lawyers and games breaking down at that point. Those weren't fun times.

[Plebian]

every game is MTP which is why the use of it as a negative is so amusing coming from you people

hope you all enjoy your future magical tea parties because nothing at all is actually codified in the way you seem to want it codified; if there are strict rules for something in order to provide a challenge you reverse-engineer those rules to get a level-appropriate challenge and in doing so you're arbitrarily assigning a value to the game. so you're just making shit up so your players will have fun.

I guess you could argue that it's not made up on the spot but what's the difference of shit made up on the spot and shit made up yesterday? oh right nothing. awesome.

[Chamomile]

If I hadn't joined to post a topic, I probably would've joined anyway to put Plebian on ignore.

[Murtak]

every game is MTP which is why the use of it as a negative is so amusing coming from you people

As a negative? How so? MTP is the default for all RPGs. We fall back on it again and again. But, as has been pointed out numerous times, MTP sucks at resolving player conflicts and at being fair. The whole point of gaming mechanics is not having to MTP everything. As such, any mechanics that are not clearly better than MTP are an insult to both my brain and my wallet. Every time a game tells me to "assign an appropriate modifier and use an appropriate skill" I want to scream in frustration, because that is what everyone was going to do anyway. Any time I read some vague bullshit about how everyone should "just roleplay their traits" and to use that to resolve diplomacy I feel like punching the designer in the face. Not because MTP is a bad game, but because the whole point of printing gaming books is to give us something to use when MTP doesn't work. At the very least I need some rules just to ensure that everyone can see how the mechanics are supposed to work, what you can expect out of the diplomacy skill or how important yoru characters strength is. That shit is important - even if we never use those rules again - just to give us a framework to MTP in.

[Plebian]

every game is MTP which is why the use of it as a negative is so amusing coming from you people

As a negative? How so? MTP is the default for all RPGs. We fall back on it again and again. But, as has been pointed out numerous times, MTP sucks at resolving player conflicts and at being fair. The whole point of gaming mechanics is not having to MTP everything. As such, any mechanics that are not clearly better than MTP are an insult to both my brain and my wallet. Every time a game tells me to "assign an appropriate modifier and use an appropriate skill" I want to scream in frustration, because that is what everyone was going to do anyway. Any time I read some vague bullshit about how everyone should "just roleplay their traits" and to use that to resolve diplomacy I feel like punching the designer in the face. Not because MTP is a bad game, but because the whole point of printing gaming books is to give us something to use when MTP doesn't work. At the very least I need some rules just to ensure that everyone can see how the mechanics are supposed to work, what you can expect out of the diplomacy skill or how important yoru characters strength is. That shit is important - even if we never use those rules again - just to give us a framework to MTP in.

but all mechanics do is quantify your MTP; they don't make it not a magical tea party of pretend. it's still a magical tea party because you're making shit up to fit the rules to provide challenge; instead of saying, "well billy the trap is really hard to disarm," you check a table and check billy's skill and then give him a really hard trap to disarm.

it's the same goddamn thing only one has the illusion of structure.

so if you love you some rules in your ONE TRUE RPG then all you actually love is the illusion of those rules giving you a structure to triumph against.

also if you need anything to tell you how to roleplay you probably shouldn't be roleplaying to begin with. seriously, what is wrong with a book saying, "roleplay your traits," because that's basically golden information right there; you can't codify how a trait will be RPed without reducing it to pointlessness. WELP YOU SEE GUYS YOU CAN ONLY ROLEPLAY A GUTTERSNIPE IF YOU ARE LITERALLY OLIVER TWIST.

[Omegonthesane]

every game is MTP which is why the use of it as a negative is so amusing coming from you people

As a negative? How so? MTP is the default for all RPGs. We fall back on it again and again. But, as has been pointed out numerous times, MTP sucks at resolving player conflicts and at being fair. The whole point of gaming mechanics is not having to MTP everything. As such, any mechanics that are not clearly better than MTP are an insult to both my brain and my wallet. Every time a game tells me to "assign an appropriate modifier and use an appropriate skill" I want to scream in frustration, because that is what everyone was going to do anyway. Any time I read some vague bullshit about how everyone should "just roleplay their traits" and to use that to resolve diplomacy I feel like punching the designer in the face. Not because MTP is a bad game, but because the whole point of printing gaming books is to give us something to use when MTP doesn't work. At the very least I need some rules just to ensure that everyone can see how the mechanics are supposed to work, what you can expect out of the diplomacy skill or how important yoru characters strength is. That shit is important - even if we never use those rules again - just to give us a framework to MTP in.

but all mechanics do is quantify your MTP; they don't make it not a magical tea party of pretend. it's still a magical tea party because you're making shit up to fit the rules to provide challenge; instead of saying, "well billy the trap is really hard to disarm," you check a table and check billy's skill and then give him a really hard trap to disarm.

it's the same goddamn thing only one has the illusion of structure.

so if you love you some rules in your ONE TRUE RPG then all you actually love is the illusion of those rules giving you a structure to triumph against.

also if you need anything to tell you how to roleplay you probably shouldn't be roleplaying to begin with. seriously, what is wrong with a book saying, "roleplay your traits," because that's basically golden information right there; you can't codify how a trait will be RPed without reducing it to pointlessness. WELP YOU SEE GUYS YOU CAN ONLY ROLEPLAY A GUTTERSNIPE IF YOU ARE LITERALLY OLIVER TWIST.

I can only guess you're intentionally not getting the way in which MTP is used as a negative here.

If you are paying money for a set of rules, then following that set of rules must give you a flat-out, indisputably better experience - fairer, more fun, etc. - than just playing magical tea party for the rules to be a worthwhile purchase.

So for your lockpicking example - having the table of "how hard is this lock to disarm" gives the MC some accountable means of giving Billy a difficult lock to break, and adjudicating the results of him failing. It also, you know, means he has an actual chance to fail at an action which isn't just deterministic MC cock-waving "you can't open ye door" - and that if he's doing it under stressful conditions, you have some way of e.g. fairly determining how many rounds Bricky McWall can hold off Trevor The Troll to allow Billy to unlock the door. (Or whatever.) With pure MTP, you would not have that ability, and you would lose many of the tactical wargame aspects that made D&D at the very least because there'd be no rules to have a tactical minigame in.

I'm using MC to mean GM, I must've lurked here long enough, right?

[K]

The problem with Magic Tea Party is that it disempowers players. For a role-playing game, being empowered is the least I expect from the experience.

Crunchy rule sets create reproducible results, and that equals player involvement. Knowing when you can do a thing without having to ask the MC gives the players the feeling that the game world is real and that they have the power to do things in that world. That's good for an RPG.

The rules will always be incomplete for many reasons, not the least is that too many rules are just as disempowering as too many. MTP fills those gaps and allows the players the freedom to go off-book with cool ideas, but they are at no point the ideal that any game system should strive for.

[Murtak]

also if you need anything to tell you how to roleplay you probably shouldn't be roleplaying to begin with. seriously, what is wrong with a book saying, "roleplay your traits," because that's basically golden information right there; you can't codify how a trait will be RPed without reducing it to pointlessness. WELP YOU SEE GUYS YOU CAN ONLY ROLEPLAY A GUTTERSNIPE IF YOU ARE LITERALLY OLIVER TWIST.

Ok, I'll bite. On your character sheet you have an ability that says you are "strong". Can you lift a crate of weapons? Turn over a cart? Break open a door? What about a "strong door"? In the absence of rules you are reduced to bargaining with the DM (and the rest of the table). And that is why we have carrying capacity, break DCs, bonus damage and all of these nice little numbers that give us a framework to roleplay in.

[DSMatticus]

it's the same goddamn thing only one has the illusion of structure.

Well that's pretty damn stupid. When you see a skycraper, do you say, "hey, that's an illusion of a skyscraper." No, you say it's a skyscraper. It turns out what you're calling an illusion of structure is actually honest-to-god structure! Rules are structure. Pretty much by definition.

Are you trying to point out, "well, certain things are still in the realm of make-shit-up-land, so therefore, all things are in the realm of make-shit-up-land?" That's a leap.

But there are still things that aren't in the realm of make-shit-up-land. A level 5 fighter is expected to have a good chance to hit a CR 5 creature with a sword, and this is codified by the AC CR 5 creatures have and the attack bonuses level 5 fighters have. Certainly, the DM can throw CR 10 creatures at the fighter. But we even have rules detailing sort of CR's the DM should throw at a level 5 fighter, and the CR 10 creature is not one of them. We think of DM's who do that as dicks. In the same we would think a MTP DM who always says, "you fail to hit it," are dicks.

There are rules and resolution mechanics which are tangible and exist, and do not involve the DM thinking to himself and saying, "yay or nay" like some divine, omnipotent judge of every action. And when you force the DM to judge such actions, the game gets stupid fast, because the DM is human and cannot possibly be consistent or reliable like a rules system can.

And that's what MTP 'derogatively' refers to - when things depend on the DM going, "hm, let me think about it..." instead of "make the check," to resolve an action. Even if the DM is saying, "that action is impossible, the DC is 1000," we've got the DM to pick a number that can be remembered and can be used consistently. So even if the DM's being a dick, we've locked him into being a consistent dick, and defeated the flaw of MTP.