A fine piece, though I would also approach this question:
“When does the conversation stop and the mechanics begin?
The answer is what the designer wants the people around the table to care about.”
In a slightly different way; particularly as it concerns randomizers-as-mechanic. Instead of randomizers in general, I’ll just use dice, but this applies to any randomizer.
I see the dice as something that comes into play not just when the designer wants the table to care, but also in two metasituations:
- when the table does not know an outcome of a situation
- when the table cannot know the outcome of a situation
The two are a little different, but in this situation that’s not particularly crucial. The point is that the dice transform one situation into another in an unpredictable way.
In this role, they are / can be a mechanic that escapes any potential designer control and gives creativity to the table (and the dice as oracle).
Though, of course, one could also argue that this is a case of designer-intent, where the intent is to provide the table a means to escape edge cases and designer intent.
I don't know that we're saying different things. I'd say that in a game where dice act as an oracle (which is most games), in either of the two metasituations you describe, the designer wants the group to care about whatever the outcome of the dice are. In other words, if the table doesn't know the outcome of a situation, such as a serious fight, and the game provides mechanics for said fight, then the game's been designed so that the outcome of the fight is what people care about.
In a different sort of game, the conversation might stop to see if the PC suffers a mental breakdown when confronted with something horrific. In Call of Cthulhu, the conversation stops when this happens because there are mechanics for it and everyone cares about the outcome. In D&D, there are no real sanity/trauma mechanics, characters aren't really affected by such events, so it's probably just a part of the conversation. In both games, the GM might describe the same horrific thing, but only in one does it go beyond that description and into mechanics. Because the game says that sanity is important in CoC, but D&D says no such thing.
I think they're very similar things, but not completely the same. Or at the least, I'm trying to put a nuance into words. However, I think I also didn't give a good example of the dice-as-oracle in action. I blame myself for typing on a phone, which always leaves me losing track halfway in frustration.
The CoC and D&D examples you give are great examples of the dice resolving a fixed situation, that's closing off known possibilities. By this I mean, the table doesn't know the outcome (win or lose), but the possible outcomes are known: win or lose, go mad or don't. It's a closed game situation.
The place I find fascinating for dice as oracles is where they open space. In D&D, something of this sort is represented by the reaction roll, or the classic random generator. There is a creature ... what is its attitude? Unknown. The design intent here is to provide a space where neither the players nor the GM can know in advance what will happen and where the game will proceed.
In my own game, I use a mechanic (meta-mechanic?) of this sort to explicitly provide space for player creativity and input. For example:
GM: "You enter the town, pennants whip upon the steely towers and griffons whirl on the breeze."
PC: "What's the mood like? What kind of vibe do I pick up?"
GM: "You tell me, your character's the local."
PC: "Hmm ... I'm not sure."
GM: "You could roll the oracle."
PC: ... rolls a d6 (1–3: things are normal, 4–5: something odd or uncommon is afoot, 6: something exceptional) then flips a coin (heads: good, tails: bad) ... rolls a 6 and heads.* ... "Ok, there's a very exceptional positive vibe ... some kind of euphoria, a kind of festival is happening."
The GM then, in dialogue with the other PCs, fleshes out the festival that's afoot in the town.
Now, the interesting thing is that with this kind of mechanic, the game will naturally evolve towards themes and ideas that are unique to (and important to) the table, creating a way for the rules to escape the designer's intent and imagination.
*this is just a sample mechanic, the oracular roll could be designed in different ways
I tend to refer to my game as "realistic" (...and also put the quotation marks around it) because I think that Believable as more to do with consistency than any logic of the world. When I say "realistic" I don't mean that the system is fully simulating physics or anything like that. I want to set the ground level of understanding: the fictional world is like the real world you experience every day.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on such a difficult field! Let me say that I have just written my (first) RPG and tried to tackle this problem in order to avoid to fail as you described. My main (and nearly only) game mechanic is not realistic, but it is fun and believable... I am not sure about the 'easy to understand' as the outcomes are not clear (and extremely subjective), but for sure it is easy to use for the player. In order to get confirmation of what I observed in my playtest, I published my game in a 'playtest edition' and I hope in the next future to get the same outcomes. Needless to say, if you would like to have a glance at it, pls let me know. Thanks again for your enlightening post! Best
A fine piece, though I would also approach this question:
“When does the conversation stop and the mechanics begin?
The answer is what the designer wants the people around the table to care about.”
In a slightly different way; particularly as it concerns randomizers-as-mechanic. Instead of randomizers in general, I’ll just use dice, but this applies to any randomizer.
I see the dice as something that comes into play not just when the designer wants the table to care, but also in two metasituations:
- when the table does not know an outcome of a situation
- when the table cannot know the outcome of a situation
The two are a little different, but in this situation that’s not particularly crucial. The point is that the dice transform one situation into another in an unpredictable way.
In this role, they are / can be a mechanic that escapes any potential designer control and gives creativity to the table (and the dice as oracle).
Though, of course, one could also argue that this is a case of designer-intent, where the intent is to provide the table a means to escape edge cases and designer intent.
I don't know that we're saying different things. I'd say that in a game where dice act as an oracle (which is most games), in either of the two metasituations you describe, the designer wants the group to care about whatever the outcome of the dice are. In other words, if the table doesn't know the outcome of a situation, such as a serious fight, and the game provides mechanics for said fight, then the game's been designed so that the outcome of the fight is what people care about.
In a different sort of game, the conversation might stop to see if the PC suffers a mental breakdown when confronted with something horrific. In Call of Cthulhu, the conversation stops when this happens because there are mechanics for it and everyone cares about the outcome. In D&D, there are no real sanity/trauma mechanics, characters aren't really affected by such events, so it's probably just a part of the conversation. In both games, the GM might describe the same horrific thing, but only in one does it go beyond that description and into mechanics. Because the game says that sanity is important in CoC, but D&D says no such thing.
I think they're very similar things, but not completely the same. Or at the least, I'm trying to put a nuance into words. However, I think I also didn't give a good example of the dice-as-oracle in action. I blame myself for typing on a phone, which always leaves me losing track halfway in frustration.
The CoC and D&D examples you give are great examples of the dice resolving a fixed situation, that's closing off known possibilities. By this I mean, the table doesn't know the outcome (win or lose), but the possible outcomes are known: win or lose, go mad or don't. It's a closed game situation.
The place I find fascinating for dice as oracles is where they open space. In D&D, something of this sort is represented by the reaction roll, or the classic random generator. There is a creature ... what is its attitude? Unknown. The design intent here is to provide a space where neither the players nor the GM can know in advance what will happen and where the game will proceed.
In my own game, I use a mechanic (meta-mechanic?) of this sort to explicitly provide space for player creativity and input. For example:
GM: "You enter the town, pennants whip upon the steely towers and griffons whirl on the breeze."
PC: "What's the mood like? What kind of vibe do I pick up?"
GM: "You tell me, your character's the local."
PC: "Hmm ... I'm not sure."
GM: "You could roll the oracle."
PC: ... rolls a d6 (1–3: things are normal, 4–5: something odd or uncommon is afoot, 6: something exceptional) then flips a coin (heads: good, tails: bad) ... rolls a 6 and heads.* ... "Ok, there's a very exceptional positive vibe ... some kind of euphoria, a kind of festival is happening."
The GM then, in dialogue with the other PCs, fleshes out the festival that's afoot in the town.
Now, the interesting thing is that with this kind of mechanic, the game will naturally evolve towards themes and ideas that are unique to (and important to) the table, creating a way for the rules to escape the designer's intent and imagination.
*this is just a sample mechanic, the oracular roll could be designed in different ways
I tend to refer to my game as "realistic" (...and also put the quotation marks around it) because I think that Believable as more to do with consistency than any logic of the world. When I say "realistic" I don't mean that the system is fully simulating physics or anything like that. I want to set the ground level of understanding: the fictional world is like the real world you experience every day.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on such a difficult field! Let me say that I have just written my (first) RPG and tried to tackle this problem in order to avoid to fail as you described. My main (and nearly only) game mechanic is not realistic, but it is fun and believable... I am not sure about the 'easy to understand' as the outcomes are not clear (and extremely subjective), but for sure it is easy to use for the player. In order to get confirmation of what I observed in my playtest, I published my game in a 'playtest edition' and I hope in the next future to get the same outcomes. Needless to say, if you would like to have a glance at it, pls let me know. Thanks again for your enlightening post! Best