Can someone explain the true reason behind "traits" (PtA style) to me?
jburneko:
The "Sausage Machine" describes perfectly what I wanted before I encountered The Forge. Back then if you asked me what I wanted out of a game system I would have said this: "I want game, that if played optimally by a computer would produce a compelling story as output." In fact, I'm pretty sure I DID say that to some people.
Jesse
Ron Edwards:
Hi Christopher,
Quote
Would you see Abilities from HeroQuest fitting under this discussion as well, since many of them seem like Traits from other games. If not, what is the distinction?...
Unfortunately, "yes and no."
One reason for the "no" is that the typical trait/skill distinction is artificial and usually bad design, as you probably know all about, despite endless paragraphs of justification about it. One can play a character with nothing but what's thought of as a trait (Over the Edge, PTA), or with nothing but what's thought of as skills (HeroQuest). Putting them both in has historically created tons of hassles - GURPS is the earliest significant culprit system, in which you have skills like Martial Arts and traits like Martial Artist, which is a recipe for point-buy headaches beyond imagining. I don't think we can fit such traits from messes like that into the discussion because they're so whacked anyway.
Another reason for the "no" is that I don't think we can use the names or even character-features of traits as their primary identifier. The idea here is that traits are qualities or inherent properties (brawny, et cetera) and skills are trained expertise, in the usual debased nature/nurture split. That idea leads to many messes in game design too. It's related to the long-standing attributes/skill crisis which fortunately we managed to dissect and abandon in the first couple years of the Forge.*
HeroQuest actually solves this problem using the same technique as Castle Falkenstein and Zero, just calling any such thing an 'ability' and using the same rules for any of them. The opposite and equally successful solution is illustrated by Amber, Over the Edge, and Sorcerer, in which there are no such things, and everything specific is handled by using general scores ("attributes"). To put it maybe more clearly, making the game either specific-centric like HeroQuest or general-centric like Sorcerer works great, because, respectively, you can use the specific stuff generally or the general stuff specifically, so it doesn't matter
So that leads to my real reason for saying "no" regarding HeroQuest, because it puts anything and everything a character is or can do into its own "roll X to make it happen" slot, and all slots are the same in terms of game mechanics. There's no 'extra' list of terms (or at least not in Hero Wars; some of HeroQuest's supra-ability categorization confuses me).
Anyway, all that is to clear the field to specify what kind of system we're talking about, which is neither a mess nor the two-alternates solution. We're talking about a system that has a list of terms (or has you invent them) which get invoked to modify the usual course of resolution, which already has its own mechanics. I think that's the defining feature of what Markus is talking about. A game already has a resolution system based on whatever. And it also has this list of other terms, which you can say "this applies" and toss in for some kind of bonus or extra effect. The question is whether that's functional, or whether it dooms the group to invoking them endlessly and annoyingly.
My observation regarding these kinds of traits is that they are in fact often endless and annoying. But the more I think about it, it's a matter of resources (they should be used them) and/or redundancy (they shouldn't stack). PTA limits them through resources, and The Pool limits them through one-at-a-time. Polaris is like PTA, in that you check off Aspects in order to use certain ritual phrases. Polaris also illustrates another design consideration that makes such traits fun instead of annoying - when they play a unique additive/functional role in resolution. That's not the case in PTA and The Pool, in which they simply add cards and dice respectively. But it is the case for Path of Journeys, in which traits play no role in resolution probabilities, but enhance the degree of success if it happens.
Best, Ron
* Which is actually really interesting:
Attributes or skills, but not both? which reaches back into the Sorcerer mailing list archives from 1999 (linked here; you'll see the relevant topics on the list
Traits & skills
Mike's Standard Rant #4: stat/skill systems
Twist on the skill + attribute dice pool mechanic
Choosing and defining the stats (good internal links including one to an essay by John Kim)
Traits and skills threads please (this gathered together many previous links)
Roll 3d6 ... what is this?
I'm including all this to back up some of my generalizations in the post; even though we're talking about trait/skill now, the points and insights about attribute/skill apply pretty well.
P.S. Yeah, Jesse, you said that in the Adept forum some years ago, prompting me to lean back in my chair and say to the grim-faced gentlemen who compete to light my cigars, "But no one can reason with this fellow."
Markus:
(Pheew! I did it eventually... I had very busy week.)
Anyway, it happened again... you guys post a couple of replies and each one unlocks some new way of looking at things. This time it was Ron's reply, specifically the "handholds" methaphor, that had that effect. Before I deal with the 'traits' stuff, I'll explain briefly what I think I understood about my system preferences, so that you can put my other thoughts in context.
(1) What I have understood
I think was ignoring a fundamental fact in my previous posts. Do you remember that I said I have zero-tolerance for system handling time? OK, I'm afraid that this is some sort of unwanted inheritance from when I was trying to play with as little system as possible. So I think that in my head, the "rules = a bad thing" equation is still working full steam, even if I consciously know that this isn't always the case. So, in all the cases in which, during play, I feel that a rule is 'just a rule', without sufficient direct impact on the immediate "stuff going on at the table" (a rather crude definition, I'm afraid, but I'm not finding any better way of saying it right now), then I'll mark it as unimportant or even undesirable.
But, as Ron made me understand with the "handholds for squeezing the system" stuff, then I'm ignoring that a player can make statements, so to say, directly *with* the system, if he/she learns to do that (and the system is designed to support that). So, there *are* certain instances of making mechanical-only statements that can be functional for narrativist play, and I was blind to this fact. There is such a thing as the art of "shaping the system from within the system". I'm quite sure however, that this thing needs practice to work right. It needs *experience*. You have to understand all the subtle implications of all the system's mechanics, you have to know how to contribute to a good "story", and how to drive the mechanics of the system toward that goal. Well, I'd say it's not the most immediate of things for everyone, frankly.
Now everything clicked into place for me, and I can see just why I prefer those sytems that do not need this art of system-shaping: very simply, the groups I played with (me included!) didn't have the necessary experience to do that, and that's not surprising after all, since I played with a lot of first-time-RPGers. I can elaborate further on that if you want, but I think it's rather tangential to the current issue.
Enough of that, back to the traits stuff now!
(2) What happened
Ron asked some more details on how the traits didn't fully work for me in actual play. I will not use PtA as an example because my few attempts at GMing PtA fell kind of flat (and thus I suspect there are other 'disfunctions' at work there that could confuse the discussion). I'll describe the session which made me go "stop this trait stuff" first. *Now* I see how that was a stupid reaction on my part, but hey, experience is what you get when you don't get what you want (or something like that).
Social situation of the session: we played at my home, after dinner, but the next day was a working day - we hadn't all the time we wanted and this put a bit of pressure on me, since I was GMing and my position was, well, not exactly that of 'the entertainer', but certainly that of someone who will teach or explain something new to others. I don't see how to avoid that when playing with new people, however.
Who was there: me of course, and three players: my girlfriend, an old friend of mine and a colleague.
My girlfriend played some 'old school' RPGs, in particular Ars Magica and D&D, and found it sort of OK, but without much enthusiasm. Of course I vexed her with my new 'indie' stuff, which she seems enjoying much more than the previous stuff. In particular, I think she suffered a lot from the social pressure that emerges in most 'high concept sim' games (I *hope* that's the right jargon), in which you could say or do something that does not 'fit' with the implicit expectations of other players. In the looser (wrt setting, specifically) nar games that I GM now, that's not a factor.
It was the first RPG session for my colleague. I invited her because we talk a lot about movies, books, etc etc during coffee breaks at work and she seemed like having 'the right mindset' to like this stuff.
My friend is an old-school D&D gamer. I begun pestering him with my doubts about D&D a long time ago (explaining him how it does not support what I want to do during a RPG session, etc etc) and he seems to agree with me most of the time. However, he continues playing D&D and buying all the new stuff. He already played Elfs with me GMing ("one of my best RPG sessions ever!" he said in that occasion, but then added that "he also liked to do more serious RPGing"). He also liked Trollbabe a lot and I was surprised by how fast he understood all the new 'narration' stuff, and used it to deliver some powerful moments! I wonder how he will GM D&D in the future, I might even be tempted to turn up at one of his games.
Why we were playing this and not something else: my friend was showing me a pdf demo excerpt of the new warhammer 40k RPG, and he asked me if it was possible to "play trollbabe in this setting". I basically said no, it isn't (IMHO you just cannot take the Trollbabe mechanics and apply it blindly to something else, unless you also like to put ice cream on your steak or something like that). But I offered to give it a try with The Pool if he provided me a small setting 'one-sheet' (nothing as deep as the sorcerer ones, mind you, just a vague but strong description of the setting).
So he gave me this paragraph in which he described a giant hive-city in a blasted world, ruled by a governor that noone ever sees and who receives the orders from the empire via his dreams. I liked that and beefed up a little the description with some important places and organizations (so that the players could choose something to link their characters to). Please excuse my narcisism, but I *must* share with you this trick I always employ and that I'm quite proud of- giving the right names to things. So I renamed the 'governor' as a 'divan' and voila, one single word immediately shaped all the hive-city: now I knew how the people were dressed, the sound of the names, the style of the imperial court, the look of the palaces, and so on. I also very briefly described an outline of a situation: children are disappearing in one of the hive-city sector, but no one seems to care much for the moment because it happens to pariahs and orphans.
Ok so I gave this one-sheet to the three players via e-mail and asked them to send me a character that had some connection to the elements they liked. I also said them that we could put finishing touches to PCs prior to play, so they didn't have to worry too much about mechanics. Just imagine my enthusiasm when my colleague, first-time-RPGer and all, gave me her character's 50 words- her PC was a small girl just escaped from home, and her father was a bounty-hunter of some renown. Of course she decided to hide in *that* zone of the hive-city... Wow! Not bad at all, I thought. The other characters were a retired sort-of-policemen just asked by an ex-colleague to see if he could see what was happening in the sector. The last character was a joung noble from the 'gardens of pleasure' (the uppermost portion of the hive-city, residence of the ruling families). The law prohibits her to mingle with 'lesser people', but she decided to risk anyway to get involved in a secret sorcerous cult- now that's what I call potential for conflict!
I liked a lot what they gave me, and I could draw a simple R-map (very simple in fact) that included all of them, the secret sorcerous cult, one injustly accused escaped prisoner (guess which bounty hunter is chasing this guy), and a scribe/priest of the 'archivium'- one of the places of interest listed in the one-sheet.
Sorry about all the details, that perhaps are not so relevant to the current discussion. Anyway, this is were my problem started. My colleague chose a trait that basically was like "daughter of Boba Fett, famous bounty hunter, +2" (yes, she wrote 'Boba Fett'- but hey, I thought, in this way everyone is going to immediately know what she's thinking about visually, so perhaps it's OK even if kind of... cheap).
Nothing wrong with that, huh? Well, I thought the same and couldn't wait to see at which time would Boba turn up to save her daughter's life (and grant her those +2 dice). The thing is, she invoked that trait the *first* time she had to roll the dice. Two thugs were attempting to capture her, and she declared that Boba was turning up immediately, after all (goodbye to the potential emotional climax I was expecting). I mentioned to her that she should check if one of her traits applied, and she chose this one. I mentally wondered whether to tell her about the difference between having a MoV, invoking a trait, and so on (there was one marvelous thread here recently in which Ron explained the difference plot, situational, narrational authorities etc... it's perhaps the best thread I found here at the Forge! it should be the mandatory first chapter of every game that has 'narration' mechanics). I *knew* that she was partially overriding some boundaries by stating that Boba was turning up as her way to communicate that the trait was being invoked, but I wasn't inclined to give a first-time RPGer an abrupt stop the first time she contributed to the narration...
So, rather than saying 'no, you can't do this', I explained that since this was her first conflict, I would give her other examples of how she could use the same trait. For example, I said, Boba has trained you in basic self-defense, or maybe you recall something that he said you about not talking to strangers, etc. etc... I said, you have many ways of invoking the same trait, so chose the one that you think will give more boost to our story. She said that her character was particularly cautious because her father told her to do so; I granted the bonus and she won the conflict (no MoV).
Nothing particularly bad per se, but soon both the other players regretted not to have taken a +2 trait (they only had +1s) because that was 'the way to go'. Huh, I asked, and my girlfriend explained me that since you can invoke a trait in pretty much thousands of ways, you should always go for the higher value, isn't it? I was quite shocked and said that no, you should choose the trait that makes most sense in the context of the story... but I saw their point nonetheless. Of course, for a couple more conflicts my colleague continued to use her 'father' trait, and I was feeling like this trait bonus dice were disrupting, rather than reiforcing, the strenght of the story. So I gave back to everyone the dice they paid for traits and proposed to stop counting the +s for the remaining of the session.
(Btw, the session was a blast, and we didn't miss the +s linked to traits at all).
(3) Other miscellaneous stuff
*Now* I see that maybe there are other functional ways of looking at this traits stuff. Another idea I'm considering is this (and it's my attempt to 'fill the gaps' in the system, effectively transforming it in *another* system however). So the idea is as follows: when you use a trait, just state it. No dialogue about if and how the trait is 'relevent' and so on. You get your bonus. However, the narrator (you, if you chose a MoV, but maybe the GM) will be the one responsible for integrating the trait in the narration, after resolution is rolled.
I'll sum up here what I don't like in the 'traits' rules. Most of this stuff is not negative per se; it's just 'lost positive potential' or originates confusion due to vagueness (does this word exist?).
- What is a 'trait'? Is it true that anything goes? It depends a lot on when you write your PC up. If you write your PC after the GM has prepared the situation (and you play with non-shared setting authorities) then traits could interphere in a non predictable way.
- What type of effect can be employed with the trait mechanics, *depending on how you write the traits*? Examples of similar traits that I think are radically different in real use: "swordplay", "swordplayer", "my sword", "a found weapon", "trained in the X fence academy", "I like to cut people's guts", "killer". In play, who provides the relevant color and when?
- What does it mean to 'use' a trait? Do you have to simply name it, do you have to add a bit of color based on it, etc. etc... Who does 'play' the NPCs created by the 'connection traits'?
- Why should be scores attached to traits? Why should the system reward mechanically more the use of one trait over the others?
- Why should the system reward mechanically the players for 'using' (see above) these traits he/she selected during PC creation, instead of choosing other courses of action/ other types of color/ other NPCs etc etc?
(4) That's all
OK, sorry for the long post and the barrage of questions, but I really look forward to hearing the opinions of you all on this!
P.S.
@John Harper - sorry but I don't get the exact meaning of what you represented in the graphs- it's a bit too abstract for my current grasp of RPG theory, but I'd be glad if you wanted to explain it a bit.
@jburneko - I don't feel your phrase describes what I'm after. I'd like to change three things: remove 'optimally' (there's nothing mechanical in the *way* my ideal game is played, even if the mechanics themselves are like clockwork), and substitute "computer" with "a group of people", and add a "most of the times" somewhere:
"I want game, that if played by a group of people would produce a compelling story as output most of the times"
Thanks again to everybody!
M
Ron Edwards:
Hi Markus,
I have some thoughts on your questions, some of which tie directly back into older conversations here. I'll post about that soon.
John Harper recently wrote a blog entry which I think explains his diagrams extremely well: How do we know how to play?
Best, Ron
Markus:
Thanks Ron, now I think I understand what John meant.
From John Harper's blog:
"This is how I know what "playing Dogs in the Vineyard" is. By playing in a group with a shared understanding and communication about what matters to us (a social contract, you might even say), using a rules text that establishes clear expectations for play. Play becomes a process of reinforcing and celebrating the expectations and procedures of the game as communicated by the text (most importantly: not just "the mechanics") and the shared understanding of the group."
John, that's brilliant! I totally agree, and now I get those diagrams too. It's funny how all the ideas that I try to communicate here were already expressed in a *much* better way by someone else... I could just cut and paste things from the web, if I knew where to look.
bye!
M
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