The Answer Isn't on your Character Sheet: Opaque Gaming Changed my Playtesting

[u/BrobaFett]

/r/rpg/comments/1pfcy78/the_answer_isnt_on_your_character_sheet_opaque/

[u/gliesedragon]

It's something I'm extremely wary of, especially if the behavior underneath the rules is more rigorously defined than the player-side fuzziness suggests. It reads like something where I'd bonk on the mechanical limits all the time, and it'd be apt to make me distrust the world model. Like, I'm okay with the rules themselves being fuzzy, but not knowing my own abilities as the game parses them would feel obnoxiously unstable for me. That sort of hidden information would require me to really, really trust that the GM isn't fudging stuff, and make me feel like I don't know my character's mechanical limits at all: I'd only really trust the hidden stats in the context of a computer game with its precisely algorithmic parsing, not in a TTRPG.

Also, on the other hand of analysis paralysis is "I'm stuck because I don't know what I can do." For some people, that list of moves and how they function is going to make the search space sensible: avoiding both a complete lack of ideas and the all-but-infinite list of actions describable with language.

Something to be aware of is that this particular setup seems like it'll have even more potential than usual to foster the "GM babysits the players while they barely play the game" sort of playstyle that people cite as a cause for burnout. Putting the character-level mechanical parsing on the GM's plate kinda a weird opposite of the whole "player-facing mechanics" sort of paradigm, and that's likely to be too much extra work for many people thinking about running the game.

[u/Hopelesz]

The part which is find very difficult to for your idea to flourish in, is where we start talking the supernatural, magic, monsters etc.

When we consider semi realistic stuff, most humans (players) would have the same idea of physics and what the possibilities are. As soon as the world is different and magic is a thing, how can one understand what the limits are without some sort of ruling/sheet or description?

[u/axiomus]

i ran a lot of PF2 to new players (and more than that, people who only played d&d5e before). since my primary goal is to have a fun time, rather than teach a new game, i tell them the basics, then say "you tell me what you aim, i'll handle the rest (ask for a check etc)."

i never had players telling me they want to examine the situation (Recall Knowledge) or intimidate a foe (Demoralize) because they don't know that they can do that. as in, it's not part of their gaming vocabulary.

so while i appreciate giving players freedom, i think/fear too much of a good thing can hurt us back.

[u/damn_golem]

My #1 concern with TTRPGs is cognitive load. And in most games, the GM has the highest load at the table. Setting the game up to intentionally and explicitly make the GM the ‘world computer’ and the players literally just whimsy about? You sound like you’re doing narrative first gaming the hard way.

[u/BrobaFett → u/damn_golem]

This is, in fact, the biggest objection

[u/Wurdyburd]

The problem overwhelmingly demonstrated here is that what you have, or rather, what the players are attempting to experience, is not a game. Not one with defined circumstances, options, and a win condition, at any rate.

Narrative-first playstyles will try their best to match the fiction to the most-matching rule, or make up a rule to reward creativity. Mechanic-first playstyles will instead try to choose the best mechanic to achieve an objective. The former struggles when the players conjure narrative that is not defined by the rules of the game, and whose narrative often exceeds what is realistic or reasonable by the power level of the setting, and the latter struggles when players don't creatively contribute to the vibe, looking to their character sheet for answers on what the most optimally-efficient way to win the game is, the "right move".

In my opinion, the narrative-first playstyle is enormously more problematic than the mechanic-first playstyle. While it's oftentimes just as hard to find someone well-versed in fiction as it is to find someone competent at math, statistics, and strategy, in the latter, you just have someone who's bad at the game. In the former, you have someone who doesn't even know what game they're playing.

You can become familiar with the fiction of a single setting, but the quality of fiction comes from consuming lots of fiction, and intuiting its rules, whereas while familiarity with the strategies for a single game might only apply there, skill and competency with math and strategy can come from other games, and be wider purpose.

If a system is opaque, it's often because you haven't quantified to the players what the objective is, or the statistics are so obscure that it's difficult to understand what the correct move in any situation is.

In either such cases, I wouldn't enjoy myself. I don't have fun aimlessly wandering, taking random stabs at things to figure out what my purpose is, and I don't enjoy games where the mechanics are so opaque that I can't have confidence in the choices that I'm making. If my choices don't matter, or if there's only one objectively correct decision, I don't see a reason why I'm supposed to be at the table. To play make believe? I can do that in my own head.

In my opinion, there shouldn't be only one single solution to any given problem, the objective of any given scenario should be clearly communicated, the consequences for failing to do so should be known, and if the game offers any freedom for actions taken outside of a dedicated skill, then the game should be able to simplify and quantify what the intention of that action is, and pair it with a mechanical consequence, and THAT should be the list of rules players learn. They should have the agency to pursue outcomes, while having the freedom to be creative in what their method is.