Quote from: estar on June 23, 2023, 10:12:53 AM
From How to Play in the 5e PHB

Quote1. The DM describes the environment
(snip)
2. The players describe what they want to do
(snip)
3. The DM narrates the results of the adventurers' actions.
(snip)

...You do realize that's a gameplay loop, right? Gameplay loops are defined as actions you repeat over the course of the game.

Granted, I was going to ignore this one; RPGs are kinda weird because they tend to have two gameplay loops going on; one at the layer of the players at the table and the other at the level of the characters in the game world. The gameplay loops happening to the characters tend to be more interesting, or at least make better discussion.

My point here isn't that you only play 5e. It's that 5e is the poster-child of not running a game this way and these structures are really hard to avoid. Using 5E is not trying to avoid gameplay loops. If that's really your goal...the only system I can really think of which stands a chance is FATE, and I'm no fan of that, either. Also, you have repeatedly assumed that gameplay loops must be taken as something written in stone like an Eleventh Commandment or something. I don't see how that follows. Your own citations show that game designers rarely view these structures as rules per se; they're just things that happen. And I rarely play RAW, anyways, so even if they were rules, I would just use the rules as a source of inspiration.

Gameplay loops are just a way of observing the structures of the game from a metagame level so that you can intentionally alter them. I understand that metagame design isn't everyone's cup of tea because it tends to pierce the fourth wall, but just because you don't like it doesn't mean you automatically grow the Snowflake power to wish it into nonexistence.

Quote from: VisionStorm on June 23, 2023, 07:40:50 AM

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 17, 2023, 03:27:17 PMThere is NO REALISM in rpgs...

...it IS elves and magic and dragons and superheroes and psionics and extraterrestrials and laser-guns and everything else that isn't REAL. And no matter how hard you try, you can't call a "fantasy game" a "reality game" because you know that's craziness. Fantasy games can never accurately simulate reality. Ever.

...No matter how hard you try you can never simulate reality in a RPG. Talking about "realism" is just crazy talk. 

The realism loop, perpetually in motion. "Simulation" is just their pet weasel.

I mean to say:
Immersion requires plausibility, and neither extreme between daily infinite arrows checks nor critically fletched individual arrows are going to fly.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 23, 2023, 07:10:08 PM

Quote from: S'mon on June 23, 2023, 01:52:51 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 22, 2023, 10:23:44 PM
ring hollow when the vanilla base system of the game you are using gives players feats and spellcasters often have spellbooks in the 5-10 page range which do exactly that.

Could you explain what feats and spells have to do with 'gameplay loops'?

Ironically, estar added one on top of what I was thinking.

D&D boils down to "kill something to get a reward." Older versions would use gold and magic items as the reward, not quite as old versions would use XP as the reward or the simple thrill of overcoming an obstacle, and the forever fallback option has always been to reward the players by advancing the story. These are variations of the same gameplay loop, and GMs will often mix up the rewards to better match the situation or vary the pacing, giving the campaign an organic feel. It's also technically optional, in that the GM doesn't always have to provide combat encounters. But the entire concept of the system is to guarantee that characters have a minimum competency for combat because the core gameplay loop of D&D involves combat.

I should add that I don't actually view this as a problem--I'm vocally critical of D&D, but this is not one of those points. Practically every game genre from video games to CCGs to board games uses some variation of the "combat: reward" gameplay loop as a meat and potatoes basic gameplay paradigm.

You do not appear to have said anything there about feats & spells and how they specifically relate to gameplay loops.

I asked in good faith, but really this feels a lot like conversing with an AI.

Edit: Maybe you were trying (and failing) to say that feats & spells are used in the D&D combat system, and the combat system is, or supports, a gameplay loop of 'kill things-get stuff-kill more things-get more stuff'. Which seems true but trivial.

Quote from: S'mon on June 24, 2023, 07:04:01 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 23, 2023, 07:10:08 PM

Quote from: S'mon on June 23, 2023, 01:52:51 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 22, 2023, 10:23:44 PM
ring hollow when the vanilla base system of the game you are using gives players feats and spellcasters often have spellbooks in the 5-10 page range which do exactly that.

Could you explain what feats and spells have to do with 'gameplay loops'?

Ironically, estar added one on top of what I was thinking.

D&D boils down to "kill something to get a reward." Older versions would use gold and magic items as the reward, not quite as old versions would use XP as the reward or the simple thrill of overcoming an obstacle, and the forever fallback option has always been to reward the players by advancing the story. These are variations of the same gameplay loop, and GMs will often mix up the rewards to better match the situation or vary the pacing, giving the campaign an organic feel. It's also technically optional, in that the GM doesn't always have to provide combat encounters. But the entire concept of the system is to guarantee that characters have a minimum competency for combat because the core gameplay loop of D&D involves combat.

I should add that I don't actually view this as a problem--I'm vocally critical of D&D, but this is not one of those points. Practically every game genre from video games to CCGs to board games uses some variation of the "combat: reward" gameplay loop as a meat and potatoes basic gameplay paradigm.

You do not appear to have said anything there about feats & spells and how they specifically relate to gameplay loops.

I asked in good faith, but really this feels a lot like conversing with an AI.

Edit: Maybe you were trying (and failing) to say that feats & spells are used in the D&D combat system, and the combat system is, or supports, a gameplay loop of 'kill things-get stuff-kill more things-get more stuff'. Which seems true but trivial.

That's certainly one of the factors involved. I've not had enough time to put complete posts together lately, so I do admit fault in not bringing feats and spells back in. Feats and spells are about 80% combat moves or optimizations. There are some which are roleplay and some which are general purpose, but realistically they're about adding space to your character growth.

What you're actually looking at is a Skinner Box as I described several pages ago, where the activity players perform is to advance the campaign (usually with combat, but roleplay is usually also an option, albeit one requiring GM override) and the reward is character growth. Most feats and spells play double duty by reinforcing both the combat loop and the character progression Skinner Box, but all of them are at least part of the character advancement Skinner Box. They are always part of one gameplay loop and usually part of a second. In both cases, the system explicitly parses out your options, which is really what was at point here.

Part of the problem we're having on this thread is the tendency to oversimplify. When someone sees their first gameplay loop in a game, they go, "ahh, that's the gameplay loop of this game," and with RPGs especially that's almost never accurate. There are player-side gameplay loops, character-side gameplay loops, and mechanics which trade material back and forth between the two layers of game reality. If you tie a monkey's fist knot, some people will describe it as a rope and others as a ball, and they're kinda both right. What's wrong is saying the other person is wrong; it makes the whole affair an exercise in "is a hot dog a sandwich" hairsplitting rather than trying to understand what's going on at a deeper level.

So you're talking about the play-reward-play loop, where acquiring of new spells, feats, powers etc helps drive play. Obvious rewards for continued play that also affect game play. Making these too central while ignoring  other play rewards was one of 4e's mistakes.

"gameplay loops" are not entirely uncontroversial even in the world of video games, with two of the more common criticisms being:

--Any repeated activity or series of activities in a game can be defined as a "loop", which makes (as several people here have pointed out) makes the concept too broad to have much in the way of use.
--That a focus on loop-based game design has been a major contributor in games increasingly becoming boring, repetitive grind-fests over the last decade.

That second criticism ties in with the concept of the "Skinner Box". In general usage, a Skinner Box is any system which uses extrinsic rewards to behaviorally condition a subject into repeatedly engaging in a particular action. In videogames, that action is usually just continuing to play, often with a side objective that the player will spend money on microtransactions, dlc, or other "continuous revenue" mechanics. These days the term is almost exclusively used as a pejorative against games that are perceived as sleazily manipulating players into losing track of how much money they spend on a game, so it's kind of strange to see it being used here as if it was an agreed best practice in game design.

Going back to the original issue, it's transparently the case that there are lots of ways the the disciplines of videogame and tabletop game design cross over with each-other. It's still the case that a lot of videogames are essentially just checking statistics and rolling dice, if you look under the hood. Moreover, there are plenty of disciplines the two share, such as loot placement, how to convey setting exposition, and environment, monster, encounter or quest design.  But that comes with the caveat that you have to recognize the relative strengths of the two mediums. Videogames have an increased audiovisual component, can operate more in real time, and can work off much more complicated calculations than TTRPGs, but they also lack the flexibility and open-endedness of the human imagination.

Bottom line. There are lots of lessons which tabletop designers can learn from videogames, and vice versa, but you have to be careful about learning the wrong lessons. That's the mistake that 4th edition made, and OneD&D looks like it's going to make again.

Quote from: ForgottenF on June 24, 2023, 12:22:59 PMBottom line. There are lots of lessons which tabletop designers can learn from videogames, and vice versa, but you have to be careful about learning the wrong lessons. That's the mistake that 4th edition made, and OneD&D looks like it's going to make again.

4th edition made no mistake design-wise. It just focused on a specific playstyle (gamist) in detriment to others, thus alienating a big part of the fanbase. If judged on it's own goals it's a pretty good design, actually.

If there's a lesson to be learned here, is that D&D as a brand and product should cater to all playstyles in some measure and avoid overspecializing. Which is exactly what 5E does with laser cut precision, to the point of being called the blandest edition ever by some fans. (I like it myself, but find the complaint reasonable)

Quote from: Fheredin on June 23, 2023, 08:58:32 PM
...You do realize that's a gameplay loop, right? Gameplay loops are defined as actions you repeat over the course of the game.

Gameplay loops in video game design are more specific and far less flexible. What D&D 5e describes, what I describes in Post #206, is a simplified description of the interplay between the referee and the players. It is not always step A, step B, and step C followed over and over again. It is not a procedure with branching decision trees.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 23, 2023, 08:58:32 PM
Granted, I was going to ignore this one; RPGs are kinda weird because they tend to have two gameplay loops going on; one at the layer of the players at the table and the other at the level of the characters in the game world.

It's not weird it is what makes RPGs distinct. What set Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign or Dave Jenkin's Wild West campaign apart from the other wargame campaigns at the times.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 23, 2023, 08:58:32 PMThe gameplay loops happening to the characters tend to be more interesting, or at least make better discussion.

For you perhaps. What I see is a focus on the game aspect that is better suited for Tomb, Dungeon!, or Gloomhaven than a RPG.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 23, 2023, 08:58:32 PM
My point here isn't that you only play 5e. It's that 5e is the poster-child of not running a game this way and these structures are really hard to avoid. Using 5E is not trying to avoid gameplay loops. If that's really your goal...the only system I can really think of which stands a chance is FATE, and I'm no fan of that, either.

Well if you actually watched and read the links I supplied then you would understand why what you focus on is irrelevant to how I run RPG campaigns.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 23, 2023, 08:58:32 PM
Also, you have repeatedly assumed that gameplay loops must be taken as something written in stone like an Eleventh Commandment or something. I don't see how that follows. Your own citations show that game designers rarely view these structures as rules per se; they're just things that happen. And I rarely play RAW, anyways, so even if they were rules, I would just use the rules as a source of inspiration.

In videogames you can't escape them as they written into the software. With RPGs if they are not treated as written in stone, as things that happens, sources of inspiration, then my analysis is more useful as it focuses on what common to all RPGs, that campaigns have a setting, a referee, and focus on players interacting with the setting as their character.

That mechanics are weighed in light of how useful they are in adjudicating the actions of characters in that setting. That the nature of the setting means that different type of mechanics will be more useful than others. For example a four color world of superheroes versus a low fantasy medieval setting.

The few posts you made about mechanics been invariably about coming with a way of rolling dice and looking for what it could be applied too.
https://www.therpgsite.com/design-development-and-gameplay/custom-core-mechanic-feedback/msg1205050/?topicseen#msg1205050

My approach is to make a list of what characters commonly do in the setting and the come up with mechanics to help me adjudicate those actions.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 23, 2023, 08:58:32 PM
Gameplay loops are just a way of observing the structures of the game from a metagame level so that you can intentionally alter them. I understand that metagame design isn't everyone's cup of tea because it tends to pierce the fourth wall, but just because you don't like it doesn't mean you automatically grow the Snowflake power to wish it into nonexistence.

You apparently don't understand my design process. Which you would if you have read and watched the links I sent. I have read your posts on this forum and you approach things by designing the game first. That not what I do, I start with the setting first and find the mechanics fit how the setting works.

Which is how the first miniature wargame and roleplaying campaigns were developed. The players didn't have published works to rely on and if they wanted to fight out the battle of Waterloo or Gettysburg then they had to make the rules themselves. And the starting point was looking at old military data to figure out the charts and procedures they would need to accurately recreate those battles.

They applied the same design philosophy when their interests expanded to the fantastic like fantasy miniature battle and fantasy roleplaying. But instead of military references they looked at Lord of the Rings and Hammer horror films and the rules reflected their best guess analysis of how to make a fun session or campaign out of it.

Most of the early rule sets were percentage based translated to a d6 or Xd6 roll until polyhedral dice became common.

By mid 70s wargames publishing became a hit, and the attitude was the rules are the rules you play by or you are cheating took hold. It impacted RPGs and the original way of designing campaigns fell by the wayside in favor of RAW (mostly).

Because of how software development rigid rulesets and gameplay loops was always the norm. SomethingI realized circa 1980 when I first programmed on my brother TRS-80 model I. Fun but something different than the RPG campaigns I ran. And what I did to make my computer games fun was not relevant to what I did to make my RPG campaigns.

Wargaming is a tournament attitude of gaming, so that explains the RAW deal in the RPG debate.

Quote from: Multichoice Decision on June 24, 2023, 12:13:54 AM
I mean to say:
Immersion requires plausibility, and neither extreme between daily infinite arrows checks nor critically fletched individual arrows are going to fly.

So I'm once again going on the record: after recent research into the term "immersion" as it applies to TTRPGs, there is no such a thing. You can get immersed reading a book or watching a movie, but playing TTRPGs includes rolling dice and table-talk, which makes any attempt at immersion literally impossible. Henceforth, let the notion of "TTRPG immersion" be considered utter poppycock and worthy of nothing but derision.

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 25, 2023, 11:48:47 AM

Quote from: Multichoice Decision on June 24, 2023, 12:13:54 AM
I mean to say:
Immersion requires plausibility, and neither extreme between daily infinite arrows checks nor critically fletched individual arrows are going to fly.

So I'm once again going on the record: after recent research into the term "immersion" as it applies to TTRPGs, there is no such a thing. You can get immersed reading a book or watching a movie, but playing TTRPGs includes rolling dice and table-talk, which makes any attempt at immersion literally impossible. Henceforth, let the notion of "TTRPG immersion" be considered utter poppycock and worthy of nothing but derision.

Well except that lots of folks have actually experienced it, myself included, which means there's something wrong with whatever research you're citing.

Quote from: Mishihari on June 25, 2023, 02:01:12 PM

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 25, 2023, 11:48:47 AM

Quote from: Multichoice Decision on June 24, 2023, 12:13:54 AM
I mean to say:
Immersion requires plausibility, and neither extreme between daily infinite arrows checks nor critically fletched individual arrows are going to fly.

So I'm once again going on the record: after recent research into the term "immersion" as it applies to TTRPGs, there is no such a thing. You can get immersed reading a book or watching a movie, but playing TTRPGs includes rolling dice and table-talk, which makes any attempt at immersion literally impossible. Henceforth, let the notion of "TTRPG immersion" be considered utter poppycock and worthy of nothing but derision.

Well except that lots of folks have actually experienced it, myself included, which means there's something wrong with whatever research you're citing.

I don't think doing actual research or keeping his story straight is Theory of Games' strong suit. Guy can't even make up his mind whether "realism" in RPGs is desirable or a stupid pipe dream.

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 25, 2023, 11:48:47 AM

Quote from: Multichoice Decision on June 24, 2023, 12:13:54 AM
I mean to say:
Immersion requires plausibility, and neither extreme between daily infinite arrows checks nor critically fletched individual arrows are going to fly.

So I'm once again going on the record: after recent research into the term "immersion" as it applies to TTRPGs, there is no such a thing. You can get immersed reading a book or watching a movie, but playing TTRPGs includes rolling dice and table-talk, which makes any attempt at immersion literally impossible. Henceforth, let the notion of "TTRPG immersion" be considered utter poppycock and worthy of nothing but derision.

*turns page, immersion lost*

Quote from: S'mon on June 24, 2023, 10:23:43 AM
So you're talking about the play-reward-play loop, where acquiring of new spells, feats, powers etc helps drive play. Obvious rewards for continued play that also affect game play. Making these too central while ignoring  other play rewards was one of 4e's mistakes.

I'm more trying to point out that gameplay loops are all over the place in these games. Feats and spells probably intertwine with a third gameplay loop specific to the classes which access them, so it's practically useless to think about "this interfaces THAT gameplay loop." There are a bunch going on.

4E is an interesting tangent; if we stay on it for a bit I'll spin off a new thread, but I don't think the focus on gamism and gameplay rewards is what sank it. The real reasons look like this:

• 4E was conceived as a way for WotC to buck the OGL, which immediately soured a fair amount of influencer opinion and kicked off Pathfinder. 4E was destined to never see enough development to compare well to 3.5. This is probably the heart of the reason 4E failed.
• 4E was sufficiently different and the D&D fanbase had become sufficiently immature that it was destined to upset the fanbase if it were released as a mainline D&D product. It should really have been marketed as something like D&D Tactics 1E, which would have in turn given the designers the freedom to actually make a good game.
• 4E is painfully slow with very long initiative cycles (owing to D&D's generally sluggish action economy, with turns involving many actions and often several rolls) and released right at the beginning of the reign of the Smartphone at the Game Table. In retrospect, releasing 4E in 2008 proved to be the very worst time imaginable to try to market a slow game.

I think we would have radically different opinions if 3.X and 4E had swapped places in time and relations with the OGL. If 4E had launched roughly in the early 2000s with the OGL beside it, the market could have supported a slow and ponderous game and people would have loved homebrewing At Will/ Encounter/ Daily powers. You would have had an even bigger smash hit than 3.5; OGL brewers would quickly learn how to make the game go faster by dropping actions, thus making more room for roleplay-time. Both of 4Es big faults would evaporate.

Alas, that's not the universe we live in. 4E sucks because Steve Jobs introduced smartphones, which punished slow games, and at the same time, WotC didn't put 4E on an OGL, so fans couldn't really debug the game to make it go faster.