Structures, Decisions and Mechanics
Let us illustrate how the different ways we present decision points to players create different game structures.
Consider the following example:
Player: I want to flirt with the duchess.
GM: Okay, make a Flirt check.
Player: I succeed.
GM: Okay, you strike up a conversation with the duchess and she seems into it.
This is about the smallest and most abstract structure we can find to resolve something a PC is trying to do: a “GM Ruling” to apply a single game mechanic and to resolve it in broad strokes. Here is a slightly different version of the same situation.
Player: I want to flirt with the duchess.
GM: Okay, make a Flirt check.
Player: I succeed.
GM: You approach the duchess, who is surrounded by other suitors, but she looks bored. You notice that they’re all just boasting about themselves, so you take a different tack: you compliment her on her skills with a rapier, which you noticed earlier when she dueled the baron. She is pleased that you have acknowledged her skill, but the other suitors are still trying to get their turn in. So you cook up an excuse to invite her to the dance floor - she promptly agrees, and guides you away from the other suitors.
This has a lot more detail provided by the GM, but it is still broadly the same structure! The added description might be invaluable in bringing the fiction to life for the player, but the player still interacts with the game the exact same way in both instances. Specifically, they express their character’s general intent and roll a dice to see if they can accomplish it or not. With either level of detail, the basic same result could be achieved without recourse to a resolution mechanic - the GM can just decide whether the flirt attempt succeeds based on what they know about the duchess and her views about the PC in question.
Compare to this example:
Player: I want to flirt with the duchess.
GM: Okay. You see she is surrounded by other suitors, who are all boasting about their achievements, but she looks bored. What do you do?
Player: The others are all talking about themselves? Guess I’ll try the opposite. We saw her defeat the baron in a duel earlier, right? I’ll go up and compliment her form with the rapier, maybe ask her if she’d give me some pointers.
GM: Her demeanor changes as she smiles proudly. She starts talking a bit about how good footwork is the most important factor in maintaining good form. One of the other suitors coughs loudly, suggesting that you are intruding upon his turn.
Player: I need to get her away from these dweebs. I ask her if she’d be willing to lead me in a waltz to show me some of that proper footwork.
GM: She laughs, agrees, and promptly leads you away from the suitors, who look mortified, but powerless to do anything about it.
The level of fictional detail given is about the same from the previous example, but now the structure is completely different. From the GMs perspective, the factors they identify as potentially preventing the PC from doing what they want are now not a matter of interpreting the result of the dice, but information to be presented to the player. From the player’s perspective, they had to make an additional number of decisions to resolve the intended action of flirting with the duchess, as they were presented with specific obstacles to achieving their goal. The process of flirting with the duchess has become more complex and involved - it has become more like a scenario structure.
Note that no mechanic was invoked in this example: the success of each attempted action was decided upon by the GM with no recourse to mechanics. It would have been trivial, however, to add in mechanics at each of those decision points.
“Make a First Impressions check to stand out from the other suitors”;
“Let’s consult the Tarot to see what happens after you request a dance”.
Any and all of these mechanics might be modified by what was framed in the fiction to change the odds or the interpretation of their result.
“I’ll say you can roll the First Impressions check with advantage, since you’re showing an interest in the duchess’s skill”;
“I think the Death card you pulled means the other suitors are now plotting your downfall”.
Adding mechanics will certainly change the feel of the structure (if nothing else, it can add an element of uncertainty over success or failure to the GM's perspective as well), and each mechanic used will change the structure in different ways. But the way each obstacle was framed in this ‘structure’ was instrumental in informing the player on what kinds of descriptions would be valid action “chunks” to address them, and that remains a strong feature no matter what mechanics that are added to it.
One last example:
Player: I want to flirt with the duchess.
GM: Okay. You see she is surrounded by other suitors, who are all boasting about their achievements, but she looks bored. I’m going to say getting her attention will be a skill challenge, requiring two successes before you get one failure. What skill are you using first, and how?
Player: I’ll start simple, and roll a Flirt check. I remember that the rules say that you get a bonus to that check for standing out from the crowd, so I’ll, uhm… compliment her instead of talking about myself, to set myself apart from the others.
GM: Yeah, that would work. Go ahead and roll with the bonus.
Player: Success!
GM: Okay, so she is happier talking about herself to you than listening to the other suitors. But they’re still hanging around, trying to get their word in. What’s the next skill you’re going to use?
Player: I’m going to use Etiquette. Partaking in tradition gives a bonus with that skill, so I’ll, uhh… invite her to dance. I succeed!
GM: Great! As soon as you ask, she gladly leads you to the dance floor. The other suitors are visibly upset, but stay back, since interfering at this point would be a social faux pas.
This has the same decision points as the previous example, but again I’d say that the structure is completely different!
Resolution mechanics are, once more, introduced to determine whether the character succeeds or not. But even more importantly, despite attempting the exact same actions in each case, the way these mechanics are being introduced means that the way the player is deciding upon these actions is completely different. The strategies in this case are being selected because there’s a mechanical backing to them that the player and GM agree are appropriate to the established fiction. The player is free to pick a mechanic they want to invoke and then describe it (or not) as a narrative beat in the fiction, instead of describing a fictional action to trigger a mechanic.
This time, the mechanical rules invoked to deal with the situation are so central to how the player and GM interact with the fiction that its introduction marks a completely different structure, in my opinion. As such, changing the mechanical rules used (say, using a Blades in the Dark-style clock instead of a skill challenge), in this instance, would also most likely change the structure.
This series of examples lead us to a few conclusions. Namely:
- Structures are defined, in part, by the number of decision points they present to the players.
- Structures are defined, in part, by how players (are encouraged to) make their choices in each of these decision points.
- Using mechanics as part of a structure changes, at the very least, the feel of the structure - but there can be a core to the structure that remains even as mechanics are added or removed.
- When mechanical rules are central to the way the structure is framed, adding or changing such mechanics causes a change in structure.
Let us be clear that we are not making any judgement here about which structure is better. You can probably pick which ones you would prefer for your games, or for different situations in your games, but the point is that such a preference isn’t objective or absolute. It is certainly not a moral imperative.
You choose a structure by how much time you’d want to give to the interaction it would resolve, by what the player’s goal in choosing to take the adjudicated action is, by how much you like the system mechanics available to use in this situation, and many other factors besides. What’s most important is that we recognize that we have many different ways of addressing any given fictional situation, understand what the effects of each of them will have in how our game goes, and use them accordingly.