Tactics, Immersion, and Meta
In your table, can a Hero (not the player) say what their current stamina is? If not, why not?
Hello! In this essay, I'm gonna be talking about just that. I was writing this post in such a way that I may eventually make a video essay about this, so, I'm sorry it doesn't feel like it's meant to be read, and instead to be performed, with voices and stuff.
Last thursday i ran my weekly draw steel session with a regular group. This was also by the time i (and a few of my friends at my table) invited a mutual friend to the table. She never played draw steel before, but was excited to try. She loves the witcher, and that game in particular, the heroes are a group of Monster Hunters. Like western monster hunter stuff. Van Helsing, Supernatural, Witcher, etc. as opposed to eastern/japanese style MonHun.
By the way, slide side tracked tangents: the heroes are a devil shadow, a vampire null, a werewolf (stormwight) and a conduit of the god of faith. Not a traditional group of monster hunters, 3/4 of them are monsters themselves. End of tangent.
The new player by the way is a veteran of the ampersand game, and has played a few games that i ran too. The session went awesomely. They fought a puppet possessed by a demonic spirit. Crap, i went on a tangent mid writing. Anyway, not the important part. I believe it was the 2nd or 3rd round that the new hero, who i absolutely love, said something that makes me wanna make this post. In character, she said:
"Master [name of null character], I've got 5 focus. I can do [name of ability], but i have to do it now."
Keep in mind that she's intending to say this in character. And by "in character", i mean the modern rpg sense of in character. Speaking with voices, as your character. Acting as them. The Dimension 20 / Critical Role ttrpg actual play streams with voice actors kind of in character. After that moment, everyone on the table then started strategizing and discussing their tactics in character as well. It's kinda awesome. Did i mention my players love acting?
I'm used to tactics discussion in my draw steel game to be made by the players out of chatacrer, not the heroes themselves. But the more i think about it, is there really anything wrong with planning and executing that plan in character, with them referring to the abstraction and meta-currency numbers?
If you've been yelling at me, "of course there is! They don't know what a heroic resource is", i understand you. Of course they don't. An elementalist might know about essence, but they surely don't know that they currently have 6 essence. Or maybe the fury knows that there is something internal that makes their claw attack more ferocious, or make even the strongest of foes fall prone to their ability, but surely they don't know that they "use 2 surges to increase their potency by 1". Of course a hero instinctively knows that sometimes, their strike can penetrate deeper or shallower, almost randomly, even against the same enemy, but surely they don't know that they can get a tier 1, 2, and 3 on their power roll.
Or do they?
My next question would be: why not? What stops the heroes from knowing these things? Just because it is the language that we use to understand the "meta" of the game, why is it that they can't use that language too?
I understand that there is this this notion which we instinctively (or perhaps after a deliberate and long thoughts) come to. The language used by the players is an abstraction of the reality that happens in the universe of the game, and that language is not the same as the language used by the people living in the universe. We as players and the directors, knows that our tactician right now has 7 focus, and 3 available surge, and the party has 2 unused hero token. But surely the hero themselves don't know about... right?
Well, not necessarily. At least not for everything. While many "meta" terms are not exactly the same as they are written on the character sheet, a lot of them have the same exact nomenclature being referred to by the characters inside that game. For example, classes.
In my world, or rather in the setting that I'm currently running (i have a lot of settings), the names of the classes are referred to exactly as they are. Especially by scholars and the smarties of the world. A layperson might call your Censor a Paladin or an Inquisitor. But in my world, if you meet someone that is familiar with the proper term, interaction with them will go something like: "That person, as you can see is a- what? What did you call them? A mage? Okay, you can call them a 'mage' outside. But you're in the university, now. The proper term is 'elementalist'. Got it?"
Another example would be ancestries. And this is, i think, the obvious one. For most games, it's deliberately designed. With the exception of reflavouring, we don't usually refer to ancestry differently whether as a player outside the game or as a character inside the world of the game. A devil is called a devil. My character sheet says I'm a human, and every npc in the world says my character is a human too.
You know what i also like? When a hero refers to their features. Before this campaign, I ran another table with a talent. And when she strained herself, she explicitly said "I am strained!". That's cool. Other examples include: "You are judged" or "That guy is marked."
As you can see, it's rather obvious that not every meta-abstraction and nomenclature is forbidden from being said by the denizens of the world of the game. So what makes surges, HRs, even wealth and renown perhaps, specifically referring to the numbers in your character sheet, felt different than just referencing the name?
Imagine for a second, that Alien Alien, a game designer, a member of an alien race from an alien civilization, father of three, outside the reality of our 3-spatial-dimensions is designing a not-so-reality-aproximator game about our real world experience. A game about your life, physics, and the universe. And they say "let this guy's walking speed be 5".
What's the first thing you instinctively ask? For me, that would absolutely be "5 what?". 5 meters a second? 5 square per turn? What's a square? How big is a square? 5 what? What does 5 mean? What does it refer to? In other words: what are the units.
That, i postulate, is what makes saying numbers felt, wrong. Unimersive. Meta. If you tell your hero that they have a might of 3, i think they will also ask the same thing. "3 what? What does a unit of might measure? It's probably referring to my strength or a measurement of my athleticism. But I don't know what that number refers to. What does a might of 3 even mean? If i have a might of 2, does that mean I'm twice as strong as someone that has a might of 1? By what metric? What are the scales? What are the units? 3 what?"
And i believe the problem of missing units is what makes saying things in the abstraction of numbers felt meta and unimmersive. Because of course it's gonna be a bit weird to say that you have a speed of 5. It'll be much more natural if you can say a unit after the end of a number. "I can walk 5 meters every 3 seconds". See? Much better. And even without an in-world measurable unit, it still feels somehow nicer to say it like: 5 squares in a turn. How big is a square? Idk. How long is a turn? Idk. But because we have the dimension of the unit, we can just translate them into whatever measurements we feel is appropriate.Maybe 1 sq in your game is 10 feet. Maybe it's 1.75 meters. Maybe a turn is a fixed number like roughly 20 seconds. Maybe it's a bit more arbitrary, like between X-Y minutes. But at least we have a unit at the end of that number that we can translate to soemthing else. A start.
So, that's it then? We solved immersion! We can make our character say meta abstraction number without it being unimmersive. Just put a unit after it, in a measurement that they understand in the world! That's it! Yay!
I bet most of y'all already know the problem with my previous statement. I deliberately choose speed, to be honest, because that's kinda the easiest thing to take from an abstraction into real world measurements. Everything else is a lot more difficult.
First of all, you might not have as quick and easy a unit to assign a number to. Stamina for example. We know that stamina is a measure of well, stamina. How long can a hero take strikes before they become winded, exhausted, and finally take the blow that brings them to their dying breath, or worse. But, how can we even assign a unit to that? What dimension of unit, even? Joule as in energy? Milliampere hours? Idk. And it's not trivial to do so.
Worse yet, we have things that we might not be able to even assign a measurement into. What's a clarity? Yes, it's described as a measure of how much focus, thoughts, and mind power your talent has. But, what is it exactly? What is it measuring? Is it thoughts per unit of time? What are thoughts? We know we need 5 clarity to use Flashback. But, what does that mean? How much units of concentration does it take to do that? How are the heroes even able to measure that? How do they know? Those are again, not very trivial to answer.
The truth is that these games are built on abstractions. They are gameplay mechanics designed for players to navigate a system, not for characters to measure their reality. In fact, a lot of games out there are deliberately designed to do so. It's not exactly a measurement, is it? It's a tool we use, gameplay mechanics, intended to be read and used by the players. Not designed to be measured or even known tothe characters inside the game.
So yeah, that's the end it, i guess. It seems virtually implausible to say the abstractions in your character sheet, in character, without it breaking immersion. We lost. After all, the game is not a reality approximator. And if it was, it probably wouldn't be as fun.
Huh... Fun...
This is a written quote (paraphrased) of a quick QnA between me and the new player shortly after we finished the session.
Q: "Are you okay with your character referring to her meta currency in character? Doesn't that break your immersion? Doesn't it feel unimmersive? A little bit meta, even?"
A: "I don't know, actually. I didn't think about it at the time. I guess i just love speaking as [her character name] and I didn't even think about it too much. So, i just follow what everybody is already doing, discussing tactics, but i mistakenly did it in character. Hehe, I'm sorry about that. I didn't realize how that was a little bit meta. I'll speak out of character when discussing tactics in the future."
Q: "What? No! That's super cool! I'm not opposed to it at all. I'm just checking in. I was afraid that you were feeling weird because this is a new thing for you, and for me as well to be honest. But if you enjoy it, by all means! I enjoy it too."
A: "Right? And then everyone joined in too at the end, oh my god! That was so cool and so much fun."
Yeah, so...
I was asking the wrong question after all. An inaccurate question, focusing on something that should be the second item or even further in the priority list. Immersion, unimmersive gameplay, meta roleplaying, those are all, cool. But not as important. You know what I should've been asking from the beginning? Not whether it was meta. Not whether we could do it without breaking immersion. Not whether it felt wrong and unimmersive.
But whether it was fun.
And i can definitively say that at least at that moment, everyone at the table, including me, was having so much fun.
It's fun to speak in character. It's fun to make tactical decisions and make plans and crate combos with your friends. To be able to combine both of them, which my table finds a way to, and to do it in a way where it's fun for everybody? What more can i ask? I basically won draw steel.
And who knows. Maybe it doesn't work at your table. Maybe you're reading all this and say "nah, that's some bullcrap. I know my table would be livid if i allow that, some of them will straight up leave", or something. Or idk, maybe you read this and think "that sounds fun as hell, i wanna try it at my game tomorrow!"
Even for my own table, I'm not even sure if it will be as fun in the future. We have yet to see. A lot of things can affect the fun of the game, and if this one is indeed just fun because of novelty, i trust my players to stop doing it the moment it becomes unfun.
But if it will continue to be fun, i bet my players will keep doing it. And they fury can keep telling the conduit not to heal them because they are close to their winded value, and the shadow can keep telling the null that they have 3 surges so they don't need anymore surges, and i will keep having fun with them.
So, at my table, can a hero (not the player) say what their current stamina is? Yes they can, because you bet your ass it's fucking fun to do. And as always, thanks for reading my post.