Thread by @lumpleygames

#rpgtheory thread! In a roleplaying game, you've got real things, like dice or cards, numbers on character sheets, stat names and skill descriptions, and maybe a Jenga tower or whatever...

And you've got fictional things, like a veteran warrior weighed down by the blood she's spilled, best friends with an ambitious and vengeance-driven sorceress, arriving together in a wealthy city on the edge of the sea. Their enemy is a prince of the city! What will happen!

As you play, both kinds of things are in action, not static. The real things are in action: the words and numbers on your character sheets change; you roll dice and flip cards; the Jenga tower falls...

And the fictional things are in action: the warrior and the sorceress fight and perform sorceries; they befriend the powerless; they assault the halls of power; they confront their enemies; they struggle and vie.

The game's rules create cause and effect relationships between the real things and the fictional things. You've got real causes, fictional causes, real effects, and fictional effects, in all the combinations that the rules create. Here are some examples.

"When your character performs sorcery to summon a creature of nightmare, roll your Knowledge." This is an example of a fictional cause (your character's sorcery), with a real effect (your roll).

"The number that comes up on the damage die, subtract your armor rating, then mark off that many wound levels. Your current wound level shows your impairment penalty." Real cause (the damage roll), real effects (the wound level and penalty).

"If you roll a 7 or better, your character has an insight into the NPC she's thinking about. It's the GM's job to tell you what your character realizes." Real cause (your roll of 7+), fictional effect (your character's realization).

"If your character dies, keep playing. She's before the Court of Death. She has to choose: submit to their judgment and proceed to the afterlife, or defy them?" Fictional cause (your character's death), fictional effect (her appearance and decision before the Court of Death).

Now, gameplay is a stringing together of cause and effect. The prince of the city sends an assassin to kill my character, so the GM tells me to make an Alertness roll. I roll a 2, so my character doesn't notice the assassin. My character's sleeping, then suddenly dead...

...And she comes to stand before the Court of Death. Will she submit to their judgment or defy them? Defy them, of course! I make a Will roll, and it comes up a 7, so the Court of Death must allow my character to return to the living world, but can impose upon her a geas...

...And so on.

Now so, when you create a roleplaying game, your rules necessarily create these strings of cause and effect, with a mix of fictional causes, real causes, fictional effects, real effects. The question is, what mix serves your game?

Look out for strings of real causes, real effects. Spend a point to gain a bonus to roll a die to gain a point to spend. Roll to hit to roll damage to lose hit points to get penalties to future rolls. They can cut the fictional stuff out of play.

Look out for giving wildly different fictional causes identical real effects. My character's mother is the West Wind, so I get +1 to my roll; your character has a spear, so you get +1 to your roll too. This can water the fictional stuff down, abstract away its imagery.

Look out for substantial fictional consequences with only fictional causes. "My character kills the prince! She gets into his palace, waits for him in a hallway, and stabs him to death!" "Don't you have to roll for it?" "Nope!" This can leave the fictional action ungrounded.

There's nothing in rpg design that's always good or always bad. It always depends on your vision for your game and its own particular needs. So what I'm telling you, rpg designer, is just this, that you already know: make these decisions on purpose.

That's it. Thanks for reading!

Oh wait, credit due: I think I learned this from @epidiah, who taught me this handy mnemonic slogan: "fictional cause, real effect. Real cause, fictional effect!"