High Trust, Invisibility, and Draw Steel

I'm becoming more and more of an adherent of High Trust game styles and I was reminded of this when I stumbled upon a discussion of invisibility in the Draw Steel subreddit.

Transcript

One of the things that I have discovered of late in my gaming journey is I'm leaning more and more towards high trust gaming. And what that means for me is that in terms of rules and mechanics, the system trusts that you as referee and you as a player are going to read things in the spirit that they're given. In other words, to put it in maybe a 5e-ish context: rules as intended. You understand what something means, you understand what they're trying to say. So instead of the rules or the mechanic having to lay out in painful legalese detail what something is, you just say, here's what it is. And the rules expect everybody to understand that and then go with it.

Example from Draw Steel

I'm going to use an example from Drawsteel to illustrate why I like this approach more and more, why I'm leaning towards it, and what I think can happen when you follow a different approach. A well-meaning one, perhaps, but a different one.

Now, some folks may recall a few years ago, I stumbled upon a way that invisibility was ruled in fifth edition and I made a video. I think I was in my niece's bedroom on my iPhone and I just made this quick video kind of riffing on that, sort of saying, shaking my head, disbelieving at what they'd done to invisibility or why they felt the need to do this to invisibility. And it almost turned invisibility into some other other thing.

I was surfing on Reddit over the weekend and the last couple of days and I stumbled into the Drawsteel subreddit. Well, not stumbled. I've been poking around in there. I've mentioned before, Drawsteel isn't a game I'm really looking to run. I'd be happy to play it. I don't really think it's for me. I'm not interested in it just in terms of the kind of game style. I'm not looking to go back to kind of a 4e-type game, but I'm interested in it just like I'm interested in Daggerheart and really any kind of game that comes out, especially one that's got some build and sort of fanfare behind it.

One of the members of the subreddit posted a question about an encounter. I don't know what adventure it's from, but it revolved around a use of invisibility. Now, I'm going to read you—because they quoted from the hero's book, which I do not have—what invisibility means in terms of Drawsteel.

Draw Steel Invisibility Rule:
Invisible creatures always have concealment from other creatures. If an invisible creature isn't hidden, they can still be targeted by abilities. The test made to find a hidden creature who is invisible takes a bane.

Interpretation and Concerns

Now, I don't know exactly what a bane is. I'm guessing that's some kind of disadvantage, some kind of penalty. That makes sense. Now, you may read that and think, well, this is perfectly sensible.

But coming from me, what I really want in a high trust system is that it doesn't have to tell me all these individual things invisibility means because we know what invisibility means. It means you can't be seen. If you're playing with a kid—whether it's a son, daughter, cousin, niece, nephew, friend, stranger on the street (well, probably you shouldn't do that)—but you're playing with a child and you play a game and one of you says, "I'm invisible," we kind of know what that means.

There may be some odds and ends or little things, but really, we do know what that means, right? So what I'm looking for in a game is just tell me they were invisible, because I think if I just say, well, they vanish from sight and they're clearly invisible, players will understand basically what that means. It means they can't see them, but maybe they can detect them by other means. I know what it means. We all have this kind of shared understanding of what it means.

Tactical Systems and Keyword Complexity

Now, in terms of Drawsteel, I understand what they're trying to do. This is a very tactics, movement, gridded-out sort of combat encounter system. So they feel the need to give you these different qualifiers or different almost keywords about what invisibility means.

But I would argue that by doing that, what they're actually doing accidentally is sowing more potential confusion. And if you look up that Reddit thread, you'll see people going back and forth with what does it mean? What do they intend? I think it's pretty easy actually to determine what they intend. And I think that's where some of the conflicts—if you see there's a little bit of friction in there—it kind of lines up with, hey, you know what they mean sort of thing. But it's not quite what the text says.

And because they have to say things, they feel they need to say things, then that opens those doors to what exactly do those things mean in a way that if you just said, yeah, they're invisible, doesn't actually do. For example, they say, hey, creatures always have concealment from other creatures.

Concealment vs. Hidden

So now we've added this little keyword here: concealment. Oftentimes in D&D sort of games, at least the more recent editions, concealment might be something like you're screened by foliage. You're not quite invisible. You don't have cover in terms of hard cover. It's not like you're behind a wall, but you're kind of behind something where they can't see you. It's like a soft cover as opposed to hard cover.

Now, I don't know if concealment is an actual term in Drawsteel or just what they're saying to say, hey, right, they can't see you. You are concealed from them. So, OK, fair enough. We've got that.

The next part, which is probably where a lot of this comes in is, hey, if they're not hidden, they can still be targeted by abilities. Now, what does that mean? They can be targeted by abilities. I have a feeling what they mean is that since they're not hidden—which I'm going to guess they mean by hidden that they have hard cover. If concealment is soft cover, then hidden is hard cover. You're kind of behind a wall or something.

If some kind of AoE splash damage effect were to come out, they can still be targeted. They're not removed from the game board, as it were. They're still there. They still occupy space. And therefore they could be hit by the hit. If that space is hit, they can be struck also.

But it's not clear. And in this Reddit thread, that's where a lot of the stuff comes in. Well, what does it mean by targeted? Does it mean that I can target you with an attack? That if I have some melee attack, I've got a sword and you're invisible, but I can still target you?

Draw Steel’s “Can’t Miss” Mechanic

Remember, this is complicated a bit because Draw Steel has that "can't miss" going on. So you can't just have a "well, they miss"—something's got to happen. And if that something's got to happen triggers the end of invisibility, then what good is the invisibility, right?

So if you go invisible and the power—which I think in this case has something to do with if you're hit, then you turn visible again—so if you go invisible, but they can still target you and then they hit you and you become visible again, but then everything's going to hit you.

Well, how does that work?

High Trust vs. Crunchy Systems

The context, I think, actually makes it pretty clear how it works. And I'm not really trying to fault Drawsteel, but what I'm trying to do is use Drawsteel to show an example of what can happen—or say, the end—5e was full of this. All these things that come up suddenly have all these arguments taking place, whereas in a high trust system, you may have arguments with your table maybe, but there's going to be—there is no singular interpretation.

It's allowing you to interpret it the way it works for you. So if you want to rule invisibility as being, yeah, it's more like predator invisibility. So your movements are causing little ripples. So until you really get hidden and stay still, they can kind of see you kind of thing. Or if it's your classic, you're just invisible man, you're invisible. All that works.

But when they start adding in details like this and specifics and keywords, then it does leave open—especially in a game like Drawsteel, where you'd think you want to nail all that stuff down because we're doing such this tactical movement-oriented, every positioning, all this stuff is super important—if that's our system, then saying, hey, we're going to go loosey-goosey on what some of this stuff means, I can see how that doesn't make a lot of sense.

Final Thoughts

No, if I'm playing chess, I don't want it to be loosey-goosey. Well, you know, the bishop can kind of do this and the knight can kind of do that. I just interpret it like, no, I want to know. That's part of the puzzle. The puzzle of combat is that these things actually have real meanings.

And what does that mean when we say something like targeted? Do we mean they can just be hit by an area of effect? Does it mean that I can still target you if I have a single target ability? I can still target you. I don't think that's what they mean. But the text doesn't say.

To fix it, they'll probably have to add more words to say, well, by targeting, we mean this or their space can be targeted or something. If you target the space that they're in—adding more verbiage, which may help alleviate it, but may actually cause more questions and more confusion than if we could have just had, "Hey, they're invisible."

Now, I'm not saying that Drawsteel is bad for this. I think it's interesting that they have the same kind of thing in there that 5e had, because 5e had the same thing where sort of invisibility—but it wasn't quite hidden in the same way that this has invisibility—and it's, but it's not quite hidden. There's somehow hidden plus invisibility and invisibility. And I guess, like I said, I think in this case that the common sense interpretation is that, yeah, they're just not hidden. So if they're in the line of an effect, they're still going to get hit by the effect potentially.

Again, I think that's what they mean. But it's opened up doors there, whereas the high trust method—maybe you would say, well, all the doors are open. It's like, maybe, but we're empowered to just make a decision. Whereas because they're giving us more, in some sense, it's asking us to conform to things. And then when there are gaps in there, it can be more confusing to try to figure out, well, how are we supposed to fill these gaps? Because it seems like they mean something. It seems like they have something particular in mind. So we as individuals are trying to think about how do we get to that meaning of the mind? Whereas without it, you would just come up with what you want.

And I think—I didn't want to make this a poking fun at Drawsteel or belittling or anything like that, because I don't mean any of that. It's just the example that came to mind.

The Takeaway

The takeaway from this is really when I'm looking at systems, what I want now for myself—and I'd love to hear what you folks out there want—is I'm looking for systems that trust in me, trust in my players and just say, hey, you know what? Interpret it the way you want.

I mean, this in a way goes back to kind of the original sort of D&D stuff where Gygax would say, hey, we don't have a rule for that. Just make a rule or however you interpret it is great. They're drowning. What does drowning mean to you? Hey, whatever it is. Good.

I'm not necessarily saying this is rulings over rules kind of thing. I think that gets overstated a bunch. But I think it's, hey, you know what it means. I know what it means. And if you don't know, you could look it up in a dictionary. And when you see what it means and you decide how to adjudicate that, that in some ways is simpler and easier. And that's just what I want.

Closing Thoughts

But I'm curious what you want. How do you find other games who may toe the line between wanting to be very specific and detailed, but being open-ended? What do you prefer as a referee, as a game master? Do you prefer rules that are spelled out with a lot of detail, or do you prefer rules that are going to ask you to decide with your table what exactly something means when there might be adjudication and pure edge cases and permutations and exceptions and that kind of stuff?

Do you want all that spelled out? Do you want to do it for yourself?

I find for me at this point, I'm OK to spell it out myself. I trust in myself. I trust that I'm playing with folks who will run with that. And if we disagree, we can hash it out amicably and quickly and get on with the gaming. And I don't need this sort of thing, but I'm glad it's there. And I'm glad folks who want this sort of detail and crunch in their game get it. But that's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for that kind of high trust experience.

You let me know what you're looking for. Game on, everybody. Talk to you later. Bye now.