What is the Purpose of Playing a TTRPG?

Subtitle: How a Rebuttal Against a Method of Resolving Chases Led Me to Pondering if You Can Logic Your Way into Finding the "Right" Way to Play a TTRPG

Some Context Required

I was part of a conversation on Discord yesterday about the chase rules in Pathfinder 2e. Someone (we'll call him Tony, because that's his name) had said the chase rules were bad, not a rare take in the communities I run in, but it was the reasoning that got me thinking. Tony's point was that since in the end the result of the chase was binary—you caught the runner or you didn't—that having a whole subsystem built so you could make a lot of rolls was a waste of time when you could get the same result much faster by making a single roll.

I disagreed. After all, resolving a chase with just a single roll is boring, isn't it? Of course you can't just replace chasing with a single roll. But the idea that complex subsystems should—or even could—be replaced with a single dice roll if they had a binary result didn't sit right with me, mostly because I couldn't rebut it immediately. Clearly he was wrong, but how could I prove he was wrong?

How to Prove Tony Objectively Wrong 

Attempt 1: Combat is Binary, Too 

What about combat? That's basically binary, right? You win, or you lose. Well, the results of that are more nuanced, and you end up with partial victories (the surviving bandits escape) or partial losses (you slay the dragon but half of you are dead as well), meaning it isn't quite so cut-and-dry. Is that what puts combat apart?

Well, add that to chases, then! The bad guy gets away, but you chased for long enough that you know his hideout is somewhere in the docks. Boom, partial victory. Or maybe you caught him, but you caused so much commotion that you ended up making a lot of people mad at you. Partial loss. Bask triumphantly in victory. But... you can do that with a single roll, can't you? The examples above are just failing forward and success at a cost, respectively, which are classic tools that were designed for games with binary resolution. So the existence of gray areas around the edges of the result can't possibly be the differentiator.

Attempt 2: The Resource Expenditure Route

Well, in most games you have resources that are relevant to combat. In Pathfinder 2e, you might have lost Hit Points, spent spell slots, or used Focus Points, leaving you in a worse situation than you were before the fight. Barring time to regain those resources, the result of one combat will bleed into the next, which means you can't just replace combat with a roll without some super complex system that takes current HP and spell selection into account in both your roll and the outcome, at least not without losing something. Something I think is important to the game. So clearly you couldn't just abstract combat away with a single roll, right? Was it those resources that made combat different?

If so, does that mean the problem was that chases were too simple, to disconnected from your character? Surely if we integrate the system into the character by adding resources to the chase subsystem, that would make it not binary and worthy of playing out in detail? Some kind of exertion or stamina points (not the ones in the Gamemastery Guide, whole new ones entirely separate from HP) could do that. Have a pool of points that you lose as you chase, and when you're out you're out of the chase: the chasee gets caught, the chaser drops out of contention. Cypher System has three different pools—might, speed, and mind, if I recall correctly—so it by default has a pool of points you can easily spend on chasing in speed. Surely that's a counter, right?

Attempt 3: Finding the Silver Bullet Argument

If we're counting spell slots as resource expenditure, and arguing that the potential of resource expenditure is what sets combat apart, we have a super easy rebuttal! You could totally use spell slots during chases in Pathfinder 2e, so it already has resource expenditure. There, rebutted. Finally found the one big argument that wins the debate. Wipe my hands and be free of that conversation. I won, and I'm right. You can't just resolve a chase with a single roll, it is boring and reductive. I have proved Tony wrong.

Failing to Prove Tony Wrong 

That Title Doesn't Bode Well

None of that matters. I was barking up the wrong tree. You can't logic yourself into an objectively correct style of play, and that's what I was trying to do. I wasn't going to find the silver bullet argument that proved that chases and combat were different or were the same. Once I had left that conversation for about a day and wasn't thinking about how to convince people I was right, I realized that there's a more fundamental point underlying the entire conversation, one that basically invalidates all my arguments: the point of playing a TTRPG is the process, not the result.

Don't get me wrong, the result is also part of the game. Hell, the result can be just part of an even larger process, meaning that in some situations the result is the process. But in general, the result is something the goal of the process, while the process is the game itself.

I like winning as much as the next trad-brained player, but the reason I like tactical combat games like 4e, Pathfinder 2e, and Fabula Ultima is because I like the process of fighting. If I only cared about the results of combat, I never would have stopped playing 5e. I won a lot in 5e, but I didn't enjoy the process of fighting in 5e—and there's a lot of process in each combat. Once I found a system that I enjoyed the actual process of combat in, I jumped ship immediately and never looked back.

Back to Combat as an Example 

The games I tend to play tend to have large tracts of dead trees (or the virtual equivalent) dedicated to rules for pushing metal things into other people at an unsafe velocity. I like choosing where I stand so I'm close enough to support my allies while not being clumped up enough for the dragon to hit everyone with its breath. I like having to pick and choose my targets and my attacks because my big hit is fire but the main threat resists fire damage, while the chaff all are weak to fire. That is all interesting to me, and I enjoy the everloving hell out of it. The sheer process of combat, assuming a well-made process, is enough for me to enjoy getting in fights.

But not every game makes combat a process. Combat could easily be resolved with a single roll. I know this, because a lot of systems do resolve combat with a single roll. Sometimes unimportant or unrisky combats get resolved quickly and everyone moves on while more important combats go into the combat subsystem, while sometimes games have no special rules for fighting, just falling back to the same resolution mechanic as finding rumors or climbing a wall. This feels alien to me, especially the concept of just not having a combat subsystem at all and treating it as just another kind of roll, but it's not wrong. If you don't enjoy the process of combat, just... don't do a process for combat. Simple as.

Chases and the Siren Song of Badwrongfun

You don't need degrees of success, a draining resource, or some other nuance to the outcome to the encounter in order to justify having chase rules more complex than a single roll. You just have to enjoy the process of chasing or being chased.

That being said, you don't have to use those rules if you don't find the process interesting. Tony wasn't wrong when he said he didn't like the chase rules and didn't think they were worth using! Nor was he wrong to prefer resolving chases in a single roll, not any more than a game would be wrong for preferring to resolve combat in a single roll. My argument against him was, in a way, an accidental invocation of the dreaded badwrongfun. "No, skipping the meat of chases is wrong! It's more fun to play them out!" Yeah, to me. That isn't universal, and I ended up accidentally trying to impose my idea of fun over someone else's because we disagreed. I'm not right for thinking that resolving a chase in a single roll is boring, but I'm also not wrong, either! I like the process, so I think skipping it is boring, while it seems that Tony doesn't like the process, so he finds doing it boring. We're both right, and nobody's wrong. It is impossible for me to prove Tony objectively wrong, because we aren't talking about objective things. Trying to logic your way to an objectively correct answer is doomed to failure. There isn't one.

I enjoy the process of chases, even if I think the Pathfinder 2e chase rules are flawed and a bit stinky. I like the time dedicated to chasing, how each new obstacle thrown in the way as the chasee moves through space creates an evolving story, as does each obstacle overcome by the chaser(s). I like the string of choices involved in the chase, and the knock-on effects that each choice can cause to every other choice. You don't have to. And if you don't enjoy it, then it's perfectly fine for you to throw dice on the table (or cards, or stones, or however else you determine outcomes) and move on to something you will enjoy. It's the same about chases, about combat, about negotiations, or investigations, or puzzles. Whatever process you aren't interested in, there's no shame in ignoring that process. You aren't playing games wrong for ignoring or simplifying the things you don't like.

Wrapping My Yapping

At the end of the day, I can't tell you for sure what Tony meant with his argument against the chase subsystem. Maybe he did mean to argue that complex systems that output binary results should be replaced with simpler, faster rolling. Maybe he didn't, and he was only arguing against that specific set of chase rules. I could have completely misinterpreted what he was saying.

An important question, though: at this point, does it matter? I thought his argument was against complex systems that output binary results, and that's what started this whole train of thought. And here I am, thinking so hard about a rebuttal I did on a niche subject on a niche Discord server that I ended up rebutting my own rebuttal and starting a blog. Even if it turns out his argument was something else entirely, something of (arguable) value came from my misunderstanding, and I came away from my musings with a fuller understanding of the hobby I love. An understanding that will help me understand those that play differently than I do more than I did before.

That's worth the time and effort, I think.