So what is Magical Tea Party anyway?

[gamerGoyf]

So I was reading this thread and I realized I've never heard the term Magic Tea Party before :?

So since this where the term came from does anyone have a definition of the term that's not filtered through a layer of complaining about opinions you don't liek :?

[codeGlaze]

MTP is, essentially, "gaming" with out using rules; or play-acting.

Making shit up on the fly and engaging in imagination adventures with little-to-no structure for conflict resolution, or the other things you want/use a rules system for.

MTP is making stuff up for when a game can't provide you with a way to do something.

[Almaz]

It is the little game that girls play when they dress themselves and their dolls and their teddies up in gowns and suits and pour imaginary tea for themselves and sip it.

It is a roleplaying game that is known to everyone, accordingly, because its rule is a classic. "Pretend!" There is no shame in playing it, per se, but any roleplaying game has to offer a more coherent and codified set of rules than this. This is not because the system is bad, but because everyone already knows it. if a rule is presented as an "anti-rule" where you should just "make shit up" at some point, then it is often disparaged as Magical Tea Party because it is wasting text, often large quantities of it, on explaining a game everyone already knows.

EDIT: Looking at that thread, Doom provided a succinct description, but people started saying it is an insult or whatever. People who think it is a derogatory or "you are having badwrongfun" term misunderstand the context, which is that no one should be paying for the Magical Tea Party rule set. Leaving large swathes of the game to MTP is fine, really, as long as you don't waste your breath explaining that, and use pages for actual rules content.

[PhoneLobster]

Didn't we have this thread already in recent memory?

Anyway yeah, it means making shit up as you go along.

That is a criticism of RPG rules because if you are going to the trouble of presenting rules they should be better than/different to just making shit up as you go along.

Most commonly it is used by people around here to complain about opinions they don't like, yes, but it is used to complain in specific ways about opinions they don't like.

So for instance, if a rules set throws up its hands and says "For this section, you are on your own, use MTP whenever this comes up!" then people will complain, especially if they perceive that as something that comes up often.

Or if a rule says "here are a bunch of mechanics, but also make sure to pull numbers out of your ass as much as you feel like that make all those rules largely irrelevant in comparison". Then people will call it MTP (but worse) because you've got a giant MTP element that makes the added complexity of whatever it was largely worthless.

And if a rule is just so bad it just cannot work at all, obviously so and to the point that attempts to use it as written will actually fail people will be forced to just replace it on the fly in play, they're gonna basically be replacing it with MTP and people will accuse that rule of "being worse than MTP".

Alternatively if a rule is complex, but unrewarding and you could have just taken a specific situation, run it through MTP and gotten something simpler and better, people will again, call it worse than MTP.

These are all pretty valid attacks on rules and rule sets. You can argue about whether specific instances fall into the category or not, but the basic concept, that having a functional rule that helps facilitate game play is usually better than just "making shit up as you go along" (and by extension that having a nonfunctional rule that is worse than that is a bad thing) is pretty safe and reasonable ground.

Well. Pretty safe and reasonable ground outside of the RPGsite I suppose, but that place is apparently a cesspit full of GM is god/rule zero is everything assholes if that thread is anything to go by.

[fectin]

For example, diplomacy often devolves to MTP, where the players speak in character and try to persuade an NPC.

That is not inherently bad.

However, you should be angry if you paid money for that diplomacy system, or for a system that's clunky or broken enough that defaulting to MTP diplomacy is better than using the system.

Roughly, your website shouldn't be zombocom, and it shouldn't be less useful than zombocom. (www.zombo.com)

[Whipstitch]

It's not just money that bugs people, but character resources as well. For example, Charisma being the traditional D&D dump stat is in part due to diplomacy being such a small and poorly sketched out part of the game.

[Almaz]

It's not just money that bugs people, but character resources as well. For example, Charisma being the traditional D&D dump stat is in part due to diplomacy being such a small and poorly sketched out part of the game.

Right. The essential critique of MTP is that since everyone already can do it, every thought cycle used to explain something that devolves to MTP in a ruleset is wasted, and every time someone reads it, the processing power to understand that is wasted. It's like, "we already know." If it takes more than a sentence, maybe two, to explain that this section of the game is MTP, you're wasting your time and everyone else's, and usually vast paragraphs and pages get devoted to what boils down to MTP. Or tables. Jeez. The formatting time alone...

[TheFlatline]

For example, diplomacy often devolves to MTP, where the players speak in character and try to persuade an NPC.

That is not inherently bad.

However, you should be angry if you paid money for that diplomacy system, or for a system that's clunky or broken enough that defaulting to MTP diplomacy is better than using the system.

Roughly, your website shouldn't be zombocom, and it shouldn't be less useful than zombocom. (www.zombo.com)

Pretty much.

Magic Tea Party should be the baseline. It's associated with little girls playing tea because it's not something that you, as a game developer, should be aiming at. It's what players fall back on when you've failed to do your job.

Also, it's associated with a lack of consistency. Consistent MTP is houserules/homebrew.

It's not actually roleplaying, but it's when you have to just make shit up as you go because the rules don't provide a workable system. See SR4's matrix rules for a system where rules are in place but they're *so* bad that all you can do really is to cobble together rules and MTP it. That's the other end of the spectrum from classic D&D diplomacy.

Edit: Classic issue with why MTP is not an ideal state for an RPG to be in is that there's no sense of conflict resolution. Let's say I make an impassioned diplomatic plea to the king that brings the other players to tears and rounds of applause, but the MC for whatever reason decides the diplomacy effort failed.

Who is right? How do you judge success or failure in that respect? It's like playing Cowboys & Indians... "Bang! I hit you" "No you didn't you missed!"

The reason *why* we have rules is so that there's conflict resolution that behaves with consistency.

[TheFlatline]

PS: We're a troll forum!!! WOOOOO!

[Maxus]

*spooky fingers*

[PhoneLobster]

Apparently our tendency towards thinking any game rules at all can be good for the game is destroying the hobby, destroying it!

[OgreBattle]

MTP is what you do when you aren't following the rules of the game

RUUUUUUUUUUUUUURUUUUS

TGD uses it as a negative when they mean that a game's given rules are poorly made so you're better off not using them.

[Krusk]

I love when the Den or Frank are mentioned on other forums. People go insane.

Are we still not allowed to cross post amazing posts? Because the guy who thinks MTP was created so that people who join the hobby 5 years from now won't know that you can change the rules is my favorite.

*edited to make a complete sentance.

[MGuy]

So I was reading this thread and I realized I've never heard the term Magic Tea Party before

So since this where the term came from does anyone have a definition of the term that's not filtered through a layer of complaining about opinions you don't liek

Oh therpgsite has the best stuff doesn't it?

[codeGlaze]

The Derp is strong with those ones.
I like how Doom seems to have a love/hate relationship with TGD.

[OgreBattle]

Having glanced through that thread, dang, the TheRPG site is filled with some incredibly rude people, glad they aren't on tgd.

[Kaelik]

I like how Doom seems to have a love/hate relationship with TGD.

That is the usual relationship associated with extreme butthurt.

[MGuy]

Having glanced through that thread, dang, the TheRPG site is filled with some incredibly rude people, glad they aren't on tgd.

You should've seen the fighter thread there. One of the many that spawned. I don't know which parts I liked best. When people claimed that ignoring the rules was the best way to play the game, when they started calling people autistic for knowing the rules, the parts where Kaelik and I were challenged to 'prove' something then quit on, the complete random tangents people decided to go on that weren't related to what was being spoken about AT ALL, etc etc.

[Whipstitch]

My favorite was the guy who said he can read between the lines well and then came to a stupid conclusion that really has nothing to do with how I actually run my games despite being a denner. For example, the Shadowrun vehicle rules are broken, so rather than introduce more rules like he thinks I would, I actually just bust out some doilies and allow people to triangle button cars willy-nilly and refuse to charge people for related skills. I mean, honestly, I kinda hate math, which is part of why I don't really contribute anything here even if I can understand much of the logic behind the arguments being made. After all, the idea that a bad rule can be worse than no rule isn't really that complicated.

[Daztur]

In defense of MTP I think it's a valid game feature since if you don't want really abstract mechanics (i.e. conflict resolution mechanics or mechanics in which how a character does something doesn't matter) or really complicated mechanics with a modifier for everything you pretty much HAVE to use MTP a lot unless the game is strictly restricted to a limited range of possible actions.

So most RPGs are going to require MTPing, there's just too many things that players will want to do that aren't covered explicitly in most sets of mechanics. The question is how best to employ MTPing.

The problem with a lot of rule sets is that there's official rules that are either too complicated or too vague so that a lot of GMs ditch them and just MTP. The problem with this is that the players never know whether the rules will be applied or whether the GM will make stuff up so they have not a clue if spending character creation resources on the various sub-systems will do them any good or not or how much good it will do them. For example I've never seen two GMs run 3.5ed social interaction the same way, so going into a game it's a complete crap shoot if Diplomacy is going to be the worst or the best skill to sink skill points into.

Also a way that I've seen a lot of skill systems work in actual play (the GM arbitrarily ass-pulls a target difficulty and the players roll a dice and add a modifier to see if they can hit the number the GM made up) are often stealth MTP. If the numbers of the players' side are bound by the rules (i.e. what dice to roll and what modifier to add) but the number on the GM side is made up on the spot, you end up with gameplay that's often just as unpredictable and arbitrary as full-on MTP, just with a fig leaf of rules stuck on top.

What'd I'd rather have is really really specific rules laying out what players can do that don't require basically any MTP on the part of the GM and then leave everything else up to MTP with there being clear dividing lines between what is governed by rules and what the GM has to make up on the spot as there are no rules governing those sort of actions. Would make things a lot clearer and more fun for me...

[...You Lost Me]

Yes, that is what effectively everyone here advocates as well.

[MGuy]

Yes, that is what effectively everyone here advocates as well.

Pretty much. I said something to that effect that very forum 5th post from the top though the topic was about GM fiat I think it still fits.

[Mistborn]

So I was reading this thread and I realized I've never heard the term Magic Tea Party before

Those assholes again sure brings back memories. Remeber this thread where MacManus was a sock puppet created to Poe everyone and Benoist was frozen fast and actually defended him.

[JigokuBosatsu]

PS: We're a troll forum!!! WOOOOO!

*spooky fingers*

Sigged, for great justice.

Also... what is wrong with these people? I roll out of bed half-asleep, with vertigo and I inadvertently mutter better insults.

[Username17]

The thing to remember is that for reactionaries everything is projection. Everything. All the time. Reactionaries really want to suppress voters, so they are deathly afraid that there is a vast voter fraud conspiracy. Because they project their own ideas onto others.

TheRPGSite is a reactionary forum. They are convinced that everything anyone talks about is a dismissive attempt to belittle people who have a different gaming style than their own... because everything they talk about is a dismissive attempt to belittle people who have a gaming style different from their own. Really. It's actually that simple.

Magical Teaparty is simply that portion of your game that could be designed and explained by a four year old child in under five minutes. There is certainly a place for that in all but the most board gamey games. But let's be honest: it could be designed and explained by a four year old. So don't expect to get a gold star for writing it up as a forty year old man. You're a big boy now and wear big boy pants, and expectations are a bit higher.

If a rule is worse than MTP, it should be removed from the game entirely. MTP can be patched in by a four year old child in less time than it takes to take out the garbage, so if your system has things that would be better replaced with MTP you have no fucking excuse for not having already done that. If a rule is MTP, but takes a long time to explain, it is similarly garbage. A four year old child can explain MTP to you during a commercial break, so if you're spending fifty pages trying to get the concept across you are doing something wrong.

These should be self evident. But to the people at TheRPGSite, this is an insult against them and a declaration of tribal warfare against their neckbeardy ways. Because projection. And the fact that literally everything they say or do is an insult against other people and a declaration of tribal warfare against people who don't share their neckbeardy ways.

It's really just that simple.

-Username17