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This will undoubtedly make some people angry. That is not my intent, but rather it is to express my observations and opinion about something I felt was implied in another thread. If it makes you angry then I am sorry, but my opinion still remains the same. Some will undoubtedly agree with me, some will disagree. C’est la vie.
It occurred to me from reading that thread that within the game (considering this particular issue) you basically have two ways of looking at the World and milieu in which the characters operate.
1. The World Exists for the sake of the Characters – therefore the players present “Wish Lists” to the DM/GM, and he makes sure that the treasure they receive, assuming magical items are included in such troves, is fit for their desires and “wishes.” I imagine by extension that such a wish list can or maybe will eventually incorporate other aspects of milieu-management, such as arranging events, dungeons, political situations, and a whole host of “goodies” for the benefit of the characters. The point of existing in such a world, I suspect? – to level up of course. To become more, or maybe far more, of what you already are. The point of the game is to a large extent the mechanics of the game. By getting what you want you become what you wish and what you wish is to be stronger, bigger, badder, and more powerful as a game-character. That is to say the point of the game is the nature of the game, the world exists to service the game-character as an expression of “gamism.” In short the various accoutrements and devices and badges of heroism are distributed and “given out” as a tangible reward based upon the wishes and desires of the player. If you want the implements of heroism, those things that will assist you in being heroic, then it is the duty of the world, through the agency of the DM, to give you those things as a reward for the idea that you want to be an imaginary hero. Which leads me to the second basic way of viewing the World in an imaginary gaming universe.
2. The Characters Exist for the sake of the World – therefore the players get whatever they happen to discover and it is up to them to make the best possible use of whatever resources they encounter and can gain in order to earn their heroism. They cannot petition the World, through the agency of the DM to get whatever they “wish for” in order to facilitate their further actions. On the contrary they must gain what they gain, either intentionally, or by accident, being in effect limited to what is, not to what is wished for. This way of looking at the world is far less like a video game full of self-imposed (auto-programmed) Easter Eggs and far more like the real world. Yes, you can create things at your own expense, but there is no Santa-Clause DM/GM to whom one can avail oneself for that special, bright, shiny toy one so desperately longs for in his secret heart of hearts. (And this toy may be an item, object, device, situation, ability, or power – anything that encompasses a possession of some kind.) Because of this the world does not exist for the characters but rather the characters exist for the world, they must make use of what is offered, and they come by that due to the logical demands of what is possible from the environment around them rather than from the environment they wish to exist. This creates an entirely different dynamic of both “heroism” and “power.” Heroism is not something made evident through the “goodies” you possess or even through the power they convey upon you, but rather what you possess is “empowered” by the cleverness by which you employ it. You cannot demand the world give you things or service your needs, so therefore you must service the world in order to make best use of what you can get. The world and the DM will not bow to your demands (though the world and the DM may consider your efforts to achieve some given end or object as noble, worthy, or even of deserving assistance of some kind) and wishes so therefore you must “earn what is possible” given the particular circumstances in which you and your comrades find yourselves.
I find this a fascinating contrast in both gaming theory and in the implications of such theories.
As a personal matter I should say I find the first method and worldview immensely fascinating and even seductively alluring. I also find it, personally speaking, as a way of approaching the game, any game, or of viewing the world, any world, ugly, repulsive, petty, doomed to eventual self-absorption, and very likely to generate little else in the end than utter apathy. I can find nothing heroic in it as an ideal at all, other than the rather atrophic and shortsighted view that heroism as a game ideal is best created through raw accumulation of power. That is to say the more power you have the more potentially heroic you must naturally become because after all it is power (in the sense of raw force) which is the true measure of heroism. (And there is something at the margins to warrant a serious examination of this assumption, without power it is simply not possible to be heroic, unless of course powerlessness is a form of power, and I suspect very much that given the right conditions that statement is also very, very true. Sometimes powerlessness is the greatest form of power.)
Nevertheless the idea of the game-world existing to service the character is as repugnant to me as the idea that the real world exists to service Paris Hilton. As a matter of fact I would call this way of looking at the game as the "Modern Entertainer" View of Heroism. I am a Hero when things go the way I wish and when I get the things I want in order to assure that heroism is worth my while. It is a sort of acting out of heroism, not as an actual thing, but as a sort of stage play in which the actor becomes a shadow or mask (a persona) of the man he is supposed to be truly representing. If on the other hand heroism makes real demands on me, such as that I serve the needs of the World, rather than the other way around, well, that’s either too tough, too demanding, not profitable, or gets in the way of my fun. Or put more simply, “Fun is the point of Heroism, and so Heroism must serve my needs and wishes to be ‘gainful.’”
I personally find that an extremely shallow view of the idea of fun, heroism, gain, or profit. To be perfectly honest all I have ever seen of real heroism makes me suspect it is in fact hard, dangerous, demanding, thrilling (at times - being deadly boring at others), patience-testing, taxing, excruciating, and exhausting work. Yes, it can be fun, it can also be incredibly disgusting, disheartening, heart-breaking, lonely, back-breaking, and yet the gains and profits of it are almost immeasurable in comparison to the dearth of “goodies” you ever really receive from your “wish list,” which is usually little more than, “God I hope I survive this,” or “God, I hope they survive this.” (Which to be perfectly honest is why I fully understand the allure of the first World View - who hasn’t been in a really tight or lethal spot and thought to themselves, “if only I had what I really needed I could have saved them,” or “if only I had the power to have prevented this I could have saved them.” That is a common condition when faced with servicing the world while facing the reality of doing so with a lack of sufficient resources and/or power.)
Nevertheless you do what you can with what you have and I’ve often wondered that if I possessed every degree of power I demanded or wished in order to solve any problem I faced, if I had every resource I desired to right any wrong or injustice, would then my actions under such conditions be heroic at all? Or those of a man who by being able to bend the world to my will through a wealth of whatever I wanted or wished, more akin to King Midas. Everything I desire turns to gold, but there is no more blood to warm my future, for everything has become through contact with me the more inanimate the more I accumulate.
I know why the world exists and it is certainly not for my sake. It is hard for me to imagine a world that exists for the sake of the hero. It is also extremely hard for me to imagine a Hero who asks that the world exists for him.
There are men who ask that the world exist for them, who make ceaseless demands upon it, and who seek to have their various wishes fulfilled for their own benefit, but you don’t call such men heroes. They have another name. Another name entirely.
I think this whole screed assumes some principles which aren't necessarily even remotely relevant.
__________________ Christopher Adams - Sydney, Australia
Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, "I am not the kind of person I want to be." It must never sink into an assemblage of the self-satisfied.
But unfortuinatly contrary to my own personal beliefs I've found that the game works better if the world exists for the players, note, not the heroes, but the players. So the heroes exist for the sake of the world, and the world exists for the sake of the players.
The ideas you present in this post are so repugnant to me that I can't even really find the words... You ascribe terribly insulting motives to large groups of people simply because they play the game differently than you. You even manage to throw in a cheap "video game" quip that doesn't even make the slightest bit of sense (what kind of videogame even works like that?), so you have already hit on some of my biggest pet peeves.
Anyways, you are so wrapped up in personal distaste that logic pretty much fails to apply to anything you are saying. It is all one big strawman full of linking together completely unrelated concepts with a twisted false dichotomy between "gamism" and "heroism". Certainly, the point where you claim that certain ways of playing the game are morally wrong, you cross all boundaries of making terrible and horribly flawed statements. Shame on you.
Anyways, yes, the game world of D&D exists for the sake of the characters. This is not some horribly evil choice on my part, this is a fundamental part of how the game works. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the better a DM is, the more the game world is suited to the characters. The story of the game is the character's story. Their adventures are the story of the world. The world doesn't exist unless they visit it. This is no different than the how any other game or story works. The world of Middle Earth exists solely to tell the stories of Bilbo Baggins and Frodo. The world of Azeroth solely exists to be the setting for the Warcrat games. These stories and games are better for the fact that the worlds themselves are portrayed very differently in each series of books or each new game in order to facilitate a better experience.
This doesn't mean that players should write up wishlists of everything they want in the game that they know they are going to get, but they have every right to expect that the game revolves around them. It is their right as players to have a fun game, after all, and fun games are ones that put the players in the spotlight and let them be a an important part of the evolution of the game.
Really, bringing up abstract ideas of "what is more heroic" is totally absurd. The only thing anyone should ever expect out of D&D is a fun time. It is a game, after all. If the DM doing something to encourage the players to "be heroic" is not fun for the players, then the DM made a mistake.
That's the biggest thing that always bugs me about this debate. By definition, the first option is true. It is the One Truth, and all others must bow before it.
The second option is a lie. Because, you know, the game world doesn't actually exist. There really is a dungeon master. There really is a game. And the game really does exist to be fun, whatever that means.
The second option, were it ever to be stated honestly by its proponents, ought to be more as follows: The game world exists for the players, but it is best to pretend that it does not. I have no doubt that a decent defense could be made of that proposition. Perhaps someday someone shall.
It doesn't matter how much you want option 2 as currently stated, you can't have it.
This is no different than the how any other game or story works. The world of Middle Earth exists solely to tell the stories of Bilbo Baggins and Frodo. The world of Azeroth solely exists to be the setting for the Warcraft games. These stories and games are better for the fact that the worlds themselves are portrayed very differently in each series of books or each new game in order to facilitate a better experience.
Two crimes were committed here. First, and the less egregious one, is that you said "Middle-earth exists solely to tell the stories of [hobbits]". Ack! I hear J.R.R. Tolkien muttering in his tomb. Actually, The Hobbit was a serial bed-time story that Tolkien told his kids that happened to be set in Middle-earth, the world of a much larger epic he had been working on for decades; the LotR started as a sequel to The Hobbit, requested by the publisher, but became something much larger, "more serious and dark," as JRRT said. But the core of Tolkien's work was not The Hobbit or LotR but The Silmarillion, which focuses on the history of the elves and, to a lesser degree, humans. In other words, Tolkien did NOT create Middle-earth as a setting to write The Hobbit and LotR in; those stories grew out of it. I think this is one of the main reasons that the setting is so...alive. There is never the feeling of the "cardboard set" that you get in a lot of novels and RPG worlds: As if all that exists is what is needed to portray the scene at hand. The Hobbit and LotR have a sense of deep history, of myth and legend--because Tolkien had spent decades detailing that world's myth and history and languages.
Certainly not every writer (or DM, for that matter) can put the same care and time into their world as Tolkien, but that is the ideal; second best would be to really disguise those cardboard set pieces well so that they don't feel like cardboard set pieces. It is hard to do.
The second crime, you wonder? It is the worst: You mention Middle-earth and World of Warcraft in the same breath! Alas, alas! May the Great Eagles carry me away to distant Valinor, where only her golden woods may heal my blighted soul!
The whole basis of what the OP appears to be saying is that killing things and looting their bodies is only heroic when the loot is randomly generated. Oh - and the treasure wish-list suddenly turns DnD into a power-gamer's game. As if there was something stopping you before from being a power gamer.
I actually don't like treasure wish-lists but I disagree with pretty much every bit of moralizing and reasoning in the OP. The people I've played DnD with that would have like the treasure wish-list the most were thespians, not power gamers. Power gamers are fine with looting dead bodies and saving up money and trying find or steal their desired magic items. They'll poison people and sell their fellow PCs into slavery for a vorpal blade. Selling your fellow PCs into slavery to buy a vorpal blade is heroic, I think, according to the OP because I'm using the world to get my power. (I wouldn't ask my fellow PCs their opinion.)
On the other hand, thespians, as I've observed, find this kind of loot garnering and XP farming to be distasteful, and would rather be handed items from the DM because they're cool - and not necessarily powerful, but fit into their 100 page back-stories.
I think the OP should really reconsider the generalizations he makes about these gaming styles and the morality behind them. If you want to play with people whose highest aspiration in the game is to save kittens, or walk old dwarves across the street, or kill a whole tribe of orcs and loot their bodies for random treasure, then that's cool but I don't see the treasure wish list as having any bearing on their morals that the whole rest of the game doesn't already establish. You can still save kittens whether or not the DM hands you a vorpal blade for doing it.
Look, I kinda get where you're coming from for the game styles.
One where, at its extreme, the game world (GM) bends over and gives the PCs everything they want merely because they want it. There's never any challenge and everything rings hollow. Gets kinda dull. At the other end there's theone where the world (GM) does it's damnedest to shaft the PCs at every turn. Also gets kinda dull.
Both of these examples of extremes strike me as games I wouldn't enjoy much. But there is a huge amount of middle ground between the two. For example:
I'm about to start a new Champions campaign. And at the moment I'm asking the players what they want to see in it. I've asked questions about the game world, the moral tone, all that, and their characters and they're giving me answers. We're all contributing to the game from the the start. Yes, at the end of the day it will be up to me as the GM to create specfic plot devices, NPCs, organisations, challenges etc. Hopefully I will be able to provide the sort of challenges the players want to see. Also I want to provide them with the opportunity to let their characters do their stuff/show off their cool powers, it is a supers game after all.
So I'd say the fun pay off comes from various sources. Overcoming great challenges, looking good while you do so, getting shiny stuff, getting more points. And many more I'm sure. The emphasis on which of them is more important depends on the individual player. ANd some people do want a game where they always win easily and there's always just the right shiny thing in the orc's chest. I put it to you that the people playing the game this way are getting much more substantial rewards than mere in game stuff. They're hanging out with friends, enjoying company, sharing food and bad jokes. The game itself is just one part of a wider social event.
ACtually, the game is always going to be just a part of a wider social event. Don't read too much into it.
cheers mate,
Glen
__________________ Just making it up as I go along.
I was gonna make a long post but Twin Bahamut sums up my view basically entirely. The world exists for the players/characters because without them there is no world. The world exists (and not even a whole world it really is just what is presently visible/knowable to the PCs) as part of the medium to tell stories and go through adventures and to have fun!
This idea that a world is created just so the players accumulate power is ridiculous. It really isn't at all connected to creating a world for the players. You base the world around them so that the adventures, stories, characters, etc. that they meet is engaging and relevant to what is going on in THEIR STORY and part of THEIR WORLD.
__________________ Secret Member of... *blink, blink* Damn you amnesia!
I think what, if anything, the "DM'ing is a skill, not an art" thread shows is that there are gazillions of ways of representing and playing the game. I feel I fall into neither category presented in this thread, and, in fact, part of my problem with the skill/art thread was that there are so many fine points of DM'ing style and play-style that you really can't create categories that suit everyone.
A little from column A, a little from column B, a little from Column C sub-section 3...
__________________ I don't support feat taxes: http://goo.gl/oGiFS
The World Exists For The Sake Of Challenging The Players - There is, naturally, a certain amount of fantasy wish-fulfillment going on. For some, that is part of the attraction of playing a fantasy role-playing game. However, the players have to earn their characters' rewards by displaying minimum levels of intelligence, tactics, planning, co-operation, courage, honor, luck, etc. (actual levels of intelligence, tactics, planning, co-operation, courage, honor, luck, etc. required will vary from DM to DM and from campaign to campaign). Under this approach, wish lists are not demands which players make of their DMs out of some sense of entitlement, but a communication tool to help the DM understand what the players want so that he can reward them appropriately based on what he thinks they deserve.
If as the DM you have already decided that you going to give the characters a reward for overcoming a particular challenge, I fail to see why allowing the players to choose which reward their characters get (within reasonable limits, of course) is a repugnant idea, or how it could reduce the heroism of the characters in any way.
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