DMing philosophy, from Lewis Pulsipher

lewpuls said:

ruin explorer:

You've posed your answer largely in terms of (tabletop) RPGs. My statement encompasses all kinds of hobby gamers, and recognizes that video games and gamers are far more pervasive than tabletop. Of course, Tabletop RPGs are now just one of many segments even of tabletop gaming alone. (You can easily make a case that we can see, in video games, where tabletop games are going. Not good.)

Consequently most of what you've said is aimed at something I didn't say, because I'm talking about a much, much larger group.

Whereas "vidiots" are video gamers who ignore tabletop when they talk about games, I've coined the term (looking for one better) "tabledopes" for tabletoppers who ignore video games when they talk about games. Maybe (hearkening back to Muhammed Ali), "role-pa-dopes" would do for RPGers who only talk about TT RPGs when generalizing about games.

Yes, video gaming was heavily consequence-based in the 80, especially when the arcades were still strong and you could actually lose a video game (in a sense). Some of it still is. But MMOs (which are frequently RPGs) and F2Ps have led to the ascendance of reward-based gaming. I think this is more a symptom of a change in society (the entitled generation), than a cause, but who can say for sure.

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Video gaming was insta-death in the 80s because that was the best way to get people to buy continues. However in the 80s entertainment was generally much more passive than it is today; say what you like about Mass Effect 3 and its really irritating linearity and mockery of "insanity" level (and about the Starchild - but that's a rant for another time), there is a boatload more challenge to Mass Effect 3 than to watching another episode of The A Team however much fun that is. And that is what you are seeing all over the place. Video games are now bigger than Hollywood. The people who would have been watching films in the 70s and 80s are now playing video games. You think that there's little challenge to a best selling video game? Compare it to ET or Raiders of the Lost Ark. (And those aren't bad films). Halfassing it on casual mode in a Star Wars game is still a massively bigger challenge than watching Luke Skywalker on the screen.

As for hardcore players? They get a far far more intense experience than they ever used to. PVP against anything up to the best in the world. Either EVE Onlne or Starcraft II take much more at just about all levels because the level of competition is so much higher.

The arcade? I've played some of those old arcade games - and for all Pacman is a great game, you're doing the same thing over and over faster and faster until you fail. The same in Space Invaders. The challenge doesn't compare to an evolving challenge like Starcraft where the game gets more complex and intricate on you and rather than having you use the same skills better, you need more breadth as well as depth. And you're up against a human. You can't predict that that #@&% red ghost will always be aimed ahead of you in Starcraft.

You want to talk about no chance of failure? That's not Modern D&D. That's 30 year old D&D. Mid 80s. Dragonlance's Obscure Death Rule. Right there in the rules. And the 90s were advocating fudging the rules whenever they got in the way, frequently in the players' favour. And the endless ascent of levels? MMOs took them from D&D.

You want to talk about hard mode? The first time Tomb of Horrors was played it was cleaned out with no casualties. That's not hard mode. Braid is far tougher. For that matter so is Portal (and Portal ain't that hard).

You want to talk about the entitled generation? As a boomer (I assume) you should look in a mirror. And broadening the appeal so more people get challenge based games doesn't dumb them down. It means that the market is larger.

And the reward based play isn't primarily from MMOs. It's from Zynga/Farmville and other such games, and from iphone/android games.

Bawylie said:

IMX, "that's how it was" because meta-gaming was verboten & DMs tended to try to "win" by defeating the Players with traps, SOS & SODs.

The only way to survive that combo, for my group (when I was still a player), was to pixel-bitch - to go over every square inch of dungeon with an 11ft pole.

It wasn't until much later that I realized that's a crappy and boring way for me to play. Now, as DM, I don't mind meta-gaming and I'm not out to defeat players or win. My objectives are to deliver a fun game session and engage the players emotionally. My players (many of whom are reformed pixel-bitchers) have embraced this enthusiastically.

So I'll do a dungeon crawl, but instead of "gotcha" traps and ambushes, I openly frame the challenges so the players can make intelligent decisions on what to do about it. This means SODs & SOS are in, but instead of requiring meticulous play to avoid missteps and make sure you don't stumble into anything, I take that burden to let you know what the hazard is, what shape it will take, and when it becomes an imminent peril - then it's up to you to deal with it. No gotchas. Better trust. Fun sessions.

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This is a good presentation of the modernist position on old school gaming. If my games were like yours perhaps I'd be wanting out myself.

Here though is why you are wrong in general about the playstyle
1. The DM is not supposed to be adversarial. He is supposed to play the bad guys fairly which can be confusing for some including DMs.

2. Gotchas are great if they are indicative of a lack of preparation or planning by the party. They are in fact a test of said things. We avoided any slowdown of our games though because we had standard marching orders and various predefined protocols that the group just announced. We had cautious advance, standard advance, and speedy advance. We chose based upon the situation. Personally I feel that this style of play feels real to me because no way am I going through an adventure full of traps and not checking for them. Perhaps some people failed to figure out this time saving approach.

3. The use of old school player challenging approaches has nothing to do with emotional connection. You can be emotionally connected and really into the story either way or you can not be. That would also depend on how well the DM brings it all together.

4. For me and my group, meta-gaming though is a sure fire way to lose any emotional connection or any suspension of disbelief. In my view contriving a situation is not fun or suspenseful. The players knowing everything makes the whole point in many cases moot.

For me D&D is about adventures into the unknown, the exploring of mysterious and exciting locations. In time you take all that treasure you've earned and you begin to affect the world around you on a larger scale.

I wasn't saying anything about "the play style." I was talking about games I played in while growing up - so I'm not wrong about my own experiences.

As for the rest:

1.) A lot of published works give advice to DMs that they shouldn't look at their relationship to players as adversarial. You're right: It's not supposed to be. But that advice didn't just spring up out of a vacuum.

2.) Surprises aren't gotchas. Gotchas are when the DM looks for any chinks in your plan or SOP and then exploits that, regardless of whatever has already been established. Or modifies his challenge to circumvent your plan altogether. You've got a fighter with high AC fighting a troll while a rogue stands by with a torch. The troll can't hit the fighter - until the DM says he pulls out a Wand of True Strike & a potion of fire resistance. Nevermind he's only wearing a loincloth. That's a gotcha.

3.) I was talking about how I changed my approach to the game - not criticising the old school approach for lack of emotional connection. I'm talking about shifting my personal focus.

4.) I got "called" for meta-gaming whenever I made intelligent decisions so the DM could make my character do something stupid, instead. "How do you KNOW trolls are vulnerable to fire?" "Why would you search for a trap here?" I don't know - maybe trolls are common enough to know something about and maybe every time I don't search for a trap, you hit me with one. Then complain how I'm meta gaming because I've been conditioned to fear abuse. Jaysus!
4b.) So now I give my players all the relevant information so they can make informed decisions. Fear of actual consequences instead of the unknown. Maybe fear of the unknown is better for you. I get plenty of mileage doing what I'm doing. So meta-game. Think. Plan. Do whatever you can to win. This IS a game - and we're playing in it.

D&D is that for me, too. And being honest about what the players see & setting expectations fairly doesn't detract from that. Conniving, withholding, gotchas, these break trust.

Emerikol said:

1. The DM is not supposed to be adversarial. He is supposed to play the bad guys fairly which can be confusing for some including DMs.

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Strict, but neutral, use of the rules still leads to the pixel-bitching.

And, my understanding of the origin of the Tomb of Horrors rather speaks against the neutral stance - if the GM is creating an adventure to prove the players wrong or humble them, that's adversarial.

Personally I feel that this style of play feels real to me because no way am I going through an adventure full of traps and not checking for them. Perhaps some people failed to figure out this time saving approach.

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If the issue is supposed to be a test, and the players find a solution and implement it, that test should then be over, and you should move on to another test. Continuing to apply the same test *forever* (using the published modules as a guide to intended play - the traps exist over all levels of play) is not adding interest or challenge to the game.

I think there was an issue here, in that general play seems to have been influenced by tournament play - tournament play is a scored test, where you are tying to beat other players. In that situation, "testing the players" makes some kind of sense. Outside the tournament, you are no longer trying to score the players against a large group doing the same thing. You are testing the players against the others in their party or against the GM.

The former can lead to backstabbing, and arguing over gold and treasure (as GP = XP!), and the latter tends to lead to the antagonistic player-GM relationship. While it is entirely possible to not have these things develop, they are natural human paths to take in the situation presented by the rules and adventures in question. If non-antagonism was really desired, the game could have been designed a lot better to avoid it.

4. For me and my group, meta-gaming though is a sure fire way to lose any emotional connection or any suspension of disbelief. In my view contriving a situation is not fun or suspenseful. The players knowing everything makes the whole point in many cases moot.

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And this is a common over-statement of what metagaming means in this context. Knowing to allow others to have spotlight time is metagaming, for example, but it has nothing to do with contriving situations, or knowing everything.

For me D&D is about adventures into the unknown, the exploring of mysterious and exciting locations. In time you take all that treasure you've earned and you begin to affect the world around you on a larger scale.

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Which has little to do with the old-school/modernist divide, in my experience. Some of the best exploration of the unknown, and mysterious and exciting locations I've ever done was in a recent Spirit of the Century game - and FATE is most assuredly not old-school in its construction.

Umbran said:

Strict, but neutral, use of the rules still leads to the pixel-bitching.

And, my understanding of the origin of the Tomb of Horrors rather speaks against the neutral stance - if the GM is creating an adventure to prove the players wrong or humble them, that's adversarial.

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Well I do consider the Tomb of Horrors really hard and I wouldn't want a group to try it unless they really wanted to put their characters at serious risk. On the flip side, I do not consider it a bad adventure given fair warning. Some groups like a really hard challenge.

I am not anti-pixel bitching as you call it (we need a less loaded term for sure). I and my group want to be rewarded for caution and thoughtful play. The DM creates a world that is challenging to the players as much as it is to the characters. For some thats good and for some it's bad. I only get my dander up when people proclaim the new way as better universally instead of just better for them.

Plenty of people have just kept plodding along using the same playstyle they fell in love with at the beginning. I know that with 3e and 4e I kept trying to get it to work the way it used to work. With 3e it was very hard. With 4e pretty much impossible. That doesn't mean those games didn't work okay for somebody. Just not for my playstyle.

Umbran said:

If the issue is supposed to be a test, and the players find a solution and implement it, that test should then be over, and you should move on to another test. Continuing to apply the same test *forever* (using the published modules as a guide to intended play - the traps exist over all levels of play) is not adding interest or challenge to the game.

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It's not a test like a math test. Dungeons are full of traps for a very logical reason. The owners want to protect their stuff. A lack of traps wouldn't make sense. I strive for a world that makes sense.

As the group levels up, the traps become harder to catch. Standard pixel bitching won't work every time. Still, if a DM completely dropped pit traps for example from his game at 3rd level, then some players are bound to metagame that fact and not take the time (in game time) to deal with these kinds of things. Obviously the nature of the dungeon will dictate the propensity of traps. I'm always careful to make sure it makes sense given the context.

Umbran said:

I think there was an issue here, in that general play seems to have been influenced by tournament play - tournament play is a scored test, where you are tying to beat other players. In that situation, "testing the players" makes some kind of sense. Outside the tournament, you are no longer trying to score
the players against a large group doing the same thing. You are testing the players against the others in their party or against the GM.

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I think tournament play forces some people out of their comfort zone for sure. I never cared for tournaments nor do I care for encounters now. I'm very campaign and world focused in my games. I do though think the tournament approach fits the playstyle of some groups well because that is how they naturally operate.

Umbran said:

The former can lead to backstabbing, and arguing over gold and treasure (as GP = XP!), and the latter tends to lead to the antagonistic player-GM relationship. While it is entirely possible to not have these things develop, they are natural human paths to take in the situation presented by the rules and adventures in question. If non-antagonism was really desired, the game could have been designed a lot better to avoid it.

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My groups are non-adversarial. They know working together is the only way to survive in the world.

If the DM is playing the monsters straight and fairly then no antagonism need arise. He should play them appropriate to their intelligence (to the degree he can of course). He should not metagame his own knowledge of the group. I also find writing up monster "plans" ahead of time helps keep me honest. I have more time to sit and think about how the monsters react in general to someone invading their lair and not so much my group in particular. I try and figure out what they would know and how often they've confronted the type of group represented by the PC's. If the answer is almost never then they will not be prepared. If on the other hand, it is an enemy well versed in PC type challenges then they will be well prepared.

Umbran said:

And this is a common over-statement of what metagaming means in this context. Knowing to allow others to have spotlight time is metagaming, for example, but it has nothing to do with contriving situations, or knowing everything.

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It actually fit the person I was responding to and his example. I realize there are all sorts of metagaming. For the most part I dislike it almost universally.

Umbran said:

Which has little to do with the old-school/modernist divide, in my experience. Some of the best exploration of the unknown, and mysterious and exciting locations I've ever done was in a recent Spirit of the Century game - and FATE is most assuredly not old-school in its construction.

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Again, I was responding to the accusation that the new style supported those things and the old style did not. In my games, the plot and character interactions are deep and fulfilling. My PCs are not cardboard counters. They have histories and the NPCs are deep and well drawn (at least the key ones). That has nothing to do with the fact that I am also old school in how I handle player vs character challenge.

Emerikol said:

I am not anti-pixel bitching as you call it (we need a less loaded term for sure).

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I agree that a less loaded term for this style of play ("gritty exploration"?) is needed.

Emerikol said:

If the DM is playing the monsters straight and fairly then no antagonism need arise. He should play them appropriate to their intelligence (to the degree he can of course). He should not metagame his own knowledge of the group. I also find writing up monster "plans" ahead of time helps keep me honest.

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This comes out in Gygax's pursuit rules in his DMG. The number one determinant of whether or not monsters pursue fleeing PCs is whatever the GM wrote down in his/her dungeon key.

If the key is silent, then there are a series of steps for working out whether or not pursuit takes place, based on monster intelligence, inclination etc.

Umbran said:

While it is entirely possible to not have these things develop, they are natural human paths to take in the situation presented by the rules and adventures in question. If non-antagonism was really desired, the game could have been designed a lot better to avoid it.

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I agree.

I actually think this is one area where metagaming can help. In my own case, by joking along with the players, letting them know mechanical information about the challenges I have framed, etc, I reduce the sense that it is "me vs them" and help establish the challenges as framed in a "neutral" rather than antagonistic way.

Emerikol said:

It's not a test like a math test. Dungeons are full of traps for a very logical reason. The owners want to protect their stuff. A lack of traps wouldn't make sense. I strive for a world that makes sense.

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Absolutely it would. Traps in the D&D sense (i.e. unattended, activated by mechanisms) have almost never been used to protect specific small places in real life, particularly not in buildings. They're used almost exclusive to catch/kill animals, or for broad-spectrum area denial and/or harrassment (such as man-traps used against poachers, or land-mines or punji stick traps). They're largely a construct of genre, and foregoing them for living or quasi-living defenses (i.e. guards, undead, golems, etc.) makes complete sense and doesn't much change how D&D feels.

To be clear, I like traps as part of the genre, and use them, but for me they must answer the following questions (at a minimum):

1) Who built this and how?
2) Why did they build it? Why a trap not guards?
3) What mechanism do/did they use to bypass it, and is that practical?
4) Why/How is it still operational? Is it maintained? By who? Why?
5) Why/how is it still/currently in an armed position?

Indeed, if one designs dungeons "to make sense", the vast majority of D&D traps fail that test. Including those in plenty of "famous" dungeons.

Umbran said:

And, my understanding of the origin of the Tomb of Horrors rather speaks against the neutral stance - if the GM is creating an adventure to prove the players wrong or humble them, that's adversarial.

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Agreed. And the fact that the first run through of Tomb of Horrors was 100% successful, no casualties, and all treasure obtained is just amusing.

Equally adversarial was the Earseeker - a monster that lives in doors and burrows into peoples' ears - to deliberately stop them listening at doors (until they invented ear trumpets).

And this is a common over-statement of what metagaming means in this context. Knowing to allow others to have spotlight time is metagaming, for example, but it has nothing to do with contriving situations, or knowing everything.

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What we would call metagaming, of course, was SOP in Lake Geneva. And in just about any form of D&D where player skill is prized.

Which has little to do with the old-school/modernist divide, in my experience. Some of the best exploration of the unknown, and mysterious and exciting locations I've ever done was in a recent Spirit of the Century game - and FATE is most assuredly not old-school in its construction.

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I'm going to disagree with you about Fate there. There is very little in Fate I can't trace back to Fuge, Amber, or Risus, and that GURPS wasn't also doing in the 90s. (Fortune in the middle? Check - when you used ordinary luck. Social influence? Check. Ability to take over narrative with e.g. Super Luck? check.) And you don't get much more trad than GURPS.

Once you remove the GMless games (e.g. Fiasco), the Old School/Modernist divide is much much smaller than the advocates on any side would make out in my experience.

Neonchameleon said:

What we would call metagaming, of course, was SOP in Lake Geneva. And in just about any form of D&D where player skill is prized.

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Yeah - player knowledge of the game was something commonly "tested", so I'm not sure how an argument against it has a link to old school.

I'm going to disagree with you about Fate there. There is very little in Fate I can't trace back to Fuge, Amber, or Risus, and that GURPS wasn't also doing in the 90s.

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The only one of those that I'd call "old school" is GURPS (which was first published in 1986). The others are games of the 90s, already showing distinct designs to differentiate them from the old school games. IMHO.

Plus, having shared ancestry does not mean two things are still in the same category today. I don't care how many threads you can "trace back" to other games in ye olden days, the final product, FATE, it not itself old school.

Emerikol said:

Well I do consider the Tomb of Horrors really hard and I wouldn't want a group to try it unless they really wanted to put their characters at serious risk. On the flip side, I do not consider it a bad adventure given fair warning. Some groups like a really hard challenge.

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I wasn't trying to call it good or bad. The point is that it's origin and construction stand against the idea that the old school GM and players don't tend to antagonistic roles.

I am not anti-pixel bitching as you call it (we need a less loaded term for sure). I and my group want to be rewarded for caution and thoughtful play.

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I don't know if we need a different term, so much as we have to be on the same page as what we are talking about here.

You want caution and thoughtful play. You can be thoughtful and cautious without pixel-bitching. Pixel-bitching isn't about "caution and thoughtfulness". The term comes from 8-bit video games, where the player had to click on a specific pixel in order to find the thing that allowed them to progress. In RPG terms, it is about having one, and only one solution to a given problem, puzzle or issue, or requiring players to explicitly state actions down to inane levels of detail - beyond caution and thoughtfulness, and off into paranoia and pedantry.

Pixel-bitching gets old. I don't mind it being a loaded term - when I use it, I *intend* the negative connotation. The connotation is part of the point.

It's not a test like a math test. Dungeons are full of traps for a very logical reason. The owners want to protect their stuff. A lack of traps wouldn't make sense.

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I think Ruin Explorer covered that well. By extension, D&D-esque traps should exist in our real world, and by and large, they don't. No, Dungeons are full of traps because Gygax and company thought traps were keen.

My groups are non-adversarial. They know working together is the only way to survive in the world.

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And, by making it about you, personally, you seem to have missed the point, I'm afraid.

If the DM is playing the monsters straight and fairly then no antagonism need arise.

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I never said it *needs* to arise. I said it *tends* to arise. You, and your individual groups, are not the question here. And, "Well, it doesn't happen to *me*, so we can discount it as a concern," is a pretty myopic way to go about discussing the matter. If you're all perfect, that's great, go have a ball. But we still have the rest of the world to consider.

Any home campaign playstyle that is about "testing", will have the tendency to breed antagonistic play, because the player will ask, "testing against what?" and the answer becomes, "against the GM".

Playing monsters (or any adventure elements) "straight" is not a defense in home campaign play - because the GM is responsible for their placement! The GM is still the one who creates the test, and the one who adjudicates it, so ultimately it is the player's runtime thinking against the GM's thinking. Still GM vs Player.

Nobody likes to lose, or fail a test, and that includes players. Then flip the coin - if the players win easily, that reflects on the GM, as his or her test was weak sauce. Either way, emotions and ego can get involved. This is not automatic, but is a quite natural development, based on very typical human behavior. Any time that having things go well is predicated on humans not acting like humans, you are asking for trouble.

This is all avoided in actual tournament play, where the GM didn't create or choose the adventure, and the players are being tested ultimately against other players. It is the adoption of tournament-style structures (and many, if not most, of the old school modules are tournament adventures adapted for sale) that tends to start the issue.

It actually fit the person I was responding to and his example. I realize there are all sorts of metagaming. For the most part I dislike it almost universally.

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See the other notes. Metagaming is/was a cornerstone of a lot of old-school play. If testing the players, rather than the characters, is the goal, the players will want to brig their system mastery (and mastery of the GM's thought processes as well) to the table - and "system mastery" is the epitome of metagaming. If testing the characters is really the goal, many of the old-school tropes that are soluble via system mastery should be abandoned for other challenges. If testing is not a goal, we can thoroughly restructure the approach into something very much not old-school.