D&D 5E Character play vs Player play

Manbearcat · Oct 31, 2014

mcbobbo said:
This may be true, but it IS appealing. I mean, I can't live in that world, but if a forum member is genuinely in a place where the whole system 'fits' and there's no whiff of metagame, who am I to mess that up? It's a bit like telling kids there's no such thing as Santa. Why would you do that? What's to be gained?

1) We're grown men and women on here. We have mortgages, we're accountable to ourselves and responsible for more than just ourselves, we've suffered tragedy, and we've all endured loss and carry on. We aren't children believing in Santa and the Tooth-Fairy. We're just talking about elfgames and the varying system mechanics, GMing principles, and play agendas and how they work to create a sum total table TTRPGing experience.

2) I'm addressing a specific contention (one that I, and others, have addressed many times). That contention being that D&D is (a) metagame-averse and (b) a simulator of process. Neither are true. Some folks may play that way (there was certainly a segment of the greater D&D culture that revolted against metagame influence with AD&D 2e and Dragonlance) and they may personally have an agenda that is metagame-averse (I really feel like I've stepped into a time machine and gone back to the early 90s with folks working overtime to sanitize the greater D&D culture from any metagame influence...the "big tent" should really have been called "wee teepee"). However, that doesn't make it so and it doesn't make folks who openly embrace the metagame not part of the TTRPG club.

Folks, specifically those who talk about being metagame-averse, shift from actor stance to pawn stance regularly! Even if they're truly interested in fully inhabiting their PC, D&D is an extremely rules-heavy system with a large amount of embedded metagame system contrivance and metagame overhead required by the user. Those same players will inevitably be simultaneously in "player mode" (pawn stance - top down viewing of the PC as a game piece conduit for their personal machinations) as they're effectively looking to enjoy a strategic game of Portal (full-on asymmetric puzzle-solving mode) as they try to figure out the puzzle or figure out/game the GM...or they're performing the mental overhead to maximize their action economy or resolution math...or group synergy for the coming round of actions...or planning a spell/magic item "Fastball Special" power play with another character...or they're thinking on implications of future PC build choices (etc etc)! Or heck, they might be deploying resources or interfacing with game mechanics that are utterly antagonistic to maintaining complete immersion (such as the combat action economy or hit points)!

This is why analyzing varying agendas and how they might be at tension with one another (eg the classic, inevitable synthesis of actor stance and pawn stance in D&D) is important for the ongoing health of our hobby and, hopefully, its evolution (rather than stagnation). Systems, techniques, and principles can alleviate or exacerbate varying issues (while possibly simultaneously causing problems somewhere else down the line).

For instance, a few ways to lessen the tension of actor stance and pawn stance in D&D is (1) fail-forward GMing techniques and (2) xp for failure/fallout (on the PC directly or on their assets/relationships/aims) or for interesting resolution of character aspects or quests. Those GMing techniques and system components alleviate the tension of actor stance and pawn stance. They protagonize PCs, increase the pace of play, and promote heroic approaches by players to conflict resolution (rather than turtling/abundant caution or pace-bogging resource management obsession). However, they may negatively impact the "Portal" (strategic puzzle solving/resource management at the metagame level) portion of play that some players enjoy as much, or more, than anything else. Running right alongside that would be the calls decrying "player entitlement" because that pawn stance mentality of "earn your advancement/xp by solving the resource-management and GM puzzle minigame" is a primal component of D&D precisely because of its wargaming roots and evolution.

So it isn't an easy conundrum to solve. But we should talk about it. And we should be as transparent as possible when we do. Or we can just tell people that they aren't part of the D&D or TTRPGing club because they have different approaches to play than we do.

The Crimson Binome · Oct 31, 2014

Manbearcat said:
2) I'm addressing a specific contention (one that I, and others, have addressed many times). That contention being that D&D is (a) metagame-averse and (b) a simulator of process. Neither are true.

It was true in 2E, and more true in 3E, with a significant reversal in 4E and with 5E sitting more towards the middle. At this point, it is sufficient that there is quite a sizable group who have and do play D&D without meta-gaming and as a process sim, so that playstyle deserves to be addressed.

Manbearcat said:
For instance, a few ways to lessen the tension of actor stance and pawn stance in D&D is (1) fail-forward GMing techniques and (2) xp for failure/fallout (on the PC directly or on their assets/relationships/aims) or for interesting resolution of character aspects or quests. Those GMing techniques and system components alleviate the tension of actor stance and pawn stance.

I'm not sure that's a good way to alleviate tension. From my perspective, that's throwing the game head-first into pawn territory by reminding the players that it's only a game (or a story) rather than any sort of immersive reality. When I'm in actor stance, I don't want to be protagonized.

Lanefan · Oct 31, 2014

Saelorn said:
For what it's worth, I believe that both of those spells existed in 2E. As of 3.0, you might be able to pull them off with Prestidigitation, but they didn't feel the need to explicitly codify them.

They came from 1e's UA - two cantrips: "Hairy", never used that I've seen; and "Colour", one of the best cantrips ever for painlessly annoying other people's characters.

Lan-"colour *me* purple, will ya?!"-efan

Lanefan · Oct 31, 2014

Manbearcat said:
I'm addressing a specific contention (one that I, and others, have addressed many times). That contention being that D&D is (a) metagame-averse and (b) a simulator of process. Neither are true. Some folks may play that way (there was certainly a segment of the greater D&D culture that revolted against metagame influence with AD&D 2e and Dragonlance) and they may personally have an agenda that is metagame-averse (I really feel like I've stepped into a time machine and gone back to the early 90s with folks working overtime to sanitize the greater D&D culture from any metagame influence...the "big tent" should really have been called "wee teepee"). However, that doesn't make it so and it doesn't make folks who openly embrace the metagame not part of the TTRPG club.

Folks, specifically those who talk about being metagame-averse, shift from actor stance to pawn stance regularly! Even if they're truly interested in fully inhabiting their PC, D&D is an extremely rules-heavy system with a large amount of embedded metagame system contrivance and metagame overhead required by the user. Those same players will inevitably be simultaneously in "player mode" (pawn stance - top down viewing of the PC as a game piece conduit for their personal machinations) as they're effectively looking to enjoy a strategic game of Portal (full-on asymmetric puzzle-solving mode) as they try to figure out the puzzle or figure out/game the GM...or they're performing the mental overhead to maximize their action economy or resolution math...or group synergy for the coming round of actions...or planning a spell/magic item "Fastball Special" power play with another character...or they're thinking on implications of future PC build choices (etc etc)! Or heck, they might be deploying resources or interfacing with game mechanics that are utterly antagonistic to maintaining complete immersion (such as the combat action economy or hit points)!

Absolutely.

However, there's more to it. Some aspects of the game are going to be meta-game no matter what you do. Some other things in the game are (or should be) acting-in-character no matter what you do. This is fine. BUT, there are many, many instances that come up where either approach works close-to-equally well and thus it becomes a choice which to use; and as far as possible I'd like to (and admittedly often fail to) choose the in-character approach over the meta-game. Put another way, I'd like to let the game simulate such processes as it can, when it can; and meta-game the rest.

For instance, a few ways to lessen the tension of actor stance and pawn stance in D&D is (1) fail-forward GMing techniques and (2) xp for failure/fallout (on the PC directly or on their assets/relationships/aims) or for interesting resolution of character aspects or quests. Those GMing techniques and system components alleviate the tension of actor stance and pawn stance. They protagonize PCs, increase the pace of play, and promote heroic approaches by players to conflict resolution (rather than turtling/abundant caution or pace-bogging resource management obsession).

But with this you lose me. In true actor-stance (probably only achievable in a hypothetical full-on sandbox where everything is predetermined) the players-in-character are going to fail on a regular basis. They will miss adventure hooks. They will make wrong choices, or none at all. They will tackle something that is beyond them and get smoked. And they will manage every resource down to the nth degree because those resources are the only thing that's gonna keep 'em alive. Fail-backward is every bit as valid as fail-forward or just fail; meanwhile succeed-forward might not be guaranteed.

Also note that a game played in complete actor-stance is going to move at a crawl. Pleasant flip-side is that the world will be as rich and detailed as our own. Most of us, including your truly, don't run it this way...but we do let the pace set itself, and the PCs are not at all guaranteed to succeed (says he, who more than once has run a game where the party went out in the field but never found the adventure!)

On the other side, a game run in full-on pawn-stance will be fast-paced but to me would end up resembling the D&D Minis game with a few shreds of plot attached. Might float some boats, but not mine.

Lan-"metagaming; as if I ever post in-character on this board Eric's Grandma will probably choke on something"-efan

Hussar · Oct 31, 2014

Saelorn said:
It's not that it's magic. Magic is just one of those in-game defined things, like swords or orcs or nanotechnology. The wizard isn't re-writing reality by conjuring up some rope, any more than a fighter is manipulating reality by chopping down a door. It's just characters doing things that they know how to do.

You can't justify those crates in-game, because players (in a traditional RPG) don't have those kinds of authorial powers. The boxes either exist, or don't, independently of the player's desire for them to be there. You could play a more story-telling type of game where the players do have limited forms of non-character authorial powers, but D&D isn't really one of those.

Oh hey I didn't notice those crates there before. Handy. Let's climb.

How is that unjustifiable? Absolutely nothing has been contradicted.

Hussar · Oct 31, 2014

Majoru Oakheart said:
It is...and I'm much less strict on the "absolutely NO meta game mechanics in my D&D" than Mark CMG. However, I like to limit it as much as possible.

To me, the game is a mix of meta-game contrivances that are required to even have a game(Spells are the order they are in because players will need them in that order, classes have abilities restricted to higher levels to avoid spoiling low level games, stats are bought using point buy, players are always the people the adventure happens to, and about a million other contrivances) and the actual in-game part that needs to stay almost entirely free of metagame contrivances in order to be consistent and believable.

This means that you may get Continual Light at 2nd level, which is a pretty powerful spell because the game tells you that you do, but you can still only cast it the number of times per day it says in the book. It still only has precisely the effect written in the book, no more, no less. Once a particular meta-game contrivance is defined as part of the game world it doesn't break believability.

There are certain other mechanics that aren't defined within the game world at all. These are the ones that seem confusing to me. Like no one has the magical ability to wave their hand and make the wizard grow a beard. Or make the door change colour or anything else like that. The DM comes up with those things and the players react.

My character is lucky and he often finds useful things lying around with which to
Macyver a solution. Funnily enough it doesn't happen all the time. No more than a few times per day. Just Lady Luck smiling on me.

Is that sufficient?

The Crimson Binome · Oct 31, 2014

Hussar said:
Oh hey I didn't notice those crates there before. Handy. Let's climb.

How is that unjustifiable? Absolutely nothing has been contradicted.

If they didn't exist before, then their sudden existence is unjustifiable. The truth of their existence transcends their observation by the PCs.

By making them suddenly exist, you contradict their previous non-existence, because the world is defined long before it is observed by the PCs.

pemerton · Oct 31, 2014

Mark CMG said:
In one sense, it is true that players influence the game directly, even in so far as they can lobby a GM to run a particular adventure, for instance. But ultimately, in a roleplaying game, they have to encounter and affect that adventure setting through the character.

Suppose we start playing the game, and I have not written up any detailed backstory for my PC.

Then the game starts chugging along, the PCs have a starting village and home base, etc, etc.

And I suggest to the GM that I might have family. Friends. Even a mentor. And given how my PC has started to turn out in play, I even suggest a little bit about what these people might be like.

Or, we get to a new town, and I suggest to the GM that a certain sort of NPC might be found there. The GM has not given that any though in the past, but thinks the idea is plausible.

Am I now story gaming rather than playing an RPG? Because in my experience that sort of behaviour - which is the player affecting the setting by direct authorship or authorship suggestions - is not uncommon. I think it would be possible to try and more formally describe it using some sort of notion about "locus of the character" (this would apply to Burning Wheel's Circe rules, also - the NPCs a PC can encounter via this mechanic are shaped by that PC's "lifepaths" established as part of character generation). But it goes beyond "affecting the adventure setting through the character".

pemerton · Oct 31, 2014

Saelorn said:
If they didn't exist before, then their sudden existence is unjustifiable.

<snip>

By making them suddenly exist, you contradict their previous non-existence, because the world is defined long before it is observed by the PCs.

But the whole point is that it's not the case that they didn't exist before.

As soon as you move outside an artificially austere environment, such as the tomb in ToH, it is uttery implausible to work on the assumption that nothing exists in the gameworld unless the GM has described it (either orally to the players, or in writing to him-/herself). Just looking around the room in which I'm typing this post, there are more things than I could describe in hundreds of words of prose or (at a guess) an hour of talking.

If the GM tells me that the NPC is a man, it follows that either he is bearded or not. If the GM doesn't mention one way or another, than deciding that he is bearded when the players express an interest in that possibiity is not making a beard suddenly exist. It is describing a detail hitherto unknown either way. If the GM said, "No, he's clean shaven" that likewise wouldn't be causing any beard or stubble to cease to exist. It likewise would be rendering determinate what was hitherto unspecified.

This is inherent in the authorship of any fiction. There are gaps, which get filled in over time. In an RPG, a lot of that happens in real time relative to the audience's engagement with the fiction.

Hussar said:
My character is lucky and he often finds useful things lying around with which to
Macyver a solution. Funnily enough it doesn't happen all the time. No more than a few times per day. Just Lady Luck smiling on me.

Is that sufficient?

Doesn't 5e even have a "lucky" feat?

mcbobbo · Oct 31, 2014

pemerton said:
Nothing, if it's just gratuitous balloon-popping.

But if the other person is looking for ideas on how to handle GMing, the issue might come up.

I didn't get the impression that this was the case, otherwise I wouldn't have said anything.

Manbearcat said:
1) We're grown men and women on here.
...
We're just talking about elfgames and the varying system mechanics, GMing principles, and play agendas and how they work to create a sum total table TTRPGing experience.

These two stand in contrast to each other. On the one hand, there's the call for maturity, and on the next the statement that the topic isn't that important.

The first one cuts both ways, though, doesn't it? Are we not also mature enough to let other people be wrong on the internet from time to time, what with our having mortgages and all?

Manbearcat said:
However, that doesn't make it so and it doesn't make folks who openly embrace the metagame not part of the TTRPG club.

If there's a club, I'm not a member. Never got my card in the mail.

Manbearcat said:
Folks, specifically those who talk about being metagame-averse, shift from actor stance to pawn stance regularly! Even if they're truly interested in fully inhabiting their PC, D&D is an extremely rules-heavy system with a large amount of embedded metagame system contrivance and metagame overhead required by the user.

Yep, I agree. But if they openly state they don't want to face that fact, then what? Can't you be right in silence? Or does your correctness somehow NEED to be stated, so it can be validated? It's rhetorical.

Manbearcat said:
This is why analyzing varying agendas and how they might be at tension with one another (eg the classic, inevitable synthesis of actor stance and pawn stance in D&D) is important for the ongoing health of our hobby and, hopefully, its evolution (rather than stagnation). Systems, techniques, and principles can alleviate or exacerbate varying issues (while possibly simultaneously causing problems somewhere else down the line).

I reject the notion that most participants influence the 'ongoing health of our hobby'. If you're on the design team for a major product, okay fine, your voice matters. The rest of us are just schlubs.

Manbearcat said:
So it isn't an easy conundrum to solve. But we should talk about it. And we should be as transparent as possible when we do. Or we can just tell people that they aren't part of the D&D or TTRPGing club because they have different approaches to play than we do.

There's that club thing again. Alongside censorship fears, too. And an appeal to inclusiveness - except that's out of place when you're trying to pull someone out of their favored playstyle, isn't it?