A GMing telling the players about the gameworld is not like real life

Lanefan · Mar 21, 2019

pemerton said:
And this idea, of the player keeping keeping hp scores secret, was a widely-discussed technique around 40 years ago. But I don't think it's much in vogue anymore.

And there's a valid question to be asked as to whether this trend has been a good or bad thing; and the answer is probably some version of "both" for most of us.

But that generates my next question: these PCs know enough about what "dungeoneering" is to understand what a proper "combined arms" force looks like; but are completely ignorant of trolls' vulnerability to fire.

Exactly. They might not know a thing about what they're potentially going to face but they know, or have a vague idea at least, what resources are available to them before going out to face it. And even then if they decide to run out a party consisting of nothing but thieves I ain't gonna stop 'em, and they'll learn in-character where their shortfalls lie.

They know that dungeons have traps that the "sneaky-types" might spot and disarm; they know that dungeons have monsters who will hurt them, thus generating a need for healing; but they don't know which of those monsters is vulnerable to what sort of damage the wizard might do.

Not necessarily.

They can surmise that it's likely there will be times when quiet scouting or infiltration will be more useful than a frontal charge; they can surmise that there's likely going to be times when having some muscle around would be helpful (even if only to carry out all the valuable loot we're gonna find!); and while they might not appreciate the need for a healer right away they probably will after their first foray into the wild.

As for the wizard - no idea what use he's gonna be but he's keen, so might as well haul him along with us.

And I - the bard - am coming along as tale recorder and, later if things go well, party advertising agency.....

That's a very arbitrary set of stipulations about "common knowledge".

Not as arbitrary as you want to make it appear, I don't think.

Bedrockgames · Mar 21, 2019

iserith said:
You will note that nowhere in my post do I say that I think I'm "enlightened." We're all subject to tribalism.

I really don't think tribalism is a part of it at all. I think tribalism exists in the hobby. But I've never encountered it around metagaming (I've encountered it around more concrete and divisive playstyle or system issues). I just don't think folks are investing much of their identity into that idea.

But I do think when you frame it as an issue of people clinging to tribalism, it does come off as sounding like your enlightened and the masses are not. I also think, like I've been saying this whole thread, if you reduce peoples reason for preferring something to a ridiculous pejorative, you'll never understand why they like something. It would be like attributing people liking chocolate ice-cream to being lazy or needing to be coddled (and then trying to talk them out of their love of chocolate ice cream like logic is going to affect that "You say you like it because its sweet, but honey's sweet and you just stated you have no love for honey at all!").

iserith · Mar 21, 2019

Bedrockgames said:
I really don't think tribalism is a part of it at all. I think tribalism exists in the hobby. But I've never encountered it around metagaming (I've encountered it around more concrete and divisive playstyle or system issues). I just don't think folks are investing much of their identity into that idea.

From what I've seen, I think some do. I know I did and groups with whom I played did. We were the real roleplayers. Those other guys - those metagamers - they weren't roleplaying. Not really.

Bedrockgames said:
But I do think when you frame it as an issue of people clinging to tribalism, it does come off as sounding like your enlightened and the masses are not. I also think, like I've been saying this whole thread, if you reduce peoples reason for preferring something to a ridiculous pejorative, you'll never understand why they like something. It would be like attributing people liking chocolate ice-cream to being lazy or needing to be coddled (and then trying to talk them out of their love of chocolate ice cream like logic is going to affect that "You say you like it because its sweet, but honey's sweet and you just stated you have no love for honey at all!").

Tribalism isn't good or bad (or is both good and bad depending on outcomes). It just is.

hawkeyefan · Mar 21, 2019

Lanefan said:
That depends, I suppose, on whether you're only looking at trying to make the new element fit in with what's established (which, as you say, is often not that hard to do) or whether - and here's my sticking point - you're looking deeper to see if the new element would or could have caused anything already established to have been established differently at the time, had the new element been in place all along. And this is where it can get difficult, if the new element is anything significant.

Why would you ever do this? Why go back and tamper with anything?

You said you hate retcons, and here you say that the problem is if you want to retcon things.

Again, I'm not following at all.

Numidius · Mar 21, 2019

iserith said:
From what I've seen, I think some do. I know I did and groups with whom I played did. We were the real roleplayers. Those other guys - those metagamers - they weren't roleplaying. Not really.

Tribalism isn't good or bad (or is both good and bad depending on outcomes). It just is.

Makes sense. I heard similar conversations in person

Manbearcat · Mar 21, 2019

Bedrockgames said:
Sure, but I think it is very telling where all the analysis leads: all the places things can go wrong, seem to reside amid other peoples' playstyle preference. When your analysis slowly but surely builds an argument for the playstyle you prefer, you might want to question how much bias is leaking into the debate. This just does not appear to me to be a healthy exploration of game style preferences, gaming issues, and problems. It looks like a fight between play styles where people are couching their point of view as objective analysis even though it isn't anything approaching that.

This thread isn't about it, and if you want to make a thread about it I'll participate, but how about a quick breakdown of what can go wrong when running a Powered By the Apocalypse game? Dungeon World since its been discussed?

* Its difficult to improvise.

* Its difficult to improvise while simultaneously managing the cognitive burden of integrating specific and differentiated character themes.

* GM's who don't have the exposure of giving up authority or having their authority constrained by system will find that difficult; difficult to do at all and difficult to trust that the process will produce a lively and satisfying play experience.

* Its difficult to consistently come up with interesting complications that provoke compelling decision-points which arise from failure and partial success...and its made especially so if your GMing mental framework has been conditioned exclusively around a naturalistic, causal logic framework.

* Conditioning players to assume authority and understand the nature and empowerment of the play conversation (if those players are used to traditional authority structures) can be difficult.

* It can be difficult to be patient with yourself, take a moment to take a breath and consider a move choice your about to make (or not make), when pacing of play is so important.

* On certain specific, rare corner cases the Soft > Hard move structure can be sticky to navigate ("was I transparent enough and was my communication clear with respect to me prior Soft Move and the implications of the impending doom of a Hard move?" Or "does this 6- truly warrant a Soft move or am I just being too meek?").

* Asking the right questions and/or drawing interesting answers from the players can sometimes be difficult. Integrating them to introduce content that is thematically interesting and relevant can be difficult.

* These games require that all participants bring their creative energy to bear and engage every session. There are lots of TTRPG players who prefer a passive experience and this can just be too much for them.

These games, and games like them, have a particular (and likely peculiar to some people) cognitive load to them. They can go wrong at first...until they go right. Or a GM who is looking for a particular experience may find that the experience of GMing them is anathema to what they enjoy about running games.

Bedrockgames · Mar 21, 2019

Manbearcat said:
This thread isn't about it, and if you want to make a thread about it I'll participate, but how about a quick breakdown of what can go wrong when running a Powered By the Apocalypse game? Dungeon World since its been discussed?

* Its difficult to improvise.

* Its difficult to improvise while simultaneously managing the cognitive burden of integrating specific and differentiated character themes.

* GM's who don't have the exposure of giving up authority or having their authority constrained by system will find that difficult; difficult to do at all and difficult to trust that the process will produce a lively and satisfying play experience.

* Its difficult to consistently come up with interesting complications that provoke compelling decision-points which arise from failure and partial success...and its made especially so if your GMing mental framework has been conditioned exclusively around a naturalistic, causal logic framework.

* Conditioning players to assume authority and understand the nature and empowerment of the play conversation (if those players are used to traditional authority structures) can be difficult.

* It can be difficult to be patient with yourself, take a moment to take a breath and consider a move choice your about to make (or not make), when pacing of play is so important.

* On certain specific, rare corner cases the Soft > Hard move structure can be sticky to navigate ("was I transparent enough and was my communication clear with respect to me prior Soft Move and the implications of the impending doom of a Hard move?" Or "does this 6- truly warrant a Soft move or am I just being too meek?").

* Asking the right questions and/or drawing interesting answers from the players can sometimes be difficult. Integrating them to introduce content that is thematically interesting and relevant can be difficult.

* These games require that all participants bring their creative energy to bear and engage every session. There are lots of TTRPG players who prefer a passive experience and this can just be too much for them.

These games, and games like them, have a particular (and likely peculiar to some people) cognitive load to them. They can go wrong at first...until they go right. Or a GM who is looking for a particular experience may find that the experience of GMing them is anathema to what they enjoy about running games.

This is loaded with the bias I am talking about. It is all framed fairly neutrally or tacitly positive about people who like these games. Reading this I come away feeling the list suggests this is more challenging, for more intelligent people and gaming at a higher level. But what we like is just Mother May I; do you see the issue?

pemerton · Mar 21, 2019

Lanefan said:
That depends, I suppose, on whether you're only looking at trying to make the new element fit in with what's established (which, as you say, is often not that hard to do) or whether - and here's my sticking point - you're looking deeper to see if the new element would or could have caused anything already established to have been established differently at the time, had the new element been in place all along. And this is where it can get difficult, if the new element is anything significant.

No.

There is some established fiction - call it F. And there is a newly-introduced element - call it X.

I am confident for any F, and for any X, there are indefinitely many ways of reconciling them as fictions - call these R. Any valid R will render it evident (if it's not already) why F happened given that X.

You seem to be focusing on identifying possibilities that aren't R - call them N - which exhibit tension between F and X. Obviously there are indefinitely many Ns also, but I don't know why you are focusing on the Ns rather than the Rs. We already know that no N is a valid candidate for the evolving shared fiction, and so there's no need to obsess over them as opposed to work on giving effect to some R or other.

In my personal experience this isn't that hard. And is a fundamental GMing skill. (The earliest D&D mechanic that I'm aware of that requires deploymnent of this skill is the wandering monster mechanic.)

pemerton · Mar 21, 2019

Manbearcat said:
Its difficult to improvise.

<snip>

Its difficult to consistently come up with interesting complications that provoke compelling decision-points which arise from failure and partial success

Here's Eero Tuovinen on the GMing demands imposed by (what he calls) "the standard narrativistic model" of RPGing:

The GM might . . . needs to be able to reference the backstory, determine complications to introduce into the game, and figure out consequences. Much of the rules systems in these games address these challenges, and in addition the GM might have methodical tools outside the rules, such as pre-prepared relationship maps (helps with backstory), bangs (helps with provoking thematic choice) and pure experience (helps with determining consequences).

DungeonWorld/PbtA may not be a pure examle of the standard narrativistic model, and it has some distinctive techniques of its own (eg "fronts"), but I think there is a high degree of overlap between your points and Eero's.

Manbearcat · Mar 21, 2019

Bedrockgames said:
This is loaded with the bias I am talking about. It is all framed fairly neutrally or tacitly positive about people who like these games. Reading this I come away feeling the list suggests this is more challenging, for more intelligent people and gaming at a higher level. But what we like is just Mother May I; do you see the issue?

Jesus man.

You think my post above reveals me to have a bias issue? Yet your complete lack of analyzing the utterly obvious implications of what I wrote and instead going with with "look how biased you are(!)" instead...isn't your cognitive blind spot shouting from the mountaintop?

Alright, since you won't do the math on my post, let me do it for you.

At the risk of offending myself, how about I call degenerate Dungeon World play:

"DADDY YOUR GAME IS UNINTERESTING, BORING, INCOHERENT, SUCKY NONSENSE AND YOU'RE TERRIBLE AT THINKING ON YOUR FEET SO IT LOOKS LIKE THIS GAME DOESN'T WORK CAN WE PLAY SOMETHING ELSE PLEASE?"

A GMing telling the players about the gameworld is not like real life

Lanefan

Victoria Rules

Bedrockgames

Legend

iserith

Magic Wordsmith

hawkeyefan

Legend

Numidius

Adventurer

Manbearcat

Legend

Bedrockgames

Legend

pemerton

Legend

pemerton

Legend

Manbearcat

Legend

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