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

pemerton said:

I think I'm in agreement up to the last sentence. But then I'm not sure - could you say more?

To elaborate a bit: to me, the loyalty subsystem and sage subsystem in Gygax's AD&D don't seem to me to examples of "We made stuff up we thought would be fun" - they have the feeling of not having been played1 much at all; or, perhaps, of attempts to present stuff that was done by Gygax and co in an ad hoc and improvisational fashion in post hoc systematic fashion, without regard to the fact that this pushed it towards the unplayable.

The stuff in AD&D that does come across as having actually been played is also quite playable - eg the wandering monster charts, the rules for finding secret doors, really most of the dungeoneering stuff.

Writing this elaboration has maybe led me to unestand what your post is getting at, but I'll spell it out so you can tell me if I'm right or not: the world-simuation/non-gamey aspect of Traveller creates design/playtest pressure to have workable subsystems to do that - they're not just semi-hypothetical options for those who want to drift the game away from its core "gamey" experience.

Also, XP not Laugh for the other post because how to run 4e well is no laughing matter!

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pemerton said:

Lanefan, it seems to me strange to reply to a post about RPGing as something other than puzzle-solving to say but then the puzzles won't work.

More generally, instead of conjecturing about how a play style you're evidently not familiar with might work, why not engage with examples that are being posted by those who do have that familiarity. For instance, my most recent session of Traveller had mysteries, such as where the "pathfinders" in Suliman are from, and what they are planning towards Ashar.

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Aldarc said:

This sort of circular reasoning actually puts a finger on what may also have been bugging me about the post in question. I don't mind D&D as a puzzle-game, and saying 'no' is often a valid necessity of play for such games. (I even plan on running an OSR-stylized dungeon crawl in the hopefully near future, likely using Black Hack.) But when other games are less designed as puzzle-games challenging player skill and more about character-propelled dramatic conflict, it seems peculiar to complain that "then the puzzles won't work" because puzzles aren't the point of play.

This sort of thinking is rarely, if ever, applied similarly to boardgames. When we play card or boardgames, we almost instinctively understand that each particular game has its own idiomatic purposes, challenges, and strategies featured through its game design that we must learn. The conflict that drives gameplay will be set on different hinges, and we naturally adjust to that fact with minimal fuss.

One would hardly go into playing Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Pandemic as if one were playing Monopoly. Nor would we play any of these games expecting the play assumptions of the other, though we may classify families of games with similar design principles. It would be an almost farcical argument to suggest that there must be something wrong with Pandemic because then Monopoly's bank would not work in the game or that the locations of Pandemic are not fixed in a linear fashion around the outer edge of the board. Or even to suggest (with equal parts absurdity and genuineness) that there is something intrinsically wrong with Pandemic because if its design principles or rules were applied to Monopoly, then the game play that results would fail spectacularly. The underlying presumption being, "What good is Pandemic if I can't use it to play Monopoly?"

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And yet we strangely and frequently encounter this attitude in TTRPG circles wherein people judge the merits of games (or design principles) in a manner that presumes "OneTrueWayism." And thus they refuse (through almost intentional ignorance) to understand with any cordiality the idiomatic nature of TTRPG systems and their design principles because they see, analyze, and rationalize everything through Their One True Game. Is it any wonder why the conversation so readily breaks down when faced with this sort circular reasoning?

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innerdude said:

It was definitely hyperbole. Purposefully hyperbolic.

And I'm not sure it's entirely untrue.

Look, I'm not equating bad GM-ing to any sort of actual social issue requiring philosophical examination or legal redress. But would anyone argue that the "jerk GM" isn't basically a foundational trope of the hobby? The most common narrative in all of RPG-dom goes something like this: "I left college/moved away and had to find a new game group. And it took 3 or 4 tries until I could find a GM who wasn't a jackass."

Or the converse, "My GM moved away and I had to find a new game group, and it took 3 or 4 tries until I could find a GM who wasn't a jackass." How many people on this board became GMs in the first place because they were tired of playing RPGs with jerks?

I can't think of a single other hobby that comes with it a near 100% probability that at some point, participants will be forced to experience emotional dysfunction, awkwardness, and pain. Why? Because even if it happens infrequently, too often the primary locus of control for the shared social dynamic---for close to 50 years now!---ends up in the hands of emotionally stunted misanthropes. In some ways, it's basically the Murphy's Law of the hobby---"No matter how bad your current GM is, the one in your next group will be worse."

And yes OF COURSE there's the flipside of good GMs. GMs who make the hobby a joy and pleasure, who have given us some of the best social, competitive, dramatic, euphoric moments of our lives.

But RPGs are unique as a hobby in this way. Model airplane fliers and hobby fisherman don't face this dynamic, and even in the off chance that they run into a jerk, leaving them behind is as simple as walking/boating 100 yards farther away and continuing to do what they've always done.

The thing is, I completely agree that a hard "No" has a place in GM-ing. It's crazy to think otherwise. In any organizational hierarchy, the final power/arbitration of decision making has to rest somewhere. And I completely agree that in the final analysis, that final power of arbitration should rest with the GM.

But man oh man, a hard "No" should be used infinitely more judiciously than it usually is.

Think of it this way---what would do the hobby a greater service in promoting it as a viable, fun leisure activity? Creating the "perfect" marketing campaign to promote the "perfect" version of D&D? Or magically waving a wand and turning every jerk GM into a true ambassador for the hobby?

If I'm railing on GMs who insist on using the "Hard No" in their games, I'm really railing on those who insist that it's one of the fundamental tenets of play.

Because there's objectively better ways to have games that are more fun than falling back to "GM's way or the highway."

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innerdude said:

It was definitely hyperbole. Purposefully hyperbolic.

And I'm not sure it's entirely untrue.

Look, I'm not equating bad GM-ing to any sort of actual social issue requiring philosophical examination or legal redress. But would anyone argue that the "jerk GM" isn't basically a foundational trope of the hobby? The most common narrative in all of RPG-dom goes something like this: "I left college/moved away and had to find a new game group. And it took 3 or 4 tries until I could find a GM who wasn't a jackass."

Or the converse, "My GM moved away and I had to find a new game group, and it took 3 or 4 tries until I could find a GM who wasn't a jackass." How many people on this board became GMs in the first place because they were tired of playing RPGs with jerks?

I can't think of a single other hobby that comes with it a near 100% probability that at some point, participants will be forced to experience emotional dysfunction, awkwardness, and pain. Why? Because even if it happens infrequently, too often the primary locus of control for the shared social dynamic---for close to 50 years now!---ends up in the hands of emotionally stunted misanthropes. In some ways, it's basically the Murphy's Law of the hobby---"No matter how bad your current GM is, the one in your next group will be worse."

And yes OF COURSE there's the flipside of good GMs. GMs who make the hobby a joy and pleasure, who have given us some of the best social, competitive, dramatic, euphoric moments of our lives.

But RPGs are unique as a hobby in this way. Model airplane fliers and hobby fisherman don't face this dynamic, and even in the off chance that they run into a jerk, leaving them behind is as simple as walking/boating 100 yards farther away and continuing to do what they've always done.

The thing is, I completely agree that a hard "No" has a place in GM-ing. It's crazy to think otherwise. In any organizational hierarchy, the final power/arbitration of decision making has to rest somewhere. And I completely agree that in the final analysis, that final power of arbitration should rest with the GM.

But man oh man, a hard "No" should be used infinitely more judiciously than it usually is.

Think of it this way---what would do the hobby a greater service in promoting it as a viable, fun leisure activity? Creating the "perfect" marketing campaign to promote the "perfect" version of D&D? Or magically waving a wand and turning every jerk GM into a true ambassador for the hobby?

If I'm railing on GMs who insist on using the "Hard No" in their games, I'm really railing on those who insist that it's one of the fundamental tenets of play.

Because there's objectively better ways to have games that are more fun than falling back to "GM's way or the highway."

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Aldarc said:

Well if we were going with emulating the genre of fiction, we could even employ the fairy tale Rule of 3 trope. The first two places you visit will not have what you seek, but the third time will be the charm.

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