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

Numidius · Mar 5, 2019

...or you just happen to finish the arrows if you botch a roll. Same realism

pemerton · Mar 5, 2019

Bedrockgames said:
I was disagreeing with the "And as far as exploring the gameworld, you can't do that in as much detail as you like, at least in a GM-decides game".

You misread me, then.

I said you can't do that in as much detail a you like - it's in as much detail as the GM likes. And then you went on, as far as I can tell, to elaborate on that point, by explaining how it is the GM who establishes what and how much detail is explored.

pemerton · Mar 5, 2019

Numidius said:
Marvel Heroic Fantasy, man, I have to tell you, liked it on paper, not so much at the table for a classic fantasy style rpg, but I found it excellent for a hex crawl, a kind of game that never inspired me before. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]

I've enjoyed it both for Marvel Superheroes (it's the only supers RPG I've ever played) and for fantasy - not hexcrawl, but rather pretty light-hearted "story now".

Aldarc · Mar 5, 2019

Lanefan said:
My point is that if they're all running full blast all the time without any valleys or lulls (which is how I more or less read/interpret [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] 's desires) then it's liable to lose its lustre after a while.

Hmm... I will leave [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] to decide whether that is an accurate reading of his position. However, I think that most dramatic play described in these sort of games is less about "running full blast all the time" and more about simply running at all. This isn't necessarily about going "full blast," but it nevertheless propels the story/drama/characters forward. It's hardly a coincidence that the common narrative-based game principles of Say Yes or Roll the Dice, Fail Forward, and Success with Complications all share some overlapping desire to engender story propulsion.

Unless you happen to be Michael Bay (or one of his acolytes), I would also not define explosions and high action as the sort of "dramatic content" that pemerton likely has in mind. This point should have been fairly clear given how pemerton uses Casablanca as his reference and not Rambo: First Blood Part 2. IMHO, this is fundamental misunderstanding. Dramatic play is not necessarily about propagating nonstop, high action, rock 'em sock 'em combat. Instead, I would argue that it's generally about propagating situations in play that frame dramatic stakes for the characters.

Lanefan · Mar 5, 2019

Aldarc said:
Hmm... I will leave [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] to decide whether that is an accurate reading of his position. However, I think that most dramatic play described in these sort of games is less about "running full blast all the time" and more about simply running at all. This isn't necessarily about going "full blast," but it nevertheless propels the story/drama/characters forward. It's hardly a coincidence that the common narrative-based game principles of Say Yes or Roll the Dice, Fail Forward, and Success with Complications all share some overlapping desire to engender story propulsion.

Unless you happen to be Michael Bay (or one of his acolytes), I would also not define explosions and high action as the sort of "dramatic content" that pemerton likely has in mind. This point should have been fairly clear given how pemerton uses Casablanca as his reference and not Rambo: First Blood Part 2. IMHO, this is fundamental misunderstanding. Dramatic play is not necessarily about propagating nonstop, high action, rock 'em sock 'em combat. Instead, I would argue that it's generally about propagating situations in play that frame dramatic stakes for the characters.

Of course. I used the high-action example as something obvious and easy to grok, that many of us will be familiar with. But all-high-drama-all-the-time can have the same numbing effect. (and maybe that's why I've never made it through watching Casablanca

)

Bedrockgames · Mar 5, 2019

pemerton said:
You misread me, then.

I said you can't do that in as much detail a you like - it's in as much detail as the GM likes. And then you went on, as far as I can tell, to elaborate on that point, by explaining how it is the GM who establishes what and how much detail is explored.

I understood what you said. I just didn't agree.

AbdulAlhazred · Mar 5, 2019

Ovinomancer said:
Eh. In the game, if a player declares they're looking for something somewhere, then it introduces the possibility it is there, which is not something that happens in real life at all. Now you either have a "say yes" moment, where the player is right (not the real world), or you use a mechanic to determine if the player is right or not or it's complicated (not the real world), or you rely on the GM to make the call as if the player is right, wrong, or complicated (again, not the real world).

What is key here is that, from the character's in-game perspective (imaginary perspective, but we can still describe it) ALL OF THESE ARE THE SAME. In all cases the item either is or is not where they look. It is impossible to tell from a narrative written from their perspective what rules and processes were being used by the game participants to adjudicate this was/wasn't there.

So, there is no issue of 'realism' here! Any desire to create some sort of verisimilitude with respect to the overall pattern of things which happen to the PC is a separate issue. That could be a concern for the players, and if it is, then in a game where the players have the power to make choices which are going to lead to new fiction, then they should do so in a way which pleases them! I would note that simply because the GM decides doesn't lead automatically to anything more pleasing to the players in this regard than if the players decide, or dice decide, or some other process decides.

pemerton · Mar 5, 2019

[MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION], [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] - I've got a lot of actual play reports on these boards, so they would give a pretty good idea of what I have in mind by drama/excitement/thematic choice.

Over the past 6 to 12 months the two campaigns I've played the most have been Prince Valiant and Classic Traveller.

In Prince Valiant the drama is often social as much as physical adventure - whom to befriend, whom to snub, whom to woo.

In Traveller the drama can be social/political, but more often is sci-fi adventure/thriller. In Sunday's session, the players (as their PCs) had to make choices that include: (i) how to deal with arms smugglers they encountered in orbit, while engaging in their own undercover activity; (ii) whether to break into an installation they were spying on; (iii) what to do when pursued after deciding not to enter the installation (that pursuit was a direct consequence of the decision they made at (i)); (iv) how to handle being interrogated, once they surrendered; (v) in one case, whether or not to "go kinetic" and try to escape from captivity by overpowering a guard; (vi) having chosen to go kinetic, and having stolen a suit of battle dress, how to deal with the enemies in the base and the consequences of blowing some of them up with a plasma gun.

Some of the choices - especially at (iv) - reflected social and political allegiances, but at a fairly supericial level. It's not a thematically deep game in that sense.

What makes me contrast it with a game about going to the library or starting a trade or trying to ingratiate oneself with nobles is that, at more-or-less every moment of play, the players have to make a choice whose consequences - while not entirely forseeable - will clearly matter to how the fiction unfolds, both for their PCs and for the setting that the PCs are embedded in. (Eg the choices have implications for what the players anticipate to be a pending Imperial assault of at least some parts of the world they are currently on.)

And the converse of that is that there's basically no moment in play where the principle focus of activity is the players learning more from the GM about the contents or parameters of the setting. The few times when that happened (eg in clarifying some of the details concerning equipment; or in clarifying some points of geography) it was ancillary and in service of the real action.