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

[Sadras]

This is all very alien to what actually happened, which was more akin to a real life marriage breakdown, with no real attempt to communicate. The player felt entitled to his NPC wife's loyalty & support, he wasn't going to engage in a Skill Challenge to earn it!

Edit: The downside of super-immersive play is that the player/PC separation breaks down so much, the player feels the same emotions even away from the table. I guess this is what Jack Chick was warning us about!

The fact that the player tried to DM a different version of the events after what happened is pretty astonishing. He had a 20th level barbie so the the character occupied the player's headspace for quite some time.

 

[Numidius]

Anytime I get to play it's always Wife-May-I.

I ask the wife questions and build on the answers

 

[Numidius]

Sure why not? But the process, given the situation would require Conversation, Multiple Checks (3 successes, before 3 losses...etc), Perhaps granting Advantage due to knowing NPC characteristics and relationship/Bond that exists, maybe even allow a Repeat, but the NPC's reaction might be worse.
You can still involve degrees of success/failure or fail forward scenarios so there is much scope for creative play/input.

I'm also sure there are games that handle such social resolution tasks much better.

Sounds cool and also a good example of SayYesOrRoll

 

[Ovinomancer]

No comment.

I like my wife more than I like gaming, so she has playing declaration veto power. She's a good wife, though, so rarely says no and then only for reasons clearly established in the marriage prior to the play declaration.

 

[Maxperson]

Upthread, [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] and [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION], in reply to [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION], explored this in the context of Dungeon World. Their point was that, although in DW all backstory authority rests with the GM, the principles of the game oblige the GM (i) to have regard to player-chosen stakes in (ii) adjudication - eg establishing the outcomes of an attempt to Spout Lore or Discern Realities - and (iii) framing. In respect of the lattermost, the GM is obliged to build on the fiction that was established via adjudication. Thus (i) feeds into (ii) feeds into (iii), and so even though players don't have backstory authority, their choices as to what matters - looking for secret doors, swearing oaths to drive foes away in terror, whatever it might be - ought to feed directly into the GM's authorship of the shared fiction.

It would be incredibly bad DW GMing to simply frame the PC who has sworn the terror oath into a conflict with a fear-immune death knight, full stop and end of story. Such a thing might be one way of the GM establishing adverse consequences for failed checks; but in that case it wouldn't come from nowhere, and wouldn't be a case simply of GM decides.

So first, it's good that a PC can fail in something important. I often learn more about my characters from their failures, than their successes. Second, I agree with you that if the DM was like, "Hehehe. I'm going to throw a death knight in front of him now," that would be bad DMing. However, if the death knight came up randomly, or if it had been pre-planned, I would want that death knight to show up regardless of my PC's oath. I understand that in some systems things are not random and/or pre-determined like that, but I've been discussing D&D in this thread, so that's the stand point that I'm looking at it from.

D&D is, proceduarlly, very relaxed about content-introduction except perhaps in its most austere, dungeon-crawling, wandering-monster table form: but in this latter case it is highly random and (in my experience) doesn't make integration of thematic focus fairly easy in the way that Traveller does. For instance, the game presents many types of PCs who might swear all sorts of oaths that orient them in particular ways to particlar foes (fighters, paladins, rangers, clerics, monks, even druids and perhaps even assassins) but the random tables won't make it easy for these oaths to play out in any narratively satisfying way; and if its Gm decides then it's all on the GM to handle these aspects of content introduction. The possibilities of unsatisfactory play experiences in either case aren't addressed at all by saying "It's OK to fail".

Even in the dungeon crawl, the DM can choose encounters, treasure and the like. From 1e on the DM has had the rule given ability to ignore the dice or not to go to the dice at all and just decide things. Sure, the base dungeon making rules contained random tables for monsters, but that didn't stop the DM from deciding that the next room has a roper.

Even following the random dungeon tables, I don't see much issue with the oaths. Unless you are spending your entire career inside that dungeon, or some massive series of dungeons, you will eventually find yourself outside where you can encounter the creatures you seek. You can even research where to find them and seek them out.

 

[Maxperson]

Anytime I get to play it's always Wife-May-I.

I don't even have to be playing

 

[Aldarc]

Well thanks for the input. Keep it up.

EDIT: Given that you define said playstyle with a pejorative I'm not sure how valuable that good will really is.

You made an edit so you could put words in my mouth?

 

[Maxperson]

I'll say that I can't recall [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] being one of those calling the traditional playstyle or game of D&D Mother May I. He has asked some questions about it, but that's as much as I remember him doing.

 

[pemerton]

Off Topic: is there somewhere I can read your char gen for BW, and/or session reports? Thanks

I've got a lot of Traveller, 4e and Prince Valiant reports, but fewer for BW. Here's a link to a report of a first session, but not the Thurgon campaign but a parallel game I'm GMing. (The report is on rpg.net, where I post as thurgon.)

 

[pemerton]

I feel like you willfully ignored the intent of the post by [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION], who was clearly speaking about attempting to adjudicate a game with a sense of real world causality in the game's fiction. So that, in the fiction, if a bad guy was hiding in the warehouse, then that is where he would be found, much like in the real world.

I wanted to pick up on this, to make a point that I don't think I've made earlier in the thread but seemed especially apposite in reply to this.

Notice how its an implication of what you say, in referring to "a game with a sense of real world causality in the game's fiction", that games adjudicated in other ways tend to lack a sense of real world causality.

The same implication is seen (and I have seen it many times over the past decade or so on these boards) in describing approaches to establishing setting and backstory that aren't GM maps and notes or GM decides, perhaps by extrapolation from maps and notes as "Schroedinger's secret door (or whatever)".

I think that there is no basis for that implication whatsoever. And I think that most of those who put it forward have very little experience with those other (non-maps-and-notes) approaches. This claim that I am making is a corollary of the OP: that the bad guy is in the warehouse because that's what the GM has written in his/her notes is no more realistic and no more emulates reality than the bad guy is in the warehouse because the player succeeded on his/her track-down-bad-guys-in-warehouses check.

And for completeness, in case it's not already obvious: whatever method is used to establish the fictional truth about the location of the bad guy, the reason that he may be found in the warehouse is because that's where he is hiding - just as in the real world.