D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[hawkeyefan]

As I've said above, the distinction between player and PC doesn't matter to me in play. At the table I don't want to do anything that isn't a result of my PCs experiences and actions, and within their power as a creature living in the setting, and that certainly includes authoring fiction.

Yes, I understand that. But when talking about the process of play, sometimes these distinctions matter. A player may say something and that doesn’t mean the character is saying something. Like if you say at the table “I pick the lock” no one’s confused that you mean your character. But certainly the character isn’t announcing “I pick the lock!” in the game.

Sometimes in conversation about the game, it makes things clearer to make these distinctions.

 

[Enrahim2]

My first thought, then, is why is the GM framing the scene so weakly? But moving on . . .

Wait, what? Are you saying a GM is not supposed to frame a scene with elements the players can decide if they want to interact with immediately or not? That sound awfully close to a kind of railroad to me. But moving on ...

OK. And how does this fit in with the interest in circus performers? We now have someone who is either both farmer and circus-wise, or at least a farmer travelling with a circus-wise person.

You are wanting to me accept both (i) that the players are deeply invested in farms, circuses and impoverished beggars, but (ii) are likely to struggle, in their play, to establish how these various things are connected. I don't accept this.

Wait, what? Are you saying a narrative game requires the players to align so that all characters are basically having the same overall topic on their agenda, or else it will fall apart? Even to the extent that you even cannot phantom having such an odd mix of character traveling together as a hypothetical? Or that at the very least the group is required to find one connecting thread between these, and only play on this connection?

Well, if the narrative games you have played in has had such draconic limitations on what is acceptable with regard to deviations from a "common norm", I guess that can explain it if there hardly ever are anything happening that might cause friction with other otherwise straight forward established facts.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't recall if I've ever read the DW discussion of fronts. In AW, Vincent Baker is very clear that preparing fronts is preparing for play, not play in itself, and that it's purpose is to give the GM something interesting to say. From the AW rulebook (p 136):

A front has some apparently mechanical components, but it’s fundamentally conceptual, not mechanical. The purpose of your prep is to give you interesting things to say.​

Baker goes on:

As MC you’re going to be playing your fronts, playing your threats, but that doesn’t mean anything mechanical. It means saying what they do. It means offering opportunities to the players to have their characters do interesting things, and it means responding in interesting ways to what the players have their characters do.​

He also says the following (pp 109, 136):

ALWAYS SAY​

• What the principles demand (as follow).​

• What the rules demand.​

• What your prep demands.​

• What honesty demands. . . .​

​

Creating a front means making decisions about backstory and about NPC motivations. Real decisions, binding ones, that call for creativity, attention and care. You do it outside of play, between sessions, so that you have the time and space to think.​

In AW, preparation of fronts doesn't change how any move is resolved (though it may introduce a custom move, which typically will be in lieu of what would otherwise be a GM soft move, or perhaps the more generic Acting Under Fire). It certainly doesn't dictate how any move is resolved. It does bind the GM, by reference to prep, as to what interesting things ("badness", "spots" and "opportunities", in the AW parlance) the GM introduces into the fiction.

Now BW doesn't discuss this issue with the same degree of clarity and precision, but as I replied to @Faolyn upthread nothing stops a BW GM making notes about ideas for consequences (similar to how Torchbearer does expressly encourage the GM to prepare notes on possible twists).

I wouldn't be surprised if my GM had already made a note of some sort that prompted the decision, when I failed my roll for Scavenging, to describe Thurgon discovering the letters from Xanthippe to Evard.

This is a good point. In my example of "they show up and start seizing property in town" that could be a custom move, or it could be simply a soft move with a particular description (a doom perhaps). The GM doesn't simply blurt out these facts in the midst of play, they have to arrive via the normal process of the conversation in the form of GM moves which are made in its course. And as you point out, they have to have actual salience to the play that is happening at the time, or at least be made offscreen as part of the process of play. Normally something like this will be introduced at a time and in a way that will provide immediate salience! That is, as the PCs approach the town gate they meet up with some bloodied gate guards and townsfolk fleeing up the road, and then when they proceed there are the culprits! Presumably some sort of action follows, though if the players decide not to deal with this doom/danger then one assumes things will continue apace and further subsequent GM moves might advance this Front.

 

[Campbell]

Not really. I think everyone understands the various sides here well enough, they just don't agree with them, and that disagreement is leading those who hold to the disagreed upon perspective to assume people don't understand.

So, you think it's fruitful to paint other approaches as less real? This isn't about agreement. It's about respect for the form (and its practitioners). It's about seeing beyond any one person's preferences and realizing the value in different forms of play (even when they are not for us). It's about asking questions, instead of making conjectures that assume the worst. Does anyone really think those of us who have run games like Apocalypse World for more than a decade would continue to run them if they resulted in wildly inconsistent play or felt stilted/artificial?

I do not care what sort(s) of play anyone prefers, but at the very least we should be able to respect those other forms of play instead of treating them as unclean. Maybe what we disagree on is that all forms of play are worthy of respect.

 

[Faolyn]

Do you understand his point? That the mechanics of D&D don't mandate any specific fiction?

I invite you to check out DMG p58 and again p112.

Are those pages reprints of editorials from ancient issues of Dragon Magazine?

But when you need to distinguish between the fiction and the play of the game at the table, then you DO need to make this distinction.

Sure. Everyone I know distinguishes by saying things like "I, Faolyn, know such-and-such but my character does this other thing," or by putting on an accent or by saying "I was talking out of character."

But we weren't talking about the play at the table, where such a distinction might be necessary. We were talking about pemerton who apparently gets confused by the words PC and player, or the idea that other people understand that things aren't happening in real life.

No, YOU are missing the point! Game worlds DO NOT EXIST! They do not abide by ANY laws of any sort whatsoever, they are simply tools of our imagination to which no causal processes of any sort whatsoever can ever logically be attached, PERIOD. This is not some sort of 'philosophical point' or opinion. This is bare hard cold fact. Your notes about play, which include descriptions, essentially instructions, about what to imagine in order to play, and the ideas in the other people's heads when they do this imagining, etc. Those are real. When you say something at the table those words have actual causal effects, which may include changes in the state of the imaginations of the players. However, there CANNOT LOGICALLY BE any connection between one imaginary event and another, no causal link between them. No necessity that one thing follow from another. Without understanding this, you are simply not going to understand RPGs in any objective fashion!

RPGs aren't "imaginary." They're fiction. Fiction needs a plot where one event logically follows after another, even if it means we have to logically figure out what happens when a dragon takes over a floating elven city. RPGs are not lolrandom dadaist streams of consciousness, not even those games that take place in dreamworlds.

Also? Rude.

Right, but to describe this process as elements 'in the game world' causing something, either something else in the game world, or some reaction in the player's minds, is at best an awkward way of saying "I said something, and it provoked the players to imagine and feel certain things." Isn't it clearer to make the actual links here? There's never, IMHO, any merit in obscuring real actual process in the world where inexorable laws and facts must actually be confronted. Placing those causes and effects in an imaginary game world and redescribing them in a different way simply serves to make them LESS clear, not more. When I talk about games and game design and game play process, I want to talk about real things, because those ultimately are all that actually matter and that I need take account of. My GOALS may be to effect a certain type of imagining, and of course we need that in mind, but to be effective one deals in means, and produces ends. Everything in the game world is ends.

I'm not even sure you know what you're talking about.

There's a game world. The GM describes it. Maybe the PCs also describe it. That description has meaning to the PCs, helps to inform their actions, and thus helps to further define the game world.

 

[Aldarc]

Also? Rude.

I'm sorry, but is this you?

We were talking about pemerton who apparently gets confused by the words PC and player, or the idea that other people understand that things aren't happening in real life.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Not sure I follow what you're saying here. But for you and @pemerton in D&D, as DM sometimes I've determined preexisting fiction, sometimes I only have an outline, sometimes I haven't thought about it. In the first case, I don't care what the player says or does, that fiction is not changing.

In the latter two cases, I may pick up on something players have said or done and incorporate it into the campaign as long as it fits. That has nothing to do with any specific roll, the player did not establish any fiction because they asked if there were orcs in the hills and rolled high. It's just adjusting unestablished fiction based on what I think will work best for the players and my long term campaign outline. I don't care if the player asked to roll for history of orcs, trolls, giants or goblins in the hills; on a successful roll they get what knowledge I think they may have on what may reside in the hills. Maybe I'll think "Yeah, it would be cool for there to be orcs there so why not" or I'll respond "You know nothing about orcs, but there used to be a reclusive clan of dwarves that have not been hear from for a long time."

This relates back to the farmer/circus performer example. I as a DM may have introduced fiction that the players do not yet realize is relevant. Changing the farmers to circus performers would disrupt my established fiction from my notes and previous description, it would disrupt my campaign outline. As DM I may choose to tweak that outline anyway, but players don't control the outline.

If you want to build a world collaboratively, I think D&D still works for many things it's generally not my cup of tea if it goes much beyond fairly minimal character background lore.

Yeah, I think we both agree entirely that if the process of construction of the fiction is always for the GM to do it, then it isn't that process if a player does some of it. In Dungeon World the GM actually describes pretty close to all the fiction, unless he asks a player a question, but there's no particular reason for any specific piece of fiction to exist which 'does no work' in the game. I would never have a reason to, and no process exists to allow me to, decide what lives in the hills in a DW game until and unless it becomes relevant. At that point the creation is subject to all the rules of DW. Now, interestingly, at this point if I ask a PLAYER what is there, they can answer pretty much anything! I mean, I could ask the question in such a way that the scope of their answer is narrow, like "which orc tribes do you think live in the hills?" but then those CONSTRAINTS need to follow the principles of GMing DW. When a GM asks such a question, or when they frame a scene which establishes a fact (which GMs can and often do) presumably they have some reason for doing so. That reason COULD relate to 'think offscreen' in some sense. However, these types of games really limit the sort of 'long term planning' of the GM a bunch. DW and AW have fronts to inject some of this back into the game, the GM is expected to develop and limited number of fronts, each with several threats, that get telegraphed to the players as (probably soft) moves at some point during play. I think its probably true, though not a really major concern, that some elements of a front might change in salience due to some facts that get established in between the time the GM wrote up the front and the time it comes into play. Maybe the GM has 'orcs of the north' as a front, and then its established for some reason that a giant snow-covered impassible mountain range is to the north. OK, that will obviously have to be factored into how this front manifests. Worst case maybe the GM has to change some notes, but 95% of the time it all comes out in the wash. The orcs live in the mountains, they have mines that tunnel beneath, etc.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Upthread, @CreamCloud0 appeared to assert that it is axiomatic that if things done by me, Thurgon's player, at the table cause the GM to establish certain fiction about (say) letters, then it must be that in the fiction Thurgon caused those letters to exist.

honestly finding the letters matters less to me than the spellbooks, the letters were not what you were looking for and were GM generated fiction as a consolation prize for failing the check (although in DnD finding the letters would've also probably required a successful search/investigation check as it's something that makes progressing the story easier and getting such outcomes typically requires successful checks or none at all if it was sufficiently significant to continuing the plot).

where my issue comes from is that if your character wishes to search for spellbooks, and in the scenario that you suceed on their roll to look for them, then there are no circumstances (to my understanding) that your character will not find the spellbooks in that location (barring specific exceptions wherein the standing results of another dice result has already influenced the GM's ability to make a move on the matter that says they don't find them?),

because you suceeded on the roll, your actions as a player controling your character have been able to influence the fiction in a way that should be beyond the scope of the direct influence of the actions of your character, your capability to look for those books should have no bearing on if they were ever actually there.

because you suceeded on your roll the spellbooks are now there in that location, because you looked for them there, rather than in any other number of possible locations that they maybe 'should' of been in if you had of been following the cause and effect of the narrative of the world itself rather than the narrative of the players, the spellbooks were allowed to be found on that bookshelf or whereever they were found becuase they weren't actually anywhere before that moment, which is what i'm talking about when referring to the 'grey featureless blob' of the world, anything can appear anywhere because nothing is anywhere until it get's established that it's somewhere, and for people who value the integrity of a world the knowledge that basically anything can be made to appear anywhere on the rolling of the dice violently shatters their immersion.

 

[hawkeyefan]

There's a game world. The GM describes it. Maybe the PCs also describe it. That description has meaning to the PCs, helps to inform their actions, and thus helps to further define the game world.

This is what’s causing confusion. You say “PCs” as if the word is interchangeable with “players”, and although I can get why, for many games the distinction is more important. @pemerton has been describing the play of Burning Wheel, and has been distinguishing between player and character to try and make the process of play clear. You’ve expressed confusion about the process of play, and at times it seems related to who’s doing what, and you don’t seem to be distinguishing between characters and players, so it seems likely to be at least part of where the confusion is coming from.

 

[chaochou]

RPGs aren't "imaginary." They're fiction. Fiction needs a plot where one event logically follows after another, even if it means we have to logically figure out what happens when a dragon takes over a floating elven city. RPGs are not lolrandom dadaist streams of consciousness, not even those games that take place in dreamworlds.

RPGs are clearly about creating imaginary things. They may have an imaginary plot where one imaginary event is imagined to follow from another imaginary event, not through actual causation but from the imagining of causation.

What happens when a dragon takes over a floating elven city is whatever I say happens because I imagined it to be that way.