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

[S'mon]

You can make it interesting in a lot of ways, but you will never, ever, in a thousand years, exterminate the party in a hail of lead.

I will exterminate the party in a hail of lead if that is the logical consequence of prior events. I did exterminate one 4e party in a hail of 1,000 ghouls - the party were tasked with holding the only river bridge against the Necromancer's ghoul horde until it could be collapsed, giving the town time to evacuate. The PCs decided to stake out position on the north (ghoul) side of the bridge, which meant their inevitable death. They did hold it just long enough that the workers collapsed the south pylons as the last PC, Varek, died to the Necromancer's death wand. Varek's player Jasper was absolutely delighted by that whole 20-session campaign, at the end he shook my hand and congratulated me, his eyes shining.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Here's what's interesting, your Traveler "random dicing" method aside, that is EXACTLY what ALL OTHER METHODS ARE. The 'realism proponents' talk about some sort of 'realistic assessment of what is likely', but I call that unrealistic. That is, I don't think anyone is BSing anyone, deliberately, but I don't think that's EVER what happens in real play in any RPG game which continues on successfully at all. I don't think it is even plausible, or possible.

We simply cannot know enough about the world in which the game is taking place. It is in fact whole cloth made up of nothing BUT our feelings and gut instincts, mixed with a thin bit of basic causal reasoning and 99% "it is this way because it will make it fun."

That is, in all cases, in all games, the Sect is either met in the Inn or not because that is the option which the GM decided was going to be a better game than any other. Heck, I even put paid to the dice here to a large extent. Yeah, GMs 'follow the dice', but they also ignore them, and probably more often in this sort of case than would be admitted by people invested in that as a concept. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] rolled dice to 'find certain kinds of people' in his Traveler game, but did he simply accept every result literally with no interpretation? Of course not. First of all, no chart can give you enough information to run with. You have to fill in a LOT of blanks! This is all done by figuring out what is going to be interesting and 'viable' in play. No GM decides that "Organized Crime" means 50 of your worst enemies show up and pump the party full of lead in an unsurvivable hail of bullets. Maybe its 10 guys, or they show up with derringers "because you can't get anything bigger into town" or whatever 100 other things the GM can say to make it sound logical. Maybe he decides your worst enemies just got a bigger enemy and they let you off the hook if you will take those guys for them. You can make it interesting in a lot of ways, but you will never, ever, in a thousand years, exterminate the party in a hail of lead.

Actually I did once run a Traveler campaign where the premise was a doomed space station. Death was 100% inevitable, but even then it was a device in that it was a stated fact that was made apparent to the characters in the first scene and was known by the players when they agreed to play that game. You CAN do anything, and make anything fun, but not often or all the time. The hail of lead might work too as the very last scene of a campaign that is guaranteed to be coming to an irrevocable end for whatever reason. It won't happen in ongoing play. Certainly not often.

It isn't realism that rules, it is fun, always. Dig far enough down and its all turtles!

People are basically just advocating for plausibility, not real world physics and realism. And no one is saying the things that happen can't also be fun. An outcome can be both fun and plausible. I would point out as well, I've been advocating for not being overly rigid about approaches and playstyles and instead, focusing on keeping the table going over the long haul. But the notion that it was even possible for the GM to make judgements on this sort of thing with plausibility in mind, without it being mother may I, was attacked in the OP. This argument is stemming from that debate. I said from very early on in this thread, I wasn't advocating for anything approaching real world physics. This whole arguments is because of a post I made, where I said that the scenario I described was no more mother may i, than real life is mother may I. I never, ever suggested, that the ideal should therefore be for the game to model real life. I was merely talking about how the game can feature real life-like crossing/missing of paths (and that doesn't make it mother-may-I).

 

[Ovinomancer]

So, has it been agreed then that it's not "realism," but rather "plausibility," "coherence," or "consistancy (internal)?"

 

[Bedrockgames]

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If, in fact, you are aware that there are ways of deciding whether or not the PCs find sect members in the teahouse that are neither GM decides based on his/her opinion about the gameworld nor GM says "yes", then why not post something about how those systems - of which Classic Traveller is the earliest example I'm familiar with - affect gameplay.

I just want to take this one in isolation. I don't know why you keep banging this drum. But I have no issue with other methods of reaching these conclusions. My purpose in this thread was never to attack alternatives to the GM deciding. I've told you, if you have a great way of handling it, by all means engage it and share it. My problem with your approach is not your play style, it is how you advocate for your play style by dismissing other approaches and even attempting to humiliate other posters. You will hone in on something I say, like "this is no more mother may I than real life" and build a hug argument that doesn't even really address the point I was making. This post is exactly the kind of thing I am talking about. I don't know why you think this kind of antagonism is useful or even relevant. I am in no way presenting myself as an expert on Burning Wheel or PbtA. With Traveller I already mentioned, I have played it, but I haven't run it, so I am not in a position to comment on the GM tools in the system (I just know I liked how character creation worked and I really had fun whenever I played it). But you seem to want to make me look like I am a gaming bumpkin. But in terms of other tools, I have pointed to them. I mentioned encounter and event tables. I think you can also use deeper tables that plant seeds for various developments. These are all entirely fine And they can contribute to building a plausible experience. But keep in mind this whole thread was started because you felt that the example I raised was evidence of a style steeped in mother-may-I-play. I have been defending against that claim. If I defended too strongly in moments, and suggested your style of play can't be believable, that wasn't my intention. Sometimes we get boxed into positions in these discussions. I was just trying to explain why I think the GM making the determination can be highly plausible, fun, and not mother may I.

but then maybe a bit of curiosity about new possibilities would make sense?

I have plenty of curiosity. But we obviously have different tastes. Some of the games you have mentioned I've looked into or even played, but they just haven't connected with me. Doesn't mean they are bad. There are different games that I enjoy though. I loved Hillfolk. I found it very immersive. I really love a lot of the Cubicle 7 Games (particularly the Doctor Who system). I like Numenera (though haven't had nearly enough opportunities to play it). But I do mainly come from a point of view that is more in the OSR. So obviously our tastes, what we read regularly, what we run, are going to be different.

If you want a real conversation, I am happy to have one with you. You are a smart guy, you obviously know how to make an argument. But I am not going to have a conversation with you, where you just crap all over someone else's taste and call it superior design. Especially when you keep making posts like this or like the OP (which I objected to when you proposed it, and when you posted it). I don't know if I made this clear or not, but I really didn't appreciate having you highlight one post I made to start a thread (it felt like you were trying to get a whole forum to disagree with me).

 

[Maxperson]

It seems to me that, if the players declare We go to the teahouse to look for sect members, then clearly it is believable to them that the sect members might be in the teahouse.

So it seems to me that, whatever method is used to work out whether or not the PCs find sect members in the teahouse, it won't contradict believability for them to be their.

While it may be believable for that one in a thousand or one in ten thousand change to hit, if it hits every time they go looking for it, it quickly becomes unbelievable or even if they believe it, unrealistic in the extreme. I mean, it's also one in ten thousand believable that a cult member will walk past them where they are standing, so why even bother to go looking. Just tell the DM that you wait where you are at and see if a cult member walks by, and one will.

 

[pemerton]

Here's what's interesting, your Traveler "random dicing" method aside, that is EXACTLY what ALL OTHER METHODS ARE. The 'realism proponents' talk about some sort of 'realistic assessment of what is likely', but I call that unrealistic. That is, I don't think anyone is BSing anyone, deliberately, but I don't think that's EVER what happens in real play in any RPG game which continues on successfully at all. I don't think it is even plausible, or possible.

<snip>

That is, in all cases, in all games, the Sect is either met in the Inn or not because that is the option which the GM decided was going to be a better game than any other. Heck, I even put paid to the dice here to a large extent. Yeah, GMs 'follow the dice', but they also ignore them, and probably more often in this sort of case than would be admitted by people invested in that as a concept. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] rolled dice to 'find certain kinds of people' in his Traveler game, but did he simply accept every result literally with no interpretation? Of course not. First of all, no chart can give you enough information to run with. You have to fill in a LOT of blanks! This is all done by figuring out what is going to be interesting and 'viable' in play.

Apropos of this, I just posted an actual play report of today's Traveller session.

Random table results that generated a need for interpretation included an encounter with a group of rowdies (religious zealots burning down an antiquities shop), an encounter with a group of fugitives (a group of people trying to escape from their local religious dictatorship to learn the *truth* about psionics), and a government official as a patron (a government official wanting to hire the PCs to use their surveillance satellite capabilities to gather intelligence about "pathfinder' forces in a neighbouring, enemy countery). There was also the need to decide exactly what followed from various reaction rolls, and to decide what the consequence was for a failed roll to escape conviction at trial (in that latter case, banishment).

In each of these instances plausibility, in the form of consistency with established fiction and with expectations around the table driven by genre and by the game's implied backstory (which eg has very primitive IT, due to its 1970s authorship, compared to what we are used to in our non sci-fi real world) is obviously important. So is game play - hence the conviction at trial did not result in (say) immediate execution.

This same session also saw multiple attempts to do things analogous to finding sect members in a teahouse - looking for dealers in old artefacts, trying to gather intelligence from government officials, etc - and in those cases I set a DC where the rules don't specify one and called for appropriate throws.

I see all this as pretty standard stuff in any sort of "intent and task" and "fail forward" approach to resolution. (Which I think Classic Traveller is absolutely fine with.) It's why I take objection to casual equations of GM judgement with GM decides outcome.

 

[pemerton]

While it may be believable for that one in a thousand or one in ten thousand change to hit, if it hits every time they go looking for it, it quickly becomes unbelievable or even if they believe it, unrealistic in the extreme.

I'll ignore the alleged contrast between believable and unrealistic, because all that means is that we have a disagreement at the table as to what is or isn't believable. There are various ways to resolve such disagreements, of which GM decides unilaterally is one but not the only one.

But as far as "every time they go looking" is concerned, (i) as I've already posted, why are assuming that the only resolution options here are GM says no or GM says yes, and (ii) how many times are you expecting the PCs to go looking for sect members in teahouses? In my experience, the action in RPGs tends to be quite varied rather than having that sort of repetition.

 

[Ovinomancer]

While it may be believable for that one in a thousand or one in ten thousand change to hit, if it hits every time they go looking for it, it quickly becomes unbelievable or even if they believe it, unrealistic in the extreme. I mean, it's also one in ten thousand believable that a cult member will walk past them where they are standing, so why even bother to go looking. Just tell the DM that you wait where you are at and see if a cult member walks by, and one will.

I'm pretty sure the whole "argument by degenerate example" was covered awhile ago. Yes, ANY method becomes bad if allowed to degenerate, this is trivial. No one is suggesting you only say yes, so let's not use that as an example.

Further, if you're playing where players only have a 1 in 10k random chance of advancing their goal, that's another pretty useless example of bad play.

The discussion here is really that none of us are using realism to decide outcomes, we're using systems (from random to GM decides) to present a coherent fictional world in-line with the themes and tropes we'd like to play. "Seems like a real world" is a laudable trope, but it's not realism, and no method we have can make it so. What we have are various means of applying judgement that create believable outcomes, where "believable" is largely subjective based on group tastes.

Why is this important? Well, it seems obvious, but what happens is that people start using terms to bolster their preferences and nake them sound as if they're more betterer. Like "realism." Or, "playing to find out what's in the GM's notes." It's all petty one-up-manship. If you take a different playstyle at it's best when discussing it, and are honest about the foibles of your own, most of this conversation wouldn't happen. It's okay that your play has potholes -- they all do.

 

[Maxperson]

Most of D&D, frankly, simply cannot be gauged on a scale of realistic to unrealistic at all, because it is entirely fantastic. Even the most generous interpretation of hit points as luck/skill/chutzpah/whatever with a little 'meat' thrown in is still completely crazy. Its impossible to imagine high level characters, there's simply nothing even vaguely like a person of 4th or higher level (in most classes) in AD&D. Sure, sometimes people are lucky and survive crazy things like falling 10 stories, or being mauled by a bear, or maybe sometimes we hear a story of a soldier who defeats 100 enemies single-handedly. However, there are NO stories about real people who do this kind of thing again and again. Luck isn't some sort of attribute that people have; in the real world its simply a statement about probabilities and our perception of certain outcomes as unusual. Likewise no amount of skill allows you to fall 30' over and over again onto hard surfaces and not die.

This perception of yours reminds me of someone who is very depressed and perceives that life simply cannot get better. Despite that person's perception, yes, yes it can.

Let's take that falling example. If I decide that I want to add more realism to falling, I can require a death save from any fall of 20 feet or higher, with a -1 penalty for each additional 10 feet. That would give your 30 story fall(300 feet) a -28 penalty to the death save. Good luck surviving that fall over and over again. It still won't mirror reality, but it is in fact more realistic.

D&D is not now, nor has it every been "entirely fantastic." It has many fantastic elements to it, but there has always been a good measure of realism to it.

But this is only one SMALL example. I could point out 100 more, but they should be pretty obvious. Most of it ends up falling under the rubric of "but it is magical." So, why is it only certain things are allowed to be magical in this type of analysis? Oddly they generally seem to be selected such as to allow only for the 'traditional play' of D&D! It seems to me that, in general, the 'realism argument' is really an argument for playing D&D in a certain specific style. So it would be more effectively framed that way!

Sure you can, and I can make all 100 of those examples more realistic, because despite your claim, realism can be gauged on a scale of unrealistic to mirrors reality. You might not be able to attach an exact number to it, but you can certainly tell which way on the scale you are moving any particular example.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm pretty sure the whole "argument by degenerate example" was covered awhile ago. Yes, ANY method becomes bad if allowed to degenerate, this is trivial. No one is suggesting you only say yes, so let's not use that as an example.

Maybe there's a roll or some other method of determining success or failure, but it still becomes highly unrealistic since unless the roll is almost always doomed to failure, you will hit successes far more often than are plausible.

Further, if you're playing where players only have a 1 in 10k random chance of advancing their goal, that's another pretty useless example of bad play.

This is a Strawman. I never claimed that the tea house was the only way to advance their goal. I said the odds of encountering a sect member at the Tea House at the moment they go there would be long odds. Please don't attribute arguments to me that I did not make.

The discussion here is really that none of us are using realism to decide outcomes, we're using systems (from random to GM decides) to present a coherent fictional world in-line with the themes and tropes we'd like to play. "Seems like a real world" is a laudable trope, but it's not realism, and no method we have can make it so. What we have are various means of applying judgement that create believable outcomes, where "believable" is largely subjective based on group tastes.

Those systems make the given event or rule more or less realistic, so yes realism is involved.

Why is this important? Well, it seems obvious, but what happens is that people start using terms to bolster their preferences and nake them sound as if they're more betterer. Like "realism." Or, "playing to find out what's in the GM's notes." It's all petty one-up-manship. If you take a different playstyle at it's best when discussing it, and are honest about the foibles of your own, most of this conversation wouldn't happen. It's okay that your play has potholes -- they all do.

No it's not. "Playing to find out what's in the DM's notes." or "Playing Mother May I." are derogatory statements about a methods of play other than your own. Realism is not such a derogatory statement. It makes no value judgement about someone else's playstyle. I simply enjoy more realism in my game that D&D has at its baseline. If you don't, I'm truly happy for you and I hope you have great games.