Beyond Old and New School - "The Secret That Was Lost"

[ExploderWizard]

Not necessarily. Horror gaming is very informative in that regard. A horror PC rarely if ever, makes meaningful choices and often has very little knowledge about what's going on. And even outside of that genre, players don't always care about their own influence.

Heck, the last session (of CoC) that I ran, I warned a player in advance that it might be a while before his character was introduced, and I ended up cutting him out of the entire session. Not even a hint of this character's existence or relevance. And he thought it was a great session. Which tells me that a) I have good players, and b) participation isn't sine qua non.

However, in general, I agree that the players expect to make a meaningful impact on the game.

But, if they get the sense that nothing ever happens to them without without them having a choice in the matter, that they aren't subject to the whims of fate, they quickly become megalomaniacal and start running rampant. That's why there needs to be a balance. The players need to feel like they matter, but not like they're in control. The DMing actions needed to achieve that have to be customized to the individual gaming table. Thus, the DM is given blanket authority, but asked to use discretion.

I was talking specifically about D&D. I don't approach every rpg or genre in the same way. There are different games for a reason. If they were all played the same way, we wouldn't need so many.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Yea, but isn't your group fairly young? I could deal with that when I was in my early 20s and played every week. But now I get in maybe 15 sessions a year with my main group, and I have to schedule around 3 kids to get a Friday free. If I showed up at a session and didn't get in the game, I'd be (I feel legitimately) angry.

Depends how you define young (mid to late twenties). However, we all have jobs, we all work different schedules including evenings and weekends, we live in different states, and we struggle to make sessions. I ran this session at the end of October and haven't run one since due to holiday breaks and other conflicts. This was a very significant sacrifice, and one that the player consciously accepted.

Don't get me wrong, I'd be mad if I was cut out too. This was a very unusual game idea and a very close group of people running it, not a typical day at the office. And it was a really good session. And it was really impressive that the player got on board with it. Unbeknownst to them, I'm working on another idea for a game that features player #1 and leaves the others out of it for a while.

I think it shows how important understanding social contract is to seeing what sort of game will work for everyone at the table. Your actions obviously aren't wrong for your table, but could easily be soon as wrong at a table with a different set of expectations.

Exactly. My only point was to go to the extreme in saying that sometimes it's okay to do these things. Sometimes it's also okay to kill a PC arbitrarily, or dominate them and make them do something they wouldn't want to do, or arbitrarily negate their actions, or otherwise totally screw the player over. Not always. Sometimes. It's under the DM's purview.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I was talking specifically about D&D. I don't approach every rpg or genre in the same way. There are different games for a reason. If they were all played the same way, we wouldn't need so many.

Is D&D a genre? To me, it covers quite a few genres. In any case, horror is definitely part of it. There's a clear Lovecraftian thread that runs through D&D, and I definitely took some DMing advice from Heroes of Horror, which is specifically a D&D book.

I certainly don't think that any part of D&D that I'm familiar with would lead me to believe that the game is primarily about player choice. That's simply one part of a very complex equation.

 

[TwoSix]

Exactly. My only point was to go to the extreme in saying that sometimes it's okay to do these things. Sometimes it's also okay to kill a PC arbitrarily, or dominate them and make them do something they wouldn't want to do, or arbitrarily negate their actions, or otherwise totally screw the player over. Not always. Sometimes. It's under the DM's purview.

See, I'm drawing a different inference from this. The authority to let you do this drew from the social contract, and specifically, from that particular player being OK with it. Your group gives you that latitude. It's not a prerequisite of the ruleset, or from anything else other than an understanding between all the people at the table. Likewise, all the other actions you describe only are allowed because the table has granted you the same latitude, in pursuit of the table goals (i.e., an experience where you as DM drive the game and they as players immerse themselves in your game). There's nothing inherent about D&D (or almost any other RPG) that creates that atmosphere, other than that some editions of D&D have prioritized a directed story as the highest priority.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Is D&D a genre? To me, it covers quite a few genres. In any case, horror is definitely part of it. There's a clear Lovecraftian thread that runs through D&D, and I definitely took some DMing advice from Heroes of Horror, which is specifically a D&D book.

I certainly don't think that any part of D&D that I'm familiar with would lead me to believe that the game is primarily about player choice. That's simply one part of a very complex equation.

Yeah, D&D is its own genre with odd bits of fantasy, horror , and pulp sci-fi in the mix. The core principles of the original game were all about player choice. Risk vs reward is a central D&D theme.

 

[Mercurius]

I apologize for stepping out of this thread a couple days ago but I'll try to address some comments.

The problem is that describing the issue as between "mild and judicious use" and "excessive power-mongering" isn't a framework at all. There's nothing to translate or analyze there to make the statement useful. It's a Goldilocks measurement. I mean, I get that @Mercurius thinks you need some fiat, but not too much fiat, or else the players might find out. But I don't know why he thinks that, or where he draws the line between "just enough", "too much", or "too little".

I used those phrases because I felt that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] wasn't differentiating between mild and excessive use of fiat, as if any kind of fiat led to the same result. And yes, it is a Goldilocks measurement because, as [MENTION=3400]billd91[/MENTION] said, it is subjective and varies by game group and situation. The "line" depends upon the situation.

This element of indeterminacy is part of what differentiates tabletop RPGs from computer games. Sure, there might be random computations in a CRPG that are akin to indeterminacy, but it is still based upon formula unlike the DM's mind. There's no DM-as-storyteller in a CRPG.

As I see it, the DM, as the caretaker of the campaign, bears the burden of the enjoyment of all more than any other participant. The players have some responsibility, of course, but not nearly as much as the DM. I employ fiat as a way to serve that end - the enjoyment of all. I will never--and I mean never--use it to take the life of a character (e.g. "You wake up naked, prone, and weaponless and a tarrasque appears in front of you and gets a surprise attack"), but I will sometimes use it to save the life of a character. Not always, but sometimes. If I roll damage dice on a PC and see that the result will lead to death, I ask myself (internally) "Will this death significantly hamper the enjoyment of the game for all?" (or something like that). If the answer is yes, then I might give a reduced damage total that will merely knock the character out. But I will never let the players know that, because that would threaten immersion and suspension of disbelief, which I find to be key to enjoyment.

So PC death is a case where I might employ fiat. Another might be if I really want the PCs to find something and they just don't; I might subtly give them a hint, or move that something to a place where they might find it.

This seems to be general discontent with D&D Fortune in the Middle mechanical resolution:fictional positioning association/mapping; the "how close does this mechanic hew to simulation of process as I understand it in the real world and make its own internal association." While I understand your concerns here (they are well documented), it is tangential. It is, of course, related to the "cognitive styles" factor in this analysis, which I invoked early on. However, I'm not concerned with immersion here. I'm trying to pin down the nature of mechanics that constitute an "expanding of the imagination" versus those that "contract the imagination" which is what appears to be at the heart of the OP's premise.

I think its related to immersion. The reason I picked on 4e is because two of its elements are, in particular, hampering to the imagination (imo): the AEDU paradigm and the reliance on the battle mat.

I think an analogy that might better explain my view is the difference between providing a child with crayons and a blank piece of paper versus a coloring book. As I see it, the blank page is more conducive to the use of imagination, while the coloring book puts parameters on imagination. If I say, "draw a lion," the child with the blank page has to imagine the lion, while the child with the coloring book finds a picture of a lion and colors it in. In the latter case, there's some use of imagination, but it is less so than in the former.

That relates to AEDU. The battlemat is simply from my experience, and from what I've heard from others, that reliance upon it leads to a game-within-the-game that is more like a wargame than a traditional RPG. So it kind of seemed as if with 4e we were playing D&D until combat began and the battlemat appeared, and then we were playing a miniature skirmish game. Decisions were made not based upon theater of mind, but by looking at the battlemat.

Classic Impressionist painters such as Monet, Renoir, Dali obviously leave the association between their work and reality extremely malleable. However, it would be a stretch to say that their work is not deeply on the expansive side of the "imagination continuum."

First a nitpick: Monet and Renoir were impressionists, while Dali was a surrealist.

As far as art and imagination goes, for me the trick is to what degree the art inspires an inner experience. This may be entirely subjective, but I think art that "indicates" more than it "defines" tends to lend itself to this.

Of course, you don't know where Mercurius draws the line between "just enough", "too much", or "too little" fiat. You're not him. The judgment how much fiat is correct is subjective. And how much is the right amount will vary from player to player, group to group, and sometimes even session to session with the same group. This is one of the reasons that excessively doctrinaire approaches to RPGs and styles of play strike me as problematic. You just end up throwing more obstacles in the path of having a good time with the game than you need to.

Well said.

Well yes, of course. But if he doesn't take the time to explain what makes it good or bad for him, how can I understand what he's talking about, and use it in a way to make my game better? I mean, shouldn't the goal of these discussion be to say "When I play X way, with players who like Y, this concept works and this one doesn't"? It has nothing to do with telling anyone how to play, it's how to find terms so that we discuss with a common language.

Yes, I agree. But the thing is, there isn't really a common language, and what I hear you asking is for me to translate my language into yours by giving clear definitions and such. I've tried to offer analogies that better illustrate where I'm coming from, which allows you to take the analogy and translate it into your own way of thinking. But make of it what you will!

I totally agree. @Mercurius seems to have some good ideas, which is why I would like him to flesh them out more than say "Well, this is too much, but this is just enough." So let's here some examples of where fiat was used, and where it wasn't, and why those worked.

Some good ideas? Some?!

 

[Manbearcat]

I apologize for stepping out of this thread a couple days ago but I'll try to address some comments.

No worries.

I have to get to bed but I'll try to address your points tomorrow. One thing I was specifically trying to do was to excise the "immersion" interest from the issue. It seems to me that the conflation of "need for tight coupling of fictional position:mechanical process for the sake of 1st person, deep immersion" with "capacity to expand or contract the imagination" does a disservice to the effort to achieve clarity on the discernment of the nature of the latter. We're trying to distill that signal from the noise of competing RPG interests. Reintroducing that noise doesn't seem very productive.

First a nitpick: Monet and Renoir were impressionists, while Dali was a surrealist.

Not quite correct. Dali's most well-known works are his Surrealist works but he had a deep and prolific period of Impressionism that preceded his jaunt into Surrealism. His largest collection of works outside of Europe is right in my backyard! Along with the lithograph Lincoln in Dalivision, his classical impressionist Landscape Near Figueras is probably my favorite of his works. Dali was extremely versatile. He was much more than just a Surrealist and certainly had a deep Impressionist background.