Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Players building v players exploring a campaign
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 7121747" data-attributes="member: 87792"><p>Please don't talk about "at best" for a style you dislike. Everything you are talking about does happen at average. And all the things appear at average in DM driven campaigns - indeed I find the insistence that Chekov's Guns <em>must</em> be fired to be somewhat harmful to a believable world unless you're moving at breakneck speed; it implies that the entire world is a facade put up for the PCs.</p><p></p><p>As for things being solved by rule of cool or Deus Ex Machina, in my experience that's most common in 90s adventure paths where the NPCs do everything and the PCs are there to bear witness. And it's a problem more common with specific DM authority than one with collective world building.</p><p></p><p>That said you are right on the nail when you say that some of the best games are ones with built in short story arcs rather than attempting to be an epic series. Fiasco, for example, is a recipe to create a Cohen Brothers movie in approximately the time it would take to watch one. Dread a horror film in the time it would take to watch one. </p><p></p><p>Which is where we get to almost a clash of media. Most good shared authority settings are effectively miniseries while it normally takes longer to play through a single author campaign than it does to watch the whole of Game of Thrones.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This depends <em>which</em> system you are using and how it's happening. There's a reason I claim that modern RPGs started with <em>My Life With Master</em>. It was the first game I'm aware of to have an inbuilt character arc and three act structure as part of the rules (the only other game that does it this clearly is the GM-less Fiasco, but most of the Powered by the Apocalypse families have character arcs built in).</p><p></p><p>A big part of this, however, is that most settings without shared authority are (at least to me) extremely unsatisfying for telling short stories because they skimp so badly on the first act and establishing normality. If we look at <em>The Matrix</em> (to name a film I expect we've all seen) then Mr. Anderson's player knows in his bones what the office drudgery is like in a far more clear way than the GM can or will and thus the player should be carrying more of the load simply because although the character is not in control they probably know what will be said to them. If on the other hand neither the player nor the character knows what is going to happen those baseline scenes suddenly become interesting for the player. Likewise <em>The Force Awakens</em> (for a more recent example), Rey's life scrabbling on Jakku is something she has a bone-deep understanding of and can tell a typical day of herself.</p><p></p><p>Perversely, although the characters become more powerful Neo <em>loses</em> this understanding of his world when he takes the Red Pill - and Rey does when she takes off in the Falcon.</p><p></p><p>On the other hand you absolutely can play Sam & Dean's Endless Roadtrip Hunting Monsters without letting the players world build. This is because there is little relevant to their core activities that they both know at the start of the series and isn't covered by the rules. Xena: Warrior Princess works really well without any sort of shared authority.</p><p></p><p>Or in short Jessica Jones needs to understand her environment, and to do that it needs to work the way she thinks until it doesn't. Murdock and Nelson need to be able to deal with their jobs without asking the GM. When you try to do a miniseries and don't tie the character to the world you end up with Iron Fist.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>When I listen to Act 2 of Hamilton or go to see a good performance of MacBeth I know exactly what is going to happen. This doesn't stop it moving me to tears. Mere discovery isn't the only reason to watch things or play RPGs and by crippling the understanding a character can have of their world you are simultaneously weakening the range of emotional engagement possible.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>It sounds as if your group of players is simply boring. When my players were confronted by troglodytes having kidnapped a child to be eaten I thought they were just going to raid the camp and I was completely prepared for all the obvious ways I could do that. Instead they decided to dress all of them except the ranger up as emissaries of Blibbloppool, God of Troglodytes, and distract the Trogs while the ranger sneaked in the back.</p><p></p><p>The wheels may have fallen off that plan because none of them spoke Trog - but if you think I discovered nothing about the setting from that plan then I'm amazed.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>And here we come to one of your fundamental assumptions. The <em>only</em> type of person I can think of who doesn't need a grounding in their setting is a professional adventurer. And yes, some fictional characters are adventurers (Sam & Dean, Xena & Gabrielle, etc.) but this is far from the only position.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Indeed. They have another experience because <em>not everyone wants to be a rootless adventurer</em>. Being a rootless adventurer is far from the only way to play and is far from the most emotionally engaging way to play.</p><p></p><p>Apocalypse World has a couple of playbooks (notably the Gunlugger, the Brainer, and especially the Battlebabe) that are rootless adventurers. And more than a few that aren't for people who want to be embedded into the setting - and playbooks like the Maestro d', the Hardholder, and the Hocus get a lot of narrative authority over the setting. Not everyone always chooses rootless adventurers when given the choice and if you rule Bartertown then how Bartertown works is in part a reflection of you.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Once more you are working on the specific rootless adventurer power fantasy. When I'm playing <em>Montsegur 1244</em> I know I am going to fail. When I play Dread I know my odds of surviving the session (in character anyway) are genuinely low. This doesn't prevent these being engaging games.</p><p></p><p>Indeed one of the biggest issues regarding D&D in specific is that it contains not just the illusion of success but an almost complete lack of consequences. Characters don't get scarred. Characters are healed trivially easily and are as able on 1hp as they are on full hit points. Even death lacks its sting, and other than death the only consequences that can't be taken away with two nights of sleep and a few cure wounds spells and a lesser restoration are basically level drain and rust monster encounters.</p><p></p><p>When you say that what makes the game fun is the illusion of success a big part of this is because you are both good at what you do and another big part of it is because you fight tooth and nail against the mechanisms that make other forms of fun easier and more desirable. Mechanisms like grounding your characters in the setting and having competing factions that aren't fully under the GM's control so there are outcomes to fights that don't boil down to "Win or die". </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Agreed. But there are ways of making emergent consequences easier.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Neonchameleon, post: 7121747, member: 87792"] Please don't talk about "at best" for a style you dislike. Everything you are talking about does happen at average. And all the things appear at average in DM driven campaigns - indeed I find the insistence that Chekov's Guns [I]must[/I] be fired to be somewhat harmful to a believable world unless you're moving at breakneck speed; it implies that the entire world is a facade put up for the PCs. As for things being solved by rule of cool or Deus Ex Machina, in my experience that's most common in 90s adventure paths where the NPCs do everything and the PCs are there to bear witness. And it's a problem more common with specific DM authority than one with collective world building. That said you are right on the nail when you say that some of the best games are ones with built in short story arcs rather than attempting to be an epic series. Fiasco, for example, is a recipe to create a Cohen Brothers movie in approximately the time it would take to watch one. Dread a horror film in the time it would take to watch one. Which is where we get to almost a clash of media. Most good shared authority settings are effectively miniseries while it normally takes longer to play through a single author campaign than it does to watch the whole of Game of Thrones. This depends [I]which[/I] system you are using and how it's happening. There's a reason I claim that modern RPGs started with [I]My Life With Master[/I]. It was the first game I'm aware of to have an inbuilt character arc and three act structure as part of the rules (the only other game that does it this clearly is the GM-less Fiasco, but most of the Powered by the Apocalypse families have character arcs built in). A big part of this, however, is that most settings without shared authority are (at least to me) extremely unsatisfying for telling short stories because they skimp so badly on the first act and establishing normality. If we look at [I]The Matrix[/I] (to name a film I expect we've all seen) then Mr. Anderson's player knows in his bones what the office drudgery is like in a far more clear way than the GM can or will and thus the player should be carrying more of the load simply because although the character is not in control they probably know what will be said to them. If on the other hand neither the player nor the character knows what is going to happen those baseline scenes suddenly become interesting for the player. Likewise [I]The Force Awakens[/I] (for a more recent example), Rey's life scrabbling on Jakku is something she has a bone-deep understanding of and can tell a typical day of herself. Perversely, although the characters become more powerful Neo [I]loses[/I] this understanding of his world when he takes the Red Pill - and Rey does when she takes off in the Falcon. On the other hand you absolutely can play Sam & Dean's Endless Roadtrip Hunting Monsters without letting the players world build. This is because there is little relevant to their core activities that they both know at the start of the series and isn't covered by the rules. Xena: Warrior Princess works really well without any sort of shared authority. Or in short Jessica Jones needs to understand her environment, and to do that it needs to work the way she thinks until it doesn't. Murdock and Nelson need to be able to deal with their jobs without asking the GM. When you try to do a miniseries and don't tie the character to the world you end up with Iron Fist. When I listen to Act 2 of Hamilton or go to see a good performance of MacBeth I know exactly what is going to happen. This doesn't stop it moving me to tears. Mere discovery isn't the only reason to watch things or play RPGs and by crippling the understanding a character can have of their world you are simultaneously weakening the range of emotional engagement possible. It sounds as if your group of players is simply boring. When my players were confronted by troglodytes having kidnapped a child to be eaten I thought they were just going to raid the camp and I was completely prepared for all the obvious ways I could do that. Instead they decided to dress all of them except the ranger up as emissaries of Blibbloppool, God of Troglodytes, and distract the Trogs while the ranger sneaked in the back. The wheels may have fallen off that plan because none of them spoke Trog - but if you think I discovered nothing about the setting from that plan then I'm amazed. And here we come to one of your fundamental assumptions. The [I]only[/I] type of person I can think of who doesn't need a grounding in their setting is a professional adventurer. And yes, some fictional characters are adventurers (Sam & Dean, Xena & Gabrielle, etc.) but this is far from the only position. Indeed. They have another experience because [I]not everyone wants to be a rootless adventurer[/I]. Being a rootless adventurer is far from the only way to play and is far from the most emotionally engaging way to play. Apocalypse World has a couple of playbooks (notably the Gunlugger, the Brainer, and especially the Battlebabe) that are rootless adventurers. And more than a few that aren't for people who want to be embedded into the setting - and playbooks like the Maestro d', the Hardholder, and the Hocus get a lot of narrative authority over the setting. Not everyone always chooses rootless adventurers when given the choice and if you rule Bartertown then how Bartertown works is in part a reflection of you. Once more you are working on the specific rootless adventurer power fantasy. When I'm playing [I]Montsegur 1244[/I] I know I am going to fail. When I play Dread I know my odds of surviving the session (in character anyway) are genuinely low. This doesn't prevent these being engaging games. Indeed one of the biggest issues regarding D&D in specific is that it contains not just the illusion of success but an almost complete lack of consequences. Characters don't get scarred. Characters are healed trivially easily and are as able on 1hp as they are on full hit points. Even death lacks its sting, and other than death the only consequences that can't be taken away with two nights of sleep and a few cure wounds spells and a lesser restoration are basically level drain and rust monster encounters. When you say that what makes the game fun is the illusion of success a big part of this is because you are both good at what you do and another big part of it is because you fight tooth and nail against the mechanisms that make other forms of fun easier and more desirable. Mechanisms like grounding your characters in the setting and having competing factions that aren't fully under the GM's control so there are outcomes to fights that don't boil down to "Win or die". Agreed. But there are ways of making emergent consequences easier. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Players building v players exploring a campaign
Top