What Is an Experience Point Worth?

It seems like a simple question, but the way you answer it may, in effect, determine the metaphysics of your game. Many RPGs use some sort of "experience point" system to model growth and learning. The progenitor of this idea is, of course, Dungeons & Dragons; the Experience Point (XP) system has been a core feature of the game from the beginning.

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Yet what exactly an experience point is remains unclear.

Think about it: can anyone earn an XP under the right circumstances? Or must one possess a class? If so, what qualifies an individual for a class? The 1st-edition Dungeon Master’s Guide specifies that henchmen earn 50 percent of the group’s XP award. In other words, they get a full share awarded, but then only "collect" half the share. Where does the other half go? Did it ever exist in the first place?

These esoteric questions were highlighted for me recently when I recreated a 20-year-old D&D character from memory for a new campaign I’m playing in. All I could remember of this character from my high school days was her race and class (half-elf Bladesinger, because I liked the cheese, apparently) and that the campaign fizzled out after only a handful of sessions. If I made it to level 2 back then, I couldn’t rightly say.

I asked my Dungeon Master (DM)—the same fellow who had run the original game for me back in the days of the Clinton administration—whether I could start a level ahead, or at least with a randomly-determined amount of XP (say, 200+2D100). Being the stern taskmaster that he is, he shot down both suggestions, saying instead that I’d be starting at 0 XP and at level 1, just like the rest of the party. As justification, he said that my character had amassed 0 XP for this campaign.

As the character probably only had a few hundred XP to her name to begin with, I let the matter slide. But it did get me thinking: do Experience Points only exist within the context of individual campaigns? Was my DM onto something?

This sort of thinking can in turn lead down quite a rabbit hole. Are classes themselves an arbitrary construct? Do they exist solely for players, or are non-player characters (NPCs) also capable of possessing classes and levels? Different editions of D&D have presented different interpretations of this question, from essentially statting up all NPCs as monsters, with their own boutique abilities (as in the earliest iterations of the game), to granting NPCs levels in "non-adventuring classes" (the famous 20th-level Commoner of 3rd-edition days).

The current edition of D&D has come back around to limiting classes and XP awards to player-characters only—which brings us back to our original question: are Experience Points, like character classes, meant to function solely as an abstract game mechanic, or are they an objective force within the game world? How do you, the reader at home, treat XP in your campaigns?

contributed by David Larkins

 

[Manbearcat]

I can't know another's motivations, of course. Developers' public comments did seem to reflect be some predisposition about aspects they didn't want to perpetuate (shouting limbs back on for example). Considering their base need to retrench and reconnect with the wider base after a seeming poor acceptance the 4e's Essentials line, it would be expected for the brand to try to emulate older editions.

The original aspirational statements around one big tent and a highly modular game with many dials that could emulate any edition appeared way too ambitious at the time and proved out that way as the books were released. In the end, we got a game that embraced DM force even more than 1e does and has a strong rules focus on a single aspect of play (combat pillar).



New and old. One of the great things about this hobby is stuff published decades ago is as good now as it was then (with the major exception of modern and near-future games that need a setting update to conform with the massive social changes that have happened in the last 30 years) and some of it is quite good. There are a lot of cool games being made. There are a lot of cool games sitting in boxes for me to dig out again. There is limited time for any single one, unfortunately.

In many ways the "hippie indie gamers" are facing their equivalent of the OSR movement. And like the OSR environment there are a whole bunch of small publisher games to choose from, many of which are excellent.

Great post and I agree across the board. And I don't begrudge the 5e developers the course they charted (though its not a newly blazed trail, it clearly is a deftly trod path!). I could have just done without the dog and pony show and bait and switch...and the disingenuousness of playtest participants not acknowledging what was happening (as it was transparently happening and being called out).

And the OSR is still creating great games with Stars Without Number and (especially) Beyond the Wall. We are in a golden era of TTRPGs and its not because of 5e. Its because of the breadth of great games by indie publishers (OSR included) is extraordinary.

 

[pemerton]

Replying to three things:

1. Amount of content in a setting

I don't think there's enough content in Dark Sun to support a full 30 levels worth of play.

How can that be possible, when you as DM can make up as much content as you need.

Because after a certain amount of play, the tropes and themes of Dark Sun will be exhausted. There'll be nothing new to do with the setting. (It's the same reason that serial fiction, after a certain point, tends to either begin recycling stories, or jumps the shark.)


2. Use of maps in RPGing

Here's an actual play post that describes part of the underdark sequence in our main 4e game.

There were encounter area maps for most of the combat encounters, but there was no overall dungeon map - I think at a certain point, as things went along, I drew up a simple line diagram just to lock in the basic geography that we'd established (but no distances, angles, compass rose, etc).

in that log you mention several times you're using a map, and it seems for more than just individual encounters.

I just reread the post. Here is every reference to a map, or to terrain and geography more generally.

By misadventure, the PCs in my game have ended up in the Underdark. They are looking for the Soul Abbatoir, using a magical tapestry woven in an ancient minotaur kingdom as their map.

<snip>

As GM, it hadn't occurred to me to place an Orcus temple until one of the players said that his PC spent time going around town trying to find out where the cultists had come from and what they were up to. But I found a suitable poster map in Death's Reach

<snip>

the PCs opened the back door behind the altar and could see Moria-like stairs descending further into the depths (the map is from one of the 4e Dungeon adventures, Siege of Bordrin's Watch).

<snip>

Once the PCs had beaten the nightwalker and bodaks <snippage> I got to reuse my poster map!

<snip>

After resting in their temple they went down the stairs. I had just got my copy of Into the Unknown, and used a picture in it, of an underdark staircase in a vast cavern, to indicate the general character of their descent.

<snip>

As the PCs continue through the tunnels, I described them coming to a cleft in the floor, and got them to describe how they would cross it. The drow sorcerer indicated that he would first fly over (using 16th level At Will Dominant Winds) and then . . . before he could finish, I launched into my beholder encounter, which I had designed inspired by this image (which is the cover art from Dungeonscape, I think)

<snip image>

I'm not sure exactly what the artist intended, but to me it looks as if the central beholder is hovering over a chasm, with uneven rocky surfaces leading up to it (archer on one side, flaming sword guy on the other). I drew up my map similiarly, including with the side tunnel (behind the tiefling) which on my version ran down into the chasm, and the columns, stalactites, etc.

<snip>

The PCs had two ways out - the main tunnel, and the side tunnel that the eye of flame had come out of - and decided to go down the latter, as (i) it went down (and they think they want to go down to find the Abbatoir) and (ii) it seemed warm, and for some reason that I now can't remember that appealed to them. There were three minor encounters - a single fungal hazard dealt with by the ranger while expanding an overgrown, abandoned duergar farm, and a couple of skill challenges. The first, which had been commenced back at 17th level and involved navigating through the underdark, failed, and the PC fighter ended up falling through thin stone into the underground river the duergar had relied upon to irrigate their fungi. This then triggered another skill challenge for the party to recover the fighter and regroup successfully in the river, and they succeeded at that.

<snip>

After heading down this underground river for some time, they came onto their sixth encounter of the day.

<snip>

Before explaining how this unfolded, however, I need to describe the terrain.

<snip description of terrain, and of subsequent events involving hydra and elementals>

the photo of the battlemap is attached below.

The actual maps referenced are a poster map of a temple (used twice); a map of Moria-like stairs and landings, used for the bodak encounter; a map that I drew based on a picture, with tunnels and a chasm, used for the beholder encounter; and a map of the volcanic chasm with the river running through it, used for the final encounter.

Those are all encounter maps. Two describe adjacent areas (the temple, and the staircase behind its altar), but there is no map of the underground tunnels and passages that connect them, which the PCs travelled through.

I also refer to two pictures - the one I based the beholder map on, and the one from Into the Unknown which I used to illustrate the general flavour of their descent down stairs into the vast underdark caverns.

Finally, I refer to one imaginary map, the one from the ancient minotaur kingdom. The PCs were in possession of that map, and using it to guide them on their journey through the underdark; but it did not and does not actually exist. It's only real-world represenation was an entry on a characer shet equipment list.

The geography of the underdark - the relationship between caverns, the abandoned duergar farm, the underground river, etc - was not mapped out in advance (nor was much of it mapped out after the event). Likewise when the PCs went to the cavern of the duergar stronghold, or - some time later on - travelled down the river to the Shrine of the Kuo-toa.

it's far easier to go mapless in a situation like underdark tunnels that maybe don't meet up very often than it is when trying to pull a castle out of one's head where all the rooms etc. have to a) fit together, b) fit in the building's footprint, and c) connect in a reasonably logical fashion both vertically (stairs etc.) and horizontally (doors, passages, etc.).

As I think I posted upthead, quite a bit of the action in my BW game has taken place in the tower of Jabal the Red, mage of Hardby. We've had descriptions of his laboratory/library (near the top), the entrance hall (near the ground), the dining hall (above the entrance hall), and a floor with living quarters (above the dining hall, and having an internal wall separating rooms). That has not been mapped out. It's not necessary. Nor were all the rooms established in advance - the tower itself, and its entry level and laboratory level, were established in the first session; the other rooms I mentioned were established some time later, after the PCs had returned to Hardby (having travelled to the Bright Desert, then the Abor-Alz, then a keep on the borderlands between the hills and Hardby).

In the same game, travel through the sewers and catacombs of Hardby has been resolved via Catacombs-wise checks and other appropriate checks (eg Speed checks, I think, when the PCs in the catacombs were trying to arrive at Jabal's tower in advance of an assassin travelling through the streets above them).

Even with your example of a castle, in my experience it's not generally necessary to map out the whole thing if the PCs are arriving there to talk to people and see what they can learn, rather than take an architectural survey and rip up every block of stone. In our 4e game, the PCs visited the bastion of Mal Arundak on the Abyss. No map was needed until they actually entered the reliquary within the fortress, because it was a complex encounter and 4e depends upon encounter maps to help with the resolution of complex encounters. (I used another poster map from a 4e module.)

In my Cortex+ Heroic game, the PCs entered a giant steading (some through the front door, one by stealth) and did a bit of fighting before everyone settled down and made friends. I described walls, and a gate, and a dining hall with dire wolves (inspired by G1), but there was no map, and no need of one, as Cortex+ does not use maps or tactical distances as part of its resolution mechanics. When the PCs later ended up in a dungeon, where they made there way through some tunnels, and a secret door, before being teleported into unknown depths by a crypt thing and then finding their way out through the faerie caverns of the dark elves, no map was necessary.

Maps play a very important role in one style of RPGing (broadly, the sort that Gygax advocates in the last section of his PHB before the appendices, and which Moldvay Basic is all about) - but the use of maps in RPGs that aren't aimed at that style of maze-mapping, puzzle-solving play is in my view mostly a result of cargo-cult-like fetishisation of the techniques of Gygaxian play. It doesn't actually serve much of a useful purpose.


3. GM advance planning for success or failure

How can the GM know from his/her notes what happens on success or failure?

And in most cases a DM who knows her game can look ahead and reasonably guesstimate what's coming next, both in the small picture and the large, and be ready for it.

Here's a prosaic example: in my last session, the PCs landed on the world of Enlil to visit a local market to look for trinkets that might reveal something about the alien heritage of the people of Enlil. How can I know in advance, from my notes, what will happen on success or failure in that attempt? It never occurred to me that such a thing would happen until the players declared it as their PCs' actions.

In theory you'll have some idea why they're going to Enlil at all, from previous play; and if Enlil is a new place to the PCs it only makes sense they're probably going to start by doing some investigation and info gathering - which means you can anticipate this and determine ahead of time what relevant info might be there to be gathered, assuming any reasonable success.

<snip>

You can also reasonably guess what'll happen should their info gathering succeed, and can prepare for that as in theory this will lead to the next phase of whatever adventure they're doing. And if your guesses are wrong then you're in react mode until you can again predict what might be coming next.

This isn't railroading. It's called being prepared, whether by copious notes or simply in your head.

Looked at in a bigger picture, you can reasonably predict at the start of most adventures what'll happen in the game world if they succeed and what'll happen if they fail, and have contingencies and-or consequences in place to suit either outcome.

I don't think I fully understand what you're saying, but to the extent that I can work it out, it seems exactly like railroading.

Here's the actual situation: at the end of session 4, the PCs have recovered from previous misadventures, have had some work done on their ship (including adding a turret with double pulse lasers), have equipped themselves, and are ready to head off to Olyx - the research base for the bioweapons conspirators - as they have been retained to do by a (somewhat mysterious) Imperial official, notionally as agents of the branch of the Scout Servicek known as the Planetary Rescue Systems Inspectorate.

Olyx is two jumps away, and between Byron (where the PCs have been since the end of session 1) and Olyx lies Enlil (the source of the pathogen that is at the core of the conspiratorial bioweapons program). The PCs also know (as a result of information provided by one of the bioweapons researchers they spoke to on Byron, and have since recruited as a computer expert) that the DNA of the Enlilians is not fully human, but includes traces of alien origin. One of the PCs has a doctorate in xeno-archaeology and is wanting to travel the universe looking for examples of alien life and artefacts, and was therefore quite intrigued by this information.

Session 5 begins with the PCs making the jump to Enlil in their ship. I know why they're there - it's on the way to Olyx. I don't know if they're going to visit it or not. As GM, I've deliberately set things up so that some PCs (and hence some players) have a reason to want to visit Enlil; while others (especially the owner of the ship, whose mortgage payments fall due every month, and who therefore doesn't want to spend time hanging out on Enlil earning no money) have a reason to push on straight to Olyx. The players (as their characters) debated their options and in the end a compromise was reached: the group would spend a day in orbit about Enlil, and those who wanted to go down to the world would do so; but those who were going down would also collecively pay the ship owner 8,000 credits - ie the amount of morgage repayment that accrues in a day.

Now, I know that the PCs who travel to Enlil are hoping to find out about the alien origins of its inhabitants. But how are they going to do that? I have no idea. It was already established that Enlil is a low tech world (TL 3, ie pre-industrial 18th/early 19th century) but with a starport (which I had therefore established was an Imperial facility in orbit above the world) and having some contact with other worlds. The players (and their PCs) knew this, and so they decided to get the standard tourist information from the starport, which included information about local markets, and to go and visit one of those markets to see if any of the items on sale exhibited signs of alien origin (eg designs, writing, etc). I can't remember how we established that the Enlilian markets would be a tourist attraction; but I know it didn't come from me, and equally that it seemed a very natural thing to be the case (think about the number of European and North American tourists who like to go to markets in less industrialised countries and buy trinkets there).

There was no prospect of planning in advance for the publications of the Enlil Imperial Tourist Board (or whatever other organisation is providing the tourist information at the orbiting starport), or for anticipating what it might say about Enlilian markets and the trinkets they sell there.

And when they did find a distinctive trinket (which I made up on the spot - it's metallurgy was clearly not from a TL 3 world), and learned about its origins (which I made up on the spot - it had been sold some time ago by the local bishop to raise funds for the bishopric) the next step couldn't be anticipated either. They decided to go and talk to the bishop. And so I made up some more stuff on the spot - the trinket had been a gift to the bishopric from co-religionist on the world of Ashar. (Which was a world I had rolled up as part of my prep, and which also had a religious government - Traveller world generation turns up surprisingly many of these - and which I now made part of the shared fiction.)

You say (in the part of your post that I've quoted above) that "you can anticipate this and determine ahead of time what relevant info might be there to be gathered, assuming any reasonable success. . . . [and] can also reasonably guess what'll happen should their info gathering succeed". But that's just not true. I couldn't have anticpated all this stuff about markets and trinkets and metallurgy and bishops and gifts from the planet Ashar. What if the PCs had instead sought out ancient ruins on Enlil? Or had tried to take their own biological samples from the locals for analysis?

And nore can I anticpate what the PCs will do now. I think they're going to go on to Olyx (because that's what they've been paid to do). But are they going to go to Ashar? If so, when? And what will they try and do there? (I think one PC will try and find a branch of the Psionics Institute, but how will she do that?)

Unless the players are following rails (or a trail of breadcrumbs, or whatever) that has been laid by the GM, this stuff can't be predicted, and - especially in a game like Traveller, where the whole of a universe is the backdrop, but even when the BW PCs are doing their thing in the city of Hardby - the details can't all be known in advance.

Enlil - find and bust up smugglers' base

Succeed: move to Fraka and bust up known base there (the PCs' current plan) unless they find info about HQ on Gurda
Fail: smugglers alerted to party's existence (bad!). Open season on the PCs unless they go into deep hiding or leave the quadrant

Fraka - find and bust up smugglers' base, again might find info about Gurda if they look/listen. Ships etc. that flee Enlil might end up here, pointing to a connection.

Succeed: by now they should know there's something bigger behind this, info gather should point to Gurda
Fail: smugglers alerted to party's existence but now there's less of 'em, not quite as bad. PCs still in danger, need to dig deeper or hide.

Gurda - bust up smugglers' headquarters, discover trade-federation connections (troops, supplies etc.) in the process

Succeed: start acting against the trade federation? Could lead to a long story arc...
Fail: smugglers much weakened but now PCs are on radar of the trade federation - could lead to a long story arc and lots of cloak-and-dagger stuff...

On paper this would look more like a flowchart with connection lines etc.

What this tells me is that I need to design the Enlil and Fraka bases, the Gurda HQ, and a bunch of encounters that would follow a failure at any point.

It's not a railroad if a story arc simply and naturally progresses from one thing to the next, and the DM sees this coming and prepares for it.

In a game in which the players have any real agency - to choose what their PCs do, to choose what is going to be salient in the campaign, etc - the prep you describe here - designing those smuggler bases, for instance - is a pointless waste of time. It's only worthwhile if the whole sequence of events is more-or-less certain to happen - first the players follow the GM's lead and do the Enlil bit; then they follow the breadcrumbs to Fraka and/or Gurda; etc. And that is exactly a railroad!

If the players actually have input into the game, then they could choose to go to any other planet that is known to be part of the world, and the GM's write up of the smugglers on Fraka and Gurda is useless. And more subtly, if the GM knows that the players have that degree of agency, then s/he won't prepare a storyboard of the sort you describe which makes sense only on the assumption that there is a set of tracks that the players are likely to proceed along. To go back to my actual play example, here are the things that were of obvous potential salience at the end of session 4: the starport on Enlil; Enlil itself (a whole planet with millions of inhabitants); Olyx (a small planet with a complex and well-equipped research base crewed by dozens of people); the Planetary Rescue Systems Inspectorate (and Imperial agencies, and the Scout Service, more generally); the naval base on the not-too-distant world of Shelley (the bioweapons conspirators have been established to have strong links to that base); and probably other stuff I'm forgetting at the moment.

It's absurd to suppose that all that could be detailed. But it would also be pointless for another reason, because it would already pre-author the fiction instead of allowing it to emerge out of play. (Eg are the conspirators working for or agaisnt the Imperium? What is the role of the PRSI in relation to the conspiracy? etc) In your storyboard example, what if the players want to play a game in which they work with the trade federation to break up smuggling rings? You seem to have already ruled that out (by way of secret backstory). What is that but pre-determining outcomes in the fiction, ie, railroading?

Further, you can reasonably guess that if their info gathering fails they're either going to blunder around blind (you can have some seemingly-random encounters ready for this) or leave and go to a different planet (putting you in react mode unless you know from the run of play where they're likely to go next).

As for this suggestion that I might use some filler encounters while the players "blunder around blind", I have no idea what the point of that would be. It can't get more of a railroad than having the players work through some "seemingly random encounters" until they stumble back onto the breadcrumbs that (for whatever reason) the GM has been keeping secret from them.

This, in particular, has nothing in common with how I GM a game.

 

[Lanefan]

Replying to three things:

1. Amount of content in a setting

Because after a certain amount of play, the tropes and themes of Dark Sun will be exhausted. There'll be nothing new to do with the setting. (It's the same reason that serial fiction, after a certain point, tends to either begin recycling stories, or jumps the shark.)

Good reason to play a more variable and-or malleable setting than Dark Sun, eh.

2. Use of maps in RPGing
As I think I posted upthead, quite a bit of the action in my BW game has taken place in the tower of Jabal the Red, mage of Hardby. We've had descriptions of his laboratory/library (near the top), the entrance hall (near the ground), the dining hall (above the entrance hall), and a floor with living quarters (above the dining hall, and having an internal wall separating rooms). That has not been mapped out. It's not necessary. Nor were all the rooms established in advance - the tower itself, and its entry level and laboratory level, were established in the first session; the other rooms I mentioned were established some time later, after the PCs had returned to Hardby (having travelled to the Bright Desert, then the Abor-Alz, then a keep on the borderlands between the hills and Hardby).

I'm really surprised it hasn't been mapped by the players, and - given its obvious importance - somewhat disappointed it hasn't been mapped out by you at some point. Where, for example, are the stairs connecting the floors?

In the same game, travel through the sewers and catacombs of Hardby has been resolved via Catacombs-wise checks and other appropriate checks (eg Speed checks, I think, when the PCs in the catacombs were trying to arrive at Jabal's tower in advance of an assassin travelling through the streets above them).

If all they're doing is trying to use the sewers to get from point A to point B and you've already determined that there's a way through the sewers from point A to point B, then a check or two for their navigation might be all you really need...unless there's other dangers down there in known locations, in which case you not only need a complete map but instead of relying on a simple navigation check you need the PCs to tell you which way they're going (left, right, straight, etc.) at each intersection they come to. And if the PCs don't make a map or make marks on the walls they risk getting lost should they be forced to turn around and try to go back the way they came.

Even with your example of a castle, in my experience it's not generally necessary to map out the whole thing if the PCs are arriving there to talk to people and see what they can learn,

Of course not; but if they're arriving there to explore the place, clear the monsters out, and take their stuff a map becomes extremely useful.

rather than take an architectural survey and rip up every block of stone. In our 4e game, the PCs visited the bastion of Mal Arundak on the Abyss. No map was needed until they actually entered the reliquary within the fortress, because it was a complex encounter and 4e depends upon encounter maps to help with the resolution of complex encounters. (I used another poster map from a 4e module.)

So you don't play out in detail the exploration part between the outdoors and the reliquary?

Also, don't get me started on 4e encounter maps - IME (and despite not playing 4e I've run about 6 4e adventures, converted) they almost always show far more than the PCs can actually see or know about and thus end up giving the players knowledge they flat-out shouldn't have...because it's knowledge their characters don't have.

In my Cortex+ Heroic game, the PCs entered a giant steading (some through the front door, one by stealth) and did a bit of fighting before everyone settled down and made friends. I described walls, and a gate, and a dining hall with dire wolves (inspired by G1), but there was no map, and no need of one, as Cortex+ does not use maps or tactical distances as part of its resolution mechanics.

This kind of boggles my mind, in that how else do you know where - say, in the fighting they did with the giants - everyone is, and how far you need to move to get to the next foe? (I just can't do that sort of thing in TotM mode - I need the visual reference).

When the PCs later ended up in a dungeon, where they made there way through some tunnels, and a secret door, before being teleported into unknown depths by a crypt thing and then finding their way out through the faerie caverns of the dark elves, no map was necessary.

They made their way through some tunnels. OK., let's run with that.

Here's a hypothetical example of what I absolutely want to avoid as DM and cannot stand as a player. We're making our way through some twisty tunnels. The DM describes a series of turns (without referring to a map; she's making this up on the fly), and we as characters are using string and angle measurements to try and map this out as we know our goal lies to the north and we know we were going north when we came in. We're also using water to determine slope but haven't found any yet - it's all about level.

As we're playing this out in detail the DM obliges, and tells us the angles we measure of each turn and twist in great accuracy. What she doesn't realize (because she's making it up as she goes) is she's turning us left about twice as often as she's turning us right, until eventually our mapping shows we've looped back to where we've already been and have in theory met our own tunnel...only there was no intersection there when we went by that place the first time.

Maps play a very important role in one style of RPGing (broadly, the sort that Gygax advocates in the last section of his PHB before the appendices, and which Moldvay Basic is all about) - but the use of maps in RPGs that aren't aimed at that style of maze-mapping, puzzle-solving play is in my view mostly a result of cargo-cult-like fetishisation of the techniques of Gygaxian play. It doesn't actually serve much of a useful purpose.

Doesn't matter what the RPG is "aimed at"...maps are important from both the DM side and the player side, and often do serve a useful purpose.

Next you'll tell me your crew don't track the treasure they find.

3. GM advance planning for success or failure
I don't think I fully understand what you're saying, but to the extent that I can work it out, it seems exactly like railroading.

Here's the actual situation: at the end of session 4, the PCs have recovered from previous misadventures, have had some work done on their ship (including adding a turret with double pulse lasers), have equipped themselves, and are ready to head off to Olyx - the research base for the bioweapons conspirators - as they have been retained to do by a (somewhat mysterious) Imperial official, notionally as agents of the branch of the Scout Servicek known as the Planetary Rescue Systems Inspectorate.

Olyx is two jumps away, and between Byron (where the PCs have been since the end of session 1) and Olyx lies Enlil (the source of the pathogen that is at the core of the conspiratorial bioweapons program). The PCs also know (as a result of information provided by one of the bioweapons researchers they spoke to on Byron, and have since recruited as a computer expert) that the DNA of the Enlilians is not fully human, but includes traces of alien origin. One of the PCs has a doctorate in xeno-archaeology and is wanting to travel the universe looking for examples of alien life and artefacts, and was therefore quite intrigued by this information.

Session 5 begins with the PCs making the jump to Enlil in their ship. I know why they're there - it's on the way to Olyx. I don't know if they're going to visit it or not. As GM, I've deliberately set things up so that some PCs (and hence some players) have a reason to want to visit Enlil; while others (especially the owner of the ship, whose mortgage payments fall due every month, and who therefore doesn't want to spend time hanging out on Enlil earning no money) have a reason to push on straight to Olyx. The players (as their characters) debated their options and in the end a compromise was reached: the group would spend a day in orbit about Enlil, and those who wanted to go down to the world would do so; but those who were going down would also collecively pay the ship owner 8,000 credits - ie the amount of morgage repayment that accrues in a day.

Now, I know that the PCs who travel to Enlil are hoping to find out about the alien origins of its inhabitants. But how are they going to do that? I have no idea. It was already established that Enlil is a low tech world (TL 3, ie pre-industrial 18th/early 19th century) but with a starport (which I had therefore established was an Imperial facility in orbit above the world) and having some contact with other worlds. The players (and their PCs) knew this, and so they decided to get the standard tourist information from the starport, which included information about local markets, and to go and visit one of those markets to see if any of the items on sale exhibited signs of alien origin (eg designs, writing, etc). I can't remember how we established that the Enlilian markets would be a tourist attraction; but I know it didn't come from me, and equally that it seemed a very natural thing to be the case (think about the number of European and North American tourists who like to go to markets in less industrialised countries and buy trinkets there).

There was no prospect of planning in advance for the publications of the Enlil Imperial Tourist Board (or whatever other organisation is providing the tourist information at the orbiting starport), or for anticipating what it might say about Enlilian markets and the trinkets they sell there.

And when they did find a distinctive trinket (which I made up on the spot - it's metallurgy was clearly not from a TL 3 world), and learned about its origins (which I made up on the spot - it had been sold some time ago by the local bishop to raise funds for the bishopric) the next step couldn't be anticipated either. They decided to go and talk to the bishop. And so I made up some more stuff on the spot - the trinket had been a gift to the bishopric from co-religionist on the world of Ashar. (Which was a world I had rolled up as part of my prep, and which also had a religious government - Traveller world generation turns up surprisingly many of these - and which I now made part of the shared fiction.)

You say (in the part of your post that I've quoted above) that "you can anticipate this and determine ahead of time what relevant info might be there to be gathered, assuming any reasonable success. . . . [and] can also reasonably guess what'll happen should their info gathering succeed". But that's just not true. I couldn't have anticpated all this stuff about markets and trinkets and metallurgy and bishops and gifts from the planet Ashar. What if the PCs had instead sought out ancient ruins on Enlil? Or had tried to take their own biological samples from the locals for analysis?

And nore can I anticpate what the PCs will do now. I think they're going to go on to Olyx (because that's what they've been paid to do).

So if I'm reading this right, the whole Enlil stopover was something of a left turn. Fair enough.

But you know they're going to Olyx at some point, so seeing as you can anticipate this and prepare for it why not do so?

Unless the players are following rails (or a trail of breadcrumbs, or whatever) that has been laid by the GM, this stuff can't be predicted, and - especially in a game like Traveller, where the whole of a universe is the backdrop,

Yeah, I can see the headaches here with any space-based game where the PCs have the means to go where they like.

but even when the BW PCs are doing their thing in the city of Hardby - the details can't all be known in advance.

Some can. Hardby has obviously become a key location in that campaign - do you have it mapped out yet? I would, at least in a loose form; if only so I could be and remain consistent on what's where each time they visit the place, should such become necessary, and on what's in the town at all.

I know for my part if a party visits a town once and spends some time there they'll learn some things about the place - what temples it has, what guilds it has, some of the pubs - and if they go back there 6 real-time months (or 6 real-time years!) later I'll never remember what they found the first time. My in-game note-taking is usually almost non-existent - I can't write and talk at the same time - and so I have to either rely on something prepared ahead of time or on whatever notes I make after the fact. Either way, the second time they visit they're getting what's on my notes.

In a game in which the players have any real agency - to choose what their PCs do, to choose what is going to be salient in the campaign, etc - the prep you describe here - designing those smuggler bases, for instance - is a pointless waste of time. It's only worthwhile if the whole sequence of events is more-or-less certain to happen - first the players follow the GM's lead and do the Enlil bit; then they follow the breadcrumbs to Fraka and/or Gurda; etc. And that is exactly a railroad!

A railroad if the DM forces it, an organic story if she doesn't.

If you know from prior play they're going to Enlil to bust up a smugglers' base then why not locate and populate and draw up the base ahead of time? Yes there's a small chance you won't need what you've prepped - maybe they don't get there for some reason, or they left-turn on you - but the odds are you'll be able to use it as you've anticipated their next move...largely because they've told you what's coming.

If the players actually have input into the game, then they could choose to go to any other planet that is known to be part of the world, and the GM's write up of the smugglers on Fraka and Gurda is useless.

An acknowledged risk, yes.

And more subtly, if the GM knows that the players have that degree of agency, then s/he won't prepare a storyboard of the sort you describe which makes sense only on the assumption that there is a set of tracks that the players are likely to proceed along.

A DM who knows her players well also probably has a pretty good idea of what sorts of stories will grab their attention and thus are likely to be followed up on. Failing that, in a game like yours where the players in effect tell you what stories they want to play out (e.g. the balrog-possessed brother) they're also in effect handing you a half-made storyboard. Between session 0 when they give you this stuff and session 1 when you drop the puck you could storyboard out some ideas about the balrog stuff and each other player's story, then do some figuring as to how these might somehow interweave.

To go back to my actual play example, here are the things that were of obvous potential salience at the end of session 4: the starport on Enlil; Enlil itself (a whole planet with millions of inhabitants); Olyx (a small planet with a complex and well-equipped research base crewed by dozens of people); the Planetary Rescue Systems Inspectorate (and Imperial agencies, and the Scout Service, more generally); the naval base on the not-too-distant world of Shelley (the bioweapons conspirators have been established to have strong links to that base); and probably other stuff I'm forgetting at the moment.

It's absurd to suppose that all that could be detailed.

True. Remind me never to try running a sandbox-style game in space.

But it would also be pointless for another reason, because it would already pre-author the fiction instead of allowing it to emerge out of play. (Eg are the conspirators working for or agaisnt the Imperium? What is the role of the PRSI in relation to the conspiracy? etc)

Where in my opinion both of those are things you as GM should already know, so you can be consistent in how you present the scenes.

In your storyboard example, what if the players want to play a game in which they work with the trade federation to break up smuggling rings? You seem to have already ruled that out (by way of secret backstory).

Then they can work with the trade federation to break up smuggling rings...and eventually they're very likely to learn some things they probably don't want to know, namely that the trade federation is in fact in league with the smugglers and (quite possibly) the PCs have been used as pawns all along just to get rid of those smugglers who aren't pulling their weight. I love this sort of thing - plots within plots that, when revealed, force major decisions onto the PCs along with making them question their loyalties.

Can't happen without some hidden backstory.

Put another way, there should always be a reason to look beneath the surface.

What is that but pre-determining outcomes in the fiction, ie, railroading?

Again I say your definition of railroading is far harsher than most - and probably far too harsh to be of any use here given the perjorativity of both the term and the way you use it.

As for this suggestion that I might use some filler encounters while the players "blunder around blind",

If they've no idea or clear plan for what they're doing next, or have found themselves at a dead end due to lack of information, then they're running blind. For example, in the Enlil game noted above, what if they'd gone to Enlil and found nothing of interest or use; then gone on to Olyx, finished up there and got paid but again found nothing of interest or use. Now what will they do? They're at a dead end due to lack of info, so all they can really do of use is head out into space and hope something presents itself...which is where you as GM come in by having something "randomly" present itself.

Same thing can happen in a more traditional sandbox-style D&D game - the PCs simply run out of things to do. They've cleared out everything of note in or near the kingdom they're in, they're not interested in courtly intrigues, they don't fancy taking on the role of local petty-crime fighters and bar-brawl referees, and they can only spend so much time playing pranks on each other. Their only real in-character option is to head off to another kingdom and see what presents itself...unless the DM steps in with her engineer's hat on and steers them toward some adventuring.

Lan-"just like there's always a bigger fish, there's always a deeper plot"-efan

 

[pemerton]

I'm really surprised it hasn't been mapped by the players, and - given its obvious importance - somewhat disappointed it hasn't been mapped out by you at some point. Where, for example, are the stairs connecting the floors?

<snip>

So you don't play out in detail the exploration part between the outdoors and the reliquary?

<snip>

Here's a hypothetical example of what I absolutely want to avoid as DM and cannot stand as a player. We're making our way through some twisty tunnels. The DM describes a series of turns (without referring to a map; she's making this up on the fly), and we as characters are using string and angle measurements to try and map this out as we know our goal lies to the north and we know we were going north when we came in. We're also using water to determine slope but haven't found any yet - it's all about level.

As we're playing this out in detail the DM obliges, and tells us the angles we measure of each turn and twist in great accuracy. What she doesn't realize (because she's making it up as she goes) is she's turning us left about twice as often as she's turning us right, until eventually our mapping shows we've looped back to where we've already been and have in theory met our own tunnel...only there was no intersection there when we went by that place the first time.

<snip>

maps are important from both the DM side and the player side, and often do serve a useful purpose.

<snip>

Hardby has obviously become a key location in that campaign - do you have it mapped out yet?

Hardby is not mapped out. Nor, as I mentioned, is the tower.

Why does it matter exactly where the staircases are?

Look at it this way - probably most of the time, you go through your RPGing never knowing exaclty what NPCs are wearing, what sort of stitching it has been made with, how it might be embroidered, etc. And this causes no problems.

Now if your were GMing for a group of embroidery-obsessed players, who kept track of all this stuff, you'd have to be careful - including avoiding slip-ups, like mixing up your different cultural motifs, or getting your sumptuary laws wrong, or whatever.

But most RPGers aren't that concerned with tailoring, and so it doesn't come up.

Maps are the same. In most of my games (4e combat being an exception), the details of locations simply aren't that important, and are not a focus of play. Even if the PCs were using tools (like plumb lines and the like) to help them with their architectural studies, that would all just be factored in as a bonus on the appropriate check (eg get an advantage die on your Catacombs-wise because you've got a plumbline on your equipment list) with no need to actually map things out, or describe all the minute details.

if they're arriving there to explore the place, clear the monsters out, and take their stuff a map becomes extremely useful.

Sure, but that's a neglibile element in most of my RPGing. The PCs who got to Jabal's tower are either guests, or are looking for one particular thing (on one occasion a spellbook, on another a recuperating mage). There are no monsters to clear out, and they are not bent on exploring the place.

Likewise in Mal Arundak - the PCs befriended the angels, purified them of their Abyssal corruption, and then were shown into the reliquary where they then did what they had gone there to do.

If all they're doing is trying to use the sewers to get from point A to point B and you've already determined that there's a way through the sewers from point A to point B, then a check or two for their navigation might be all you really need

It is the Catacombs-wise check that determines whether or not the character is able to find a path from A to B. If the check fails and no such path is found, it remains an open question whether that's because there is no such path, or rather because the character just failed to find it.

(Ie the GM's state of knowledge mirrors that of the player, which in turn mirrors that of the PC.)

This kind of boggles my mind, in that how else do you know where - say, in the fighting they did with the giants - everyone is, and how far you need to move to get to the next foe? (I just can't do that sort of thing in TotM mode - I need the visual reference).

Think of it this way: in AD&D you can resolve a thief's climbing of a wall without knowing where every, or even any, handhold is. The resolution doesn't depend upon that information.

In Cortex+ there is, similarly, no detailed geographic/tactical input into action resolution - the permissibility of a declared action is assessed by reference to fictional positioning (just as the thief can't climb a wall if his/her hands and feet are tied, so the PC who is surveying the steading from the top of the palisade can't declare an attack against the chieftain in his dining hall); but then resolution is by way of opposed checks.

Next you'll tell me your crew don't track the treasure they find.

In 4e they do - it's part of the game. In BW, treasure is measured in bonus dice ("cash dice"), but there's been very little of that. Mostly the players track their gear.

In Cortex+ loot isn't that important - but when one scene ended with one of the PCs tricking a drow into leading him first to the treasury nd then out of the dungeon, while the other PCs got stuck in the lowest levels, that PC started the next session with a free "bag of gold" asset, which provides a bonus to appropriate action declarations.

But you know they're going to Olyx at some point, so seeing as you can anticipate this and prepare for it why not do so?

<snip>

If you know from prior play they're going to Enlil to bust up a smugglers' base then why not locate and populate and draw up the base ahead of time?

It's established that the interstellar research vessl the St Christopher - which was last seen jumping away from Byron - might be on Olyx, so I've got stats for its crew. But I don't want to stat up the research station, as its nature and inhabitants haven't been established yet in the fiction.

The last (and only) time the PCs staged a quasi-military assault on a base, the geography of the base was, in part, read of the results of the encounter range determination roll. I regard this as just another instance of Traveller's heavy reliance upon random generation of the content of the fiction.

Put another way, there should always be a reason to look beneath the surface.

But that doesn't require anything being written in advance. The requisite content can be generated, using appropriate techniques, in the process of resolving the looking.

If they've no idea or clear plan for what they're doing next, or have found themselves at a dead end due to lack of information, then they're running blind. For example, in the Enlil game noted above, what if they'd gone to Enlil and found nothing of interest or use; then gone on to Olyx, finished up there and got paid but again found nothing of interest or use. Now what will they do?

That's not going to happen in a game run the way that I run it.

There are different ways of establishing a compelling scene, depending on system details. But in Traveller the players would take steps to trigger a patron encounter; and then I (as GM) would make sure that the patron encounter draws play back to where the action is. (This is, in fact, exactly what happened at the end of session 4 - a player had his PC go to the TAS bar to meet a patron, the chart told us said patron was a diplomat, and I - as GM - established him as an Imperial official approaching the PCs on behalf of the PRSI.)

 

[darkbard]

So you don't play out in detail the exploration part between the outdoors and the reliquary?

The kind of gaming pemerton advocates for has as one of its defining desiderata: "go where the action is." If the players have indicated that the story with which they wish to engage is about the reliquary and they have failed no mechanical checks to keep them from exploring the reliquary directly, why must the GM place an additional obstacle in their path merely for the sake of what you seem to consider verisimilitude? The GM can simply describe the outdoor exploration with appropriate flavor elements and cut directly to the action.

Similarly, the players need not engage the size of the bedframes, the quality of the bedding, whether or not there are bedbugs or lice, etc. in the inn at which they rest. The GM simply describes their night's rest and cuts to the next action scene.

Some can. Hardby has obviously become a key location in that campaign - do you have it mapped out yet? I would, at least in a loose form; if only so I could be and remain consistent on what's where each time they visit the place, should such become necessary, and on what's in the town at all.

I know for my part if a party visits a town once and spends some time there they'll learn some things about the place - what temples it has, what guilds it has, some of the pubs - and if they go back there 6 real-time months (or 6 real-time years!) later I'll never remember what they found the first time.

I work in NYC, the city which I've lived in or around for 18 of the past 22 years. I can tell you from real world experience that even with the familiarity I have, any number of times I have tried to find a restaurant or shop or bar that I remember visiting from weeks or months ago only to find that (1) it's closed since my last visit or (2) I was wrong about the location and it's actually two blocks south of where I thought it was.

My point is that absolute, immutable historical accuracy enforced by a map defined to the last pothole is not verismilitudinous in the least in a constantly changing real world, and so trying to enforce such upon your fictional world actually works against what seems to be your goal in verismilitudinous play.

Can't happen without some hidden backstory.

Of course it can! And I think this is exactly the largest gulf in your thinking and that of the style of play pemerton advocates. A failed check by the PC establishes the fiction: The PC fails a Diplomacy check (or whatever mechanic serves a similar role in Traveler, the example under consideration); the DM adjudicates that the reason for failure is because the diplomat with whom the PCs are working is actually a mole for the bioterrorists (or whatever the plot is).

In your example of play, with secret backstory determining the result of checks rather than checks determining the backstory, how would you explain the PCs succeeding at a Diplomacy check against an opponent who is secretly working against the goals of the PCs? Does it require you to change your hidden backstory? And if so, what purpose does it serve to have this backstory predetermined if it's mutable?

 

[Lanefan]

Hardby is not mapped out. Nor, as I mentioned, is the tower.

Why does it matter exactly where the staircases are?

Look at it this way - probably most of the time, you go through your RPGing never knowing exaclty what NPCs are wearing, what sort of stitching it has been made with, how it might be embroidered, etc. And this causes no problems.

Now if your were GMing for a group of embroidery-obsessed players, who kept track of all this stuff, you'd have to be careful - including avoiding slip-ups, like mixing up your different cultural motifs, or getting your sumptuary laws wrong, or whatever.

No word of a lie, I had that player many years ago - she was a dedicated embroiderer and also involved in the SCA. Yes, I had to mind my p's and q's.

Maps are the same. In most of my games (4e combat being an exception), the details of locations simply aren't that important, and are not a focus of play. Even if the PCs were using tools (like plumb lines and the like) to help them with their architectural studies, that would all just be factored in as a bonus on the appropriate check (eg get an advantage die on your Catacombs-wise because you've got a plumbline on your equipment list) with no need to actually map things out, or describe all the minute details.

Where often the "minute details" are also the interesting bits. It's the same principle as telling the DM how you're searching the room and where you're looking (interesting) rather than just dropping a d20 down for a search check (boring as hell).

Sure, but that's a neglibile element in most of my RPGing.

Heh, not in mine. From the players'/PCs' point of view, if it's there, it's probably there to be sacked.

The PCs who got to Jabal's tower are either guests, or are looking for one particular thing (on one occasion a spellbook, on another a recuperating mage). There are no monsters to clear out, and they are not bent on exploring the place.

Were I playing a Thief or Rogue type in that game I'd have probably already quietly explored the place from top to bottom...

It is the Catacombs-wise check that determines whether or not the character is able to find a path from A to B. If the check fails and no such path is found, it remains an open question whether that's because there is no such path, or rather because the character just failed to find it.

Again reducing something that could be detailed and interesting down to a simple die roll.

(Ie the GM's state of knowledge mirrors that of the player, which in turn mirrors that of the PC.)

Player knowledge = PC knowledge: EUREKA! We agree on something!!!

But DM knowledge isn't even part of that equation. The DM knows all; or at least from the player side must appear to know all. That's just how it works, unless (as I said in another post somewhere) you're trying to be a player in the game you're GMing.

Think of it this way: in AD&D you can resolve a thief's climbing of a wall without knowing where every, or even any, handhold is. The resolution doesn't depend upon that information.

True enough.

In Cortex+ there is, similarly, no detailed geographic/tactical input into action resolution - the permissibility of a declared action is assessed by reference to fictional positioning (just as the thief can't climb a wall if his/her hands and feet are tied, so the PC who is surveying the steading from the top of the palisade can't declare an attack against the chieftain in his dining hall); but then resolution is by way of opposed checks.

If there's a combat between 6 PCs and 8 Giants with various participants moving around and a mixture of terrain, I want to know where the tricky terrain is and where the people and monsters are at any given moment. I don't know if Cortex+ has fireballs or an equivalent, but if it does how do I know where everyone is so I don't hit my allies if I-as-player can't see (via a map) what my character sees?

Don't get me wrong - I'm by no means attached to the 3e-4e style grid-based tactical game. I just want a reasonable visual reference as to what is where.

That's not going to happen in a game run the way that I run it.

There are different ways of establishing a compelling scene, depending on system details. But in Traveller the players would take steps to trigger a patron encounter; and then I (as GM) would make sure that the patron encounter draws play back to where the action is. (This is, in fact, exactly what happened at the end of session 4 - a player had his PC go to the TAS bar to meet a patron, the chart told us said patron was a diplomat, and I - as GM - established him as an Imperial official approaching the PCs on behalf of the PRSI.)

Ah, so the game system in effect provides both you and the players an "out clause" if things need to be jumpstarted. Got it.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

The kind of gaming pemerton advocates for has as one of its defining desiderata: "go where the action is." If the players have indicated that the story with which they wish to engage is about the reliquary and they have failed no mechanical checks to keep them from exploring the reliquary directly, why must the GM place an additional obstacle in their path merely for the sake of what you seem to consider verisimilitude? The GM can simply describe the outdoor exploration with appropriate flavor elements and cut directly to the action.

To me, that's just a different form of railroading in a way: jumping straight to the next "scene" without allowing for anything in between.

Hell, for all the DM knows in this instance something en route that the DM thought was irrelevant might have caught someone's attention, sending the party on a different course entirely. But they'll never know, because the exploration sequence was skipped.

And note this happened in mid-adventure, when the stakes were in theory rather high. Low-stakes or no-stakes stuff like this:

Similarly, the players need not engage the size of the bedframes, the quality of the bedding, whether or not there are bedbugs or lice, etc. in the inn at which they rest.

Who cares?

The GM simply describes their night's rest and cuts to the next action scene.

Again skipping the opportunity for PC choice ( = railroad). Why not instead describe their night's rest, narrate the new day's weather, and ask what the PCs are going to do now?

I work in NYC, the city which I've lived in or around for 18 of the past 22 years. I can tell you from real world experience that even with the familiarity I have, any number of times I have tried to find a restaurant or shop or bar that I remember visiting from weeks or months ago only to find that (1) it's closed since my last visit or (2) I was wrong about the location and it's actually two blocks south of where I thought it was.

My point is that absolute, immutable historical accuracy enforced by a map defined to the last pothole is not verismilitudinous in the least in a constantly changing real world, and so trying to enforce such upon your fictional world actually works against what seems to be your goal in verismilitudinous play.

Things change over time, of that there's no doubt. That said, as an example I've been to London (UK) three times as an adult and several more times as a kid or teenager; with about 25 years between the last teenager visit and the first adult visit. I didn't remember much by way of specifics, but I remembered enough that finding my way around the city's core was relatively simple - once I remembered to check for traffic coming from directions I didn't expect!

Major landmarks, such as temples in a D&D city, aren't likely to change their locations very often. And every now and then yes, I'll randomly determine that a shop or tavern or a person they visited last time is for some reason no longer present, to reflect the idea of it being a living breathing place rather than a painting.

Of course it can! And I think this is exactly the largest gulf in your thinking and that of the style of play pemerton advocates. A failed check by the PC establishes the fiction: The PC fails a Diplomacy check (or whatever mechanic serves a similar role in Traveler, the example under consideration); the DM adjudicates that the reason for failure is because the diplomat with whom the PCs are working is actually a mole for the bioterrorists (or whatever the plot is).

In your example of play, with secret backstory determining the result of checks rather than checks determining the backstory, how would you explain the PCs succeeding at a Diplomacy check against an opponent who is secretly working against the goals of the PCs? Does it require you to change your hidden backstory?

Nothing that's happened up to that point changes at all. A minor Diplomacy success might lead to the opponent slipping up or acting oddly; while a heavy success might blow his cover completely. From there, the backstory would proceed as makes sense: if the opponent has allies, at some point they may learn his cover's been compromised and act accordingly; while if the opponent is working alone that secret backstory has pretty much just become open...well, frontstory, if you will.

And if so, what purpose does it serve to have this backstory predetermined if it's mutable?

History isn't mutable*. Anything that's happened before now is locked in; anything that's happening now that the PCs can't affect is locked in; and anything that would happen in the future will happen once the future becomes the present unless something else occurs in the meantime (usually coming from the PCs) that would change it.

* - unless the PCs somehow gain access to time-travel, at which point all bets are off.

Lanefan

 

[pemerton]

A failed check by the PC establishes the fiction: The PC fails a Diplomacy check (or whatever mechanic serves a similar role in Traveler, the example under consideration); the DM adjudicates that the reason for failure is because the diplomat with whom the PCs are working is actually a mole for the bioterrorists (or whatever the plot is).

In your example of play, with secret backstory determining the result of checks rather than checks determining the backstory, how would you explain the PCs succeeding at a Diplomacy check against an opponent who is secretly working against the goals of the PCs? Does it require you to change your hidden backstory? And if so, what purpose does it serve to have this backstory predetermined if it's mutable?

I think the answer is - that check can't succeed. (This is a variant of the notorious chamberlain example from years ago - a good GM, it was said, will veto any attempt by the players to have their PCs persuade the chamberlain to grant them an audience with the king, because verisimilitude and *the plot* demands as much. [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] will have fond memories of that incorruptible, unpersuadable chamberlain!)

If it can, then your (final) rhetorical question goes through with full force.

I've started a thread about "what's worldbuilding for" to try to tackle some of these issues from the point of view of analysis rather than advocacy.

EDIT: I encountered this reply:

A minor Diplomacy success might lead to the opponent slipping up or acting oddly; while a heavy success might blow his cover completely. From there, the backstory would proceed as makes sense: if the opponent has allies, at some point they may learn his cover's been compromised and act accordingly; while if the opponent is working alone that secret backstory has pretty much just become open...well, frontstory, if you will.

This answers [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION]'s question - a successful Diplomacy check gets interpreted in a way that accords with the GM's secret backstory, rather than with the player's intention for the action declaration.

History isn't mutable

But imagination and intention are. I can imagine that the reason an NPC is doing such-and-such is X; but then discover, through play, that it was Y. Charles Dickens rewrote the ending to Great Expectations when his editor suggested the original was too sad.

 

[pemerton]

often the "minute details" are also the interesting bits. It's the same principle as telling the DM how you're searching the room and where you're looking (interesting) rather than just dropping a d20 down for a search check (boring as hell).

<snip>

Again reducing something that could be detailed and interesting down to a simple die roll.

To me, that's just a different form of railroading in a way: jumping straight to the next "scene" without allowing for anything in between.

Hell, for all the DM knows in this instance something en route that the DM thought was irrelevant might have caught someone's attention, sending the party on a different course entirely. But they'll never know, because the exploration sequence was skipped.

Two things:

(1) It's always true that, had I done X instead of Y I might have had more fun. Maybe your group would have had a better time RPGing if you'd spent all your efforts on D&D playing Over the Edge instead!

But to the extent that you're fairly confident that the stuff you did was more enjoyable, to you, then the stuff you didn't do - so likewise for me and my group. I don't think anyone thinks it would have been more interesting to map out some catacombs rather than find out what happens to the balrog-possess brother. (Spoiler: the assassin cut his head off before the PC brother could save him; but another PC did manage to catch a whole lot of his blood in a nearby ewer, and carried his head out of the tower in a chamberpot.)

(2) You write as if there was actual stuff to be discovered in the corridors leading from the PCs' chambers in Mal Arundak to the reliquary. But it's all a fantasy; it exists only in the imagination. The players can only "learn" about such stuff if someone goes to the trouble of making it up, and then telling it to them (at around 100 words per minute for spoken delivery of written text). Which takes us back to (1) - I guess it's possible that that would have been a more fun way to spend our time, but I don't see any actual evidence for that. After all, I've got quite a bit of evidence as to what the players will find interesting, and I've made sure that plenty of that sort of stuff is part of the framing and unfolding resolution of the reliquary scene!

And note this happened in mid-adventure, when the stakes were in theory rather high. Low-stakes or no-stakes stuff like this:

Again skipping the opportunity for PC choice ( = railroad). Why not instead describe their night's rest, narrate the new day's weather, and ask what the PCs are going to do now?

The players say (speaking as their PCs) "Can we see the reliquary?" I, speaking as the angels, say "OK, we'll take you to it." I then start describing the reliquary entrance. That's not railroading. That's framing the scene the players have asked for!

The DM knows all; or at least from the player side must appear to know all. That's just how it works

Huh? That's like saying, to the inventor of Five Hundred, "But you have to have a dummy in an auction card game - that's just how it works!" Let's put aside the fact that that's not how it works at every RPGing table - we could still ask, why should it work that way?

 

[pemerton]

If there's a combat between 6 PCs and 8 Giants with various participants moving around and a mixture of terrain, I want to know where the tricky terrain is and where the people and monsters are at any given moment. I don't know if Cortex+ has fireballs or an equivalent, but if it does how do I know where everyone is so I don't hit my allies if I-as-player can't see (via a map) what my character sees?

How do you resolve a sprint contest in Moldvay Basic or AD&D?

Maybe you roll opposed DEX checks. Or just have each runner roll a D6, adding the individual initiative adjustment. However you do it, you are not going to know where everyone is at any given moment. The rules of AD&D are simply incapable of generating that sort of information; but, equally, you don't need it to resolve the sprint. And if the 18 DEX sprinter rolls a 1 and loses the race, you can easily narrate that as "Achilles loses his footing on some uneven ground he only noticed too late, and falls behind the rest of the pack."

Well, combat can be resolved like that too.

The Cortex+ Heroic resolution system is a bit more intricate than what I've just described, but it's about opposed checks using dice pools built up from character and setting attributes. If a player thinks the CROWDED MEAD HALL might make it hard for giants to get to his/her PC, then s/he can declare actions that make that so (eg by establishing a TAKING COVER UNDER THE GIANT'S TABLE asset).

If a giant succeeds in a check to avoid being toasted by a fireball, then the GM has resources to spend to cause the action to redound upon the PC who undertook it - by default, there are no rules for friendly fire (it's the PC who failed who cops the blowback), but it would be easy to narrate the fireball as nearly frying a friend, and the blowback could then take the form of emotional stress suffered by the PC who hurled it.