Judgement calls vs "railroading"

pemerton said:

My claim is that the flexibility of D&D is overrated, and that the non-flexibility of (say) BW is exaggerated. Hence I point to constraints in D&D, and to variants of BW.

The idea that D&D is flexible because there are lots of house rules, variants etc out there doesn't change my mind. I'm aware of a reasonable number of them.

But other systems can be modified and house-ruled too. The Cortex+ Hacker's Guide is full of such stuff for MHRP, Leverage and Smallville, for instance - I used some of those ideas to run my MHRP/Cortex Fantasy Hack.

When I look at 5e, the variants are mostly around PC build rules and some elements of combat action resolution. But at it's core it doesn't look that flexible. Just to give one example: the rate of PC failure in BW is, to me at least, very striking. It's a core feature of the system, and a lot of other system elements are built around it. It's very hard for me to see how 5e would be modified to deliver that sort of experience in any coherent way.

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Fair enough. I never said that any other game is not flexible, though. All I said was that D&D is flexible.

pemerton said:

Further thoughts on illusionism and railroading:
But (within the fiction) the skulker does have a motivation or goal! It's just not known yet.

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That's the illusion right there. Because the skulker's motivation has not yet been determined, so it is assumed he has a motivation of some sort....the players may guess at that motivation, which in turn could give the GM ideas on what to do....

It's not concrete....it's mutable.

pemerton said:

The short answer is "yes". Qv the OP example of finding the vessel; the discussion, somewhere upthread, of the players making a Catacombs-wise check to see if their PCs successfully navigated through the Hardby catacombs to find a way into the tower where the events of the OP took place; and the example, somewhere more recently upthread, of a MHRP/Cortex Fantasy player making a check to establish a Secret Door asset.

In the Adventure Burner, Luke Crane discusses the players checking Architecture to see whether their PCs discover a secret door into a citadel they wish to infiltrate. The failure of the check estalishes (among other things) that there is no secret door to be discovered.

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See this is where I find the system as you've described it to be a bit flawed. It sounds to me like the players are free to attempt to introduce solutions to their problems via this method. They find themselves cornered in a room in some way? Oh, let's check for a secret door! Let's have the character with the best chance at such a check be the one to do it!

It seems like this method could be easily abused to create deus ex machina type events that allow PCs to bypass challenges. And it also seems like it allows in some ways for players to really play to their characters' strengths rather than their weaknesses.

Now, the players may be reasonable players who are not likely to abuse these rules....but it just seems like that would be open to multiple opinions and interpretations.

Imaro said:

Interesting... is this through specific moves? And if so what is the play procedure for introducing these

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Everything the GM does is through moves. In fact, once play begins that's really his only tool since he doesn't get any dice.

Let me digress and discuss moves a little first. In general, player moves are usually really generic. I find it better to think of a player move as a defined resolution mechanic that the GM helps the player pick from based on what the PC is trying to accomplish. "My character cuts the bottom of a vine and swings across the chasm" becomes a Defy Danger move with specific attributes involved for the roll.

The GM's moves are different than a player's, of course. Both sets are often very generic, but the GM's are even more so. Rather than a move of "Defy Danger" like a player may choose, the DM gets moves like "Reveal an Unwelcome Truth" or "Use up Their Resources". The GM makes a move whenever a player rolls a failure OR when the players are waiting for something to happen (or if the situation is irresistible -- like a character says "Piece of cake. What could possibly go wrong?"). GM moves are designed to keep the action flowing and don't really represent much more than the typical narration and action/reaction of the environment most games have.

Digression over. Let's suppose a fight between the PCs and a guard breaks out. One of the PCs attempts to hit the guard with a weapon (this is the Hack and Slash player move), but the player rolls a total of 4 on 2d6 + Strength. Oops, a complete failure result. The GM gets to make a move. He might decide the guard strikes back (Deal Damage move), raises a horn to signal the rest of the band (Show signs of approaching threat), turn tail and run (Shows signs of approaching threat, Put someone on the Spot if they get a shot to interfere, or Change the Environment into a chase), or the guard may have a specific move defined in the stat block that is appropriate.

Now if the player had rolled 7 - 9 instead of <=6, the GM doesn't get a move. The guard takes damage and something happens to the PC because of the partial success. The typical side effect is the PC takes damage as the guard hits back, but it can be any GM move specifically targeting the PC that failed that makes sense within the situation.

So if the same group is having easy success at the gate and the GM gets an opportunity to play a move, perhaps the PCs hear the tumult of people scattering and see the prize they've come for being taken down one hallway (Offer an opportunity/Offer an opportunity with cost). as the camp scatters as best it can.

I'd also be interested in understanding the ways in which that deviation is accomplished.

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It comes back to the GM being in control of the developing fiction and moves. Moves are defined in two categories: Hard and Soft. A hard move has immediate irrevocable consequence like taking damage, losing gear, etc. A Soft move adjusts the situation the PCs find themselves within often ramping up the danger of potential consequence of further failure. The general expectation is the GM uses a Soft move to get the players moving and a Hard move most other times especially in reaction to failures and partial successes. But there are no strong rules around whether the GM should use a Hard or Soft move since Soft moves are often a reasonable environmental response.

The primary way I'll call "Lead the horse to water and force it to drink". One of the GMing principles for Dungeon World is "Play to find out what happens". You're not supposed to plan too thoroughly and let the fiction go where the play experience takes you. But let's say I'm a GM who really really wants a particular scene to occur. Let's say I just watched Slither or Alien and I want the party to bring an outsider into the group that is acting as a host to a terrible evil so I can have it explode open at an inopportune time.

I want the inclusion of the Trojan Horse to be the PCs idea so that they will be caught off guard by the event when it does happen. Since I'm in complete control as to how the fiction responds and the scene unfold I can lead the group to the base situation. I design the Trojan Horse to be something that looks pitiable and something one or more of the players or characters is likely to respond to -- a sick pregnant woman, a lost and starving hound, whatever is appropriate and when the PCs try to approach/aid the creature I make a show of asking for a Move to successfully tend/befriend the Torjan Horse expecting at least a partial success and simple inclusion in the group from that point forward. The player fails the move. Now the expectation is I as GM will make a Move to reflect that failure and keep momentum going. As a move in reaction, it should be a Hard move resulting in a change where the gambit the PC was pursuing can't pay off. But I want it to happen so I make a Soft move. Instead of the creature dying/running off in the night/attacking or whatever, I introduce a secondary threat and give the PCs a chance to save themselves AND the Trojan Horse. If they fail again, I can continue to use a Move that doesn't prevent the adoption of the Trojan Horse into the group until such time as the group finally succeeds or I give up as my interference grows too blatant. If I gave up, I can simply introduce a new Trojan Horse in the next couple of scenes until I get the result I want.

Tony Vargas said:

Hit points/damage are one of D&D's less inflexible mechanics - they can represent anything that keeps the creature from being defeated, and anything that pushes it closer to defeat.

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But "represent" here just means colour. It has no teeth.

It's not a coincidende that nearly all the early fantasy RPGs that react against D&D do so by abandoing the hp model, instead opting for some sort of wound/death spiral system.

And the hp mechanic produces endless debates about eg is it good or bad RP for a player whose PC has a loaded crossbow pointed at him/her to ignore the threat and suck up the attack.

Of indie games that exhibit this sort of "flexibility", in the sense of very loose connection between mechanics and colour, I would put HeroQuest revised at the top. Because it takes the hit point approach and generalises it across the whole framework of resolution (not just combat).

No serious sim system (eg RQ, RM, C&C, BW stripped of its overlays) is going to be flexible in that particular regard, because the whole point of those systems is to tightly anchor colour to resolution mechanics, so that the process of resolution also, ipso facto, establishes what is taking place in the fiction.

Tony Vargas said:

I thought you considered D&D a sim game?

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Not really. At least, not by the standards of RM or RQ. (And I should probably be putting C&S in there too, to complete the trifecta of "classic" sim games, but I don't know it very well.)

As I've often posted, hp and saving throws (as Gygax explains in his DMG) are fortune-in-the-middle resolution systems. They don't model any particular fictional process. Likewise the action economy. And one of 4e's great achievements is to really take hold of this by both hands and build the game around this mechanical premise from the ground up.

As I've also often posted, one of the things I like least about 3E is that it tries to meld a rather process-sim skill and combat manoeuvre system onto a wildly non-sim core combat mechanic (action economy and hit points), and then tops this off with non-sim, level-driven DC setting with an overlay of sim (ie the game makes no real effort to tell you what having a 40 DEX or a +30 natural armour bonus actually means in the fiction - the latter contrasting oddly, for instance, with the maximum +15 or so bonus available from the best magical plate armour in the game).

5e's bounded accuracy deals with some of the issues (eg the DC setting) but not others.

hawkeyefan said:

See this is where I find the system as you've described it to be a bit flawed. It sounds to me like the players are free to attempt to introduce solutions to their problems via this method. They find themselves cornered in a room in some way? Oh, let's check for a secret door! Let's have the character with the best chance at such a check be the one to do it!

It seems like this method could be easily abused to create deus ex machina type events that allow PCs to bypass challenges. And it also seems like it allows in some ways for players to really play to their characters' strengths rather than their weaknesses.

Now, the players may be reasonable players who are not likely to abuse these rules....but it just seems like that would be open to multiple opinions and interpretations.

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My issue with the whole secret door thing is that it makes it so that the PCs will always find every secret door. If they succeed, they find the secret door. If they fail, there was no secret door there to fail to find. That stretches believability too much for me. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s playstyle creates those kinds of situations too often for my liking.

Tony Vargas said:

5e which is, of course, very DM-empowering, and also much less player-empowering, but between the prior two WotC editions in ease of DMing, but with the 'hard' part of DMing being more a matter of taking responsibility (the issue Manbearcat was getting at) for the success of the game rather than from needing to master/manage the system like in 3.x/PF

<snip>

that sense of responsibility is an issue I think gets ignored when people complain about 5e being 'too easy' or 'imbalanced' or 'prone to illusionism' or whatever - that the DM has a responsibility, as a direct consequence of being Empowered, to make his campaign challenging, to give each PC their time in the sun, and to deliver a good play experience.

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[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], were you thinking of GM Empowerment vs Responsibility in terms of Agency with respect to a game like 5e (very high Empowerment, tempered by equally great Responsibility) vs a game like pemerton presents BW to be* (ie player-driven with lesser or shared-with-players Empowerment, but less/shared Responsibility for the success of the game, was well)?

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I can't speak for [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] (obviously) but I find the premise of the question a bit strange.

The GM has a lot of responsibility for the success of a game of BW. From the rulebook (Revised p 268; Gold p 551 - the text is the same in both editions):


Personally I find it very demanding.

The next page of both rulebooks goes on to discuss "the sacred and most holy role of the players", who "have a number of duties", to:



Those duties are demanding too. [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] has talked, upthread, about "release valves" and about inviolability of character concept. Well, BW - as you can see - insists that players put their characters on the line. Characters might change in ways that noone foresaw (changes of ability; changes of colour; changes of goals).

There's no analogue, in BW played as per the above guidelines, to just rolling up some PCs and taking on White Plume Mountain. (This is why Burning THACO is a significant departure. It drops much of the player and GM responsibilities mentioned above, and instead is all about light-hearted, beer-and-pretzels module bashing.)

I wouldn't think of it as having very much in common with either playing or GMing 3E/PF, except in some very surface level ways. There is not a whole lot of PC-build rules and lists of spells to remember and adjudicate. The dmeands all relate to establshing and engaging with the fiction.

Imaro said:

Ok so looking at this and referencing the DW SRD... the player (because remember I was speaking to GM/DM creativity) decides what the out come will be from their move either less damage, spent ammo or danger.

Now let's first look at the example where the player picks less damage... With this choice I see no area where the GM gets to express any type of creativity.

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the DM is constrained by the fact that he doesn't get to actively pick which of the consequences (even within the parameters of the 3 set forth for the specific roll in the game) affect the player.

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The player chooses danger, well the GM does get to flex his creative muscles in that he gets to decide the type of danger and the fiction surrounding it but again he is constrained.

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Perhaps I've missed the point, but this seems an odd place to argue about GM creativity. In D&D, if the player makes a roll to hit, all the GM gets to do is either leave the target's hp unchanged (on a miss) or reduce the hp tally (on a hit). (Having read on a bit, I see that [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION] has made much the same point.)

And if we think about non-attack moves declared by a player, like climbing - well, the GM gets to declare "You go up", "You stay put" or "You fall". When [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] once suggested that, using DW-type principles, the GM might instead narrate an essential item falling into the crevasse, I remember this provoking a degree of controversy.

So what GM creativity are you envisaging being opened up by player action declarations that is missing from DW?

Imaro said:

IMO...most indie games are curated to produce a specific experience. As an example the "moves" and appropriate responses in the Apocalypse World games are curated... nothing about them strikes me as particularly authentic or organic. They are artificial constructs used to classify and limit the actions of the participants in order to produce a game about X.

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"Curated" is not a synonym for "designed". And no one is claiming that the moves in PbtA games are authentic - the claim is about the play that these systems tend to support or push towards.

Because this thread is lacking in contention and points of disagreement, I'll just put this out there: one function of the D&D alignment system, in at least some of its applications, is to shield the players from having to fully deal with the ramifications of the choices. For instance, instead of having to wonder (in character) "Having done that terrible thing, am I still a good person?" there is a little entry on the PC sheet that assures them that they still are.

Another example in the same general conceptual space: Faith, in BW, is bound by "intent and task". The task is speaking a prayer: so, at the table, the player has to speak the prayer his/her PC is making. The intent is the deisred (mechanically defined) outcome, which also determines the difficulty of the check, although (as per Revised p 231; Gold p 523) "Outlandish intents are a fine cause for massively increased obstacles and a little divine wrath." Having to actually speak your prayer puts the player of the faithful character in quite a different position from the player of the D&D cleric: there is no "hiding" behind spell slots and V, S, M/F components. You have to give voice to your faith.

And yet another example, in a different conceptual space, but that relates back to the account of the GM and player roles that I have posted in response to Tony Vargas: the GM is expected to respond to what you, as a player of your character are pushing towards, and if you check fails the GM is expected to thwart that intent. Upthread, [MENTION=6802765]Xetheral[/MENTION] described this as unduly adversarial. Personally I don't find it to be such (otherwise I wouldn't play the game), but it is putting emotions, and conceptions of the character and the fiction, on the line. There is nothing like an alignment system, a pre-written scenario, etc to serve as a buffer or a "release valve" for these issues.

pemerton said:

Literally speaking, this is impossible in a typical RPG: the player is dependent upon the GM presenting the fictional situation, narrating the actions of NPCs present in that siutation, etc.

In the example you provide, here is the framing:

​

The difference between this - as you present it - and my preferred approach is that the action seems to be being driven by the GM's concerns and interests in the fiction, rather than the players'.

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That's not the way I look at it. It's not driven by my concerns. It's driven by the world and what makes sense for the people in it. Yes, as the DM I have a hand in the authoring of the world. But I'm presenting "just the facts" - it's entirely up to the players to decide where they go and what they do.

PC: I want to buy stuff

DM: No problem Waterdeep has stuff. What skills will help you with this?

PC: I'm an ex-merchant.

DM: OK, you can tell that some people are selling forgeries (expected in a large city), and the price is higher than usual.

PC: Can I get a better price?

DM: Only at one place, everybody else held firm.

PC: I wonder why

DM: Rumors of civil war in Calimshan

I don't really see how this is "driven by my concerns." It has some potential adventure hooks, but other than the hooks, those adventures haven't been written. If they take one, then we'll see where it leads.

I see it as being driven entirely from the PC's concerns. The PC is the one that says they want to go buy the silk, and their questioning is what leads to additional hooks.

The reason I say I don't see it as "framing the scene" is because I'm specifically not trying to make the scene interesting, or tying it into the motivation of the PCs. I'm not trying to make it uninteresting, I'm just not actively trying to steer it in any specific direction. What I get out of the BW/DW recommended approach (which may be incorrect) is that you're always trying to tie every scene into the motivations and story of the PCs. To me that sounds like the story is being driven by the DM's concern - or their interpretation of what the players/characters are looking for.

My goal is to present the world uncolored by my wishes in regards to story line/fiction. I love detailing the world itself, and the motivation of the others that live their. But all of that is still just scenery and color until the PCs interact with it.

pemerton said:

From my point of view, that's one way of getting at the distinction between GM-driven and player-driven play. As I said, the approach you favou seems to mean that it is the GM's conerns and interests that underping the GM's framing and narration.

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And I think that a DM-driven game is characterized by the DM writing story arcs and attempting to keep the game within that story arc. Although it doesn't always require railroading, it's quite difficult to have a DM-driven game that doesn't involve railroading. Although I have some input on the character's story arcs regarding NPCs like family members (especially extended ones) and history, the rest of my preparation and story arcs are written about the world around them, without involvement with the PCs.

When the PCs intersect with these story arcs, they then have the control over the story. Yes, I still have control over the NPCs, and the decisions they make will write a part of those story arcs too. But those are driven by the NPCs established goals and personalities, and the logical reactions they will have to the PCs involvement.

Of course, I've had some players that don't contribute much to any story arc. These are the types of players that I find don't play in a sandbox style well. They need more to hang onto from a story arc, and in particular they have generally been most interested in a more epic style story arc. I can accommodate that as well, and the last campaign morphed more and more into that as the players involved changed. But it's not my preferred approach, because I think that the collaborative story is much better. I just have different thresholds as to what the players author and what they don't.

pemerton said:

Well, you're the one who described an angry owlbear protecting its cubs - which seemed to suggest conflict. And I didn't say anything about combat. The only two times the PCs in my 4e game encountered a bear, they tamed it. Based on your account, your - non-4e game -seems to be the one in which the players lean towards combat.

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I described an angry owlbear which is a potential conflict. It's an obstacle to potentially be overcome. They can run away, they can try to calm it down, they can fight it, whatever.

Most people I know agree that 4e put combat front-and-center. That doesn't mean that you can't run a 4e game without combat being a focus. Nor does it mean that a non-4e game won't involve combat.

The fact that the players chose combat this time doesn't tell you anything about the rest of the campaign. In addition, this particular encounter really altered their approach to encounters, and when they would actually resort to combat.

I don't see any connection between this, and the question of whether or not the GM is "going where the action is". Unless one is assuming that the action doesn't involve the normalcy of the world and considerations of humanity - but what is the basis for such an assumption?[/QUOTE]

Perhaps I'm not explaining it well. My point is that "going where the action is," at least as I've seen it explained, is that you skip past the boring parts. The idea of framing scenes like a movie or TV show. Each scene has a beginning, middle, and end, and once you reach the end, you jump ahead to the next scene.

The scenes are when something "interesting" happens in the fiction. That things like the traveling from one place to another, the exploration in the dungeon with empty rooms, etc. basically anything that doesn't have an encounter, a decision point, or moving the fiction forward, is a scene to be skipped.

The scene framing (at least the way I think about it) comes into play because of that construct.

For example, If you're following me with a camera, and I get up, put on my gun holster, I sit down for breakfast, then call my wife, who asks me to get some stuff at the grocery store, which I write down on a pad of paper on my desk, that shows the name of my private detective company at the top, then put on my coat, and I walk out my front door, then get in the car, drive to a client's, have a conversation, go to the hardware store, the pharmacy, meet a friend for lunch, stake out an office building, watching several people enter and exit over the course of hours, taking pictures, taking notes, go to the grocery store where a villain attacks me, there isn't really any need to frame the scene. The narrative is continuous and flows from one "scene" to another. More importantly, you probably aren't expecting the attack in the grocery store.

On the other hand, you might start with me getting out of the car at the grocery store. The camera pans up so when I'm leaning to get out of the car, you see the gun holster under my coat. You've framed the scene - I'm carrying a gun, and there will probably be a use for it in the grocery store, or you wouldn't have shown it to me so obviously.

When the violence happens in the grocery store, the expectation is that the gun will come into play. But in the first scene, that's just a routine "getting up to go to work" which happens to involve a gun, the expectation in the scene is different.

Yes, both are technically scene framing. And one could argue that the first one is just a really long frame. But eventually it's long enough that it's not a frame, it's just part of the life of the character. Sure, waking up, getting dressed, getting breakfast, etc. establishes a normalcy, that life isn't really all that different for me than anybody else. More importantly, the attack isn't even necessarily expected at that point. There's no framing that points to a specific, violent encounter.

The boring, mundane part of life makes the character more human, you don't expect the violent encounter, and it has a greater impact when it happens. I see lots of advice to skip all of that. That's not to say that you can't gloss through some of it. Breakfast doesn't have to be watching him eat the whole thing, for example. The stakeout can show the passage of time based on how much of my coffee is drunk, etc. But what I'm not doing is deciding, as the DM, when the scene ends, and what we skip. Again, that sounds more like a DM-driven game, where the DM is deciding what's important and what's not. I'm also not waving a flag and saying, "pay attention, something important is happening here, or we wouldn't be here."

I do think that there are a lot of good approaches that have been mentioned here from those style of games. As I was writing out the market scene, it occurred to me that I give the player a lot of leeway on describing their past and how that will help with the current scenario. Likewise, when they meet somebody that their character knows from their past, I give them a lot of leeway in describing their relationship, how they feel about each other, perhaps some key events that explain why they feel that way about each other, etc. So I do let the players write a lot more at the table than I have given credit. Overall, I don't think we're all that far apart in our approaches, other than I like to have a really well detailed world ready for the PCs to explore.

pemerton said:

When I look at 5e, the variants are mostly around PC build rules and some elements of combat action resolution. But at it's core it doesn't look that flexible. Just to give one example: the rate of PC failure in BW is, to me at least, very striking. It's a core feature of the system, and a lot of other system elements are built around it. It's very hard for me to see how 5e would be modified to deliver that sort of experience in any coherent way.

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I do see a lot of that - new races, new classes, etc. I find that a lot of the home-brew that is showing up holds little interest for me too. Most of the UA stuff hasn't excited me terribly either, although there's lots of stuff I have stolen in part. But for a different group of gamers it's very popular.

My 5e PHB Home Rules is 123 pages now. It covers character creation (limitations based on abilities, reworked races that support how they are different in the world, traits, etc., I don't have "build rules" like how to make the best fighter, etc. And I hope that the choices are meaningful, and not always easy to make), reworked classes, feats, equipment, movement, armor (including higher ACs and damage reduction), rules that support the different types of weapons (rapiers aren't great against plate, for example), combat (called shots, tactics based on fighting instead of a grid), magic (to tie it into the world better, and including rules on research learning spells, casting spells you haven't mastered, interrupting spellcasting, etc.), crafting magic items, healing, conditions (particularly in regard to addressing things such as pain, exhaustion etc.), separating short and long rest abilities from resting, along with including rules regarding sleep, or more specifically lack of, being awakened, etc. No initiative in combat, injuries, etc.

Also, failure is much more common in my game. For example, our combat system is based on the idea that people wear armor because it offers very good protection. Tactics, based on positioning and endurance among other things, is really important to winning a combat. But monsters are also tougher. Like the giant in Game of Thrones picking somebody up and slamming them into a wall. Hit points are capped at level 8-12 (depending on race) and only Constitution bonuses are added as you gain levels after that. So combats require much more thinking than 5e (which is pretty much hit first and the most frequently). It's bringing it back to the gritty, deadly combat that I remember of AD&D (at least how we played it). Combat is more about survival than just being an obstacle to the treasure and a source of XP.

So on the one hand, your chance of surviving is somewhat better, but any other creature wearing armor has the same benefits too. So it's harder to kill your opponents too. One of the things that I like least about 5e is how easy combat is (in most cases you hit at last 40%, but often more like 60% of the time), I like that it's fast, and it can be swingy, but overall the assumption is that the PCs will win, and win fairly quickly. The other thing is the very fast advancement.

Advancement is very, very slow as well. And since there are level caps based on ability scores, that can have an impact too. With armor being more effective, even low level characters make a difference. 1st and 2nd level characters are nearly as effective as 8th level characters in combat, since only a +1 proficiency bonus separates them. They have fewer hit points, of course, but the way hit points work in the game it's not as much a hindrance provided they can survive a combat. Armor proficiency is based on background and region. Every able-bodied person in the village is trained in the use of several weapons and armor up to mail armor.

Yet, at least to me, and my players, it still feels like 5e. It's feeling a lot like AD&D too (one of my goals), but because almost all of the mechanics are based off of existing 5e mechanics, that's what it feels like, mechanically. The exhaustion track and death saves are used extensively, for example. Combat is quite different in many ways, but also easy to understand. It's very modular, and you start with the basics and add layers as the character improves as they gain levels.

This isn't really all that different than what I did in AD&D (which was also very easy to homebrew, although far from consistent which is part of why I was modifying it), 2e helped simplify some things, and it wasn't difficult to move our rules to 3e either. We were happily on the battle mat and lots of modifiers approach that started with 2.5e and continued until 4e. It was virtually impossible to continue with what we had in 4e. It was just too different.

5e is much simpler, but with a relatively small number of mechanics (some of which come from 4e, and are very good - mechanics were generally a strong point of 4e).

That's why I find D&D as flexible. It is capable of supporting many different play styles, from minor changes or additions, to very significant modifications, all without breaking the system. Is it perfect? Of course not. Does it benefit from being the game with the most history and the largest base? Of course. If you're counting variations, pretty much any d20 book released is a variation of D&D.

Does that mean other systems aren't variable? No. But, at least based on what I'm seeing in this thread, and also by looking at BW vs DW and other variants, there's a more narrowly defined core. As you've stated several times, the way I play D&D would break the game in BW. I don't think the opposite is true. While attempting to play BW/DW with D&D rules would be difficult. But my understanding is that it grew out of a particular way they played OD&D. In which case it's a also a variant of OD&D. And in reality, the flexibility of D&D also includes OD&D, BECMI, AD&D, all the way to 5e.

Even if you stick with only TSR/WotC published material - there is an enormous amount of variations from OD&D and AD&D alone simply by including the alternate rules published in Dragon magazine.

pemerton said:

Further thoughts on illusionism and railroading:

It's true that fictional events, unlike events in the real world, are authored. But how does this tend to show that some approach or other to RPGing is illusionism?

Illusionism requires an illusion. There's no illusion in acknowledging that the fiction is authored. If anything, wouldn't it be illusionistic to somehow pretend that the elements that make up a fiction aren't authored, but rather are the result of the (purely imaginary) causal processes taking place (as authored) within the fiction?

But (within the fiction) the skulker does have a motivation or goal! It's just not known yet.

If the GM had already decided what it is, then (as I have talked about upthread) to the extent that the skulker becomes a focus of play at all, it is the players trying to find out what is written in the GM's notes.

If the GM doesn't know - at that point - what the skulker's goal is, then if the players engage with the skulker as an element of the fiction, some sort of motivation or goal for the skulker will emerge out of play. Eg, in the 4e game, at a certain point I decide that skulker is engaged to the baron's niece. I obviously couldn't have made that decision until it was established that there was a baron, so this was months of play (more than a year, I would guess) after the first occurrencdes of the yellow-robed mage as an NPC. This established new backstory about him, which informs what his motivations are. These emerging motivations (i) provide colour and framing, and (ii) answer questions that arose from earlier play ("What exactly is the skulking wizad's plan?")

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Overall I agree with most of this. I disagree with the "players trying to find out what is written in the GM's notes." Or I guess it's the sense that you (or others) seem to consider that a negative. If the players are fighting a skulker, they may just be trying to survive the battle. They might not be giving any consideration beyond that, and may never give any consideration to it. Whether I have notes or not.

Just like creating the motivation on the fly isn't better or worse, neither is creating it ahead of time. Nor does that mean that the player have any interest in finding out what's in my notes. They remain interested in the world, the fiction, and whether I have it pre-written or not is (in my mind) irrelevant. Just as having it prewritten doesn't mean that it will actually come into play, nor that it will necessarily restrict my options as a DM as the scene unfolds.

Where it is a problem, is if they DM works to ensure that the players decide to learn what's in the DM's notes. That is, if the DM has prepared something so tries to push the play to ensure that his hard work will be used.

The reality, as far as I'm concerned, is this: The DM is providing the motivation for the skulker. Whether the DM predetermines that, improvises it, uses some sort of combination of the two, or even predetermines it, then changes it as better alternatives present themselves, is all good.

As a DM I certainly can't know or plan for everything ahead of time. I might have a motivation, if not, I'll have to improvise.
I won't know what the PCs are going to do, or where the fiction will lead for the evening. So I might need to change something.
I don't agree that the skulker has to relate to the rest of the campaign's fiction, but it doesn't mean it can't either.

And in regards to [MENTION=61721]Hawke[/MENTION]yfan - there are quite a few people in the world that think that's exactly how the world works. Some people believe in fate, and that their lives are essentially predetermined (not saying I do, but I won't deny others the right to their beliefs). Of course, in the real world, each person is their own author. In that case, there isn't an overarching DM-being that's authoring everything, but they are taking on that roles. This isn't to turn this thread into a discussion about this. Just pointing out that like gaming theory, there are a lot of perspectives on how life works, and we may both be wrong.

Having said that, what is a simple fact is that a DM has a limited amount of time to prepare stuff, without having full information as to where the adventure will lead for the evening. If you don't want to be railroaded, then the DM has to rely on things like improvisation, and sometimes changing what they were thinking ahead of time. Can you run a game without these sorts of things? Yes, but I personally don't enjoy when I have to run a game like that (due to participant preferences) because it greatly limits my options to provide options for the players/characters.

One could eliminate the "authoring" by using an entirely randomly determined dungeon and event generator. But that is still authored in the sense that there area limited number of options on the table, and somebody had to decide what those were.

hawkeyefan said:

That's the illusion right there. Because the skulker's motivation has not yet been determined, so it is assumed he has a motivation of some sort....the players may guess at that motivation, which in turn could give the GM ideas on what to do....

It's not concrete....it's mutable.

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But even in real life, aren't people's motivations mutable? Isn't it possible under whatever circumstances that they'll change their mind, or learn something, or decide that the risk isn't worth the reward, or whatever?

Regardless, pre-determining everything that can possibly happen (including random ones) is an awful lot to put on the DMs shoulders.

[MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION]

The basics of the techniques outlined in Apocalypse World work well in pretty much most games. Amongst D&D Versions I think they work best in B/X. 5e would probably come next, although I would strip out Inspiration and Feats. They could be made to work decently with 1e or 2e (without all the crazy supplements). I know from experience they work really well with Stars Without Number which is a B/X clone. I would not use them with 3e because of all the active management needed to make the rules work. I also would not use 4e because 4e works best as 4e. Basically the more tightly wedded to particular mechanics that require DM intervention and the rest cycle the less well it works. You really do not want to worry about things like balancing encounters and adventuring days. That probably speaks to my own preferences for handling time though. I feel like the specific principles should be tuned to what you're after though.

Burning Wheel is a different story though. The specific techniques are intimately tied into its mechanical features. It is a highly integrated design. I feel like Burning Wheel should be played as Burning Wheel.