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

pemerton · Mar 26, 2019

Maxperson said:
pemerton said:

The suggestion that PCs would acquire their information about the gameworld primarily from interactions in taverns is (to me) a sign of a very particular approach to FRPGing, which frames the PCs as "man with no name"-type wanderers (along the lines of REH's Conan) who have no roots or connections to the world in which they act.

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Who even suggested this? I have had one person ask me if I would use taverns as a possible source, but I haven't seen anyone suggest that they are better than libraries or universities.

Perhaps you didn't understand my point. Mentioning universities and libraries doesn't change it.

My point is that, in real life, for most of human history, most people gather information not from gossip (rumours!) from strangers in taverns, nor from book research, but in virtue of being embedded in real social situations and relationships. The information that an illiterate peasant has about his/her social and natural world outstrips by any imaginable degree the information that the players are going to acquire about the gameworld from play, from being told stuff by the GM, and even by reading the setting sourcebook.

Maxperson said:
AbdulAlhazred said:

Maxperson said:

I've never played RuneQuest, so all I know of it that passage. That passage definitely limits PC knowledge, and disallows the player from using player knowledge for a PC that wouldn't have that knowledge.

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But who decides which knowledge that is?

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Without further rule quoting from RuneQuest saying differently, it would say it has to be the DM. The DM is the one who runs the rules, and that's a rule.

It's not a rule in RQ. Furthermore, your assumption that, by default, the GM gets to decide what happens reveals certain unargued assumptions about how RPGing works.

Here is an extract that I quoted upthread, quoted again:

pemerton said:
Here's some stuff from RuneQuest (Avalon Hill Deluxe Edition, 1993, p 8):

<snip>

Cooperation and Competition
Gaming is social. . . .

<snip>

There also needs to be cooperation between players and gamemaster. Though the gamemaster creates the world and manipulates its details, it's also true that the game remains a game for him as well, and that he likes to have fun playing too. Players should pit their ingenuity against the game world, not the gamemaster.

The gamemaster should be interested in his players' opinions on game matters, and the players should debate rules questions and play opportunities with him. Gamemaster decisions are final, and players must be will to take losses if the gamemaster sticks to his ruling. All the same, strive to work out questions by discussion. Both players and gamemasters should be willing to change their minds if necessary and occasionally adjust the game to the situation at hand. . . .

Simple communication builds enjoyable and understandable worlds for adventuring. The rewards of cooperation are great . . .

That says that the GM creates the world. It says that the players should discuss "play opportunities", that both players and gamemasters should be willing to change their minds and adjust the game to the situation at hand, and that communication builds understandable worlds for adventuring. Nothing in the passage says or implies that that communication is exclusively, or even primarily, one-way.

Simple example: a player is playing a shepherd. It's almost certainly obvious to everyone why that PC can't start an alchemist's shop. But does s/he know which plants, when eaten, cause or cure various ailments? Does s/he know the social structure of the pastoralists who travel through the area? Does s/he know who the headman is of the village two days walk away? Does s/he know the metaphysical meaning of some or all of these things (a very big deal in RQ, when compared eg to most versions of D&D).

RQ answers these questions through a mixture of stipulation and skill checks. Nothing in the rules suggests that the player can't bring his/her own knowledge to bear where it would be relevant. Eg if someone is sick, no rule precludes the player conjecturing that the illness is caused by a spirit, and that perhaps a shaman is needed to drive out the spirit and cure the person. In fact it's hard for many RQ scenarios to progress if the players aren't allowed to bring that sort of knowledge to bear.

And of course, if the game is set in Glorantha than the players can read the section on Glorantha as easily as the referee can! Indeed, they will need to learn something about Glorantha if the game is going to work!

pemerton · Mar 26, 2019

Here's some stuff about "The Advemture" and "Successful Adventuring" (those are the headings used) from Gygax's PHB (pp 101, 109):

When you go on an adventure, you, and in all probability one or more other characters, will go to explore some underground labyrinth or area of land outdoors[i/]. Your Dungeon Master will have carefully prepared a map of the place you and your party are to enter, a map showing all outstanding features of the place, with numbers and/or letters to key encounter/special interest areas. Your DM will give you certain information prior to the odventure - you might have to ask questions of the local populace, or you might have heard rumors or know of legends - so your party can properly equip itself for the expedition, hire men-at-arms, and obtain mounts or whatever in order to have the best possible chance for success in dungeon or wilderness setting. Of course, going about a city or town might in itself be interesting, informative, and dangerous, so a third sort of adventure can occur at any time, the.city or town adventure. These three major types of adventures have elements in common and differences; so each will be described separately. . . .

Adventures into the underworld mazes are the most popular. The party equips itself and then sets off to enter and explore the dungeons of some castle, temple or whatever. Light sources, poles for probing, rope, spikes, and like equipment are the main tools for such activity. And, since none of the party will know the dungeon’s twists and turns, one or more of the adventurers will have to keep a record, a map, of where the party has been. . . . As your party is exploring and mapping, movement will be slow, and it is wise to have both front and rear guards. In the dungeon will be chambers and rooms - some inhabited, some empty; there will be traps to catch those unaware, tricks to fool the unwise, monsters lurking to devour the unwary. The rewards, however, are great - gold, gems, and magic items. Obtaining these will make you better able to prepare for further expeditions, more adept in your chosen profession, more powerful in all respects. . . .

Adventuring into unknown lands or howling wilderness is extremely perilous at best . . .Travel will be at a slow rate in unknown areas, for your party will be exploring, looking for foes to overcome, and searching for new finds of lost temples, dungeons, and the like. . . .

Cities, towns, and sometimes even large villages provide the setting for highly interesting, informative, and often hazardous affairs and incidents. Even becoming an active character in a campaign typically requires interaction with the populace of the habitation, locating quarters, buying supplies and equipment, seeking information. These same activities in a completely strange town require forethought and skill. Care must be taken in a11 one says and does. Questions about rank, profession, god and alignment are perilous, and use of an alignment tongue is socially repulsive in most places. There are usually beggars, bandits, and drunks to be dealt with; greedy and grasping merchants and informants to do business with; inquiring officials or suspicious guards to be answered. The taverns house many potential helpful or useful characters, but they also contain clever and dangerous adversaries. . . .

Preparation for one of these adventures is highly important, and one can lead directly into another sort altogether. . . .

So much for the underworld adventure. Most of what was said regarding successful expeditions there also applies to outdoor and city adventures as well. Preparation and mutual aid are keys to these sorts of adventures also. It is not usually possible to return to home base in the wilderness, but a place of refuge can be found and used in order to rebuild a party's strength. The party should avoid confrontations with monsters which are obviously superior and always seek to engage monsters at an advantage. City adventures are the toughest of all, for they are more difficult to plan and prepare for. Yet with care, and a careful adherence to co-operative principles, they can be successfully handled with the guidelines stated above. Setting out with an objective in mind, having sufficient force to gain it, ond not drawing undue attention to the party in the course of accomplishing the goal should serve to bring such adventures to successful conclusion.

There is a clear "man with no name"-type assumption here, namely, that the PCs are essentially strangers who have no prior knowledge of the places in which they find themselves. This in turn fits with an assumption that play will involve mostly one-way transmission of setting information from GM to players.

And consistent with what was just said, the whole assumption in this text is pawn stance: choices about cooperation, preparation, etc are all based on the game playing priorities of the real people at the table. There is not an iota of suggestion of actor stance. Nor of author stance. The focus of play is on finding the dungeons so they can be looted so that PCs can gain in power. Character in the sense that underpins actor stance doesn't come into it.

Maxperson · Mar 26, 2019

pemerton said:
Nonsense. Pawn stance is a variation of author stance. Both involve a player determining a character's choice/action by reference to the player's real-world priorities. In author stance, there is a second step also, of retroactively imputing a motive to the character to explain the choice/action.

I mean, you can define "pawn stance" however you like, but I'm using it as Ron Edwards does. Edwards makes no reference to "personal knowledge". He refers to a "real person's priorities". Nor does he make any reference to "without a reason in the game". He is talking about the method whereby a player chooses what a character does, not what fiction accompanies or is created by that choice. Obviously if a PC chooses to do X rather than Y, then there exists, in the game, a reason for that (unless the PC is insane). But that fact about the fiction is irrelevant to the question that Edwards is concerned with, which is how is a player making decisions about the play of the game.

I use Actor Stance, though, so you are incorrectly applying Pawn to me, as I pointed out.

The main example provided in this thread has been given by [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]: the player determines that the character chooses to attack the troll with fire because the player knows that trolls are vulnerable to fire (on it's own, this would be pawn stance) and attributes a motivation to the character, namely, "Uncle Elmo told me once that only fire can kill a troll!" (with that second step, we have author stance in the strict sense).

Yes, but I have been arguing against that. That's not how it's done at my table, so it's not Author at my table. No Author at my table = no Pawn at my table.

So that means that you think that it is not necessary for a PC to have relatively richly established knowledge and motivations in order to make play decisions in actor stance? So can you explain how this works? How do shallow/thin PC knowledge and motivations support actor stance?

Because the richness you describe is simply not required. All that is required is making "a character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have." Full stop. Nothing in that sentence says you have to have what you are describing. Playing my way, which fully allows the player to know what knowledge and perceptions the character has before making a decision is sufficient for Actor.

But that's not relevant to the question I asked, which was about how richly establisheda character's knowledge and motivations have to be.

Yes. My answer was not relevant to your Red Herring.

If a character has no background, and the campaign is just starting so the player has no knowledge acuqired via the play of the game, how do you envisage this working?

Well, if you hadn't ignored(again) the myriad of times that I described skills and ability checks as ways to determine knowledge, you wouldn't have had to ask me that question. How about you stop ignoring what I say, and only ask me things that I haven't already answered a dozen times?

Imagine, for instance, a group starting out a campaign with B2 keep on the Borderlands. The players generate their PCs using the rules found in Moldvay Basic or Gygax's PHB. The referee reads the players the opening text about them arriving at the Keep, etc. How does a player decide what his/her PC does?

Ability checks. Class based knowledge(rangers and nature, fighters and strategy, etc). Basic knowledge(trees, what food is, etc.). Exploration. And so on.

In my personal experience, at most D&D tables the players have their PCs "look for the adventure" rather than (say) ask about trading opportunities or look for potential spouses for their PCs. And this is because they are making decisions for their PCs motivated by real-world priorities (in this case, playing a D&D module). That decision might be lampshaded by an attribution to the character of a desire to become rich through adventuring (which takes it from pawn to author stance) but I don't possibly see how it could be actor stance in the scenario I've described.

In my experience, it can be two or all three of those. Adventure is a given. I have had several PCs get married, and many more found love. I have also had several merchant adventurers over the decades. As for Actor, all that's required is a way to get the information, which has been possible in every edition of D&D.

Manbearcat · Mar 26, 2019

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]

Maybe you could detail your thoughts on this Blades mechanic:

FLASHBACKS (p 132)
The rules don’t distinguish between actions performed in the present moment and those performed in the past. When an operation is underway, you can invoke a flashback to roll for an action in the past that impacts your current situation. Maybe you convinced the district Watch sergeant to cancel the Bluecoat patrol tonight, so you make a Sway roll to see how that went.

The GM sets a stress cost when you activate a flashback action.

...

LIMITS OF FLASHBACKS
A flashback isn’t time travel. It can’t “undo” something that just occurred in the present moment. For instance, if Inspector Helker confronts you about recent thefts of occult artifacts when you’re at Lady Bowmore’s party, you can’t call for a flashback to assassinate the Inspector the night before. She’s here now, questioning you—that’s established in the fiction. You can call for a flashback to show that you intentionally tipped off the inspector so she would confront you at the party—so you could use that opportunity to impress Lady Bowmore with your aplomb and daring.

To harken back to my post upthread, the deployment of Flashbacks hooks deeply into all 3 of Discovery, Creation, and Competition; we’re finding out something new about the world, someone besides the GM has introduced compelling content, and the conception/deployment/and opportunity cost evals is a manifestation of skilled play in Blades (meanwhile it hooks directly into the play principle if “Act now, plan later”). As a mechanic, it’s a damn near perfect piece of design for a game.

My intuition is that you’ll find it seriously problematic to the play virtue you’ve espoused in this thread and other threads. However, you may not? And if you don’t, that would be extremely interesting because it would help me understand the nature and limits of the application of the virtue you hold dear.

Can you relay your thoughts in terms of Creation, Discovery, Competition (this one will be particularly interesting to me and probably contentious), and the virtue you’ve been espousing (give it whatever name you’d like)?

Maxperson · Mar 26, 2019

pemerton said:
My point is that, in real life, for most of human history, most people gather information not from gossip (rumours!) from strangers in taverns, nor from book research, but in virtue of being embedded in real social situations and relationships. The information that an illiterate peasant has about his/her social and natural world outstrips by any imaginable degree the information that the players are going to acquire about the gameworld from play, from being told stuff by the GM, and even by reading the setting sourcebook.

When it comes to his garden, work, and so on, sure. Not trolls, though. If trolls were a common part of his world, he would be dead.

That says that the GM creates the world. It says that the players should discuss "play opportunities", that both players and gamemasters should be willing to change their minds and adjust the game to the situation at hand, and that communication builds understandable worlds for adventuring. Nothing in the passage says or implies that that communication is exclusively, or even primarily, one-way.

Nothing I have said implies it's one way, either. The DM being in charge of what would require a roll to know or not know is not communication in general. Nor is it a limiter on play opportunities. The "play opportunities" and "player ingenuity" are just referring to actual game play. The player should use ingenuity try to figure out the smart way to get into the baron's castle, not that he knows the layout of the castle because his old gardener who was never previously mentioned use to garden there. The player should be able to create a play opportunity by being able to decide to go north to become chief of the Snow Barbarians if that's what he decided he wants to do. Nothing there implies that the players should be able to just decide that their PCs know everything they know, and the first portion of that RuneQuest quote strongly implies that the players shouldn't, as the DM is the one who runs the rules.

Simple example: a player is playing a shepherd. It's almost certainly obvious to everyone why that PC can't start an alchemist's shop. But does s/he know which plants, when eaten, cause or cure various ailments?

There's no reason why a shepherd would or wouldn't. That's not shepherd based info. Different kinds of sheep and goats, sure. What plants make the animals sick and should be avoided, sure. General cures and illness causing plants? No way that it would be automatic knowledge. That would need a roll based on something like an ability check, other piece of background info, etc.

Does s/he know the social structure of the pastoralists who travel through the area? Does s/he know who the headman is of the village two days walk away?

Probably. Depends on whether he travels days away very often. Headmen change and if the PC didn't go more than a few miles from home before beginning to adventure, knowing who the headman is for sure would be in doubt. If they traveled to that town often to sell sheep, then it would be a yes unless the headman changed very recently.

Does s/he know the metaphysical meaning of some or all of these things (a very big deal in RQ, when compared eg to most versions of D&D).

As I pointed out, I don't know RuneQuest, so I can't answer that one well.

RQ answers these questions through a mixture of stipulation and skill checks.

Excellent. So just like my game.

Nothing in the rules suggests that the player can't bring his/her own knowledge to bear where it would be relevant.

Eg if someone is sick, no rule precludes the player conjecturing that the illness is caused by a spirit, and that perhaps a shaman is needed to drive out the spirit and cure the person. In fact it's hard for many RQ scenarios to progress if the players aren't allowed to bring that sort of knowledge to bear.

Repeating the incorrect claim that if it isn't precluded, it's included won't make it correct. In an RPG, if something isn't precluded by the rules, it is NOT included in the game at all unless the DM says it is.

As for conjecture, players can assume whatever they like for their PCs about things that the players don't know about. They just can't bring in metagame knowledge such that their "conjecture" isn't really conjecture. It would defy credulity for the PC's "conjecture" to be just "happen" to be correct that often.

hawkeyefan · Mar 26, 2019

I don’t think it would defy credulity any more than many fictional examples I can think of whose hunches or intuitions are remarkably accurate. Sherlock Holmes, Batman, Conan....and many more.

To me, a regular person, it seems a good way to replicate characters who are beyond the norm and who have acces to abilities greater than what’s typical.

Numidius · Mar 26, 2019

"Act now, plan later" motto of BitD is very good. Like a Time coordinate for the Spatial one "Draw maps, leave blanks" of DW, and to achieve a 3D structure of sort: "Ask questions, build on answers" regulating the flow of content intro among all players at the table.

The use of flashbacks is an old practice to speed up things, but IME trad Gms I know don't appreciate it so much, if not at all. The linear, causal, unidirectional sequence of events must be mantained, by them, on all 3 dimensions: temporal, spatial and of information. Not a bad thing per se, but unfortunately leads me to another Numidius play report:

Resuming recently our WFRP2ed game, the whole first session was spent on Previously recap, accountability, filling equip sheets, and a very long speech intro/description by the Gm to prepare for playing. Session ended. The next, we started already on the location, but then instead of a fast scene framing, we had to play the whole initial approach phase, meeting locals Npcs, and extracting info from them word by word, basically.

It's always nice to interact with Npcs, the problem being that the table was by then set in Audience Mode, not really interacting anymore, or declaring anything meaningful. I improvised a situation on my own involving clueless fellow Pcs , to keep the Gm and his Npcs busy, and finally free I could go alone to the location we wanted to be in the first place... risking my character's life and forcing the party to come resque me and engage the meaty encounter after a too long downtime and bland exploration.

Not sure if on my part was Actor or Pawn stance... probably a mix of both, given the situation.

pemerton · Mar 27, 2019

Maxperson said:
the richness you describe is simply not required. All that is required is making "a character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have." Full stop. Nothing in that sentence says you have to have what you are describing.

Again, you may have misunderstood my point. I'm not talking about the meanings of words. I'm talking about how certain human decision-making processes work.

The decision-making process that is inovlved in actor stance is the following: a real person, sitting at a game table, makes a decision/choice for a character in that game by reference not to real world priorities, but rather to that character's knowledge, perceptions, motivations etc.

This simply can't happen if there is not sufficient richness in respect of those fictional mental states.

For instance, sometimes school students are given the task of "finishing a story" which is provided to them, incomplete. Suppose the "story starter" is noting more than the following sentence: Spot rany yapping to the front door!" And suppose the instruction to the student is Write what Spot did next."

I assert that it is impossible to complete that writing task adopting actor stance with respect to Spot. We know nothing about Spot's motivations (does Spot yap when his/her owner comes home? When s/he hears a burglar? Both?), circumstances (is Spot at home? on the loose in the veterinarian's surgery?), etc.

The student who completes that writing task will have to adopt author stance with respect to Spot - fill in details of situation and behviour as the student thinks will show of his/her writing skills, and then impute (retroactively, as it were) the appropriate motivations and beliefs to Spot.

The same applies in RPGing. Suppose that we have a character who is defined as Throngor the 1st level NG dwarven warrior, and the situation is the referee's narration at the start of B2 - which is a description of arrival at the Keep, a last outpost on the borders of civiisation. Now the GM turns to Throngor's player and asks So, what do you do next? This is the same as the writing exercise above: there is simply not sufficient fictional detail about Throngor's mental states for the player to make a decision in actor stance. Is Thronger inclined to seek hire as a man-at-arms? To forswear violence and join a monastic order? To seek to be knighted by the Czstellan? Suppose Throngor learns about the Caves of Chaos, is Throngor inclined to ignore them, on the grounds that they seem to have caused little harm so far? To try topersuade the Castellan to lead an expedition against the Caves? To persuade the local peasants to labour to build additional fortifications to provide protection aginst possible assault?

We all know that, in fact, B2 really only works as a module if Throngor's player (i) has Throngor seek out "adventure", which in classic D&D terms means a dungeon to assault, and (ii) when Throngor's player learns from the GM about the Caves of Chaos, decides to mount a persoanl assault on the Caves. But none of that can be extracted from the fiction of Throngor, 1st level NG dwarven warrior. It's all pawn stance or perhaps author stance if Throngor's player writes in some backstory motivation to do with Throngor's hatred of goblins and personal desire to seek revenge against them.

As I've mentioned a couple of times upthread, the desire to enable actor stance by enriching both PC psychological details and the external gameworld social details was one significant driver of the early "simulationist" FRPGs like RQ and C&S. (Of course they don't use Edward's terminology; it hadn't been invented yet. But designers can respond to states of affairs they don't have labels for.)

Christopher Kubasik, in his Interactive Toolkit essay, notes the tension between pre-packaged adventure design and actor stance (again, he doesn't use the "stance" terminology because it hadn't been invetned yet; but he's talking about the phenomenon nevertheless):

The basic plot form of a story is this: A central character wants something, goes after it despite opposition, and arrives at a win, lose or draw. All roleplaying games involve this basic plot in one form or another.

Dungeon & Dragons fulfilled this requirement brilliantly and simply. Characters wanted experience points and wanted to gain levels. Any other want they might have had – social, political or personal – was subsumed within the acquisition of levels. Did you want social recognition? A greater understanding of the ways of magic? Influence over people as a religious leader? Pretty much anything your character might have wanted was acquired by gaining levels.

Dungeon modules worked for this very reason. A D&D character who wanted to become a lord didn’t go off and court a princess. He became a lord by wandering around dungeons, killing monsters and overcoming traps. The game offered no rules for courting a princess, but did provide rules for becoming a lord at 10th level . . .

Modules disintegrated the moment a player got the bright idea of having his character become a lord by courting a princess. . . .

The motivation behind hitting on the princess rather than crawling through a series of traps is obvious. First, and perhaps most importantly for some, the idea of wooing a princess was more fun than hanging out in a dungeon. Second, just because the rules didn’t say anything about wooing didn’t mean you couldn’t do it. As we all know, the minute an idea pops into a player’s head, he’s going to try it. Third, the goofiness of acquiring the title of lord by looting holes grated against the sensibilities of many players. They wanted to become lords in ways that made sense. . . .

Games released since the advent of D&D have wildly opened up the narrative possibilities of adventures. The dungeon vanished, replaced by the settings of AD&D’s Forgotten Realms, Traveller’s Imperium, Star Wars’ Empire and Vampire’s World of Darkness.

Unfortunately, characters in many games still have to stick it out as a group. Since dungeon crawling no longer provides a focus for group activity, characters are often hired, as in Traveller or Shadowrun, or wait around for something bad to happen that they can put an end to, as in most super-hero games. . . .

Scene-based modules engage characters in a goal from the start (steal the money, stop Dr. Dread’s Doomsday Ray, get Mr. Johnson his data, make peace with the Prince of Chicago) and offer a set of options of where to go and with whom to speak to fulfill the goal.

The problem with scene-based modules is that characters may go anywhere and do anything. Unlike location-based adventures, where it’s understood that everything needed to succeed is geographically at hand, a story-based game suggests that the next vital Clue/person/conflict could be anywhere. This often leads characters to visit places and talk to people (or make assumptions of any kind) not explicitly covered in the module. The GM who bought the module (so she wouldn’t have to make up maps and NPCS) suddenly has to make up both on the spot. . . .

[N]o pre-generated adventure can be complete because characters have different motivations.

Remember the adventurer who left the dungeon to woo a princess? Before he did that he assumed that if he trashed enough dungeons, a princess would be his once he got to 10th level. His motivations and desires were subsumed within the group activity of exploring dungeons.

Let’s say this guy – Charise d’Amor, a lovable rake who’s trying to marry a rich princess – is your character. You arrive at the gaming table and see the GM crack open a new pre-generated adventure, “The Quest of Tallian’s Orb.”

A busy wizard hires your group of adventurers to steal back a magical orb that keeps the fair land of Tallian safe from terrible monsters. He tells you what he knows about the theft of the orb. You’re on the doorstep of a scene-based module. You know the goal, the clues and the options of what to do next.

Let’s assume the author has done a good job. The clues presented are intriguing, not obvious. The characters encountered are amusing and full of life. The scene descriptions help the GM evoke the proper mood. Every, thing is going fine.

And then the princess shows up. The module’s author just put the princess in because she was a fun character who would have some information about the orb’s location. You see, the guy who wrote the module didn’t know your character is Charise d’Amor.

Suddenly your character doesn’t care about finding the orb. The only reason he’s out searching for an orb in the first place is to pull together enough cash for a suitable set of clothes and an introduction to royalty. But now he’s got a princess right in front of him. You could play “out hours of flirting with the princess. The story suddenly fractures into tiny pieces.

Does everybody wait around for Charise to woo the princess? Do the others leave your character behind? Do you blow the princess off to stay with the group, even though your character’s motivation is right in front of him?

The flipside of Kubasik's observation is that when B2-type adventures are working (and there are a lot of adventures of that sort), it's precisely because the players are not making decision in actor stance but rather are making decisions on the basis of real world priorities like keep the group together, don't cause badl blood with the GM by ignoring the adventure, earn XP, have an exciting rather than a boring session, etc.

Maxperson said:

pemerton said:

magine, for instance, a group starting out a campaign with B2 keep on the Borderlands. The players generate their PCs using the rules found in Moldvay Basic or Gygax's PHB. The referee reads the players the opening text about them arriving at the Keep, etc. How does a player decide what his/her PC does?

Click to expand...

Ability checks. Class based knowledge(rangers and nature, fighters and strategy, etc). Basic knowledge(trees, what food is, etc.). Exploration. And so on.

<snip>

As for Actor, all that's required is a way to get the information, which has been possible in every edition of D&D.

Click to expand...

Some of this doesn't quite make sense, For example, both ability checks and exploration require action declarations, which correpsond to choices/decisions made by the character. Players who declare such actions at the start of B2 are declaring those action in pawn stance - that is, they have real world priorities (namely, to learn what the GM's adventure set-up is) and because of thsee priorities they declare actions for their PCs (like "We hang out at the tavern to collect rumours") which will help them with those priorities.

Perhaps because of [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION]'s misunderstanding about the relevance of Edwards's account of stance to your concerns about "metagaming", you think that there is some important connection between stance and metagaming,. But there is not. Stance is about the basis on which, and method whereby, players make action declarations for their characters. And D&D adventures depend upon the players making those decisions on the basis of certain well-known real world priorities.

Maxperson · Mar 27, 2019

Manbearcat said:
To harken back to my post upthread, the deployment of Flashbacks hooks deeply into all 3 of Discovery, Creation, and Competition; we’re finding out something new about the world, someone besides the GM has introduced compelling content, and the conception/deployment/and opportunity cost evals is a manifestation of skilled play in Blades (meanwhile it hooks directly into the play principle if “Act now, plan later”). As a mechanic, it’s a damn near perfect piece of design for a game.

My intuition is that you’ll find it seriously problematic to the play virtue you’ve espoused in this thread and other threads. However, you may not? And if you don’t, that would be extremely interesting because it would help me understand the nature and limits of the application of the virtue you hold dear.

So, yes, it would be problematic in my game. I can see the design intent for Blades, though, and it seems like a cool mechanic for that sort of game. I would actually like to try out that sort of game to get a good feel for those mechanics in that sort of game. I'm also curious what a "Stress Cost" is.

Can you relay your thoughts in terms of Creation, Discovery, Competition (this one will be particularly interesting to me and probably contentious), and the virtue you’ve been espousing (give it whatever name you’d like)?

I'm really not used to thinking in these terms, so bear with me if I seem off.

Again, I don't mind the players creating things for the game. I allow them to give details about towns they come from, NPCs in their backgrounds, etc., and even come up with these things after game play begins if it makes sense with their already given backgrounds. This mechanic gives the players much greater creation ability as they can come up with just about anything they want, so long as it doesn't contradict something. Assuming the "Stress Cost" isn't a limiter. For my D&D game, though, such an ability would be incredibly powerful at getting around and going through things, and would be a vehicle for metagaming. It's not the sort of thing I and my players would really enjoy for the game.

As for discovery, I'm really not sure what we are discovering with this ability. The player is making up what he wants, so it seems that nothing is really being discovered by him. To me discovery means finding out something you didn't know about, rather than creating something you didn't know about. Finding a map vs. drawing one.

The competition here seems to be player vs. DM. The DM comes up with an problem, the player flashes back and creates something that while it doesn't undo the event, does allow the player to sidestep or defeat it. I personally dislike player vs. DM situations. I may set up challenges and the players are trying to overcome them, but we are doing so as a team, rather than the player making moves to counter my moves.

Lastly, I'm not sure what you mean by "the virtue I've been espousing."

Maxperson · Mar 27, 2019

pemerton said:
Again, you may have misunderstood my point. I'm not talking about the meanings of words. I'm talking about how certain human decision-making processes work.

The decision-making process that is inovlved in actor stance is the following: a real person, sitting at a game table, makes a decision/choice for a character in that game by reference not to real world priorities, but rather to that character's knowledge, perceptions, motivations etc.

This simply can't happen if there is not sufficient richness in respect of those fictional mental states.

I understand and I'm saying you are wrong. If I have no background, and nothing else to go off of, and the DM says to me, "There is are light woods ahead of you," that is sufficient for me to achieve actor stance. My character has knowledge of the woods, has perceived the woods, and I can based off those things inform the DM as to what action I take. If I declare that I got into the woods and look for a trail through," that is an actor stance declaration.

This "richness" you describe doesn't need to be present.

For instance, sometimes school students are given the task of "finishing a story" which is provided to them, incomplete. Suppose the "story starter" is noting more than the following sentence: Spot rany yapping to the front door!" And suppose the instruction to the student is Write what Spot did next."

I assert that it is impossible to complete that writing task adopting actor stance with respect to Spot. We know nothing about Spot's motivations (does Spot yap when his/her owner comes home? When s/he hears a burglar? Both?), circumstances (is Spot at home? on the loose in the veterinarian's surgery?), etc.

This is a bad example. In a story who cares about stance. Stance is irrelevant. In an RPG, if a player is playing Spot, he will determine the motivations and such. Most likely though, the DM is just going to describe to the players that the PCs see a Dog yapping in front of a door." and the PCs can use that knowledge and their perceptions to make an actor stance declaration about what they want to do.

The student who completes that writing task will have to adopt author stance with respect to Spot - fill in details of situation and behviour as the student thinks will show of his/her writing skills, and then impute (retroactively, as it were) the appropriate motivations and beliefs to Spot.

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Writing a book is not roleplaying, so you are comparing apples and oranges here.

The same applies in RPGing. Suppose that we have a character who is defined as Throngor the 1st level NG dwarven warrior, and the situation is the referee's narration at the start of B2 - which is a description of arrival at the Keep, a last outpost on the borders of civiisation. Now the GM turns to Throngor's player and asks So, what do you do next? This is the same as the writing exercise above: there is simply not sufficient fictional detail about Throngor's mental states for the player to make a decision in actor stance. Is Thronger inclined to seek hire as a man-at-arms? To forswear violence and join a monastic order? To seek to be knighted by the Czstellan? Suppose Throngor learns about the Caves of Chaos, is Throngor inclined to ignore them, on the grounds that they seem to have caused little harm so far? To try topersuade the Castellan to lead an expedition against the Caves? To persuade the local peasants to labour to build additional fortifications to provide protection aginst possible assault?

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We don't need to know his mental state. We only need to know what he knows and perceives about the situation. You are ascribing more to actor stance than is required or included in the Forge's definition.

We all know that, in fact, B2 really only works as a module if Throngor's player (i) has Throngor seek out "adventure", which in classic D&D terms means a dungeon to assault, and (ii) when Throngor's player learns from the GM about the Caves of Chaos, decides to mount a persoanl assault on the Caves. But none of that can be extracted from the fiction of Throngor, 1st level NG dwarven warrior. It's all pawn stance or perhaps author stance if Throngor's player writes in some backstory motivation to do with Throngor's hatred of goblins and personal desire to seek revenge against them.

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You don't need to extract it. Throngor perceives that the caves exist and knows where they are. His actor stance action declaration in response to that knowledge and perception is to mount a personal assault on the Caves. That's all you need. More richness like motivations and such make things smoother and more enjoyable, but they are not necessary for actor stance to occur.

Dungeon & Dragons fulfilled this requirement brilliantly and simply. Characters wanted experience points and wanted to gain levels. Any other want they might have had – social, political or personal – was subsumed within the acquisition of levels. Did you want social recognition? A greater understanding of the ways of magic? Influence over people as a religious leader? Pretty much anything your character might have wanted was acquired by gaining levels.

Dungeon modules worked for this very reason. A D&D character who wanted to become a lord didn’t go off and court a princess. He became a lord by wandering around dungeons, killing monsters and overcoming traps. The game offered no rules for courting a princess, but did provide rules for becoming a lord at 10th level . . .

Modules disintegrated the moment a player got the bright idea of having his character become a lord by courting a princess. . . .

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I disagree. The adventuring prince/noble is a trope. My PC could marry the princess and still go off and search for the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth with his buddies in his free time.

I also never viewed the titles in the 1e PHB as something the PCs knew about, but were rather for the players' benefit. Level is an out of character concept, and the title structure was silly in the sequence given to us. You're a veteran before you are a swordsman. You go from hero to swashbuckler somehow, and then back to superhero? It made no sense as in in-character thing.

Let’s say this guy – Charise d’Amor, a lovable rake who’s trying to marry a rich princess – is your character. You arrive at the gaming table and see the GM crack open a new pre-generated adventure, “The Quest of Tallian’s Orb.”

A busy wizard hires your group of adventurers to steal back a magical orb that keeps the fair land of Tallian safe from terrible monsters. He tells you what he knows about the theft of the orb. You’re on the doorstep of a scene-based module. You know the goal, the clues and the options of what to do next.

Let’s assume the author has done a good job. The clues presented are intriguing, not obvious. The characters encountered are amusing and full of life. The scene descriptions help the GM evoke the proper mood. Every, thing is going fine.

And then the princess shows up. The module’s author just put the princess in because she was a fun character who would have some information about the orb’s location. You see, the guy who wrote the module didn’t know your character is Charise d’Amor.

Suddenly your character doesn’t care about finding the orb. The only reason he’s out searching for an orb in the first place is to pull together enough cash for a suitable set of clothes and an introduction to royalty. But now he’s got a princess right in front of him. You could play “out hours of flirting with the princess. The story suddenly fractures into tiny pieces.

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Or I could recover the orb to gift to her father for her hand. Or I could recover the orb and save the country and impress her into marrying me. Or... There are lots of ways that could go that don't fracture the story.

The flipside of Kubasik's observation is that when B2-type adventures are working (and there are a lot of adventures of that sort), it's precisely because the players are not making decision in actor stance but rather are making decisions on the basis of real world priorities like keep the group together, don't cause badl blood with the GM by ignoring the adventure, earn XP, have an exciting rather than a boring session, etc.

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That's simply not true. I can go through that module making each and every decision based on what my PC knows and perceives about the situations at hand. That's sufficient for actor stance and the module will work just fine. I can even mix it up with a princess or whatever like I demonstrated above. While you can fracture a story with something like a princess, you don't have to, and in fact it's quite easy not to.

Some of this doesn't quite make sense, For example, both ability checks and exploration require action declarations, which correpsond to choices/decisions made by the character. Players who declare such actions at the start of B2 are declaring those action in pawn stance - that is, they have real world priorities (namely, to learn what the GM's adventure set-up is) and because of thsee priorities they declare actions for their PCs (like "We hang out at the tavern to collect rumours") which will help them with those priorities.

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They are not in pawn stance. As I pointed out, all you need is knowledge and perception of what is happening right in front of you in order to make an actor stance declaration based on character knowledge and perception. Pawn can't happen without author stance, and you certainly aren't authoring anything in the beginning of that module.

This idea that you have to have incredible richness in order to achieve actor stance results the achievement of actor stance being a snipe hunt. Nobody can know everything that a PC would know, or know all of his motivations, etc. There will always be something missing, which would prevent a completely accurate(based on all knowledge, motivations, etc. of the PC) declaration. Obviously you don't need to know 100% of everything the PC knows and desires in order to make a decision from actor stance, so we know that making decisions without full knowledge is completely acceptable. Given that, there is no good reason to think that we need "rich" knowledge anymore than we would need 100% knowledge. You can certainly play it that way for your game, but simple knowledge and perception of what is happening around the PC is all that is required for actor stance to be achieved.

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

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