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

AbdulAlhazred · Apr 22, 2019

pemerton said:
This is where I think @Maxperson has some assumption in mind as to what an implementation would look like, but isn't articulating it because it hasn't occurred to him that there are other implementations possible in different modes of RPGing.

I'm assuming he's thinking of some form of "critical failure" which imposes a penalty to hit and/or damage. How it would work in a non-D&D system I assume simply hasn't been thought about.

That it could be introduced into the fiction without any mechancial change (as @hawkeyefan suggested; and as you and I have both suggested by narrating a "miss" as the result of a dulled edge) seems not to have been thought about either.

That there is a difference between introducing a new mechancial subsystem and making something a part of the fiction also doesn't seem to have been thought about. I attribute this to the making of assumptions about how RPG systems must be.

I certainly have come (LONG before this thread TBH) that Max only focuses on and really has only internalized one very specific methodology of play. All discussion seems to be filtered through the lens of this one way of playing, and every commentary on play seems to be predicated on this specific game being some sort of universal baseline which need not even be referenced and is just understood to be the only relevant method of play, and one which everyone is automatically completely familiar with and which they are inherently referencing unless some explicit statement conflicts with it (at which point said statement and anything inferred from it must be 'wrong').

I find amusing, and then sometimes mildly irritating. Always I am puzzled. It is almost as if one stumbled upon someone living in the middle of Manhattan who has no idea what lies more than 2 blocks in any direction and refers to his surroundings as if they were the whole of the Earth!

pemerton · Apr 22, 2019

AbdulAlhazred said:
Max only focuses on and really has only internalized one very specific methodology of play. All discussion seems to be filtered through the lens of this one way of playing, and every commentary on play seems to be predicated on this specific game being some sort of universal baseline which need not even be referenced and is just understood to be the only relevant method of play, and one which everyone is automatically completely familiar with and which they are inherently referencing unless some explicit statement conflicts with it

Yes, this is exactly what I mean by referring to unarticulated assumptions about how RPGing "must" be.

AbdulAlhazred said:
It is almost as if one stumbled upon someone living in the middle of Manhattan who has no idea what lies more than 2 blocks in any direction and refers to his surroundings as if they were the whole of the Earth!

Well, presumably there are some Manhattan-ites who have the privilege of living their lives in that very fashion! (I live in a country which is rather peripheral in world terms, but am conscious that there are peripheries of the periphery whose inhabitants have to engage with my situation in a way that I don't have to engage with theirs.)

But one wouldn't expect to encounter those particular Manhattan-ites posting in a "rest of the world" forum. Just stick to the I-heart-NYC ones, and maybe even particular subforums.

pemerton · Apr 22, 2019

Maxperson said:
pemerton said:

What things?

Maxperson said:

So first, his imagination seems stronger, not weaker. He is able to imagine all of those other things that your style doesn't take into account.

Click to expand...

What things?

Click to expand...

Did you read his post? He stated some examples pretty clearly.

I did read his post. He didn't mention "things" that "my style" doesn't take into account.

Here is a recap of the things that were mentioned:

Lanefan said:
But there's a bigger picture to consider: first the easy one, whether the right-hand path being more travelled makes sense with what has been determined in the fiction leading up to this point; and second the harder one, whether that determination now is going to risk leading to things appearing later that should have (or could have) been known or telegraphed sooner.

In a pre-mapped situation the GM [and maybe everyone, depending whether a) the map is already known or b) someone in the party has flight capabilities and went up to scout] will in theory know what both paths lead to before the party get to the junction, and that knowledge will then inform the tracking results. Internal logic is maintained.

Because unless the entire idea of setting exploration is denied to the group, the players don't know what's out there that they haven't seen yet. If for example the GM already knows that the left path leads to an orcish village while the right path leads to a rarely-used dock on a lake then the GM could have in various ways telegraphed or breadcrumbed these things earlier had the opportunity arisen. But if the GM doesn't know these things then she can't telegraph anything; she can't describe elements of the scene that might very logically be there (e.g. that the traffic on the left path is probably all orc) because she has no way of knowing yet that they would exist.

Which of these do you think I haven't thought of? The fictional elements, like orc villages and little-used docks? The storytelling techniques, such as that narration should build on what has already occurred?

I've thought of these things. The first sort are pretty common tropes in FRPGing. The idea of building on established fiction, and certainly not contradicting it, is very commonplace. Keeping it in mind is in fact one of the ways to avoid the inconsistencies that yoiu and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] seem to think are inevitable in "no myth" RPGing.

Maxperson said:
The richness of your game does not invalidate his examples or prevent those sorts of things from occurring in your game. There are many different areas of game play and a game can be very rich in some areas, and deficient in others. I'm sure [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s game is weak in areas that you find important, just like yours is weak in areas that he finds important. That doesn't mean that your game is less rich than his. It's just lacking in areas that he prefers.

I know that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s game is weak in areas that I find important, because he has said as much. For instance, he has made it clear that he authors scenarios and adventures without regard to evinced player interests and PC builds.

But you and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] are making a very concrete assertion about a particular alleged weakness in my game - namely, that my gameplay does (because it must) contain inconsistencies in the fiction that result from "no myth" narration. I'm denying this, and inviting you - by reference to my very extensive posting of actual play reports - to indicate the examples you have in mind.

pemerton · Apr 22, 2019

Maxperson said:
The reasons a DM uses to increase realism can increase it in some areas, even if it decreases it in another, and still result in a net gain to the realism of the situation. When I come up with reasons that make a situation more realistic, I'm making net gains.

I don't understand what point you are trying to make here.

Are you simply saying that one game can be more realistic than another? (Eg compare Heroic tier to Epic tier 4e D&D - only the latter involves heroes who can fall hundreds of feet and walk away largely unscathed.)

That is not what the OP of this thread is concerned with. The OP maks a particular claim: that the GM deciding what the gameworld contains by "logical extrapolation", and hence deciding what the PCs encounter in the gameworld, does not make the game like, or more like, real life. Other ways of doing this - the most obvious being some sort of chance-to-meet-NPCs mechanic (be that Streetwise, or Circles, or a variant of Commune with Nature, or whatever) - are just as, or even more, life-like in the results they produce, and no less like real life in respect of the process.

As for your current focus on weapon degradation rules and disease rules: whether or not introducing these into a RPG makes it more or less realistic seems to depend almost entirely on the details of the relevant subsystem. You mentioned the AD&D disease subsystem: I'm not persuaded that that increase the realism of the game at all, in part because I'm doubtful about the incidence of serious disease that it posits, but more because it produces discordance with other game systems (eg disease make people physically weaker by degrading their stats, but being beaten up to the point of unconsciousness doesn't).

Maxperson · Apr 22, 2019

pemerton said:
I did read his post. He didn't mention "things" that "my style" doesn't take into account.

It's right here...

But there's a bigger picture to consider: first the easy one, whether the right-hand path being more travelled makes sense with what has been determined in the fiction leading up to this point; and second the harder one, whether that determination now is going to risk leading to things appearing later that should have (or could have) been known or telegraphed sooner.

In a pre-mapped situation the GM [and maybe everyone, depending whether a) the map is already known or b) someone in the party has flight capabilities and went up to scout] will in theory know what both paths lead to before the party get to the junction, and that knowledge will then inform the tracking results. Internal logic is maintained.

You don't pre-author, so your style has that inherent weakness. If there are a tribe of orcs down the trail of both your game and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s, only in his game will I be able to find orc tracks down the right path if the tribe has not been authored yet in yours. Once you author the tribe, the lack of tracks is a glaring inconsistency to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]. These sorts of inconsistencies will grow and grow as your game goes on and more and more is authored.

It's a weakness of your playstyle and a strength of his, just as your playstyle has strengths that his doesn't and his has weaknesses that yours doesn't. It's not some slight against you that your style is weak in areas. All styles have strengths and weaknesses. This is just one of yours.

I know that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s game is weak in areas that I find important, because he has said as much. For instance, he has made it clear that he authors scenarios and adventures without regard to evinced player interests and PC builds.

Just as he knows that yours is weak in areas that he finds important. For my part, I'm more forgiving than he is. My game falls in-between both of yours, though probably closer to his.

Maxperson · Apr 22, 2019

pemerton said:
I don't understand what point you are trying to make here.

I'm saying that if I want to add in a bunch of diseases that exist in the real world to my game, that increases the realism. Can I think of all diseases? Of course not. There are more of them in this world than modern science has discovered. That I can't come up with all diseases does not detract from the increase in realism, though. Why? Because prior to that the game also did not have all of them.

No game can cover everything the real world might offer up as a possibility, so my failure to include all possibilities does not make the game more unrealistic in any way. The game was already unrealistic in that manner before I added more realism to it.

As for your current focus on weapon degradation rules and disease rules: whether or not introducing these into a RPG makes it more or less realistic seems to depend almost entirely on the details of the relevant subsystem. You mentioned the AD&D disease subsystem: I'm not persuaded that that increase the realism of the game at all, in part because I'm doubtful about the incidence of serious disease that it posits, but more because it produces discordance with other game systems (eg disease make people physically weaker by degrading their stats, but being beaten up to the point of unconsciousness doesn't).

As I pointed out to you, you don't have to make things mirror real life to increase realism. Nor do you have to account for every possible interaction. To your point above. The 1e disease rules would in fact add more realism to the game as they stand. Would it add MORE realism to the game to make PCs physically weaker if they get beat to the point of unconsciousness? Yes. I don't have to make that change in order for the disease rules to increase the realism of the game, though. Increasing realism is not about mirroring reality, no matter how often you repeat that.

pemerton · Apr 22, 2019

Maxperson said:
The 1e disease rules would in fact add more realism to the game as they stand. Would it add MORE realism to the game to make PCs physically weaker if they get beat to the point of unconsciousness? Yes. I don't have to make that change in order for the disease rules to increase the realism of the game, though. Increasing realism is not about mirroring reality, no matter how often you repeat that.

One reason you are drawing sceptical responses (at least from me, and I'm pretty sure [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] also has this in mind) is that taken on it's own this claim seems to make no sense.

For instance, declaring that every NPC the PCs meet has smallpox would be introducing a real world element into the fiction, but clearly would not make the game more realistic.

When we look at the AD&D DMG disease rules, there are a number of questions that come up: is the incidence of serious and fatal diseases realistic in the pseudo-mediaeval context? is it realistic when we include the existence of clerical magic which makes it easy to purify water and not too hard to cure diseases?

And then, when we compare how the disease rules work to how the generic injury rules work, we get the further question: is it realistic that any debilitated person suffered the debility from a disease rather than (say) a weapon blow?

Your apparent insistence that all these questions are irrelevant, and that any reference in the fiction of a game to some element derived from the real world makes the game more realistic, is very odd.

Maxperson said:
I'm saying that if I want to add in a bunch of diseases that exist in the real world to my game, that increases the realism.

What does "add in" mean?

My Traveller game includes chronic diseases as elements in the fiction: for instance, we have a high-STR/low-END PC whose backstory includes (in order to explain this apparent disparity) chronic heart disease. But there is no mechanical subystem for dealing with this. It's just fiction introduced retroactively to explain a mechanical outcome.

And as I already posted, not any old "adding in" will increase the realism of the game. If every NPC has smallpox, that's not realistic. If every sword breaks every time it is swung, that's not realistic. Etc. Realism isn't just about the presence of certain phenomena: it's intimately connected to their incidence, their imagined genesis, etc.

Maxperson said:
You don't pre-author, so your style has that inherent weakness.

The only "weakness" you've pointed to (by way of bolding [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s post) is that because I don't pre-author I won't have pre-authored material to establish which path is the more travelled. That's self-evident. (Tautological, even.) But you were defending Lanefan's claim that this will lead to inconsistent fiction. That is what [MENTION=9200]Hawkeye[/MENTION] and I are denying.

Maxperson said:
If there are a tribe of orcs down the trail of both your game and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s, only in his game will I be able to find orc tracks down the right path if the tribe has not been authored yet in yours.

This makes no sense. If you go down the right path and observe no tracks, then either (i) there's no village, or (ii) for some reason there are no tracks to find. (Eg it's a village of ghosts.)

Maxperson said:
Once you author the tribe, the lack of tracks is a glaring inconsistency to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION].

But why would anyone author inconsistent fiction?

I mean, yes, inconsistent fiction is inconsistent. That's a tautology too. But why would someone author such a thing?

Maxperson · Apr 22, 2019

pemerton said:
One reason you are drawing sceptical responses (at least from me, and I'm pretty sure [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] also has this in mind) is that taken on it's own this claim seems to make no sense.

For instance, declaring that every NPC the PCs meet has smallpox would be introducing a real world element into the fiction, but clearly would not make the game more realistic.

When we look at the AD&D DMG disease rules, there are a number of questions that come up: is the incidence of serious and fatal diseases realistic in the pseudo-mediaeval context? is it realistic when we include the existence of clerical magic which makes it easy to purify water and not too hard to cure diseases?

And then, when we compare how the disease rules work to how the generic injury rules work, we get the further question: is it realistic that any debilitated person suffered the debility from a disease rather than (say) a weapon blow?

Your apparent insistence that all these questions are irrelevant, and that any reference in the fiction of a game to some element derived from the real world makes the game more realistic, is very odd.

What does "add in" mean?

My Traveller game includes chronic diseases as elements in the fiction: for instance, we have a high-STR/low-END PC whose backstory includes (in order to explain this apparent disparity) chronic heart disease. But there is no mechanical subystem for dealing with this. It's just fiction introduced retroactively to explain a mechanical outcome.

And as I already posted, not any old "adding in" will increase the realism of the game. If every NPC has smallpox, that's not realistic. If every sword breaks every time it is swung, that's not realistic. Etc. Realism isn't just about the presence of certain phenomena: it's intimately connected to their incidence, their imagined genesis, etc.

Coming up with a corner case scenario that DMs aren't going to use doesn't disprove what I'm saying.

The only "weakness" you've pointed to (by way of bolding [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s post) is that because I don't pre-author I won't have pre-authored material to establish which path is the more travelled. That's self-evident. (Tautological, even.) But you were defending Lanefan's claim that this will lead to inconsistent fiction. That is what [MENTION=9200]Hawkeye[/MENTION] and I are denying.

This makes no sense. If you go down the right path and observe no tracks, then either (i) there's no village, or (ii) for some reason there are no tracks to find. (Eg it's a village of ghosts.)

But why would anyone author inconsistent fiction?

I mean, yes, inconsistent fiction is inconsistent. That's a tautology too. But why would someone author such a thing?

Such inconsistent authoring is unavoidable with the style of play you engage in. Or do you really expect me to believe that before any player authors anything in the fiction, you guys stop and go over ever single thing ever authored in that campaign to see if it results in any type of inconsistency and cease that specific case of authoring if it does?

pemerton · Apr 22, 2019

Maxperson said:
Coming up with a corner case scenario that DMs aren't going to use doesn't disprove what I'm saying.

Well, it does disprove that any addition of real-world elements into the fiction will increase the realism.

But the actual point of my example isn't to disprove your claim: it's to show that your claim is underdeveloped, and indeed so underdeveloped as to not be up for evaluation, or even really understanding, by others. Until you explain what you mean by "adding in" real world elements, only you know what you are thinking of.

I mean, [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] and I already gave the example of a D&D GM narrating a miss as due to a dulled blade, which is perfectly possible under the existing D&D rules. And I gaven the parallel Traveller example of explaining a PC's stats as the result of a heart condition. But by "adding in" you seem to have in mind the introduction of some sort of mechanical subsystem (like the AD&D system for disease); which then invites points of the sort that the two of us have made, such as that such systems don't increase realism if they yield unrealistic results in the fiction.

Until you try and explain what you mean by "adding in" real world elements, and why some forms of "adding in" count differently from others, you're not going to get much traction for your assertion. And you're certainly not going to persuade me that my campaigns are "less realistic" than yours or [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s, given that you're both running D&D variants whereas I'm running systems (Burning Wheel, Classic Traveller, heck even Prince Valiant in some respects) that are far more gritty than D&D is capable of being given it's core mechanics of class, level and hit points. And even the non-gritty systems I'm running (Prince Valiant in some of its respects; 4e D&D; Cortex+ Heroic) establish a fiction at least as verisimilitudinous and rich in descriptive details (including dropped weapons, various sorts of injuries, locations and the people who inhabit them) as anything either of you has pointed to in your own games.

Maxperson said:
Such inconsistent authoring is unavoidable with the style of play you engage in. Or do you really expect me to believe that before any player authors anything in the fiction, you guys stop and go over ever single thing ever authored in that campaign to see if it results in any type of inconsistency and cease that specific case of authoring if it does?

Hang on - are you telling me that before you say anything as GM you check it against a written record of every bit of fiction ever produced in your campaign? Or do you rely on memory when doing your prep and when making decisions in the course of play (such as whether or not any sect members are in the teahouse)?

At my tabel we rely primarily on memory but secondarily on notes. (I suspect that this is what [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and you also rely on.)

I believe that much of what you and Lanefan call inconsistency is really ambiguity or uncertainty. For instance, in my 4e campaign there is uncertainty about how old the world is; and about the precise sequence in which certain events occurred before, during and in the immediate aftermath of the Dawn War. But given that only one PC (the deva invoker/wizard, who having become a Sage of Ages has access to all the memories of his previous incarnations) has the possibility of access to such knowledge, and he hasn't attempted to ascertain and document it all, the uncertainty makes sense. And gives the campaign a trueness to life that encyclopedia-style campaign timelines undermine!

Maxperson · Apr 22, 2019

pemerton said:
Well, it does disprove that any addition of real-world elements into the fiction will increase the realism.

But the actual point of my example isn't to disprove your claim: it's to show that your claim is underdeveloped, and indeed so underdeveloped as to not be up for evaluation, or even really understanding, by others. Until you explain what you mean by "adding in" real world elements, only you know what you are thinking of.

It's self-evident, though. The real world elements are the diseases and other rules in the 1e DMG. I said so. Those don't exist in the 5e rules, so you have to add them in.

I mean, [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] and I already gave the example of a D&D GM narrating a miss as due to a dulled blade, which is perfectly possible under the existing D&D rules. And I gaven the parallel Traveller example of explaining a PC's stats as the result of a heart condition. But by "adding in" you seem to have in mind the introduction of some sort of mechanical subsystem (like the AD&D system for disease); which then invites points of the sort that the two of us have made, such as that such systems don't increase realism if they yield unrealistic results in the fiction.

It's possible in D&D if the blade was dull when the players found it, the DM let the players know, and incorporated a mechanical penalty which could cause a miss. But if the blade wasn't dull to begin with, such as being a blade owned by a PC, then it's not a possibility as there are no rules for dulling weapons, requirements to maintain weapons, or mechanical penalties to a dull blade that would cause a miss. Making such a ruling in D&D absent those circumstances creates one of those inconsistencies we are discussing. You now have a sharp blade that missed due to being dull. That's fairly inconsistent.
[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] was talking in general with his statement, not coming up with a D&D specific example. His example fails when talking about D&D, but is something that could work under another system.

Hang on - are you telling me that before you say anything as GM you check it against a written record of every bit of fiction ever produced in your campaign? Or do you rely on memory when doing your prep and when making decisions in the course of play (such as whether or not any sect members are in the teahouse)?

When I used to prep everything, I already had all the consistent information available at my fingertips. Now, as I mentioned just a few minutes ago, I'm more forgiving about things like minor inconsistencies. I have to be since I don't have time to prep everything and do a lot of on the spot improvisation. Due to that improvisation, those inconsistencies crop up, though not as often as if I used a system where I did no advance prep.