What is *worldbuilding* for?

hawkeyefan said:

I think maybe as a default assumption, sure, but I don't see why it must be so. It could be something as simple as the player wanting to play a character from a far off land. I look at that and then ask for details about that land. Let the player provide them...if he doesn't want to, then I will.

Honestly, I try to get my players to put as much into the world as possible. It helps invest them in the world and in the game.

Click to expand...

More than that, when Throttleneck Dwarffist says they come from a long and proud linage of dwarven warriors, I don't want to responsible, as DM for executing his vision. It is far easier to tell the player to tell me a little bit about this proud lineage of dwarven warriors, what are his parents names, does he have siblings, who did he train with, what was their family name (the Dwarffists I guess?) and so on and so forth.

I tend to favor players filling in the little details, while I keep track of the big details. I've no real desire to let a player author an entire continent or countryside for example, but if Billy wants to come from a backwater fishing town, I'm more than happy to let him fill in that sort of thing.

Lanefan said:

No, but the PCs are seeing their causal powers at work.

Again - and how many times do I have to repeat this - look at these events through the eyes and perception of the PC rather than through the eyes and perception of the player.

And yes of course the DM has to generate - and then maybe narrate - the fiction that comes between cause A and result B, just like she narrates anything else that happens to or around or in reaction to the PCs.

Lanefan

Click to expand...

This focus on PCs confuses me. I'm not sitting down at a table full of friends to enjoy a game of D&D with Grog the Half-Orc, Gilladian the one-handed dwarf fighter, and the rest of the crew. I don't care if they are thrilled or not! In fact, as GM, I narrate horrible things happening to them all the time that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy in real life!

Ovinomancer said:

Firstly, thanks for engaging the concepts I tried to explain. That's very welcome.

Okay, I see that I went a bit to general and maybe skipped a few steps, because you're talking a bit past the point I was making and why @pemerton's argument fails. Let me expand a bit using what you referenced, as boardgames are a fantastic metaphor to explain the thinking.

Firstly, the claim was that fiction doesn't exist -- it's not a real thing, it's imaginary, and, as such, it's really only the act of authoring that fiction that's a real thing. This is important because @pemerton's argument revolves around authoring. To relate this to boardgames, it would be like saying that the rules of a boardgame don't exist, the are not real things. The only thing that is real is making moves in the game, because you don't rule, you make moves.

@pemerton goes on to use the framework above -- that authoring fiction is the only real thing, to say that therefore authoring one fiction is equivalent to authoring different fiction -- they're the same act, and, and here's where he skips a number of steps, therefore changing the fictional orc to dead is the same as saying there's a map in the study. However, the steps he skips are the rules applied to how it's okay to author fiction. For @pemerton's examples, those rules are that the authoring adheres to the established fiction, that it adheres to the pre-defined genre logic, and that it adheres to the concepts that it should always revolve what certain authors want over other authors (this last being player action declarations vs DM fiat). To relate back to boardgames, @pemerton wants to say that both moving your pawn one space forward is just as legal as moving your knight in an 2x1 L. What he skips is that this is true in the game of chess, but not in the game of checkers -- that you can play different games with different rules and that those rules are subjective and not objective things -- they are imaginary restraints on allowable moves, just as the conventions of an RPG are imaginary restraints on how authoring occurs.

For some reason @pemerton misses this crucial point to his own argument -- that it's the subjective restrictions on what's allowable that determine the usefulness and legality of moves. @pemerton so loves a certain set of games that he applies the rules of those games to other games and becomes confused when confronted with games that use different rules. In a way, it's like @pemerton really loves his chess, and when confronted with the move of jumping in checkers, which has the same board, the same number of pieces, the same general concept as chess, stops and asks, "What's jumping for?" When explained, he says, "but that's doesn't make any sense, why should I have to wait until the opponent moves into a space where I can take his piece, and why does that mean I have to move past him. What should be happening is that I can move my pieces according to their unique abilities and take whatever piece I want, so long as it's withing my abilities, by moving into their space?" He's applying a different game's rules.

When this is pointed out, he then retreats to the argument that the rules are fictional constructs and don't really exist, it's the moves that matter and that moving your pawn forward 1 is just as legal as moving your knight in an L. He, again, applies the rules of the game he prefers when he presents this argument, which defeats his argument because it hinges on his preferred rules and doesn't allow for other rules to be equally valid.

As far as agency, yes, your example is largely devoid of agency. The decision to regarding the door being only to open it or not, and the results being being told what's behind the door or doing nothing is an example of very low agency. I think, for this reason, it's a bad example, as what's happening is that people are bringing in larger assumption sets of their playspace and not understanding that that those assumptions aren't universal. For example, in a style where there's a set dungeon, and set encounters, then opening that door is a part of a larger agency to engage that dungeon in the order you wish, and you might have many tools to bring to bear on your decision making on how to do that. In that context, opening that door might be very fraught with agency due to things you've already found or that your very low on resources and opening a new door may bring salvation or ruin. On the other hand, if the game you're playing is one that centers on things the players have indicated are of interest to them and on situations that engage those with stakes, then, sure, that door might just be set dressing and the players shoudn't even be faced with a choice to open it or not -- it's not the crux of the scene. Or maybe it is, but because of things brought to the table.

The point of that example is to show that opening a door as a move in a game is something that, absent any other rules or conceits, is hard to evaluate. It's really the rules you bring to the situation, those completely fictional rules, that turn opening a door into something loaded with agency or trivial and banal. If you only look at the door from one point of view, you'll only see the value of it from that point of view. Someone else may have a completely different opinion of that door and the impact of opening it.

Click to expand...

I think you may be selling [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] a bit short. He's not saying 'checkers is a silly game' or misunderstanding that you play a different game than he does. He started the thread asking a question about what the purpose of certain 'rules' in a certain type of RPG are for. Now, he may be interpreting them in terms that he understands, but I think that cuts both ways as certainly there's been some interpreting his ideas in the lens of 'classic DM-driven play' (to try to coin some sort of name for it, please substitute something better if you don't like it).

Also I think there was a bit of cross-posting, as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] also elaborated on what I said in terms of the difference/similarity of the orc vs the map as fiction. Now, I will note that in terms of that elaboration you could still simply say "the rules of my game are that they're different situations, players get agency in combat that they don't get in exploration" but its valid to point that out and ask WHY (and that may actually be a part of the question of world building/DM content generation too for that matter).

Anyway, I don't think anyone is 'not getting' you, or that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is being either sloppy nor employing some form of rhetorical art in cleverly ignoring some key point. He's driving at a certain question, that's all. The notion that different games are all potentially valid rules sets and different from each other AFAICT is not a bone of contention here (though I skipped a good bit of the middle of the thread, maybe it was at some point).

AbdulAlhazred said:

This focus on PCs confuses me. I'm not sitting down at a table full of friends to enjoy a game of D&D with Grog the Half-Orc, Gilladian the one-handed dwarf fighter, and the rest of the crew. I don't care if they are thrilled or not! In fact, as GM, I narrate horrible things happening to them all the time that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy in real life!

Click to expand...

That's what role-playing is, though: it's pretending to be your character. Everything that happens in the game world, the player has to look at it from the perspective of their character in order to figure out what the character would think about it, and how they would act.

The physical process in the brain, by which role-playing occurs, is that one person (the player) pretends they are in the same situation as another person (the character); and whatever your brain spits back as what you would do, that's your best guess for what they would do in that situation. The fact that the character doesn't exist is not actually relevant to the role-playing process. Humans are usually pretty good at modeling other humans and predicting their behavior, as long as they know what's going on with them and they can imagine themselves in that situation; it's a byproduct of an evolutionary arms race where modeling other people gives you a comparative fitness advantage, and all of us are survivors of that competition. (It's also why it can be difficult to play as characters that are substantially not human - you need to re-filter all of your thoughts to correct for your anthro-centric bias.)

But it's also the direct cause of one of the major conflicts between role-players and story-tellers. Since story-tellers treat characters like fictional entities in some sort of novel, they don't really care about whatever traumas they inflict upon those characters; having the fighter's loved-one be kidnapped by terrorists and then killed in front of him is just dramatic story-telling that gives him suitable motivation. To a role-player, if you're pretending that your loved-one was kidnapped by terrorists and then killed in front of you, that means your brain has to actually configure itself to replicate that scenario; from a biological perspective, your brain becomes something like the brain of someone who has gone through that horrible experience. Whatever trauma you visit upon the character, it is also directly felt by the player (albeit mitigated somewhat by distance).

For the purpose of the player doing the role-playing, the character is a real person in almost every way that matters. The brain which is telling you what Grog the Half-Orc wants to do is the brain of Grog the Half-Orc in a very meaningful way.

hawkeyefan said:

I don't think the DM needs to be neutral about the party when designing adventures and so on. I think it's probably best if he designs things with the specific players and characters in mind.

I get your approach. It's a bit more classic in that you have an idea for an adventure and it's the same no matter who comes to try it. Much like the old modules. Nothing wrong with that.

Click to expand...

It is much more ancient and fundamental than that. In the true Gygaxian model of play the DM is NEUTRAL ARBITER when it comes to actually adjudicating the action. He's also author of the environment, but it is actually DIRTY POOL in Gygaxian terms to construct elements of the dungeon which favor or disfavor a specific character (its OK if specific skills that character has prove useful, that's different). It becomes favoritism.

I think in the end you can trace most of the preferences of people in [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s camp back to elements of the roles associated with player challenge exploration/puzzle play. AD&D (2e specifically) advocated moving away from that mode of play, but it left in place most of the mechanical structure, so the roles and associated concepts culture persisted and took on new meaning in the context of more open-ended story focused play.

In Gygax's formulation the DM was referee and the world was a game board, or even in a sense a battlefield. Much like the referee role in Chainmail, and especially in extended wargaming campaigns, one of the referee's main jobs was to maintain the 'fog of war'. So, in a 2e context the DM's role persisted but changed, so that he became the author of a story, a fiction that was inherent in the structure of the adventure and which was played out by the players moving their characters through it. The player's role basically didn't change from OD&D, they were supposed to use cleverness and expert play to get through the tough parts of the adventure, the climaxes and such.

So, you ended up with the hidden information adventure story kind of setup. Problematically 2e lacks any sort of rules for the players to assert any real control in this story. In the puzzle dungeon their simple agency as their character alter-egos was enough. They decided to push ahead, go back, check for traps, hire a sage to decipher the map, etc. In the story (basically the same as the APs that are popular today) that agency is not always sufficient. The story can really only play out as variations on success or failure to move along the set plot (it may have a small number of branches, but logistically many complex branches are hard to do in a pre-authored story).

2e is, and I think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has stated this before and I agree with it, an incoherent game. It espouses a type of play and a set of goals which its mechanics are incapable of delivering.

Saelorn said:

That's what role-playing is, though: it's pretending to be your character. Everything that happens in the game world, the player has to look at it from the perspective of their character in order to figure out what the character would think about it, and how they would act.

The physical process in the brain, by which role-playing occurs, is that one person (the player) pretends they are in the same situation as another person (the character); and whatever your brain spits back as what you would do, that's your best guess for what they would do in that situation. The fact that the character doesn't exist is not actually relevant to the role-playing process. Humans are usually pretty good at modeling other humans and predicting their behavior, as long as they know what's going on with them and they can imagine themselves in that situation; it's a byproduct of an evolutionary arms race where modeling other people gives you a comparative fitness advantage, and all of us are survivors of that competition. (It's also why it can be difficult to play as characters that are substantially not human - you need to re-filter all of your thoughts to correct for your anthro-centric bias.)

But it's also the direct cause of one of the major conflicts between role-players and story-tellers. Since story-tellers treat characters like fictional entities in some sort of novel, they don't really care about whatever traumas they inflict upon those characters; having the fighter's loved-one be kidnapped by terrorists and then killed in front of him is just dramatic story-telling that gives him suitable motivation. To a role-player, if you're pretending that your loved-one was kidnapped by terrorists and then killed in front of you, that means your brain has to actually configure itself to replicate that scenario; from a biological perspective, your brain becomes something like the brain of someone who has gone through that horrible experience. Whatever trauma you visit upon the character, it is also directly felt by the player (albeit mitigated somewhat by distance).

For the purpose of the player doing the role-playing, the character is a real person in almost every way that matters. The brain which is telling you what Grog the Half-Orc wants to do is the brain of Grog the Half-Orc in a very meaningful way.

Click to expand...

Eh, I don't entirely buy that. I mean, sure, RP can and does work as you say to some extent. However that doesn't make RP ALL THERE IS TO AN RPG. Its a game after all for one thing, and you could play it for a whole variety of reasons. Beyond that, the RP part need not be the entirety of the game. I mean, I have no problem imagining (and have played in) games where I was RPing some character and using my agency as a player to help throw twists and difficulties in the path of the character I was RPing. Sure, I identify with the character, but if I didn't want adventure and the adversity and etc that goes along with that why would I play D&D? If I only wanted to endlessly triumph in my play, then why would I again play D&D instead of some game where I didn't ever risk failure and nothing bad happened to anyone.

Now, I think its reasonable to ask just exactly what sorts of things you want to RP. I can think of some types experiences I'm not particularly eager to explore in a game which is supposed to be entertaining. Maybe either some aspects that might logically be present in such games are glossed over or left out. Its a fantasy world, we don't have to make it TOO realistic, sure. Likewise we usually have a sort of 'cartoon evil' in our games, etc.

Anyway, my point is, I'm still playing with my friends, the PCs are imaginary. I think most players would say they would like agency to avoid certain things in game, or add certain things to the game, but they don't all want to just give their characters bennies.

I see the tedious one true wayist Saelorn is back trying to extrapolate from a single word what the entirety of 'roleplaying' has to involve. It's so tenuous as to be moronic.

Nothing in the words 'roleplaying game' says it has to be first person. It can be third. Equally, nothing says other activities within the game are 'forbidden'.

It's the same as insisting that a 'wargame' must involve only war - therefore if your game involves production, economics, politics and negotiation, or logistics it isn't a wargame. It's like insisting that a 'boardgame' must involve only a board. So that if you roll dice or get dealt a hand of cards you're no longer boardgaming.

It's clear that such 'definitions' are untenable. As is Saelorn's chronically blinkered view of roleplaying. What roleplaying 'is' involves putting fictional characters in situations. He desperately wants to believe - and to promote the idea - that the one true way of generating situation is for it to be dictated by the GM.

It's complete nonsense. It can be generated by players as well. It can be generated through the process of action resolution, if such a process is sufficiently robust and transparent enough. Such things have been part of roleplaying since the start of the hobby.

But he doesn't want that to happen - and his comedically bad method of arguing against anyone having any sort of say or control - has been to adopt a position that anything but 'thinking in character' is no longer 'roleplaying' and then to subject thread after thread to the same unending bilge.

As an ironic aside, Saelorn is on record as saying only the GM can change the gamestate. What this means is that most of the time you, as a player, are not playing. The ability to effect the gamestate constitutes playing - and the players aren't allowed. So not only does his definition of 'roleplaying' fail to reflect anything but prejudice, his game fails the definition of 'game'.

[MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION], novels aren't imaginary. But the people they talk about are.

I never said that shared fictions are imaginary, either - in fact I've tried to analyse in some detail that social processes that generate them. Thoughts are real - they are caused by complex processes that begin (typically) in the "external" world and terminate somewhere in the brain. But fictional things - the orcs, swords, maps, studies etc that make up the imaginary worlds of our roleplaying games, and that we think about when RPGing - do not exist. They are imaginary. Not real.

If you want to discuss the metaphysics of fictions, and of ideas about and reference to fictional things, I'm happy to do so. It's a topic on which I have a degree of expertise. But I don't think it is necessary in the context of this thread, as the basic point - that imaginary things don't exist and don't exercise causal power - is sufficient.

I can explore the streets of Melbourne. (And have done so.) I can't literally explore the streets of Greyhawk. What I can literally do is read a book that someone has written describing the (imaginary, hence non-existent) streets of Greyhawk. Or, in the context of RPGing, I can have someone (typically, the GM) read me passages from that book. Or I can declare "I look for a handy side-alley to ambush them from" and then roll some dice - which, if the requisite result is obtained, then leads to everyone at the table agreeing that the streets of Greyhawk include said alley.

The above strikes me as so obvious - as a literal description of how RPGs work - that it is strange that you so vehemently reject it. Where do you think the map of Greyhawk came from? Presumably you accept that it was invented. Who invented it, and when? It can either be invented in advance, or invented in the course of play. If the latter, by what means? A roll of the dice to determine whether the player's desire as to how it is to be, or something adverse to that, is a method that is available and fairly widely used in RPGing.

If I'm telling a story about an orc confronting a swordsman, and then add - "It just got killed by a sword blow from the swordsman" - that is an act of authorship, of invention. It adds detail to the story of the orc and its encounter with the swordsman.

If I'm telling a story about the (imaginary) city of Grehyawk, and some character's travels through it, and then add - "And then she found a side-alley to hide in, and to lay an ambush for her pursuers" - that is an exactly parallel act of authorship. It adds details to the story of Greyhawk, and this character's adventures in that city.

Mutatis mutandis for a story of a study being searched, in which I add - "And the searcher found a map in the bottom desk drawer!".

I take it as obvious that these stories are not the same, and so I'm surprised that you think that is important to spell out - one is a story of an orc and a swordsman who kills it, one of a city and a would-be ambusher who finds an alley to lurk in, one of a study and a searcher who finds a map in it. What I said is that they are structurally equivalent acts of authorship. The structure in each case is: (1) established fiction about a situation involving a character (the swordsman, the would-be ambusher, the searcher) and some other story element (the orc, the city, the study); (2) an embellishment of the situation, an extra detail added - the orc is dead, killed by the swordsman; the city has an alley suitable for lurking in, which the would-be ambusher handily comes upon; the study contains a map, which the searcher finds.

There are millions of RPGers the world over who don't want player action declarations to play any roll in embellishing the story involving the city or the study, but are happy for those action declarations to play a roll in embellishing the story of the orc. That is there prerogative. No doubt they have their reasons. But if the reasons they assert are that it is "unrealistic" for the player to embellish some of these stories, that is a bad reason. Because there is nothing less "realistic" about one rather than another person embellishing a story of a study than embellishing a story of an orc.

If the person asserts (as I think [MENTION=6698278]Emerikol[/MENTION] does) that "As a player I only want to add those embellishments that correspond to causal powers exercised by my PC in the gameworld, so I will embellish deaths caused by my PC, but not maps discovered by my PC" that's his/her prerogative. It's a type of aesthetic preference. (As well as Emerikol, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] has advocated it strongly in this thread.)

My claims about it are two. (1) It is not more "realistic", or less "Schroedinger-y" than embellishing other parts of the fiction. (2) It means that a reasonable amount of your play experience will involve the GM telling you stuff that s/he made up (either in advance in his/her notes, or stuff that s/he makes up as needed but that is to be treated the same by the game participants as if it were part of his/her pre-authored notes).

The reason for (2) I take to be obvious given the extensive discussion of it in this thread, and the example provided by [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], [MENTION=40176]MarkB[/MENTION] and others. And the more the game involves "exploration" - that is, the players declaring actions which have, as an outcome, their PCs learning about the gameworld (eg opening doors, finding bribeable officials, searching for maps, etc) rather than their PCs changing the gameworld (eg by killing orcs or befriending strangers) - then the more that (2) will obtain.

Furthermore, given that a PC's success in changing the gameworld often depends (in the imaginary causal processes) upon unknown but relevant factors (eg the armour of the orc; the temperament of the stranger) then even changing the gameworld through action declarations can become hostage to a resolution process that does not permit the player to embellish other elements of the shared fiction.

For instance, if we go from player action declaration through resolution mechanics through embellishment that reflects outcome, then it is possible to have combat systems like D&D (AC, roll to hit, determine outcome from that) and hence it is impossible for it to be established, in advance of combat resolution, that the orc to literally have no chinks in his armour (such that, eg, you can't kill him until you rip off his helmet). Even a mage wielding a dagger can get lucky, find a chink in his armour, and kill the orc (if the orc wins, it's possible to say "Well, no chinks after all" - embellishment following resolution and reflecting outcome). Similarly, it is impossible for it to be established in advance that the temperament of the stranger is such that s/he is never befriendable: if the reaction roll (or corresponding resolution system) is high enough, it turns out that today the stranger is cheerful enough (or perhaps sufficiently in need of cheering up) that s/he will make a new friend. (Again, if the roll comes up poorly for the player, maybe this person really can't be befriended - embellishment follows resolution and reflects outcome.)

Whereas if the process is GM adds all embellishments that pertain to elements of the fiction that, in the fiction, are not consequences of a PC's causal powers, and only then go to action declaration, then we may never even get to the resolution mechanic to find out if the PC changed the gameworld. Eg if the GM decides the stranger is too despondent to be befriended, then the PC can't change that part of the gameworld. If the GM decides there are no chinks in the orc's armour, then the dagger-wielding mage PC can't change that part of the gameworld.

This is the point about agency. In a game in which (2) is strong, the players' agency over the shared fiction is rather minimal. The focus of game play is on triggering the GM to relate this or that bit of the fiction that she is in charge of embellishing (because it concerns elements whose nature, in the gameworld, is not amenable to being caused by the PCs).

I think I've made it clear that I don't really enjoy that sort of gameplay. Others have made it clear that they do. One thing that worldbuilding, in the OP sense, is for, is to enable that sort of gameplay. The only things that seems contentious is that some people don't like the description of it as "The GM telling the players stuff from his/her notes." But given that, literally, that is what it involves - as spelled out in some of the actual examples given in this thread - I don't see what the grounds for contention are.

Ovinomancer said:

in a style where there's a set dungeon, and set encounters, then opening that door is a part of a larger agency to engage that dungeon in the order you wish

Click to expand...

Agency in Gygaxian dungeoneering has two main elements.

(1) The dungeon map is a real artifact. It is a strong constraint on the fiction that the GM narrates when the players trigger narration of fiction. The dungeon key is another strong constraint. These constraints establish a maze/puzzle that the players can solve. And that puzzle has "nodes" - in the fiction, they are rooms of the dungeon - which contain the elements of the win condition for the game - in the fiction, this is treasure; and also contain obstacles to both solving the maze and meeting the win condition - in the fiction, these are traps, tricks and monsters. The players' agency consists in solving the puzzle in a way that achieves the win condition; overcoming the obstacles is an important means to doing this.

(2) The second element of player agency is what distinguishes Gygaxian dungeoneering from a boardgame (and whereas I think [MENTION=3192]howandwhy99[/MENTION] and I broadly agree in respect of (1), I know that we disagree on the following point). Because the dungeon is not only a physical artefact (a map) but is also an imagined thing, the players can declare, as moves in the game, whatever they conceive of their PCs being able to do given their fictional positioning. This means that overcoming the obstacles permits a range of problem-solving solutions that goes beyond a traditional boardgame. In Talisman, just to pick an example, you can't cross the river by damming it; in classic dungeoneering you can.

The second element of agency in Gygaxian dungeoneering depends very heavily on fair refereeing ( [MENTION=6680772]Iosue[/MENTION] had an interesting thread a few years ago that talked about Mike Carr's comments on fair refereeing). It also depends upon the obstacles, and their basic natures, being settled in advance of the players trying to overcome them by declaring moves for their PCs. (This is why Lewis Pulsipher said (paraphrasing) "Never put a diamond-studded room in your dungeon; because you can never be sure that a player won't find a way to get the diamonds - eg via a ring of wishing".)

The second element of agency in Gygaxian dungeoneering does not depend, in general (perhaps it might in some cases) on the players getting the GM to tell them enough of his/her notes for the players to put together the solution to which the GM has scattered hints. So it is not (in general) like [MENTION=40176]MarkB[/MENTION]'s example of looking around to see if any PCs are bribeable; and, if none are, then looking for more information from the GM until you learn what the solution is to the problem of your PC being a wanted criminal that is written in the GM's notes.

Some Gygaxian dungeoneering does have this character - eg a door that won't open until a particular password is read, with the password written on a scroll elsewhere in the dungeon. If we describe this in literal rather than figurative terms, we have an obstacle to the players solving/beating the maze that the players can't overcome by declaring moves until they have made the correct other moves to trigger the GM to read the bit of his/her notes that records the information about the scroll. Some even has this character to a more extreme degree: there's a solution written in the GM's notes but there is no move the players can make in the course of play that will trigger the GM to tell them the solution, so they just have to guess. Tomb of Horrors has a lot of this; it contrasts with (say) White Plume Mountain or Castle Amber, which have lots of wacky obstacles but don't tend to impose particular solutions. I think these latter modules therefore offer players more opportunity to exercise agency of the second Gygaxian sort than does ToH.

As I've said, I think running a game with either of these sorts of agency becomes hard when (i) the "map" ceases to be a real physical artefact and becomes, instead, some ideas in the GM's head which the player's only have access to through the GM's exposition of those ideas (the living, breathing world) and (ii) the situations - the obstacles - get framed in ways that suggest such a confluence of verisimilitudinous forces operating upon them that the open-ness of possibility found in wacky modules like S2 and X2 is lost, and play becomes increasingly about getting the GM to tell you stuff from his/her notes.

The paradigm of RPGing in which neither sort of agency is present is a CoC module.

hawkeyefan said:

The GM can determine some things, and leave others to be established during play.

Click to expand...

This is true.

hawkeyefan said:

I don't really see a problem with the game being about what the GM would like. Or at least, I don't see the problem if it's reasonable.

Click to expand...

My response to this is slightly round about.

My own experience is that play becomes more engaged, and visceral, when the stakes reflect player buy in, rather than a GM-established McGuffin. A very large number of modules involve McGuffins ("fetch quests" are the paradigm; just today I saw a post which suggested that it is good GMing to require a PC to go on a quest to get ingredients for the magic item that s/he wants for his/her PC).

I don't think that the GM establishing what the game is about has to involve McGuffins. But I think it can.

If the GM buys into the players' stuff and embellishes it and works with it, I find the engagement and visceral nature of play increases. That's a mixture of aesthetic preference ( [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] upthread said he doesn't want pressure when playing; for me it's pretty vital, and McGuffins are the enemy of pressure in the relevant sense as the pressure is purely tactical/operational, not gut-wrenching) and generalization from experience. Both are prone to idiosyncrasy!

hawkeyefan said:

I don't see why a random table result can't generate declaration blocking elements. I can see how it doesn't have to, but I think the risk of it is still there, no?

Click to expand...

It depends on the table and its function.

Sticking to the Traveller example, I've used several random tables. I'll try to break them down.

Some are, in effect, action resolution mechanisms:


Then there are the random person and animal encounters. These aren't really a type of action resolution; they're more like random framing devices, for generating new content periodically. They don't block anything. Both these and the starship ones do give rise to a different issue - namely, they require some deft GMing to keep things going "where the action is" - the modest level of abstraction at which they deliver results (roughly speaking, beings but not purposes) helps here.

Random world generation is similar to the random person and animal encounters - it's a way of generating framing.

One bit of randomness that could block, and which I am therefore not using, is to actually generate the whole sector map via the random method the book recommends. Our starmap has been generated by me rolling up individual worlds but putting them into play, and in relation to one another, in a way that responds to the demands of action resolution and "go where the action is" framing.

Another bit of randomness that could block, but which I am using, is the presence of Psionics Institute branches on worlds. The rule here is first the GM rolls randomly to see if there's one present; the player then rolls to see if s/he can find it, but can't succeed on that check if the GM's roll means there is not one there. When this rule came into play, it actually did block. And the strongest lover of Burning Wheel in my group was the one who experienced the blocking and he DIDN'T LIKE IT; he very strongly felt that it should hinge on the resolution of his action declaration (which is how a Traveller Streetwise check is handled).

Why am I using a rule that goes contrary to my preferences and that has irritated one of my players? Two reasons: I want to play the game more-or-less as written, to get the "Traveller experience"; and the rule is there to make getting psionics fairly hard, and I'm happy for that part of the game experience to be delayed a bit because it will change the nature of the game once this player's PC does develop psionics.

Why not just ban psionics, then? See the first of my two reasons. But then why, given that reason, am I not using sector-mappig? Because (i) I contain multitudes etc, and (ii) that would have such a ubiquitous blocking effect that it would make the game effectively unplayable for me, and so on that point Traveller has had to yield.

I could have worked out an alternative Psionics Institute rule that puts it all on the player action declaration side but roughly preserves the likelihoods of finding one, but that would have required doing maths that I didn't get around to doing. And would have involved a departure from the first reason.

hawkeyefan said:

I think the default assumption of many games, and of D&D certainly, is that the player should describe what the character does and then let the GM determine the outcome based on what's been established and the results of whatever check may be required (Search or Perception or what have you). The player is limited to describing what his character attempts to do.

Click to expand...

This isn't how D&D handles combat (subject to a qualification in the next paragraph). In combat the player doesn't have to describe what the player does (other than the very generic "I attack with my sword"); and the GM doesn't decide the outcome - we roll to hit dice, and damage dice, and track hit point totals, and some (not all) of us track figures on a map, etc.

I agree with you for non-combat, though, in contemporary D&D (I don't know that it was always thus, but it has been at least since 2nd ed and its NWP system). Also, GM fudging of hit point totals or monster to hit rolls or monster AC will tend to change the character of combat to being what you described. That's why upthread, in reply to [MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION], I described this approach to player action declarations as the player making suggestions to the GM as to how the fiction might be developed.

hawkeyefan said:

Okay, but if we compare the search for the letter and the attack on the orc, I don't think they're exactly alike. One is the player actively seeking something, the other is the player responding to action from the game world.

What if the orc is 100 feet away from the PC and is attacking them with a bow? Is not allowing the PC to retaliate with a melee attack denying their agency? Is the player free to resolve the issue of the orc in any way he sees fit? Or is he bound by the constraints of the fictional world?

Is that any different than the hidden letter? It's location determines the chance of finding it.

Click to expand...

I posted a lot about this upthread. The difference I see is that in your orc example the player knows the fictional positioning - the GM has framed something, and the player has to deal with it. (If the player declared an action to sneak within dagger distance of the orc, and the GM fiated failure, that's a further matter, but I hope you're happy for me to assume that the player finds his/her PC at sub-optimal distance from the orc either as the result of a failed check, or in other circumstances where the GM was at liberty to frame the PC, and thereby the player, into adversity.)

In the case of the hidden document, the player doesn't know the fictional positioning - it's secret fictional positioning, secret backstory that leads to failure.

Upthread we also discussed invisible opponents, or NPCs in social encounters with hidden motivations or quirks. My view about these is that they're fair game if (i) the hidden stuff is knowable by the players within the current framing, and (ii) the hidden stuff in some sense is salient (because if not salient then, in practice, not knowable even if knowable in principle), and (iii) the failure to find the hidden stuff won't be a "rocks fall" moment.

Obviously factors (ii) and (iii) in particular are highly contextual - I would take more liberties playing with friends than with strangers.

My view is that the hidden document - which in this thread has served as placeholder for the generic "clue", or the generic thing that is central to the unfolding of play - violates (iii), and may well violate (ii) if the GM has decided that it's hidden in some largely arbitrary or unlikely place (my example upthread was the breadbin in the kitchen).

This obviously isn't exact science, but what is motivating my comments here is that the practical result of the map being hidden in the breadbin is that quite a bit of the actual episode of play, at the table, will be the players declaring moves for their PCs that trigger the GM to narrate stuff about the rooms of the house being searched by the PCs until eventually they think to search the breadbins and the GM tells them they find the map. Because of issue (iii) the play couldn't continue without that moment taking place; because of issue (ii) it is an extended period of play; and thus a lot of time is spent on something where the players exercise little agency and the game doesn't really move forward.

Contrast: there are two scroll cases in the study, one with the rune of Ioun and one with the rune of Vecna, and one of the PCs is an invoker who is affiliated with both these (mutually opposed) deities, and finding the map in one or the other would count as a big reveal. We now have (i) and (ii) both satisfied, so no risk of a type (iii) misfire because the hidden thing is going to be revealed. Personally I would be quite comfortable with this sort of framing.

Between the two examples - of breadbins, and of two scroll cases on the desk - lie a range of other possibilities which differ as far as (i), (ii) and (iiii) are concerned. It's not an exact science. But I've tried to explain why I incline to one end of the spectrum, and the method I use to try and satisfy myself that that's where I am.

hawkeyefan said:

I think that the approach for the player to attempt to establish game elements beyond their character's actions is less common. No less viable, and certainly it has advantages to it that can create interesting play, but I don't think that many players would expect this to be the case. Not unless it was a specific game designed with mechanics that proamoted this approach.

<snip example>

It's probably a byproduct of the fact that most of their gaming experience has come from D&D in its many iterations, and similar games. And with using published modules as a template for how to construct an adventure scenario and run a game.

Click to expand...

I definitely agree with this - that is, the influence of a certain approach to D&D play and module design.

Emerikol said:

Constructively, where do you see this thread going? Is it style evangelism by you?

Click to expand...

My main goal is analysis of play that talks in literal terms - ie how, in the real social world of a group of people sitting around a table talking with one another, handling some physical stuff (maps, dice, etc), does RPGing work?

And then to talk about what worldbuilding achieves in these literal terms.

I'm not ruling out aesthetic preference as a factor (I hope that's clear, but wanted to put it out there to make sure) - but again I want to describe the object of that preference in literal rather than metaphoric terms.

This is why I keep talking about what the GM and players say and do, emphasise the imaginary character of the PCs and gameworld, etc.