pemerton said:
Whether or not this sort of case, in which the player who was hoping to change the fiction discovers that s/he is really exploring it, is a problem will obviously be something that varies from table to table. That it might be a problem I think is obvious.
How exploration in an RPG can ever be a problem rather boggles the mind, given as exploration is one of the three** key pillars*** of the game.
** - or four, if downtime is included as a pillar
*** - and though it took 5e D&D to codify this, the principles this codification are based on - that an RPG consists in varying measures of social interaction, exploration, and combat - are nigh-universal.
(1) Notice that I didn't say that exploration is a problem. I said that I think it is obvious how the following
might be a problem:
a player who is hoping to change the fiction, by way of an action declaration for his/her PC, discovers - in virtue of how the GM approaches adjudication that s/he is really exploring the fiction.
The risk of such a problem is not obviated by pointing out that exploration is a "key pillar" of the game.
Here's a trite illustration of the point: drinking water is a key pillar of human existence. But it might be a problem if every time you go to eat some food, or drink some beer, or . . ., you find yourself drinking water instead.
Here's a slightly less trite illustration: if a player is setting out to do something in a different "pillar", and discovers by way of unanticipated GM adjudication that s/he is really exploring, then s/he might feel surprised or even disappointed.
(2) The idea of pillars of exploration, combat and social is actually distinctive to some versions of D&D.
It doesn't generalise to Traveller, in which making a FTL jump is a moment of action resolution that is neither fighting nor talking but is not exploration. It requires various rolls to avoid misjump, drive failure and the like.
It doesn't generalise to Burning Wheel, in which
chasing someone or
buying something can be a moment of action resolution no different in basic mechanical structure from fighting or talking, but obviously neither.
It doesn't generalise to 4e D&D, which has two basic pillars - combat and non-combat (skill challenges) - and the latter can be used to adjudicate social interaction, crossing a desert, altering or dispelling a magical phenomenon, etc.
Before starting to change something, doesn't it make sense to explore it first and figure out what you're trying to change and why? To learn the parameters of your in-fiction surroundings, and of the situation at hand?
And then isn't it reasonable to first determine what means and methods of change, of those you have available to you in the fiction, have better chances of success* before just diving in?
* - and this determination can and often will include some trial and error, a fine example of which is the Dimension Door bit quoted above. If the PCs have no way of knowing they've just entered a teleport no-fly zone, this is how they find out.
This all rests on very strong assumptions about how RPGing works. I'm sure they're true for how you play D&D. They're clearly not true for (say) Dungeon World played by the book.
To elaborate: the most common way that the players in my games learn the parameters of their in-fiction surrounding is by asking and being told. That is, they don't declare actions with the intention of having the outcome being narration of fiction; they (as players, not as their PCs) ask me and I tell them.
Sometimes this has collaborative dimensions, in the sense that together we establish the parameters of the fiction.
In our last Traveller session, for instance, through asking and telling and working together we established fiction about Imperial Marines insignia, the player of an ex-Marine established some details about salutes and signals, we referred to rulebooks to ascertain exactly how battle dress (a type of powered armour works), I described to the players the existence of force-field type technology that is used to maintain heat in open-air areas on the icy-cold world the PCs are currently on, etc. None of this took the form of
exploration in the D&D sense of delcaring actions like "I prod it with a 10' pole". It was all about establising and sharing backstory and establishing clear framing of current situations.
Another way the fiction in my games is established is as the outcome of action declarations. In a BW session, this was how it was established that a sick-room contained a chamber pot (a player made a successful Perception check to notice a vessel in the room). In a Cortex+ Heroic session, this was how it was established that some runic inscriptions described the dungeon layout (because a player declared an action to eliminate his PC's Lost in the Dungeon complication, using the Runic Inscrptions Scene Distinction as a component of his dice pool for this action).
Yet another way is because players make checks that oblige me to make up new fiction. This is a part of Dungeon World - you'll recall the discussions upthread of the Discern Realities and Spout Lore moves, which - if successful - oblige the GM to provide the player with certain bits of information:
Spout Lore
When you consult your accumulated knowledge about something, roll+Int. ✴On a 10+, the GM will tell you something interesting and useful about the subject relevant to your situation. ✴On a 7–9, the GM will only tell you something interesting—it’s on you to make it useful.
Discern Realities
When you closely study a situation or person, roll+Wis. ✴On a 10+, ask the GM 3 questions from the list below. ✴On a 7–9, ask 1. Either way, take +1 forward when acting on the answers.
• What happened here recently?
• What is about to happen?
• What should I be on the lookout for?
• What here is useful or valuable to me?
• Who’s really in control here?
• What here is not what it appears to be?
It's taken for granted in DW that that information won't have been pre-established - the GM is expected to make it up on the spot, building on what has gone before and the current dynamic of play (including previous "soft moves" made by the GM) - [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] and [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] have discussed the details of this technique upthread.
Similar things happen in my Traveller game, though in Classic Traveller it is mostly less formally structured.
In the first session, after the PCs had been briefed by their patron, one of the players was suspicious because the whole thing didn't make much sense:
Methwit thought all this sounded a bit odd - why would a high-class (Soc A) marine lieutenant be smuggling goods into a dead-end world like Byron - and so asked Li back to his hotel room to talk further. With his Liaison-1 and Carousing-1 and a good reaction roll she agreed, and with his Interrogation-1 he was able to obtain some additional information (although he did have to share some details about his own background to persuade her to share).
The real situation, she explained, was that Byron was itself just a stop-over point. The real action was on another world - Enlil - which is technologically backwards and has a disease-ridden atmosphere to which there is no resistance or immunity other than in Enlil's native population. So the goods to be shipped from Ardour-3 were high-tech medical gear for extracting and concentrating pathogens from the atmosphere on Enlil, to be shipped back to support a secret bio-weapons program. The reason a new team was needed for this mission was because Vincenzo had won the yacht from the original team - who were being dealt with "appropriately" for their incompetence in disrupting the operation.
(I had been planning to leave the real backstory to the mission pretty loose, to be fleshed out as needed - including the possibility that Li was actually going to betray the PCs in some fashion - but the move from Methwit's player forced my hand, and I had to come up with some more plausible backstory to explain the otherwise absurd situation I'd come up with. And it had to relate to the worlds I'd come up with in my prep.)
For the character in the fiction, of course that's all about figuring out what is going on. But for the
player, given that I am approaching my Traveller game in a DW-type spirit rather than a "secret backstory" spirit, it's about using action declarations to force the referee to provide more detail in the framing, thus providing the player with more fictional "levers" on which to hang action declarations.
And notice that this is the
player doing this. (Just as, in DW, it is a player who triggers Discern Realities or Spout Lore.) Which relates back to the first part of my reply - my response as referee conformed to the players intentions in declaring the action (ie forcing the GM to enrich the framing to provide more fictional levers).
