The Player vs DM attitude

[Dausuul]

Do the (potentially) final verbal exchanges between the PCs and the antagonist have to be a monologue?

In other words, can it be an interactive dialogue? With a give and take form both sides, each one wanting to gain the upper hand from another, so that nobody gets bored? This may come from knowing my players well, but that method seems to work for my group.

Absolutely. Much better way to handle the whole thing. Like I said up above, I'm generally up for a bit of pre-combat banter with the villain; it's when he's clearly gearing up for a long speech (usually easy to detect from his opening line) that my trigger finger starts itching.

Moreover, nobody says the banter has to be pre-combat. Most RPG systems are pretty generous about talking during a fight. Dialogue during a combat scene is an excellent, and much underused, way to satisfy both the roleplayers and the action gamers in your group with a single encounter... although it only works if the combat system is simple enough that it doesn't require the players' full attention.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm not entirely sure why though. If I trust the GM to provide an enjoyable adventure, why do I not trust him enough to let him stuff me in a small box and then tell me to get out of it?

First of all, it's entirely clear from the OP's initial post that his group does not trust him. So, any answer to the OP's post that assumes trust rather than addresses how to build trust is not very useful in this context. That's why I gave answers directed toward building trust in an environment where it doesn't exist. I can gaurantee you that in an environment where trust doesn't exist, that stuffing the player's characters into a small box by DM fiat is not going to build trust.

Secondly, for me it isn't really an issue of trust at all. Even if I trusted that the DM had provided plenty of means for me to escape from the small box, I still wouldn't want to play that way. The reasons for this are numerous, but I think they can all be losely brought under the heading of immersion.

The very fact that the small box is intended to be escaped from is an anathema to me. If some NPC builds a dungeon in the literal sense of a prison, he intends it to be escape proof within the limits of his resources. A prison which has been designed to be escaped from sucks as a prison and a scenario. The fact that the enemy has easily overcome the PC's argues that the resources and intelligence of the enemy is quite high, and therefore that the small box ought to be as escape proof as such an enemy can manage. Escaping such a box ought to be an order of magnitude harder than defeating the enemy in the first place.

The normal tropes of a 'capture scenario' - the villain doesn't kill his greatest threat when he has them in his power, the villain leaves the hero alone or in the hands of incompotents, the hero escapes from an 'escape proof' prison quickly using some obvious method for which resources are readily at hand - don't strike me as attractive but rather as things worthy of ridicule. I don't like them in stories and they break suspension of disbelief in stories as well as in games. Why would I want to port them into my game? In my games I'm not generally trying to create the illusion of living inside a story, much less a story filled with cliched tropes. I'm trying to create the illusion of living in a real living world.

The continuity of play is one of the most attractive features of the game for me. It helps me be inside the characters head and view the world through the character's eyes, rather than looking down on the world from a position of external manipulator. This is the more exciting viewpoint IMO. Holding some metagame conversation about the game world where we decide what is going to happen is an unattractive proposition because it enhances the position of player/DM as external manipulator of events rather than inhabitants of the imagined space.

I'm a bit on the fence here to be honest. I hate being forced, but, on the other hand, I'm pretty sure that the GM's I play with now would force me into situations that I would enjoy. In fact, one of the GM's started the campaign with us in prison for various reasons.

It's not a question of whether the scenario is enjoyable, it's that it is a 'scenario' at all that is the problem. I don't want to be having 'scenarios' at all.

I consider the games 'starting state' to be a special case. A game that begins with the players in prison, assuming that that is agreeable to all, is perfectly acceptable and maybe interesting if done well. But once the game starts, it should be a single continuity. Having scenarios inside it is equivalent to me of ending the old game, and starting a new one only partially related to the first. It requires us to kill the old game and negoitiate a new one. That's fine for a series of tournament games or a short 'one off' where we only stay in the character's head for a couple of sessions at most, but isn't what I want for a long term campaign.

 

[billd91]

In the specific case of the slave lords, why would your players see strike-to-subdue as abuse? Slavers aren't usually trying to kill their inventory! There's loads of other situations where strike-to-subdue also makes realistic sense; it's hardly abuse, and in these cases I'd suggest your players might want to lighten up a bit.

Lan-"slave to the grind"-efan

Yeah, I'm wondering about that too. It's not like the rules are being abused. I don't even agree with the idea that the encounter building guidelines are being abused if you stack the deck with an encounter that pretty much can't be won (after all the guidelines actually include extremely difficult encounters as a low-frequency possibility). So I'm wondering about the 'abuse' here too.

 

[Celebrim]

This paragraph makes so many assumptions about the situation that it's hard to know where to start.

I'm not making assumptions about the situation. I'm pointing out the vast differences between what may happen when you make the situation concrete and realized, rather than resorting to fiat, handwaving and abstraction.

Suffice to say that I don't think I've ever had a party go to sleep in a tavern with wizard locks, alarm spells and bottles balanced on the door handle. If the players did describe their PCs doing all that, then (everything else being equal) they're sending a pretty clear signal that they want to play out an attempt to thwart someone breaking into their room - in which case, as a GM I'd run that encounter rather than the capture scenario.

Well, that's nice of you. One of the very earliest things we discovered as players was that random monsters or proactive villains were most dangerous when were most vulnerable - asleep, low on hitpoints, and virtually out of spells. Hense, in all the groups I've been a player in, there was a strong emphasis on turtling up whenever we needed to find some place to rest. Not incidently, the attack on the hero when he's asleep, the precautions taken by the hero to prevent ambush, and the heroes ability to defend himself even in this state is also a very strong element of fantasy fiction.

I don't know of any evidence that games that use it produce adversarial GMing or railroady play.

From the start in this thread I've tried to argue that the OP is misinterpreting his data and that the problem isn't the 'adversarial' dynamic that he precieves. Likewise, even if it is true that you have participationism and thereby no possibility of a railroad, you are ignoring the problem that metagame exchanges may themselves be something players don't desire.

This more or less repeats my first two options for capture in my Edit of my earlier post - abuse of the encounter building guidelines, or abuse of the action resolution mechanics. These are not the only two options - but for other (metagame driven) options to arise, the action resolution mechanics need to make room for them.

Or there is the third, metagame alternative in play.

Yes, but the metagame alternative isn't attractive either. The metagame alternative is essentially to assume that no events happened between A and B, or if they did happen, to work backwords to assume what must have happened to get to B - even if that means breaking suspension of belief, having characters act out of character (the light sleeper didn't wake up, precautions weren't taken, the hotheaded guy surrendered without a fight, etc.).

Again you're making a lot of assumptions. After all, maybe the dramatic scene was the consumption of the drugged meal in the tavern the night before - what had seemed innocuous takes on new meaning in the light of subsequent events!

There are so many problems with that. First of all, the 'drugged meal' alternative is one of the 'assumptions' I originally mentioned. Hense, why didn't the PC's recieve saving throws, why was there no chance to detect the poison in the meal, or to sense the motive of the innkeeper, and if the meal had been played out what if the PC's had cast detect poison on their food or neutralize poison on themselves before going to bed. What if one of the PC's had sensed the poison before it fully took effect and hit a panic button of some sort (teleporting to a remote location, etc.)

You're also assuming that the GM's desire is the only one operating here. I've never asserted that, and indeed finished my last post (in the edit) with a more detailed discussion of the advantages of metagame scene framing because it gives the players an alternative "in" to the discussion.

Yes, but I don't want to be 'in' on the discussion. I don't want such discussions at all. I want to be 'in' the gameworld, not in on a game.

But anyway, let's suppose that in a given session there's time to resolve only a handful of dramatic scenes. I don't see how it is per se objectionable to resolve scenes (1) wake in prison, (2) escape from the cell, (3) sneak through the corridors into the baron's bedchamber, (4) kill him in revenge and (5) jump out the window escaping across the moat, rather than starting at (0) fight in tavern room at night.

Because '0' happened, and because while the series of events you describe are not objectionable in themselves necessarily, the fact that they can be scripted out in advance is objectionable in and of itself. No outcome is certain. What's objectionable is that #0 always leads to #1 which always leads to #2. That #2 doesn't necessarily lead to #3 or #4 is beside the point. The point is that for some portion of this 'story' the characters have no input in the story. Note particularly that even if the players technically have input in the story, if this input doesn't come through the agency of their characters its disruptive of the game I want to play.

And I don't really take this as a refutation of my earlier claim that games that constrain scene framing by reference to traditional action resolution mechanics are potentially tactically and strategically rich but incline towards the thematically narrow and limited. If it's all AD&D-style action resolution all the time, with bottles balanced on doors and saving throws against poison and killing trumping over capturing, you won't get to play a capture scenario...

Your wrong. My PC has been captured several times. My party has allowed themselves to be captured on one occassion as part of a prison break plotline. I've DMed various situations were a PC was captured. What you lose isn't the capture scenario, but the DM's ability to decide when and fully control when you are going to have a capture scenario.

... in which case your game won't really resemble the sword and sorcery stories that (for many players) made the genre attractive in the first place.

Your wrong. This is the sort of Ron Edwards BS that just makes me want to scream. I just don't even know how to address that sort of assertion. Capture scenarios are not universal to all sword and sorcery stories in the first place. They certainly aren't more ubiquitous than 'the hero is ambushed in his sleep but overcomes the attacker'. I've been playing RPGs for 25 years and all sorts of things happen and all sorts of dramatic situations have occurred. All sorts of deep themes have been developed. There used to be a time when my understanding of the game was so weak that I was sure I knew what the best and most fun story was and by golly I was going to make it happen just like I'd imagined before hand, but experience has taught me how foolish that was and how you are just better off trusting your players and the dice than your own preconceptions. Yes, it does take some skill to design the game such that it can survive the unexpected, but it can be done and it does work.

But the notion that it can't be done without exercising GM force via abusing the encounter building guidelines or the action resolution mechanics is simply not true.

This is not something I asserted. This is something you asserted. You are trying to refute yourself now and attributing your own red herrings and straw men to me.

It can be done by tolerating a metagame approach to scene framing.

Well, yes, it certainly can be done that way. But that approach is itself not something I enjoy and its costs the game more than it gains.

Upthread you expressed concern that players shoudn't have things put at stake that they didn't buy into, and now you're saying that it's OK for a traditional fantasy RPG to force a split between courage and self-interest...

Yes, it is ok for a traditional fantasy RPG to force a split between courage and self-interest. How that violates the player's freedom of choice I'm not sure, accept that you are using really tortured ways of expressing things in order to make it sound like I'm contridicting myself. My concern was for the player's freedom of choice being violated. Expressing my concern in some alternate language of your own out of context doesn't sound like an honest attempt at understanding.

whereas perhaps the most basic presupposition of standard heroic fantasy RPGing (drawing on tropes established by REH, Tolkien etc) is that these two will not come apart.

I disagree. I don't agree that its the most basic presupposition of standard heroic fantay, or that its the basic assumption of Tolkien, or that it's even a particularly common assumption. Fantasy literature often contains assumptions of martyrdom and self-sacrifice, and this is maybe even particularly common in RPG inspired literature where heroic deaths are rather more common than in stories where the heroes enjoy implicit plot protection.

It's not a coincidence that fantasy RPGers have a strong aversion to having their PCs surrender (as is being discussed in multiple threads at the moment). The unity of courage and self-interest is almost inherent to the genre.

I agree that RPGers have a strong aversion to surrender, but I don't agree with you on its basis.

You also seem to be saying that it's anathema to frame the capture scene, but it's acceptable to run the Colossal Red Dragon "surrender-or-die" scene.

I didn't say that nor do I seem to be saying that. I wouldn't run a 'Colossal Red Dragon' "surrender-or-die" scene. Once again, that's something you brought up. You are now arguing against your own straw man as if I was the one who brought it up.

Personally, if I brought in a Colossal Red Dragon early on, it wouldn't be to get the PC's to surrender. I've already asserted what I think is a reasonable usage and goal of such a scene. I have a very hard time imagining why a Colossal Red Dragon would want anyone to surrender or why it would take a particular interest in seemingly ordinary humans. Colossal Red Dragons aren't generally known for modesty, self-restraint, and respect for human life. It's out of character to even have a dragon acting in that manner.

I certainly know which sort of game I'd rather play in - one in which the GM frames exciting scenes and I can be confident that the GM is abiding by the encounter building guidelines, than one in which the GM abuses the encounter building guidelines so as to railroad the players. And the "surrender-or-die" scene is a railroad, because it is as encounter with only one real option, namely, to surrender.

More straw men here.

Whereas the capture scenario is not a railroad at all.

LOL. Well, you can assert it, but I'm not sure how many people are going to buy that.

Games like AD&D 2nd ed try to resolve the issue by keeping the same "continous play" assumptions and the same action resolution mechanics but adding heaps of injunctions to the GM to use egregious force to produce dramatic scenarios. For me, this is a terrible way to play an RPG, but I know that there are some (perhaps many) who like it.

I suppose that there are, and I agree that its a terrible way to play, but I think you are much closer to playing in that manner than I am. Indeed, I'm having a hard time seeing how you differ much from action-resolution mechanics together with heaps of egregious use of GM force to produce dramatic situations.

I'm suggesting a simple alternative - if you want to have your RPG include the sorts of fantasy scenarios that attracted you to the genre in the first place, then just do it.

Isn't that GM force?

It's GM power, but it's egregious GM force only if (i) we make all sorts of assumptions about the nature and purpose of the action resolution mechanics, or (ii) we assume that the players don't want to play that sort of game.

Welll at least you seem to realize that it is, even if you want to rationalize it away. I believe that there is fundamentally no difference between what you recommend and what 2nd edition D&D recommended, and your not giving nearly enough credit to the 2nd edition D&D style and its writers/designers because it justifiied itself in the exact same way, "It's ok to use alot of DM force to produce dramatic situations, because don't players want to have that sort of game?"

The solution to (i) is, if necessary, to change systems.

I still don't agree with you that systems make that much of a difference here, especially if you are talking about something other than hard nar games.

The solution to (ii) is to talk to your players. But I'd be surprised if every turtling player, once they are shown that a different sort of play is possible, really turns out to want to play exclusively in the turtling mode.

That's Ron Edwards talking again. No one actually enjoys the way that they are playing, and only Ron Edwards understands how to have fun playing an RPG. Frankly, I get sick and tired of that Forge evangelism.

 

[Celebrim]

So I'm wondering about the 'abuse' here too.

Because it makes it sound like you are doing something nasty and immoral.

 

[Dausuul]

First of all... *post full of win*

Damn it, stop posting stuff that I want to give XP for before I've spread enough XP around to give it to you again!

 

[Negflar2099]

I've read nearly every post in this thread and it's a very fascinating discussion. For those who are curious, yes I perceive there to be a lack of trust in my particular game, so I appreciate the advice from those people who talk about how to build up trust between players and DMs, specifically between my players and me. But I guess I didn't do a very good job defining what I mean by trust. I guess for me it comes down to players trusting that their DM isn't out to destroy them, that he knows how to create combat scenarios that, while challenging, won't result in a TPK as long as the players play to the best of their ability, and that he isn't trying to trick them somehow. That in short I may play the antagonists but I'm not a rat basterd.

It's like this. Personally I agree with those of you who think the capture scenario is unfair. At least it isn't fair the way it's being described here. The way that you go to sleep and end up in a dungeon. Now I can think of a dozen dozen different magical reasons for something like that (in which case it could be very Lost-like) but I certainly would never have people break in and kidnap them with no chance for the players to wake up, especially if my players took precautions.

And when it comes to PCs trusting NPCs I sort of feel the old "that kind old wizard you all thought was friendly stabs in the back" is the same thing as the PCs just waking up in jail. I mean the PCs took dots or trained in skills like Perception, or Insight and they are fairly high level. They should be able to know if something is up with a NPC (unless he defeats those defenses some how but that's another story). What I mean when I say trust is that when I as the DM say "I'm telling this guy raised you since you were 10 (their backstory not mine) and you can trust him." I sort of expect my players to say okay. Just like when I say the gazebo is just a building. There's no reason to investigate it. I sort of expect my players to trust that I personally am not lying to them even if the NPC might be.

The problem I've found is that one develops a certain mentality if you play enough D&D and part of that mentality is the old, I put up bottles on the door frame and wizard lock the windows and every NPC that approaches me I stab in the face kind of paranoia. I find trying to run adventures when PCs are that paranoid more challenging and less fun than it should be but I guess that's just me.

Needless to say trust in my group has broken down a bit. I think it's all my fault and I've gotten a lot of good advice from this thread about how to fix it so I appreciate that very much. Thank you.

I hope this post made more sense than my last one.

 

[Lanefan]

Because it makes it sound like you are doing something nasty and immoral.

Say-what?!

Strike-to-subdue to try to capture a party as slaves (or to otherwise set up a scenario outside the comfort zone) is nasty and immoral???

Guess I'd better use strike-to-kill then...see how they like that.

There's nothing - repeat, nothing - wrong with at least trying to set up a scenario; be it a capture-and-escape, capture-and-transport, capture-enspell-release, whatever - where if successful the intent is to rip the party off its current course and plunge them into something new where the overall goal changes from whatever it was before to one of simply getting back on track. Behind the scenes, you as DM are mostly expecting they'll get it together sooner or later (i.e. they get their gear back, they get back to their home base/world, etc.) and everything carries on as before.

Note that I say "trying". One always has to be prepared for these set-ups to fail, as they often do; and if half the party get affected while the rest don't then get ready to run a split party for a while.

But scenarios like this are not bad for the game, nor are they bad for the story either in a game setting or a book. And if the players can't handle a situation like this when (not if) it occurs, that's their issue; and they'll get no sympathy from me.

Note too that I'm no fan of any of what I've seen come out of this Forge thing...it seems that every time it gets brought up in any discussion said discussion's useful life immediately ends, lost in a morass of arguments about semantics and definitions. So I'm not coming at this from any Forge-defined background; I'm more concerned about the issues around what a DM is allowed to do in order to run the game and tell a story.

Lan-"if you've got a better story, tell it and we'll play it; otherwise, we play mine"-efan

 

[Hussar]

Lanefan - I think Celebrim was making a joke.

I consider the games 'starting state' to be a special case. A game that begins with the players in prison, assuming that that is agreeable to all, is perfectly acceptable and maybe interesting if done well. But once the game starts, it should be a single continuity. Having scenarios inside it is equivalent to me of ending the old game, and starting a new one only partially related to the first. It requires us to kill the old game and negoitiate a new one. That's fine for a series of tournament games or a short 'one off' where we only stay in the character's head for a couple of sessions at most, but isn't what I want for a long term campaign.

Not a fan of episodic campaigns huh?

Now, this brings up an interesting point - my next campaign, or, I should say, my group's next campaign is episodic. We're rotating DM's after each adventure (or scenario if you like). So, each episode will likely be mostly self contained with some sort of resolution a the end each time.

I'm going real old school here. At least, this is what old school was for me.

So, in this type of situation, where we're round robining DM's, I think that the "stuff the party in a box" scenario becomes a lot more viable. Since each DM is expected to run only a self-contained bit, the idea of continuous play becomes less important.

Or, to put it another way, every adventure starts out at ground zero - just like the opening scenario in a regular campaign.

 

[pemerton]

I'm having a hard time seeing how you differ much from action-resolution mechanics together with heaps of egregious use of GM force to produce dramatic situations.

<snip>

I believe that there is fundamentally no difference between what you recommend and what 2nd edition D&D recommended, and your not giving nearly enough credit to the 2nd edition D&D style and its writers/designers because it justifiied itself in the exact same way, "It's ok to use alot of DM force to produce dramatic situations, because don't players want to have that sort of game?"

<snip>

I still don't agree with you that systems make that much of a difference here, especially if you are talking about something other than hard nar games.

Celebrim, leaving aside different preferences in play style, plus questions that are hard to answer in the abstract in relation to what seem to be quite different RPGing experiences (eg is standard AD&D play well-suited to producing thematically powerful play - you think yes, I think no), the passages above seem to me to capture our main point of disagreement.

It doesn't seem very helpful just to reiterate, and what I'm about to say isn't intended as mere reiteration, but if it doesn't strike you as actually elaborating the point I apologise.

I think there is a huge difference between scene framing with metagame cooperation or at least mutual understanding between GM and players, and the use of force to override the action resolution mechanics. The latter almost by definition vitiates player choices by undermining the mechanical framework within which those choices are made. This is the classic "disregard the dice rolls if they would lead to unfun", and my reply is "play a system where this won't happen". Lanefan consistently posts from a perspective which captures the fun in AD&D played without disregard to the dice. I'm not sure I want to play in his games, but the AD&D 2nd ed "solution" for getting more dramatic play is a nonsense one. It's about overriding the action resolution mechanics, and about vitiating the players' thematic choices.

In your reply to Hussar, you compared GM scene framing to "rebooting the game". I think that this is right. Leave aside for the moment whether one is happy with such reboots as elements of a campaign, and just focus on player choice/freedom. Do such reboots vitiate player freedom? Well, they won't vitiate player thematic focus/preference provided that the players' chosen themes inform the new scene. Some "hard nar" games achieve this mechanically. In a more traditional game this is a matter of GM/player negotiaton. If you're not interested in that - what I called upthread the "metagame in" - then that's fine, but I think that it is a viable way of playing. Sometimes it's just a version of skipping over the boring stuff when shopping in a market, but with bigger time and space gaps. The capture or ship scenarios are different - the scene framing is a bit harder - but there's no necessary reason why it should be at odds with the player/GM understanding of things.

The other main aspect of player freedom, besides thematic choices, is meaningful deployment of the action resolution mechanics. This is where I think system matters - to go back to your example of bottles on door handles and alarm spells, this is an example of action resolution mechanics which (i) allow the action-resolution-mechanical state at the end of one scene affect the action-resolution-mechanical state at the start of another scene, and (ii) assume that that effect is to be played out in real time in the same sequence as it would unfold in game time. If a game has those sorts of mechanics, it is harder for the GM to frame scenes without being unfair to the player, by vitiating their action-resolution-mechanical choices. Even in such games I think workarounds of variours sorts are possible - frank metagame discussion being the main one - but not all games have action resolution mechanics with properties (i) and/or (ii). 4e, for example, is designed to have a lot less of (i). And systems which allow the GM to override the players precautios in return for granting them plot/fate points in the new scene are designed to have a lot less of (ii). In these sorts of games, GM scene framing needn't vitiate players' action-resolution-mechanical choices.

This is why I think (a) that there is a big difference between what I'm talking about, and 2nd ed AD&D, and (b) that system matters to these things. I also think (I'm not 100% sure) that it's an implication of your position that Forge-style narrativist play isn't possible using traditional RPGs. I don't agree with that. Neither does the Forge. Provided that some care is taken in the sorts of ways I'm talking about - in particular with handling the implications of action-resolution mechanics from scene to scene - I think vanilla narrativism is eminently possible with an otherwise pretty traditional approach.