D&D 5E Character play vs Player play

[The Crimson Binome]

Hang on. The paladin is creating the mount? Really? You might want to check your facts there. If the paladin is creating the mount, then how come he has to go fight someone for it?

The paladin calls for the horse. It magically appears. It appears in a location and situation where it will be convenient for the paladin to quest for it. This was before the rules bothered to establish between creation effects and summoning effects, so we have no further information on how it appears.

Unless, somehow, the paladin is aware of things like "level" and "experience points" then there's absolutely no way he would know when he could summon the mount.

Level has in-game meaning. A paladin with sufficient in-game experience may possess an intelligent warhorse. A wizard with sufficient in-game experience may be able to cast Fireball. A character would have to be extremely dense to not be aware of the in-game concept which experience points represent.

In what way is this not player authorship? The only thing the player hasn't done here is write the quest. He initiates the quest, dictates the rough location, time, and reward of the quest. Not the character, the player decides all of this. This is pretty clearly player authorship. What do you think player authorship actually means?

The character calls for the mount. That's explicit. Plain as day. I don't know how you could possibly misinterpret that. If the character bothered to interview other paladins about how they acquired their own special mounts, he or she could learn the rough parameters involved. There is no player authorship or narrative causality involved. It's purely scientific, cause and effect - just like casting a Fireball.

 

[pemerton]

The paladin calls for the horse. It magically appears.

From Gygax's DMG, p 18:

It will magically appear, but not in actual physical form. The paladin will magically "see" his or her faithful destrier in whatever location it is currently in . . .​

The horse already exists when the paladin calls for it. It appears to him/her in the sense of being seen by him/her. It is not spontaneously called into existence.

In a typical game, the GM will look at the encounter table and see that Lich is a possible result. By looking at this table and agreeing to roll on it, he has thus accepted as an established fact that there is a Lich around here... somewhere.

Two things.

First, the GM need not have accepted any such fact. If the lich result never comes up on the table in the whole course of the campaign, the GM is not committed to it being true that an undiscovered lich existed in the campaign world. In my experience (playing, reading around magazines and message boards, etc) it is a small minority of GMs who treat the random encounter table as representing gameworld actualities rather than gameworld possibiites.

Second, and more importantly, the GM will not have worked out any details of the lich until it comes up on the table. That is the point at which the GM works out its backstory, fits it into the gameworld history etc. In other words, an out-of-game event - the roll on the table - leads the GM to introduce new material into the gameworld past. I don't understand why you do not respond to this point. Even if - contrary to the rules - you treat the paladin's horse as a case of spontaneous creation, no one treats the random encounter result as a spontaneous creation. These entities, together with their histories and backstories, get incorporated into the unfolding fiction via an act of authorship on the part of the GM.

There is no meta-game event, because whether or not the party encounters the Lich is not a factor in the Lich existing, or in determining anything about its prior history.

Just as [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] is curious what you think people mean when they refer to "player authorship", so I am increasingly curious what you think anyone means when they talk about the metagame shaping the authorship of the fiction.

In this particular case, the rolling of an encounter is a metagame event - it happens in the real world, using dice and a table, in accordance with a wandering monster procedure spelled out for the GM in a rulebook.

And as a result of following that procedure, the GM now has to engage in an act of authorship - namely, detailing the lich's origins and backstory - which (i) hadn't previously been undertaken, and (ii) adds new content into the shared fiction - much like a new Harry Potte novel adds new content into that fiction, even if some of that content deals with events that, within the fiction, happened before the events of an earlier novel. The time-sequence of authorship doesn't always correspond to the time-sequence of ingame events; hence prequel are possible.

And not that none of this is driven by consideations of ingame causality. The GM is not inferring to the lich, or its origins and purposes, simply by extrapolation via ingame causal laws from a known prior state of the ingame world. S/he is doing all this because s/he is falling the content-creation rules of the game, which include rand

The DM should have determined this before rolling. It is probably the same one, given how few Liches "live" in any given area.

The random encounters tables in the back of Gygax's DMG have hundreds of entries. No GM ever determined all this stuff before rolling. Nor does any DMG I'm familiar with advise that s/he should. As I've mentioned upthread, part of a GM's skill is being able to manage backstory, including backstory introduction resulting from such devices as random encounters, in a manner that preserves the consistency of the gameworld.

 

[innerdude]

. . . . in traditional D&D play, rewriting backstory and retconning ingame causality is regarded as a core GMing skill that is necessary to make the game function. It is not some wacky, deviant idea smuggled in by latter-day "storygamers".

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and I disagree on any number of things related to GM-ing and playstyle, but this ain't one of 'em.

And in terms of "verisimilitude," or whatever you want to call it, playing with a GM who's bad at performing this kind of retconning is far more likely to pull me out of the game world than "unrealistic" or meta-game mechanics (though frankly I don't care for any of the three---bad retconning, unrealistic mechanics, overly meta-gamed mechanics).

One of the worst games I've ever had the displeasure of playing in was a GURPS game where the GM claimed it was the "best, most realistic rules system," but couldn't create a coherent story continuity if his life depended on it.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

In my experience (playing, reading around magazines and message boards, etc) it is a small minority of GMs who treat the random encounter table as representing gameworld actualities rather than gameworld possibiites.

And in my experience, with the same sources, the opposite is true. Both of these ways of playing the game were fairly common, whether or not they were encouraged or supported by the words in the book.

Second, and more importantly, the GM will not have worked out any details of the lich until it comes up on the table. That is the point at which the GM works out its backstory, fits it into the gameworld history etc. In other words, an out-of-game event - the roll on the table - leads the GM to introduce new material into the gameworld past. I don't understand why you do not respond to this point.

The physical roll of the die isn't important, just as the particulars of the die you are rolling are irrelevant. It's all just a random number generator to determine the minutiae of who is where at a particular time. The DM doesn't need to alter the history of the world to account for the Lich showing up, because the history of the region already accounts for everything that could show up on that chart, unless you're using your weird retcon rules that should be entirely unnecessary.

Even if - contrary to the rules - you treat the paladin's horse as a case of spontaneous creation, no one treats the random encounter result as a spontaneous creation. These entities, together with their histories and backstories, get incorporated into the unfolding fiction via an act of authorship on the part of the GM.

The PHB, being the primary source for rules regarding player characters and classes, states that it magically appears. The DMG, being the primary source for guiding the DM, then states that the paladin will see its current location. These are not at odds with each other - the horse appears, but it doesn't physically appear before the paladin.

If you ignore the primary source, and really twist the secondary source, I could see how you might interpret that to saying that the horse existed before the paladin called for it. It's vague enough that it could go either way, if you pre-suppose the insistence of extensive retcon-ing.

Just as [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] is curious what you think people mean when they refer to "player authorship", so I am increasingly curious what you think anyone means when they talk about the metagame shaping the authorship of the fiction.

That's a lot of buzz-words for one sentence. From what I can tell, it would be that the DM (the one who possesses authorship powers over the fictional world) should bias what happens in-game, with regards to metagame concerns (such as what the players want to happen, or how much time is left in the session).

 

[billd91]

This whole paladin's warhorse debate is pretty pointless. If this counts as player authorship, it's really weak. It may be up to the player to decide when he calls it. That particular animal may not explicitly exist in the campaign until a player chooses to play a paladin, survives to the appropriate level, and decides it's time for his vision. But it's still up to the DM to set the quest that must be undertaken. It's still up to the DM to allow paladins in the campaign. This is really what people are hanging their "player authorship stuff existed back in the early days" hat on?

I just don't see the point to expending the energy.

 

[billd91]

Let's look at what's actually happening here:

1. The character gains enough xp to make 4th level.
2. At a point in time of the player's choosing, the player tells the DM that he wants his mount now.
3. The DM is then obligated to create a quest (ie adventure) specifically tailored for the paladin PC, with challenges that are level appropriate (meaning that if I wait levels before calling my mount, for some reason, the challenge will be significantly different than if I do it right away).
4. The DM is also obligated to give a specific reward to the character (ie the horse).

In what way is this not player authorship? The only thing the player hasn't done here is write the quest. He initiates the quest, dictates the rough location, time, and reward of the quest. Not the character, the player decides all of this. This is pretty clearly player authorship. What do you think player authorship actually means?

It might depend on how much detail the player needs to set to really claim the role of "author". If the players says "I want a quest over the next 7 days that gains me a <specific class feature built into the rules>," is that really significant authorship? I can be convinced that it really isn't or, at best, it's really weaksauce authorship because it's barely authoring anything.

 

[Manbearcat]

And in my experience, with the same sources, the opposite is true. Both of these ways of playing the game were fairly common, whether or not they were encouraged or supported by the words in the book.

The physical roll of the die isn't important, just as the particulars of the die you are rolling are irrelevant. It's all just a random number generator to determine the minutiae of who is where at a particular time. The DM doesn't need to alter the history of the world to account for the Lich showing up, because the history of the region already accounts for everything that could show up on that chart, unless you're using your weird retcon rules that should be entirely unnecessary.

You need to pump the brakes a minute here and throttle it back. I started GMing in 1984. I learned while watching the games of 4 prolific GMs of that era who began playing in 1974 and by digesting Gygax's DMG + the absurd collection of D&D magazines that troupe possessed. Over the course of the next 10 years, as I was honing my craft and my own specific niche within it, I watched and shared advice on principles and techniques with a dozen other very prolific GMs. Your "unless you're using your weird retcon rules" statement is 100 % absurd. The art of heavily improving a game via random encounter rolls and adjusting backstory as required to mesh the newly generated content with the establishment is utterly orthodox GMing (and one of the most important, and most difficult to master, skills of proficient GMing). It is absolutely as legitimate (and predates it) as the extreme prep, metaplot heavy, detail-saturated setting, process-sim (possibly heavy GM-force) style you're advocating for. The Dragonlancing of D&D during the burgeoning stages of AD&D2e was a thing. And it was a thing because it was different than what came before it.

But more to the point, D&D has had many different agendas that require the invocation of different principles, techniques, and play procedures:

1) Pawn Stance, Step On Up, Dungeon-Crawl Murderhoboing
2) Sandbox Hex-Crawling
3) Metaplot Heavy, Big Damn Setting, Process Simulating (and maybe Deep Immersioning + GM Forcing)
4) Action/Adventure, Story (right) Now For Big Damn Heroes

I'm intimately familiar with running all 4. Whether you personally like them or not, styles 1, 2, and 4 are not remotely deviant to the hobby.

 

[Hussar]

It might depend on how much detail the player needs to set to really claim the role of "author". If the players says "I want a quest over the next 7 days that gains me a <specific class feature built into the rules>," is that really significant authorship? I can be convinced that it really isn't or, at best, it's really weaksauce authorship because it's barely authoring anything.

You've just dictated the game world to the DM. Again, how is this not player authorship? Look, I said earlier that it's nowhere near the level you might get in hippy dippy pass the story stick type games.

But its pretty clearly the genesis point of such ideas. Because once you've said its ok to demand in game elements from the DM, it's a pretty small step to add in game mechanics that allow you to make other demands.

 

[Hussar]

It might depend on how much detail the player needs to set to really claim the role of "author". If the players says "I want a quest over the next 7 days that gains me a <specific class feature built into the rules>," is that really significant authorship? I can be convinced that it really isn't or, at best, it's really weaksauce authorship because it's barely authoring anything.

You've just dictated the game world to the DM. Again, how is this not player authorship? Look, I said earlier that it's nowhere near the level you might get in hippy dippy pass the story stick type games.

But its pretty clearly the genesis point of such ideas. Because once you've said its ok to demand in game elements from the DM, it's a pretty small step to add in game mechanics that allow you to make other demands.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The Dragonlancing of D&D during the burgeoning stages of AD&D2e was a thing. And it was a thing because it was different than what came before it.

As I've said, I started playing D&D with 2E, so that's what I learned and that's my perspective. From that perspective, there's nothing in 1E which suggests pawn-stance play or player authorship.

If you're saying that BECMI was all pawn-stance play and heavy retroactive continuity, then I'll take your word for it. I've never played that edition. I don't even own those books.

It's entirely possible that, if you started out in an earlier edition, then you could go into 1E with those assumptions, and that's how you'd use those rules. It would seem totally normal to you. AD&D 1E was flexible enough that either way could work within the rules.