Judgement calls vs "railroading"

[pemerton]

The PCs try something that should have worked, but didn't. That gets them thinking, "What happened? There must be something going on here that we don't know about.". They then start digging for that information, find out about the niece and rescue her.

As I posted upthread, I'm not that interested in RPGing as puzzle-solving. If you enjoy it, then go for it!

It's probably a good thing that sort of thing isn't about puzzle solving then. The hidden backstory about the kidnapped daughter provides motivation and reason for the interaction between the baron and the advisor. The PCs may find out about it, or they may not. If they do find out about it, they may care or they may not. If they care they may do something about it, or they may not. It's not something for them to solve. It's simply part of the world for them to roleplay off of if they find out about it

In the post I replied to, and that I have re-quoted, you said "The PCs try something that should have worked, but didn't. That gets them thinking, 'What happened? There must be something going on here that we don't know about.'. They then start digging for that information, find out about the niece and rescue her." That is a description of the PCs solving a puzzle (or, if you prefer, a mystery): the players think "what happened?", they dig for information, and gain answers.

As I said, I'm not very keen on that sort of thing as a focus of RPGing. If you are, then - as I said - go for it!

 

[pemerton]

by the player taking the role of the character, the world can react to the characters by the DM taking on the role that's needed within the world.

Sure, but this is (in the fiction) the world reacting to the characters and (at the table) the GM authoring some fiction in response to what the players have declared as actions for their PCs, and in accordance with whatever rules and principles the GM in question adheres to.

In this thread I've mostly been trying to focus on those rules and principles. And you can't tell what they are, or how they are being applied, just by recounting what is happening in the fiction.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]: While not disagreeing overall, the definitions don't seem to have a place for systems which allow players to introduce major scene elements.

I'm just trying to characterise the main focus of discussion in the thread, which has been on game with a fairly traditional GM/player divide, and hence the bulk of content-introduction is done by the GM; and trying to do that in response to a couple of particular posters.

I don't think the two characterisations are exhaustive even of the space they might cover, let alone the whole space. (Eg they don't properly describe classic dungeon-crawling either, I don't think, because that introduces constraints on the GM of various sorts that I didn't try to pick out in my post.)

 

[Tony Vargas]

Some thoughts on skill challenges:

(1) The 4e DMG says...
I think this is fairly confusing (and perhaps confused)

The original Skill Challenge rules were unclear and downright non-functional (SC's got /easier/ with increasing complexity!). A rapid succession of errata's and re-published versions ended with the RC version, which was still far from perfect, but at least functional, and much clearer.

 

[pemerton]

the focus of the game is specifically on only the parts of the world that come into play and impact the PCs at that point in time.

Can I ask - what would a RPG look like that was different from this?

As in, what would a game look like that was focused on parts of the gameworld that have not come into play and have not impacted the PCs?

The question is not rhetorical. And I could guess at possible answers, based on my own experience, but I'm wondering what you had in mind.

 

[pemerton]

I was building a PC, which led to me pulling out my copy of BW Gold, which led to me rereading the opening few pages. Some stuff in there seemed relevant to this thread, in so far as it sets out a particular approach to what I have been calling "player-driven" RPGing.

From the Foreword, by Jake Norwood (The Riddle of Steel designer, and HEMA guy):

So how do you play Burning Wheel? Fight for what you believe. Or, since it’s a roleplaying game: Fight for what your character believes. Everything else in the rules tells either how to craft that character’s beliefs or how to fight for them.

Burning Wheel’s character creation drips with character history. History breeds conflict. Conflict means taking a stand. What will your character stand for?

Burning Wheel’s core mechanics, advancement and Artha rules demand more-than-usual attention from the player. Skill or stat advancement isn’t an afterthought, but rather a crucial part of the game. The decision to solve a problem with cold steel or silken words isn’t just one of better numerical values - it’s a question of who you, the player, want your character to become. Every action - pass or fail - is growth. Every decision affects how your character matures, shifts, changes. Even little decisions impact the character in permanent, subtle ways. . . .

The game is meant to be played as written. Each rule has been lovingly crafted . . . to support player-driven stories of white-knuckled action, heart-rending decisions and triumph against the odds.​

And from the introduction, pp 9-11, 13:

The Burning Wheel is a roleplaying game. Its mood and feel are reminiscent of the lands created by Ursula K Le Guin, Stephen R Donaldson and JRR Tolkien in their works of fantasy fiction. It is also heavily influenced by the brilliant medieval historical accounts of Barbara Tuchman and Desmond Seward; a dirty, complicated world full of uncertainty, but not without hope or opportunity for change.

Unlike many other roleplaying games, there is no set world in which you play. Burning Wheel is an heir to a long legacy of fantasy roleplaying games, most of which contain far better worlds and settings than could be provided here. Also, it is my strong belief that players of these games are adept at manufacturing their own worlds for gameplay; my own world pales in comparison to what you will create.

In the game, players take on the roles of characters inspired by history and works of fantasy fiction. These characters are a list of abilities rated with numbers and a list of player-determined priorities. The synergy of inspiration, imagination, numbers and priorities is the most fundamental element of Burning Wheel. Expressing these numbers and priorities within situations presented by the game master (GM) is what the game is all about.

Though the game has no world full of ethics and laws, the rules do contain a philosophy that implies a certain type of place. There are consequences to your choices in this game. They range from the very black and white, “If I engage in this duel, my character might die,” to the more complex, “If my character undertakes this task, he’ll be changed, and I don’t know exactly how.” Recognizing that the system enforces these choices will help you navigate play. I always encourage players to think before they test their characters. Are you prepared to accept the consequences of your actions? . . .

Burning Wheel is best played sitting around a table with your friends - face to face. It is inherently a social game. The players interact with one another to come to decisions and have the characters undertake actions.

One of you takes on the role of the game master. The GM is responsible for challenging the players. He also plays the roles of all of those characters not taken on by other players; he guides the pacing of the events of the story; and he arbitrates rules calls and interpretations so that play progresses smoothly.

Everyone else plays a protagonist in the story. Even if the players decide to take on the roles of destitute wastrels, no matter how unsavory their exploits, they are the focus of the story. The GM presents the players with problems based on the players’ priorities. The players use their characters’ abilities to overcome these obstacles. To do this, dice are rolled and the results are interpreted using the rules presented in this book. . . .

Burning Wheel is very much a game. While players undertake the roles of their characters and embellish their actions with performance and description, rolling the dice determines success or failure and, hence, where the story goes.​

All the key ideas are there: the GM responding to player-established priorities; the PCs (and thereby their players) being tested in relation to both their abilities and those priorities, and potentially changed, in both respects, as a result; the setting as a venue for play, not as an end in itself; the results of checks ("rolling the dice") as binding on all participants.

One thing that makes the BW books among my favourite RPG rulebooks is how forthrightly they state the way to play the game. The 4e rulebooks could have benefitted, I think, from greater clarity along these sorts of lines.

 

[Lanefan]

Hey! Your sig here almost sounds like the preference for a player-driven game over a DM-driven one!

Ay, marry, there's the rub! The unknown task is in fact known by the DM ahead of time - it's part of The Grand Plot - and the hope* is that the PCs will either a) somehow stumble onto it, realize its relevance, and do it; or b) do it without ever knowing what they've done until later when the relevance becomes more clear.

* - and if they miss it completely, no problem; it'll reappear somewhere else later.

I still don't get why you feel this way. Using an example from my own Dark Sun game scenario, two of the PCs have goals at the beginning of play as follows: The Fighter, a former arena slave, desperately seeks her combat partner, who disappeared during the insurrection and slave uprising that immediately precedes play. The Druid mechanically has a theme called "Ghost of the Past," through which we flavor the theme power as a mystic connection to Athas's past--glimmers of the distant past when the world was green, before the scorching sun turned (nearly) all to desert. Her goal is to somehow use these intuitions of the past to discover a way to bring some kind of healing to the planet.

Perhaps you might frame the Fighter's "drives" as "emo," in the sense that they are rather personal (though outwardly directed). But the Druid? How is that anything less than the grandest of scales? And note that neither of these "narratives" are DM-written. They are PC goals and the scenes that I, as DM, will frame will be interesting obstacles, etc. along the way as the PCs take actions to meet these goals.

The Druid's goal is great - that's the sort of thing one can build a good long multi-faceted campaign around! Excellent stuff!

The Fighter's goal doesn't give much to work with - it can easily be solved in one adventure, if that. Then what do you do?

You know, as I type this I'm having a thought or two (alert the media, it's a rare occurrence!). Would it be the end of the world for the player to not only come up with a goal but to give a high-level storyboard at least ten adventures long* on how that goal might be achieved in the game? That's the player-drive side and with luck it'll force goals more like your Druid's and less like your Fighter's. Then, once the DM gets all these storyboards she takes them and merges them together (without telling the players exactly how she's doing so) into something of a master storyboard for the campaign, while perhaps throwing in a few ideas of her own. That's the DM-drive side. Then she runs the game in whatever manner she likes on the day-to-day scale, and it's up to her whether she informs players which adventures tie to whose goals or whatever.

* - an example of what I mean for the Druid in your game: (I suppose you could call these chapters instead of adventures, but whatever)

GOAL: Encounter Ghost of the Past intuitions and then to somehow use these intuitions to discover a way to bring some kind of healing to the planet.
STORYBOARD:
Adventure 1 - introductory, learn about the other party members, the setting, etc., including history that says the world was once a green place. Dungeon crawl with extras?
Adventure 2 - encounter GotP intuitions at some point, maybe learn what they are (this can be mostly someone else's adventure, my bits can be a sidebar)
Adventure 3 - learn of an item that relates to these intuitions, also start discovery process as to what they mean (another dungeon crawl followed by research)
Adventure 4 - find the Green Crystal: this clarifies the GotP intuitions, tells me I still need more (the intuitions by themselves aren't enough instruction) - typical item-recovery mission
Adventure 5 - locate then recover (then decipher) the Prophecies of Athasia, in effect the rather cryptic divinely-placed instructions on what to do and what is needed - and it's not in a safe place!
Adventure 6 - the Grand Oasis - nobody knows why it's where it is or why it's always green; in fact it's all that remains of what was once a divinely-blessed forest, a piece of which is needed. The adventure is the journey there and back and encounters in the settlements surrounding it, very dangerous.
Adventure 7 - plants need water - maritime adventure where we sail to find the fountain of youth (base the events on Pirates of Caribbean 4?) and recover some of its waters
Adventure 8 - to find the last surviving Ent on the planet, a small part of whom is necessary both to green the planet and contunie his race (dangerous forest adventure)
Adventure 9 - off-plane travel to gain direct divine blessing on parts gathered; danger is the astral journey there and back
Adventure 10 - grand finale - heal the planet and make it green once more. Many people oppose this, so a big sprawling adventure maybe in several parts? Civil war? Battlesystem-type stuff?

You see what I'm after here. Each player gives in something like this for their character, and the DM then synthesizes them into something vaguely resembling a campaign combining adventure ideas where she can. For example, if someone else also needs a written work maybe the adventure to find that can be combined with the Prophecies of Athasia adventure (or maybe the Prophecies can do for both?).

And the "final" storyboard built by the DM will never be final at all - characters come and go, goals and ideals change, and of course nothing ever survives contact with the dice.

Thoughts?

Lanefan

 

[Campbell]

I've responded to both these things in multiple posts, begining way upthread when I noted the same apparent category error in a post made by [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION].

I will do so again.

Taken at face value the claim that "the gameworld only reacts to the players" makes no sense to me. Adding in the adverb "as determined by the GM" doesn't help, because it's still the case that the gameworld doesn't react to anything. Apparently it's clear to you what is meant, but unfortunately that doesn't help me! (I know that you believe that no one "should need to clarify" these things. All I can do is apologise for my difficulty in making sense of the claim. The metaphor is not working for me.)

In a post following yours [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] refers to "the viewpoint being used to create the fiction". "Viewpoint" here is itself a metaphor - my best reading of it is as a reference to purposes or considerations that guide the authoring of the fiction. If I am misunderstanding what was meant, Ovinomancer no doubt will let me know once again!

So anyway, with that interpretation in mind, here is the nearest true thing that I can see in the general neighbourhood:

Player-driven: The GM authors the gameworld (i) having regard to consistency with the fiction already established in the course of play, (ii) having regard to the concerns/interests of the players as manifested through their creation and their play of their PCs (this is especially relevant when framing the PCs (and thereby the players) into challenging situations, when narrating consequences of failed checks, and the like), and (iii) bound by the outcomes of action resolution. It is worth noting that (iii) cuts both ways: if the players succeed, the GM is bound by that; if the players fail, the GM is bound by that - no retries is a fairly hard rule, while no softballing I would say is generally a softer but still important rule.

(NB [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] may disagree with my ranking of the importance of these rules - if so, I think that would reflect some of the differences in our preferences that have come out in this thread eg "scene-framing" vs "MCing".)

GM-driven: The GM authors the gameworld having regard to consistency with the established fiction, where this includes not only fiction already established in the course of play but also fiction authored secretly by the GM. This requirement of consistency can extend to rendering player action declarations for their PCs failures simply on the basis of fictional positioning that is unknown to the players because part of this GM's secret backstory. And a fortiori there is certainly no obligation on the GM, in authoring the gameworld, to have regard to the concerns/interests of the players.​

I haven't gone back through the thread to see the first time I stated something along those lines, but I believe that it's implicit in most of my posts, and especially the discussion with [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] earlier in the thread.

Is this what you and [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] mean? As I've said, it's the nearest true thing in the neighbourhood that I can think of. But because it is basically a restatement of stuff that was already established hundreds of posts ago, I feel that it probably is not what you are saying.

My primary contention would be the notion of merely having regard for the established fiction. That does not dno it justice! In the sort of gaming I have been talking about our relationship with the fiction is much stronger than that. We have a great curiosity about the fiction. We actively follow it as the primary interest of play! We chase after it like a dog to a bone. We do our level best to make sure it is interesting, but we do not really drive it. Instead we let it drive us into experiences we would otherwise not have and try not to put designs on it.

Our own interests as players are also somewhat secondary to the interests of the fiction and the game as enumerated in the principles. Instead it is our curiosity about the fiction which drives us. We welcome the decidedly unwelcome into our game and believe we are better for it - that more fun is had that way. The value of the system is to make the fiction more interesting than it would be if we were left to our own devices.

Finally, I think there is some room for fiction unknown to players to impact resolution. I do not like characterizing some fiction as backstory and other fiction as fiction. It's all fiction to me regardless of when it happened. However, it must be meaningfully knowable through skilled play of the fiction and mechanisms provided before it impacts resolution. We must say what honesty demands and not manipulate things to our own ends. It is alright for the fact that The Baron is possessed by a demon to mean that punching him in the face is a bad idea. However, a player must have the opportunity to find out that is a bad idea before they declare their character punches him in the face!

 

[pemerton]

My primary contention would be the notion of merely having regard for the established fiction. That does not dno it justice! In the sort of gaming I have been talking about our relationship with the fiction is much stronger than that. We have a great curiosity about the fiction. We actively follow it as the primary interest of play! We chase after it like a dog to a bone.

Sure, no quarrel with that!

I was trying to state the constraints in a fairly anodyne way (and failed twice: [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] quarrelled with the way I stated the lack of obligation of a "GM-driven" GM to have regard to player interests/concerns in authoring the fiction).

And to take your thought in a direction slightly orthogonal to your own purposes: The idea of actively following the fiction is, I think, at the heart of the gap between the "official" BW rule for setting stakes (p 32 of Gold: "When a player sets out a task for his character and states his intent, it is the GM’s job to inform him of the consequences of failure before the dice are rolled") and the way that Luke Crane actually plays, which he describes in the Adventure Burner/Codex and which is how I also tend to play: I quoted it upthread, and don't have the book ready-to-hand at the moment, but it's along the lines of there's no need to expressly state the consequences of failure upfront, as the fiction is sufficiently charged that they are implicit within it.

Our own interests as players are also somewhat secondary to the interests of the fiction and the game as enumerated in the principles. Instead it is our curiosity about the fiction which drives us.

I would say that this is more true for my 4e and Cortex games than BW. I think that's not a coincidence, either: of the three systems, BW has the most formal framework for establishing clear player priorities and putting them front-and-centre at every moment of play.

I think there is some room for fiction unknown to players to impact resolution. I do not like characterizing some fiction as backstory and other fiction as fiction. It's all fiction to me regardless of when it happened. However, it must be meaningfully knowable through skilled play of the fiction and mechanisms provided before it impacts resolution.

To this, I would generally add: it must be meaningfully knowable in the relevant episode of resolution. In 4e combat, for instance, there are ways to learn the abilities of enemies; in a skill challenge there is Insight as well as knowledge skills. In BW there are Wise checks, Perception checks etc.

MHRP doesn't really have this particular sort of mechanic, and hence isn't going to have the sort of thing you describe. My first thought is that the closest it comes is the ability of the GM to establish a new Scene Distinction by spending a d8 from the Doom Pool.

 

[pemerton]

Would it be the end of the world for the player to not only come up with a goal but to give a high-level storyboard at least ten adventures long* on how that goal might be achieved in the game?

Not the end of the world! But not that appealing to me. It seems almost the opposite of playing to find out.

I think [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] sees FATE as being a little bit like this, though (not in literal details, but the sort of RPGing experience it provides).