Judgement calls vs "railroading"

[Imaro]

I find the general DM empowerment approach of 5E to lead to an increase in GM agency with little to no increase in reaponsibility.

I think the system has replaced a lot of "maintenance" type mechanics with simple judgment calls, which I find refreshing. This is largely due to coming from the highly codified systems of 3E/Pathfinder, and some dabbling in 4E. So mechanically, there is less to keep track of, less rules and subsystems to know.

This shift in focus away from mechanics has also kind of reminded me that the story should come first. I'm more free to focus on that, which I think has helped my game overall. It's also allowed me to involve the players much more in determining how the game goes, although that's likely more of an indirect effect than a direct one.

I wouldn't be surprised, though, to hear others give examples that are very different than mine.

This has pretty much been my experience with 5e as well. Though like you I'm sure there may be some who differ even to the extent that 5e places too much or the wrong kind (for them) of DM responsibility on them.

EDIT: I wonder if there are perhaps "GM types" who cognitively deal with running certain games better than others. Less active preference and more just how their particular brain works??

 

[Imaro]

There's no such thing as power without responsibility.

(Though there are certainly many examples throughout history of power being exercised irresponsibly...)

Well to be fair [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] spoke to feeling an increase in responsibility... not that he didn't feel any when running 5e. For me I don't feel any more responsibility than I do with any other game I've played (and less than with quite a few), perhaps I felt different responsibilities but I don't think I felt more.

 

[hawkeyefan]

There's no such thing as power without responsibility.

(Though there are certainly many examples throughout history of power being exercised irresponsibly...)

I didn't really say that, though. I said I felt my agency went up with little or no increase in responsibility. And I mean this in the "net" sense that [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] originally mentioned.

So, even if 5E increases my responsibility by empowering me as a DM, then such an increase is offset by the removal of other areas of DM responsibility that I found tedious and of little value.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I didn't really say that, though. I said I felt my agency went up with little or no increase in responsibility.

You said 'find' rather than 'felt,' but I'm starting to understand what you were trying to say...

And I mean this in the "net" sense that [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] originally mentioned.

That is very different from how I took it, thanks for the clarification.

So, even if 5E increases my responsibility by empowering me as a DM

It would seem to follow that it does, inevitably - a price well worth paying, IMHO.

then such an increase is offset by the removal of other areas of DM responsibility that I found tedious and of little value.

Ah, that's a different sense of 'responsibly' than I was thinking of: While a system that figuratively 'runs itself' with detailed mechanics relieves the DM of /bearing responsibility for the results of those mechanics/, if the DM tracks/executes all those mechanics, himself, he's responsible for doing whatever work that 'entails' at the table - if you keep everything behind the screen, that could be a lot.

 

[pemerton]

I think maybe technically and from an official perspective you may be correct but with the advent of the OGL for 3e and the DM's Guild with 5e from a practical point of view I disagree... With this type of openenss and the numerous options created by 3rd party publishers, independent publishers, etc. I think D&D has an unprecedented amount of flexibility.

<snip>

http://slyflourish.com/guide_to_narrative_combat.html

D&D 5E is an intentionally mod-able system.

And I also find it odd that you would deny flexibility on the part of D&D and then use an example of an alternate version of Burning World in support of system flexibility.

My claim is that the flexibility of D&D is overrated, and that the non-flexibility of (say) BW is exaggerated. Hence I point to constraints in D&D, and to variants of BW.

The idea that D&D is flexible because there are lots of house rules, variants etc out there doesn't change my mind. I'm aware of a reasonable number of them.

But other systems can be modified and house-ruled too. The Cortex+ Hacker's Guide is full of such stuff for MHRP, Leverage and Smallville, for instance - I used some of those ideas to run my MHRP/Cortex Fantasy Hack.

When I look at 5e, the variants are mostly around PC build rules and some elements of combat action resolution. But at it's core it doesn't look that flexible. Just to give one example: the rate of PC failure in BW is, to me at least, very striking. It's a core feature of the system, and a lot of other system elements are built around it. It's very hard for me to see how 5e would be modified to deliver that sort of experience in any coherent way.

Not sure why the Ideals,Bonds,Flaws and Inspiration mechanics (along with Background) "won't offer very much" (especially since there are rules for fleshing these out in ther DMG...but I think my point is they are there as a framework for a DM to hang more or less on. It seems you are claiming they are not integral... which is exactly my point, they are not necessary for the game but for those who want to hang more on them they exist

The Ideals/Bonds/Flaws mechanic doesn't contain a system for change.

And the Inspiration mechanic is triggered by "playing your character in a way that’s true to his or her personality traits, ideal, bond, and flaw" and/or "when you play out your personality traits, give in to the drawbacks presented by a flaw or bond, and otherwise portray your character in a compelling way" (SRD pp59-60). In the PC build dimension, and in the award of Inspiration dimension, there is no concern for conflict.

It's also far from clear that the maths of the game, and the basiscs of PC build, support constant access to advantage (eg look at barbarians' Reckless Attack), which means that the GM has a mechanical reason to be cautious in awards of Inspiration.

Conversely, the system in BW works in part by relying on the maths of the game: failure is a common default, so spending artha to boost rolls doesn't break the maths, it simply reduces the incidence of failure. A dice-pool system in which players are rolling for successes, not totalling the dice, means that adding bonus dice (Persona points add bonus dice 1-for-1; Fate points allow adding bonus dice by way of opening up 6s for re-rolls) increases the prospects of success while still leaving failure as an option (unlike bonuses in the d20 system); and there are rules for enhancing abilities, over the long sequence of play, by spending artha on them, which give players another consideration to factor in in spending their artha; etc.

can I even play BW without these types of mechanics if I don't desire them to be front and center?

Beliefs are still central to the BW variant you cited above, the advice is to tell the players what module you are running and what it is about... and to ignore "filler" combat... de-emphasize loot... not really seeing how this shows flexibility as opposed to a change in the scenery with the same game.

Well, hit points and damage dice are central to any D&D game. Does that mean that all the "flexible" options you are pointing to are all just changes in scenery?

Furthermore, Burning THACO presents a completely different way of establishing and using backstory, and of establishing Beliefs: instead of the players working out Beliefs for their PCs, and the GM "going where the action is", the GM (via choice of module) establishes what the action is, and estabishes a whole lot of secret backstory (contained in the module keys) that s/he will use to adjudicate action declarations, and the players set Beliefs that fit with the module. That you see this shift from largely player-driven to largey GM-driven play as "a mere change of scenery" is to me very telling. It suggests that, in judging whether or not D&D is notably flexible compared to other systems, there are whole dimensions of game play that you are disregarding.

In any event, if you wanted to strip Beliefs, artha etc out of BW (and the "fail forward" resolution logic that accompanies it) then you'd have a simulationist dice-pool system that plays a bit like RQ or RM (or a fantasy version of Classic Traveller). I don't know if that would be fun or not - they're fairly brutal systems, and BW played in this way would be just as brutal, I suspect - but it could be done easily enough. You could even - to ameliorate the brutality - just put in a rule where each player gets (say) 2 Fate and 1 Persona at the start of each session.

Which is actually another thing D&D can't do: this sort of classic sim game.

As to your second point you're citing a different game, Torchbearer, irregardless of whether it is based on similar rules to BW, is not BW.

Seriously? So D&D is flexible because it has all these official and unofficial house rules, including under the OGL, but Torchbearear and Mouse Guard - which are BW variants designed and published by the BW designers and which have a greater degree of mechanical resemblance to BW than Moldvay Basic does to 5e - don't count as indicators of BW's flexibility?

OK, then, you win. (And no doubt that the HeroQuest revised rulebook is full of example that include low-brow superhero hijinks doesn't tell us anything about what that game can be used for either.)

 

[pemerton]

Further thoughts on illusionism and railroading:

things that the players do not know about are being changed. Or in this case, not necessarily changed, but left open to be determined later on....which is not the way that the real world works.

It's true that fictional events, unlike events in the real world, are authored. But how does this tend to show that some approach or other to RPGing is illusionism?

Illusionism requires an illusion. There's no illusion in acknowledging that the fiction is authored. If anything, wouldn't it be illusionistic to somehow pretend that the elements that make up a fiction aren't authored, but rather are the result of the (purely imaginary) causal processes taking place (as authored) within the fiction?

So the players see the yellow skulker....they will assume that the guy has some kind of motivation or goal, even if it is not clear to them at this point....and yet, his motivations and goals are undetermined at this point. So, there is an illusion of sorts at play.

But (within the fiction) the skulker does have a motivation or goal! It's just not known yet.

If the GM had already decided what it is, then (as I have talked about upthread) to the extent that the skulker becomes a focus of play at all, it is the players trying to find out what is written in the GM's notes.

If the GM doesn't know - at that point - what the skulker's goal is, then if the players engage with the skulker as an element of the fiction, some sort of motivation or goal for the skulker will emerge out of play. Eg, in the 4e game, at a certain point I decide that skulker is engaged to the baron's niece. I obviously couldn't have made that decision until it was established that there was a baron, so this was months of play (more than a year, I would guess) after the first occurrencdes of the yellow-robed mage as an NPC. This established new backstory about him, which informs what his motivations are. These emerging motivations (i) provide colour and framing, and (ii) answer questions that arose from earlier play ("What exactly is the skulking wizad's plan?")

In the OP game, after introducing the wastrel elf, and his possession of the mace, I introduced the dark naga, in response to a player's belief for a PC. And I establish that the dark naga is the master whom the renegade elf was serving. That established , in the fiction, the elf's reason to be opposing the PCs.

I'm not seeing what the illusion is, other than the "illusion" inherent in any fiction. (Ie fiction is a type of pretence.) The GM isn't manipulating the players into believing something about the dynamics or elements of play that is false.

can players simply try to find a secret door in any room in which they find danger? Is it forcing a specific narrative to not allow that?

The short answer is "yes". Qv the OP example of finding the vessel; the discussion, somewhere upthread, of the players making a Catacombs-wise check to see if their PCs successfully navigated through the Hardby catacombs to find a way into the tower where the events of the OP took place; and the example, somewhere more recently upthread, of a MHRP/Cortex Fantasy player making a check to establish a Secret Door asset.

In the Adventure Burner, Luke Crane discusses the players checking Architecture to see whether their PCs discover a secret door into a citadel they wish to infiltrate. The failure of the check estalishes (among other things) that there is no secret door to be discovered.

The longer answer relates back to the discussion with [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] upthread, about inclusion of "secret backstory" as part of the framing fiction in circumstances where it is meaningfully knowable by the players, in virtue of action declarations by their PCs. Having NPCs arrive during a scene via a secret door that they shut behind them, for instance, reveals the presence of the secret door and thereby makes it salient in the context of the present situation, and - especially in a game with a rigorous action economy - opens up a new option for the players to engage the fiction to get what they want ("I try to find the mechanism for the secret door").

But that is quite different from "If you think to hunt for secret doors, and the GM rolls a 1 on a d6, then you'll find a new pathway to adventure."

Secret doors are especially interesting in this context, and raise speciall problems, because of their connection to the framing of scenes. Even Gygax, by the time of writing his DMG, was aware that treating what is, in fact, a question of the players' access to those bits of the backstory that they are interested in, as if it were a moment of action resolution, could sometimes lead to unsatisfying results - hence he gives the following an example of disregarding the dice (p 110):

You also might wish to give them [ie the players] an edge in finding a particular clue, eg a secret door that leads to a
complex of monsters and treasures that will be especially entertaining.​

 

[hawkeyefan]

You said 'find' rather than 'felt,' but I'm starting to understand what you were trying to say...

That is very different from how I took it, thanks for the clarification.

It would seem to follow that it does, inevitably - a price well worth paying, IMHO. Ah, that's a different sense of 'responsibly' than I was thinking of: While a system that figuratively 'runs itself' with detailed mechanics relieves the DM of /bearing responsibility for the results of those mechanics/, if the DM tracks/executes all those mechanics, himself, he's responsible for doing whatever work that entails at the table.

Perhaps a shift in focus would be a better way to view it? A lessening of the role of rules manager/referee and an increase in the role of storyteller/narrator?

For me, the further we got into the 3E/Pathfinder era, the more constrained I felt as a GM. It seemed more about knowing all the mechanics than anything else.

So for me the simpler rules and flattened math makes that side of things easier, allowing me to focus both before and during play on the story.

I find I'm simply using judgment to make a ruling rather than having to consult rules and ao on.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Flexibility & Illusionism

The idea that D&D is flexible because there are lots of house rules, variants etc out there doesn't change my mind. I'm aware of a reasonable number of them. But other systems can be modified and house-ruled too.

It's more a matter of DMs being flexible. You can hack D&D quite a bit, if you want to and have experience or theoretical knowledge to do it well. The same goes for any system, but a lot more of us have a lot more experience hacking D&D, because it has been the dominant TTRPG for so long.

Just to give one example: the rate of PC failure in BW is, to me at least, very striking. It's a core feature of the system, and a lot of other system elements are built around it. It's very hard for me to see how 5e would be modified to deliver that sort of experience in any coherent way.

Isn't that just insisting the two systems are different? So BW makes it likely for PC to fail, and 5e (sometimes even criticized as 'too easy') makes it likely for them to succeed. That doesn't make one more or less flexible than the other.
(And, really, how hard can be to shift something like chances of success?)

The Ideals/Bonds/Flaws mechanic doesn't contain a system for change.
And the Inspiration mechanic is triggered by "playing your character in a way that’s true to his or her personality traits, ideal, bond, and flaw" and/or "when you play out your personality traits, give in to the drawbacks presented by a flaw or bond, and otherwise portray your character in a compelling way" (SRD pp59-60). In the PC build dimension, and in the award of Inspiration dimension, there is no concern for conflict.

The latter seems like conflict - between what's expedient and what fits those traits.

Well, hit points and damage dice are central to any D&D game. Does that mean that all the "flexible" options you are pointing to are all just changes in scenery?

Hit points/damage are one of D&D's less inflexible mechanics - they can represent anything that keeps the creature from being defeated, and anything that pushes it closer to defeat. Fairly simple mechanics that can cover a lot of fictional ground = flexibility, no?

In any event, if you wanted to strip Beliefs, artha etc out of BW (and the "fail forward" resolution logic that accompanies it) then you'd have a simulationist dice-pool system that plays a bit like RQ or RM.

Sounds good (RQ) or awful (RM).
;P

Which is actually another thing D&D can't do: this sort of classic sim game.

I thought you considered D&D a sim game?
It's certainly a classic game, by definition.

Seriously? So D&D is flexible because it has all these official and unofficial house rules, including under the OGL, but Torchbearear and Mouse Guard - which are BW variants designed and published by the BW designers and which have a greater degree of mechanical resemblance to BW than Moldvay Basic does to 5e - don't count as indicators of BW's flexibility?

I don't buy that hacks and variants and other games using the same core system in any way equal flexibility in a game. Flexibility exercised by the designers in the latter case or GMs in the former, sure, but not inherent in the system, itself. If the game were flexible, you wouldn't need to hack it or publish a separate game to do a different genre or support a different style or whatever.

Maybe I haven't been paying close enough attention (no, I'm sure I haven't, I lack the patience), but it seems like the inflexibility of the various systems discussed in this thread had been the point. Such-and-such a game plays a certain, specific way, to cater to a certain agenda or produce a certain result, and thus fill some sliver-like niche of the RPG market not already pinned down by the 500-lb gorilla, or not already lavishly catered to by some other, equally niche product. While the 500-lb gorilla must remain inflexibly focused on looking, smelling, and acting the part of a gorilla, and weighing 500-lb (not 225 kg!), and squatting on the same share of the market, lest some 90 lb chimp temporarily take it's place.

Illusionism requires an illusion. There's no illusion in acknowledging that the fiction is authored.

There still could be. It's like explaining how a magic trick is done, but still being able to pull it off well. It goes from the sense of wonder "that's impossible!" to an appreciate of skill "wow, really well done!"

But, in general, illusions work better when the audience doesn't know the trick, and the magician controls the scene. The same goes for illusionism in running a game. You can play a game above board and still use such techniques, the players become magicians-assistants instead of audience, but you lose something (or rather they lose something of the experience). But you'll deliver a better experience if you limit what the players know of the processes, so they can fill in something more impressive and cool than the reality of how it was done.

 

[Tony Vargas]

DM Empowerment & DM Em-Responsibility-ment

Perhaps a shift in focus would be a better way to view it? A lessening of the role of rules manager/referee and an increase in the role of storyteller/narrator?

OK, if that's what you meant to say.
I'd see it more as a shift from rules-manager (tracking/applying system), to referee (making calls). :shrug: But I suppose I was thinking of a hypothetical case of a low-empowerment/low-responsibility system vs one that was high in both, while...

For me, the further we got into the 3E/Pathfinder era, the more constrained I felt as a GM. It seemed more about knowing all the mechanics than anything else.

OK, that I get, with 3.x as a concrete example. Yes, you needed to know the mechanics, because the mechanics gave players a /lot/ of options, and all you had to push-back with was the off-handed 'rule-0' that everyone acknowledged but no one gave much respect - or using the very similar options for your monsters & NPCs.
It was a very player-empowering edition, and it still made the game very hard on the DM. That contrasts with both 4e, which was also player-empowering but phone-it-in-easy to run, and 5e which is, of course, very DM-empowering, and also much less player-empowering, but between the prior two WotC editions in ease of DMing, but with the 'hard' part of DMing being more a matter of taking responsibility (the issue Manbearcat was getting at) for the success of the game rather than from needing to master/manage the system like in 3.x/PF (the point you made, and I finally grok, I think).

And, like I at least tried to say, that sense of responsibility is an issue I think gets ignored when people complain about 5e being 'too easy' or 'imbalanced' or 'prone to illusionism' or whatever - that the DM has a responsibility, as a direct consequence of being Empowered, to make his campaign challenging, to give each PC their time in the sun, and to deliver a good play experience.

I find I'm simply using judgment to make a ruling rather than having to consult rules and ao on.

Another bit I can agree with. I run 5e, improvisationally, how I feel is best in the moment - I run a lot of games that way, including some people might say were 'impossible' to run that way - but 5e does make it easy with the expectations it engenders in players. I don't need to consult a rule - if a player points one out, I'll work with it (which includes around it or overruling it for a good reason), otherwise, I'll go with what feels right, often including going with about how something worked in AD&D, when built up a lot of my DMing muscles.


[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], were you thinking of GM Empowerment vs Responsibility in terms of Agency with respect to a game like 5e (very high Empowerment, tempered by equally great Responsibility) vs a game like pemerton presents BW to be* (ie player-driven with lesser or shared-with-players Empowerment, but less/shared Responsibility for the success of the game, was well)? As opposed to games like 3.5 (neither strictly player- nor DM-driven, per se, and with Empowerment one both sides of the screen coming through profound rewards for System Mastery, and, particularly on the player side, in consequence of a social contract typically emphasizing adherence to RAW)?







* I've never even glanced at BW.

 

[pemerton]

I don't view my job as DM to frame the haggling check for them. The framing takes care of itself.

Literally speaking, this is impossible in a typical RPG: the player is dependent upon the GM presenting the fictional situation, narrating the actions of NPCs present in that siutation, etc.

In the example you provide, here is the framing:

there are plenty of merchants in Waterdeep eager to sell their wares. Do you have any skills or history with regard to purchasing silks that would give you an idea of what's good quality or price?

<snip player response>

OK, makes sense. You find that some of the "Calishite" silk is bogus (based on his Wisdom (Insight) modified by his past expertise), but for the legitimate goods, the price is higher than you'd expect, even up here in Waterdeep

<snip player response>

the best you've been able to manage is 18% so far, do you want to continue to pressure, or go with that price. None of the others are willing to come down more than 5%, unusual from your experience.

<snip player response>

Inquiring, you find that the supply is very limited, due to the threat of a civil war in Calimshan right now. They will sell there wares without any problem at this price, and will likely be raising it.

The difference between this - as you present it - and my preferred approach is that the action seems to be being driven by the GM's concerns and interests in the fiction, rather than the players'.

All I'm saying is that as a DM, if the players tell me they are doing something, and I don't know why they are doing it, I don't need to know, nor would I usually ask why. I'll see how it plays out and it may become obvious over time.

<snip>

I don't need to frame anything related to the PCs at all.

From my point of view, that's one way of getting at the distinction between GM-driven and player-driven play. As I said, the approach you favou seems to mean that it is the GM's conerns and interests that underping the GM's framing and narration.

it doesn't have to be a conflict - which is one of the reasons I don't like 4e because of it's tendency to lean toward combat. The owlbear thing was something that came up in my campaign, and the PCs hadn't seen the cubs, just the angry owlbear. They killed it

Well, you're the one who described an angry owlbear protecting its cubs - which seemed to suggest conflict. And I didn't say anything about combat. The only two times the PCs in my 4e game encountered a bear, they tamed it. Based on your account, your - non-4e game -seems to be the one in which the players lean towards combat.

scenes that establish the "normalcy" of the world, the ones that make them stop and consider that the characters are people, interacting with other people, and that "normal" is not "anything we meet is an adversary" brings some of that humanity into the game

I don't see any connection between this, and the question of whether or not the GM is "going where the action is". Unless one is assuming that the action doesn't involve the normalcy of the world and considerations of humanity - but what is the basis for such an assumption?