What is *worldbuilding* for?

[Aenghus]

The vast majority of RPG games I have played in have been GM-driven games, and I have enjoyed or at least appreciated many of them. A few were consistently great, most had highs and lows, with varying proportions of high and low.

IMO to get the best out of such games places some constraints on the players. The players need to learn at least enough about the setting to get by, even if they are playing ignorant outsiders at the start. How much work this takes varies from game to game and group to group.

If a PC is supposed to be from the setting the player should make some effort to fit them to that part of the setting, ideally with the GM's help. Tolerance of special snowflakes varies a lot from group to group, with some creativity very unusual PCs can be grafted in if that's desired. Alternatively, it's common for GMs to modify or ban PCs who don't fit his or her concept of the setting.

PC goals need to fit the setting. If the players are ignorant of the setting at the start of the game, they don't know enough to set any but the most conservative of goals with any expectation of success. In some GM-driven games PC goals might be discussed with the GM and arrived at with collaboration. In others, they are entirely the business of the player and there are zero assurances of relevance or closure. Expected PC lifespan has a bearing on this, campaigns with high PC turnover don't encourage long term PC goals.

IMO proactive players who don't like conforming to someone else's setting don't do so well in GM-driven games with strong settings. Players who don't like learning settings may have issues as well.

There a whole load of reasons why players might stop engaging with the game, ignore plot hooks and turtle up. Acting out, attention seeking, feeling starved of enough information to make reasonable choices, setting dangers exceeding player expectations, concern the game is ignoring or misinterpreting their PC's goals, concern that plot hooks are irrelevant to the PC etc etc. Many of these can't be addressed properly in-game IMO and call for an OOC discussion to attempt a resolution.

 

[pemerton]

]As far as agency is concerned, why is being in the bazaar a railroad? Can't your player choose to leave the bazaar to look for a sage?

Yes, but why would they when you-as-DM have given them a hammer-upside-the-head clue that what they seek is in the bazaar - probably from the feather merchant - by framing them there?

This is bizarrely backwards.

There is no clue. There is a chance for the player to commit - or not, if s/he is feeling weak or cautious. For instance, given that the PC has an Affiliation with a sorcerous cabal, it would be easily open to the player to reach out to a contact and learn what sort of reputation - if any - this peddler has.

It's a weird conception of agency where (i) we know that what the player is interested in includes items that have the possibility of being useful in confronting a balrog, and (ii) it's judged a burden on agency to present the player with situations that speak to this desire, while (iii) it's considered an increase in agency to make the player jump through essentially GM-driven and mediated hoops (is there a sage? is there a shop? who knows where angel feathers might be sold?) before we actually get to the core moment of play.

t's not an increase in player agency to have the GM offer a menu of things to ask questions about.

Sure it is, as it provides choice the players/PCs would not otherwise have had.

<snip>

The railroad occurs when you skip a series of possible interactions (e.g. intersections, slaves being beaten, etc.) to get to the "action" one. The fiction doesn't get the chance to be changed away from the action scene you've already decided comes next.

Again, this is all weirdly backwards. You're saying that the GM increases agency by saying choose from these things I'm offering rather than here, engage with this thing that you've shown you care about.

The other bit that's biazarre is that you increase choice by saying "You're in the town" raher than "You're at the bazaar" - as if your playuer has all the town choices pluys, once the PC gets to the bazaar, all the bazaar choices. Buit by the time (say, half-an-hour of play) your PC gets to the bazaar (or the sage, or whatever), guess what! - my table has been playing to, and the player at my table has made choices (what to do about the curse, who to ask for work, what to do about spotting the vendor of the cursed feather lurking in Jabal's tower).

Tight scene-framing doesn't reduce choice. It just means that the choices more often egnage dramatic need rather than are simply requests for the GM to download setting information.

I'd like to think that the player isn't so selfish as to only care about the goals on his PC's character sheet, and is willing to engage in the goals of other players/PCs and with the game world at large.

Integrating the goals of multiple players is an important matter in player-driven RPGing. Both [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] and I have posted about it at some length, over multiple posts, upthread.

But (1) you don't address this matter by giving all agency to the GM. And (2) the gameworld at large is not a participant who can be slighted or harmed by player :"selfishness". It's just a metaphor for GM authorship!

The conception I'm working with is choice = agency. "You're in town - what do you do?" gives the player a nigh-endless amount of choice. "You're at a bazaar, there's a pedlar selling feathers - what do you do?" takes away all the possible choices and options (and yes, distractons) between starting in town and finding the pedlar...if the PC ever finds the pedlar at all.

As choice situations in a RPG, the fictional setup in the second is no more limiting than the first. Given that the bazaar is in a town, the player whose PC is framed into the bazaar has all the same action declaration options vis-a-vis the fiction as does the player whose PC is framed into the town - but in addition, the framing speaks directly to his/her PC's dramatic need.

But - to go back to the "choose your own adventure" motif - agency over the content of the shared fiction is not established simply by the fact that in the fiction, the PC has choices. If the content of all those choices is established by the GM, and if the significant outcomes of them are primarily a function of GM authorship of unrevealed backstory (as in your example of the mage who charms the spy and therefore but unknown to the player allows the attempt to be made on the life of the duke), then the player is not contributing very much to the content of the shared fiction.

So the DM isn't allowed to introduce hooks, or distractions, or seemingly-superfluous information?

It's not an issue of permission. It's an issue of what's the point. If the plaeyr wants to play a Raven Queen devotee, and the table is in the middle of an exciting sequence dealing with the plots of some Orcus cultists, what does it add to play to tell the players that their PCs come to an intersection?

That doesn't increase choice, for the reason already described - if I'm not wasting my time on that, I'll instead be framing a situation which invites relevant choices (eg the Orcus cultists are trying to bring the PC's friend back to life as a zombie).

The only answer I can see is because - for whatever aesthetic reason - one prefers RPGing to consist in the GM telling the players stuff that is independent of player exercise of agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction.

Let the player tell you what the PC does, then narrate what comes of it based on what you know about (or have just made up about!) the city.

And there could hardly be a clearer example of my point. This is the player being told a story by the GM, about a city that the GM has made up, or is making up. All the player is doing is triggering the GM to tell him/her stuff!

 

[Maxperson]

There is finality. Success is success: the PC acquires an item useful for confronting his brother. Failure is failure: the item is cursed.

Success as you described it is not finality in any way. You told me when I said that the player would have the item needed to save his brother that it still needed to be enchanted and one other thing I can't remember. That's not finality. That's exactly like me saying, "I want something to help me dig holes in my garden." as one of my goals, and you handing me a chunk of iron and saying that success is finality, even though I still need a blacksmith to make a shovel head out of it and a handle to attach.

Finality is a shovel. Finality is the item to free the brother. Heck, even failure wasn't final since now the player had a curse to contend with.

The GM is not at liberty to upend or undo these outcomes by manipulating as-yet unrevealed backstory. [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] outlined this in more detail upthread (in discussion of the example of "becoming a king"), and I posted an actual play illustration of the point: when Halika was drugged by the other PCs, the resultant success - Halika can't beat us to the tower - was secured until they affirmatively took an action that put it into jeopardy (by trying to sneak through the catacombs).

They succeeded in something that said that Halika can't beat us to the tower. If it can be later put in jeopardy by a trip through the catacombs, not only is it not final, but it's not truly successful, either. To be both successful and final, Halika can't make it to the tower ahead of them no matter what they do.

I was talking about the opening scene of a campaign, and provided a concrete example from actual play. I thought you were talking about the same thing. if you weren't, then tell me what you were talking about and how it bears upon what I was talking about.

I know you were talking about the opening scene. That's why I said "outside of the very first moment..." So how do they get to the next important scene. Do they just get transported to wherever, or do they travel there? If they are just transported(whether through skipping the travel portion or however), who decides where those places are?

First, I don't see how what you describe is significantly different from what I said - "You're in town - what do you do?" All you've done is add a bit of colour - there was colour in my description of the bazaar too, but the colour doesn't change the basic choice structure of the moment of play.

As far as agency is concerned, why is being in the bazaar a railroad? Can't your player choose to leave the bazaar to look for a sage?

My way allows for players to exercise agency over wherever they go. Your way would be considered a railroad since the players had absolutely no choice in whether or not they went to the bazaar. You decided their movements for them.

But furthermore, what does "best method" mean? What makes one method better than another? If you're running D&D, there is no "contact" rule system for finding an old merchant buddy. Are you talking about Streetwise checks? What makes those "better" than investigating the feather in the bazaar? It is completely opaque to me how you are framing and running these situations, how you are setting DCs, what information the player has about those DCs, what moves the player is able to make to affect DCs, and when the game actually gets to the crunch point of whether or not the PC finds a useful item.

I didn't say "best method", rather, what I said was that the player gets to decide how best to further his goal. What he decides may or may not truly be the best way, but the player has made that value judgment, not you. He decides whether to go to the bazaar, a wizard, or another way. For the rest, it all depends on the circumstances of the situation. As one example, the DC for finding a merchant(if a roll is even required) with a helpful item will be much higher in a mid sized town than in a large capitol city.

This is consistent with my characterisation in the post to which you replied. But I don't see how it is a source of player agency that the question of whether or not they actually get to engage their player goal - in this case, finding a useful item - is dependent upon the GM making a (presumably secret) die roll.

They are engaging in that goal by the very act of searching out the item and interacting with the various NPCs in the game to achieve finding the item. It doesn't have to be a single all or nothing roll in order to be engaging in the goal.

Well, in my game the PC's goal, as established by the player, was to find an item which would be useful in confronting his balrog-possessed brother. My question is, how do you decide what counts as a useful item? When you're making your die roll to determine if a curio shop has a useful item for sale, what item are you rolling for?

In my case, the player will declare what sort of property he hopes to detect in the feather. As well as establishing immediate details about the fiction, it also contributes to the table's shared understanding of what is involved in confronting a balrog.

By the very act of declaring, "I will find an item useful in saving my brother before I leave town.", the player has established that the item be useful in that goal. Therefore, any item that is of use in achieving that goal would qualify as a useful item. He doesn't need to declare anything more specific than that in order for the item to be useful.

I don't understand what contrast you think you're drawing. This is like [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] saying that the players have more agency because the GM tells them about an intersection, or about a slave being beaten. It's not an increase in player agency to have the GM offer a menu of things to ask questions about.

I've never said that it was, so I don't know why you keep repeating it to me. I've explained the difference many times to you.

If the players expressed goal is finding a useful item, and half an hour of play is spent getting to the pont where that goal is actually in issue, with that half hour essentially the player eliciting information from the GM ("Does anyone know whether there's a curiou shop in town? OK, can someone tell me where it is? Is it open? Does it have anything interesting for sale?"), I am not seeing where the player agency resides.

Yeeeah, that sort of thing doesn't happen. What's you next suggestion for how we run things? is the door stuck? Is it stuck with jam? Is it stuck with peanut butter?

Why do you consistently offer up ridiculous examples and then try to attribute those to our playstyle?

This is contradictory. If, at every interaction, the fiction might change (ie there's never any interaction where the fiction won't change) then what is the railroad?

I was asking you which it was.

This same claim has been made by [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]. It's only true under the assumption that the GM is responsible for all content introduction into the fiction. As soon as you drop that assumption, the claim is not true at all.

Sure it is. If the DM is the one doing the authoring, then it doesn't matter if he authored it in advance or on the spot. Adding in the players doesn't change that fact, since it's still the DM doing the authoring.

For instance - if the reason the GM is talking about wolves is because one of the PCs has an ability to summon and control wolves, it makes a difference. If the reason the GM is talking about Jabal is because a player has declared a Circles check, it makes a difference. If the reason the GM is talking about the Raven Queen, or Orcus, is because a player has just declared that his Raven Queen devotee prays for guidance, it makes a difference.

If I know there is a Raven Queen devotee and that he is likely to play for guidance, what's the difference in pre-authoring something and authoring the identical thing on the spot? If I know the player can summon and control wolves and I know he will eventually use the ability, then what's the difference if I prepare ahead of time that one that responds is dark grey except for the silver muzzle or if I make the same identical thing up on the spot?

The basic action of RPGing is conversation. If the conversation takes the form of the players saying to the GM "Tell me stuff", and then the GM replies, it is true that it makes little difference whether the reply is pre-scripted or not. But as soon as the players engage the fiction in some more proactive style - be that "I'm a devotee of the Raven Queen - are the forces of Orcus opposing me here?", or "We go to the market on Enlil to look for alien artefacts - what do we find?", or "While he goes south with the villagers, we're going to make a hard run through the hills to avoid the giants - what happens?" - then the difference between pre-sripted answers and genuine answers is huge.

Nobody is talking about never having to improvise and pre-authoring everything. As I point out above, though, there is a lot I can know ahead of time and prepare for that will have no difference when it arrives, than if I improvised it.

And I say genuine answers deliberately: because in a game with robust resolution mechanics, we don't get answers to the players' questions until those mechanics are applied, and the application of the mechanics could mean that things go either way.

So there are mechanics to determine what color the wolves are, or what the answer to a successful or failed guidance might be?

 

[Maxperson]

I'm not assuming. I'm doing my best to make sense of what [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] is posting.

Dude! You literally said this...

Hence when you say that there is more agency in (i) having the GM say "You're in town, what do you do?" then starting things at the situation the player has signalled as salient, I can only assume that you mean: there is more agency in choosing from the GM's list of possible situations, and in gettting the GM to tell you more about the world s/he has made up, than there is in actually providing the content of a situation. I don't know what conception of agency you are working with here.

 

[Maxperson]

In Burning Wheel a player is free to change any/all PC Beliefs at any time (unless the Belief is an additional Belief resulting from a particular build element which introduces constraints; and some Belief changes can have knock on effects - eg you lost the Faithful trait if you don't have at least one Belief that expresses your faith).

Okay. I was genuinely curious about how that worked.

The GM is entitled to veto a change, however, if (i) s/he takes the view it's an attempt to squib in the face of a challenge to the existing Belief, or (ii) s/he is about to frame a challenge to the existing Belief.

So no cheating. That seems reasonable.

WORDS, NOT DEEDS

1 XP when you begin an action scene with a non-attack action
3 XP when you inflict emotional stress or take mental stress via an argument
10 XP when you either foreswear conversation as useless or when you foreswear the initiation of violence​

You can trigger the 1 XP no more than once per action; the 3 XP no more than once per scene; and the 10 XP only once, which then closes out the milestone and requires the PC to take on a new milestone. You can't change milestones otherwise.

Interesting. How does one inflict emotional stress?

 

[Lanefan]

This is bizarrely backwards.

There is no clue. There is a chance for the player to commit - or not, if s/he is feeling weak or cautious. For instance, given that the PC has an Affiliation with a sorcerous cabal, it would be easily open to the player to reach out to a contact and learn what sort of reputation - if any - this peddler has.

It has to be obvious that any player is going to meta-know that you've framed that scene and that pedlar for a reason: because that's where they'll get to determine ultimate success or failure on this part of their journey. In story terms, you've jumped straight to the climax of this chapter without any real buildup.

It's a weird conception of agency where (i) we know that what the player is interested in includes items that have the possibility of being useful in confronting a balrog, and (ii) it's judged a burden on agency to present the player with situations that speak to this desire, while (iii) it's considered an increase in agency to make the player jump through essentially GM-driven and mediated hoops (is there a sage? is there a shop? who knows where angel feathers might be sold?) before we actually get to the core moment of play.

How does the PC even know whether confronting a balrog requires an angel feather or an enchanted herb or a Johnson outboard motor...as in at what point did the player/PC glean this information? You framed him straight into the bazaar in front of the feather merchant, and in so doing might as well have said out loud "don't bother looking anywhere else, this is where to go". That's as much lead-'em-by-the-nose as the worst of railroads.

That he then turned around and promptly failed the check, saddling himself with a cursed feather, is sucky for him; but also kind of irrelevant here.

Again, this is all weirdly backwards. You're saying that the GM increases agency by saying choose from these things I'm offering rather than here, engage with this thing that you've shown you care about.

No, the DM is increasing agency by saying that while you've got this dramatic thing you care about there's other things going on around your PC as well - you're not in a bubble - so let's test how much you really care about your thing and what other opportunities you're willing to give up in order to pursue it, and while we're at it let's put your character's morals and ethics (a.k.a. alignment) under a lens for a moment via your reaction on seeing a slave being beaten.

The other bit that's biazarre is that you increase choice by saying "You're in the town" raher than "You're at the bazaar" - as if your playuer has all the town choices pluys, once the PC gets to the bazaar, all the bazaar choices. Buit by the time (say, half-an-hour of play) your PC gets to the bazaar (or the sage, or whatever), guess what! - my table has been playing to, and the player at my table has made choices (what to do about the curse, who to ask for work, what to do about spotting the vendor of the cursed feather lurking in Jabal's tower).

Where my table now knows a lot more about the city in general, and can worry about Jabal's tower next session if they want to.

Tight scene-framing doesn't reduce choice. It just means that the choices more often egnage dramatic need rather than are simply requests for the GM to download setting information.

Leaving the game world as little more than a Hollywood-style facade where you don't dare look behind the walls of the constructed set. I prefer a bit more depth and solidity than that.

As choice situations in a RPG, the fictional setup in the second is no more limiting than the first. Given that the bazaar is in a town, the player whose PC is framed into the bazaar has all the same action declaration options vis-a-vis the fiction as does the player whose PC is framed into the town - but in addition, the framing speaks directly to his/her PC's dramatic need.

The bit I've bolded just sounds like fancy words for "the PC has been railroaded to where I think it needs to go to further its story".

But - to go back to the "choose your own adventure" motif - agency over the content of the shared fiction is not established simply by the fact that in the fiction, the PC has choices. If the content of all those choices is established by the GM, and if the significant outcomes of them are primarily a function of GM authorship of unrevealed backstory (as in your example of the mage who charms the spy and therefore but unknown to the player allows the attempt to be made on the life of the duke), then the player is not contributing very much to the content of the shared fiction.

The player(s) is(are) contributing to the shared fiction in that their decisions determine what that fiction will end up being.

If the PCs decide go south along the coast to battle some troglodytes rather than go inland to explore Archmage Donalt's ruined tower then guess what: the shared fiction isn't going to say much about Donalt's tower! It almost certainly will, however, end up with lots of reference to troglodytes.

It's not an issue of permission. It's an issue of what's the point. If the plaeyr wants to play a Raven Queen devotee, and the table is in the middle of an exciting sequence dealing with the plots of some Orcus cultists, what does it add to play to tell the players that their PCs come to an intersection?

That doesn't increase choice, for the reason already described - if I'm not wasting my time on that, I'll instead be framing a situation which invites relevant choices (eg the Orcus cultists are trying to bring the PC's friend back to life as a zombie).

The only answer I can see is because - for whatever aesthetic reason - one prefers RPGing to consist in the GM telling the players stuff that is independent of player exercise of agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction.

I'm beginning to draw a comparitive analogy between your game and mine (and I dare say most others) in a sports-TV format: your game is the 10-minute highlight show where you see just the goals and key plays while everything in between gets skipped; where mine is the whole 90-minute match including all the buildup and stoppages and everything else, and the viewer doesn't miss anything.

Lan-"plus five minutes stoppage time"-efan

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So you keep saying. I disagree with the 'modest' qualifier.

The conception I'm working with is choice = agency. "You're in town - what do you do?" gives the player a nigh-endless amount of choice. "You're at a bazaar, there's a pedlar selling feathers - what do you do?" takes away all the possible choices and options (and yes, distractons) between starting in town and finding the pedlar...if the PC ever finds the pedlar at all.

What [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is likely saying is that what the story is ABOUT, what it 'contains' in terms of the SUBJECT MATTER is the domain of the players. The GM draws a picture, framing a scene in which that subject matter will be examined, but the subject itself is of the player's invention.

The BW character's believe selected the subject, a struggle to save his brother from possession by a demon, and a search for an item useful in achieving this goal (with a constraint, 'before I leave the city'). The GM cast the subject in the form of a feather, and cast the location of interacting with this material as a bazaar, but the player had complete freedom to make the story about finding unusual species of snails if he had wanted to. The bazaar might still have been invented as a location in this case, but the goal and consequent action presumably different.

This is what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] means by "agency with respect to the fiction" and why when you say you have given the player's some choices, potentially even unlimited choices, to interact with the fiction WHICH THE GM INTRODUCED FOR HIS OWN REASONS, that doesn't produce the same agency, no matter how many choices they have. Pemerton calls it 'modest agency'. I presume this is because there is assumed to be some sort of logical progression to the game such that the PC's choices COULD potentially lead in some anticipated fashion towards fictional content which the player particularly wanted to include in the game. Even then the GM still has to decide to cooperate, whereas in BW the GM has literally no choice.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In that one scene, yes. But it's only a stepping-stone on the road to the overall success-failure finality of redeeming the brother - I think you two are looking at different scales here.

Yeah, but I think this was an earlier topic of discussion. Unless you want a one hour campaign you probably want incremental steps along the way to final success in the 'big thing'. In BW there may not really be one single 'big thing' even for a PC, as the player could write new beliefs at any point (almost).

Yes, but why would they when you-as-DM have given them a hammer-upside-the-head clue that what they seek is in the bazaar - probably from the feather merchant - by framing them there?

They have a choice, and given how Story Now works what will happen is that the player will 'vote with his feet' to engage on different terms (reframe the context of engagement with his goals). I don't want to haggle in the bazaar, I go looking for a library! OK, so be it! The player wants lore. Maybe instead he'll make a contact, or whatever, he he'll PROBABLY find some sort of 'book place'. Or maybe he'll find a bard instead and learn some lore that way, but 'lore and books' are probably going to factor in, right? I mean in standard DM-centered play that wouldn't be unlikely either.

Why involve hard mechanics at all? Streetwise, DCs, etc. - don't use unless absolutely necessary! Let the player tell you what the PC does, then narrate what comes of it based on what you know about 9or have just made up about!) the city.

I'll quite often use what I call "soft mechanics", where I'll get a roll and use it as a general barometer of success - roll really well and you're good, roll really badly and you're screwed, but roll something in between and I'll scale the narration to the roll - a middling roll of 14 might get you further than a middling roll of 7 - but there's almost never a hard number binarily (is that a word?) dividing success and failure.

I just consider what is happening. If there's really something at stake, the PC is directly going for some goal, taking some risk, there's some decision point with explicit consequence to the path of the narrative, then mechanics are normally engaged, so as to produce some uncertainty of outcome. In reference to what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] said, HoML, my own 4e hack which I often run, has pretty explicit mechanics for resolving conflicts. They are always 4e-like General Challenges (or maybe combats, but this doesn't seem like one of those). Success and you end up with a useful item. Failure and you don't end up with a useful item. Its going to involve some number of checks, and some evolution of fictional position within that part of the narrative (scene).

Frankly, if something is 'lesser', it doesn't seem to be 'worth' a challenge, then its not worth mechanics IMHO. I call it an interlude and its just narrated. This might be, for example, where something gets mentioned, like your example of the intersection. "You pass many other passageways branching in various directions as you travel."

I'd like to think that the player isn't so selfish as to only care about the goals on his PC's character sheet, and is willing to engage in the goals of other players/PCs and with the game world at large.

I've had selfish players like that in the past. They don't play in my games any more.

I don't think it is selfish to engage with the game in the way it is intended. You take on the persona of a character, right? Is it selfish to build hotels on Boardwalk and take everyone's money in Monopoly? No, its the point of the game. I mean, 'style counts' IMHO, so every instance could be judged on its own merits, but I think as long as the player is cooperating with everyone getting to share equally in the fun of playing there's no selfishness here.

Sure it is, as it provides choice the players/PCs would not otherwise have had.

The railroad occurs when you skip a series of possible interactions (e.g. intersections, slaves being beaten, etc.) to get to the "action" one. The fiction doesn't get the chance to be changed away from the action scene you've already decided comes next.

I think there's a quite obvious reductio ad absurdum here: No game is infinitely detailed. In every case some things are abstracted away and some choices are just assumed, or presumed to be inconsequential. Nobody cares which cobblestones you set foot on, "you advance 30' to the end of the hallway" works fine. This is the same principle at work. If the players want to say "as we move along we'll look for interesting things to investigate" then I think the GM is going to say something. It COULD be 'you see nothing', or its more likely some sort of relevant thing will come up.

So the DM isn't allowed to introduce hooks, or distractions, or seemingly-superfluous information?

Letting the mechanics tell the story for you is one way to go about it, I suppose, but hardly my preference.

Lanefan

The GM is framing scenes. She COULD add some unimportant detail or something, but no, the GM's job is to introduce the relevant scenes. Its the players who decide what kind of material they want.

4e introduced much more solid mechanics into D&D, ones that aimed to provide quantifiable results and to relate to the fiction in predictable ways, in order to provide players with empowerment. This is generally not really controversial. Mechanics decide story points for a good reason, they're impartial, the players can understand what they're buying into and assess risk and know their capabilities.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, but I think this was an earlier topic of discussion. Unless you want a one hour campaign you probably want incremental steps along the way to final success in the 'big thing'.

Obviously. And I further suggest you want side quests, detours, and other optional extras as well.

In BW there may not really be one single 'big thing' even for a PC, as the player could write new beliefs at any point (almost).

Which is good, as it can keep the campaign going even after the first major goal/belief of each PC has been dealt with.

They have a choice, and given how Story Now works what will happen is that the player will 'vote with his feet' to engage on different terms (reframe the context of engagement with his goals). I don't want to haggle in the bazaar, I go looking for a library! OK, so be it! The player wants lore. Maybe instead he'll make a contact, or whatever, he he'll PROBABLY find some sort of 'book place'. Or maybe he'll find a bard instead and learn some lore that way, but 'lore and books' are probably going to factor in, right? I mean in standard DM-centered play that wouldn't be unlikely either.

In DM-centered play it would be normal. In this particular example, however, I know I-as-player would be thinking "OK, he's put me in the bazaar, which probably means something is supposed to happen here, so I guess I should engage with it rather than turn my back on it." If he just puts me in the town then it's on me to do the digging required to get me to the bazaar.

4e module design seemed to do this a lot - sort of want to jump from one elaborate set piece (with fancy battle-map included!) to the next without always bothering to detail what went in between. As a DM trying to use some 4e modules converted for my game it was annoying, and as a player a DM doing this will put me off a game real quick...and I'm not alone in thinking that way.

I just consider what is happening. If there's really something at stake, the PC is directly going for some goal, taking some risk, there's some decision point with explicit consequence to the path of the narrative, then mechanics are normally engaged, so as to produce some uncertainty of outcome. In reference to what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] said, HoML, my own 4e hack which I often run, has pretty explicit mechanics for resolving conflicts. They are always 4e-like General Challenges (or maybe combats, but this doesn't seem like one of those). Success and you end up with a useful item. Failure and you don't end up with a useful item. Its going to involve some number of checks, and some evolution of fictional position within that part of the narrative (scene).

Frankly, if something is 'lesser', it doesn't seem to be 'worth' a challenge, then its not worth mechanics IMHO. I call it an interlude and its just narrated. This might be, for example, where something gets mentioned, like your example of the intersection. "You pass many other passageways branching in various directions as you travel."

It's likely we're just using a different level of detail when determining what counts as 'lesser' as opposed to what's relevant.

But even there, a DM just saying "You pass many other passageways branching in various directions as you travel" is all I'm asking for, while walking to the reliquary with the angels...well, that and the opportunity to say in response "I glance down each one as we pass to see if there's anything of interest, all the while staying alert for threats."

Then it's up to the DM to determine, via whatever means she chooses, whether or not there's anything down any of them for me to see. If not, all is cool.

What's important is that at least a nod is given to the fact that we-as-PCs are part of a bigger world, and that we're moving through it rather than blipping from scene to scene.

I don't think it is selfish to engage with the game in the way it is intended. You take on the persona of a character, right? Is it selfish to build hotels on Boardwalk and take everyone's money in Monopoly? No, its the point of the game.

And the point of the game in Monopoly is pure selfishness. Monopoly might be the most selfish game ever invented. (probably not the best example you could have picked...)

I mean, 'style counts' IMHO, so every instance could be judged on its own merits, but I think as long as the player is cooperating with everyone getting to share equally in the fun of playing there's no selfishness here.

Sure there is - "my story is more important than any other story out there" sounds like a baked-in tenet of that game system; with it being left to the DM to try and weave these stories together such that more than one can be played out simultaneously at the table.

I think there's a quite obvious reductio ad absurdum here: No game is infinitely detailed. In every case some things are abstracted away and some choices are just assumed, or presumed to be inconsequential. Nobody cares which cobblestones you set foot on, "you advance 30' to the end of the hallway" works fine. This is the same principle at work. If the players want to say "as we move along we'll look for interesting things to investigate" then I think the GM is going to say something. It COULD be 'you see nothing', or its more likely some sort of relevant thing will come up.

I guess I just take "as we move along we'll look for interesting things to investigate" as the baked-in standard until and unless something changes it e.g. the party is fleeing at full speed, or is for whatever reason intentionally trying to ignore their surroundings (usually a good idea in CoC, from what I've heard).

The GM is framing scenes. She COULD add some unimportant detail or something, but no, the GM's job is to introduce the relevant scenes. Its the players who decide what kind of material they want.

Put that way it sounds like the DM is little more than a CPU or a music streaming service: players input requests for material, DM outputs material to suit.

You probably don't mean it that harshly, but that is what it boils down to.

4e introduced much more solid mechanics into D&D, ones that aimed to provide quantifiable results and to relate to the fiction in predictable ways, in order to provide players with empowerment. This is generally not really controversial.

Let me get this straight: you're saying something about 4e design is not controversial?

4e's very existence is controversial. Its design elements, from my perspective and having dug into it somewhat on its release*, covered a range between about marginally tolerable to hideous. Every other edition has had for me at least one "aha!" element, where I see a mechanic or system and think "that's brilliant!". Even the new PF2 has already shown me one of those...but 4e never did.

* - I only bought the initial three core books (DMG,PH,MM) but didn't get the later books as I knew I wasn't going to be doing anything with the system.

Mechanics decide story points for a good reason, they're impartial, the players can understand what they're buying into and assess risk and know their capabilities.

A DM-driven game can do all of this, and do it more realistically (which equals better IMO). A DM impartially preauthors the world or adventure or whatever (or should!), then presents it impartially during play either as setting exposition or in reaction to PC actions and-or movements in the game world. If the players/PCs want to "understand what they're buying into" and-or "assess the risk" they have to take the time to do the requisite investigating or scouting or information gathering, just like reality. In either system the players in theory know the capabilities of their PCs, and it's perfectly realistic to say they might not always know how well those capabilities will measure up against whatever threat might be looming until some trial and error has occurred.

Lanefan

 

[pemerton]

the game world is bigger than the PCs and has more going on in it than the PCs' own drama

You mean the referee's drama?

These aren't real worlds. Those NPCs aren't real voice crying out to be noticed. They're just stuff the GM made up. Saying that paying attention to the GM's stuff is "bigger" than paying attention to the players' stuff doesn't make any sense.