What is *worldbuilding* for?

[Lanefan]

But the players are real, as are their desires about the game.

DM's real too, at least for now. Some systems might function with a robot once robotics has advanced a bit further.

Dude, it's all just imagination! We can talk (admittedly not on this board) about the politics of JRRT's focus on NW Middle Earth in LotR, or about the aesthetics of that (and his desire to create a mythology for England). But it would be ludicrous to complain that the Southrons have been wronged by not being written about!

OK, let's try another angle.

In both The Hobbit and LotR Tolkein puts a lot of effort and a lot of words into describing the settings through which the parties travel. He also introduces elements of the greater world, particularly from the historical side, and repeatedly makes it very clear that there's a world out there beyond what the protagonists see or even know of (the Southrons are one example of such). Unless you skip all these bits when you read the books, you can't help but become immersed in the world of Middle Earth and end up knowing a lot more about it (and wanting to know more yet, most likely) than just what the protagonists saw on their journeys.

Well, the same is true when playing/DMing a fantasy RPG using a homebrew world. The more description and flavour and richness you can give it the better, in terms of player immersion and depth of imagination. Sadly I don't have JRRT's gift with words, so my somewhat lesser descriptions will have to do for my table.

Now both The Hobbit and LotR the setup is such that the "PCs" are on a mission that is so important (to the Dwarves in one, to the whole world in the other) that it can't be ignored or abandoned; and even then it is at various times. The Hobbit crew have Bilbo leave the party on more than one occasion; they then get diverted by the Wood Elves, which then leads them to Laketown and into another diversion. The LotR crew get diverted all over the place - Old Man Willow leads to Tom Bombadil; they get back on track just in time to be diverted by the barrow wights, after which they stay on course for a while and gather the fellowship...which then splits into three different groups only one of which carries on with the original goal. And this is while trying to ignore as many diversions as they can.

And this is in a novel, where the author has complete control over who goes where and does what. In the more open-ended situation of an RPG where there's options for players to follow up on whatever diversions they want, the only way to keep them on story is to never present or offer any diversions. In other words, keep the game-world descriptions and framed scenes completely focused on what the PC is trying to do at that moment, and ignore everything else. A soft railroad. Bleah.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

Yes it is. It establishes that the feather has whatever trait the player was looking for, and that that trait is useful for making stuff that will help you confront balrogs.

The contrast would be something that is clearly quite possible in [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s game: the player learns that the feather has such-and-such trait, but it turns out that such-and-such trait is irrelevant for confronting balrogs.

The feather may still be useful, just less directly. Maybe it's in fact a key allowing access somewhere else to something needed to defeat a balrog. Hey, or maybe it summons a balrog if given the right command!

Or maybe it's an element of a completely different adventure or story, which the PCs can investigate and-or follow up on should they (and their players) so desire.

Because they put it back into play. They didn't just cross the town to go to the tower; rather, they tried to sneak through the catacombs which (it was already known) were labyrinthine. (I think one of the players wanted a catacombs-wise check for his PC; and the other was happy to try this way of getting into the tower rather than risking the front door.) And so (in the fiction) they got lost, because (at the table) the check failed.

This one's fine with me - sure they knocked out Halika but they've no reason to think she'll stay unconscious all night, or that someone won't happen by and tend to her.

This is an instance of what [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] called following the fiction where it leads.

Applicable to both DM- and player-driven games.

The point about finality is that the GM has no prerogative to unilaterally undo the success.

Outright undo? Maybe not. Twist, mitigate, alter, or corrupt? Situationally dependent, but by no means a hard no. Just like getting wishes from a genie - you think you wished for this but you ended up with that; here it's you think you accomplished this but you in fact did that.

Sometimes a player asks but doesn't have a view as to what the answer is.

As a player, if I knew the answer I wouldn't be asking. I might very well know what I'd like the answer to be, but that's not the same thing.

How do you start a campaign? Do the players narrate the starting situation?

You'll like this: in my current campaign the answer was yes!

A couple of players came up with the idea of having their two initial PCs - a Bard and a Cavalier who already knew each other - start the campaign by just rolling through the farm country bragging at every village about how rich they were gonna get adventuring in the mountains, in hopes that some other suckers - er, brave adventurers - could be persuaded to join them. The rest of the starting PCs joined in one or two at a time from different villages. (the Bard, as it turned out, was the only one of that initial group of 9 to survive that first adventure)

I have a lot of trouble making sense of this question. How do the PCs in your game get from the common room of the tavern to their bedrooms upstairs? In the fiction, they step over flagstones and climb every stair. But - again echoing [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] - I assume that you don't play through every such step. Probably everyone at the table agrees that it's bedtime for the PCs, and you then say - in the absence of anything interesting happening overnight - "OK, you wake the next morning."

Yes, after I roll some dice to see if anything interesting does happen overnight.

In the BW game, after dealing with the peddler the PCs went to a tavern to eat some lunch and wait for a message from Jabal. We didn't worry about how many blocks it might have been from the bazaar to the tavern. At the tavern they were approached by Athog, Jabal's enforcer, telling them to leave town. When Athog drew his sword, one of the PCs wrestled disarmed him and wrestled him to the ground, and the PCs then went to confront Jabal in his tower. Again, we didn't worry about how many blocks it might have been from the tavern to the tower.

A fight in the middle of a city and nobody else jumped in, either to break it up or to add to the mayhem?

Dull city.

Later on in the campaign, when the PCs trekked across the Bright Desert from an oasis with a friendly naga to the Abor-Alz, I pulled out the GH maps and we worked out a number of days. But the actual travel was resolved via an Orienteering check. The distance didn't influence the difficulty of that check, but did influence the difficulty of the Forte checks required to avoid dehydration. Otherwise the number of days required was primarily colour.

Where I'd probably be rolling each day for some sort of random encounter; asking whether they divert to and-or stop at oases and-or villages seen en route or intentionally avoid them; and making sure I described each day's weather after rolling - relevant if the roll comes up high winds i.e. sandstorm. I'd also describe the landforms, particularly if there was any significant change e.g. the sand desert becomes a rock desert.

Depth. It takes time.

In my Cortex+ Heroic session on the weekend, the action (continued from our previous session of that particular campaign) started at the house of the Frost Queen. After defeating her, the PCs and the villagers rested the night and then set off the next morning - one PC to the south with the villagers, the rest to the north. The key features of the ensuing situation were established by the scene distinctions: Frightened Villagers, Snow All About, The Giants are Almost Upon You. These are what the players interacted with. The exact number of miles travelled isn't relevant and doesn't need to be worked out.

I'd say it's extremely relevant as soon as one group tries to send a message to the other, to determine how long that message might take to arrive. Even if I didn't bother telling the players, I'd still be keeping track of it in knowledge that it's highly likely to become relevant sooner or later.

There's no map. We know there are hills, which rise into mountains and glaciers to the north and farmland to the south. That's enough.

The in-my-eyes awful risk you run here is that you could end up with unrealistic travel times and distances. Geography is important. Time is important. The two put together - which you're doing here - can become vitally important; and thus need to be carefully tracked.

Lanefan

 

[Ovinomancer]

I've compiled your posts on this topic.

You said, of combat in BW, that "At no point did it appear you had options to limit danger occurring or make tactical choices about fictional position to mitigate danger that did appear." I pointed out that this claim is wrong (or, at best, that the only reason you drew that inference is because you were not familiar with the system). I provided some examples of how, during the course of that fight, I had the option to manage danger (both to my PC and to Aramina) by making choices about positioning. And I also explained how the scripting system more generally permits tactical choices to manage and mitigate danger.

You linked this (alleged) feature of BW combat to some more general thesis that

scene framing is already at a crisis point (go to the action) that requires immediate addressing of events AND failures are meant to increase stakes, so any precautions taken will have limited impacts. Story Now games offset this by using player resources to possibly mitigate consequences (like Blades' use of the resist mechanic), but this is reactionary and not proactive action declaration -- its a choice after the fact, not behavior the player can engage with prior to failure.​

I have no idea where this thesis comes from. It is not borne out by BW play - the mage PC in my game, for instance, at one point took the precaution of donning leather armour and that has mitigated danger in subsequent combat. At another point he took the precaution of turning invisible and that mitigated the danger of being detected in an attempt to escape from prison.

It is not borne out by Cortex+ Heroic play either. In my MHRP game, for instance, Bobby Drake's player took the precaution of paying a plot point to have counselling, thus establishing a d6 Pscyhologist's Counselling asset. Later on, he was able to include this asset in a pool to avoid suffering emotional stress.

These are all things done prior to failure.

You also asserted, but quite mistakenly, that the play examples I provided of tactical choices and choices made to manage or mitigate risk (eg the seer in our Vikings game managing the Doom Pool downwards; PCs in Burning Wheel starting with weapons drawn to avoid the action cost of having to draw a weapon; a PC choosing to reach out to a lesser personage so as to reduce the severity of any blowback; a PC in the Viking game scouting out the giants' steading - in mechanical terms, establishing assets - so as to set himself up for success in a subsequent social conflict) were all "after the fact resource expenditures to reduce consequences". None of them was.

BW doesn't have such mechanics, except the expenditure of a Persona point to survive a mortal wound. Cortex+ Heroic may allow particular PCs to have them, but across my two games the only PC with such an option is Wolverine (who can spend a plot point to recover physical stress). As I posted, these are relatively common in 4e (as interrupts of various sorts) but none of the examples I gave was of this sort of 4e mechanic.

This is why I have no idea what you're talking about. Your thesis is bizarre to me, and seems to be based on generalising some feature of Blades in the Dark across whole swathes of games that you seem to have not much familiarity with.

It's unpredictable if you're poor at scripting. Scripting well is a skill. (Not a skill I have in large quantities. I have a couple of players who are much better - unsurprisingly, they also beat me in war games.)

As I already posted, the likelihood of death is low, and of wounding more severe than a Light is not that high. A typical physically-oriented PC will have a Light wound of 5 and a Midi of 7. A typical Incidental result will be 3 or 4, and a Mark 6 (Power 4 with a spear) or 7 (Power 4 with a sword, Power 5 with a spear).

My PC wears Plate and Mail armour for 6D armour on the chest, and 5D everywhere else. Few weapons have VA better than 1 (eg spears, and superior swords). The likelihood of 2 successes on 5 dice is over 80%. If a Power 5 orc with a spear attacks my PC, to deliver a midi requires 3 successes - assuming a skill of 4 (on the high side for an orc), that is about a 30% chance; and then there is an 80% chance of being blocked by armour (or better if the blow is to the chest, which will be the default - because shifting to a limb costs additional successes). That is a chance around 5% of a midi or worse, and the chance of the worse is very much lower, because 5 successes are hard to get rolling 4 dice.

Fighting in lighter armour is riskier. Fighting stronger people with better weapons is riskier. But those are all matters that can inform the choice to fight.

Recovery takes a long time. My PC currently has a midi wound - not from combat, but from falling masonry. It is at -1D. It hasn't stopped me adventuring.

Which RPGs are you talking about? I've played a lot of RM, a bit of RQ and related systems, a fair bit of Traveller, and quite a bit of low level D&D.

It is clearly less risky than first level classic D&D, where orcish spears do 1d6 to PCs whose hit points are frequently in the 1 to 6 range. It is less risky than Stormbringer, I would say (because in Stormbringer your armour dice are more likely to fail you, being linear in probability rather than curved). I think it is less risky to unarmoured characters than RQ.

Comparing to Traveller is harder, because most Traveller combat involves weapon fire, and BW Range and Cover is more dangerous than Fight! because IMS is determined by a die of fate rather than via number of successes.

As I have reiterated in this post, different weapons pose different risks: the add to Power affects IMS, and for an armoured character the VA is crucial. The most dangerous weapon against my PC is a mace, because of its high VA.

Recently, [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] linked to this blog:

Commenter: I remember a good example in a talk by Will Wright. It's that scene in Indiana Jones in which a large boulder almost rolls over him. . . .

Will Wright commented that in a linear narrative such as this, the viewer is aware of the probability space. We are acutely aware, even at a subconscious level, of what would happen if the boulder rolls over him. This creates dramatic tension. Of course in film, things are happening too fast for the audience to rationalise, and disbelieve what they're watching.

In roleplaying, we don't have that luxury. We are also presented with an even more difficult challenge. Let's say the player fails that check. . . .

I think that a huge boulder rolling over you kills you - that's the only credible result.

So, from a design standpoint, what do you do?

. . .

I guess what I'm asking is, can you have your cake and eat it too.

John Harper: Yes, of course! Not only can you have it, you can have it easily.

The basic method is to ask questions and elaborate until there's clarity to invoke the system. It's a conversation, right? You ask questions, you assess the fiction, you make it clear to the players what the characters know (and don't know) and they make choices.

. . .

In other words, you 1) set expectations, 2) invoke the system, then 3) follow through on the results.

Every functional RPG system works that way.

When you get "random deaths" that seem abrupt, it's usually because #1 has been glossed over too vaguely, forgotten, or assumed and left unspoken. A lively, productive conversation (the essence of RPG play) keeps this from happening.

"You have literally NO IDEA what will happen if you snatch that idol and run. Are you sure you want to do that?"
"Yes!"
"You're taking a crazy risk!"
"I know! I'm a crazy risk taker![1] Let's do it."
"Okay, here we go!"

In some systems (3:16, say), that character is now a die-roll away from death. But everyone knows it, and we all lean forward and hold our breath and watch the dice tumble. On a miss, yeah, maybe the giant boulder squashes them flat, the end.

In other systems (SotC, say), the character has a huge safety net under them all the time so we know this roll is really about how much or how little trouble the character is about to get into. On a miss, yeah, they might take harm (there's no way to die from one hit) and now there's a boulder chasing them -- they have a new problem to escape from, and some problematic aspects introduced into the scene.

Either way, there's nothing abrupt or random going on. The fictional situation has been brought to life during the conversation, the player has made an informed choice (or understands they're making a choice without all the information) everyone understands the genre we're playing in, and everyone is clear on the system before it's brought to bear.

Make sense?

[1]This reminds me of another rant I need to write about: How so many gamers create characters that are crazy risk-takers at heart (dungeon raiders, say) and then play them like timid, risk-averse, weenies. Ugh.​

That seems apposite here.

My PC is a Knight of the Iron Tower. He wears plate and mail and carries a shield and mace. He has a whole bunch of relationships, Beliefs and Instincts that are all about his loyalty to the order and to his family, his defence of the innocent, and the pursuit of glory in the name of the Lord of Battle. For this guy, entering combat is a good idea. Getting wounded may be part of that. Perhaps I'll have to spend time in a hospital of my order; or back at my family estate.

The point of the combat system isn't to disincentivise melee. Nor to incentivise it. It's (i) to make it visceral (whether blind scripting does that for you is probably an aesthetic thing), and (ii) to create a sense that it matters. There's probably not going to be a fight every session. (Just as not every Traveller session has a fight.)

But if my PC ends up dying because I decided, with no persona points remaining, that some slight to me (or my god, or Aramina) wasn't to be tolerated, well so be it. That's the point of the game!

Your "compiled" quotes again selectively edit. Unsurprisingly, what you chose to selectively edit out is exactly what I complained you selectively edited out to begin with.

I didn't read anything past that, as there's not much point since you've chosen to continue to frame the discussion in a manner that allows you to ignore inconvenient things I've said. If you can manage to honestly engage my statement instead of selectively quoting my posts and applying the selectively quoted portions out of context to different arguments, then there's room for productive discussion.

ETA: Look, I'm trying to have a good discussion here, but when I keep having to point out that you've ignored my points by clipping them out and also I have to keep correcting the discussion to point out that you're taking my statement out of context and applying parts of my posts to parts of the discussion they're not referencing, it's extremely hard to maintain that the other side is acting in good faith. I want to believe you're acting in good faith, but given how many times I've asked you to stop selectively quoting me and yet you continue to do so in a manner that removes arguments I'm making germane to your response, it's hard, man. Throw me a bone and stop doing it.

 

[Tony Vargas]

what is world building for once we're no longer playing a dungeon crawling, puzzle-solving game?

Scene-setting, genre-emulation, mood, theme, plot hooks - it's the settings and situations that the PCs interact with.

Even if they're, say, looking for a story, or looking for what happens next, rather than looking to accrue maximum wealth/power with minimum risk, it still helps to have a place to do it, and if that place sparks idea, evokes senseofwonder, or even just calls back favorites from genre and lets you find some easer eggs.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

I think there's plenty of ways that pacing and dramatic structure can be achieved. The biggest one is by how the GM frames things. So, you may have a criticism of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s framing in this instance, which is a legitimate aesthetic question. I'm not sure it is really a generalized flaw of Story Now. In fact I don't even feel like I have a good enough feel for how the specific game was paced or structured in detail to offer criticism myself. I said earlier that the "find something before I leave town" goal seemed rather subsidiary. Making progress on it doesn't seem like it was necessarily bringing up some sort of 'climax'. In fact it feels a lot more prefatory to things that happened later on, part of a larger build up, not some crazy instant major plot crisis.

Anyway, nothing in my understanding of Story Now demands that you move willy nilly from one climax to the next without anything in between. Just that the in between WILL be related to your player described interests, not just random wanderings in streets and byways, unless that IS your interest.

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.

Exactly! How does he know? The CHARACTER doesn't know, and neither does the player until after he resolves a check which decides the issue, in this case against. What if he succeeded? Maybe the feather still turns out to be only modestly useful. Its really going to be up to the player to determine that in large part. If his choices are to go around using the feather to defeat a balrog, then it will probably turn out to be handy. How, when, or why are still open questions.

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.

Does the player care about his alignment? In fact, isn't alignment kind of a burden? I mean, its a system that effectively imposes some GM-determined (because NO two people agree AT ALL on what alignment means, and I won't even consider an argument otherwise, EnWorld is chock full of the proof) standard of behavior on a character and then punishes them for transgressing, often for transgressions that the player doesn't even agree are legitimate. I think, at best, alignment can be a 'character trait' that the player can leverage and the GM can use judiciously as a signal and in framing, but I am not real fond of it.

In any case, Story Now is full of tests and dilemmas and whatnot. It would be perfectly reasonable to create a hard choice for a character, save your brother or save those children! Its just definitely going to be about something the player cares about.

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.

Well, its hard to disagree with this in some abstract sense, but we get to play maybe 30 weekends a year, and I'm not into spending a lot of them on learning the specific layout of the alleyways in lower dockside, which are actually little more than lines drawn on some graph paper late one night.

I guess what I'm really saying is, there's X amount of creativity and 'juice' that can go into a game, based on people's time and imagination. Exploring many fairly trivial details of an invented location might not usually be the best use of that time and energy. Again, if you really just play for nothing else, that's an agenda and someone should get on with it, but most players only passingly find that kind of thing engaging, and from a pure gaming standpoint details like that can be added in scene framing when they DO make a difference (or in action resolution, etc.).

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.

I just don't think that game worlds get all that deep to be perfectly frank. Most of these vaunted details are forgotten within 20 minutes, perhaps they add some color, but again that doesn't require vast depth. I think, in some sense, a world is DEEPER and MORE meaningful when the action within it speaks to universal dramatic themes.

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".

And I honestly think this is a misconception. The player arrived at this point through entirely free choice, not even dictated by the GM. Yes, the GM invented a bazaar, but he did that in your game too! And your bazaar was built to hold what YOU found interesting. You may HOPE that the players also find it interesting, but my bazaar, definitionally interesting to everyone!

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

Only if they know substantively what the consequences and ramifications of all their actions will be. Otherwise they're just pulling levers and watching to see what happens. If I, with no other context, describe 5 levers in a wall, does a player congratulate me on giving him a lot of choices when he has to pull one?

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.

And this is quite true, and this forms the highest ideal of the form of play you are espousing, but it is the LOWEST possible form with Story Now. It can only go higher from here!


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.
[/QUOTE]

Again, I largely disagree. A reasonably well-formulated and run Story Now game will feel like a pretty coherent narrative. It MAY deal in less detail with some relatively peripheral things than your game might, but the story will be complete and should feel complete and dramatically cogent to the players. No game I ever ran was ever described by anyone, to my knowledge, as a highlight reel. Nor is it in any sense shorter than your game. Maybe you get to play more than I do? Possible, and good for you, but on the whole we're likely to each play some amount of RPGs and whether its slogging through lots of trivia or high adventure isn't going to change that.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

I think this is a really interesting point. You are thinking with the mind of a player in a DM-centered game, and applying your conclusions to a Story Now game. The GM in Story Now HAS NO AGENDA. There is nothing significant about the bazaar, whatsoever. It was invented 5 seconds ago and it is a nullity, "gate gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi soha!" It is literally empty of meaning. The GM put the player there so that the player could exercise his interest in a particular theme, in an exercise of RPing. The plot significance of the place will arise out of the interaction of these two (probably more) participants. If the player says "Oh, I want to go to the library, I ask the guy at the stall here which direction to find that in" then that's all the meaning there ever was in that scene. He's not 'missing something' because he didn't stick around. That's exactly the sort of logic which would apply in DM-centered play instead! How many times have I pixel-bitched some room at the end of a hall, thinking "The GM put it here for SOME reason, didn't he!?" In a Story Now game I can just walk out, any potential meaning is unrealized and its meaningless to even ask "what would have happened if I'd stayed there?"

It is hard to overemphasize this point, it is a sort of category error. Reasoning this way about Story Now is simply not going to make sense.

 

[Maxperson]

Well, its hard to disagree with this in some abstract sense, but we get to play maybe 30 weekends a year, and I'm not into spending a lot of them on learning the specific layout of the alleyways in lower dockside, which are actually little more than lines drawn on some graph paper late one night.

You get weekends?!? All I get are 4 hours on Thursday nights.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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

Yeah, I think the quantity of detail is likely equivalent, it may just be spent on different things.

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 have a problem with this. I think that sometimes it can be leveraged later for more development too, but in a sense it is just color. The world is always kind of really mostly the path that the characters walk. The rest is pretty fuzzy.

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.

In the games I've played in, of all types, it is common and normal for each player to yield the spotlight and allow other characters to be developed by their players as seems most conducive to fun. I admit, I'm a pretty active player and I don't have trouble getting my time in the sun, but I do try to be considerate. There's nothing about Story Now which changes this equation in the least.

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).

Well, yes, but this doesn't work really in Story Now, does it? I mean, the players could spend their time moving the PCs around poking for what they're interested in, but the whole premise is it can come to you! I realize this is not a recipe for a dungeon crawl, and D&D evolved from that recipe, so its foreign to much of the D&D community, but I think it would behoove them all to learn something about it sometimes.

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.

Well, you might have missed some good stuff! I have run a mean game of 4e. It works quite well, even if some people don't care for it. There is a lot of very clever design in 4e.

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.

I think that is another field of player preference. Taking great risks and gambles is a perfectly good thematic concept for a game. It can still be, and maybe inevitably is, pretty player centered. As for 'realism' I can't even define that, so I stopped worrying about it 20 years ago and suddenly found I had achieved a great deal of freedom.

 

[Maxperson]

I think this is a really interesting point. You are thinking with the mind of a player in a DM-centered game, and applying your conclusions to a Story Now game. The GM in Story Now HAS NO AGENDA. There is nothing significant about the bazaar, whatsoever. It was invented 5 seconds ago and it is a nullity, "gate gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi soha!" It is literally empty of meaning. The GM put the player there so that the player could exercise his interest in a particular theme, in an exercise of RPing. The plot significance of the place will arise out of the interaction of these two (probably more) participants. If the player says "Oh, I want to go to the library, I ask the guy at the stall here which direction to find that in" then that's all the meaning there ever was in that scene. He's not 'missing something' because he didn't stick around. That's exactly the sort of logic which would apply in DM-centered play instead! How many times have I pixel-bitched some room at the end of a hall, thinking "The GM put it here for SOME reason, didn't he!?" In a Story Now game I can just walk out, any potential meaning is unrealized and its meaningless to even ask "what would have happened if I'd stayed there?"

It is hard to overemphasize this point, it is a sort of category error. Reasoning this way about Story Now is simply not going to make sense.

More and more I'm thinking that preference of one style over the other is a personality thing. The way you have to think about player facing games reminds me of the way actors talk about their craft. It takes a different mindset than most of us have(much more left brained). That also would jive with the difference in the number of DM facing games vs. the number of player facing games. Just like there are a lot more of the rest of than people who are actors(or think like actors), there are a lot more DM facing games out there.

That's not to say that people can't enjoy both, but I think the preference for one over the other is going to go hand in hand with how people think and perceive the world.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In both The Hobbit and LotR Tolkein puts a lot of effort and a lot of words into describing the settings through which the parties travel. He also introduces elements of the greater world, particularly from the historical side, and repeatedly makes it very clear that there's a world out there beyond what the protagonists see or even know of (the Southrons are one example of such). Unless you skip all these bits when you read the books, you can't help but become immersed in the world of Middle Earth and end up knowing a lot more about it (and wanting to know more yet, most likely) than just what the protagonists saw on their journeys.

Well, the same is true when playing/DMing a fantasy RPG using a homebrew world. The more description and flavour and richness you can give it the better, in terms of player immersion and depth of imagination. Sadly I don't have JRRT's gift with words, so my somewhat lesser descriptions will have to do for my table.

Now both The Hobbit and LotR the setup is such that the "PCs" are on a mission that is so important (to the Dwarves in one, to the whole world in the other) that it can't be ignored or abandoned; and even then it is at various times. The Hobbit crew have Bilbo leave the party on more than one occasion; they then get diverted by the Wood Elves, which then leads them to Laketown and into another diversion. The LotR crew get diverted all over the place - Old Man Willow leads to Tom Bombadil; they get back on track just in time to be diverted by the barrow wights, after which they stay on course for a while and gather the fellowship...which then splits into three different groups only one of which carries on with the original goal. And this is while trying to ignore as many diversions as they can.

And this is in a novel, where the author has complete control over who goes where and does what. In the more open-ended situation of an RPG where there's options for players to follow up on whatever diversions they want, the only way to keep them on story is to never present or offer any diversions. In other words, keep the game-world descriptions and framed scenes completely focused on what the PC is trying to do at that moment, and ignore everything else. A soft railroad. Bleah.

Lanefan

Two points, which you kind of touched on but didn't elaborate, deserve some attention here.

1) This is an RPG, not a work of fiction. The whole point of an RPG is to play the characters, to explore what the existence and experiences of a character are about, and the ramifications of their beliefs and personality.

2) You're not JRRT! (neither are any of us). If you WERE JRRT, THEN I would, perhaps, acquiesce to basically having you spiel on about your world ad infinitum even when it meant I wasn't doing much actual playing. Heck, that would be ATTRACTION of a JRRT-run RPG, no doubt.

Sadly we are not JRRT, and we are not writing a novel which is merely the last chapter of something like 10+ million words of material assembled over a period of 50 or more years. Now, I've actually run games in a single persistent fantasy world for 40 years, give or take, and I ASSURE you it isn't even nearly in the same realm of elaboration of history and various other elements. It probably has a lot more descriptions of towns, forests, roads, mountains, etc than 3rd Age M.E. but that's about it. I'm sure I lack the literary gifts of a Tolkien and it shows.

None of us can hope to reach a fraction of the kind of depth of a Tolkien, so why not play to the strengths of the medium, and our own strengths in it? That's what I do. I have no desire to be something I am not.