What is *worldbuilding* for?

[Lanefan]

Geologically speaking, we know little enough about the internal dynamics of the Earth that its difficult to make conjectures about what is or is not possible. Now translate that to some other 'planet' with some completely alien origin etc. and IMHO any considerations of geographical plausibility are pretty much out the window.

I think we know enough about how Earth works and almost enough about how some other planets work to be able to more or less conjecture a consistent pattern as to how they're formed and what they're probably made of...and from there working out the basic geology isn't a big stretch.

That said, I've put my geology knowledge (of which I've a bit - it was my field in college) to a severe test when designing my current world; along the lines of "If this gets done to an otherwise innocent and ordinary planet, what happens? OK, how about this? And then this? [etc.]" The Godswall is a result of one of these "this"es.

CONSISTENCY might be a goal, IMHO mostly because it allows the players to reason about their character's actions (IE if we go 52 miles in this direction trigonometry says we should end up at location X).

Yep, and if we make the same trip next year it should take roughly the same amount of time and we should arrive in roughly the same place.

While there's no 5000km long 1500m high ridge on Earth its not actually THAT far off from reality. The East African Rift forms a scarp on its eastern side which is 1000's of feet high and runs for more than 1000 miles (I'm sure there are breaks and I don't know exactly how high all of it is, but if you have been there you will know its a HUGE geological feature, you can't even see the other side).

I've never been there but I've heard of it, and there's a few similarities with the Godswall in my world. A few.

My point is, I'm not super worried about it, nor am I constrained in terms of what I can frame into existence (or that the players can).

I do worry about it mostly because I don't want to end up constantly having to explain away things that don't make sense.

 

[Lanefan]

Rich, or poor, enough to possibly be a motivation to adventure, if that's stated as one of the character's needs is money (he is desirous of such). Otherwise I have little desire to muck around with making the players delay the whole thing so they can what? Pick some pockets for a few extra gold?

Or make the decision to do without the gold. It forces a choice on to the players/PCs.

In any case, a wealth check can work just as well as arithmetic here "make a check, ok, you passed, you've got enough gold in your purse to pay the porters for several weeks of travel. You know this SHOULD be enough time to get to the Lost City."

Taken in isolation, sure. But when taken in context of all the other things a PC might want to spend money on while in town (restocking supplies, bribes for information, high-roller living, commissioning scrolls or potions, whatever) it's better just to track it properly.

Realism, in a literal sense of mechanics which are a simulation of some real-world processes, is NOT the same thing as verisimilitude. The later is actually notoriously hard to define and more of a 'you know it when you see it' thing.

Yes. IMO however, v-tude is much much easier to achieve if there's a solid foundation of realism underlying it.

And how many times have the 10th level PCs in your game thought this, and then pulled out the spike they bought at level 1 and wrote on their sheet?

About as often as it happens where they suddenly realize they don't have something so simple because it isn't noted on anyone's sheet.

Hard and fast rule: if it's not noted on your character sheet, you don't have it.

It happened quite a bit in my game, but nobody ever really bothered to track how realistic it was that those spikes stayed in the pack for 15 months of high action adventuring! Nor am I so compulsive in my desire to record-keep that I'm going to catch the dozen instances where they might be lost and make all the players check for it, or record exactly how many the elf has expended over that time. My solution? Dice for it. If you're wise and experienced you probably kept up your supplies, but not every character is...

Dice-for-it does come up now and then, for sure, though only in non-essential situations.

Yeah, this kind of thing was pretty close to the first casualty of AD&D play in my group. Nobody wanted the tedium and sheer compulsive rulishness of demanding item saving throws and such at every turn. UGH!

This will NEVER be taken out of my games. Hell, magic item fragility is the main reason I can keep giving out lots of neat funky magic items for them to play with!

Never mind that sometimes when they break they go boom or have some other odd effect.

Magic is dangerous stuff.

Seriously? You know more than NOAA does about these things? humbug!

I'm a weather geek in real life, so of course that's going to translate into my games!

When designing my current game world one of the things I did was work out the rough climate patterns and zones for the part of the world I expected most of the play to be in, so I could then have a vague idea of what types of weather would make sense for what times of year based on where they happen to be at the time. What actually gets narrated each day is based on a certain amount of expected variance from these norms, as run through my tables if I'm being diligent and my head if I'm not.

This is pure theorycrafting silliness. Nobody knows that much about climate and weather, NOBODY. Nobody that I have ever played with or even HEARD OF is so crazy as to try to question some long past adventure on the basis of their made-up interpretation of the weather consequences of some invented geography.

I know enough about the climate and weather in my own game world to say that sticking a mile-high thousands-mile-long cliff somewhere is going to have some serious effects on the weather and climate of the areas relatively close to it. And as that cliff has in theory always been there (it didn't just appear out of nothing!) but is only just now being authored into play, so would its effects have in theory always been there...and thus would have affected elements of play in the past had they been known about at the time. To me this invalidates the previous play, which is something I adamantly oppose.

An analogy might be changing some significant game rule in mid-campaign, trying to retro-act the change all the way back to the start for consistency, and finding the old rule had in the past allowed or caused some major things to happen which in theory under the new rule could not have happened (or vice versa). To me this invalidates what came before...and in this example would cause me to abandon the rule change; I'd be stuck with the old rule until I changed campaigns or game worlds. (right now I've got a list of things I want to change but can't, for just this reason)

I mean, sure, some player could call you on how your streets don't line up in the town, but my answer would be "Oh, yeah, that's very interesting! Now, does your character spend the next 3 days figuring it out? Yes? OK, roll a Streetwise check. You succeeded? OK, what did you discover?"

Character wouldn't need to spend three days in the streets figuring it out - fifteen minutes with a good map ought to suffice; and in most cases medieval street plans looked like spaghetti anyway.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

They tried to go over the mountains. In RPG hypothetical LoTR land they failed some sort of mechanical challenge and were turned back. Then they went to Moria. Here we see EXACTLY why you don't skip to the end of the story! The GM said "Oh, you want to go to Mordor and dispose of the ring... OK, you have to cross the Misty Mountains Dark and Cold!" This is HOW Story Now evolves story. The GM introduces scenes which frame putting the character's goals and beliefs to the test, which is another word for CONFLICT.

The DM said "Oh, you want to go from Washington to Tokyo [to do whatever]? OK, you have to cross the open endless plains, the dangerous western mountains, and the monster-infested ocean!"

Same thing, ain't it?

Sauron himself is an adversary (as is Saruman). These adversaries are substantial elements of the drama. Without them, without problems to overcome there's no story. Its not 'Story Ends Now'. Our hypothetical JRRT, GM extraordinaire, wisely put a challenge in the player's way. Now, they had a choice, to try to up the stakes on Caradharas and push on, into very likely death, or retreat and choose the grim and uncertain Mines of Moria. The fact that Gimli is served by going to the mines is useful to the GM, but its only one of his goals and not the most central one. In fact in Story Now No Myth, the Mines ONLY EXISTED because the PCs failed on the Mountain and the GM then noted Gimli's "I want to find out the fate of my cousin Balin, Lord of Moria." and hatched a plan (framed a new scene).

This is how these games work.

OK, sounds great!

As long as we can all agree the same result could easily be achieved in a DM-driven or traditonal game, we're good on this one.

Lanefan

 

[pemerton]

I use PC and player interchangeably

This is obvisouly hopeless for analysis. It's even hopeless for everyday conversation - if you tell me that a PC died in your game yesterday, am I to take it that there was a tragedy at the table?

Without drawing the distinction, you can't make sense of my point, which was this: something can be interesting to a player, because answering in some fashion to the dramatic need/thematic concerns s/he has established for his/her PC, yet not be interesting (yet) to a PC.

And vice versa, too. That s/he is under attack is probably interesting to a PC, but may be uninteresting, even tedious, to a player. This point has actually been recognised for a long time in RPGing - for instance, complaints about "hack and slash" RPGing being boring are nearly as old as the hobby, but those aren't complaints about the PCs being bored, are they?

Nobody sat the council at Rivendell and said, "It's important to me that we see Moria on the way to Mt. Doom", or "Hey, one of my goals is to see Lothlorien." You're making up importance to characters that wasn't there.

See, this is the sort of stuff that results from a failure to distinguish the author of a fiction from the fiction s/he is authoring. It's a mistake that children sometimes make, especially when the fiction is written in first person or presents itself as documentary (I'm thinking of, eg, the preface to The Princess Bride).

Turning to RPGing techniques, once again it seems that you are not able to think outside the context of a GM-driven railroad. You seem to be literally incapable of envisaging a story, in the sense of a narratively meaningful sequence of events, being the result of the play of a RPG, where players declare actions for their PCs and then outcomes are establsihed via the mediatin of system..

For instance, imagine how a RPG session played "story now" might actually produce the Moria sequence. It's a bit long (and sblocked for that reason), but that's because genuine actual play reports, with serioous analysis, tend to be. This one is imaginary, but aspires to the same sort of seriousness.

[sblock]One PC has, as a goal (whether formally established, in the manner of a BW Belief or a Cortex+ Heroic Mileston, or informally flagged as it might be in 4e) I will meet my cousin Balin in Khazad Dum".

Another has the goal "Having escaped from Saruman [in an earlier episode of play], I will thwart his desire for the ring." And also has the character descriptor (again, in BW this would be a Belief, in Cortex+ Heroic a trait, in 4e it might be an element of a theme or paragon path) "I am a wielder of the Secret Fire!"

A third has the goal "I will show that I am fit to be king, and leader of the Free Peoples".

A fourth has the descriptor "I am an elf of the woodlands, a peerless traveller".

(For the present, I ignore the hobbits and Boromir. The journey through Moria is not such an important part of their stories.)

Through whatever mechanism is being used (eg in BW it would most likely be an Orienteering check; in 4e it would probably be a Nature check in the context of a skill challenge), the players fail a check that corresponds to their safe travel from Eregion into the Vales of Anduin. The GM narrates, as the consequence for failure, that the Mountains steand before them as a significant obstacle.

The next thing that occurs in play is that it is established - the method is something I'll elaborate on - that the PCs know of two ways to get to the other side: the Path of Caradhras, or the Mines of Moria.

There are multiple ways this might be established, depending on system, mood, whim, etc. Eg the players might declare knowledge-type checks; the GM might just tell the players; etc.

Let's suppose, for the sake of this example, that it unfolds in the following way.

To begin, let's take it that it's already established in the fiction that Moria is known to offer a path under the mountains (eg this seems implicit in one PC's established goal). Gandalf's player then declares an Ancient History check, with a buff from Legolas, to establish some useful bit of knoweldge about the mines. But the check fails - and so instead (the GM explains) Gandalf and Legolas recalls that there is terrible danger in Moria, awoken by the dwarven miners. (The GM is getting ready here to play with Legola's identification as an elf, with Gandalf's identification as a wielder of the Secret Fire, and with Gimli's goal to visit Balin in Moria.)

Gandalf, therefore, cautions another way. The GM calls for another check (in 4e it would be Nature; in BW it might be Mist Mountains-wise). Again, it fails, and the GM narrates, "You know of the Pass of Caradhras, but the snow seems to have set in early this year. It will be hard going." (In Dungwon World that's what they call a "soft" GM move.) Aragorn's player advocates for passage through Moria, but Gandalf's player encourages the group to take the pass. In BW, this could be resolved as Duel of Wits between the two PCs (which would obviously implicate Aragorn's Belief about leadership); 4e doesn't have a comparable mechanic. In any event, the group resolves to take the pass.
The players then make a group Athletics or Endurance check (maybe both, maybe one, depending on system and what the GM calls for), but it fails, and the GM narrates the snow all around. And, picking up on Gandalf's character elements about Saruman and about the Secret Fire, adds in a hint of magicsal malice to the description. Gandalf's player, playing the fiction in the sort of fashion that [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] has talked about upthread, declares an Arcana check in response to try and tame the storm. This also fails, and the GM informs the players "Your hobbits will die unless you turn back." So the players decide that the party turns back. Now they have to try Moria.

Free narration gets us to the west gate, but the GM describes it as closed. A failed History check by Gandalf's player is narrated as him not knowing the password. Frodo's player offers an after-the-fact augment (in our 4e game that is acceptable if an action point is spent), but the success comes at a cost: the watcher stirs and attacks the PCs. There are different ways to do success at a cost - in BW, it is one way of establishing "fail forward" narration; in 4e, it could similarly be part of the narration of a skill challenge.

The PCs retreat into the mines without defeating the watcher, leaving it free to block the door behind them. Gimili's player then makes a Circles check (in BW) or perhaps a Diplomacy check (in 4e) to make contact with the dwarven colony. But this check also fails, and so the GM narrrates an undesired consequence instead - the dwarves are dead, killed by orcs with drums in the deep! (This narration plays on the Belief written for Gimili, and also is another "soft" move that cumulates with the earlier one establishing the danger in Moria.)

It is now clear that Moria is inhabited by bad things, and so the players declare, or the GM calls for, a group Stealth check as the party crosses to the east. The player of Pippin fails, and the GM narrates this as him carelessly dropping something down a shaft. The drums start up! (Another "soft" move, that further ratchets up the stakes of failing in the attempt to travel through Moria.) But the group as a whole succeeds on the check, and so they aren't immediately attacked.

There are different ways to imagining the fight scene being framed. One is that another check - perhaps a Dungeoneering check, for successful navigation - is failed, and it is the "hard" move made by the GM in response. Alternatively, the GM just frames it as a consequence of what has already taken place, but - because the group Stealth check was on balance a success - allows the players the advantage of being attacked in a defensible position (a room with a door) rather than pinned in an open hallway.

The fight is a success for the PCs, although the GM is now pouring on the pressure, and Gandalf's player has him cast an Arcane Lock spell to hold the door against the implied hordes beyond. The spell is broken, though. There are different ways to imagine that happening. In 4e, the GM is free to have introduced a monster into the situation (in this case, a balrog) with a "spellbreaker" ability. In BW, this would more likely be the result of another failed check - perhaps not everyone succeeded on the Speed check to make it to the final bridge.

However exactly it comes about, the final scene of Moria is framed as the PCs trying to flee across the bridge while Gandalf holds off the balrog. In BW, Aragorn's player makes a Command check to break the hesitation the other PCs suffer from the balrog, so they are able to flee. (And this speaks directly to his leadership Belief, earning him a fate point.) In 4e, Aragorn is probably statted as a warlord or hybrid warlord, and uses some power to buff his allies' movement, so they are able to flee.

Neither BW nor 4e has a "pyrrhic victory" rule which would enable Gandalf's player to buff his attempt to hold off the balrog by risking his own life (but such a rule is not purely speculation - HeroQuest revised does have one, and Cortex+ Heroic has options in the neighbourhood). So we have to assume that Gandalf's "shatter" effect is subject to an interrupt from the balrog (which is part of the 4e mechanics; and in BW a lot of action resolution is simultaneous following blind declaration, so the balrog can declare "ensnare with whip" while Gandalf declares "shatter the bridge"). And so is dragged down even as the other PCs get away.[/sblock]

What does that example show?

First, it illustrates how important failures are in "story now" RPGing, as they generate the unwanted consequences that drive things forward in ways that are unexpected, in some sense undesired, and yet continue to speak to player-established concerns.

Second, and related, it reminds us how the trip through Moria is a story of failure upon failure - as Aragorn later laments. By my count (with fails and successes bolded in my account) there are at least 5 failures, interrupted only by a success with a cost, before the players eventually succeed at a combat. The final confrontation is then another success with a cost (ie Gandalf dies). It would be quite unlucky to get this happening in 4e, as 4e is quite a mathematically generous system. BW is capable of giving this sort of thing, though. It is mathematically pretty brutal.

Third, it shows how "no myth" works. From a bit of backstory and some Beliefs/descriptors, the participants at the table have all that they need to establish a setting with mountain passes, magically sealed gates, watchers in the water, orc-and-balrog infested halls where a dwarven colony has perished, etc. But at no point is any of that stuff pre-given: had Gimli's player's Circles check succeeded, for instance, then the fiction would have unfolded completely differently. The dwarves would have been able to guide them through Moria. Because of the earlier "soft" move in which the GM established that there is danger in Moria, some sort of check would still have been required - there's no real point speculating what sort of check, because we don't know how the ensuing interaction with the dwarven colonists would have gone. All we can say is that the story would have been very different.

And if Tolkien had been writing in Story Now, he would not only have survived, but only been down maybe a healing surge. After all, their goal was to get to Mordor, so the journey was of no interest to the players. They should have left Rivendell and shown up at Mordor in the next scene.

[MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION]'s reply to this deals with the obvious point. I'lll add - the notion of writing a novel by way of a RPGing technique is obviously nonsense, and it's not even clear what rhetorical point it's meant to serve.

They were supposed to go over the mountains, but their goal was blocked(to use a Story Now term) by encounters.

Which prevents Moria from happening in a Story Now game. They had a significant destination in mind before they were blocked and had to go through Moria instead.

And this is so obviously wrong it's hard to credit its assertion. It has been a repeated theme, though, from [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] also - I (and others) emphasise how important action declarations and resolution are, and how important the contrast between success (= player's desire for the fiction is realied) and failure (= GM narrates some defeating consequence), and you simply don't seem to believe it.

Failed checks is how, in "story now" RPGing, adverse consequences become part of the fiction. This is why PCs don't always get what they want; and why players' plans don't always work out. (It's not because they guessed wrong about what is in the GM's notes.) The imagined Moria recount shows how this can happen.

The travel route was only important in LotR, because Tolkien didn't fast forward it

And how does this contradict what [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] said? If the players don't want to "gloss over" the travel, then they won't. I gave an example where they did so want.

For examples of glossing over travel in LotR, consider the joureny from Rivendell through Eregion (I think the chapter is called The Ring Goes South), or the journey from Fangorn to Edoras, or the journey from Helm's Deep to Isengard, or the return journey from Gondor to the northwest.

Wheher JRRT had a good sense of narrativ pacing is obviously a matter of contention, but it's clear that he didn't regard himself as being under any obligation to correlate wordage with in-fiction mileage. The journey through a few halls of Moria gets more attention than the the trip across Eregion. (Having written this post, I see that [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has made the same point. And also sketched out a Moria scenario. Having already written this post, I'm posting it anyway in spite of having been ninja-ed.)

And to return to the players of the giants-in-the-Underdark game: suppose, having been spotted by giants, they decide to retreat rather than fight. (Or maybe they try to fight but the giants get the better of them.) Now, as a consequence of failure, is the occasion for the GM to place obstacles in their way. Not pointless ones, of course, but obstacles that also speak to the player-evinced dramatic needs of the PCs. The imagined Moria recount above shows how this is done.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] admitted to doing exactly that a few pages ago. He said he brought up things that were not yet of interest to the players.

No I didn't. Here's the quote, for anyone who missed it first time around:

Here's one thing that's gone wrong in your assumptions: in this sentence, "One of the biggest hallmarks of a "living, breathing world" is that stuff goes on in the world outside of the PCs, the influence of the PCs, and what they are interested in," the word they refers to the PCs. Yet the anchor for "story now" RPGing is player-established themes, dramatic need etc. And as even a cursory familiarity with literature and film will reveal, something can speak to a protagonist's dramatic need although s/he is not (yet) interested in it.

That says nothing about the player not being interested. The player is not the protagonist. The PC is the protagonist.

If they aren't of interest to the players yet, they aren't a stated goal that he is engaging. Either those things were of interest to the DM only, or he was doing what I do and coming up with things that he thought they might become interested in, which would be a plot hook that he says he doesn't do.

Even bracketing the bizarre confusion of player and PC, this is wrong. Something can be of interest to a person although, as a matter of current psychological state, that person is not interested in it because (eg) s/he doesn't yet know about it.

For instance, if my PC description includes servant of the Secret Fire, then the fact that an NPC wields the Flame of Udun is of interest to me, and engages my PC's dramatic need, although I mightn't yet know that the NPC wields the Flame of Udun (eg because at the moment the GM is portraying the NPC as a friendly person helping me to stable my steed). Part of the skill of GMing a "story now" game is being able to think of situations, and story elements, that will speak to PCs' dramatic needs in new and engaging ways. Eero Tuovinen expresses this requirement when he says that:

One of the players is a gamemaster whose job it is to . . . frame scenes according to dramatic needs (that is, go where the action is) and provoke thematic moments . . .

Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character . . .

The GM . . . needs to be able to reference the backstory, determine complications to introduce into the game, and figure out consequences.​

I find the assumption that Story Now players are perfect and never overlook anything to be amusing. I find the idea that if I am playing Story Now, I have to plot out possible things that might happen at the end of the trip so that I can see if I need to tell the DM before my character leaves what I want to do, to be disheartening. I don't like having to play a mental game of chess with the DM, plotting out my moves well in advance. .

All this reinforces what is already clear, namely, that you don't understand how non-GM-driven play works.

The notion of overlook has no work to do hear. Suppose I go to a carnival. I choose to go on the ferris wheel rather than the ghost train. Perhaps I would have enjoyed the ghost train more - who knows? But I didn't overlook that possibility. I choose to do something else. Suppose that there was also a superslide that I didn't know about - maybe I would have enjoyed that the most! But I chose the ferris wheel. C'est la vie. I'm certainly not going to spend my life scouring every carnival I might go to trying to identify what ride I might enjoy the most! And I'm not going to be dragged around by someone else, being shown rides rather than going on one.

In the context of "story now" RPGing, the notion is doubly inapplicable - not only for the reasons that can be extrapolated from the metaphor of the carnival ride, but also because the players have their PCs sheets in front of them, and are playing their PCs, and so will know if their PCs are sneaky sneaks or forthright assailants. These are some of the most basic of fantasy tropes. The players aren't going to overlook their PCs' fundamental natures.

The notion of "plotting out possible things" and "playing mental chess with the GM" is also bizarre. Well in advance of what? Given that your complaint is that the narration of the trip to the giant cavern takes only a few seconds, where do you envisage this "mental chess" taking place? And who are you trying to outwit?

To reiterate: GM - "Players, are you going to the giants?"; Players - "Yes"; GM - "OK, you're at the giant cave". Where did this mighty struggle of wits take place? Was it in the Gm asking the question "Are you going to the giants?' Or was it in the players saying "Yes"? And once the players say "Yes", do you really think they're going to be shocked to be told that their PCs are at the cave?

You are treating "Are you going to the cave?" as short hand for "Are you ready for all these things that I'm going to tell you about your trip to the cave?" Which, in a GM-driven game, it may well be. But that wasn't what I, or [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION], or [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], was talking about.

 

[clearstream]

I do worry about it mostly because I don't want to end up constantly having to explain away things that don't make sense.

Or because it can inspire, too, right?

 

[pemerton]

Not every situation. If the party had been surprised by some giants appearing a few miles before they'd normally have been expected then sure, no lead-up required. But in the situation as presented the PCs had every reason to suspect there'd be giants ahead, and as written there's no indication given as to whether either side gained surprise (or system equivalent).

I already discussed this c 200 posts upthread. I sketched the example in 4e. 4e doesn't have generic surprise rules. The players could have declared stealth. They didn't.

Maybe when they are spotted by the giants, they want to attack with an initiative bonus. There are various warlord and other powers that permit this. Maybe they want to use one of those. I don't know - it's a made-up example, and I didn't write that bit yet.

If the players want to fight giants and there's risks or dangers or hazards between where they are and where the giants are, I want to see what effects those risks-dangers-hazards might have on the party so that both I and the players know what they have left

But those risks and hazards are nothing more than stuff the GM made up. So wanting to see what their effects are is nothing different from wanting to find out what happens when the GM tells the players about this stuff s/he made up in his/her worldbuilding.

I think everyone posting in this thread knows that you have that preference. But I don't see what bearing it has on the possibility of other ways of RPGing. It does reinforce what was clear from very early in this thread, though, that one purpose of worldbuilding is to give the GM stuff to tell the players.

The DM said "Oh, you want to go from Washington to Tokyo [to do whatever]? OK, you have to cross the open endless plains, the dangerous western mountains, and the monster-infested ocean!"

Same thing, ain't it?

The first quetion in "story now" play is, does the GM call for a check or simply "say 'yes'". This is a decision about drama, pacing, what's at stake.

Much of the time there is no reason not to just say "yes". In my MHRP game, no one was interested in the question of whether or not the Stark Corp private jet had been tampered with by rivals. They wanted to find out what happened at the Yashida headquarters in Tokyo. So that was the next scene I framed.

There is nothing unrealistic about having an uneventful flight from DC to Tokyo. Many hundreds of people are doing it every day!

How rich? If hiring a couple of porters to carry my heavy stuff through the jungle is going to cost me 2 g.p. per day per porter, I'd like to be able to just look at my character sheet, see I've got 105 g.p. right now, and know I can confidently hire these guys for 20 days (80 g.p.) and still have a bit left over.

For someone who's into realism, that's not very realistic! In the real world, money gets lost, unexpected or forgotten debts fall due, credit is granted or refused, etc.

But in any event, in Cortex+ Heroic, hiring porters is either pure colour - so it just gets narrated by the player - or else is the creation of a resource, which requires the expenditure of a plot point. Nothing in that system involves adding or subtracting numbers to a running tally except earning and spending XP.

The more you tell me about this game the more it seems like the game completely turns its back on any sort of realism, or resource management, or small-scale grittiness. Yes I know it has "Heroic" in its name and that alone should red-flag me as to what to expect but come on, man: even heroes have to pay for food and count their arrows.

I sure hope these resources can only be created when it makes sense they be available e.g. if you can create a horse while on a ship at sea that's right over the top.

And what happens if while deep in a dungeon somewhere it suddenly becomes extremely important whether or not someone has some particular piece of mundane gear e.g. iron spikes to wedge a door shut? They can't be allowed to 'create' them there and then; they either had some all along or they didn't, and if they did they'd be noted somewhere and if they didn't then they're out of luck. Otherwise it'd be like these plot points are almost like little tiny Wishes - bleah.

Well obviously it's far less realistic than White Plume Mountain, The Ghost Tower of Inverness, and Zuggtmoy the Demoness Lady of Fungi!

But in any event, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy! Eg many heroes in fact do not pay for their food, but are billetted by those they are helping (see eg The Seven Samurai). Some people are able to acquire horses on board a ship (eg by buying one from the captain, or another passenger).

As far as iron spikes are concerned, they're not going to come up very often (I think it must be 20 years or more since I've thought about iron spikes, except maybe running one AD&D session a year or two ago). But suppose that a player wants to create a Door Spiked Shut asset (eg to impede the actions of some threatening monster) - that would be a check against the Doom Pool. If it fails, there are a number of possible narrations - one might be "You're out of iron spikes!"

Sure things like this could be made up on the fly, but doing so gives no opportunity to think it through ahead of time and work out the possible consequences (both in and out of fiction) and-or rationales.

Putting the Godswall where it is makes east-going non-magical travel extremely difficult. If anyone at the table (including me as DM) has any reason for the party to go east or for anything to have been coming from the east that trip just became a lot more challenging. I've also just munged up the climate and weather patterns over about a quarter of a continent, retroactive through every minute of the PCs' played careers.

Actually, I think you missed my point.

Maybe the weather across the continent is magical? Maybe last year's rainstorm was caused by a druid the PCs never knew anything about (go "living, breathing world"!)?

And if the trip to the east becomes more challenging, well that's what happens when you establish fiction. It has consequences for play. That's the point.

 

[pemerton]

In my Dark Sun game, the opening scene took place in an arena, where the crowd were responding to news of the death of the Sorcerer-King of Tyr.

<snip>

In a player-driven game the players hook the GM, not vice versa.

The Sorcerer-King of Tyr just died? That's not a hook, it's a trawling net!

As I recall from the bits of description of it I read that event pretty much drove all the action from there on out, either directly or indirectly.

Makes sense - an event like that is a hook with a million potential sub-hooks and the players jumped at it.

Here is the relevant actual play post:

[sblock]

As the final part of PC building, and trying to channel a bit of indie spirit, I asked the players to come up with "kickers" for their PCs.

From The Forge, here is one person's definition of a kicker:

A Kicker is a term used in Sorcerer for the "event or realization that your character has experienced just before play begins."

For the player, the Kicker is what propels the character into the game, as well as the thing that hooks the player and makes him or her say, "Damn! I can't wait to play this character!"

It's also the thing that the player hopes to resolve at the end of the game. At the start of the next game with the same character, the resolution of the Kicker alters the character in some way, allowing the player to re-write the character to reflect changes.​

In my case, I was mostly focused on the first of those things: an event or realisation that the character has experienced just before play begins, which thereby propels the character into the game. The main constraint I imposed was: your kicker somehow has to locate you within Tyr in the context of the Sorcerer-King having been overthrown. The reason for this constraint was (i) I want to be able to use the 4e campaign books, and (ii) D&D relies pretty heavily on group play, and so I didn't want the PCs to be too separated spatially or temporally.

The player of the barbarian came up with something first. Paraphrasing slightly, it went like this:

I was about to cut his head of in the arena, to the adulation of the crowd, when the announcement came that the Sorcerer-King was dead, and they all looked away.​

So that answered the question that another player had asked, namely, how long since the Sorcerer-King's overthrow: it's just happened.

<snip>

Discussion of PC backgrounds and the like had already established that the eladrin was an envoy from The Lands Within The Wind, aiming to link up with the Veiled Alliance and thereby to take steps to save his homeland from the consequences of defiling. So his kicker was

My veiled alliance contact is killed in front of me as we are about to meet.​

(A lot of death accompanying the revolution!)

With all that in place, we started the session proper. I started with the barbarian, describing him standing over his defeated foe in the arena as the cry comes through the crowd "The tyrant is dead!" - taking all attention away from his victory and the pending kill.

[/sblock]

Those are some examples of what I mean by "the players hook the GM". To see how it worked out, you can read the rest of the post.

 

[pemerton]

In summarising player advocacy, he writes

This means that the player tells the others what his character does

Here is the full passage:

When a player is an advocate for a character in a roleplaying game, this means that his task in playing the game is to express his character’s personality, interests and agenda for the benefit of himself and other players. This means that the player tells the others what his character does, thinks and feels, and he’s doing his job well if the picture he paints of the character is clear and powerful, easy to relate to.​

If I tell others what a character I am advocating for does don't I therefore have control of that character?

I'm not sure what you mean by "have control of that character"? I guess I'm also not sure what you having in mind when you talk about "telling others what a character I am advocating for does".

In playing White Plume Mountain, a player might say "My PC takes the doors of the hinges, so that we can use them to ride down the frictionless corridor without falling into the tetanus pits".

In playing Tomb of Horrors, a player might say "My PC uses a 10' pole to probe the floor as I walk down it. I also tap the wall with the paintings on it."

But neither of these is advocacy in Eero Tuovinen's sense. No "picture of the character" has been painted, let alone a clear and powerful one. The character has not had any personality, interests or agenda expressed. Nothing has been conveyed about what the character thinks or feels.

A minimum requirement for character advocacy as Tuovinen describes it is that the GM establishes situations that permit the player to paint that picture by expressing an agenda, thoughts, feelings. You can have character advocacy in games that aren't "story now" or "standard narrativistic model" (eg classic White Wolf games), but there is likely to be tension if the player's advocacy comes into collision with the GM's conception of how the fiction should be.

(One way of describing the function of alignment mechanics, in 2nd ed AD&D (and perhaps since then, too, to the extent that the 2nd ed practice has continued) is to put a limit on character advocacy so as to avoid those sorts of collisions. ("Your character wouldn't do that because she's LG" is the most extreme version of how this can work.))

In any event, I think it's fairly clear that the more that the GM decides what flows from advocating for one's character, the less control the player has over the content of the shared fiction. Personally, I also think that the more the GM decides what flows from advocating for one's character, the less control the player has over the character, as it is the GM who is deciding what it means to be someone with this agenda, these interests, these particular thoughts and feelings.

 

[Maxperson]

Again, Gimli was QUITE interested in Moria and several times mentioned going there. In fact I think he even said so at the Council of Elrond (well before it was on the table as an actual route). Aragorn was VERY interested in going to Lothlorien, as his girlfriend was there! And truthfully, all the adventures of the 9 Walkers were of key importance. Aragorn and Gandalf arrived at Theoden's Hall at a very critical point, as did Merry and Pippin arrive at Fangorn. Again and again it was clear that the events set in motion by the Fellowship were critical. The War of the Ring would have been radically different, even lost, had they turned out differently.

The adventures of the 9 members of the company were important, but they were not goals. Pippin did not have the goal of becoming a guard to the steward. That happened as a result of the journey not being rushed to the conclusion, but instead being walked out. Merry and Pippin did not have goals to go to Fangorn and meet ents, but rather that also happened as a result of the journey. The same with the rest of them. The only two real goals were destroy the ring at Mt. Doom and the lesser goal of become king for Aragorn. This is a great example of the style that I and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] espouse. The journey can result in all kinds of awesome roleplaying, character changing, and world changing events. Those events are missed out on in Story Now when you just put the PCs at the giants, because that's what the interest/goal is.