What is *worldbuilding* for?

[Maxperson]

No, its INFINITELY relevant. You are committing a category error by confounding what happens in the game narrative, where the door has always existed, with what is happening in the GAME where the door just came into existence due to a check. The backstory is CLEARLY not a game narrative element, PCs don't discuss the backstory of the world they live in! (at least not unless you're playing some game which 'breaks the 4th wall' or something). The backstory is something which exists at the game table, in the game being played by the players, where the backstory is pre-existing, and the secret door is not! If you misinterpret Tuovinen's statements on backstory to mean something in the narrative, then you are misinterpreting him. He's not saying what you think he is, you have to think in terms of what is happening at the TABLE, which is actually the focus, the origin point for the considerations of Story Now, the game world and its narrative are secondary constructed elements which serve the agenda, they dictate nothing.

They do mean something that happens in the narrative. He even gives specific examples which I will quote below.

"My brother Markku likes narration-sharing a lot, narrating stuff is one of his big loves in roleplaying. Now and then he gets proactive about introducing various methodologies into his gaming, which often ends up with him asking his D&D players what sort of monsters they would like to meet in the next encounter. Of course it’s fine if he likes this (no intent to call Markku out here specifically), but to me it seems completely awry and awkward to break the GM backstory authority and allow the players to narrate whatever they want. There’s no excitement and discovery in finding orcs in the next room if I decided myself that there would be orcs there. This fundamentally changes my relationship to my character."

The bolded is specifically about backstory as narration. In this case, the DM is allowing the players to narrate the backstory, rather than having the DM do it.

"Somebody at Story Games suggested in relation to 3:16 (don’t remember who, it’s not really important) that a great GM technique would be to leave the greater purpose and nature of the high command of the space army undefined so the players could make this decision when and if their characters find it out. So maybe they find out that the great space war is a hoax or whatever. I find that this is completely ass-backwards for this sort of game: the players cannot be put into a position of advocacy for their characters if those same players are required to make the crucial backstory choices: am I supposed to myself decide that the space war is a cruel lie, and then in the next moment determine how my character is going to react to this knowledge? Doesn’t that look at all artificial?"

Again, he is speaking about the DM narrating the high command in such a way as to leave the army undefined so that the players can fill in that narration.

"In another thread a similar claim was made about Trail of Cthulhu – that is, somebody described how he’d played the game with the players having the right to invent backstory by paying points for it. I’m not that vehemently against this in this case, as I don’t know ToC that well. Still, I’m almost certain that this is not the intended reading of the game text, and it definitely deviates quite a bit from how the game works if you assume an objective, GM-controlled backstory. My first instinct would be that I wouldn’t be that interested in playing the game if there weren’t a carefully considered, atmospheric backstory to uncover; it’s an investigation game after all."

Here he mentions players being able to invent backstory on the spot by paying points for it. This is no different than inventing backstory on the spot by rolling to see if it happens or not. Secret door anyone?

As for PCs talking about backstory, they do it all the time. If the DM decided that the kings son was assassinated prior to gameplay, when the PCs discuss that assassination, they are discussing backstory. Backstory is only backstory if it makes it into the game. It doesn't matter what the DMs notes say at the game table if they never make it into the game. Those notes are not backstory until they hit the game world.

P.S. It's a shame that you ignored this post. I was really looking forward to your response. http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...uilding*-for&p=7391365&viewfull=1#post7391365

 

[pemerton]

"My brother Markku likes narration-sharing a lot, narrating stuff is one of his big loves in roleplaying. Now and then he gets proactive about introducing various methodologies into his gaming, which often ends up with him asking his D&D players what sort of monsters they would like to meet in the next encounter. Of course it’s fine if he likes this (no intent to call Markku out here specifically), but to me it seems completely awry and awkward to break the GM backstory authority and allow the players to narrate whatever they want. There’s no excitement and discovery in finding orcs in the next room if I decided myself that there would be orcs there. This fundamentally changes my relationship to my character."

The bolded is specifically about backstory as narration. In this case, the DM is allowing the players to narrate the backstory, rather than having the DM do it.

Succeeding on a check to find a secret door is not deciding myself that there are orcs there. It is declaring an action. There is the prospect of success. There are consequences for failure. (I think you and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] tend to have a rather weaksauce conception of failure - hence Lanefan's suggestion that there are unlimited retries to find desired things. Most "story now" games have a more robust notion of consequence.)

"Somebody at Story Games suggested in relation to 3:16 (don’t remember who, it’s not really important) that a great GM technique would be to leave the greater purpose and nature of the high command of the space army undefined so the players could make this decision when and if their characters find it out. So maybe they find out that the great space war is a hoax or whatever. I find that this is completely ass-backwards for this sort of game: the players cannot be put into a position of advocacy for their characters if those same players are required to make the crucial backstory choices: am I supposed to myself decide that the space war is a cruel lie, and then in the next moment determine how my character is going to react to this knowledge? Doesn’t that look at all artificial?"

Again, he is speaking about the DM narrating the high command in such a way as to leave the army undefined so that the players can fill in that narration.

Again, you seem not to appreciate the difference betwen deciding and declaring an action. THey're not the same thing.

"In another thread a similar claim was made about Trail of Cthulhu – that is, somebody described how he’d played the game with the players having the right to invent backstory by paying points for it. I’m not that vehemently against this in this case, as I don’t know ToC that well. Still, I’m almost certain that this is not the intended reading of the game text, and it definitely deviates quite a bit from how the game works if you assume an objective, GM-controlled backstory. My first instinct would be that I wouldn’t be that interested in playing the game if there weren’t a carefully considered, atmospheric backstory to uncover; it’s an investigation game after all."

Here he mentions players being able to invent backstory on the spot by paying points for it. This is no different than inventing backstory on the spot by rolling to see if it happens or not. Secret door anyone?

It's absolutely different. There is a significant difference between delcaring an action, which may fail and hence has the risk of consequences, and spending points.

This is why, in Cortex+ Heroic, a character can only spend points to establish resources in a transition scene (ie before they know exactly what they will be confronting), or if the GM rolls a 1 during an action scene (ie when something is at stake between the PCs and some opposition). Otherwise they are confined to generating assets, which are always contest checks which thus pose the possibility of adverse consequences if they fail.

Are you familiar with any of the RPGs that Eero mentions in his blog, other than D&D?

 

[pemerton]

perhaps Pippin seeks out Faramir in Osiliath and to offer his service. Perhaps, feeling rejected, but still wanting to do something for Gondor due to his feelings for Boromir, he joins the Gondorian regular army.

The first looks like ye olde "standard wilderness crawl with a McGuffin at the end of it". With the second, where is the character arc going to come from? Where is Pippin's resolve going to be put to the test?

How are the thematically compelling moments going to be produced if the GM doesn't do it on purpose?

 

[Lanefan]

In the fiction, of course the secret door was always there.

Exactly!

And now that we've agreed on this, let's go one step further:

If the presence of that secret door had been known about all along by the DM, what would have been done differently in play/occurred differently in the fiction than what in fact transpired? Then run the same question past every single instance of something being introduced out of the blue by a successful action declaration...

I ask this because if the answer at any time is anything - anything - other than "nothing at all" then as far as I'm concerned the whole game is invalidated. As soon as something is introduced later that would reasonably have had effects earlier had its presence been known about earlier then either a) that thing being introduced is invalid (less-worse option) or b) any and all previous play that would have been affected is invalid (utterly unacceptable).

The best option is to never allow this to happen in the first place...and to achieve this requires solid pre-authorship of the setting by someone, and that someone is almost without exception going to be the DM.

But at the table, its existence was established as a result of the check. Therefore its existence is not part of the backstory, as Eero Tuovinen uses that term. You are free to use backstory to mean "elements of the fiction which predate the present in-fiction moment of play" if you want, but that's not how Eero is using it. He is using it to mean suuff that is literally pre-authored or is notinally pre-authored. (The latter is what is often called, on these boards, "winging it". Establishing the existence of a secret door as a result of a check is not "winging it".)

Sure it is, it's just that the flapping is being done by someone other than the DM: in this case, a player aided by her dice.

But in any event, action resolution changes the fiction. It thereby contribues to future framing and fictional positioning. Which in turn fees into future action declarations and resolutions. I wouldn't have though that this is contentious.

It's contentious not because of what it does to the future but because of what it will inevitably at some point end up doing to the past, and how that change to the past should affect the present but cannot.

In some systems, action resolution also generates discrete mechanical consequences whose connection to the fiction may be more or less tight, depending on system and congtext (eg in AD&D a successful attack roll results in the mechanical consequence of a depletion of opponent hit points - what this correlats to in the fiction is, by the rules, rather uncertain and relatively unimportant to future action resolution).

This kind of action resolution isn't relevant to the discussion. Physical-setting-affecting action resolution is.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

I take the opposite approach: a loosely defined concept is plenty to get started, and then as the game progresses the player "discovers" more about their character's backstory. This might manifest as improvisations to explain things in the present, or just flashes of creative inspiration. But just as we learn more and more about a character as we read a novel, the table (including the character's player) learn more about the character as they play the game.

My preference also.

It also means if the character perma-dies within its first few sessions (a common occurrence particularly at low levels) you don't lose all the time and effort spent on its history etc., as that was never done.

 

[Lanefan]

How good an example is it? a 4e Fireball is an area burst 2, meaning it is a full 25' across. This is a SLIGHT exaggeration of the 'canonical' 20' diameter fireball. the upshot is, if you actually draw the 'canonical' fireball inside the 25' 5x5 square 4e footprint they are identical, assuming you used the rule 'any square partially in the AoE is affected'. Thus the 4e fireball compromises in no respect on the 'classic' fireball, aside from exactly regularizing the target points in 5' increments, which IMHO isn't a really big deal. However the procedure for resolution is about an order of magnitude simpler to handle.

It's rarely if ever a problem for me, and I use the 'canonical' type you refer to just below.

In fact however, the canonical fireball is supposed to fill a 'volume' of (IIRC 22,000 cubic feet, or 22 10x10x10 cubes, expanding in all directions).

It's very slightly under 33 10' cubes, actually - a bit less (I think) than 33000 cu ft. I didn't do the math on this, mind you; my first DM did - and as his math skills are beyond exemplary I've always just taken his word for it.

Exactly how this is resolved is left to the GM. So you can't, always at least, even say exactly WHAT is within the area of the canonical fireball of classic D&D. In practice few GM's take into account the height of ceilings and other such factors when resolving them.

I've never met a DM who didn't consider these things, and at least in our games the players know it. In fact around here it's a running joke that if a MU asks "How high is the ceiling?" it means some random part of the neighbourhood (usually but not always the part that has the enemies in it; spells like this do require a roll for aim) is about to get fried.

So really I'm not convinced that 4e's approach IS actually 'less realistic' in any meaningful sense.

Yeah, one more where we'll have to agree to disagree.

This is an aesthetic choice for you, which it seems to me is mostly made in the direction of "this is traditional" and not necessarily a really objective evaluation of any kind of realism. So I'm not exactly impressed with the degree to which this OBJECTIVELY amounts to simulationism.

Every little bit helps.

Does game-world gravity work the same as real-world gravity? Default is yes. Ditto for a bunch of other things, unless specifically overridden by the DM as part of her - can you see this coming? - worldbuilding!

As I pointed out in my ammunition discussion in a previous post, I remain unconvinced that the most basically 'realistic' procedure is actually more accurate, even in a simulation sense. In a verisimilitude sense (which again I consider a somewhat separate and purely aesthetic concept) there's nothing that MUST make what you say true either.

It's not always more accurate, but again - just because perfection is unachievable doesn't mean we should stop trying where and how we can.

Eh, don't overstate things. It is EASIEST OF ALL to reason about purely gamist constructs, as these are highly structured and easily understood and implemented at the table without questions of interpretation. Having played 4e for 10 years I can say that this is HUGE. Nobody can argue in a 4e battle about exactly what the fireball did. Its clear. Its quite easy to reason about it!

But in a rulings-not-rules (e.g. 5e) or rules-as-guidelines (e.g. 1e) system it's not as clear-cut, and one can push things in a certain direction if desired.

Good grief! Game Masters are now cops, and players are cheating if they don't manage to accurately record every arrow they use? Play as you wish, I have NO desire to get near that!

Part of the DM's job since day 1 has been that of referee and rules enforcer, and that hasn't changed. Ever.

Exactly! And there is no way anyone can say what is actually realistic. The type of arrows, the humidity, the amount of light, etc etc etc are all going to factor into if they break or split, how far away they are, how hard to see, etc. There are actually quite a few factors. To the point where, as I said before, you're totally 'winging it' to make a ruling. This is one of those places where the GM is tempted to either favor the PCs, or something else.

Or let the dice decide, modified by situational factors.

Sure, but what of the fletching, the nock of the arrow, etc? Its going to depend on how it was made, the exact materials, workmanship, etc. Eventually (and in my limited experience as a very amateur archer not super long) any given arrow will degrade. Again, simulating this realistically is probably not feasible, the best you will get is some largely gamist "it works 3 times" or something like that. Congrats you now have to track EACH ARROW and how many times it has been used? Nobody is going to do that.

Here you have the advantage, as I've no real-world experience with archery at all and so I kind of have to do what the game tells me.

But in those areas where I do have some experience (e.g. boating) I'll let that experience guide my DMing, overriding the game rules if needed.

I'm certainly not faulting classic D&D for just inventing some usable GAMIST valuations and numbers. Gygax didn't go research this stuff because he didn't have to. His numbers are within common sense and thus don't invalidate player common sense, and they work for what he wants. Also they're in the PHB, so the players should KNOW them (in 1e anyway).

The research has been done since, however, and it's possible to come up with quite accurate price lists for (in game terms) mundane gear based on different eras and (European) places.

All I'm proposing is that the consideration in 1e was gamist, not simulationist, and that in games like Cortex+ (or HoML) that the primarily story-centered approach taken is not really LESS realistic than Gygax's. It is less 'numerical model', that's all.

1e was gamist as written...but it's possible to steer it away from that via tweaks and approach, using the many little choice points I referred to earlier.

Lanefan

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Then some other character growth arc would have emerged. ::shrug::

Exactly. This is non-controversial, we all agree that in your game SOMETHING will happen. The question is, "how will that thing address Pippin's player's agenda?" If its simply a question of chance as to whether the GM happens to frame a scene with Denethor, often simply due to it being pre-authored or not pre-authored, then there is simply some random chance that the player will be confronted with a situation where his agenda is addressed and his character's desire/belief is put to the test. It may or may not happen. The point we made way back when this particular exchange started was that it is MUCH more likely you will achieve a 'LotR-like' story-arc by playing directly to it in a 'go to the action' type of style. There are NO paths in Story Now where something analogous to the experience of Pippin in Minas Tirith will not happen. There are MANY such paths in other styles of play.

Incorrect. My own account reveals why, in the absence of some sort of agenda, there is no guarantee of the same arc Pippin encountered emerging over the course of play. Character growth arcs will happen, regardless of absence of an agenda.

Furthermore, the issue isn't about whether or not it plays out as in the book. The question is, if the player amkes other choices do we get a dramatic arc? Thematically compelling vhoices? What happens if Pippin offers fealty to Denethor and Denethor refuses to accept it? (In 4e, this could be the result of a failed Diplomacy check in a skill challenge. In BW, it could be the outcome of a duel of wits.) Now "the action" has changed - perhaps Pippin seeks out Farimir instead.

Yep. Something else will happen. Good call.

Exactly, again, same as above. The point still stands, in the absence of 'going to the action' of intentionally speaking to the dramatic elements nominated by the player, there's no sure way to achieve a dramatic story arc. Pippin's time in Minas Tirith is JUST as likely to be largely uneventful or to involve action that is unrelated to the character's central question. Loyalty vs Admiration may never come up at all! Pippin may never 'pay his debt' or it may simply be discharged in a relatively uneventful way which never brings into question just what it means to swear an oath to a man whose family member died for you. Pippin may well not grow at all.

Who cares. This isn't about my game being Story Now, it's about character growth arcs. So perhaps Pippin seeks out Faramir in Osiliath and to offer his service. Perhaps, feeling rejected, but still wanting to do something for Gondor due to his feelings for Boromir, he joins the Gondorian regular army. Perhaps something else. It doesn't matter whether the game is Story Now or not. Character growth arcs are going to happen regardless.

But again, he could join the regular army, and be posted to some boring guard duty, or he could fail some checks or simply not have the requisite information needed to find Faramir, or it could even be IMPOSSIBLE to find Faramir due to his location having been pre-established as someplace inaccessible to Pippin. Truthfully, this is what you would EXPECT. Certainly if this was [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s style of play, as I understand it, this is exactly what would most likely happen. The world doesn't exist for you, PCs are nothing special, you rarely have any incredible opportunities because that's just not realistic. What does Pippin most likely learn? The taste of wormy army biscuits sounds like the most probable thing! lol.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

They do mean something that happens in the narrative. He even gives specific examples which I will quote below.

"My brother Markku likes narration-sharing a lot, narrating stuff is one of his big loves in roleplaying. Now and then he gets proactive about introducing various methodologies into his gaming, which often ends up with him asking his D&D players what sort of monsters they would like to meet in the next encounter. Of course it’s fine if he likes this (no intent to call Markku out here specifically), but to me it seems completely awry and awkward to break the GM backstory authority and allow the players to narrate whatever they want. There’s no excitement and discovery in finding orcs in the next room if I decided myself that there would be orcs there. This fundamentally changes my relationship to my character."

The bolded is specifically about backstory as narration. In this case, the DM is allowing the players to narrate the backstory, rather than having the DM do it.

But, this, as I interpret the text, is clearly an example of something that is not Story Now, or at least violates certain principles which Eero Tuovinen is expounding. I would say its not Story Now, its 'free narrative', the players invent things to add to the fiction whole cloth. I see no indication that the thing added was relevant to an agenda, had dramatic consequence, or was in some way mediated by some mechanic which was intended to produce such. It was just "narration-sharing", which Tuovinen also denigrates (in an unstructured form) as 'conch-passing'.

"Somebody at Story Games suggested in relation to 3:16 (don’t remember who, it’s not really important) that a great GM technique would be to leave the greater purpose and nature of the high command of the space army undefined so the players could make this decision when and if their characters find it out. So maybe they find out that the great space war is a hoax or whatever. I find that this is completely ass-backwards for this sort of game: the players cannot be put into a position of advocacy for their characters if those same players are required to make the crucial backstory choices: am I supposed to myself decide that the space war is a cruel lie, and then in the next moment determine how my character is going to react to this knowledge? Doesn’t that look at all artificial?"

Again, he is speaking about the DM narrating the high command in such a way as to leave the army undefined so that the players can fill in that narration.

I'm completely mystified by the significance of this. It has no relation to Tuovinen's definition of Story Now, nor anything [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] nor I have discussed. I mean, I remember reading it, someone quoted it up thread before. I don't consider it to be a very coherent idea either. It certainly has nothing to with player agenda. I might put it a different way and say that it should be up to the GM to choose the purpose and nature of army high command. The GM is in a position to make this choice speak to the dramatic themes of the specific game. However, I think 3:16 is a game where the agenda is largely inherent, there's a question to be examined, but it is, at its core, built into the game and its single assumed setting. This is common with this type of game.

"In another thread a similar claim was made about Trail of Cthulhu – that is, somebody described how he’d played the game with the players having the right to invent backstory by paying points for it. I’m not that vehemently against this in this case, as I don’t know ToC that well. Still, I’m almost certain that this is not the intended reading of the game text, and it definitely deviates quite a bit from how the game works if you assume an objective, GM-controlled backstory. My first instinct would be that I wouldn’t be that interested in playing the game if there weren’t a carefully considered, atmospheric backstory to uncover; it’s an investigation game after all."

Yes, this was another quote from upthread IIRC. I think you need fairly savvy players for this one, but it can be done. If they're really into the whole Cthulhu Mythos concept then its not actually THAT hard to build a story that is consistent with the tropes involved. I mean, there's going to be some sort of cosmic horror, its somehow related to some weird happenings, strange location, potentially world-destroying events, etc. In that kind of a situation a GM who frames scenes with some adroitness can emplace these elements in a suggestive enough way to allow for a thematic solution to a mystery to evolve. In terms of players using 'points' to invent backstory, as long as its in keeping with the mythos tropes and not a deliberate attempt to unravel the story, it PROBABLY will work out. I wouldn't just try this with some random group, and I think there are ways I trust more to get this right, but its not inherently terrible, and it could be 'Story Now' and seems like a 'No Myth' (kind of odd to use that term WRT to C.M. but....) kind of thing.

Here he mentions players being able to invent backstory on the spot by paying points for it. This is no different than inventing backstory on the spot by rolling to see if it happens or not. Secret door anyone?

I think there is a substantive difference. If I 'pay' then I get what I pay for, right? If I have to pass a check to get what I want (and even then its what the GM is willing to consider story appropriate, no laser weapons in the Duke's Bathroom) I could get nothing, and not having paid for something, I am not necessarily ENTITLED to anything. When I pay, then its a lot like getting ripped off if you don't get exactly what you thought you bought. Harder for the GM to regulate, though Cortex+ uses the Doom Pool concept in a similar way. Here the GM gets to push back harder if the player takes control of the narrative.

As for PCs talking about backstory, they do it all the time. If the DM decided that the kings son was assassinated prior to gameplay, when the PCs discuss that assassination, they are discussing backstory. Backstory is only backstory if it makes it into the game. It doesn't matter what the DMs notes say at the game table if they never make it into the game. Those notes are not backstory until they hit the game world.

P.S. It's a shame that you ignored this post. I was really looking forward to your response. http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...uilding*-for&p=7391365&viewfull=1#post7391365

Its STORY when it makes it into the story in an active way. Sure, PCs talk about what they know, but the backstory as a thing is not part of the in-game reality. Not in the way it is in OUR reality, where it is a piece of paper, some dice and charts, a wiki, etc.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's rarely if ever a problem for me, and I use the 'canonical' type you refer to just below.

I stand by my assertion, it is vastly easier to say "I target square X, and these other squares are in the AoE, I'm rolling 7 to-hit rolls, I hit targets 2, 3, and 7, they take 27 points of damage and the others take 13." In AD&D you have to (at best, assuming an accurate room layout with figures representing the real positions of all PCs) decide on an exact target location, draw a circle somehow (on top of all the figures, walls, etc, even a template of some sort will be awkward at times) and then argue about if the figure that just got knocked over was EXACTLY outside or inside the diameter, and whether the base of figures counts or only the 'pieces parts', if the figure is really a fair size to represent the PC, etc. etc. etc. ALL of these arguments have come up in play where I have GMed, many many times! As I said, I'm not even delving into the 'volume filling' process and its potential intricacies (exactly how tall is that arched ceiling anyway?).

It's very slightly under 33 10' cubes, actually - a bit less (I think) than 33000 cu ft. I didn't do the math on this, mind you; my first DM did - and as his math skills are beyond exemplary I've always just taken his word for it.

I have a math degree, I won't argue it either. In fact though your trusting E. Gary Gygax, because it is right in the 1e DMG section on adjudicating various spells! I trust Gary's basic solid geometry. I just haven't GMed 2e in a long time, so I'd have to go back and reread this stuff to recall every stray number. Again, this attests to the added complexity of the 'AD&D way' of doing it...

I've never met a DM who didn't consider these things, and at least in our games the players know it. In fact around here it's a running joke that if a MU asks "How high is the ceiling?" it means some random part of the neighbourhood (usually but not always the part that has the enemies in it; spells like this do require a roll for aim) is about to get fried.

Well, you seem to play with a group of people who are basically incredibly focused on the minutia of D&D play, so I will just take your word for it. Trust me when I tell you, this is highly atypical, particularly in more recent times. If this was 1980, it wouldn't surprise me too much...

Yeah, one more where we'll have to agree to disagree.

I actually assert its objectively determinable in this specific case. The original point stands, that agency of players is positively impacted by having well-defined and easily understood consequences to standard actions.

Every little bit helps.

Does game-world gravity work the same as real-world gravity? Default is yes. Ditto for a bunch of other things, unless specifically overridden by the DM as part of her - can you see this coming? - worldbuilding!

Really, you studied that? lol. Honestly, given how D&D hit points work, classically, there's no way falling is at all realistic, and thus we must question the realism of gravity itself. I don't agree that every bit helps. I think that physical reality is holistic, and unrealistic is unrealistic.

It's not always more accurate, but again - just because perfection is unachievable doesn't mean we should stop trying where and how we can.

But in a rulings-not-rules (e.g. 5e) or rules-as-guidelines (e.g. 1e) system it's not as clear-cut, and one can push things in a certain direction if desired.

Part of the DM's job since day 1 has been that of referee and rules enforcer, and that hasn't changed. Ever.

Well, I think you are 'playing like its 1981' basically. Out here, yeah, the GM's role has evolved, a LOT!

Or let the dice decide, modified by situational factors.

OK, but I'm just saying that isn't going to be very realistic either, my way may be MORE so.

Here you have the advantage, as I've no real-world experience with archery at all and so I kind of have to do what the game tells me.

But in those areas where I do have some experience (e.g. boating) I'll let that experience guide my DMing, overriding the game rules if needed.

The research has been done since, however, and it's possible to come up with quite accurate price lists for (in game terms) mundane gear based on different eras and (European) places.

I did this exercise out of curiosity a couple years ago. Numbers are all over the place. Yes, there are some records, but there isn't any large body of price and wage records for one specific time period. If you are willing to take a spread of records that cover over 600 years of history, kind of squint a little, and interpolate based on some prices that overlap between sources here and there, you can make something CREDIBLE. However, AT BEST it represents a sort of averaging over time, space, and circumstance, and only applies to the region it is based on (IE usually late Medieval England). How that relates to a fantasy world is anyone's guess.

1e was gamist as written...but it's possible to steer it away from that via tweaks and approach, using the many little choice points I referred to earlier.

Lanefan

I will just give you back your reply to me on that. I don't agree. I never will probably. The result of using D&D (no matter how tweaked) is utterly unrealistic and by necessity 99.9% gamist. You might make it 99.8% gamist, but is that really worth the effort? I gave it up years ago.

 

[Maxperson]

Succeeding on a check to find a secret door is not deciding myself that there are orcs there. It is declaring an action. There is the prospect of success.

No, it's not you deciding orcs are there. It's you deciding yourself that a secret door should be there and making the attempt to author it into the backstory via your declared action.

There are consequences for failure. (I think you and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] tend to have a rather weaksauce conception of failure - hence Lanefan's suggestion that there are unlimited retries to find desired things. Most "story now" games have a more robust notion of consequence.)

Have I ever said that? No. Please don't lump me in with [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] with all that he says. While he and I play the same style, our game are not the same and we do disagree on some things. My game falls somewhere in-between his and yours.

Again, you seem not to appreciate the difference betwen deciding and declaring an action. THey're not the same thing.

Yep. Declaring an action is trying to look for a secret door that you have no control over and might or might not be there. Deciding is when you have control over whether something is there, even if it requires a roll to succeed. That's all your "action declaration" is. An attempt to see if what you decided should be there, actually is there.