A GMing telling the players about the gameworld is not like real life

[Maxperson]

then you wake up all sweaty and hurry up to catch up your party that already left for the sunken pyramid never to come back

When I become Pharaoh I will have their bloated corpses turned into mummies so that they may serve at my feet for all eternity!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Really glad to hear it.
The impression I get from outside is of a series of adds on to what is a fairly standard Od&d concept.

Would you suggest to me 5e if I wanted a non combat centered campaign?

[MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] is of course being accurate, and I'm not at all disputing that people can (and do) use these rules to run a game with increased ranges of input from players compared with 'baseline' D&D. However, they are ALL add-ons. There is an essential bedrock, which is Rule 0. None of these other things displaces that rule in any way. Nor are these other addons on an equal footing with core rules. They are not really playtested much, don't really have defined interactions with each other or other subsystems, etc.

What I mean is, they don't form a part of the default way of playing or the default expectations of play for people playing 5e, in general. You won't find them in AL play, nor generally in tournament play, nor expected or accommodated in published adventures. Some of them are pretty widely used, to an extent, like TBIFs, but even in an ideal situation those have very limited mechanical impact on the game.

IME of play, 4e was (the way we used it at least) much more amenable to and encouraging of a sort of story now type of play with reduced reliance on DM authority. So 5e actually represents a step backwards in that light. Its odd, 5e is more explicit about these features, but vastly less committed to them. They feel very 'decorative' to me, and in contrast the way 5e character abilities, items, spells, and many rules are vastly more reliant on DM interpretation actually tells me a different message, let the DM run things.

 

[hawkeyefan]

It definitely has been, at times, because the posit was something like "I wouldn't like this kind of game because I want a feel of a plausible realistic world..." which certainly implies that a 'story now' and/or 'zero myth' kind of system with SYORTD or some analogous mechanics cannot provide that. In other words, when you argue that a procedure of play is your preference because it is the one which produces the results you want, and another procedure is disfavored, you are pretty much saying that other procedure lacks the characteristic of producing the desired results! Anyway, it has been more explicitly stated than that by many posters at times, though not usually consistently. Often it comes in the form of questions about how to deal with 'non-realistic' types of results. I can recall several instances in this thread of "but then the players just declare they found the solution to the problem..." which is a kind of way of saying the whole procedure in which players can interject pieces into the setting is fundamentally bound to lead to degenerate unrealistic results.

Yes, I agree that’s happened throughout the thread toward both player driven play and gm driven play. Examples offered by side A about play style B are often exaggerations that little resemble actual play, and which are of little use.

I’m not denying that. I just saw an appeal toward context and intent, and found it odd in relation to how this thread came to be.

I think the comparison of playstyle to the real world was made casually, and I understand why that terminology was used. In GM driven play, the target of the PC’s search will be where the GM’s decided it will be. The player doesn’t get to decide. In that sense, it is like the real world in that if I am looking for something, I don’t get to decide where it is.

I don’t think the choice of language used to describe this was perfect, but I also don’t think it was really unclear.

Is there an implication about a play style that allowed players some input on the outcome? I don’t think any was intended. Can I see why someone might infer such? Yes...although I don’t know if I would attribute anything more to it than someone saying “this is what makes sense to me.”

Right, so the question then is, would the later type of player explicated fiction, or at least player empowerment to receive a chance to lay stakes on achieving their goal not benefit from being more of a mechanically enabled thing vs simply being something you do in an ad-hoc way?

That’s an interesting question!

Might they benefit? Absolutely. Must they? Not necessarily. It’s about the quality of design more than the actual style, I think. If the mechanics are weak, I don’t think anyone would care about whether it’s the GM or the players determining the fiction.

I do think that some such systems are great. I also do still enjoy D&D, although I likely allow far more player input on the fiction than is typical. I do like how D&D lets me alter how I handle things. That’s lukely not possible in more narrative based games.

It’s likely about expectations and how the game sets and then meets (or doesn’t) them. I can play an OSR style dungeon crawl, or I can play Dungeon World. I like both styles of game...but I know what each is trying to do and can enjoy accordingly.

What I found is that a huge advantage is the lack of a need to try to be laboriously systematic in considering every possible eventuality in the design of the campaign and associated adventures. I remember the ultimate end of my thinking that doing so would somehow lead to emergent dramatic elements of play. I created a VERY VERY thoroughly documented scenario for a campaign. One in which the existence of every hamlet, the recruiting of every bad guy, the expenses of every lord, the nature, location, aims, and capabilities of every monster, etc. was all to be documented and tied together in terms of a whole series of contingent timelines and cause-effect networks. This was silly. Not only was it impossible to really complete, no amount of trying lead to a situation in which the players in that campaign didn't crash it all to bits within a few sessions!

I took a pretty long hiatus from D&D after that, and came back to run a follow up game taking up the basic state of that world at a slightly later date, but using 4e and simply not worrying about the previous fiction, except where the players simply wandered into it and it could form the default background to what they were doing. Quickly the world went in a new direction, the players made up a whole bunch of background material and took up an agenda which entirely changed the context of the stuff happening in the previous campaign. I worked 50x less hard and the result was infinitely more interesting.

I also used to over prep and worry over every detail of the setting and the world. And I would create plots! Ugh. I did all that stuff and it’s only as I’ve gotten older and therefore had less time to devote to game prep that I dialed it back...and found that my game improved dramatically.

I do enjoy players having some narrative clout in the game. The amount can vary, but there’s always at least some in my games. Even if it’s D&D.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I have to ask. Why do you need a mechanic for that sort of thing? Were that my 5e PC, I would make the stronghold happen. I would save the prodigious amounts of coin I get adventuring. When I am speaking with(and I would arrange to be able to speak with) nobles and kings as part of adventuring, I would ask for land grants and permission to build a stronghold. When being asked for a reward, I would ask for titles and commissions. I would build my way towards that stronghold and rule my land one way or another. Many settings have wild areas not ruled. The kingdoms next to those areas would be prime areas for me to go to for this sort of thing. I could set up my own kingdom, after proving my worth and promising trade exclusives, mutual protections and such.

5e does as much interesting stuff as you have it do. I'm sure mechanical aids would make it easier, but those aids aren't necessary to accomplish goals.

Our 5e campaign was fun, and the DM of that game took plenty of input. Still I felt the system was working against us. There were many times when I would have liked to point the action in a direction which I was more interested in. Lots of times material was introduced for reasons which had, apparently, little to do with specific things the players wanted. It seemed, at times, like obstacles were coming up more because there was some underlying preconception of how things should turn out, some 'meta-plot' or something that dictated that our schemes were to be curtailed. At any rate there seems an undercurrent surviving from the ancient days when Gygax wrote the 1e DMG, like the DM's mission is partly to make sure the players don't "get away with anything."

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Cant do boo about what? It's not a single roll. The process I described begins at 1st level and probably doesn't finish until your level is in the double digits. So I fail some rolls along the way. That's to be expected.



If aligning with my expectations means that I expect them not to be asshats, then sure. If it means that I need to have rules or people who will be compliant with my wishes for everything I want my PC to accomplish, then no.

It isn't about "compliant with my wishes", this is the straw man again which equates player empowerment over the direction of the game with some sort of 'easy mode' or 'candy store' where your character just lives in a world where all his wishes are fulfilled. That might be a possible game, but it isn't the game we're talking about, anymore than a DM-centered game is talking about "rocks fall and you die" which is also of course 'possible'.

What it is about is how I want to shape a narrative which centers (at least for the part about my character) on his quest to build a great kingdom. He may well fail. OTOH he may well succeed! Certainly it will be more dramatic and probably more engaging if he is able to get pretty far in his ambitions, taking great risks, winning great victories, etc. Eventually he may well fail. He might risk it all once too often on the chance of making it not just an ordinary kingdom but a really extraordinary one, and crash it all tumbles down! That's fine. That's playing to find out what happens.

But if I have to play inside the DM's conception of how the world is basically going to work and only draw from his palette then it will be a more limited story that is less about that, probably. I mean, maybe not, maybe the DM and I are in perfect harmony about it, but probably we aren't. At least I would have liked to see 5e structured in such a way that it could take 4e's implicit possibilities as a story now type of game and given us a mechanism to make that explicit. Truth is though, we got a game which at the basic mechanical level bakes in DM-is-in-charge pretty hard, and then adds a bowtie to it that is mostly dress. Even if you hack it pretty hard it doesn't yield a really good narrative focus very easily. You could read my 4e hack though and see how easy it is to make it explicit there.

 

[Sadras]

Would you suggest to me 5e if I wanted a non combat centered campaign?

No. 5e is still very much about combat.
Having said that you can certainly play 5e without having emphasizing combat, the tools are there you just make them more prominent, but then you're losing a large part of the game's identity IMO. In that instance you might as well find a game then which ordinarily focuses less on combat.

 

[Sadras]

I would call all of these 'thin' in terms of adding much to the game conceptually.

...(snip)...

This is one of the disappointments I have with 5e. It has a universal mechanic, but it fails to actually DO interesting stuff with it!

Agree. Hence my use of the word limited.
I have only just now started to try things with the flaws/Inspiration mechanic as i reflected upon in this thread. I am hoping to expand on this.

EDIT: Also since you mentioned strongholds, I intend to acquire Mathew Colville's Strongholds book hoping to add something along those lines.

 

[Sadras]

Our 5e campaign was fun, and the DM of that game took plenty of input. Still I felt the system was working against us. There were many times when I would have liked to point the action in a direction which I was more interested in. Lots of times material was introduced for reasons which had, apparently, little to do with specific things the players wanted. It seemed, at times, like obstacles were coming up more because there was some underlying preconception of how things should turn out, some 'meta-plot' or something that dictated that our schemes were to be curtailed. At any rate there seems an undercurrent surviving from the ancient days when Gygax wrote the 1e DMG, like the DM's mission is partly to make sure the players don't "get away with anything."

I truly attempt to steer my game hard in the sandbox tent where I'm willing to sacrifice large meta-plot arcs and storylines in favour of letting the PC pursue their desires. Of course the obstacles I introduce in my game are because of some underlying preconception of how things should turn out, given that I am the primary author of the fiction.

The question I ask is, how was that different for you in 4e?
For instance, we have a PC at my table with a backstory (all his by the way):
A restitched soul of the player's previous dead PC (Bard), but now different/altered/evolved into a being serving Kelemvor (Cleric). He has memories/fragments of his past, but his personality is changed, more solemn and grave. His sole purpose is to track down and kill a psychopathic NPC who intends to revive A'tar whom the NPC believes is the true deity of the sun, the harsh and merciless goddess, as opposed to the feeble and fake gods Amaunator and Lathander. Kelemvor, the deity of the Dead, firmly believes that A'tar must remain dead for the good of the cosmos and so his faithful servqnt, the PC, does his bidding.

As DM how do you not introduce obstacles that are your preconception of how things should maybe turn out? If the PC is free to write their own story (via dice), his story-arc might end within the next session or two. That would leave him twiddling his thumbs for the rest of the campaign arc.

EDIT: The psychopathic NPC was also a previous PC of his who had that goal to resurrect A'tar. He became an NPC when he left the table for a while due to personal reasons.

 

[pemerton]

In GM driven play, the target of the PC’s search will be where the GM’s decided it will be. The player doesn’t get to decide. In that sense, it is like the real world in that if I am looking for something, I don’t get to decide where it is.

In the real world, if I am looking for something no one decides where it is. It just is where it is.

Only if one treats the GM's decision as somehow "impersonal" or radically different from any other participant's contribution to the fiction can the suggestion even get off the ground. But that is exactly the "Mother may I" that the OP in the other thread was wanting to avoid.

 

[Numidius]

As DM how do you not introduce obstacles that are your preconception of how things should maybe turn out? If the PC is free to write their own story (via dice), his story-arc might end within the next session or two. That would leave him twiddling his thumbs for the rest of the campaign arc.

I don't think anyone is saying you shouldn't put obstacles, and the Pc is free to write their own story to be completed in two session.

Btw cool Bg linked to previous Pc