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

[Sadras]

Well, obviously part of my answer is I would advise approaching games which feature at least some mix as being more-or-less equal partnerships. Its OK to have ideas and themes you as DM want to explore, that's only fair! I'm not sure about the 'primary author' part. I mean, in a lot of story games the GM is still primary author, maybe even sole authority on what is really possible within the 'box' of the particular game world/genre. I would just say that the game should also be equally about what the players are interested in it being about.

I don't really have any disagreement here. Most of the players have a decent detailed backstory for their characters which I weave in and out of the main campaign meta-plot and they decide when to actively pursue such goals balancing it up with the stakes of the meta-plot. But everything is pretty much their decision. There is one player though that doesn't have any strong goals besides those provided by the DM and other characters' goals.

As for the PC in your example... You don't quite cast the belief in terms of the PC, but attribute it to the god, Kelemvor. Is it the PC's belief? Is the PC's belief that he should serve Kelemvor? Is he serving because he has some OTHER belief/goal/interest which makes him want to do that?

The way I understood it from the player, his character was forged by Kelemvor, instead of having his soul spend an eternity on the Wall of the Faithless. At this point in time the PC is acting out the wishes of Kelemvor and in fact believes them to be true and just. For now that is his sole purpose. He travels with the party since they were essentially the ones that freed the psychopathic NPC and briefly accepted him as part of their group - he believes their relationship (NPC and party's) is not over and their paths will cross again due to converging goals/meta-plot reasons.

EDIT: Again, this is all the player. As DM I ask and prod to learn more to stay faithful to his backstory.

Pressure could be put on this PC via stressing his relationship with his deity. It coule be done by bringing back elements of his previous life. Maybe he still feels something about the people and whatever who were in that life. Maybe the 'reawakening of his soul' causes conflict within himself. You could do a ton of stuff with this. Obviously the goal of tracking down the psychopathic NPC could also be used for all sorts of pressure.

This is all good stuff to bring into the mix. The above stress caused might see the PC act out against the wishes of Kelemvor. Traditional D&D sees me as DM deciding if Kelemvor was offended and if offended, dealing out any consequences. How would that differ in your type of game?
Would you let the die decide if Kelemvor acts out the punishment/consequence?

EDIT: This skirts closely to Alignment i guess.
This is similar to @pemerton's example some years back of Vecna and the imp.

In one of my previous examples either on this thread or another (I forget), a character handed a magical item to a Frost Giant who had a similar such item (essentially each had a shard of the rod of seven parts). The shards clicked into place and became one item. I ruled the Frost Giant kept such item ignoring the soft protestation by the character (a cough and hand motion to return). There was no die roll. Some posters felt there should have been a die roll.
I'm only asking because if I apply pressures on the relationship between PC and deity it might end up in a situation where fictionally it would make sense for the deity to lash out his annoyance of a decision made by the PC - and essentially I'm asking if you would have it resolved via die roll or DM fiat?

 

[pemerton]

And these kinds of seriously disingenuous responses are why a lot of people find it frustrating(or just don't do it) to talk to you. Your monarch barely deserves the title. She's a figurehead. You know damn well that I'm discussing the medieval nobles who actually had the power of life and death over people, often at a whim.

Maxperson, here's this particular conversation:

Some of what the DM does should confront PCs, and some should just be normal stuff.a

Why normal stuff? And what is "normal stuff" in the context of an adventure-oriented RPG?

Going to the library and do research on items that can make me a king doesn't seem very normal to me. Nor does going to the local lord and try to ingratiate myself with him to gain status.

What's normal in life? An RPG doesn't have to mirror life, but real life will let you know which kinds of things that are normal.

<snip>

You've never gone to the library to do reasearch on something? I have. Book reports are pretty normal in school. Sometimes I just want to read about a certain culture's mythology and I'll go to the library and find some books on that.

And if you think that there is no risk in just walking up to a local lord and interacting with him, you don't know much about nobility. There's plenty at stake, including life and freedom with that plan.

've never gone to the library to research whether or not I will become king - so that's not normal, as I said.

I spend a good part of my waking hours doing library research. It can sometimes be interesting but is rarely exciting. I wouldn't recommend it as the stuff of RPGing. (You find another article whose title is promising but which seems to rely on a doubtful methodology. What do you do?)

<snip>

I don't have much familiarity with nobility - although I live in a monarchy, my monarch lives in another country and spends most of her time there, so I've never had the opportunity to meet her. I do have a friend who was once invited to dine with a (continental European) Prince, but I don't think she was at much risk other than perhaps of heartburn from overly-rich food.

I asked you what you meant by "normal stuff", and you told me to refer to "real life". Well, in real life I've never researched my heritage and destiny in a library, and have never met nobility.

Furthermore, in real life, interacting with mediaeval nobility did not generate the risks you are describing - you seem to have mediaeval nobles confused with Stalin.

Moreover, if interacting with nobility is so risky and high stakes and exciting, then how does it fall under the description normal stuff rather than confrontingt stuff?

I've articulated a pretty clear conception of what makes character goals and themes MEAT in [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s sense, and have explained why reading library books and hanging out with nobles doesn't count. In response you're trying to tell me that that stuff is good because it's normal like real life, not dramatic, but is also risky. I have no idea what your actual advice to players and GMs is. Should games be boring, or not? If not, then where is the interest located? If it's in risk, then what do you think is the contrast between that and drama? If it's in the laying out of GM-established backstory, then we're back to AbdulAlhazred's point that the PC's goal/theme is not at the centre of play. But I thought you were disagreeing with him on that point.

If you are claiming that your game can be exciting by eschewing excitement, then I simply don't believe it.

RPGs are open-ended in length, thus there's no need whatsoever to cram story in (whether player or GM generated, doesn't matter for this point) in a rush to make it fit within a real-world timeframe.

Huh? Here's a real-world timeframe - I'll probably be dead in 40 or so years.

Here's another real-world timeframe - I play on Sunday afternoons, which are followed by Sunday evenings which are school nights. So given our sessions start after lunch around 2 pm, and have to finish around 6 pm, I have 4 hours per session.

I want to cram as much into each session as I can!

Of course there's (quite likely) not much risk involved in doing the library research...which might be exactly why the player/PC chose to take that angle - low risk but potentially decent reward, where the reward is useful information that might help reduce or mitigate the risks later when he puts this research to practical use and actually tries to take over the kingdom. So, low-to-no pressure now could lead to reduced pressure later.

Why take great risks until and unless you have to? And why not do whatever you can to turn those great risks into moderate risks?

Sure it might be less dramatic, but - wait for it! - it's what a rational character would do.

There's a whole genre of games for people who like mathematical optimisation as their approach to play - rules-intensive wargames - and D&D has a significant heritage connection to that genre.

But it's not very realistic to have such rational characters all the time. Many people in many circumstances don't act rationally. I re-watched Gravity on Saturday afternoon in preparation for GMing Traveller yesterday, and (*spoiler alert*) in an early scene Sandra Bullock insists on finishing a particular engineering process even though George Clooney is instructing her to get back into the shuttle NOW. That's not rational on her part, but it makes for a believable character.

In the context of the film it also produces drama, where the question is not will this character compute the optimal course of action? but will this character's irrational concern with her particular component of the mission bring ruin on the mission itself? Approaching the fiction from the point of view of mathematical optimisation does not produce drama - in the context of RPGing, it tends not to produce exciting play.

In my Prince Valiant game, two of the PC knights wanted to marry noblewomen, to improve their social status. They didn't go about this by hanging out at heraldic colleges collecting lists of eligible ladies and then calculating their odds with each one. That would be boring; and part of why it would be boring would be that it would be, in effect, triggering glossography download from the GM. Where's the play?

Rather, they wooed ladies they met in the course of their errantry (at one stage the two of them competing for the hand of the lovely Violette), protected them from bandits, aided their families, and in general did the sorts of things that Arthurian knights do in (real or faux) mediaeval romances. That's game play!

Except that when everything's dramatic, nothing is.

I think this is obviously not true. When you look at films, or TV shows, or other well-authored fiction, the whole thing is structured so as to produce drama, excitement and interesting stuff. A film won't show the characters going to the laundrette if that does not have some connection to the deeper narrative concerns of the film.

The idea that RPG fiction will suffer in some fashion if it's as dramatic and/or exciting as other forms of fiction is quite implausible.

 

[pemerton]

I'm only asking because if I apply pressures on the relationship between PC and deity it might end up in a situation where fictionally it would make sense for the deity to lash out his annoyance of a decision made by the PC - and essentially I'm asking if you would have it resolved via die roll or DM fiat?

I strongly suggest that you closely read [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s hypothetical example of the poltergeist upthread, and what he says about using soft moves vs hard moves.

One point that follows from what is said in that post is that the question you ask can't be answered in the abstract. When is it proper to use a hard rather than a soft move? How much foreshadowing/prefiguring is the right amount? What would count as a GM squib; and what would count as heavy-handed GMing that is in "rocks fall" territory?

This is similar to @pemerton's example some years back of Vecna and the imp.

So here are some features of this example:

* The player deliberately chose to have his PC implant the Eye of Vecna in the imp, not himself, because "Malstaph's not foolish enough to think that he's a god."

* This itself built on multiple years of play in which the PC's flirtation with Vecna-worship had been a part of play (eg dozens of sessions earlier, when the PC picked up the Sword of Kas, I inflicted the damage it does to a Vecna-worshipper - the player didn't complain at all, but rather used this to confirm his hunch that the sword was indeed the Sword of Kas, hence doing damage to his Vecna-respecting PC).

* In the moment of play, the player had the choice to provide a boon of souls to Vecna or to the Raven Queen. He couldn't choose both. I asked him which he chose. He pondered, though not for long, and then answered "The Raven Queen". He was presented with a choice, and made it.

* I imposed the consequence, which was - in mechanical terms - a modest de-buff that ended up lasting a handful of sessions. The player didn't have any objection. I don't know if he anticipated it, but - in Dungeon World terms - it was undoubtedly a move that followed from the fiction. In DW mechanical terms, this is the sort of thing that might happen on a 7-9 result (ie the player gets something s/he wants for his/her PC, but also has to pay a cost which - often - is going to be established by the GM).​

Is your Frost Giant example similar? As I've read your account of it, it doesn't seem to be a move that follows from the established fiction, imposed as a consequence at a moment of dramatic choice. That's not to say that it's bad GMing. But as you've presented it, I don't see how (for instance) I could reconcile it with DW-like GMing principles.

[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s example of the GM deciding his PC's castle had been taken over by another seems to follow even less from a player choice, and from the established fiction - I would regard it as being in "rocks fall" territory.

What is a player staking? What is the established fiction? (Not in the mind of the GM - I mean at the table.) What "soft moves" have already been made? Does the player see the situation as having the same significance as the GM?

This is all in the realm of judgement, not machine-like rules.

I'll finish with this post from the Burning Wheel rulebook (it's found in more than one edition, but can be found in Gold edition at p 54):

We once had a character with the Belief: "I will one day restore my wife’s life." His wife had died, and he kept her body around, trying to figure out a way to bring her back. Well, mid-way through the game, the GM magically restored his wife to the land of the living. I’ve never seen a more crushed player. He didn't know what do! He had stated that the quest and the struggle was the goal, not the end result. "One day!" he said. But the GM insisted, and the whole scenario and character were ruined for the player.​

It take skill as a GM to avoid squibbing while also avoiding "rocks fall".

 

[pemerton]

in -say- BW I expect that there is an actual rule that the GM doesn't take away the player's goodies unless they're staked somehow.

The post just above is my main response to what you posted - but on this point I don't think BW has such an express rule. (Maybe it does and I can't remember.) But I think it's implicit in the fact that loss of gear, reputations, etc is flagged as among the possible consequences for a failed check.

I think I've always taken this as close to obvious, at least for the last 25+ years of GMing - the GM shouldn't just unilaterally purge a player's position. To suffer that sort of loss the player has to have actually lost at something.

That's why I put it in "rocks fall" territory (which may be too harsh on your GM overall, sorry - but I don't have all the good experiences to ameliorate my judgement, just the story you've posted).

 

[Lanefan]

Huh? Here's a real-world timeframe - I'll probably be dead in 40 or so years.

Same here; and because I've got 40-ish years to do whatever I don't feel all that much pressure to do it all right now.

Here's another real-world timeframe - I play on Sunday afternoons, which are followed by Sunday evenings which are school nights. So given our sessions start after lunch around 2 pm, and have to finish around 6 pm, I have 4 hours per session.

I sail Sunday evenings, in theory starting at 7:30 but most often starting a bit after 8 (our crew in general aren't known as a punctual lot), and we go till midnight or sometimes later if we're all into it - particularly if the following day is a holiday Monday.

I want to cram as much into each session as I can!

I want people to have fun, but that can happen without me-as-DM having to ratchet up the drama factor.

A silly - but then, maybe not so silly - example from the game I play in: the session before last was largely taken up by one character playing an ongoing prank (involving another PC's castle which is our home base, and lots of pink paint) during downtime and other characters reacting to said prank. Did this advance the story in any form? No, not a whit. Did it allow us to do a bunch of in-character role-playing? Hell yeah. Were we all enjoying the entertainment? Sure seemed like it!

And the DM could mostly sit back and enjoy the ride.

There's a whole genre of games for people who like mathematical optimisation as their approach to play - rules-intensive wargames - and D&D has a significant heritage connection to that genre.

I don't see this sort of in-character action as "mathematical optimisation"; that's more a term I use for out-of-character min-maxing and that sort of thing that grants anumeric game-mechanical advantage at the table..

Perhaps a better term for what I'm thinking of might be "fictional optimization", where the in-fiction actions are done in an attempt to gain an in-fiction advantage (and where, depending on system, numeric game mechanics might only peripherially enter into it, if at all). But that said...

But it's not very realistic to have such rational characters all the time. Many people in many circumstances don't act rationally. I re-watched Gravity on Saturday afternoon in preparation for GMing Traveller yesterday, and (*spoiler alert*) in an early scene Sandra Bullock insists on finishing a particular engineering process even though George Clooney is instructing her to get back into the shuttle NOW. That's not rational on her part, but it makes for a believable character.

I'm not saying that everyone (or every character) is going to act rationally all the time. Hell, I'm the poster child for characters doing rash things - it's been said that most of the time the biggest threat to my characters is their player and it's not entirely untrue.

But assuming a player with a bit more patience than me and a character with a wisdom score higher than that of a shoe, when given the choice between the safe methodical approach and the rash risky approach one would think the safe methodical approach would - all other things being equal - be chosen most of the time; and it's then on the DM to adjudicate and determine results via whatever means the system in use provides.

You say the safe methodical approach isn't realistic: I posit that it's far more realistic - in terms of what most real people would be likely to do, assuming their intention is to succeed at their goal - than the rash risky approach. And, in the example given the PC can always quietly bail on the whole idea if the library research indicates she hasn't got a chance of success before she sticks her neck out and paints a target on herself.

In the context of the film it also produces drama, where the question is not will this character compute the optimal course of action? but will this character's irrational concern with her particular component of the mission bring ruin on the mission itself? Approaching the fiction from the point of view of mathematical optimisation does not produce drama - in the context of RPGing, it tends not to produce exciting play.

Again, though, this is a film. A film is designed to entertain a passive non-participating audience who have paid to be there, and thus is expected to deliver. Also, the participants in the film (i.e. the actors, directors, and all the other names in the credits) are remote from the audience both in time and space (different to a stage play where the active participants are in the same room - or close - at the same time as the audience). And a film almost always has a written script being used to tell a predetermined story.

A sequel to said film not only has to do this but it really has to do it better than the first film, as to entertain to just the same level as the first will leave (most of) the audience disappointed. It's the whole "how do we top this?" syndrome.

An RPG is vastly different. First off, in most cases the participants and the audience are the same people, which means the entertainment has to be provided by and to the same people simultaneously. Second, most parts of an RPG are unscripted in the here-and-now with the exception of either a) a DM reading boxed text or providing expository narration, or b) a player reading out prepared elements of her character's background or pre-story. Some DMs do try to script the bigger picture to some degree, with varying degrees of success based on a bunch of factors too long to list here, but what happens at the table is rarely if ever fully scripted.

I've wandered off my original point, so let me return to the path. "If everything's dramatic, nothing is" means that if there's drama all the time it'll tend to plateau and, as we know from the movie-sequel example, plateau-ing leads to a disappointed audience. So, you're stuck with always trying to top whatever you did before, which is of course unsustainable beyond the very short term.

What's the answer? Back off on the drama until and unless it's needed.

In my Prince Valiant game, two of the PC knights wanted to marry noblewomen, to improve their social status. They didn't go about this by hanging out at heraldic colleges collecting lists of eligible ladies and then calculating their odds with each one. That would be boring; and part of why it would be boring would be that it would be, in effect, triggering glossography download from the GM. Where's the play?

Rather, they wooed ladies they met in the course of their errantry (at one stage the two of them competing for the hand of the lovely Violette), protected them from bandits, aided their families, and in general did the sorts of things that Arthurian knights do in (real or faux) mediaeval romances. That's game play!

Much of this depends on the knights' underlying motive for marrying a noblewoman as opposed to a commoner or anyone else.

Is the motive only to marry into nobility whatever it takes? If yes, then collecting lists of eligible ladies, learning about their families, and going for the best odds makes perfect sense. Result is ultimately binary - you either marry a noblewoman at some point or you don't.

Is the motive to marry for love? If yes, then the second approach holds sway: you do your knightly deeds, put yourself out there where various ladies can see you and see if any mutual attractions develop. The risk here, of course, is that the mutual attraction ends up being with a commoner; so you get the love you want but lose the nobility angle. This adds more possible end-result outcomes that may or may not be counted as complete success:

Marry nobody (worst case)
Marry a commoner for love
Marry a noblewoman without love
Marry a noblewoman for love (best case)

I think this is obviously not true. When you look at films, or TV shows, or other well-authored fiction, the whole thing is structured so as to produce drama, excitement and interesting stuff. A film won't show the characters going to the laundrette if that does not have some connection to the deeper narrative concerns of the film.

See above re time, audience expectations, etc.

A film is only going to show you the highlights of the charaters' lives as they relate to that specific story, mostly because it doesn't have time to show anything else.

The idea that RPG fiction will suffer in some fashion if it's as dramatic and/or exciting as other forms of fiction is quite implausible.

It will suffer. Maybe not in the first session, or even the first half-dozen; but to try and keep that level of drama going for 100 or 200 or 500 sessions is simply unsustainable. In an RPG you do (in theory!) have time to delve into the day-to-day of the characters' lives if you want to; you can explore their backgrounds and personalities and quirks in a depth that no film can ever provide; you can (and in fact rather have to) manage their resources and finances and so forth on an ongoing basis; and you can make your own decisions as to how your PC is going to interact with the other PCs and with the game world around it/them and then follow up on these decisions in as much depth and detail as you like.

 

[Aldarc]

I've wandered off my original point, so let me return to the path. "If everything's dramatic, nothing is" means that if there's drama all the time it'll tend to plateau and, as we know from the movie-sequel example, plateau-ing leads to a disappointed audience. So, you're stuck with always trying to top whatever you did before, which is of course unsustainable beyond the very short term.

What's the answer? Back off on the drama until and unless it's needed.

It's difficult to take this assertion seriously when 1) you are arguing from a position of ignorance about a play preference you self-admittedly have mostly second-hand exposure to online and minimal to zero actual play experience, and 2) you demonstrate repeated lack of good faith arguments about story-narrative play styles.

I believe that even [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] and [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] had noted how one side seems to have more experiential awareness of other playstyles than the other side. And this can be a glaring weakness when one side attempts to argue how those games would operate under such game design principles and mechanics.

That said, consider most things with a serialized format. Generally there are multiple points of dramatic conflict throughout a series. There will dramatic conflict that is the forefront of the episode. There will be dramatic conflict in the backdrop of the episode. (Usually A, B, and maybe C plots.) There will be dramatic conflict centered around lengthy character arcs. There will be dramatic conflict centered around narrative or story arcs. There will be dramatic conflict between characters. This drama will overlap, crisscross, and branch. Some storylines will naturally slow down in favor of other storylines. Over the long term, we are not looking at a plateau, but, rather, a mountain range containing peaks, valleys, and hills.

It's also silly to argue against the principle to "top whatever you did before" while lauding a game where monsters have an increasing difficulty challenge rating that encourages players to engage a level-based treadmill where they will top what they did before in their encounters as they level. The entirety of D&D's character and encounter design is rooted in increasingly "topping" prior things.

It will suffer. Maybe not in the first session, or even the first half-dozen; but to try and keep that level of drama going for 100 or 200 or 500 sessions is simply unsustainable.

This falsifiable assertion seems at odds with [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s lengthy campaigns that he has run using 4e with story now approaches.

 

[pemerton]

Were we all enjoying the entertainment? Sure seemed like it!

Sure. I think the people I play with enjoy our games too - certainly no one is forcing them to set aside every second Sunday afternoon and come along to our sessions.

A film is only going to show you the highlights of the charaters' lives as they relate to that specific story, mostly because it doesn't have time to show anything else.

<snip>

In an RPG you do (in theory!) have time to delve into the day-to-day of the characters' lives if you want to; you can explore their backgrounds and personalities and quirks in a depth that no film can ever provide; you can (and in fact rather have to) manage their resources and finances and so forth on an ongoing basis; and you can make your own decisions as to how your PC is going to interact with the other PCs and with the game world around it/them and then follow up on these decisions in as much depth and detail as you like.

I suggest that your account of films is confusing cause and effect - it's not that films are time limited and hence show highlights; it's that films want to tell well-paced stories and hence show only selected events in the (notional) lives of their (fictional) subjects.

Of course there are real-time films, like some of Andy Warhol's, but I find it hard to believe that more than a handful of people has ever watched all 5 hours of Warhol's Sleep.

Good RPGing also involves management of pacing - not by retrospective editing (given the way RPG fiction is created) but by managing scene-framing and transitions. (Even if this is as simple as Moldvay Basic's no play, only healing, happens between dungeon raids.) I don't want to RPG doing the laundry, cleaning my character's teeth, or collecting wood for a campfire. I find managing resources rather tedious, and prefer RPGs where that's not really a consideration (this is one respect in which Traveller shows its age, design wise - your suggestion that you have to do this suggest you don't have much familiarity with the many RPGs where that's not true).

I am interested in exploring characters, but that precisely requires generating situations that force choices in the way I've described.

And as far as exploring the gameworld, you can't do that in as much detail as you like, at least in a GM-decides game - you can only do it in the detail the GM likes!

A film is designed to entertain a passive non-participating audience who have paid to be there, and thus is expected to deliver.

<snip>

An RPG is vastly different. First off, in most cases the participants and the audience are the same people, which means the entertainment has to be provided by and to the same people simultaneously.

In my experience, this means that the actual fiction produced by way of RPGing is less compelling, qua fiction, than that which is written by more professional authors with the opportunity to edit.

The fact that it is produced spontaneously by and for the participants goes a long way in overcoming this issue. In that sense, I see it as similar to making one's own music.

But in any event, the particpant-audience aspect seems rather orthogonal to the question of whether RPGs can't sustain drama.

A sequel to said film not only has to do this but it really has to do it better than the first film, as to entertain to just the same level as the first will leave (most of) the audience disappointed. It's the whole "how do we top this?" syndrome.

<snip>

"If everything's dramatic, nothing is" means that if there's drama all the time it'll tend to plateau and, as we know from the movie-sequel example, plateau-ing leads to a disappointed audience. So, you're stuck with always trying to top whatever you did before, which is of course unsustainable beyond the very short term.

What's the answer? Back off on the drama until and unless it's needed.

<snip>

It will suffer. Maybe not in the first session, or even the first half-dozen; but to try and keep that level of drama going for 100 or 200 or 500 sessions is simply unsustainable.

I've been running periodic RPG sessions for about 30 years without much interruption, so maybe close to a thousand in all; and haven't experienced the problem you hypothesie.

 

[Maxperson]

That said, consider most things with a serialized format. Generally there are multiple points of dramatic conflict throughout a series. There will dramatic conflict that is the forefront of the episode. There will be dramatic conflict in the backdrop of the episode. (Usually A, B, and maybe C plots.) There will be dramatic conflict centered around lengthy character arcs. There will be dramatic conflict centered around narrative or story arcs. There will be dramatic conflict between characters. This drama will overlap, crisscross, and branch. Some storylines will naturally slow down in favor of other storylines. Over the long term, we are not looking at a plateau, but, rather, a mountain range containing peaks, valleys, and hills.

And if you watch the series over multiple seasons, each season tries to top the last in order to keep going, but that tactic only stretches it out a few seasons and then the series dies a usually sudden death with either no ending, or a rushed and crappy ending.

It's also silly to argue against the principle to "top whatever you did before" while lauding a game where monsters have an increasing difficulty challenge rating that encourages players to engage a level-based treadmill where they will top what they did before in their encounters as they level. The entirety of D&D's character and encounter design is rooted in increasingly "topping" prior things.

This is a False Equivalence. A vampire being more powerful than a zombie, or a dragon being more powerful than a large lizard is not at all the same as one season of a drama trying to outdo the last to stay marketable. C'mon man! You can do better than that.

This falsifiable assertion seems at odds with [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s lengthy campaigns that he has run using 4e with story now approaches.

Sure, and there are some people who like how House kept getting more and more ridiculous until at the end, he faked his own death to go riding off into the sunset with his oncologist buddy who had terminal cancer.

That he has found people that enjoy ridiculous levels of drama doesn't mean that in general, ridiculous levels of drama are not sustainable. T.V. Dramas routinely die, because of that unsustainability.

 

[Numidius]

Numudius' corner: another boring actual play.

In the last group I played, the party took a pause of rest in an ancient settlement built around a health-regenerating thermal pool, after an almost lethal fight against a giant monster in the haunted forest surrounding it.
What I thought ought to be just a brief downtime, became soon a whole session of jokes, embarassing moments, relaxed roleplay, casual spent of money for "services" by the locals, all while having a day long regenerating bath.

Rinse. Repeat. Next session same thing. I already split from them earlier to follow an investigation in town on my own. I had my scene but nothing more happened. The others still having the rejuveneting bath.

Third session of bathing. I try to hire some guides to take me to the infamous settlement, the Gm fiddles for ages about costs, wages, timing, distance, preparation and takes me by exaustion. Nothing dramatic happens.

On the fourth session I roll a new Pc to be present in the settlement to hurry the party up and move on. Half a session later we are eventually out: one random encounter in the forest and the evening of play ends.

Then I quit the group, sadly.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Good RPGing also involves management of pacing - not by retrospective editing (given the way RPG fiction is created) but by managing scene-framing and transitions. (Even if this is as simple as Moldvay Basic's no play, only healing, happens between dungeon raids.) I don't want to RPG doing the laundry, cleaning my character's teeth, or collecting wood for a campfire. I find managing resources rather tedious, and prefer RPGs where that's not really a consideration (this is one respect in which Traveller shows its age, design wise - your suggestion that you have to do this suggest you don't have much familiarity with the many RPGs where that's not true).

But not everyone enjoys the kind of pacing or scene framing you like (and to be clear, I am not knocking what you do, since it clearly works for you). In the games I run, which tend to be more sandboxy, but with a bit of drama, and plenty of world exploration and character-driven stuff in it....pacing is often more in the hands of the players actually. Their the ones that would prevent me from scene framing. I am actually quite impatient and as a GM and would often be happy to just keep moving briskly. But I can't tell you the number of times, I've had players say 'wait, I still want to do this thing in town before we go to the next thing'. It isn't laundry, but to me it often feels pretty close to laundry. Yet they are really enjoying themselves. I can understand this because when I am a player, one of the things I really enjoy doing is building things in the setting. For example one of my favorite campaigns was when I started a enterprise selling coffee and making connections along a trade route. I think a lot of people would find the dull, but I enjoyed lingering on the details.

I don't disagree with what you saying, it is more the intro of "Good RPGing involves". I think the hobby is simply too varied for those kinds of statements to really have the weight we think they do at other tables.

And as far as exploring the gameworld, you can't do that in as much detail as you like, at least in a GM-decides game - you can only do it in the detail the GM likes!

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I would disagree with this. You can very much explore worlds in detail when the GM decides. I would argue that the GM functioning as the referee who makes calls about the things players attempt is one of the key elements that makes this the case. Not saying their are not other ways. Just saying I've seen it work, I've experienced it working as a player, and I have been doing it myself for many years. It works brilliantly because there really isn't much a limit to how much detail you can go in, if the GM is seriously considering anything the players attempt.