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

[S'mon]

To be honest, even in the context of 5e D&D this is looking to me like a dubious system of classification in the way that you present it, because social can include both exploration and combat.

Well, that is what I just said, or tried to say - that social can involve combat & exploration
elements.

 

[Sadras]

Sure. And the player will also be disappoined if someone drops a mug on her foot that breaks a toe. But that wasn't what I was talking about.

If I turn up to a bridge tournament and lose a hand, then I'm disappointed in the sense that I lost. But I'm not disappointed to be playing bridge - that's what I turned up to do. If I turn up to a bridge tournament and find everyone's playing poker, though, that's a different sort of disappointment. I've been tricked, my hopes raised and then dashed.

We have a phrase for someone whose disappointment at losing makes them regret having taken part at all - a bad sport.

But it's not being a bad sport to be disappointed at having been tricked into attending a poker tournament because it was advertised as a bridge tournament.

If I turn up to play a RPG, and I find that what is really going on is that the GM is telling me his/her story - which is to say, if my attempts at changing the fiction by way of action declaration routinely default to the GM rendering it exploration and telling me more about the fiction - then I will be out of there.

And that's not hypothetical. I've left games for this reason.

Okay I understand the difference, but I'm not sure you are being fair in this instance with this example.

Never once in my entire RPG-experience has any player commented (including me) saying they are so disappointed with roleplaying x because a certain mechanic never worked in or out of combat, for whatever reason. I honestly think with this example, you're falling afoul of making an assumption of a certain playstyle.
In the games we play, a Dimension Door not working due to x does not cause the disappointment you're referencing in your example. At the same time, I'm not at all disputing your dislike of such an adjudication. I'm just saying that "negative" disappointment feeling is not so common (give the rpg market).

I don't understand what you're saying or how it relates to my post that you quoted. Which puzzles? What highs and lows?

Given that say in traditional games the player is being tested (in a manner of speaking)...i.e. the joy of solving the puzzle (defeating a certain foe, solving the dungeon, succeeding in the adventure), I would imagine the highs of that to be higher than an adventure where the player is not tested at that level.

This is backwards. You're not a jerk GM. You're just someone I may not want to play RPGs with. What is the moralistic language adding?

Fair enough, the jerk term was not appropriate.

What I was getting at is the word significant is subjective.
The DM may use Say No twice in the game and that to you may be significant.
The DM may use Say No five times in a game before I may call it significant.
The DM may use Say No seven times in a game before Max may call it significant.

When you use a word like significant is at various meanings for various people and sometimes this sees posters jumping to extremes.

 

[S'mon]

To me, it seems fairly clear that the utility of the "3 pillars" is not in identifying categories of fictinal activity, but in identifying ways of handling stuff at the table. In particular, as I understand it, the 5e "3 pillars" are an attempt to capture in a single classificatory scheme some D&D traditions concerning how different sorts of action-resolution are handled.

...It follows from what I've just said, and frankly I think should be pretty uncontroversial, that a system that doesn't follow these traditional D&D understandings of how certain sorts of actions are adjudicated isn't usefully thought of in terms of the "3 pillars". So in 4e, for instance, if social encounters are being resolved as skill challenges, and if searching for stuff and avoiding getting lost is being resolved as skill challenges, then GMs and players need good advice on how to adapt the skill challenge mechanics to this variety of stuff, but no clarity in analysis or advice is gained by distinguishing "social" from "exploration".

Yes, I agree.

I think I've mentioned a few times my failures in trying to apply traditional D&D 'Exploration' play in the 4e D&D system. IMO 4e D&D does not have a functional "Exploration Pillar" in 5e D&D terms. That does not mean it's a broken game - it just does not do something I like doing.

 

[pemerton]

My example is no different than a player reading the Monster Manual and using the puzzles attached to the monsters in game.

Here is one difference: reading the Monster Manual, or the monster section of B/X, is a fairly standard part of learning to play the game; whereas reading a module before playing it is generally considered cheating.

To elaborate: it is very common for person A to be both a GM (sometimes) and a player (sometimes) and hence to have read the MM in the former capacity and to have that knowledge become relevant in the latter capacity.

Whereas for person A to have GMed a module which s/he is now playing in is (at least in my experience) less common, even unusual.

To elaborate further: if I've played D&D for a few years, even if I've never GMed or read the MM, I'm likely to have picked up some knowledge about eg trolls & fire. But reading a module I'm meant to be playing is still cheating.

[MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] has said that the player should be allowed to do this and that the DM is a jerk for not allowing it. He has also made the claim that it's "Mother May I" to say no.

I believe [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] was assuming a context of playing D&D in which, via past experience, a player already knows that trolls are vulnerable to fire and wants to rationalise that from an in-character point of view.

I don't think [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] was expressing any opinion about how such a thing would be handled in Dungeon World, even supposing that it were to come up in anything like the way that it might in D&D. My sense from this thread is that hawkeyefan is relatively sensitive to the differences that pertain in respect of both GM and player roles when different RPG systems are involved.

 

[pemerton]

I think I've mentioned a few times my failures in trying to apply traditional D&D 'Exploration' play in the 4e D&D system. IMO 4e D&D does not have a functional "Exploration Pillar" in 5e D&D terms. That does not mean it's a broken game - it just does not do something I like doing.

And mutatis mutandis for me and 5e D&D. It puts all this weight on "exploration" and GM decision-making which I'm not really that interested in as part of my RPGing!

 

[Maxperson]

Here is one difference: reading the Monster Manual, or the monster section of B/X, is a fairly standard part of learning to play the game; whereas reading a module before playing it is generally considered cheating.

No it's not a standard part of learning how to play. Reading the PHB is the standard part of learning how to play. Not the DMG and MM which are both for the DM. You don't need to read the DMG or MM unless you are going to run the game, which relatively few players ever do.

To elaborate: it is very common for person A to be both a GM (sometimes) and a player (sometimes) and hence to have read the MM in the former capacity and to have that knowledge become relevant in the latter capacity.

Only because of sheer numbers. If only 1% of the U.S. does something, that's still 3.2 million people. That's a LOT, but it's still a relatively small number of people. It's the same with gaming. Most players don't DM. A relatively few do, but given the number of people who game, we still encounter a lot of them.

Let's go with what you are saying, though. It's also common for people who are going to DM to read modules in advance to run them or even just to see if they some day want to run them. The same logic you are applying to the MM still applies to modules.

I believe [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] was assuming a context of playing D&D in which, via past experience, a player already knows that trolls are vulnerable to fire and wants to rationalise that from an in-character point of view.

It doesn't matter where the player got the outside knowledge. Bringing it in via a weak justification is still no different than bringing in knowledge of a module you know that the DM is running.

Let's go with a personal example. I've run the Desert of Desolation series at least 3 times. Well after that, a DM I used to play with decided to run it. I remembered many of the secrets. According to what you are saying here, it would have been okay for me to bring in my Uncle Cheap Justification to let me know all of those secrets via talks he had with me in my youth.

 

[Aldarc]

No, only what has been posted here. I did purchase a copy of TorchBearer which I'm hoping to experience once my short campaign finishes.

I would recommend that you consider Dungeon World as well. I am not proposing that it replaces 5e D&D for you, but I genuinely think that there are many things that you could positively learn from running it.

 

[pemerton]

Given that say in traditional games the player is being tested (in a manner of speaking)...i.e. the joy of solving the puzzle (defeating a certain foe, solving the dungeon, succeeding in the adventure), I would imagine the highs of that to be higher than an adventure where the player is not tested at that level.

I am still not really following. By "highs" do you mean pleasure and/or excitement?

In my most recent Traveller session, the most dramatic moment was, I think, the struggle between a detained PC and a guard for control of a submachine gun. The PC won, killing the guard and hence escaping, and then being able to grab some battle dress (= lite powered armour) and free his comrades. There were plenty of other moments of tension and uncertainty - eg when the PCs were being interrogated, and when the PCs were deciding whether or not to fire on a merchant ship that they encountered - but that fight for the gun was I think the apex for the session.

I'm not sure what you're positing about the difference that would obtain in a "traditional" (= GM decides?) game.

For instance, based on my experience posting in this thread and posting about my Traveller game, some GMs would take the view that it is unrealistic that a detained PC should be able to wrestle a gun from a guard at all. At a table where the GM made such a decision, I think the game would be less exciting than the session I GMed.

Never once in my entire RPG-experience has any player commented (including me) saying they are so disappointed with roleplaying x because a certain mechanic never worked in or out of combat, for whatever reason.

<snip>

In the games we play, a Dimension Door not working due to x does not cause the disappointment you're referencing in your example. At the same time, I'm not at all disputing your dislike of such an adjudication. I'm just saying that "negative" disappointment feeling is not so common (give the rpg market).

I'm not making predictions about commercial success, or even about popularity abstracted away from sales. But I can report, truthfully, that I have walked from games where the GM treated action declarations primarily as an opportunity to expound his/her sense of the fiction rather than as opportunities for the players to engage and change the fiction.

 

[pemerton]

No it's not a standard part of learning how to play.

Moldvay Basic - one of the best-selling and most-played versions of D&D - suggests that a new player should read the monster chapter of the book.

It's also common for people who are going to DM to read modules in advance to run them or even just to see if they some day want to run them. The same logic you are applying to the MM still applies to modules.

<snip>

I've run the Desert of Desolation series at least 3 times. Well after that, a DM I used to play with decided to run it. I remembered many of the secrets. According to what you are saying here, it would have been okay for me to bring in my Uncle Cheap Justification to let me know all of those secrets via talks he had with me in my youth.

Not at all. In fact I posted the exact opposite of that:

it is very common for person A to be both a GM (sometimes) and a player (sometimes) and hence to have read the MM in the former capacity and to have that knowledge become relevant in the latter capacity.

Whereas for person A to have GMed a module which s/he is now playing in is (at least in my experience) less common, even unusual.

To elaborate yet further: whereas some versions of D&D direct new players to read the monster section (eg Moldvay Basic) and others are silent on the matter (AD&D, 3E, 4e); and whereas it is a ubiquitious feature of D&D play that one encounters the same monsters in new campaigns, and hence knows the weaknesses despite never having had this particular PC deal with them before; most modules that I'm familiar with have a bit somewhere near the start which says Don't read this if you're going to play it as opposed to GM it.

In other words, the assumptions in D&D around knowledge of monsters and knowledge of modules are completely different. I can't believe that this is even remotely controversial.

If the relatively unusual situation comes up that this instruction is being violated - eg you are playing Desert of Desolation as a player despite having read it - then the table will have to make some decision about how to handle that, given that it is going directly against the instructions, and the premise about play (ie that players don't know the module) which those instructions are an expression of.

(Note also that none of this changes my point that there are other systems (DW) in which this whole issue cannot even arise.)


TL;DR EDIT: It's taken for granted in D&D play that the contents of the Monster Manual will be reused by the same people across multiple campaigns, multiple PCs, etc. It's therefore practically inevitable that any given player will experience a situation in play where s/he knows more about a monster's weaknesses that is prima facie likely for his/her PC.

The game provides no rules for actually dealing with this, because when the game was invented it was taken for granted that players, being good wargamers, would do what you call "metagaming" without anyone looking for an ingame rationale.
[MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]'s suggestion of how to generate an ingame rationale seems as good as any.

In contrast, it has never been assumed that the same player would play the same module again, or play a module s/he has GMed. In fact the instructions for most modules direct the opposite: that if you're going to play it then you should make sure not to learn the contents in advance.

So if this comes up for a group, that group is going outside the assumed and stated parameters of play. However this is handled, it can't just be assumed to be the same as the ubiquitous, and intended to be ubiquitous, monster case.

 

[darkbard]

you seem to be far more concerned with analysing the mechanics and letting the fiction just tag along.

To reiterate what I just said: in my experience players will create the fiction that they want, consistently with what the mechanics make room for. As GM I don't need to police the fiction; but when deciding what game to play, and when adjduciating a system as GM, I do need to understand how its mechanics work.

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] addresses this above, but I just wish to emphasize the point: system; at least as much as genre tropes, social conventions, aesthetic preferences, etc.; necessarily restricts or unlocks how the players engage the fiction. Understanding what the system does allows a game to become fiction first, if that is the desired outcome; poor comprehension of system blocks allowing engagment of the fiction first, as players stumble their way through mechanics and play directives that work with or against their desired fictional outcomes.

For this reason, I think it vital to understand not only a single game system but many: only in the comparison can one see the possibilities and limitations of a particular system.

(This is why it sometimes becomes frustrating conversing with you, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] (even though you are generally quite pleasant in your interactions): when others suggest you look at other systems (like, actually read the rules books) so that you stop viewing everything through your constant lens of D&D, you don't seem to follow through.)