D&D 5E Consequences of Failure

[Ovinomancer]

Because - as I explained in my post - those things are decided by me, the GM, as one aspect of making decisions about pacing and framing.

For instance, I decided that the relieving army arrived at the castle when it did because that suited the dramatic needs of play. I decided that the fleeing fiance arrived ahead of the relieving army, but only just, in order to raise the question of whether they would lower the drawbridge to let her in, or leave her to her fate, or - as it turned out, somewhat unexpectedly - to rescue her by climbing down to her on a rope outside the castle wall. (Had the drawbridge been lowered then I would have called for competing Battle command rolls to see whether it was able to be raised before the enemy force arrived.)

What do you mean the drama unfolds from there? If it's all being done in the mechanical fashion you suggest, then there is no guarantee that drama occurs at all. For instance, if the players spend X time debating whether or not to lower the drawbridge, and then decide to, measurement on the GM's clock might determine that there is no way of lowering it and raising it in time to avoid the enemy force taking advantage of it. And so the dramatic decision-point in fact evaporates - instead of the dramatic decision-point the game consisted of the effluxion of time by way of debate.

Ron Edwards made the general point over 15 years ago in two essays, where he describes the exploration-type approach as follows:

In-game time at the fine-grained level (rounds, seconds, actions, movement rates) sets incontrovertible, foundation material for making judgments about hours, days, cross-town movment, and who gets where in what order. I recommend anyone who's interested to the text of DC Heroes for some of the most explicit text available on this issue throughout the book.​

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The time to traverse town with super-running is deemed insufficient to arrive at the scene, with reference to distance and actions at the scene, such that the villain's bomb does blow up the city. (The rules for DC Heroes specifically dictate that this be the appropriate way to GM such a scene).​

Paul Czege also has a nice discussion that relates to this:

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[A]lthough roleplaying games typically feature scene transition, by "scene framing" we're talking about a subset of scene transition that features a different kind of intentionality. My personal inclination is to call the traditional method "scene extrapolation," because the details of the Point A of scenes initiated using the method are typically arrived at primarily by considering the physics of the game world, what has happened prior to the scene, and the unrevealed actions and aspirations of characters that only the GM knows about.​

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"Scene framing" is a very different mental process for me. Tim asked if scene transitions were delicate. They aren't. Delicacy is a trait I'd attach to "scene extrapolation," the idea being to make scene initiation seem an outgrowth of prior events, objective, unintentional, non-threatening, but not to the way I've come to frame scenes in games I've run recently. More often than not, the PC's have been geographically separate from each other in the game world. So I go around the room, taking a turn with each player, framing a scene and playing it out. I'm having trouble capturing in dispassionate words what it's like, so I'm going to have to dispense with dispassionate words. By god, when I'm framing scenes, and I'm in the zone, I'm turning a freakin' firehose of adversity and situation on the character. It is not an objective outgrowth of prior events. It's intentional as all get out. . . . I frame the character into the middle of conflicts I think will push and pull in ways that are interesting to me and to the player. I keep NPC personalities somewhat unfixed in my mind, allowing me to retroactively justify their behaviors in support of this.​

My Prince Valiant game is (I'm certain) more laid-back than anything Paul Czege has ever run; but the basic points hold true. For instance, in deciding whether or not the smitten knight and the lady he is rescuing are able to make it from the castle to the coast (where they hid in a lighthouse to await the outcome of the battle between the castle's and the relieving forces) I did not worry about a map. Or a precise distance. Prior play had established that the distance from coast to castle was not too hard to cover mounted at night, and so the player's action declaration for his PC could certainly stand. (This is a geographic analogue to keeping NPC personalities somewhat unfixed, allowing retroactive justifications of how matters unfold.) What did matter was the Stealth check, because this resolved the dramatic focus of the action declaration, namely, did they avoid being seen?

This seems orthogonal to the assertion that @Campbell and I are making. I've GMed dramatic tomb-raiding sessions. Insofar as they were aimed at establishing drama and compelling the players to make hard choices for their PCs, they didn't use the sorts of techniques that Moldvay and Gygax talk about.

As sympathetic as I am to this point, I'm wondering if it's appropriate to the D&D specific forum in a thread explicitly about techniques for 5e? The foundational assumptions of 5e preclude the kind of drama-driven play above, but also fight against pure exploration-play described above. There are middle positions.

 

[Ratskinner]

As sympathetic as I am to this point, I'm wondering if it's appropriate to the D&D specific forum in a thread explicitly about techniques for 5e? The foundational assumptions of 5e preclude the kind of drama-driven play above, but also fight against pure exploration-play described above. There are middle positions.

I chuckled a bit at this post, because I've always seen (most) D&D as taking the "middle road" by not being particularly good at either end of exploration or drama (or gamism, if you want to throw that in). Different editions waver a bit toward one side or the other, but nonetheless seem to be reliant on the DM (either by brute force or houserules) to "push" it towards one playgoal or another. Whether that's a good thing or not is in the eye of the beholder.

I see the rafts of variants and extensions that people publish (including things like ICRPG) as evidence to the point.

 

[Guest 6801328]

It seems to me different posters are using very different definitions of "drama".

 

[Maxperson]

Obviously @Campbell has his own views. But for my part, by heightened drama in RPG I would think of the sorts of things that happened in my Prince Valiant game yesterday: the PCs, having taken a castle at the end of the previous session, had to make a choice about who would become the next duke; they also had to decide what to do about the peasant army they had led; when a rival force arrived to relieve the castle, they had to negotiate with its leader; they also had to decide how to deal with the fiance of that leader, who was fleeing from him and accusing him of treating her cruelly; when the duke they had supported died from being shot by a treacherous arrow, they had to decide what approach to take to his sister who would succeed him; and this was complicated by the fact that one of their number had been smitten by the fleeing fiance after helping her into the castle by scaling a rope, it being impractical to lower the drawbridge in the face of the approaching forces.

This all seems very typical of game play and not anything out of the ordinary. It's perhaps a tad busy, but that's it. How is the drama heightened from ordinary game play where PCs have to make those choices, rival forces arrive, etc.?

 

[Guest 6801328]

This all seems very typical of game play and not anything out of the ordinary. It's perhaps a tad busy, but that's it. How is the drama heightened from ordinary game play where PCs have to make those choices, rival forces arrive, etc.?

Agreed. I read @pemerton's example and could imagine it being really dramatic, or really boring. Regardless of system. The difference has almost nothing to do with the rules. IMO, anyway.

 

[Krachek]

Aside game mechanics there is no golden rule to create thrill or drama.
Players are not dumb. If you keep things floating and arrange them too much at the right time, they will find that odd. On the other side strict sand box can be boring if player don’t find out solution.
The way and the timing the Dm use to open up situation can create drama or quench it. Dm have to let and force sometime players to talk about their character.
That way he can find out at the same time players and character motivation.
Then he can put the good event, clue, npc on their road.
Game mechanic have no power on this.

 

[iserith]

As sympathetic as I am to this point, I'm wondering if it's appropriate to the D&D specific forum in a thread explicitly about techniques for 5e? The foundational assumptions of 5e preclude the kind of drama-driven play above, but also fight against pure exploration-play described above. There are middle positions.

Agreed, and there's nothing that I can see in the D&D 5e products that suggests the DM be "neutral" as defined by what looks like the Forge jargon above. Consistent with regard to the fictional world, yes. A referee and mediator between the rules and the players, sure. He or she is also the lead storyteller who "creates a world that revolves around their [the adventurers] actions and decisions," but who is also willing to change it without necessary reference to character actions to show that it is a living, breathing place.

So yeah. It's a middle position, as you say, regardless of what some dudes said on a defunct forum 15+ years ago.

 

[Campbell]

Agreed, and there's nothing that I can see in the D&D 5e products that suggests the DM be "neutral" as defined by what looks like the Forge jargon above. Consistent with regard to the fictional world, yes. A referee and mediator between the rules and the players, sure. He or she is also the lead storyteller who "creates a world that revolves around their [the adventurers] actions and decisions," but who is also willing to change it without necessary reference to character actions to show that it is a living, breathing place.

So yeah. It's a middle position, as you say, regardless of what some dudes said on a defunct forum 15+ years ago.

All my words are my own. I am just doing the same thing everyone else here is doing : earnestly offering my perspective based on my own personal experience which in my case includes running and playing 5th Edition, but also includes running and playing Moldvay B/X, a beloved version of Dungeons and Dragons and OSR games built on top of it, and running and playing some more recent indie games. I have tried to apply this experience without using jargon. If you have issues with the ways I have phrased anything feel free to address me directly.

I largely agree with the meat of your post here. 5th Edition absolutely does not expect a DM to be neutral. I noticed that some commenters were lamenting the lack of conflict neutral play and I sought to address that. I would not necessarily call 5e's mixture of techniques a middle position because I do not see this as a spectrum. Different games use a different mix of techniques at different times.

 

[Bawylie]

It seems to me different posters are using very different definitions of "drama".

When Ron Edwards uses a word (like drama), it means just what he chooses it to mean — neither more nor less.

 

[Xetheral]

You can very much combine techniques within the scope of a larger session, but the important thing to remember is that the more you lean one way the more you are not leaning the other. It's a bit of a tug of war. Naturalistic exploration depends on a GM who is a referee in every sense of the word. Their only agenda is fairness and accurately depicting the fictional world. Maintaining a heightened sense of drama depends on a GM who has a definite agenda in the way they present the fiction and resolve things. You can change this moment to moment, but as you do so you color the overall experience.

I disagree that exploratory play requires the DM to be a neutral referee whose only concern is fairness and accurately depicting the fictional world. Sure, players who prefer an exploratory playstyle often prefer the DM-as-referee DMing style, but I can't agree that the connection is inherent.

Instead of "accurately depicting the fictional world"
I would argue that exploratory play only requires the DM to consistently depict the fictional world. Consistency is sufficient to provide the increased verisimilitude that exploratory play emphasizes, and also permits players to make meaningful inferences from their existing explorations of the game world regarding the state of the unobserved parts of the game world. Crucially, exploratory play does not require that the accuracy of those inferences be known to the DM in advance based on reference to pre-written material. Instead, it's entirely possible for the DM to defer the decision on whether or not the players' inference is correct until the players take an action whose outcome depends on it. At that point there are usually still a broad range of outcomes that would be perfectly consistent with the game world presented so far. The DM can choose between those consistent options based on pacing, drama, spotlight time, or any other factor they want. As long as consistency is maintained, I think a game can still strongly emphasize the exploratory style even with a DM who, as you put it, has another agenda other than accuracy.

Ultimately, I would claim that accurately refereeing player actions with regard to a pre-determined state of the game world is only one (very common) DMing style that achieves the consistency emphasized in exploratory play. But many other DMing styles can also achieve the requisite consistency to support the exploratory playstyle. I thus cannot agree with your claim that leaning towards an exploratory playstyle requires leaning away from a drama-driven DMing stlye.