D&D 5E 2 year campaign down the drain?

[Lanefan]

What if none of those other ways work, and they miss all your hints, and misinterpret another hint, and end up in TOTALLY THE WRONG PLACE looking for a gnome, who doesn't exist, that they think has the information?

Do you try to steer them back to the book, or do you adjust "truth"?

Neither, for as long as I can get away with it.

I let them flounder.

 

[prabe]

The difference, perhaps, is that I don't much care how they go about righting those evils (as in, if they want to fight evil with evil, so what) or even whether they choose to do something else in the setting instead and leave the evils to go on their merry way.

In principle, I suppose I'd be willing to allow a party to be the lesser evil. In practice, neither of the parties I'm GMing has chosen to do so.

 

[pemerton]

The players can make the stakes of the resolution "would we find the widget if it was here?" The players can make the stakes of the resolution "Can we figure out if the widget will do the thing?

<snip>

if the information is in a book, I know where that book is, and there are several ways for the PCs to find out where the book is and what they'll find in it. If the information is vital to whatever the PCs are pursuing, it'll probably be available at least one other way. I try not to have anything gated behind a single check or other roll.

I said "in 5e D&D, have no canonical way of making the stakes of resolution be do we find the widget at place X or does the widget do what we want it to at place Z. All they can do is look to the GM and ask."

You have replied by saying that "The players can make the stakes of the resolution "would we find the widget if it was here?" The players can make the stakes of the resolution "Can we figure out if the widget will do the thing?" Those are different things from what I said. I'm not sure if that's intentional on your part, or not.

But in any event, the second paragraph that I have quoted drives home the difference I have just noted, and it shows that what I said is correct.

Consider:

You say I know where that book is. I take that to mean - you have either a written or a mental note that (let's say) the book is in the captain's trunk.

If the players then declare We search the captain's daughter's hope chest looking for the book they have not been able to establish, as stakes of the resolution, Would we fine the widget at place X where X = the captain's daughter's hope chest. Because you have already decided that the book is not in the hope chest but rather in her father's trunk.

That feature of canonical 5e resolution - namely that generally the player's cant establishe stakes of non-combat resolution - is highly relevant when thinking about how to play out an Ocean's 11 scenario in 5e D&D.

There are other approaches to RPG resolution that are different from 5e D&D. @TwoSix has pointed to ones where the player is entitled to expressly make the truth (in the fiction) of the statement The book is in the captain's trunk hostage to a mechanic over which the player has some influence. Burning Wheel has this to a relatively large degree. I don't know BitD all that well, but I think it has at least modest bits of this.

Another approach is one in which the player is able, via mechanics over which s/he has some influence, to oblige the GM to establish some fiction that will serve the player and his/her PC's purposes, and the GM is expected in general to establish fiction having regard to the players and their PCs' purposes. Apocalyps World is probably the best-known RPG at the moment that exemplifies this approach. 4e D&D encourages it, although not with the same degree of clarity and mechanical rigour as AW. And other systems can also be run this way - eg this is basically how I run Classic Traveller, and the rules for that system (at least in their 1977 presentation) point towards it somewhat.

I think it would be possible to run 5e D&D this way although there would probably be a few challenges and need for a bit of work establishing table practices and conventions, because the mechanics aren't presented with this sort of approach in mind. Obviously I can't speak for @Elfcrusher but he seems to approach 5e in something like this fashion. The starting point, obvoiusly, would be to abandon the notion that I know where the book is.

Which is to say, you would have to move away from what I described, upthread, as an approach to resolution in which the players have to figure out what the GM has in mind. (Eg by figuring out where the GM thinks the book is.)

 

[Guest 6801328]

And there’s also a blended approach. The DM might start off thinking the book is in the chest, but when things go sideways he/she improvises, perhaps using the players’ choices for inspiration.

Kind of like a business plan for startups: there’s no way on earth your 3 year projection will be anywhere close to reality, but at least it gives objectives and direction.

 

[pemerton]

To me, the only thing that separates D&D and 'Narrative-type' games like FATE is the narrative games tend to weave narrative into the mechanics which encourages and depends on narrative and collaborative story-telling.

Besides that, collaborative story-telling is a style of running a game. I'm not sure why D&D shies a way from that style. I'd say 90% of the DMs I've had who have exclusively played D&D run their games as a 'Creator of the World' and the players are actors in the events the DM has imagined.

In a typical D&D game, a player asks, "Is there a torch that I can grab to better search the room?" And the DM decides if there is or not.

In FATE, a player declares, "I grab the nearest torch and explore the room"

There's no reason why D&D can't be played like the latter example. In fact the DMs I know who have ventured into other gaming styles, such as FATE, tend come back to D&D with a more cooperative way of running the game.

I can't really comment on the issues of ethos that you raise. I can see what you're pointing to, and I think there's plenty of evidence for it on these boards, but I've got no very good explanation to offer.

But I think I can say something about the mechanical issue. My impression is that a lot of D&D players aren't aware of the full range of mechanical possibilities in RPGing.

For instance, my experience on these boards is that, if someone talks about player agency then the discussion will move straight to narrative mechanics meaning things like what you describe - either the players can freely establish elements of the shared fiction (like torches in your example) or can spend resources (eg Fate points) to establish such elements.

There seemes to be less familiarity with approaches where the player has to make a check in order to establish the fiction s/he wants - eg as per Burning Wheel wises, Circles etc.

And there seems to be even less familiarity with approaches like Apocalypse World in which the players have very little if any "narrative control" of the sort you have described, but in which they (i) have the ability, by succeeding at checks, to oblige the GM to narrate new fiction that runs the way the players want, and (ii) that the GM is, in general, obliged to establish fiction in ways that respond to the players' concerns first and foremost.

If the only mechanic that is familiar is the one of the players asking the GM what their PCs see and know, then it is hard to adopt an approach other than GM as creator of the world and players as actors in those imagined events.

 

[prabe]

I said "in 5e D&D, have no canonical way of making the stakes of resolution be do we find the widget at place X or does the widget do what we want it to at place Z. All they can do is look to the GM and ask."

You have replied by saying that "The players can make the stakes of the resolution "would we find the widget if it was here?" The players can make the stakes of the resolution "Can we figure out if the widget will do the thing?" Those are different things from what I said. I'm not sure if that's intentional on your part, or not.

That was intentional, to establish what the players could establish. I don't think that renders them as powerless in the face of The Almighty GM as you seem to. I probably should have said something to that effect; I apologize I wasn't clear.

You say I know where that book is. I take that to mean - you have either a written or a mental note that (let's say) the book is in the captain's trunk.

If the players then declare We search the captain's daughter's hope chest looking for the book they have not been able to establish, as stakes of the resolution, Would we fine the widget at place X where X = the captain's daughter's hope chest. Because you have already decided that the book is not in the hope chest but rather in her father's trunk.

If the PC are searching the captain's daughter's hope chest, it's because they've found something somewhere else leading them to believe they'll find what they're looking for there. Frankly, I'm not likely to be as granular as all-a-that: They'd probably find information indicating the captain had it, and if they were in a position to search his home they'd find it in, if you prefer, his daughter's hope chest. Or, not, if the captain didn't have it, or he had it in some other place (his quarters on his ship, for instance).

There are other approaches to RPG resolution that are different from 5e D&D. @TwoSix]has pointed to ones where the player is entitled to expressly make the truth (in the fiction) of the statement The book is in the captain's trunk hostage to a mechanic over which the player has some influence. Burning Wheel has this to a relatively large degree. I don't know BitD all that well, but I think it has at least modest bits of this.

Another approach is one in which the player is able, via mechanics over which s/he has some influence, to oblige the GM to establish some fiction that will serve the player and his/her PC's purposes, and the GM is expected in general to establish fiction having regard to the players and their PCs' purposes. Apocalyps World is probably the best-known RPG at the moment that exemplifies this approach. 4e D&D encourages it, although not with the same degree of clarity and mechanical rigour as AW. And other systems can also be run this way - eg this is basically how I run Classic Traveller, and the rules for that system (at least in their 1977 presentation) point towards it somewhat.

I think it would be possible to run 5e D&D this way although there would probably be a few challenges and need for a bit of work establishing table practices and conventions, because the mechanics aren't presented with this sort of approach in mind. Obviously I can't speak for @Elfcrusher but he seems to approach 5e in something like this fashion. The starting point, obvoiusly, would be to abandon the notion that I know where the book is.

And as I said to @Elfcrusher above, I'm not usually so specific about where whatever the characters are looking for is, and I'm certainly not fixated on there only being one path to getting to it. I would say I run with a good deal of flexibility, even though the players have practically no opportunity or explicit authority to edit the world in the ways you talk about (sometimes I'll ask them to do so, and I listen to the table talk and sometimes I'll react to that). No, it's not as rigorous as in some other games, but it works at least as well for me, and it genuinely doesn't feel like "the players have to figure out what the GM has in mind."

 

[Ovinomancer]

I said "in 5e D&D, have no canonical way of making the stakes of resolution be do we find the widget at place X or does the widget do what we want it to at place Z. All they can do is look to the GM and ask."

You have replied by saying that "The players can make the stakes of the resolution "would we find the widget if it was here?" The players can make the stakes of the resolution "Can we figure out if the widget will do the thing?" Those are different things from what I said. I'm not sure if that's intentional on your part, or not.

But in any event, the second paragraph that I have quoted drives home the difference I have just noted, and it shows that what I said is correct.

Consider:

You say I know where that book is. I take that to mean - you have either a written or a mental note that (let's say) the book is in the captain's trunk.

If the players then declare We search the captain's daughter's hope chest looking for the book they have not been able to establish, as stakes of the resolution, Would we fine the widget at place X where X = the captain's daughter's hope chest. Because you have already decided that the book is not in the hope chest but rather in her father's trunk.

That feature of canonical 5e resolution - namely that generally the player's cant establishe stakes of non-combat resolution - is highly relevant when thinking about how to play out an Ocean's 11 scenario in 5e D&D.

There are other approaches to RPG resolution that are different from 5e D&D. @TwoSix has pointed to ones where the player is entitled to expressly make the truth (in the fiction) of the statement The book is in the captain's trunk hostage to a mechanic over which the player has some influence. Burning Wheel has this to a relatively large degree. I don't know BitD all that well, but I think it has at least modest bits of this.

Another approach is one in which the player is able, via mechanics over which s/he has some influence, to oblige the GM to establish some fiction that will serve the player and his/her PC's purposes, and the GM is expected in general to establish fiction having regard to the players and their PCs' purposes. Apocalyps World is probably the best-known RPG at the moment that exemplifies this approach. 4e D&D encourages it, although not with the same degree of clarity and mechanical rigour as AW. And other systems can also be run this way - eg this is basically how I run Classic Traveller, and the rules for that system (at least in their 1977 presentation) point towards it somewhat.

I think it would be possible to run 5e D&D this way although there would probably be a few challenges and need for a bit of work establishing table practices and conventions, because the mechanics aren't presented with this sort of approach in mind. Obviously I can't speak for @Elfcrusher but he seems to approach 5e in something like this fashion. The starting point, obvoiusly, would be to abandon the notion that I know where the book is.

Which is to say, you would have to move away from what I described, upthread, as an approach to resolution in which the players have to figure out what the GM has in mind. (Eg by figuring out where the GM thinks the book is.)

You can't actually run 5e this way, not without some hacking. Fundamentally this is because the resolution method is player proposes action and then GM decides auto no, auto yes, or uncertain. If uncertain, the GM decides the difficulty. So, the entire play loop is predicated on GM decides. To allow for players to set stakes, there really needs to be either a negotiated check or the rules need to define the check. Blades in the Dark does the former (with some of the latter as backbone). Dungeon/Apocalypse World rely on the latter. 5e, though does neither and puts it entirely in the GM's hands. So, player proposals are always gated by the GM, either in allowing a check at all or by the setting of the difficulty and the check mechanics.

You can, though, hack this and either add some defined checks or negotiate the check as needed, but this is a substantial departure from the intended play loop in the rules.

 

[pemerton]

You can't actually run 5e this way, not without some hacking. Fundamentally this is because the resolution method is player proposes action and then GM decides auto no, auto yes, or uncertain. If uncertain, the GM decides the difficulty. So, the entire play loop is predicated on GM decides.

<snip>

You can, though, hack this and either add some defined checks or negotiate the check as needed, but this is a substantial departure from the intended play loop in the rules.

This seems right to me. But I think @Elfcrusher thinks the system is a bit more flexible/expansive than that, and he definitely has more play experience with it then me! That's why I referred to canonical, or if one prefers typical, ways of doing things in 5e D&D.

 

[Ovinomancer]

That was intentional, to establish what the players could establish. I don't think that renders them as powerless in the face of The Almighty GM as you seem to. I probably should have said something to that effect; I apologize I wasn't clear.



If the PC are searching the captain's daughter's hope chest, it's because they've found something somewhere else leading them to believe they'll find what they're looking for there. Frankly, I'm not likely to be as granular as all-a-that: They'd probably find information indicating the captain had it, and if they were in a position to search his home they'd find it in, if you prefer, his daughter's hope chest. Or, not, if the captain didn't have it, or he had it in some other place (his quarters on his ship, for instance).

Here, you postulate that the only reason the PCs have to search the Daughter's hope chest is that previously established fiction told them this was a likely good option. This kicks the can, though, and avoids the issue by postulating that previous fiction exists. How did this previous fiction come to be -- was it established by the players or by the GM? Here, your example is silent, but this is the crux of the issue. If players cannot establish, a priori, that the widget is in the hope chest and then have that establishment tested in a way that success means it is true, then you're right back to the GM gating everything according to the DM's idea of the secret fiction.

Secret fiction here means fiction the GM has established or establishes in the moment but that is secret from the players until the GM determines the situation ripe enough to reveal it. It's the default was 5e plays.

To head off complaints, I run 5e weekly, by the book with only some tacked on house rules for downtime, and love it. I fully run 5e using secret backstory -- it's how that system is built to run, and you should run games how their designed to get the most from that design. There's nothing inherently wrong with secret backstory, or GM decides as a core decision mechanic. They aren't the only ones, and I absolutely avoid them like the plague (or COVID-19, to modernize) when I run Blades in the Dark. Because BitD is built on a completely different approach to play, and you should play the game how it's built.

And as I said to @Elfcrusher above, I'm not usually so specific about where whatever the characters are looking for is, and I'm certainly not fixated on there only being one path to getting to it. I would say I run with a good deal of flexibility, even though the players have practically no opportunity or explicit authority to edit the world in the ways you talk about (sometimes I'll ask them to do so, and I listen to the table talk and sometimes I'll react to that). No, it's not as rigorous as in some other games, but it works at least as well for me, and it genuinely doesn't feel like "the players have to figure out what the GM has in mind."

You're still the gatekeeper to when/where/how the characters find it, though, whatever it is standing for right now. And, you do this through maintaining secret fiction. This is well and good, and how 5e works, so right on! However, this is exactly what @pemerton is presenting alternatives to. Quite often, in these dicsussions, people get hung up assuming that what someone else is saying reflects poorly on their play choices, and the natural result is to either deny or to claim that you do the thing to. You don't, usually, and that's fine. 5e is a game about GM deciding based on secret fiction. It's in it's bones. Doing it this was is perfectly fine. There are other ways, and you might be interested in looking at them. Or not, all good, the important part is you have fun.

 

[prabe]

Here, you postulate that the only reason the PCs have to search the Daughter's hope chest is that previously established fiction told them this was a likely good option. This kicks the can, though, and avoids the issue by postulating that previous fiction exists. How did this previous fiction come to be -- was it established by the players or by the GM? Here, your example is silent, but this is the crux of the issue. If players cannot establish, a priori, that the widget is in the hope chest and then have that establishment tested in a way that success means it is true, then you're right back to the GM gating everything according to the DM's idea of the secret fiction.

Of course previous fiction exists. How else would they know they needed or wanted the book? In most cases (after the opening story arc) it was established in most cases by the players and the GM.

You're still the gatekeeper to when/where/how the characters find it, though, whatever it is standing for right now. And, you do this through maintaining secret fiction. This is well and good, and how 5e works, so right on! However, this is exactly what @pemerton is presenting alternatives to. Quite often, in these dicsussions, people get hung up assuming that what someone else is saying reflects poorly on their play choices, and the natural result is to either deny or to claim that you do the thing to. You don't, usually, and that's fine. 5e is a game about GM deciding based on secret fiction. It's in it's bones. Doing it this was is perfectly fine. There are other ways, and you might be interested in looking at them. Or not, all good, the important part is you have fun.

I don't think @pemerton is denigrating 5E, though he admits to not knowing the game as well as someone who plays it regularly. I think the game is more flexible in practice than he does, seems to be our major point of difference. I don't think he's denigrating my style of play, either, for that matter.

I guess it doesn't feel as though I'm gatekeeping, because so much of my deciding, and keeping track of what you're calling "secret fiction," and suchlike, seems to happen on an unconscious (or preconscious) level. Most of the time I don't know what the secret fiction is until it comes out of my mouth (or otherwise becomes apparent).