A Question Of Agency?

[Lanefan]

Another question for @Lanefan , @prabe , @Thomas Shey , and @Crimson Longinus (I'm confident I know Thomas' answer, but perhaps not). 5e's orthodox handling of starting Monster/NPC Attitude is "GM Decides." How do you guys feel about Monster/NPC Reactions as in Moldvay et al? Do you:

• often roll Monster/NPC Reaction
• sometimes roll

...and if/when you roll, do you:

• consult table and always run with result (therefore having to often post-hoc justify a behavior)
• sometimes ignore results you don't think "fit" and frame Monster/NPC Reaction how you feel "fits"
• rarely ignore results (etc)

I rarely if ever roll, instead trying to take the situation as it stands and having the monsters do what seems natural for them to do (and-or say) at the time. With some monsters e.g. unintelligent eating machines or most jellies/oozes this is way simpler than with others who are more intelligent and-or more confident in themselves. So in this I guess I started using "GM Decides" long before 5e ever saw the light of day.

On the rare occasions I do roll it means I'm stuck and seeking guidance from a randomizer...which will either help me or it won't.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Yup. Moldvay Basic, Expert, RC had a 2d6 table with 5 possibilities. 1e had a Percentile table with 7 possibilities.

Did you play any of these editions or did you start with 2e?

I did play the basic. It was the red box with Elmore art and then the expansions. (So that would apparently make it the 1983 version.) But I'm really not gonna remember the details.

Is it your sense that the Moldvay Basic/Expert/RC and 1e procedure is apt to create situations where NPC responses are incoherent?

I don't think I can properly answer as I don't remember the table at all. But if we are talking about a context independent table for randomly generating a reaction when a creature or NPC is encountered, then I have hard time imagining it not producing rather incoherent results. I guess a really skilled GM could try to create post-hoc justification for each weird reaction, but that really doesn't sound like worth the effort nor can I see it as a working strategy in the long run.

 

[hawkeyefan]

But if that would not be fun for you then they wouldn't be doing a very good job!

Well the game may be fun. Agency is typically what I hope for, but depending on what the GM is going for, I may be onboard.

Also, sometimes gaming is a social event for my group....sometimes it’s the sole reason we get together. There’s plenty of BSing going on and so on. On those occasions I’m not always looking for a deep and immersive experience.

I don't believe in fixing people problems with rules. Rules matter in a sense that you should choose the ones that suit your tastes and the desired style of the campaign, but there are not rules that will turn a bad GM into a good one.

I think such principles can indeed improve the skill of a GM. Not on their own, but they can help.

I wish I’d become aware of many of them much sooner in my gaming career.

I like the sound of “ask questions and build on the answers.” If I have some sort of guiding principle as a GM, I guess it would be something like "whatever you do, something interesting will happen." I just made it up though.

Well, the gist of that is great, but I feel like it’s a bit too passive(?). Like, how do you make sure something interesting always happens?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Another question for @Lanefan , @prabe , @Thomas Shey , and @Crimson Longinus (I'm confident I know Thomas' answer, but perhaps not). 5e's orthodox handling of starting Monster/NPC Attitude is "GM Decides." How do you guys feel about Monster/NPC Reactions as in Moldvay et al? Do you:

• often roll Monster/NPC Reaction
• sometimes roll

I rarely rolled back in the day (keeping in mind I, to the degree I did D&D after the OD&D period, hopped almost directly to 3e) because I thought the reaction table was too much of a blunt object. In later years, I sometimes would do a quick-and-dirty roll in other systems to get sort of an initial "rest state" relative to what I'd normally expect given the nature of the opponent and the situation, but only when it didn't seem pretty clear-cut what it was likely to be (or I hadn't decided in advance that the creature involved was aberrational in some fashion).

(In case I haven't made it clear, I'm not primarily a D&D-sphere GM and have not been for some years. I ran one 3e campaign when it came out, and since then have played in a 4e and PF2e campaigns, but my last two games run were Mythras and Fragged Empire)>

...and if/when you roll, do you:

• consult table and always run with result (therefore having to often post-hoc justify a behavior)
• sometimes ignore results you don't think "fit" and frame Monster/NPC Reaction how you feel "fits"
• rarely ignore results (etc)

If I'm going to roll I'm not going to ignore the result, but I may very well put my thumb on the scale (I.e. apply a modifier to the roll) up-front if I think its warranted. Its the only thing that makes using such a thing make any sense to me.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yes, probably.


Well, it not like the distinction is super clear cut. Some things are clearly in the narrative-control territory while others are more borderline.

That's fair. I just think you really need to leave that statement to heavy-duty scene editing before it isn't the commoner case these days; I can't think of the last game I've interacted with that didn't have some kind of metacurrency.

 

[Manbearcat]

Alright, thanks for everyone for responding.

If its not clear why I brought this up, I'll unpack it (because its salient to the lead post).

Moldvay Basic was my introduction into the hobby in 1984 (I quickly assimilated a ton of other texts thereafter, but this was the first). Rather than actually playing, I GMed a game for my cousins (who were 4 years older than me and vets of the game by 3 years or so) at 7 years old using the text's principles, rules, procedures. It was very elegant, easy to follow, paint-by-number-ey.

It took me awhile to understand the brilliant engineering that went into this tome (the decision-point pressure leading from the Turn structure interfacing with the Wandering Monster and Rest Clock, etc), but one thing that stood out to me right away was "Monster Reaction."

In my gaming career, THIS was the first introduction I had to the "play to find out what happens" ethos. Before and by 7, your make-believe is completely unstructured. But here, here is a piece of structure that (a) dictates how the fiction emerges (constraining the GM) while (b) challenging the GM to imagine, within the confines of the dungeon's Theme/Scenario and Setting, how/why this creature is reacting the way it is and then frame the situation/challenge accordingly.

The dungeon Theme/Scenario/Setting is Remove a Curse (someone in the village stole an idol from a sunken temple and it needs to be brought back and replaced in its sanctuary). The dungeon is stocked with undead. Wandering Monster roll hits when the PCs double back to the vestibule to find another way in after they've explored the sunken entrance hall and found a swim is necessary to advance. I get 3 Lizard Men (who are Neutral but are not above capturing and bringing humanoids back to their tribes for a feast) and I, crazy enough, I roll a pair of 6s on Monster Reaction; Enthusiastic Friendship!

What could that possibly mean? Why would 3 Lizard Men be in the vestibule of a sunken temple and enthusiastically entreat the PCs toward alliance? What a creative challenge! This could go any number of ways, but I have to think on my feet, give life to this situation and frame it with vigor. Who knows what the PCs will do or what happens next?

I hope its clear how this looks just like the lead post's question and the games that we've been talking about above (except in those games, discoveries/challenges like this should hook into one or more of the PCs' thematic portfolios).

 

[Aldarc]

Yes, when times like that arise I've got time to do whatever the hell I want. But they don't arise that often...

Perhaps the only place I've ever encountered the idea of house rules* outside of RPGs is Monopoly, and then it was just one variant.

House rules and treating the rules as guidelines is actually a common practice for board games, IME.

It doesn't need to be LARP influenced. There are some branches of OSR which pretty much have identical views.

Hmmm... One of my takeaways from the OSR movement as a critical movement was that it involved a collection of people looking back at early roleplay, particularly 0-1e and B/X, with the presumption that the system did matter and how that system cultivated a particular game experience. While there are a number of OSR games that are straight-up retro clones, many also take "system matters" seriously for the purposes of designing non-retroclone games that adhere to OSR principles.

 

[pemerton]

But if that would not be fun for you then they wouldn't be doing a very good job!


I don't believe in fixing people problems with rules. Rules matter in a sense that you should choose the ones that suit your tastes and the desired style of the campaign, but there are not rules that will turn a bad GM into a good one.

This doesn't seem right to me.

I work closely with many students. All aspire to be good writers/thinkers. But many of them just don't know how. I teach them principles. These can address general issues of text structure, such as where and how to use headings (students who are still learning tend to place their headings either too early, so the first paragraph under the heading actually deals with the previous topic, or too late, so that the topic is introduced before we get to the heading), or detailed issues of sentence structure (eg students have a tendency to bury important assertions inside subordinate clauses in long sentences, which makes their key ideas and arguments hard to extract).

These students are bad writers and arguers, in the sense that their writing and arguments need to improve. But bad writer is not some sort of essential or inevitable category. By learning and practising in accordance with certain principles, they can (and in my experience they do) get better.

It's not a "people problem". It's a skills and techniques problem.

Likewise for GMing. If a GM is running a railroad, but doesn't want to, how does s/he change? Part of that is introducing him/her to new principles. And I don't mean principles of little practical applicability, like don't railroad! I mean much more concrete principles like Here's how you should frame a scene or Here's how to avoid the game bogging down in endless retries - Let it Ride! or Here's how to handle failure without your game grinding to a halt - focus on intent moreso than on task. Etc.

I've learned many principles and techniques from reading good RPGs and good RPG commentary. I've adapted them to the play of games that don't themselves feature them at all (eg Rolemaster) or terribly clearly (1977 Classic Traveller) or as consistently as one might desire (4e D&D).

I've got no reason to think I'm unique or even terribly atypical in this capability.

I think such principles can indeed improve the skill of a GM. Not on their own, but they can help.

I wish I’d become aware of many of them much sooner in my gaming career.

Or in other words, this.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

@pemerton if we are talking about 'rules' as in 'principles' instead of 'mechanics' I kinda agree. I'm a teacher too, an art teacher. Mastering techniques, understanding principles etc is important, but ultimately captain Barbossa had the right of it; they're just guidelines. You got to to have your own vision, and you must be able to asses what tools (both literal and figurative) are best for achieving it. For every 'rule' you can come up with a situation where breaking it was the right call. 'How' is important, but 'why' is more important.

 

[nevin]

Alright, thanks for everyone for responding.

If its not clear why I brought this up, I'll unpack it (because its salient to the lead post).

Moldvay Basic was my introduction into the hobby in 1984 (I quickly assimilated a ton of other texts thereafter, but this was the first). Rather than actually playing, I GMed a game for my cousins (who were 4 years older than me and vets of the game by 3 years or so) at 7 years old using the text's principles, rules, procedures. It was very elegant, easy to follow, paint-by-number-ey.

It took me awhile to understand the brilliant engineering that went into this tome (the decision-point pressure leading from the Turn structure interfacing with the Wandering Monster and Rest Clock, etc), but one thing that stood out to me right away was "Monster Reaction."

In my gaming career, THIS was the first introduction I had to the "play to find out what happens" ethos. Before and by 7, your make-believe is completely unstructured. But here, here is a piece of structure that (a) dictates how the fiction emerges (constraining the GM) while (b) challenging the GM to imagine, within the confines of the dungeon's Theme/Scenario and Setting, how/why this creature is reacting the way it is and then frame the situation/challenge accordingly.

The dungeon Theme/Scenario/Setting is Remove a Curse (someone in the village stole an idol from a sunken temple and it needs to be brought back and replaced in its sanctuary). The dungeon is stocked with undead. Wandering Monster roll hits when the PCs double back to the vestibule to find another way in after they've explored the sunken entrance hall and found a swim is necessary to advance. I get 3 Lizard Men (who are Neutral but are not above capturing and bringing humanoids back to their tribes for a feast) and I, crazy enough, I roll a pair of 6s on Monster Reaction; Enthusiastic Friendship!

What could that possibly mean? Why would 3 Lizard Men be in the vestibule of a sunken temple and enthusiastically entreat the PCs toward alliance? What a creative challenge! This could go any number of ways, but I have to think on my feet, give life to this situation and frame it with vigor. Who knows what the PCs will do or what happens next?

I hope its clear how this looks just like the lead post's question and the games that we've been talking about above (except in those games, discoveries/challenges like this should hook into one or more of the PCs' thematic portfolios).

As they were scoping out the PC's planning the feast a rare bird (lizard whatever) favored by the spirits gave them a sign that these PC's were blessed by the spirits.