A Question Of Agency?

[pemerton]

Exploration was kinda left to slip between the cracks, but that's another issue again.

This is an odd thing to say. Classic D&D is chock-full of exploration-focused sub-systems:

* Map-and-key on the GM side; principles of narration of what the PCs can see/sense on the GM side; mapping practices on the player side;

* Rules for time-keeping by the GM based on a systematic set of rules for equating PC actions taken to "turns" spent, which feed into the wandering monster system;

* Rules around light sources, their durations, their extent of visiblity, etc - this also interacts with the surprise rules;

* In AD&D (not Moldvay Basic and I suspect not OD&D) rules for the noise made by armour and footwear, which interacts with the surprise rules;

* rules for listening at, and opening, doors (including locked doors - in AD&D this also includes gates, portculli and the like).

* rules for finding secret doors, traps and other "tricks" or "specials" that are part of the dungeon environment.

 

[pemerton]

Combat can be narrated at the table just as seduction can, and just as (say) searching a room can be: I thrust at the Orc's shoulder; I dodge under the dragon's belly so I can stab straight up; I wait for the gnoll to rush past me to the magic-user so I can stab it in the rear; etc.

The reason Classic D&D doesn't use this sort of approach but instead single-figure-per-unit wargame rules is because the game evolved out of a set of wargame rules which had some provision for dealing with single-figure-units.

 

[pemerton]

The idea that it is easy to predict how a given person would respond to a given provocation is in my view not terribly plausible, once the response-provoking behaviour gets beyond something banal like a simple greeting or extended hand in a typical social situation where both participants are familiar with the salient cultural norms.

If it was so easily predictable, then the real world would have fewer fights, less appeals-court litigation - because we would all know in advance how the judges would decide - and more successful diplomacy.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

To the extent that romance is resolved just by everyone at the table talking, I don't see that that would be very satisfying - consensus fiction can be fine in some RPG contexts but doesn't tend to make for drama.

Have you ever been in a LARP?

 

[Bedrockgames]

The idea that it is easy to predict how a given person would respond to a given provocation is in my view not terribly plausible, once the response-provoking behaviour gets beyond something banal like a simple greeting or extended hand in a typical social situation where both participants are familiar with the salient cultural norms.

If it was so easily predictable, then the real world would have fewer fights, less appeals-court litigation - because we would all know in advance how the judges would decide - and more successful diplomacy.

It is much easier to predict how a particular social scenario might go down, than to predict the result of a roulette wheel spin or a predict when whether a drive is going to crash on a given day. Further, the GM has access to information about the NPCs we don't have about people in diplomatic situations. He or she knows the motivations, background, private thoughts of the NPCs and that helps form a basis on adjudicating what a reaction will be. True I can't predict in real life how you pemerton will react if someone asks you to spy on behalf of the British Government. But the more I know about you, the easier that prediction becomes. And you certainly know yourself how you might react (and for all intents and purposes the GM is the NPC). So I just think this is leagues easier for me to run than off the cuff in a free form way, than it would be for me to run a car chase or combat. If this isn't how you approach play or if this isn't your experience, that is fine. But I really don't understand the aggressive dismissal of other peoples experience on this.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Combat can be narrated at the table just as seduction can, and just as (say) searching a room can be: I thrust at the Orc's shoulder; I dodge under the dragon's belly so I can stab straight up; I wait for the gnoll to rush past me to the magic-user so I can stab it in the rear; etc.

Yes but it is harder to for most people to do the former. How do I the GM know your thrust hit the orcs shoulder? In real life I don't know that a punch is going to land or not. But the GM knows what is in the room and where. If the players search a room, it is easy for the GM to report what is there. If it is hard to find, a roll may be called for, but even without a roll that is easily handled by asking "where in the room do you search?" (if they look in the desk and the desk contains Y, they would find Y). I just see a massive difference here in terms of my ability to feel out how the players are interacting with the room versus feeling out whether that punch would land.

 

[Aldarc]

The idea that it is easy to predict how a given person would respond to a given provocation is in my view not terribly plausible, once the response-provoking behaviour gets beyond something banal like a simple greeting or extended hand in a typical social situation where both participants are familiar with the salient cultural norms.

If it was so easily predictable, then the real world would have fewer fights, less appeals-court litigation - because we would all know in advance how the judges would decide - and more successful diplomacy.

I think that this idea that one can predict or read behavior also overlooks the difficulties that some people intrinsically have with reading other people and social situations. One reason why one of my players has expressed a dislike of freeform roleplay without mechanics is because they are on the autism spectrum. So social encounters are not always easy or enjoyable for them even though they otherwise enjoy roleplaying in-character. They told me that resolution mechanics can help them "make better sense" of the social situation. I think the idea that this can be overcome with confidence or practice kinda neglects that it can also force players into uncomfortable modes of play.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yet another example of the game being played differently in different communities - in our crew* those charts were/are, as far as I know, not used all that often at the best of times and (particularly the 'town' ones) more often not used at all. Most of the time the DM just wings something if it seems appropriate, with a glaring exception being cases where a module (e.g. JG's Sword of Hope) specifically states when monsters will 'randomly' appear.

* - for sure this is true in my case, and I've a very strong hunch it's true in any local game I've either played in or heard of

True. Then again, if an adventure is a closed environment where do the wandering monsters come from? Never mind that often the listed wandering monsters are the sort of things the 'real' dungeon inhabitants would have long since cleared out.

Though there's situations where wandering monsters make perfect sense, I often find wandering monsters and setting consistency tend to fight each other.

Agreed. Interesting to note, though, that having just run S1 Lost Caverns (which Gygax wrote) I'll say it's a very high risk, very high reward adventure without a wandering monster in sight: he specifically notes there's no wandering monsters in the caverns.

Which is odd, because the module builds in a perfect means of having them appear (room 9, lower caverns, inbound instead of outbound); and so I chucked some in once the party started taking multi-week trips to town and back.

Or more or less eschew rules in favour of roleplay...?

Of course you can eschew rules and 'just roleplay', and of course you can eschew rules and figure out some sort of substitute for wandering monsters (or just live with the resulting caster supremacy since everyone will play the old "unload the big guns at every encounter and then just rest" game). It is amusing to note that in the 40 years since 1e was published NO set of D&D rules has YET found another way to solve that problem, and 5e is still suffering with it! I do take your point that wandering monsters feels like a sort of hack, but yet, again, since nobody is willing to mess with casters to make them weaker, you can't just say "well, that's not a significant part of the game, just leave it broken!". I mean, you CAN, but it isn't satisfactory to a LOT of people!

So, really what it all amounts to seems to be that some of us want to play a game which WORKS and provides relevant functionality out of the box. I'm perfectly fine with coloring outside the lines of any given game when people want to do that. If players in a DW game want to spend their 'carouse' move in irrelevant banter or seducing the local townswomen or whatever, that's fine. We don't really need to play with dice or whatever, but we COULD. I mean, 'Carouse' has a check, and one of the possible results is "you get into trouble". Nothing is worse trouble than girls! (sorry ladies, you may read the gender reversed version of this, it is equally true).

I mean, I can tell stories. I don't need an RPG for that. What @Crimson Longinus is suggesting is perfectly feasible and to an extent happens in every game, but it is not relevant to the point I was making, which was that principles of a game, and its agenda (maybe that falls under principles too, not sure) are an integral part of the game. Just because you can 'do other stuff at the table' doesn't really change that. Likewise with Wandering Monsters. Just because some people, even a lot of people, ignore it and live with the inevitable (and well-known) fallout doesn't undermine the point that wandering monsters are part of a set of rules that support core principles of classic D&D. XP for GP does that too, and this is why its removal from 2e was such a key indicator that 2e is really a whole different non-classic D&D (despite sharing a lot of mechanics with 1e).

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think that this idea that one can predict or read behavior also overlooks the difficulties that some people intrinsically have with reading other people and social situations. One reason why one of my players has expressed a dislike of freeform roleplay without mechanics is because they are on the autism spectrum. So social encounters are not always easy or enjoyable for them even though they otherwise enjoy roleplaying in-character. They told me that resolution mechanics can help them "make better sense" of the social situation. I think the idea that this can be overcome with confidence or practice kinda neglects that it can also force players into uncomfortable modes of play.

free form isn’t a green light to be cruel. But this attitude can also be extremely limiting. One of the best free form RPers, quite possibly, in my group is on the spectrum. If someone does have difficulty and it makes the game hard or not fun for them, I am happy to work with them. But having a system any less likely to produce problems. A person with a learning disability for example could have a harder time with free form RP than with a system involving mechanics

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think that this idea that one can predict or read behavior also overlooks the difficulties that some people intrinsically have with reading other people and social situations. One reason why one of my players has expressed a dislike of freeform roleplay without mechanics is because they are on the autism spectrum. So social encounters are not always easy or enjoyable for them even though they otherwise enjoy roleplaying in-character. They told me that resolution mechanics can help them "make better sense" of the social situation. I think the idea that this can be overcome with confidence or practice kinda neglects that it can also force players into uncomfortable modes of play.

free form isn’t a green light to be cruel. But this attitude can also be extremely limiting. One of the best free form RPers, quite possibly, in my group is on the spectrum. If someone does have difficulty and it makes the game hard or not fun for them, I am happy to work with them. But having a system any less likely to produce problems. A person with a learning disability for example could have a harder time with free form RP than with a system involving mechanics