A Question Of Agency?

[aramis erak]

At least to a degree. I am also sure you can add significant narrative game elements to D&D, 4e is a little covert about it, but it does a pretty decent job given that it had to not stray too far from the classic formula.

Many of narrative elements can be added to ANY edition of D&D.
The easiest include:

• Let it Ride
• Hero Points (5e DMG 264 - each point is +1d6 to a d20 roll, max 1 per roll)
• Success with Complication instead of failure
• Fail-forward (implied in 4E and 5E DMG)
• Decision in front with Fortune in the middle (pick action, roll, narrate attempt and result)
• reward playing the psychology as defined with a metacurrency (5E does: Inspiration; if one wants to emphasize it more, allow PC's to bank PB or even level of inspirations, and refill a point anytime a psychological bit is played)
• Group authority instead of GM authority on rules (rules interpretations get handled by table vote, instead of GM vote)

Note that the RAW standard for D&D is narrate the attempt, then the GM confirms the mechanic, player rolls, GM narrates the outcome. Resequencing this can allow for smoother narrative. Note that AWE is very similar to traditional D&D: narrate the attempt, GM notes it as a move, player confirms it was intended or acceptable, player rolls, GM or player narrates the results, and a player continues.

And, for the entirely oddball, some do things in other orders still...
Brute Squad has the pick attribute, roll attempt, pick what the roll represents and narrate it.

 

[Campbell]

Well, I think "Wheaton's Rule" is simply an assumed principle of GMing in all cases (unless you really don't care if the players come back tomorrow, but even then...). AFAIK every edition of D&D has either assumed or outright stated 'Rule 0', even 4e has some statement to the effect that the DM's arbitration is final. NO edition of D&D calls out 'group decision making', certainly not as the assumed default mode, though I think some may suggest it as a 'DM advice' kind of thing. I think some editions also discuss the possibility of separating the roles of 'rules officiating' from 'game running' (I think 4e suggests this possibility, I would be surprised if 5e doesn't discuss some of this sort of thing somewhere either).

Still, no edition of actual genuine D&D brand RPG has ever put anything else ahead of Rule 0, explicitly, as the default assumption.

Here's Frank Mentzer's take in BECMI which is substantially different than most other official takes.

The Most Important Rule
There is one rule which applies to everything you will do as a Dungeon Master. It is the most important of all the rules! It is simply this: BE FAIR. A Dungeon Master must not take sides. You will play the roles of the creatures encountered, but do so fairly, without favoring the monsters or the characters. Play the monsters as they would actually behave, at least as you imagine them. The players are not fighting the DM! The characters may be fighting the monsters, but everyone is playing the game to have fun. The players have fun exploring and earning more powerful characters, and the DM has fun playing the monsters and entertaining players. For example, it’s not fair to change the rules unless everyone agrees to the change. When you add optional rules, apply them evenly to everyone, players and monsters. Do not make exceptions; stick to the rules, and be fair.

– Frank Menzer, Basic Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters Rulebook p. 2 (1983)

Pathfinder Second Edition, while not on brand D&D is pretty relevant. Here's it's take :

THE FIRST RULE
The first rule of Pathfinder is that this game is yours. Use it to tell the stories you want to tell, be the character you want to be, and share exciting adventures with friends. If any other rule gets in the way of your fun, as long as your group agrees, you can alter or ignore it to fit your story. The true goal of Pathfinder is for everyone to enjoy themselves.

Both still ultimately feature the GM as a final rules arbiter elsewhere, although the impression I get from both is that the GM/Referee is expected to interpret the rules like a judge, not change them without the assent of the other players. This is a fairly unique perspective in the D&D space, but there are some corners that lean away from GMs having carte blanche over the rules.

Not really making a point here though. Just a digression.

 

[pemerton]

I don’t get why you are being pedantic instead of engaging with the important content

I thought I was engaging with the important content. Perhaps you could explain what the important content is that I missed.

Here are two things that seem to me to be no different in terms of process, or in terms of influencing the state of the shared fiction.

(1) Player: I attack the Orc with my mace. <rolls dice, performs lookups in tandem with the GM, etc> GM: The Orc is defeated.

(2) Player: I remember that Evard's tower is around here, don't I - I've studied the lore of the Great Masters. <rolls dice, performs lookups in tandem with the GM, etc> GM: Yep, that's right.

Can you explain why you regard (2) as having an authorial dimension that is absent from (1)?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

If we want to talk about story I think the only level that it's close to universally true at, for given values of true, is that each player might perhaps be said to be crafting their own story, the story of their character. Like X versions of the same novel or something. In some games there might be a consensus that a larger story is a desirable outcome (great) but I still don't think that playing an RPG, described at the level of the party, is in any useful way synonymous with storytelling unless a group effort is made to make it so.

I don't think it is possible to generalize. Some 'story now' games have a very narrow agenda, and it can include really specific story elements, etc. Honestly, to an extent, this describes most RPGs, even D&D in its most elemental form. Some such games also put most of the formation of the plot in different places. It may actually be almost entirely in the GM's hands, and still be a game designed to 'explore the characters' or 'play to see what happens'. It will just have a narrow range of outcomes, or at least elements will be arranged in specific ways.

A game can be pretty set like this, and thus there really aren't separate 'character agendas' as such, or at least they may not diverge from each other much. Or maybe they simply fill fixed roles in the story (IE a mystery game where one PC is always the murderer, his agenda is pretty fixed. Another PC might be the aggrieved relative, also pretty fixed, and a third may be the detective, again a very set agenda). They can thus be opposed, but mesh together to form one story.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Posting this yet again in this thread:

Roleplaying is negotiated imagination. . . .​

​

Mechanics might model the stuff of the game world, that's another topic, but they don't exist to do so. They exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table. That's their sole and crucial function.​

We don't need to reinvent all this stuff from scratch in this thread.

Yeah, and I have always been keenly aware of this, because I don't just naturally work well in small group situations. OTOH playing an RPG is perfect. There are defined roles, you know when to say something, when to shut up, and there is some degree of collaboration that is built into the process. I can assure everyone that if this was not so, then I'd never have become a GM, or probably even played RPGs. It is probably the real underlying reason WHY I play them.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well in that case a Battlemaster's dice are a metagame mechanic, as is Action Surge and Second Wind on a 5e fighter. And many if not most other rationed 5e mechanics too.

But I didn't think @estar was counting those as metagame mechanics given he said he doesn't use such mechanics.

I agree they are exactly such, and suffer all the same objections which were leveled at 4e A/E/D/U (if you had an issue with it, I didn't). It is merely tradition which makes them more acceptable. Maybe in some cases such things can be colored as 'fatigue' or 'nobody will fall for that twice', or whatever. Of course those arguments again apply to even games some people don't like for those very mechanics...

So, I agree that the Story Certificate is a meta-game mechanic, because it doesn't itself correspond with anything within the fiction of the game world. If the game were coloring it as "the power of faith" or something, then you could maybe start to make it more concrete, but the rub there is you then have to explain it in a way that works in the story, is genre appropriate, etc. This is where many of the explanations like 'fatigue' for superiority dice or 4e power slots tend to fail.

Of course, many of us are just fine with these sorts of mechanics, so it really need not be an issue. As you point out, it is amusing when people are so inconsistent about it though. Or maybe puzzling...

 

[FrogReaver]

I agree they are exactly such, and suffer all the same objections which were leveled at 4e A/E/D/U (if you had an issue with it, I didn't). It is merely tradition which makes them more acceptable. Maybe in some cases such things can be colored as 'fatigue' or 'nobody will fall for that twice', or whatever. Of course those arguments again apply to even games some people don't like for those very mechanics...

So, I agree that the Story Certificate is a meta-game mechanic, because it doesn't itself correspond with anything within the fiction of the game world. If the game were coloring it as "the power of faith" or something, then you could maybe start to make it more concrete, but the rub there is you then have to explain it in a way that works in the story, is genre appropriate, etc. This is where many of the explanations like 'fatigue' for superiority dice or 4e power slots tend to fail.

Of course, many of us are just fine with these sorts of mechanics, so it really need not be an issue. As you point out, it is amusing when people are so inconsistent about it though. Or maybe puzzling...

It’s not inconsistency. It’s focus. I don’t like onions but when they are finely chopped and there’s not a lot of them in something then I’m usually fine with them in it. Why would anyone expect rpg preferences to be any different?

 

[pemerton]

I didn't mean materialize in the sense that it popped into being in the setting but I meant it looked like the detail was decided by the players basically. Again I could be wrong on how you are describing it.

Which detail? I'm having trouble following you.

I'll repost:

I asked the players who would be with the four of them if they were scouting ahead to verify whether the band could pass safely through the forest, and they nominated their two NPC hunters - Algol the Bloodthirsty who is in service to Sir Morgath, and Rhan, the woman who had joined them at the end of the last session I posted about.

I was using the Rattling Forest scenario from the Episode Book, and described the "deep and clawing shadows [that[ stretch across the path, and the wind [that] rattles through the trees." The PCs soon found themselves confronted by a knight all in black and wearing a greatsword, with a tattered cape hanging from his shoulders, and six men wielding swords and shields, their clothes equally tattered. The scenario description also mentions that they have "broken trinkets and personal effects" and I described rings and collars that were worn, notched and (in some cases) broken. The description of the collars was taken by the players as a sign that these were Celts (wearing torcs), and I ran with that. . . .​

As I said, I - the GM - was using the Rattling Forest scenario from the Episode Book. I described the forest, as per the quoted text from the book. I told the players they were confronted by the knight and his men, as per the book. I conveyed the scenario description of "broken trinkets and personal effects" and described rings and collars that were worn, notched and (in some cases) broken. The description of those collars was taken by the players as a sign that the NPCs were Celts wearing torcs. I ran with that. It became particularly significant when, to quote myself again, "Sir Justin had the idea of converting these ancient Celtic ghosts to Christianity and the reverence of St Sigobert - 'a Celtic saint' as he emphasised several times - and he also thought that their bones could be put in the reliquary that had been made for martyrs of the order".

I am now unclear if this was a matter of procedure (you empowered the players to make the decision) or if it was simply a spur of the moment thing (the players assumed something about a thing you described, you liked the assumption, so you went with it). If that the latter, the only difference between what you are doing and how I would do it, is I would have settled on that detail already by the time of description.

I'm not sure what you mean by "a matter of procedure".

I described the NPCs as wearing (among other things) collars. The players, playing their characters, took this to mean that the NPCs were Celts wearing torcs. They gave voice to this understanding, which is how I knew they had formed it. And I went along with that understanding; eg when they started talking to the lead NPC (the Bone Laird), "Because he was speaking an ancient form of Celtish - not the British the PCs are fluent in - a roll was called for on Presence + Lore. Sir Morgath and Twillany succeeded."

I'm sure there must have been occasions in your own play when a detail wasn't settled in advance. It's literally impossible to settle every potentially salient detail in advance.

When that happened, how did you handle it?

 

[pemerton]

I consider Battlemaster Dice to be a metagame mechanic.

The major difference between them and something like a fate point (as I understand them) is the Battlemaster dice's extremely limited scope, both in terms of when they can be applied and what they can affect. Maybe to highlight that difference it'd be better to call them a metacharacter mechanic as their scope is basically my character whereas metagame mechanics are not.

And how would you locate the Storyteller Certificate within your framework?

 

[pemerton]

Events that potential or certain negative consequences for the character that they zero control over. In my experience it doesn't end will over the long haul if that handled through fiat. Players are far more accepting of the results if it occurred because of random generation.

<snip>

Players are more aware than one would think that the referee just happened to create a forest in front of them to adventure in. It can be gotten away with is done sparely but done over and over it become a noticeable pattern.

<snip

it takes away from the challenge knowing the referee is creating something out of whole cloth right then and there.

<snip>

Keep in mind player can and do make a bad plans.

<snip>

Because the bias is minimized as a result. So the result is perceived as more fair. Provided of course the random table itself is perceived as fair.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say "players are more aware than one would think that the referee just happened to create a forest in front of them". What do you think I think? Do you think I'm lying to my players?

My players knew that I narrated a storm and the landing of their ships on the Dalmation coast. They knew that we collectively agreed they were travelling overland to Constantinople. They knew that I narrated that they came to a forest. They knew that we were working from a generic map of Europe that gives one a general sense of what is between the Dalmation coast and Istanbul/Constantinople.

I don't think the concepts of fairness or challenge have much applicability in my RPGing, at least as you use them. I am not challenging the players in their ability to plan an overland trek. Or to avoid meeting the Bone Laird. The "challenge", such as it is, is to decide how to respond to an ancient ghost who lingers on for some reason.

If "sandboxing" means play that prioritises geographical matters, then I am not running sandbox games.

Though that would still leave it a bit unclear to me why it is OK for the GM to establish, say, a challenging bit of topography (without random rolling) but not a challenging bit of weather (without random rolling).

So I think the timing of scenario design is not all that important. If the GM is coming up with the forest now or 10 months ago does not matter to me. What matters to me is the thought process behind it. What are they prioritizing? Are they trying to create a challenge? Are they framing something that provokes action? Are they trying to create something that should be interesting to explore? Are they guided by what they think will make the best story? For some GMs timing can matter because they feel more temptation to skew things away from what they really want to prioritize if they make that decision in play, but that experience is not universal.

In my case, I narrated a forest because that was what I had in front of me in the scenario I wanted to use. It was colour, easily incorporated - surely there were forests in Dacia/Romania in the 8th century CE? - but not the principle focus of play. The focus of play was the NPCs and their ongoing status as ghosts. Celtic ghosts, as it turned out.

I would think that sometimes, even in a geography/architecture-focused sandbox, the GM must have to come up with details on the fly: colours of drapes, shapes of columns, manufacture of roofing materials, etc. Presumably most of the times these aren't very significant to what is at stake.