D&D General DM Authority

[Maxperson]

I would argue that improv acting is something that you do in addition to roleplaying. It's an embellishment or an enhancement of roleplaying, but not a fundamental necessity to roleplaying.

It's a how to. It's like the difference between fly fishing, river fishing, lake fishing with a bobber, spear fishing, and deep sea fishing. They're all fishing, but how you go about it is different.

 

[Scott Christian]

I will keep that in mind. Next time that you tell me that you don't judge other people's games, that there is no one true way, I'll remember that that only applies to the things you think look like DnD. After all, if they don't play your way, it is a boardgame, not DnD.

?

If it's still D&D to you, fine. It's not the game as described by the rulebooks. I would not personally consider what you've described as D&D. In my opinion it's a glorified ad-hoc board game using D&D stats. The game is flexible, but at a certain point it stops being D&D. I have a D&D based board game on my shelf, I don't call it D&D. If you have fun with what you're playing go for it.

It's not the game described in the rulebooks = 100% fact. True.
Personally = opinion.
In my opinion = opinion.
How is him stating a fact and then his opinion implying he believes there is a true way?

 

[happyhermit]

I can quite get not wanting scene-editing or the like for that too, it just seems to me that if I found that disruptive, I'd also find the fact that a fifth level fighter can take so much more punishment than a first to be a problem, too; I mean, people are going to find a problem with immersion where they do, but that strikes me as being pretty selective about what's needed to be a "convincing" world.

Really? Because I struggle to see how they could even be considered similar. Remembering that the preference being valued is something along the lines of "I want to inhabit my character in a world I can imagine is a real place.". If I know I or another player can declare things into or out of existence and it happens in play regularly then it's blatantly obvious that the world is subject to whim. As opposed to the default D&D method where I need not know how much fidelity the world has or where it is lacking. Why would imagining a world where a 5th level fighter is much harder to defeat be a problem from this perspective?

I've seen it do so in the past. Where people found themselves having to reify it (in other words come up for reasons why it worked like that in-world), with some pretty degenerate results (aka characters who acted like they knew they could take more damage, because acting like that wasn't true in character while it clearly was out of character was exactly the same sort of dissonance they had with metacurrancy.)

I'm sorry, but I am having a hard time parsing this.

The GM could do that with metacurrancy, too; it just requires the players to wall off what they know from what the player knows. If they can't or don't want to do one, the other seems no more easy.

Metacurrency can mean a lot of things, altering the world in-play cannot be done without it being clear that the world is altering.

However, systems with less blatant stylized, abstracted, honestly war-game derived mechanics can at least be closer.

Which systems do you have in mind?

People can juggle chainsaws and not get cut too.

But if I see someone starting to throw chainsaws in the air, I'm going to be concerned that they are doing something dangerous that could seriously backfire.

Equating a way that people like to roleplay (ie; actor stance, imagining themselves as a fighter, etc.) to this sort of thing is just not good.

Besides, while going out on a date is living in the moment, playing a game where you decide your character goes on a date is a step removed and far more likely to be understood as "crafting a story"

Not to the person who is imagining themselves as that character, it just doesn't make sense for them to call what they are doing "working at crafting a story". Because they aren't, the story is a happy byproduct at most.

When the DM asks "What do you do" after the King is shot by assassins, then you are in part crafting a story.

No, you are only crafting a story if you are considering it. Crafting denotes intent at the very least.

The story can be framed as "what would Jason (the player) do" or "What would Robpierre (the character) do" but there is still a narrative going on and being followed as a fundamental part of the gameplay loop.

As has been mentioned, anything can be turned into a story and/or a narrative. My point is that; "working together to craft a story" is NOT the same as; "playing a game without consideration to the story, that happens to be easier to view as a story than a game of go-fish." And also, though I never made the point here, there are TONS of storytelling games these days and they are great, and tons of ttrpgs that focus on storytelling, and it's easy to play D&D with focus on storytelling it just isn't necessary.

 

[Don Durito]

Metacurrencies don't generally alter the world.

Rather they tend to define parts of the world that were previously in an undefined state (sort of like Schordingers cat).

Basically they answer a question.

If I'm need to get to an archer on the balcony in traditional play I might ask the GM "is there a crate I can jump off next to the wall to grab a hold of balcony". The GM can then decide yes or no (or let the dice decide - although thats more of an old school approach, as for some reason, modern games tend not to like true randomness).

A metacurrency is just a way of giving a player a limited way to answer that question (and can often be vetoed by the GM anyway.)

For example:
Player A: I spend a plot point to say that there's a crate next to the wall so that I can attempt to jump up to the balcony.
GM: I'm going to spend a plot point to cancel that. These guys are professionals and they had time to scout out the location before the ambush, there may have been a crate but it's been removed now.

In this case the metacurrency rules just provide the means to answer the question "Is there a crate?".

Using metacurrencies in this way slight alters the stance of the player toward the world and they are not entirely interacting with the game world soley through their character any more - and I'm sympathetic to the fact that for some players that matters a lot, but they are not actively altering the game world - previously established facts are not being changed. (Well there may be games where you can do that, but generally you can't).

 

[FrogReaver]

If there are different roles, there's roleplay. Maybe there's no improvisational method-acting that develops, but improvisational method-acting is playacting, not roleplaying.

Weird. I didn’t know football was roleplaying. Who would have thought roleplaying was so mainstream...

 

[loverdrive]

The idea that your particular corner of the hobby gets to say what counts as a roleplaying game on site dedicated to the greater hobby is bumpkiss. It was bumpkiss when John Wick tried to do it. It's still bumpkiss.

I personally wouldn't say such things about John Wick. At least when there are pencils nearby.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Really? Because I struggle to see how they could even be considered similar. Remembering that the preference being valued is something along the lines of "I want to inhabit my character in a world I can imagine is a real place.". If I know I or another player can declare things into or out of existence and it happens in play regularly then it's blatantly obvious that the world is subject to whim. As opposed to the default D&D method where I need not know how much fidelity the world has or where it is lacking. Why would imagining a world where a 5th level fighter is much harder to defeat be a problem from this perspective?

I'm sorry, but I am having a hard time parsing this.

The "real place" where you can fall 80' and get up, injured but still fulling functional? The "real place" where an attack that will kill a dinosaur leaves you alive pretty reliably?

That's the gig here; a lot of D&Disms only make sense as game abstractions of fairly stylized genre assumptions. If you push on them (and this applies to magic too, but its muddied here because it turns more on how much you're prone to press on magic) they don't make sense, unless you assume the world works vastly differently than ours or look the other way about the places it doesn't--and if you can do that with these, you can do that with metacurrencies that do the same thing.

Metacurrency can mean a lot of things, altering the world in-play cannot be done without it being clear that the world is altering.


Which systems do you have in mind?

Most of the BRP derivatives come to mind, but there are others like GURPS and the like too, that on a base level try to avoid telling you counterfactuals outside of overtly supernatural phenomenon. Heck, if GURPS is too complicated a case for you, drop back to TFT.

You can, of course, do this other ways where you actually bake the D&Disms into the setting like Earthdawn did--but that also requires people to stop accepting their characters as just highly skilled people, too. D&D tries to have its cake and eat it here, and the same kind of people who are going to press on things like metacurrency are about as likely to press on things like how disconnected from any sort of reality the D&D combat system is (and likely, how little impact the magic system has on the setting for what it seems like it should, but that's on a whole different level).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Metacurrencies don't generally alter the world.

Rather they tend to define parts of the world that were previously in an undefined state (sort of like Schordingers cat).

Eh. It turns heavily on how you view "alters the world." A lot of metacurrencies will let you, for example, reroll a roll or create objects in a scene that have not previous been indicated as being in the scene. From some points of view, both of those are world alterations. Some people are bothered by the latter, some by either.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Of course. Hence, "arguably."


And you're missing my point. As soon as D&D was about dungeon-delving (which is to say, from the very first), it was a roleplaying game. It couldn't be otherwise. The mere fact of controlling one minifig as "your character" made it so. You don't have to personally identify with the character or give them a personality to play the role (i.e. "fighting man" as opposed to "magic-user" or "cleric")—you just have to control the character/figure.

I was reading the Art and Arcana book I got for Christmas a few days ago.

Are you aware of the original point of monster filled dungeons in Chainmail? It seems like it was for them to send squads down into the dungeon to fight monsters and gather loot to bring back to improve their kingdoms and armies. And I do mean squads, it seems each individual player sent their own squad down before they realized they could have all their leaders go down together.

So, the Dungeons came before the "single figure as your character", at least according to what I read.

 

[Chaosmancer]

?

It's not the game described in the rulebooks = 100% fact. True.
Personally = opinion.
In my opinion = opinion.
How is him stating a fact and then his opinion implying he believes there is a true way?

I see you didn't highlight him calling that style of DnD a "D&D based board game", because we were talking about hack and slash megadungeons. Not even necessarily ones with no DM, but he found the very concept of a hack and slash megadungeon with few or no NPCs where you simply fight monsters and take their stuff "not the game described in the rulebooks"


I think that is false. I think that is so provably false that the very idea of it being true is ludicrous. Is it my preferred style of play? No. But that doesn't make it not DnD.


But hey, it is okay to judge other people's way of playing the game as long as you say "in my opnion" first right? That isn't saying that there is only one true way to play the game, just that in your opinion any way that doesn't fit your vision of how the game shouldn't work isn't actually playing the game.


Of course, since I'll be accused of twisting words and lying and all that, let me just go ahead and quote myself here so I can point out how, no, I'm not lying. Yes, I did say these things, and if Oofta misunderstood, well, I believe the recently shut down thread everyone was saying that misunderstanding would be entirely on him.

My Post

sigh

Of course DnD is more than that. I actually don't personally like mega-dungeon hack and slash games.

But the point I was originally countering was "It is impossible to play DnD without a DM"

Well, a hack and slash, kick down the door, kill the monster, take their stuff, repeat style game is still DnD. Might not be our favorite, but DnD it still is.


Now, if you want to say that it is impossible to play DnD in the style you prefer without a DM... then I'd say of course it is impossible. Because your style was built and predicated on the role of the DM existing.

Analogies are often in adequate, but if someone said to me "It is impossible to play soccer without a referee" I'd tell them they were wrong, if they said "It is impossible to hold the FIFA World Cup Soccer Tournament without a referee" well... I'd say they are right.

The game is bigger than one style though.

Note I start out with agreeing with his point before this post, that DnD is more than Dungeon Crawling for a lot of people.

I reiterate the original point of contention (that DnD cannot be played with a DM) and then follow up with the current point of contention (that a hack and slash, megadungeon with few or no NPCs is still DnD). I want to highlight this, because there were two different points. There was the point that Hack and slash games can be played with No DM, but that point was challenged, quite a few times, by claims that Hack and Slash games are not DnD. This post was about that second point.

I then offer a concession, that if Oofta's point is not to say that it is impossible to play DnD, but merely it is impossible to play DnD in the style he prefers, that of course he is right, because his style relies on the existence of a DM.

And I finish with reiterating the major point, that I figured no one could contest. That DnD is larger than one single style of play.

Oofta's response? Well, I'll do some highlighting this time

If it's still D&D to you, fine. It's not the game as described by the rulebooks. I would not personally consider what you've described as D&D. In my opinion it's a glorified ad-hoc board game using D&D stats. The game is flexible, but at a certain point it stops being D&D. I have a D&D based board game on my shelf, I don't call it D&D. If you have fun with what you're playing go for it.

But I'm done talking about this, I don't see what it has to do with the thread.

His first sentence acknowledges my point about styles. "If that is still DnD to you". So he has accepted that fact that we are discussing the hack and slash style of game.

I would again contend that "hack and slash, kick down the door, kill the monster, take their stuff, repeat" is actually DnD, as described by the books. Sure, it removes some other things described by the books, but kicking down doors, killing monsters, taking their stuff, that is classic DnD.

Oofta then calls this style, because he did accept that I was talking about a style,

1) Not DnD as described by the rules
2) Not DnD
3) a "Glorified Ad-Hoc Boardgame" (which is derogatory, in case you can't tell)
4) Not DnD
5) A DnD Board game, and not DnD

I know that gets repetitive, but I wanted to highly that he said four times it wasn't DnD (oh sorry, in his opinion, can't forget that since it forgives his one-true-wayism) and a Board game twice.


So, since this was a rather blatant example of claiming that a way to play DnD was wrong, and Oofta has often voraciously defended himself with claims of "but that is just my opionion, everyone can enjoy the game the way they want" and "there is no one true way, everyones preferences are equal" and ect ect ect. I took a rather harsh stance against that.