D&D General Can we talk about best practices?

[Fanaelialae]

But if [X] it didn't contribute to [Y] at all, can it really be said that they used [X]?

Yeah, a hammer is a sufficient tool for building a house of cards... I didn't really touch the hammer, but still, it didn't get in the way!

In another thread, someone actually mentioned the optional Plot Points rule on DMG 269. I had completely forgotten about it!

Given that rule, I'd say that 5e has fairly decent (albeit optional) narrative support. Obviously, if that's the style of game you want to run and you don't use that rule (or some alternative) then that's really on you.

Still nowhere near Fate levels of support, of course, but significantly more than I recollected.

 

[Mort]

In another thread, someone actually mentioned the optional Plot Points rule on DMG 269. I had completely forgotten about it!

Given that rule, I'd say that 5e has fairly decent (albeit optional) narrative support. Obviously, if that's the style of game you want to run and you don't use that rule (or some alternative) then that's really on you.

Still nowhere near Fate levels of support, of course, but significantly more than I recollected.

Right. I hadn't even known this optional rule existed, must have skipped right over it. One aspect of having played so many editions is that you just assume you know what's in the DMG and tend to miss stuff like this.

 

[Umbran]

I still don't agree with negligible.

Okay, but maybe you'd want to delve into what "negligible" means, seeing as it is a subjective assessment, rather than an absolute one?

Or are you simply more interested in asserting your personal assessment? That'd be okay, but folks would want to know.

Simply by being an RPG, 5e benefits from the narrative tools that all RPGs share

But, isn't that kind of like saying skateboards are rapid transit, since they have wheels?

Or, maybe here's a better approach - can you list the narrative tools that all RPGs share? At least some of them, so we know what you are referring to in that otherwise vague and undefined bundle?

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

I don't know that they're synonymous, but I don't that you can entirely disconnect them either, unless the GMing style is so loose that what game system is used is mostly irrelevant.

I would never completely separate them-- your system has to be capable of running the kind of story, or easily modified to tell the kind of story you want to, but there's a vast amount of space to be had without disconnecting them in my eyes, likely more than some of my peers here would suggest.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Okay, but maybe you'd want to delve into what "negligible" means, seeing as it is a subjective assessment, rather than an absolute one?

Or are you simply more interested in asserting your personal assessment? That'd be okay, but folks would want to know.



But, isn't that kind of like saying skateboards are rapid transit, since they have wheels?

Or, maybe here's a better approach - can you list the narrative tools that all RPGs share? At least some of them, so we know what you are referring to in that otherwise vague and undefined bundle?

I think Plot Points (DMG 269) renders this line of inquiry rather moot.

That said, I'm not sure that the presence or absence of rules can be said to be anything other than objective fact. Either the rule exists or it doesn't (whether or not anyone recollects it's existence).

However, whether or not something is negligible is essentially subjective. We're not talking about a chemical analysis, where the presence of some substance will or won't bias certain test results based on concentration. We're examining game rules, so obviously there's a significant subjective element. Which isn't to say that certain claims can't be questioned. It's certainly subjective, but I don't think it's reasonable to claim that Monopoly supports a narrative focus as well as an RPG does. Just for starters, an RPG has an expectation of narrative, unlike Monopoly. Whether that is a heavily plotted narrative, an emergent narrative, or something in between.

(And lest you make this about narrative games, I will remind everyone once again that I was not claiming that 5e was a narrative game in the same sense that Fate is - I literally stated in multiple posts that it is not - I was using the terms narrative oriented and narrative focused to distinguish this; I'm unfamiliar with a better common term for my meaning. You can use narrative tools without having a narrative game. Narrative games just have a more developed narrative toolset than other RPGs. I would define a narrative oriented game as making the most of the existing toolset, as opposed to something like an old school dungeon crawl where the narrative only exists in retrospect.)

I think my earlier post (about how the knight errant would tell the DM he is going to look for his brother) illustrates the narrative toolset that RPGs share. There could be more collaboration, obviously, but I think this is a sufficient example to grasp my meaning.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Plot points seems pretty brutal and do not have a dispute resolution mechanic.

A secret door appears where none previously existed or a hidden diary that reveals the bad guys plot suddenly.

Are there other approaches to this, and what would they look like.

 

[pemerton]

"Hey DM, I've been on my errantry the past 5 years but I'm back now. I'm going to look for my brother to find out what happened to my family's ancestral estate."

Depending on the group dynamic, you might of course want to get the group's consent first, if this has the potential to be a lengthy investigation.

You could even throw in, "The last I'd heard, my brother was running a profitable shipping business down by the docks in this city and he'd started doing business with some criminal types, which is what lead me to part ways on bad terms with him. I've also been sending money this whole time to a tavern girl he knocked up but never acknowledged, so she might know his whereabouts, provided she's still here."

This is exactly what I said - the player asking the GM. If that's what you mean by player-driven, well fair enough. But to me that's still GM-driven: the GM is deciding and curating the content of the shared fiction.

You also refer to a lengthy investigation. You don't actually say how that would be resolved in play, but I get the strong impression that it is to be resolved by a whole lot of further askings of the GM by the player.

I chose this particular example because it is something that I've actually done in play, using Burning Wheel as the system and Circles as the mechanic for resolving the action declaration I hope to meet my brother.

This sort of contrast between D&D and some other systems is why I think, when it comes to D&D (or at least 5e D&D), a discussion of best practices would begin by advising the GM that they need to have a good chunk of fiction ready to go. Because the game has no processes for introducing new elements into the fiction other than the GM doing it.

 

[pemerton]

Ok, I am not familiar with narrative game mechanics, (My players are not interested) but my understanding is, that in narrative games: There is a formal process where a player (not the DM) can propose a narrative and the DM, perhaps others) can accept or contest that narrative and if they contest the narrative then mechanical resolution decides whether the proposed narrative is accepted entirely or with modification in to the fiction of the game.

Plot points seems pretty brutal and do not have a dispute resolution mechanic.

A secret door appears where none previously existed or a hidden diary that reveals the bad guys plot suddenly.

Are there other approaches to this, and what would they look like.

I don't think "narrative game" is a term of art.

"Narrativism" is a term of art in a certain RPGing subculture, namely, The Forge and those who still use their jargon. In that sense, it is glossed as "story now" and is contrasted with "story before" (eg most post-DL modules for D&D, which have a built-in plot) and "story after" (the OSR-ish idea that there is no story to play until after the event, when you tell war stories).

"Story now" RPGing needs systems and processes that allow meaningful (in a literary or artistic sense) questions/conflicts to be posed and answered through play. Eg in a 4e D&D game this might be Is a Dusk War inevitable, or can it be averted? In systems like Burning Wheel or Apocalypse World, normally the concerns of play might be more personal or intimate, like Can Thurgon liberate his family estate from its degradation while staying true to the ideals of his order?

The more that resolution is dependent on the GM making stuff up, the harder it is to get "story now" play - because really we're just finding out what the GM thinks. The GM isn't him-/herself "discovering" the story just as the players are.

Player-side stipulations (which sounds like what D&D 5e plot points are, judging from your post) are not particularly relevant to "story now" play either. OGL Conan has them (called Fate Points) but is a system that aims pretty much at traditional GM-storytelling play as far as I can tell. Burning Wheel doesn't have them, but is one of the better-known "story now" systems.

One thing that is fairly distinctive about Burning Wheel is that it deals with many of the same tropes as classic FRPGing, but it uses different techniques. In D&D, as traditionally played, the action declaration I attack the Orc is resolved as a check - and if successful, the upshot may well be that the shared fiction includes a dead Orc; but the action declaration I search for a secret door is first filtered through a GM decision as to whether or not a secret door is present in the location being searched. Only after the GM answers "yes" at that filtering stage might a check then be called for. BW treats both action declarations the same: if the check to find the secret door succeeds, the PC finds a secret door as desired; if it fails, then some adverse consequence (that follows from the established fiction) ensues.

The same process applies to the declaration Having returned to my ancestral estate, I hope to meet my brother.

These mechanics don't magically give you "story now" RPGing. But they help support it, because they allow players a much greater degree of capacity to contribute to the shared fiction, and thereby to drive the direction of play. If these sorts of checks succeed, things move in the direction the players hoped for their PCs. If they fail, then adverse things happen which follow from the established fiction, including the declared check, and hence have immediate thematic relevance. So the vagaries of dice rolls means we get an ebb-and-flow of success and failure, but all thematically related to the PCs' (and players') aspirations. Ie we get story now, in play, without anyone having to author it.

There are "story now" oriented RPGs that don't include these sorts of mechanics (eg Prince Valiant) but they use other devices to ensure thematic relevance and avoid having the direction of play depend upon GM exegesis of pre-authored fiction.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Plot points seems pretty brutal and do not have a dispute resolution mechanic.

A secret door appears where none previously existed or a hidden diary that reveals the bad guys plot suddenly.

Are there other approaches to this, and what would they look like.

I know you didn’t ask me, and I’m far from an expert, but I’ll try and summarize a bit. I come to this topic as someone who played D&D or very similar games almost exclusively for many years, and only in the last few years have I branched out into games that function differently.

So to take your example of the secret door, there are a few ways this may be handled differently from how D&D does it. In D&D, the existence of a secret door is determined ahead of time, and is only revealed if the players have their characters perform some action (typically a search) and that action succeeds.

Another more narrative style game may leave the presence of a secret door undetermined. Very often such games won’t have a map and key element like D&D. Perhaps a player has his character search the library of an old manor house. He rolls a success! The GM takes into consideration genre conventions and previously established fiction and player intent, and then the GM determines what is found through the successful search, which very well may be a secret door revealed by a sliding bookcase. What's down the secret passage? It's undetermined at this point....the players and the GM are learning together.

There are other ways….different games will handle this kind of thing in different ways, some subtly different and others drastically so. But typically, the determination of what is there is not left solely to the GM. Player intent and the dice are big factors, along with genre, established fiction, and GM judgment.

The games that typically get labeled as “narrative games” very often limit the amount of control or the scope of control that the GM has. There are processes that must be followed to determine these things, much as D&D has a process for the players to follow (1- be in a room with a secret door present, 2- declare that your character will search the room, 3- roll well enough to discover the secret door).

That’s just a quick take. I’m sure someone with more experience with these types of games can clarify further, or maybe offer a more specific example with a specific game in mind.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Plot points seems pretty brutal and do not have a dispute resolution mechanic.

A secret door appears where none previously existed or a hidden diary that reveals the bad guys plot suddenly.

Are there other approaches to this, and what would they look like.

This clunks hard within the normal framework of 5e. In fact, as a fan of narrative games, this system causes more harm that good.

Specifically, what this system does is give very powerful fictional authoring tools to players in a situation where the GM is expected to have prepared materials to play. As such, the changes the players introduce are disruptive to the rest of the play of the game -- they do not compliment the GM's prepared material, they force the GM to alter it, and quite likely a lot of it, at the drop of a hat. Unless the GM is already winging it, of course, which is fine, but it's odd that an optional rule is presented as if it applies equally to all games.

This, honestly, gives narrative games a poor name if this is the only exposure people have to the concept, largely because it's so disruptive. I'm a fan of narrative games, and I'm also taking the caveat in the rulebook and never, ever using this system in my games. I have other options I can exercise to do a better job enabling narrativism.