D&D General Can we talk about best practices?

[UngainlyTitan]

@pemerton Thank you that was illuminating.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I don't see how this is any different from traditional RPGing. In What is Dungeons & Dragons, published in the early 80s by Puffin Books, it was assumed that the players would author this sort of backstory for their PCs.

Do many people approach PC backstory with the premise that a player must rely on the GM to establish this sort of information about immediate relatives?

What I was referring to is the bit where the player declares that his/her PC hopes to meet his/her brother, having returned to their old stomping grounds. In some RPGs, there are ways of resolving this that do not depend upon largely unconstrained GM decision-making.


My point is that BW has a system for resolving the action declaration Having returned to our homeland, I hope to meet my brother - the PC has a rating in Circles, there are rules for setting the obstacle, the check is made, and if it succeeds the meeting takes place while if it fails the GM establishes an adverse consequence which (i) follows from the established fiction and (ii) maintains pressure on the PC's (player-authored) Beliefs, Instincts and Traits.

5e D&D has no system for resolving that action declaration, other than the GM deciding whether or not a meeting takes place. Or deciding whether or not to tell the player clues about the brother's location. Or deciding to roll a d% and have the brother show up on a 66+. Or . . . (Some Backgrounds might be relevant here; but nothing I read online about 5e play makes me think that Backgrounds are a very prominent feature in typical 5e games.)

Upthread, you said "Not having explicit control of the fiction does not equate to having to wait for the DM to tell you things." I responded that "5e D&D has no canonical procedure for resolving [the declaration of hope to meet the PC's brother, upon having returned to the homeland], other than the player asking the GM."

And I stand by what I said. The player does have to wait for the GM to tell him/her things. And of course this generalises beyond hoping to meet one's brother. I seem to recall that the Captain of the Guards in this town has a fondness for black lotus. Or Isn't this where Evard's Tower is located? Or We'll enter the palace via a secret way. Or . . . There's no other process beyond Be told by the GM - and you haven't pointed to one - for this or for any other statement of hope or intent or belief about the PC's encounters with other elements of the gameworld.

EDIT: To bring this back on-topic, given the fact that, in 5e D&D, the process for this sort of thing is that the GM decides, then advice on best practice would be upfront about this and discuss how to do it. Eg what's a good structure, in 5e D&D, for the GM to determine whether or not a desired encounter takes place? (In 4e D&D this could have been done via a skill challenge, and the example of a skill challenge in the Compendium gets close to showing how it might be adjudicated. What does the 5e analogue look like?)

D&D isn't BW, obviously. I wouldn't approach Paranoia with the same mentality as Fate and expect that to work.

I suppose if you just write in your background that you hope to meet your brother et al, the DM might ignore it. Of course, if the DM established this as a narrative focused campaign and does so, they're acting in bad faith. Moreover, they're not being smart, since you (the player) just dropped the equivalent of a heap of gold into their lap. If you're trying to run a narrative focused campaign, you should definitely not ignore when a player hands you anything resembling a reasonable story hook (best practice).

On the other hand, if this is an old school dungeon crawl and you drop that into your background, then yes, it's absolutely up to the DM whether or not to engage with that, because that's not typically a default expectation in an old school dungeon crawl.

Which is why it's good to establish such expectations in a session zero (best practice).

 

[UngainlyTitan]

D&D isn't BW, obviously. I wouldn't approach Paranoia with the same mentality as Fate and expect that to work.

I suppose if you just write in your background that you hope to meet your brother et al, the DM might ignore it. Of course, if the DM established this as a narrative focused campaign and does so, they're acting in bad faith. Moreover, they're not being smart, since you (the player) just dropped the equivalent of a heap of gold into their lap. If you're trying to run a narrative focused campaign, you should definitely not ignore when a player hands you anything resembling a reasonable story hook (best practice).

On the other hand, if this is an old school dungeon crawl and you drop that into your background, then yes, it's absolutely up to the DM whether or not to engage with that, because that's not typically a default expectation in an old school dungeon crawl.

Which is why it's good to establish such expectations in a session zero (best practice).

So we have session 0 and paying attention to player provided character background in narrative leaning games. Are there mechanics we can borrow from other systems that are not too disruptive to allow player narrative injection to a game in progress?

 

[Mort]

So we have session 0 and paying attention to player provided character background in narrative leaning games. Are there mechanics we can borrow from other systems that are not too disruptive to allow player narrative injection to a game in progress?

I think the answer is almost certainly yes.

But the bigger question to ask at session 0 is do the players WANT any narrative injection into the game. It's often surprising how many players are vehemently against themselves or any other player having narrative control.

 

[Fanaelialae]

So we have session 0 and paying attention to player provided character background in narrative leaning games. Are there mechanics we can borrow from other systems that are not too disruptive to allow player narrative injection to a game in progress?

Yeah, absolutely! There are 3P products out there designed to do exactly this (I'm not really familiar with most of them, apart from the Luck deck I mentioned in the other thread), and I seem to recall a few threads here on the subject as well (along the lines of adding Fate traits to D&D, though I don't remember the details).

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I think the answer is almost certainly yes.

But the bigger question to ask at session 0 is do the players WANT any narrative injection into the game. It's often surprising how many players are vehemently against themselves or any other player having narrative control.

That is fine and to be honest, I think there are plenty of stuff out there outlining best practice for sandboxing and 'plot' driven adventure paths
but you what to run a mechanically supported narrative game, or even a fairly traditional investigative/diplomacy game where the bard player cannot string a sentence together when put on the spot and the most charismatic player wants to play a grunting barbarian.

So I guess what I am saying, What I have seen online are obvious tips about the social management of the player, advice in procedural game play, module design but a meaningful discussion of "best Practice" to my mind means bet practice towards some gameplay orientation.

Sandbox and AP type play are fairly covered but it one wants to drift toward a more player narrative control game, what is best practice? Should it include additional mechanical support.

What about investigative game? etc.?

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Yeah, absolutely! There are 3P products out there designed to do exactly this (I'm not really familiar with most of them, apart from the Luck deck I mentioned in the other thread), and I seem to recall a few threads here on the subject as well (along the lines of adding Fate traits to D&D, though I don't remember the details).

Could you point me out to some of them? Thanks

 

[Fanaelialae]

Could you point me out to some of them? Thanks

Frankly, they're not really my area of interest. I prefer narrative control to be rules lite or freeform, so beefy narrative mechanics are only really interesting to me in regards to curiosity about their design. I tend to glance over them and move on.

That said, here's a blog I found (quick Google search) about combining Fate aspects with d20:

Aspects, Fate and D&D

I’ve always thought that aspects were pretty easy to roll into d20. Just define a currency (there are a lot of different versions of action points) and toss em in there, say, one every level …

www.evilhat.com

As for products, the only one I'm familiar enough to recommend is the Nord Games luck deck which has a variety of benefits, including automatic successes and (everyone's favorite card) Fortuitous Circumstance (which does exactly what the name suggests).

 

[hawkeyefan]

Just a note that there's an additional possibility here: that the GM has not previously decided. He may decide on the fly, or he may make a secret check for the search roll first (because it may well not matter whether one is there or not if no one finds it). It can be a slightly odd approach, but its not beyond what I've done in on-the-fly GMing on occasion.

Yes, this is true. It's also one of the things that makes D&D...particularly 5E...kind of hard to discuss at times. It's so amorphous that there are always exceptions, and all exceptions must be considered to be as valid as all others. Hence the mention of the Plot Points from the DMG as evidence that D&D can do more narrative style play.

So many people defend 5E from perfectly valid criticisms based on the version they play, which has been tweaked a bit to suit them, rather than defending what is actually written or presented in the books.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That is fine and to be honest, I think there are plenty of stuff out there outlining best practice for sandboxing and 'plot' driven adventure paths
but you what to run a mechanically supported narrative game, or even a fairly traditional investigative/diplomacy game where the bard player cannot string a sentence together when put on the spot and the most charismatic player wants to play a grunting barbarian.

So I guess what I am saying, What I have seen online are obvious tips about the social management of the player, advice in procedural game play, module design but a meaningful discussion of "best Practice" to my mind means bet practice towards some gameplay orientation.

Sandbox and AP type play are fairly covered but it one wants to drift toward a more player narrative control game, what is best practice? Should it include additional mechanical support.

What about investigative game? etc.?

Are you talking narrative mechanics in 5e? Because as has been mentioned earlier, that's not really what D&D is designed for. There are plenty of fantasy games that are, however.