D&D 5E Respect Mah Authoritah: Thoughts on DM and Player Authority in 5e

[hawkeyefan]

In either case, while mechanics are used they're not narrated. What's narrated after a round worth of rolling is the father chopping off one tentacle while two others grab him and try to haul him out of the boat, meanwhile the daughter screams and hides under the thwart (and-or maybe inexplicably vanishes from view, if she uses her diminution ability/potion) and other tentacles flail away.

The inclusion of mechanics doesn't replace standard narration. It's typically in addition to the narration. The GM's still going to describe the events of play, they're just going to add in the meaningful and relevant mechanical bits.

Another reason to play it out round by round is that while the players don't see the DM's die rolls they do - or should - get a play-by-play narration from the DM as things proceed; which may prompt the players to have their PCs intervene quickly or slowly or not at all, depending how things go.

I quoted this bit, because I think there's a useful bit in here.

Why would the players not see the GM's rolls?

To me, that's a really basic summary of the larger discussion about player facing mechanics. Why hide rolls? There may be more than one reason, but the relevant one is so that the players don't know the result of the roll....which will allow a GM to decide the result as he likes without their knowledge.

Rolling in the open means he cannot do that (or at least it becomes much more difficult to do it) without the players knowing.

This is the advantage of player facing mechanics/processes at the most fundamental. Do things in the open, and you can't hide them.

It's that the specific information has been shared, where that specific information wouldn't yet be known in the fiction.

When you've never seen any of the father, daughter, or Kraken before and thus have no idea what makes any of them tick beyond the obvious (e.g. she's small, the beast has tentacles and can swim), why do you expect to be told exactly what their mechanics are?

I don't quite see it that way. The PCs see the father and daughter struggling on the boat, they see the kraken's tentacles attacking, they see kraken in the distance, an obviously enormous creature with just a part of it breaking the surface.

In seeing these things, the characters would have a sense of the danger and the scope of the creature and the capabilities of the father and the traits that the little girl would have. Do the characters know them precisely? No. But sharing that information with the players informs the players of information that the characters would know.

Is it more precise than what the characters know? At times, it may be, yes. Does that make it "meta"? My guess would be that for you it would be. And yet my counter would be that me having to rely on someone else's imprecise language to describe the scene would render me much less informed than the character would be, and therefore is far more meta.

The father, for example, could be a common-joe fisher or a 3rd-level Fighter in the army or a 12th-level Wizard who's retired to raise his kid; but until he does something other than row a boat you have no way of telling.

No, he was described as a soldier. Clearly, he appears to be a soldier, and likely has a weapon that he's using, and the PCs see how he wields it. There absolutely is a way of telling.

The daughter could be a polymorphed demon that the father has just summoned the Kraken to devour; you can't tell.

Oh stop it. That could be true of everything all the time, so therefore nothing is certain!!!

Such exteme hypotheticals are useless.

And in older editions where illusion spells were actually useful, the whole damn scene could be somebody's afternoon entertainment.

Somebody's, I suppose.

I don't see these things as an either-or. I generally prefer the mechanics stay out of sight until they're forced to rear their ugly heads, but I also tend to dislike being railroaded and can usually tell if-when it's happening.

This insistence that folks keep putting forth that they know when they're being railroaded is interesting. I agree that at times it can be incredibly easy to notice. Some railroading is very obvious. But some is not. Some is very subtle, and more a product of the system working as designed than as anything the GM is actively doing.

I'm less concerned about the obvious stuff, because in most cases it's obvious (obviously!) but also because typically that's an example of poor GMing (except in those cases where the players may be aware of it and have accepted it).

But in cases where maybe a GM has an idea in his head about how things should go, and then everything goes that way largely because there's nothing about the rules or processes that act as a check against that.....those are more what I'm on guard for, as a GM and as a player. I don't want to do that to my players, and I generally don't want that going on when I'm playing.

Hence the preference for player facing rules and procedures. If a GM rolls openly, if they openly share DCs and similar game elements, then I am more comfortable that they are not forcing things towards some preconceived idea. It's not so much that it's an either/or as it just lessens the chance.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

This insistence that folks keep putting forth that they know when they're being railroaded is interesting. I agree that at times it can be incredibly easy to notice. Some railroading is very obvious. But some is not. Some is very subtle, and more a product of the system working as designed than as anything the GM is actively doing.

I mean if I don't feel railroaded it is because I am not, or because I am but the GM hides is so well that all seems organic. As my experience is the same either way, I don't really know why it would matter which it is.

I'm less concerned about the obvious stuff, because in most cases it's obvious (obviously!) but also because typically that's an example of poor GMing (except in those cases where the players may be aware of it and have accepted it).

Yes. Obvious railroading is bad GMing.

But in cases where maybe a GM has an idea in his head about how things should go, and then everything goes that way largely because there's nothing about the rules or processes that act as a check against that.....those are more what I'm on guard for, as a GM and as a player. I don't want to do that to my players, and I generally don't want that going on when I'm playing.

Why? This is a genuine honest question.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think @Lanefan has already explained his very effectively. The example given assumes characters having rather bizarre level of perfect knowledge of situation. It also prevents them learning the situation organically like a real person would.

Do you think that learning things through a cypher is organic? Everything the player knows about the situation comes from the GM, right? Their choices of description and narration and so on. Do you expect that most GM's can convey to a player the same level of specificity as their character would have actually observing the scene?

Does the specificity sometimes mean player knowledge is more precise than character knowledge? Yes, it may at times. But generally speaking, I would say that concern is minimal compared to my concern over providing enough accurate information for the player to make truly informed decisions for their character.

Having to constantly revisit things with the GM to confirm what my character knows doesn't feel organic to me at all.

The last bit was more about the the whole topic of the whole thread, more than about this specific example. And yeah, I don't get the obsession about thought policing the GM. Think less about what the GM thinks and more about what your character would think.

Thought policing is an odd term to use. Is the GM thought policing the players when he expects them to stick to the rules and follow the established procedures of the game?

I prefer games that place limits on what a GM can do. This is as both a GM and a player. How things turn out is much more out of my hands as a GM than it is in games that don't do this, or that do it less frequently.

If I'm playing in a game, I like to know the rules of the game, and how the different participants are expected to perform or take part. I don't think that's being obsessive. It's wanting to be informed.

Yes, these are things in 4. What they have to do with player agency? Anyone can list random things from a game.

They're not random. They're the mechanics of the game, which have been designed. The GM makes a decision to share them. They matter to the resolution of the challenge that's being presented.

What makes you think they're random?

I mean if I don't feel railroaded it is because I am not, or because I am but the GM hides is so well that all seems organic. As my experience is the same either way, I don't really know why it would matter which it is.

If your spouse cheats on you obviously, that's bad, but if they do it carefully and you never learn about it, then it's okay?

Honestly, it's about expectations of the participants. If folks are indifferent to how the game works, and they just want to be there and follow the GM's story and occasionally roll some dice, okay cool. Railroad away, GM, and know that you're not in the wrong.

But since the topic is about authority distribution among players and GMs in games, I would expect most people commenting here care about it. Discussing these things can help people understand better what they'd like from a game, and how they want to GM and to play. A lot of these discussions have benefited me greatly. They've helped crystalize my thoughts and spend actual time considering what I like and don't like.

Yes. Obvious railroading is bad GMing.

I would say that if obvious railroading is bad, then so is secret railroading. Either would seem to subvert the expectations of play in the sense that what the players declare actually matters.

Why? This is a genuine honest question.

Because I want to be surprised by what happens, not just tick off a box on a checklist when the players get to that spot in the story that I've written.

I'm much more enthused as a GM when I'm not in control of things. When I'm as in the dark about how things will go as the players. When I don't presuppose ideas about how problems are solved. I want that stuff to come from what the players do. They make the call, and the dice tell us how it goes. My job is to act as a bit of an intermediary there.

As a player, I want to feel like any specific game session is different because I was there. That if you took me out and swapped in someone else, things would go differently. And I don't mean like oh the party went left instead of right.

I don't just want to be one of the characters in the story, I want the story to be that of my character.

These are generally my feelings about it. It does shift a bit based on what game I'm playing and with whom. Some games are far more suited to it than others. But overall, within whatever confines a game may have, the above is mostly what I'm striving for.

When I GM 5e, I try to bring as much of that to the fore as possible. It's not as easy to do as it is with games that are specifically designed to do that.

When I play 5e, I attempt to do that as well. I find this is much harder to do because most GMs don't operate with that mindset because they aren't really encouraged to do so, the rules aren't really written with the intent that they do so, and most players don't really play with the expectation that they do so. Which I think your comments drive home pretty clearly.

So if I may ask that you return the favor; why? Why do you take parts in these discussions if you're not really concerned with how a game distributes authority or in how it's used or misused?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

If your spouse cheats on you obviously, that's bad, but if they do it carefully and you never learn about it, then it's okay?

In real life objective truth exist. In fiction it doesn't. In fiction the truth is what we are told.

Honestly, it's about expectations of the participants. If folks are indifferent to how the game works, and they just want to be there and follow the GM's story and occasionally roll some dice, okay cool. Railroad away, GM, and know that you're not in the wrong.

But since the topic is about authority distribution among players and GMs in games, I would expect most people commenting here care about it. Discussing these things can help people understand better what they'd like from a game, and how they want to GM and to play. A lot of these discussions have benefited me greatly. They've helped crystalize my thoughts and spend actual time considering what I like and don't like.

What I am trying to do is take things to the level at which they're actually experienced. When GMing it is important to recognise how things actually appear/seem/feel to the players. In these discussions a lot of people seem to talk things about some omniscient objective perspective. But that is not what the players experience.

I would say that if obvious railroading is bad, then so is secret railroading. Either would seem to subvert the expectations of play in the sense that what the players declare actually matters.

But again, if the player feel that what they declared mattered, how is it different from their perspective?

Because I want to be surprised by what happens, not just tick off a box on a checklist when the players get to that spot in the story that I've written.

I'm much more enthused as a GM when I'm not in control of things. When I'm as in the dark about how things will go as the players. When I don't presuppose ideas about how problems are solved. I want that stuff to come from what the players do. They make the call, and the dice tell us how it goes. My job is to act as a bit of an intermediary there.

Yeah, I agree with all of these. These are the reasons I limit my use of force as GM. But I also recognise that it is just for my own enjoyment, not for the players. They wouldn't know.

As a player, I want to feel like any specific game session is different because I was there. That if you took me out and swapped in someone else, things would go differently. And I don't mean like oh the party went left instead of right.

I don't just want to be one of the characters in the story, I want the story to be that of my character.

Yes, I want that too. And if the GM was a masterful illusionist that made me feel like that even though they had planned it all, my experience would be exactly the same.

These are generally my feelings about it. It does shift a bit based on what game I'm playing and with whom. Some games are far more suited to it than others. But overall, within whatever confines a game may have, the above is mostly what I'm striving for.

When I GM 5e, I try to bring as much of that to the fore as possible. It's not as easy to do as it is with games that are specifically designed to do that.

When I play 5e, I attempt to do that as well. I find this is much harder to do because most GMs don't operate with that mindset because they aren't really encouraged to do so, the rules aren't really written with the intent that they do so, and most players don't really play with the expectation that they do so. Which I think your comments drive home pretty clearly.

So if I may ask that you return the favor; why? Why do you take parts in these discussions if you're not really concerned with how a game distributes authority or in how it's used or misused?

I find these discussions interesting, It is always good to see other perspectives, even if you disagreed. I also don't think that our GMing styles in practice differ significantly, I just feel that certain things are not bad in similar dogmatic way than you do. I don't use force often. I however I don't think it is a bad tool in any fundamental level. Ultimately I aim to provide good experience for the players, and I feel using force often makes things less fun for me, but more fun for them. Because making things more fun for the players would be the only reason for me to use force.

I really wish discussions could move past 'force bad!' 'no, force good!' stage and we could discuss what applications of force are beneficial. For example GM might use force/illusionsm/railroading to force a situation that would be relevant to the characters bonds/flaws/motivations, provide challenge that would resonate with the important player authored aspects of the character and let the player make significant decision relating to things that are relevant to their character. Basically the GM might railroad on micro level to give the player an opportunity to use their agency on macro level.

 

[pemerton]

That's not the kind of fiction I'm talking about.

As an example.
PC Backstory is I want to take vengeance on my brother's murderer. 2 factions start to war. PC's learn of this and approach their preferred faction.

What happens at the table that makes it the case that the PCs learn that two factions start to war? How is it decided which faction is the PCs' preferred faction?

The player makes it clear his PC isn't interested in gold but in information about the person and location of who killed his brother. The faction agrees to provide that information in lieu of gold if he will assist by helping to raid an important outpost.

How is all this resolved? Who decides that the faction has information about the brother's killer?

He assists, they provide the info and instead of continuing to help that faction he leaves to find his brothers killer. The faction war continues in the background with DM behind the scenes mechanics determining which faction comes out on top and the consequences of that. PC's probably hear news of this as they track down the killer. How is that player not driving the story?

What you've described could be a total railroad: the GM introduces the campaign with some notes about a faction war, and tells the players which faction their PCs are aligned with. The GM dictates the outcome of the social encounter, in part by deciding that whatever it is the player has established their PC cares about, the faction can provide it in exchange for performing the attack on the outpost.

And the railroad could continue after that: when the player has their PC go off to find the brother's killer, what scenes are framed and how are they resolved?

I'm not saying that it is a railroad - because all you're describing is fiction, and fiction that is not wildly different from the DL modules, which are widely regarded as railroads, I can't tell.

Not really. In a living sandbox situations activate without need for the PC's. The world goes on without them so to speak.

That is not situation as I am using the term - ie as a rough synonym for scene, that is, an immediate fictional context which calls the players to declare actions for their PCs. (More succinctly, per Ron Edwards: Situation: a problem or circumstance faced by the character.)

The world "going on" without the characters is the GM authoring more setting/backstory behind the scenes and from time to time revealing that to the players, either as colour (As you walk down the street, you see the shops are all boarded up to protect against violence - the faction war seems to be getting worse, not better) or as part of framing a scene/situation (As you walk down the street, you see one of the faction couriers coming towards you - from the look on her face, you can see she's about to ask you for a favour!).

The DM can have a general world in mind and modify it to incorporate PC backstory elements after receiving them. Say who your brothers killer is and his relationship to the various people in the world. To me that makes the game about your characters quest to avenge his brothers death and this was not something independently established by the GM.

Action resolution is going to be often determined by reference to notes. But the situations the characters find themselves in are of their own choosing - not independently established by the GM.

<snip>

While backstory is important and is the means of action resolution, getting to the point where backstory really starts mattering is even more important for sandbox play. That is handled by players choosing what situation to act on and how they go about it which depends on their character and his strengths/weaknesses/motivations/goals.

<snip>

Don't wait on the PC's for events to start to unfold

<snip>

Provide plenty of events and factions and characters for them to potentia

Everything here seems to me to turn on backstory. And in the example you provided, it is the GM, playing the faction NPCs, who established the actual focus of play: raiding the outpost. It is also the GM who established the situation: the faction offer information if you agree to raid the outpost.

I don't see how sandbox play ever gets to action resolution without character and situation, which IMO makes them more important.

No RPG can get to action resolution without character and situation. The issue isn't whether they're present, but which has priority.

In reading what you have described, I am seeing a set-up in which the GM's pre-authored backstory/setting, and the revelation of that through framing and action resolution, is central in shaping th fiction. It is not situation-first. A situation-first setup is something like the Burning Wheel excerpt I'm pretty sure I posted not too far upthread: the situation comes first, and the backstory flows out of framing and consequence narration rather than into it.

 

[Malmuria]

I don't know. What you're describing above is some fiction - ie there are things happening and then these people (the PCs) stick their bibs in and some different things happen.

I don't know of many RPGs that don't produce that sort of fiction. The DL modules produce that sort of fiction - there is a war/invasion going on and the PCs discover and intervene to stop it and on the way through discover people and places - but I can't imagine that the DL modules count as any sort of sandbox.

I've always understood a "sandbox" to be a description of a process of play, not just of some fiction. What is the process of play in a "living sandbox"? My best guess is that it is a version of what I described: the GM has notes about people and places, with situations latent in them, and depending on what actions the players declare that "move" their PCs through the sandbox, various situations are "activated".

This probably won't be a very popular citation in this thread, but I feel Justin Alexander has a serviceable definition of sandboxing here:

A sandbox campaign is one in which the players are empowered to either choose or define what their next scenario is going to be. Hexcrawls are a common sandbox structure because geographical navigation becomes a default method for choosing scenarios, which are keyed to the hexes you’re navigating between.

The second sentence references both space and notes. But that could be just convention--there's no reason you couldn't meet the primary criteria without relating the scenarios via an extensively keyed map. So the DL modules (IIRC; it's been a million years) wouldn't count as sandbox because, while the players can engage with whatever fiction is on offer, they can't really choose what scenario to pursue.

Genuine questions: How many notes count as "story before"? BitD is virtually zero-prep, but a lot of that is enabled by the notes included in the book: a (walled-in) city with neighborhoods, locations, and a backstory, and factions with npcs, assets, pre-existing relationships, and various schemes. Is there a hard difference between activating situations (latent or improvised) and framing scenes?

Which would be backstory first. Situation would be next, as this is what occurs when the players have their PCs engage the backstory in such a way as to enliven latent situations. Character would seem to be last, given that the backstory and those latent situations are established independently by the GM.

What is more interesting is what is the point of the improvisation? And what principles govern it? I gave an example of the graffiti under the table where the point is to give a non-boring payoff for the players' action declaration "We look under the table" and the main principle is don't introduce anything that will be misleading or confusing relative to the prepared notes. The upshot of (1) and (2) is a bit of colour. In No Myth play, the point of improvisation is generally to drive play forward by engaging players' evinced priorities/goals/aspirations for their PCs, and the principles are things like go where the action is, apply pressure, honour success and failure, and in 4e at least say 'yes' or roll the dice.

As I mentioned in the railroading thread, in the way I run things the neutrality of the world is consistent with respect for the character's choices. So if the world never reacts to character choices, they feel meaningless. But similarly, if the world seems to revolve around the characters, then I get a Truman Show-feel. I guess it's just a matter of using judgement as a dm.

EDIT: we are cross posting on the various active railroading threads, so you may have essentially responded to these points elsewhere

 

[Xetheral]

I'm going to address all of this at once, because it's interconnected. You seem to lump "make it up on the spot" with "already has detailed prep" with "has to stop the game to go create detailed prep" together. These are either the same thing or aren't the same thing, and it's going to depend entirely on how you define how and what the GM's allowed prep/improv space is.

Various approaches to content creation are definitely different things, but they don't directly relate to the sandbox spectrum, as I've defined it. The spectrum is only looking at one dimension of play: how often players are expected to make strategic choices from among specific options for that choice offered by the GM, rather than being able to make open-ended decisions. The various techniques for creating that content can each be used at any point on the spectrum.

For example, a campaign that focuses on a particular plot and uses mostly pre-written content might have a table expectation that players usually choose from the list of pre-prepared options (thus tending towards the non-sandbox end of the spectrum) precisely because those are the options for which pre-written content exists. An exhaustively pre-written hexcrawl campaign, by contrast, might have the expectation that players can go anywhere within the setting and do anything (thus tending towards the sandbox end of the spectrum), despite being just as heavily reliant on pre-authored material as the plot-focused campaign was.

Similarly, an improv-heavy "living world" style campaign can be somewhere near the sandbox end of the spectrum, while an informal "curated story" style campaign (e.g. something akin to an improvized, tailored CYOA novel) can be near the non-sandbox end of the spectrum despite both relying on the GM making up the content as they go along.

As an aside, I think that the fact that different content creation styles can be used at all points along the sandbox spectrum emphasizes that the variable the spectrum is isolating (i.e. frequency of constrained vs unconstrained strategic decisionmaking) is an independent variable worth looking at when describing a campaign's style. (For the campaigns that fit on the spectrum, anyway.)

Because, according to this, the players can declare their going over that hill to the north, and the GM can respond with their notes -- nothing there. Then the players keep going north, but the GM has notes, a detailed setting even, and everywhere nothing is pretty much nothing. So the GM indulges the players by letting them just keep going north and describing nothing (I mean, except probably some terrain features). Alternatively, the GM can make up this same thing on the spot without notes. According to your construct, both of these are equal. This, unfortunately, means that a GM can, on the spot, decide to effectively negate actions by just making up nothing, and this is as valid a strong sandbox as a detailed, prepped setting to explore!

Now, I'm sure you don't intend this, but this is the issue with the vagueness of your metrics -- they don't actually define anything very well and encompass quite a lot of play space (before we even get to alternative fiction creation, we're still in GM-sole-creator-at-GM's-desire territory). I mean, the example above is unlikely to actually occur (although there are stories of "sandboxes" where the players can do whatever they want, it's just not going to get anything from the GM until they get back to the prepped bits) but the construction you've created allows it.
Also, I'm not agreeing a spectrum exists and we're haggling price, I'm looking at your proposed spectrum and seeing if it has any useful description to it. So far, you have to bring in so many additional yet unspoken assumptions about what play is that I can't use it at all to categorize games in a way that actually tells me something useful.

First, I would rarely consider "going over the hills to the north" to be a strategic decision on its own. It's missing any description of strategic aims or purpose. Maybe it would contextually qualify as a strategic decision in certain unusual circumstances, such as a cross-country chase through unfamiliar terrain?

To illustrate what I mean by "strategic choices", consider a situation where the PCs' goal (howsoever determined) is to free political prisoners from a particular Duke. The GM asks the players whether they want to try for a breakout, or instead to try to negotiate with the Duke first. If the table expectation is that the decision is constrained to the two options presented, this would nudge the campaign towards the non-sandbox end of the spectrum. Conversely, if the expectation is that the decision is open-ended, that would nudge the campaign towards the sandbox end of the spectrum. As an example of taking advantage of the open-ended option, maybe the players respond that they want to head to the (previously established, but not yet featured) capital city and instead apply pressure on the (previously established, but not yet featured) King to intervene, hopefully either getting the prisoners released or provoking the Duke into open defiance of the King (which would then provide legal cover for a forcible breakout attempt).

Second, note that the spectrum is agnostic to later tactical decisions regarding how to pursue the chosen strategy and to the eventual mechanical resolution, whether via (e.g.) combat(s), ability check(s), skill challenge(s), player-facing fiat mechanics, roleplayed social encounter(s) decided by GM fiat, or any other sort of mechanic. So I don't think my spectrum is making nearly as many unspoken assumptions as you suggest. The only real assumption is that when talking about comparing two campigns' places on the spectrum (i.e. discussing which one is more sandboxy) the comparison only works if both campaigns fit on the spectrum in the first place. But I've been explicit about that assumption from the start by acknowledging that there are campaign styles that don't fit on the spectrum at all.

Third, from my perspective a GM offering the players meaningless choices is just passive-aggressively constraining the players' options. So when trying to decide if a given strategic decision is constrained or unconstrained, I would simply ignore meaningless options even if they are ostensibly available to the PCs.

Okay, can you tell me what I should expect to be different from a 60% sandbox game and a 40% sandbox game? I can't figure out what I should expect different from these two middle positions. It seems being above and below the mid point, and with a 20% spread, that there should be differences that we could decidedly pick out. What do you think defines these two points on your proposed spectrum? What should I be looking for in these games if they were offered to me?

What you should expect follows directly from how the spectrum is specified. (How could it be anything else?) Proportionately, the fraction of strategic decisions which are unconstrained by an expectation to pick an option from a GM-provided list is 50% higher in a campaign pegged at 60% on the sandbox spectrum than a campaign pegged at 40%. So you'd know to expect noticably more player authority over campaign direction in the 60% sandbox campaign, but that both campaigns feature a pretty even mix of times when the players are expected to follow the GM's lead and times when the GM is expected to follow the players' lead.

(One might alternatively reasonably conclude that, in practice, the calibration issues with the spectrum that I've acknowledged from the start make 60% vs 40% within the margin of error of whatever methodology is being used to score the two campaigns.)

I've repeated the definition of the spectrum many times, so I'm perplexed by how you wouldn't know what to expect to learn when comparing two campaigns' relative sandboxiness. To clarify in case I've created confusion: I'm not trying to say that the sandbox spectrum is some general-purpose analytical tool from which multi-faceted conclusions can be drawn about playstyle. Instead, I'm saying that one can look in isolation at how frequently strategic decisions are constrained or unconstrained in a campaign (if applicable) and the result will be somewhere between never and always. More simply, I'm saying it is meaningful to discuss the concept of sandboxiness on a range, rather than treating "sandbox" as a binary property or using the term as a label that refers to exactly one specific style of play.

 

[Maxperson]

As an example.
PC Backstory is I want to take vengeance on my brother's murderer. 2 factions start to war. PC's learn of this and approach their preferred faction. The player makes it clear his PC isn't interested in gold but in information about the person and location of who killed his brother. The faction agrees to provide that information in lieu of gold if he will assist by helping to raid an important outpost. He assists, they provide the info and instead of continuing to help that faction he leaves to find his brothers killer. The faction war continues in the background with DM behind the scenes mechanics determining which faction comes out on top and the consequences of that. PC's probably hear news of this as they track down the killer. How is that player not driving the story?

This. The DM is responding to the players' wishes and the story moves where they take it, not him.

 

[Maxperson]

Well, nor can she fiat-declare the father beats away the Kraken using a boat oar either. She still has to run the combat through, round by round (though unless the PCs intervene quickly, this process probably won't take long - a Kraken against those two sounds like a pushover for the Kraken all day long ).

Man I read too much news. I swear I read that as, "...the father beats away the Karen using a boat oar..." I had to do a double take, because that just didn't sound right.

 

[FrogReaver]

What happens at the table that makes it the case that the PCs learn that two factions start to war?

That can happen in a number of ways. A non exhaustive list of examples

• The DM uses a behind the scenes mechanic to determine what world information the PC's learn and then picks an appropriate NPC conduit to disseminate that information (behind the scenes mechanics)
• The players approach a member of said faction where that member tells them about the war (trigger event)
• They are witnesses to a battle between the factions breaking out right before their eyes (this could be either dm fiat or behind the scenes mechanics depending how the dm decided to place that scene there).

In any event, within this sandbox the players can take a side, ignore the war, attempt to leverage the war to gain something they want, etc. It's up to them how they handle this information and this situation. IMO this means that the method of GM fiction creation matters a lot less in this style of play - as regardless of the method that some particular detail is created and disseminated to the players they have full control over whether that becomes a focus of play or a background element of play.

How is it decided which faction is the PCs' preferred faction?

Typically via the PC's experiences with said factions and the players deciding "screw this faction" and "let's help this faction". Typically they will have had past in game experiences with said factions, but they need not. Upon learning of the faction war they may take that as the opportunity to explore the factions and decide which if either they will help.

How is all this resolved? Who decides that the faction has information about the brother's killer?

Presumably that was either decided in the DM's notes or via some behind the scenes process he created.

the player also could have included the identity of the individual in his backstory

The dm might decide the identity after asking the player a few in game prompts - allowing the player to improv the details he knew of the killer.

What you've described could be a total railroad: the GM introduces the campaign with some notes about a faction war, and tells the players which faction their PCs are aligned with. The GM dictates the outcome of the social encounter, in part by deciding that whatever it is the player has established their PC cares about, the faction can provide it in exchange for performing the attack on the outpost.

*Maybe? But doubtful. It's just not how living sandboxes typically work. DM's don't dictate to players their goals in these games. They provide a world for the players to move around in and explore where the players can puruse their own goals.

And the railroad could continue after that: when the player has their PC go off to find the brother's killer, what scenes are framed and how are they resolved?

I'm not saying that it is a railroad - because all you're describing is fiction, and fiction that is not wildly different from the DL modules, which are widely regarded as railroads, I can't tell.

I think you are fairly smart and should be able to fill in the blanks. Maybe you are soo unfamiliar with the concept that you can't. That's fine. But railroading doesn't align with the key principles of living sandbox play. In a living sandbox the players are allowed to craft their own story within the GM's world.

That is not situation as I am using the term - ie as a rough synonym for scene, that is, an immediate fictional context which calls the players to declare actions for their PCs. (More succinctly, per Ron Edwards: Situation: a problem or circumstance faced by the character.)

The world "going on" without the characters is the GM authoring more setting/backstory behind the scenes and from time to time revealing that to the players, either as colour (As you walk down the street, you see the shops are all boarded up to protect against violence - the faction war seems to be getting worse, not better) or as part of framing a scene/situation (As you walk down the street, you see one of the faction couriers coming towards you - from the look on her face, you can see she's about to ask you for a favour!).

I'm not sure what you are trying to say here

Everything here seems to me to turn on backstory. And in the example you provided, it is the GM, playing the faction NPCs, who established the actual focus of play: raiding the outpost. It is also the GM who established the situation: the faction offer information if you agree to raid the outpost.

Doesn't that depend on scope though? It's only in the most immediate context that the outpost raid becomes the focus of play. But zoom out to the next level and you clearly see the outpost raid was a means to an end about what the player is driving play to focus around - avenging his brother.

No RPG can get to action resolution without character and situation. The issue isn't whether they're present, but which has priority.

What is your criteria for determining which has priority then? It seems at this point that you are declaring one to be the priority by sheer fiat.

In reading what you have described, I am seeing a set-up in which the GM's pre-authored backstory/setting, and the revelation of that through framing and action resolution, is central in shaping th fiction. It is not situation-first. A situation-first setup is something like the Burning Wheel excerpt I'm pretty sure I posted not too far upthread: the situation comes first, and the backstory flows out of framing and consequence narration rather than into it.

It doesn't make sense to talk about priority of play and then talk about situation first flowing out of as opposed to into something. Those are 2 different concepts that you are using the same word to describe.

In any event the main point is that there’s not an explicitly well defined process for most of this stuff as there is in story now play. That’s part of the reason that when examples with this kind of detail is asked for that it is shrugged off because there’s always a number of ways this kind of fiction can get generated (and yet it always seems like the most railroady method is assumed by story now advocates)