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

[Xetheral]

This is mistaken. You're noting that if your intent is to separate two things with an arbitrary categorization you will end up with a division of two things. The analysis being presented in this thread shows, along the rubric of backstory, two large distinctions (three actually). You then think that since there are such distinctions, and that you can get there via arbitrary definition, that this must be what's happened. You're neglecting the clear evidence that the analysis is actually of play.

That isn't at all what I think or what I am doing or saying.

To clarify, I am inquiring as to the utility of the category "Backstory first" and whether it is axiomatic (as @Malmuria suggested) or describes differences in play experiences (as @pemerton claims). I agree that it at least describes differences between Story Now and not Story Now, but alone that isn't enough to show that the category isn't axiomatic.

Everyone putting this forward plays multiple different games and many have extensive experience with D&D. This isn't people that play these games and not those games saying how they must work -- that's actually coming from one segment of commenters here and not the ones advocating for this analysis but those arguing against it. Instead, we're all more than willing to put out play in front of you, talk about exactly what's happening where, and exactly how we approach different games from the different approaches. When I learned to play D&D, I didn't know anything else, so how I learned to play is utterly untouched by any future theory or thinking. Yet, I can 100% identify how I played (and in some ways still play) D&D today with others that don't have any experience with other games. It is not that I am defining (or @pemerton, or @hawkeyefan, or @Campbell, or @Manbearcat, or others) play just to arbitrarily separate games. This is entirely about experience and application. And I do both sides.

In other words, this isn't a categorization to say this goes in bin a and this in bin b. There are games that are hard to categorize. It is, instead, actual analysis of how the games work. And it's not just me, or the people I listed, there are entire communities that discuss and play and design these games and what we're saying here what is being used in all of that.

The framing of my question to pemerton without mentioning the broader context of the Forge was purposeful. I'm trying to discuss the approach to categorization in question on its own merits without dragging in the attendant controversy. Accordingly, please do not treat my silence regarding the broader context as ignorance.

I do apologize, however, that by trying to keep the conversation about the ideas themselves I was necessarily unable to acknowledge the time and effort spent developing them. I do so now.

Respecting the effort behind the analytical work, however, does not require one to agree with the ultimate conclusions of that analysis. My questioning the ultimate utility and limitations of a particular categorization is therefore necessarily reasonable, without regard to the degree of effort involved in developing that categorization.

You do not have to like these other games. You don't even have to try them. But, for God's sake, please stop intimating that they just don't work that way or that people discussing them are doing so in bad faith just label games as Good and Bad. You can't find a single person doing that. The only thing you will find are people that say they, personally, prefer some to others.

I thought I had avoided making any value judgements of any kind in my post, and I thus am alarmed that I nevertheless came across as doing so. Please accept my assurance that I am indeed only trying to discuss the utility of the "Backstory first" categorization and that any intimations about the functioning or worth of any specific games or playstyles are entirely unintended.

Indeed, rereading our exchange I am completely at a loss as to how I might have come across the way you evidently read my posts. Do you have any suggestions for how I might have been more clear that I am discussing the "Backstory first" categorization and not the worth of specific games or playstyles?

 

[FrogReaver]

You do not have to like these other games. You don't even have to try them. But, for God's sake, please stop intimating that they just don't work that way or that people discussing them are doing so in bad faith just label games as Good and Bad. You can't find a single person doing that. The only thing you will find are people that say they, personally, prefer some to others.

One can find that the particular language used to describe various types of play can serve as its own defacto value judgement even if not intentionally done so by any poster.

 

[Ovinomancer]

That isn't at all what I think or what I am doing or saying.

To clarify, I am inquiring as to the utility of the category "Backstory first" and whether it is axiomatic (as @Malmuria suggested) or describes differences in play experiences (as @pemerton claims). I agree that it at least describes differences between Story Now and not Story Now, but alone that isn't enough to show that the category isn't axiomatic.


The framing of my question to pemerton without mentioning the broader context of the Forge was purposeful. I'm trying to discuss the approach to categorization in question on its own merits without dragging in the attendant controversy. Accordingly, please do not treat my silence regarding the broader context as ignorance.

I do apologize, however, that by trying to keep the conversation about the ideas themselves I was necessarily unable to acknowledge the time and effort spent developing them. I do so now.

Respecting the effort behind the analytical work, however, does not require one to agree with the ultimate conclusions of that analysis. My questioning the ultimate utility and limitations of a particular categorization is therefore necessarily reasonable, without regard to the degree of effort involved in developing that categorization.


I thought I had avoided making any value judgements of any kind in my post, and I thus am alarmed that I nevertheless came across as doing so. Please accept my assurance that I am indeed only trying to discuss the utility of the "Backstory first" categorization and that any intimations about the functioning or worth of any specific games or playstyles are entirely unintended.

Indeed, rereading our exchange I am completely at a loss as to how I might have come across the way you evidently read my posts. Do you have any suggestions for how I might have been more clear that I am discussing the "Backstory first" categorization and not the worth of specific games or playstyles?

Frankly, I'm having trouble seeing this line of argument as genuine engagement and not just looking for a means to dismiss. The argument that the distinction regarding backstory being possibly still axiomatic even after detailed examples of play analysis have been shown, offers to examine other play excepts have been made, testimonies of people doing the different approaches have been heard -- well, it seems like just saying "I don't know, you could still be a liar. I guess we'll never know!"

You haven't engaged the analysis at all. You've just repeated questioning if it's axiomatic or not -- ie, arbitrary for the purposes of saying these and those without any value in analysis of play other than categorization. This is in the face of multiple, detailed posts walking through the differences. And, yet, your choices here aren't "ah, but I disagree with this bit of analysis because x, y, and z," but rather to put forth the possibility the analysis is actually in bad faith, or has a bad foundation. These are just accusations. The bits where you hint that you're avoiding a genetic argument while clearly pointing out a genetic argument are icing to the bad faith cake you've baked. It's clear that there's little interest in engaging the many words of analysis and explanation here, just intent on making sure everyone has a handy term to dismiss it -- and one that cannot be challenges because, at the end of the day, how do you know we're not lying?

 

[Ovinomancer]

One can find that the particular language used to describe various types of play can serve as its own defacto value judgement even if not intentionally done so by any poster.

That's on you, then, isn't it? If you're attached a value judgement that others are not, are they responsible for your attachment?

 

[Campbell]

Another common form of situation first play that happens all the time in my experience are those moments where a player or set of players say something along the lines of "I want a scene where PC X confronts PC Y about their feelings for NPC Z" and we then fill in the details of how that scene came about as we start playing it. This is pretty much what the Nordic LARP play culture is all about. In my experience it's also phenomenally common in a lot of tabletop play, particularly in the World of Darkness and Legend of the 5 Rings fandoms. We do this thing all the time in the groups I play more traditional games with.

Don't know how relevant that is.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Another common form of situation first play that happens all the time in my experience are those moments where a player or set of players say something along the lines of "I want a scene where PC X confronts PC Y about their feelings for NPC Z" and we then fill in the details of how that scene came about as we start playing it. This is pretty much what the Nordic LARP play culture is all about. In my experience it's also phenomenally common in a lot of tabletop play, particularly in the World of Darkness and Legend of the 5 Rings fandoms. We do this thing all the time in the groups I play more traditional games with.

Don't know how relevant that is.

I mean it shows that 'situation first' is not synonymous with 'story now'. I kinda tried to question earlier how these are supposed to correlate, by pointing out that games that rely a lot on improvisation are not 'backstory first', yet they're not automatically 'story now.' And I'm not sure they're necessarily 'situation first' either...

In any case, this thread is starting to get too much of a jargony semantics battle for my liking...

 

[pemerton]

Skipping straight to this part as I think it explains our primary disconnect.

To me, backstory is what happens before the game. That's been the crux of this disagreement and it shouldn't have taken pages of posts on the topic to figure that out. Sometimes it feels like you are too focused on and rely to heavily on jargon to communicate ideas that would be better communicated with natural language.

I've spent about 20 pages of posts setting out in painstaking detail accounts of various approaches to play, using a small amount of jargon to describe different elements of the fiction. I've described processes of play in painstaking detail. In my first post in this thread I set out the following terminology:

I would frame it this way: there is authority over backstory (histories, maps, cosmology, relationships, etc); over situation (what is happening here and now); over action declaration (which characters are doing what - this follows pretty naturally from situation); and over what happens as a consequence of the declared actions.

All these are parts of the shared fiction - the "narrative", if you like

So I think I've made it pretty clear that backstory/setting is just that. Everyone knows that in any RPG that uses backstory or setting at all (maybe there are some that don't, eg Toon?) some of that setting is written before play starts, and some is written as play unfolds, between sessions, etc - Gygax suggests doing it this way in his DMG, and it is the explicit process set out in the AW rulebook, and I've given examples of situation => backstory which obviously means that backstory is being established during the course of play.

You've not contributed any analytical terminology. Your description of the process of play is players do stuff: you don't distinguish categories of action resolution which I'm pretty confident in your "living sandbox" play are resolved differently (eg I attack the Orc which I would guess is resolved via a player-side dice roll, vs I look under the sofa which I would guess is resolved by the GM consulting notes, or perhaps a random stuff-under-the-sofa table, and then telling the player what the PC finds). In fact, you haven't really talked about who has authority over the consequences of declared actions at all, nor what principles might govern the exercise of that authority.

I think I'm working pretty hard to keep up my end of the conversation.

Pre-authored backstory implies that there's some backstory that is not pre-authored. To me what it means for backstory to not be preauthored is that it's the backstory that emerges based on what happens in play.

<snip>

Since it's changing based on what's happening in play that takes away the pre-authored aspect.

But in the playloop that you yourself stated, that new backstory feeds back into situation and resolution as an input. At that point, it is pre-authored: it is authored prior to the framing and resolution of the situation. It is drawn upon both to establish what scenes are framed; and to resolve at least some of the action declarations that are made by the players of the PCs in these scenes.

And when you say the updated backstory/setting elements get used as the starting point of the next loop you seem to be agreeing with me that it is backstory first!

The same thing happens in story now. That doesn't make it backstory first.

The same thing doesn't happen in "situation first". You said that the setting/backstory is 'The constantly changing backstory/setting (and not just in response to player actions)"; and you also said that it is not all revealed to players. Neither of those things is shocking or surprising - they're standard techniques in GM-authored backstory-first RPGing. But they are not techniques that are used in "story now" or "situation first" RPGing.

@Campbell made the same point not very far upthread:

The main difference between a platonic living sandbox and a platonic Story Now game is that in a platonic Story Now game literally everything you do as a GM is centered on creating and resolving an on screen situation that is directly relevant to the narrative trajectory of the player characters based on their dramatic needs. The fallout to the setting is based entirely on the narrative logic of what has just occurred rather than causal reasoning of its attendant ramifications on the setting. You are trying to make the fallout of what happens in each scene as meaningful as possible.

In a platonic living sandbox pretty much the inverse is true. What the player characters seek out to do is just one small piece of the living sandbox. One of many inputs. Causal rather than narrative logic wins the day. We base fallout not on reflecting the narrative weight of player decisions and conflicts, but on reasoning based on the fiction what the fallout should be.

You posrepped this, and described it (post 1189) as "an excellent starting point". And it directly contradicts you assertion that "The same thing happens in story now."

If you want to claim that the GM instead of randomness, the events of play, and player choices author the next iteration of backstory then that seems equally true of story now. If that shows the priority of backstory then why doesn't it do the same for story now?

<snip>

I don't doubt there's some difference but I'm not finding backstory first/situation first to be very explanatory in analyzing living sandbox play vs story now play (at least without a bunch of predefined jargon).

OK. I'll wait for your account of the difference between play that is driven by situation, and play that is driven by setting/backstory.

In trying to make a counterpoint that the GM's job isn't to frame compelling scenes you referenced an obscure game (at least to me).

I posted an example from an AD&D module authored by Gary Gygax. And an example from the only CoC module I have on my shelf, which I'm fairly confident is pretty representative. I don't think either AD&D or CoC is an obscure RPG.

Here's The Sunless Citadel, a WotC 3E module, starts like this:

Adventure Background
The PCs are not initially privy to the background information, but they may learn it during the adventure.

[This is followed by two-to-three hundred words of backstory. Although players aren't mentioned, I think the intention is that the GM will keep this secret from them at the start of the adventure.]

Character Hooks
Player characters can find the Sunless Citadel within a remote and lonely ravine . . . The PCs can be drawn to the dungeon via the following methods [in summary: an eagerness to go on an adventure; being hired to go on the adventure; solving the mystery of the healing fruit].

Rumours Heard in Oakhurst
Player characters can discover the following additional pieces of information either through a Gather information check . . . or via roleplaying: [a list of rumours follows].

. . .

The Citadel and Environs
Once the player characters are ready to leave Oakhurst, the adventure truly begins.

The overgrown Old Road winds through rocky downs, near strands of old growth oaks, and past 1d4 abandoned farm shacks. . . . Should the PCs travel or camp by night . . . they stand a 60% chance per night of falling under attack by a pair of twig blights!​

That is not a compelling scene. I'm not going to type it out, but the start of the WotC 3E module Heart of Nightfang Spire is basically the same as the above - which is, in turn, not very different from S4 Lost Caverns of Tjoscanth. This is a completely standard way of starting a D&D module.

 

[pemerton]

What purpose do you see in categorizing together playstyles that provide different experiences?

For instance, in the second quote above you're evidently defining "Backstory first" as a singular process broad enough to encompass both static map-and-key and living sandbox styles even though those styles use backstory differently and produce different experiences.

It's your use of such seemingly artificial definitions that make it appear that the way you categorize play styles has more to do with how you are defining the categories than with mapping play styles to play experiences. That's what makes your approach to categorization come across as axiomatic.

I've also talked about difference in situation first play - between "living novel", for instance, and player-driven RPGing. Within that last category we can talk about the difference between Burning Wheel (my favourite) and Apocalypse World (@Campbell's favourite within this particular family of RPGs).

Given that I don't do very much "backstory first" RPGing, I don't really feel a great need to get down into the weeds of the variety of approaches. I'm not posting in this thread to explain why a "living sandbox" is different from ToH - both involve exactly the same degree of GM authority over backstory, and both use backstory as an input into scene framing and action resolution in the same way. The difference is the principles that govern the GM's authorship of backstory.

I'm posting on this current trajectory because @FrogReaver asked me to elaborate on my claim that D&D can be played situation-first. Now maybe you and FrogReaver disagree with me about that claim, but I wouldn't know because you mostly seem concerned to deny that it's a coherent claim at all.

 

[pemerton]

Sure. In story now there is a formal structure for this. It just is that @pemerton’s ‘backstory first’ is misleading as not having that can be a feature of many different sorts of games.

How many times do I have to post that "situation first" also includes "living novel" play of the sort that Lewis Pulsipher was criticising back in the late 70s? (EDIT: As best I can tell, @Manbearcat's "Calvinball" as an instance of improv that is contrasted with "story now - post 1252 - is what I am calling "living novel", or at least pretty much in the same ballpark.)

Here's a post I made, reflecting on those criticism, about 4 years ago:

Lewis Pulsipher was a prominent contributor to White Dwarf in its early days. The following quotes are from his article in an early number of White Dwarf (my copy is in Best of White Dwarf vol 1, 1980):

D&D players can be divided into two groups, those who want to play the game as a game and those who want to play it as a fantasy novel . . . The escapists can be divided into those who prefer to be told a story by the referee, in effect, with themselves as protagonists, and those who like a silly, totally unbelievable game. . . In California, for example, this leads to referees who make up more than half of what happens, what is encountered and so on, as the game progresses rather than doing it beforehand. . . . [T]he player is a passive receptor, with little control over what happens. . .

Gary Gygax has made it clear that D&D is a wargame, though the majority of players do not use it as such. . .

The referee [in a skill campaign] must think of himself as a friendly computer with discretion. Referee interference in the game must be reduced as much as possible . . . Effectively, this means that the referee should not make up anything important after an adventure has begun. He should only operate monsters encountered according to logic and, where necessary, dice rolls. . . . Occasionally an adventure will be dull, because players take the wrong turns or check the wrong rooms, while others may be 'milk runs' because the players are lucky. Referees must resist the temptation to manipulate the players by changing the situation. Every time the referee manipulates the game on the basis of his omniscience, he reduces the element of skill. . .

The referee who, for example, schemes to take a magic item away from a player is incompetent. If the player doesn't deserve the item he shouldn't have obtained it in the first place. Don't lie to the players when speaking as referee. If players can't believe what the referee tells them they are case adrift without hope. . . .​

I tried to implement this advice in my early GMing (around 1984). I was not very good at it - I'm not a particular effective "computer with discretion", and my players didn't (and don't) like the occasional dull adventure. But I do like the advice about not manipulating the players. It was around 1986, with original Oriental Adventures, that I started to discover a way of GMing in which the GM would make stuff up on the spot, while still allowing players the scope to make choices which are genuine in their consequences, thereby avoiding the railroading that Pulsipher warns against. (More than 15 years later I discovered that this approach to GMing had been refined and theorised by Ron Edwards and others at The Forge.)

In the context of this current thread, "manipulating players" is what has been referred to as Force.

And what "story now" RPGing generally relies upon is ways of allowing stuff to be made up on the spot that do yield genuine consequences and that don't require the use of Force. AD&D is a bit more rickety in this respect than Burning Wheel; I suspect the same is true of 5e D&D. But it can be done in AD&D and can probably be done in 5e.

If someone is doing this using "backstory first" rather than "situation first" then they should post about it. Without an example of that, though, I am stuck with my own thought that there is the risk of the occasional dull adventure - because the players don't engage the right bit of backstory - unless the GM uses Force to override the "natural" consequences of those dullness-threatening action declarations.

And as I've already posted, if this becomes anything like a regular occurrence then why maintain the pretence of backstory first play?

 

[pemerton]

Isn't this--at least possibly--something of a matter of judgment and/or taste? I mean, some GMs (or plausibly players, or tables) might need more context (I guess, for lack of a better word) before they feel comfortable kicking stuff off, however much prep they're going to do between sessions.

Maybe. To use a culinary analogy - everyone's favourite - some people just don't feel comfortable sitting down at a table where all the food is spicy.

Based on my (admittedly limited) experience, those people are going to be out of luck in Seoul, where everything on offer is spicy.

A RPGing table which is not comfortable with situation-first might have to play backstory-first. That's obviously their prerogative. But it doesn't mean that there is no difference between the two approaches!

Yes—but again, it's not that they happen, but why/when/who/how/how much etc. And it's about what doesn't happen in Story Now'™' brand play—the GM is explicitly not supposed to prep more backstory/situation/setting/what-have-you than is necessary to get a ball rolling.

There are specific formal processes for how to handle that improv stuff in Story Now'™' games

My only addition to this: it is possible to play "situation first" and "story now" without using formal processes of this sort. The Forge called this "vanilla narrativism" - vanilla because no fancy, formal methods are being used - just table understandings and practices.

In 5e, after everyone has built a PC with a background, you might spend 10 to 30 minutes having everyone discuss how their PCs' backgrounds intersect, and clearly establishing one relationship/loyalty for each PC to a NPC or some other entity/faction in the setting. Then the GM frames a scene that speaks to these concerns (maybe if there are 4 or 5 players the initial scene foregrounds some but not all, depending on the details of the PC backgrounds and the deftness of the GM). And then action declarations commence!

I don't see any a priori reason why that can't be done. Is 5e the best system for it? In the abstract, probably not - I'd suggest Burning Wheel! But if that's the system for which everyone sitting around the table has books and is familiar with the PC build and resolution rules? Then suddenly it's claim to optimality at that table has strengthened quite a bit!