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

[niklinna]

Anyway, your example from BitD shows, for me (can I emphasize that enough...for me) both the strengths and weaknesses of the gns framework, as I understand it. Since you buy into it, it allows you to identify what is fundamental about a system and understand how it ought to be played. It's prescriptive, in the sense that there is a more correct way to play any particular type of game. On other hand, I'm not sure it knows what to do with styles of play that don't line perfectly with its categories. Let's say there's a group using flashbacks in their 5e game...and, they're making it work for them. Are they playing it wrong? Is their game "incoherent"? Would they have more fun, objectively, if they didn't try to mix and match mechanics, principles, and influences in that way? I think my approach there would be to say, ok, if the group is having fun and making it work, let's assume they know what they're doing. Let's look at that as a legitimate playstyle, and then go from there, if we wish, to figure out what makes it fun.

While that wasn't addressed to me, I will say that I don't "buy in" to the GNS framework so much as that I find it useful for discussion, sometimes. Its prescriptive side (and overblown language, including some of the specific names), I have little use for. I've recently read several posts and essays about "incoherent" play that still seems to work quite fine in the pursuit of fun. There are dismal failures too, but supposed or actual incoherence isn't exclusive of fun.

 

[Ovinomancer]

What I was trying to do in bringing DW up is point to someone who is prominent in the 5e space who seems influenced by the game and has written a couple articles about it, and see if that sort of thing would qualify as a kind of mild boundary-blurring, shifting through technique some of the usual principles that might guide a 5e dm to something else. It seems that your response is, because it's not supported in a holistic way throughout the system, it would not qualify as a meaningful shift (or something to that effect?).

Okay, so your argument is that taking Fronts from DW, stripping out most of it except the list of dangers/dooms, and then modifying this using a different game's idea into a short list of the plot points a BBEG is going to enact on the campaign -- ie, just a story organization aide for traditional D&D Trad play -- is a major absorption of DW concepts into D&D? This is what you're arguing? Importing the idea of Fronts and stripping them down to planning aide for plot is importing serious stuff from how DW plays into 5e?

I mean, if we take a soccer ball, and using it to play basketball, have we significantly influenced the game of basketball with soccer? Because, you know, we've taken an important part of the game of soccer -- the ball (can't even play without it!) -- and we've put that in a basketball game. Sure, no other rules of basketball have changed, good soccerballs bounce pretty close to the same way basketballs do, and they're the same size, or very darned close. But, yeah, we've totes influences basketball by subbing in a soccer ball!

This is the argument you're making as I see it. It's saying "but we used the name of it, and we've like done 1 similar thing at the end of the day, so that's like, a lot, right?! It's totally a lot."

I don't particularly like 5e, it's just a useful point of comparison because it's so well known, and is incidentally what the OP's post was about. Aside from Blades, the game I'm vibing on right now is The White Hack 3e, but I feel it would be alienating to others to start talking about a relatively obscure game.
Anyway, your example from BitD shows, for me (can I emphasize that enough...for me) both the strengths and weaknesses of the gns framework, as I understand it. Since you buy into it, it allows you to identify what is fundamental about a system and understand how it ought to be played. It's prescriptive, in the sense that there is a more correct way to play any particular type of game. On other hand, I'm not sure it knows what to do with styles of play that don't line perfectly with its categories. Let's say there's a group using flashbacks in their 5e game...and, they're making it work for them. Are they playing it wrong? Is their game "incoherent"? Would they have more fun, objectively, if they didn't try to mix and match mechanics, principles, and influences in that way? I think my approach there would be to say, ok, if the group is having fun and making it work, let's assume they know what they're doing. Let's look at that as a legitimate playstyle, and then go from there, if we wish, to figure out what makes it fun.

No, they're not doing it wrong, but they've imported something that doesn't align with the other bits of 5e. This has been discussed. Flashbacks work well in Blades because they're so tightly tied in with the other mechanics -- they aren't free, for one, and they generate complications as regularly as other things. The implementations I've seen for 5e are pretty much just a plot coupon. And that can work just fine. The problem really only occurs when you suggest that they're the same thing. They aren't, even though they have the same name and you can "flashback" to establish something. The actual nature of the mechanics are vastly different -- a plot coupon is not a Blades flashback.

Introduction of plot coupons is an interesting thing in 5e. It very much depends on how these are implemented -- are they subject to GM veto? What is the allowed scope? How do they replenish? Are they tied into other mechanical systems? What do they cost?

As far as mixing and matching principles, you're making a broad assumption that the goals of play are the same for every principle. There are completely incompatible things, largely incompatible things, mehly compatible things, very compatible, and totes compatible. You're just idly speculating about generalities in what appears to be an attempt to claim there's no really point in looking at these things. What we don't have is any specific examples (outside Fronts things, which I've discussed) of the things you're trying to claim are easily possible. It should be trivial, if your gut is telling you true. I've actually tried. It wasn't easy. It didn't line up. I had to use fiat to make most of it work. If you're fine with this, cool, but you're already pretty far out of lane for Story Now (or Neotrad or Classic) play, so there's that.

 

[pemerton]

When a player rolls 10+ three times in a row, then 6- four times in a row, there aren't a lot of opportunities for soft moves, other than by making a soft move "as hard a move as you please." (I think that's the wording)

My experience of the game was that it was more reflective of the dice rolls than 5e, not less, but--as I said--my dice luck is notoriously peculiar.

I'm not going to quibble with your ability to generate wild dice throws. But I would still expect there to be soft moves in those moments when everyone looks to the MC/GM to say something about what happens next. (And sometimes the move that is as hard as you please might also be towards the softer end - Baker gives an example of this in his discussion of adjudicating Opening One's Brain to the Psychic Maelstrom.)

 

[pemerton]

I've not done World's without number, only Stars Without Number but it was an excellent game. One of my favorites.

And it does seem to explain how backstory/setting should be authored, too.

Why would me stating my preferences have anything to do with contrasting backstory first and situation first?

Because all the things you don't prefer are present in BW and AW, which seems to push against your assertion that play in either of these systems might be very similar to a D&D living sandbox.

 

[pemerton]

Anyway, your example from BitD shows, for me (can I emphasize that enough...for me) both the strengths and weaknesses of the gns framework, as I understand it.

What does "GNS framework" have to do with anything? Or are you asserting that to contrast elements of the fiction (like backstory vs situation) or to contrast resolution methods (such as map-and-key vs make-a-check) or to contrast possible authorship principles (eg naturalistic extrapolation vs applying dramatic pressure) is to deploy the "GNS framework"?

EDIT:

It's prescriptive, in the sense that there is a more correct way to play any particular type of game.

What does the "it" refer to? Not the "GNS framework", I assume, which begins from the premise that many RPGs are played in multiple ways, and tries to describe those different ways in clear terms.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I think it is bizarre to deny the influence of one thing to another because the thing being influenced does something somewhat different with the shared elements. This is how it almost always is with such things, be it music cuisine etc.

 

[Numidius]

@Ovinomancer Thanks for the detailed passage. At first I thought six successes were too much, but reading, it flowed nicely. Also cool that in the end they did not make it.

 

[Aldarc]

Since you brought it up - Seems to me it's the other way around. That those with story now preferences are hung up on their preferences and unable to see past them to the critiques of their analytical framework.

It's difficult to argue this, IMO, when the various people making such arguments have an asymmetric familiarity of the various analytical frameworks and playstyles under discussion.

Like in my academic field, the number of people who have familiarity with historical critical methods is larger than those who have more literary, cultural, or other analytical approaches. The former is basically what everyone learns at one point or another, while the latter are "newer" or more specialized approaches. The academic field was predominately engaging in historical criticism, and it arguably still is. The result is that non-historical critics tend to have more familiarity with historical criticism than historical critics have with non-historical critical approaches. This represents a real asymmetry of familiarity and knowledge in the field.

Or whose opinion on board games is likely better informed? The dude who only knows Monopoly and Candy Land or the person who plays a wide variety of games (e.g., Eurogames, party games, drafting/deckbuilding, co-op, area control, push-your-luck, etc.) but may still prefer particular types of games?

On the whole, I tend to find people who actually have concrete prolonged experience with different games, analytical frameworks, and playstyles more persuasive than those whose counter-criticisms, more often than not, come from feeling slighted or threatened by the idea that other game play frameworks can do things better/differently than their preferred/accustomed game.

I think it is bizarre to deny the influence of one thing to another because the thing being influenced does something somewhat different with the shared elements. This is how it almost always is with such things, be it music cuisine etc.

I suspect it's a "how much influence" or questioning the degree to which that influence is meaningfully felt or experienced. Dungeon World and Fate, for example, likely did influence Inspiration in 5e, but its implementation in 5e seems incredibly half-baked and vestigial to the game. And it's like an uncanny valley for both people who hate and like these sort of meta-mechanics (e.g., action/fate points, drives, etc.).

 

[FrogReaver]

And it does seem to explain how backstory/setting should be authored, too.

Because all the things you don't prefer are present in BW and AW, which seems to push against your assertion that play in either of these systems might be very similar to a D&D living sandbox.

Having differences doesn’t exclude having similarities.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Having differences doesn’t exclude having similarities.

Cool, what are they? I mean, surely you didn't deploy an empty platitude and actually have some ideas here. I'm very keen to see these similarities.