D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[Ovinomancer]

Yes, yes I am! As examples in an attempt to make you understand that rigidity and specificity of the campaign premise is a spectrum.

Those are spectrums, but the difference between a goal as a premise and a genre as a premise is not on the same spectrum. The goal can be more or less specific, the genre can be more or less specific, but a goal does not exist on a spectrum with genre.

Yes, I am sure it is the premise. And it is very limited one. This is not in question.


Sure. It just merely expresses it in a way that might not require a specific resolution. And yes, it loosely implies certain disposition for characters. This is not unusual in a premise. Like if we play Star Wars game about the Rebels, it implies they might want to do something about the Empire. And of course the premise of the Blades heavily implies that the characters might want to do crime.


These are not unconnected. If we play Victorian criminals that implies a goal of doing crime, if we play gothic vampire hunters that implies a goal of hunting vampires, if the play Rebels in SW that implies a goal of fighting the Empire.

I agree that all of these are genre tropes, not goals. They're at least a promising start. Nothing to stop a GM from forcing goals into play, though. Premise is a weak shield at best.

 

[hawkeyefan]

If characters were interchangeable in 5e play, I'm not sure there would be such a mechanical focus (death saves, healing word, etc) on keeping them alive.

Two things on this. I said interchangeable in adventure path style games. That may be less true in another 5e game.

But would this actually ever happen? Or would the players in reality restrict their action declarations in those which they imagine being within the assumed premise of the game? I think that the premise of the game, at least implicitly, always in effect limits what things the characters can do. I don't think this should be particularly controversial.

But who’s saying that players aren’t influenced by the premise of the game?

The interesting questions about premise i would say are: how specific is the premise and how is it determined?

 

[Maxperson]

If the D&D 5.5 DMG said it granted the owner immortality, would that also become true?

It's nice to have these brief words of guidance but we should judge a game by what it does, not what it says it does.

All of those things are for the DM to do, so those words ARE what it does, unless you go against what it is telling you to do. Do you go against that advice?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, I’m not really disagreeing with anything you’re saying here. It’s always about preference.

And to be fair, if you read some of what you've posted with the prefix "to me", I have a lot less issue with them. Its entirely possible that you do have that zoomed out view, and its not illegitimate. But I do think without that some of what you (and others here) have said trivializes what a lot of people consider actually the important part of RPGs, and I find that as bothersome as the people on the other side who act like there's no functional difference between a game where PCs are allowed to actually deflect what's going on in ways they chose rather than how the AP or the GM's design chooses.

Both arguments seem to kind of invalidate other play priorities, and that sort of thing gets to me.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think the lens is too narrow here...

And as I've said before, I think you're wanting it to be broader than everyone feels a need for, and writing off anyone who doesn't.

I mean, there are clearly people who do want the sort of "PCs are what all the game is about, and events are just ways to test and exhibit them." That's Campbell's view if I'm not misrepresenting him. But its not the degree of depth everyone feels a need for, and that doesn't mean the level they choose is trivial or insufficient.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think it’s way too easy to dismiss these sorts of things as “degenerate play.” It’s basically “No True Scotsman” by another name.

It's an argument, but since I'm in a AP at the moment where what the poster described is not happening, the question comes down to "Is this a necessity of that style and we're somehow special snowflakes that avoid it, or is it an artifact of that style interacting badly with some people who simply shouldn't be playing in it because they're not motivated enough by themselves to avoid that?" The latter can come across as kind of critical, but I'm really seriously having trouble believing we're such focused roleplayers that we can somehow maintain that sort of thing where others can't (especially since I'm old and frankly off my game a fair bit and I manage).

Basically, the question I have to ask is "Is it necessary for for the actions of the PCs to really change the results of a campaign for someone to be able to stay in character while participating in it and not just treat it as an extended wargame?" And the answer I have to give in terms of watching a rather lot of people play in games over the years that did not have any longterm thrust at all is "No." At that point I have to conclude that these are a mix of general failure states (people who don't focus on their characterization at all consistently--token play has existed since the start of the hobby) and people who need more engagement with what's going on to be able to do so. But I have no reason to believe the latter is particularly a common case, and to the degree the first is, it doesn't care what kind of game is going on.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is a non sequitur. I'm talking about how the characters present don't change the game in Trad play and you've shifted to an argument about whether or not players want to play a game where this is so over a game where it is not. Okay, that's a trivially true argument and it doesn't go to the point I'm making.

And the point you're making keeps trying to trivialize what other people are getting out of these sort of games because its not what you're arguing for.

 

[Thomas Shey]

From my perspective a big part of this is that adventuring is not conducive to having who the characters are really matter. A substantial amount of what makes a character who they are is their personal context. You need goals, responsibilities, relationships, personal reputations. It's hard to have that alongside epic quests, big bads, and world shaking stakes.

I think that's an issue of pacing as much as anything else. You can manage to have pretty much all that in most superhero games alongside most of the latter, but its because there's usually some time to breath between events. If you have a fantasy game that does the same, you should be able to do it there, too, and that's not untrue even if the characters are, effectively, professional adventurers. It just needs to have everyone on the same page so that everyone will cooperate with the necessary timing.

 

[Ovinomancer]

And the point you're making keeps trying to trivialize what other people are getting out of these sort of games because its not what you're arguing for.

How am I trivializing it? It's play I do as well. I play, and run, 5e. I play it pretty much like you do -- you wouldn't feel off at my table. I've run APs. I've played them. No issues with 5e. I'm not trivializing the play, I'm saying quite a lot of 5e play involved interchangeable characters -- the game's gonna play out pretty much the same way regardless of who the characters are. And that this is because most 5e play is about the GM's ideas. This is perfectly fine! I do it when I run 5e -- it's mostly about my ideas. There's nothing at all wrong with this kind of play. There's some definite value in it, especially in D&D! It creates shared play and shared experiences and the ability to talk about the game in ways that are intimate and familiar to those doing it. If I talk about the Blades game I'm in, it's hard, because the Duskvol that game is set in increasingly gets very different from other Duskvols in other games. There's less shared play there. No two games of DW or AW really look at all alike -- they so rapidly diverge that it's not at all the shared experience. You don't see DW players talking about a published adventure and swapping war stories because it doesn't create that kind of play. And liking that is not bad!

It's an easy out to take any criticism or analysis of play that isn't resounding praise and just assume the other person must hate the subject of the analysis. I don't. I embrace 5e for exactly what it is, warts and all. Knowing where the potholes are helps me steer around them, and knowing where road maintenance ends also helps. I like that 5e has interchangeable characters. It's one of it's charms. I don't expect any game to not focus on play. The cheerleading that 5e can do anything is something that is obviously wrong if you get outside of games that play like D&D even a little bit -- you really start to see that each game actually does rather specific things and cannot do other things. You can make your peace with this, and accept games for what they actually do. I'd never try to run a detailed plot game (which can be fun, but crafting and running) in DW -- it's the wrong tool for the job. Hell, I'm totally looking forward to running a game of Alien RPG this weekend, and it's going to be a romping good Force-fest of a game! I'm gonna hurt the PCs for their own good! But, I'm also gonna be blunt and analytical when I talk about how that game works.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I think that's an issue of pacing as much as anything else. You can manage to have pretty much all that in most superhero games alongside most of the latter, but its because there's usually some time to breath between events. If you have a fantasy game that does the same, you should be able to do it there, too, and that's not untrue even if the characters are, effectively, professional adventurers. It just needs to have everyone on the same page so that everyone will cooperate with the necessary timing.

I don't think the things @Campbell, who's very clear on the games he likes and what he wants from them, is suggesting things here that are cured by free-roleplay during downtime. Or that pacing is the actual cure, either. I know that I would not, for a skinny minute, suspect this to be the case.