D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[pemerton]

It isn't? Those examples of player action declarations causing dwarven forges and hunter lodges to appear certainly could have fooled me!

The GM is authoring those things, not the player. I posted the Spout Lore move upthread:

Here is the Spout Lore move and some commentary on it (pp 21, 66 of my DW pdf):

Some moves . . . Give you a chance to say something about your character and their history. When you spout lore you may get asked how you know the information that the GM reveals. Take that opportunity to contribute to the game and show who your character really is. Just keep in mind the established facts and don’t contradict anything that’s already been described.

. . .

Spout Lore
When you consult your accumulated knowledge about something, roll+Int. ✴On a 10+, the GM will tell you something interesting and useful about the subject relevant to your situation. ✴On a 7–9, the GM will only tell you something interesting—it’s on you to make it useful. The GM might ask you “How do you know this?” Tell them the truth, now.

You spout lore any time you want to search your memory for knowledge or facts about something. . . .

On a miss the GM’s move will often involve the time you take thinking. Maybe you miss that goblin moving around behind you, or the tripwire across the hallway. It’s also a great chance to reveal an unwelcome truth.

Just in case it isn’t clear: the answers are always true, even if the GM had to make them up on the spot. Always say what honesty demands.​

 

[prabe]

What about the lattermost category - of having the GM build encounters, setting etc to enable a player to pursue his/her PC's goal?

It honestly didn't occur to me that a GM wouldn't. I mean, if the players have set goals for their characters (which is what those Quest mechanics seem to be about) they've explicitly told the GM what they want, what they're interested in, what they'll engage with. Ignoring that just seems like bad GMing to me.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The GM is authoring those things, not the player. I posted the Spout Lore move upthread:

That's not how I recall it happening in those examples. Unfortunately I am probably unable to find them in again in this giant thread.

 

[FrogReaver]

It's also not really a Story Now game in my opinion. It's a pretty traditional game where GMs write or use adventures players expected to play through.

Not a dig by the way. I have had a ton of fun playing it, but it is not a game where your character is terribly important to how things turn out.

Im really confused. I thought Pbta games were all story now?

 

[Ovinomancer]

Monster of the Week is a PbtA game. Its premise is that the players are a squad that hunt down the Monster of the Week. That seems to be a pretty specific goal. As a matter of fact, each adventure has the GM create a monster for the characters to hunt down.

Very true! And, so, it still fits my argument - MotW does have rather interchangeable characters as well because of the nature of it's premise.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Here's my post that you're referring to:

You haven't specified enough about your example. Is the purpose of the Ogre to be interesting? Or to push the players into combat rather than trying to have their PCs negotiate? Or something else.

You are the PC in this example, so you don’t know. Maybe one of those, maybe more than one.

I’m not sure how useful a definition that seems to depend principally on the state of mind of a third party is. Particularly when that third party may not even know their state of mind.

 

[pemerton]

The things I dislike about the Story Now approach:

1. Limited tactical and strategic considerations on the fiction level. In a traditional RPG your tactical choices can make an encounter much easier or harder. In a Story Now RPG your success or failure is decided without respect to your specific in fiction tactical choices. (at least as I understand the games).

Well, AW doesn't use DCs, but also doesn't really use encounters.

Burning Wheel and Prince Valiant use "objective" DCs, and both expect players to leverage fictional positioning. In my Prince Valiant game, when the PCs lead their warband into battle, they are often looking for advantages to be gained by eg splitting their forces to pincer their opponents.

Cortex+ Heroic uses opposed checks, and fictional positioning doesn't directly change the dice pools involved, but there is a degree of mechanical tactics involved in building an effective dice pool.

 

[Ovinomancer]

That's not how I recall it happening in those examples. Unfortunately I am probably unable to find them in again in this giant thread.

It's probably because you mistook the constraint on the GM on how they authored things for a statement that the player does. Spout Lore means the player gets to ask a question about something -- and they can ask nearly anything -- and a hit binds the GM to tell the player something useful -- useful to the character, mind -- about that thing. This gets to the player having control because they can ask about something not yet mentioned -- a forge, say -- and on a hit the GM has to give useful information about that question to the player. "There is no such Forge" is not useful information, that's blocking the question. So, without authoring the information, Spout Lore let's the player both insist the GM author information AND provides constraints how that information is to be authored and what content it can contain.

This is an entirely alien idea to Trad play, and it's hard to get your head wrapped around it because it first requires understanding the low/no myth approach to play.

 

[Ovinomancer]

You are the PC in this example, so you don’t know. Maybe one of those, maybe more than one.

I’m not sure how useful a definition that seems to depend principally on the state of mind of a third party is. Particularly when that third party may not even know their state of mind.

Yes, to go back to the OP, this is the Illusionism that can hide Force -- you are not privy to the decision process nor are you privy to what might happen in alternative situations. As the GM, though, you should be privy to this.

I'm also unsure who the third party is here -- there's only the player and the GM in the example. Who is this third party?

 

[pemerton]

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.

Given his statement that its not compatible with "adventuring" he's going to need to unpack further if I'm to believe that, then.

When @Campbell talks about RPGing that is not adventuring, he's talking about RPGing which focuses on the everyday lives of the protagonists in their homes, interacting with the friends and family and neighbours and rivals. He's not talking about free roleplay in between the action. The non-adventuring stuff is the action.

The fact that it's not adventuring doesn't necessarily mean that it's not exciting.

There can also be play that does not involve the PCs in their homes, but is not adventuring. In my jointly GMed BW game, our PCs didn't adventure. Our PCs tried (and largely failed) to establish a basic footing for themselves in Hardby.