D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[prabe]

It is. The distinction of a contest is poorly posed. It's a complex, meaning many step, resolution process to reach a conclusion to the initial question posed. In the case of combat, this is simple - do we survive this encounter. In the case of the example of spout lore, or really any instantiation of spout lore, it's part of the extended process of play that's just as complex as combat. Blades has a useful construct here in the idea of the score. While Blades doesn't have a spout lore move, the idea that a score is a complex resolution process to answer a question, like combat, is there and we can imagine something like spout lore taking part in that process. This correctly cites spout lore not as an independent bit, but more akin to an individual round in combat were you progress or do not progress towards your end goal.

You were comparing a single attack in D&D 5e--not an entire combat--to a Spout Lore move. Perhaps you were replying to someone else who was. Either way, it's not an accurate comparison, because a single attack in D&D 5e is vanishingly unlikely to carry the same weight as a Spout Lore move in a PbtA game.

I think your comparison between a Score in Blades and a combat if D&D 5e is more relevant--both because they're both complex things, and because Scores are at the heart of Blades in the Dark in the same way that combat is at the heart of D&D 5e.

The distinction you're drawing is more one of habituation -- combat is a place in D&D (and similar games) were the resolution of play zooms in and you have strong system say in that resolution (after the GM has blessed it, of course). The rest of play does not have this focus or strong system say and is quite often dealt with in a simple process of a single check. In this framework, combat feels different because of that zoom and strong system say. It's not actually different, though, outside of this. And spout lore really needs to be situated in the larger play. Arguably, this applies to 5e as well, in that a pick locks check isn't isolated either but is, in fact, part of a larger resolution process to answer a larger question. It's really that sudden zoom to a tighter pixel count in combat that makes it seem different.

My point is that comparing a single attack in D&D 5e--which is what you did--to a PbtA move is not a useful comparison as anything other than a rhetorical maneuver. This is precisely because, as you say, combat is so zoomed-in, in D& 5e.

Compare the Spout Lore move to any sort of know-whats check in D&D 5e, and you're probably making a fairer comparison. I'd be happy to discuss that comparison. I won't be discussing unlike comparisons further.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'm pondering, and I think it feels weird to me to have a player rolling/declaring where a person IRL doesn't have impact on it. So a roll for determining how positive a social interaction seems ok to me because I'd like to think what a person does has an impact on social interactions. A roll to see if a character is able to solve an engineering problem seems ok to me because I'd like to think the effort and training a person has would have an impact on that. A roll to find a forge that exists seems ok to me because I'd like to think peoples effort and luck determine whether they can locate things.*

It feels different to me to have the DM (as an oracle checking procedure; perhaps using dice perhaps not) consult a (maybe not yet fully rendered) mental-map to see if a forge exists, than it does for me as the PC to have the forge come into existence because I want it to. I'm imagining a twilight zone episode where the world the main character hasn't seen yet doesn't exist until they go look. Say the main character is looking for a store of some sort - it feels like a very different episode to me if the show has the between-the-seconds craftsmen building out what's there according to some pre-made plan, vs. them listening in on the characters thoughts and altering the plans based on what the character in the show wants. Or it feels like a very different theological world view to have a world created where humanity can "succeed" if they all work together and do the right thing, vs. a world where the divine decides each day to nudge things against whatever rules of science others might see and miraculously reward/punish folks based on what they've done.

There is of course a tension there. I'd like for the world I'm exploring to have things interesting to my character in it - and not be too real life in terms of the random bad stuff that seems to happen in terms of drudgery and pain and set backs. And so I do want the DM to have built (or be rendering) the world based on those general desires.

So maybe a better example is a Star Trek:TNG episode where someone wants to go in the holodeck to experience what a well trained explorer might experience on some planet, specifically in regards to discovering ancient ruins. They call up that program and go have some recreation time. It feels like a very different holodeck program if the holodeck is generating parts of that planet full of interesting things at an appropriate difficulty level for the crew member to go check out and the crew member wondering if they'll see something in particular or not, as compared to a holodeck program that takes verbal cues from the crew member about what it should generate around the next virtual corner.

Or similarly, when one starts up Minecraft there are a lot of options and mods to set what is in the world before you start playing so that you're pretty sure you'll find interesting things. And then you can go off in survival mode and see what you can find. Or you can set it on creative mode and hit a button or type a command to have the game spawn whatever you want if it wasn't there. Survival mode seems very different from creative mode.

Is creative mode weird to the survival mode player just because it's not survival mode (because the creative mode things weren't in the survival mode rules)? Or is it because there's a difference in kind? Where would a "stochastic creative mode", where you can try to spawn things in parts of the screen you hadn't seen yet, but there's a chance of failure, fall?

Edit:
* Disclaimer: I'm trying to think of who I have roll if the player is shopping and wants to see if a certain thing is in stock or not. I certainly have had the player roll instead of me sometimes if I was ambivalent, but didn't want the store to just become magic Christmas land. In other cases I might say it is just there or just not there based on how I picture the store. That feels somewhat akin to having a table in the book that gives what percentage chance each thing is in stock - and if such a table were there (instead of being generated on the fly in my head), I'm not sure if it matters if the PC rolls or the DM rolls. So the forge thing isn't that totally out there. But having all the locations be completely random feels different to me from having some that would certainly have it, some that certainly wouldn't, and some that might. If forges are a common occurrence, then a big chance of having it in that hex seems great. But if random forges in the woods are rare, then the chance should be small. --- The key to being a Bayesian is how the prior is set, and in many cases it makes all the difference.

The consideration here is one I find to be false. We aren't playing IRL. There is no objective reality to the fiction. Further, the characters are supposedly rooted in this fictional world, and so should have knowledge of it, and that level of knowledge is impossible to bridge to the players. In the real world, you could ask me a horde of questions about the area around me, or even the world, and I might have some extremely surprising answers, some correct and some not so correct. In the game, we cannot bridge this information the character, as a thing in the fictional world, to the player so that they can indeed partake of this wealth of knowing, both true and false, about the world. Instead, we have to figure out a way to bridge this.

One way is that one person is responsible for imagining everything in the world, and then the players can ask questions about that world and be told things that this one person has imagined. This should be very familiar. But, this doesn't have anything at all to do with how the real world operates -- it's a bridge only, not a representation of how things work.

Another way (and I'm not postulating only two possibilities even when I stop here) is that the players can pretend to know things about the world like their characters should, and those things can be tested to see if they are true or false. This is also not like the real world, it's a bridge as well. This is how Spout Lore works.

So, in a situation where we can't actually do what the real world does, and we have to choose some way to try and bridge the gap, I don't see how trying to claim that one person doing the imagining and passing it to the other players is in any way more "real" than the players acting like their characters are in this world and recalling things and then seeing if it was a good recollection or a poor one. Or, rather, asking a leading question and finding out if what's recalled is what the player hopes or if it's not at all hoped for. "IRL" seems to have very little bearing on either of these.

And, that said, you can absolutely prefer one of these methods to the other. I find them both pretty useful for different kinds of play, and use them both (and even hybrids, because these aren't all possible ways). But I don't consider one to be more "realistic" than the other.

 

[Campbell]

One of the things that is personally important to me is what the mood around the table looks like when I'm interacting with a piece of the setting that really matters only to my character. How much does it matter to the GM? To the other players? Do I get the sense that I am being placated or that this is going to be used to further some main plot? Same goes for when somebody else has the narrative spotlight on their character.

I want games where everyone feels for my character and I feel for their characters as well. Nothing makes me feel better as a player as when another player gets attached to the NPCs in my PC's life. When they say stuff like he's kind of being a jerk to X or are you really going to let your sire treat you like that? That's golden stuff. I love getting into the characters of the people I play with, including a fair number of NPCs.

I am also not trying to say other people are missing out anymore than I am missing all that golden epic quest stuff which can be a lot of fun. I just think that where you place your emphasis matters. I know that when I try to get deep into the personal stuff in a game where there is a plot to be followed I feel like I'm always riding that line and like being a bad contributor. I hate not doing my part.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I did build a story-now MERP/LotR game, using MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic. The details are here.

The only fellowship character was Gandalf - who perhaps turns out to be a bit over-powered, or at least dominant in play, when played without regard for the consequences of using magic (which mechanically consist in building up the Doom Pool, leading in turn to GM opportunities to spend 2d12 to end the scene).

The way we started was by me asking each player to tell us all why their PC had come to Rivendell. That gave us some starting ideas - Orcs in the North, from where rumours of a recovered Palantir (presumably the one that was lost at Forochel) were also coming.

The main thing I discovered - fairly early on, and building on experience in another Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy game plus thinking through some of the published MHRP examples - is that to get a LotR feel you need to use Scene Distinctions as "opposition" - for instance, if the PCs are pursuing the Orcs then there is a In Pursuit of Orcs scene distinction, and to catch the Orcs the players have to wear down that distinction - by declaring actions that target it (eg running fast, or in Gandalf's case using his magic to slow the Orcs, by reaching out through the Palantir they were carrying and sowing dissension) - before the scene is closed off by me (as GM) spending 2d12 from the Doom Pool.

The prep I did for this game consisted in (i) rereading bits of LotR and my Complete Guide to Middle Earth, (ii) writing up the PCs, (iii) writing up some NPCs (Orcs, Trolls, Nazgul, Saruman, etc), (iv) preparing some ideas for Scene Distinctions in places like Ost-in-Edhel (they didn't go their originally, but passed through there when pursuing Saruman's Orcs south), and (v) writing up some artefacts (a Palantir, a Lesser RIng) which seemed like they would be relevant to play.

Of course the game has a tremendous amount of setting backstory, but it is not backstory-first in its play: it's situation-first, with the backstory providing genre and colour that can be leveraged as part of the process of declaring actions, establishing Assets and Resources, etc.

Yeah, well, in terms of Story Now the very thinness and parsimonious nature of the background information that Tolkien provides about 3rd Age Middle Earth could be a benefit. Certainly there's not a ton of rich detail as to the more mundane aspects of the setting, particularly Arnor and related areas. I mean, you might run into some constraints if the action went to The Shire or someplace like that, but really even those areas are more characterized vs actually detailed. More trad games like MERP had a lot of problems with this, because any attempt to generate real details inevitably disperses some of the 'magic' of the setting. With a Story Now technique you need not focus on those problematic points so much and get more to the evocative and tonally appropriate elements.

I think you could do some sort of a PbtA (maybe a DW hack, though I think it would work better to go back to the basics) too. It would heavily focus on the characters place in the greater 'cosmic' picture of the setting, perhaps. Like how is your character upholding the principles of free will and destiny/duty represented by the Valar vs the tyranny of the will of the stronger over the lesser represented by Morgoth and his followers. Things like relations between the races of free peoples might also appear as factors in some way. Obviously it gets brought down to the personal level, but that might be one of the ways to put some limiters on super powered characters like Gandalf as well, or of Noldorin Exiles who are 10,000 years old and wield vast power. Sure, if you are Gwaithlo, Prince of the House of Finrod you might have a lot of power, but you better be real careful how you use it! There's definite potential, its just a fairly narrow tone, so it can be hard to pull off, I'd imagine (never tried anything like that, though my observations of MERP were that it really didn't work).

Despite the Gandalf issue I've enjoyed it, and would happily come back to it if others in my group were happy to. (It's one of about half-a-dozen of our more-or-less active games.)

 

[Ovinomancer]

You were comparing a single attack in D&D 5e--not an entire combat--to a Spout Lore move. Perhaps you were replying to someone else who was. Either way, it's not an accurate comparison, because a single attack in D&D 5e is vanishingly unlikely to carry the same weight as a Spout Lore move in a PbtA game.

I disagree entirely. Some combats pivot entirely on a single attack, and some campaigns do as well. That railroad game I keep mentioning? The final boss was defeated by a single attack roll. Totally epic. My character died during the resolution of that single attack roll. So, they can totally be as weighty. Similarly, a Spout Lore move may be made that has little impact to ongoing play because the players abandon that approach. The result of a forge being recalled nearby might be pointless because the players decide to go in a different direction and do a different thing. Or play between here and there spirals out somewhere else entirely. This is a poor comparison that's not born out except by special pleading.

But, the weight doesn't matter -- it's a complete red herring. I'm pointing out that if the player suggesting something and the system's say says that this is so, it's considered the player authoring things in one game and not in the other. That "scope" is being deployed to defend this shows that it's true because some other reason needs to be asserted to make it so.

Again, preference matters to how you engage games, but the result of an attack roll meaning the player authors the orc is hit by the sword is exactly the same thing as the result of a spout lore move.

I think your comparison between a Score in Blades and a combat if D&D 5e is more relevant--both because they're both complex things, and because Scores are at the heart of Blades in the Dark in the same way that combat is at the heart of D&D 5e.

And, in that comparison, a move like Spout Lore is analogous to an attack in a combat -- it moves the fiction forward. You're arguing my side on this here.

My point is that comparing a single attack in D&D 5e--which is what you did--to a PbtA move is not a useful comparison as anything other than a rhetorical maneuver. This is precisely because, as you say, combat is so zoomed-in, in D& 5e.

No, you only think that combat is special because the rules of D&D (and similar games) have different approaches to it. Combat in 5e is one of the few places that players actually have predictable agency in play because the system say gets so much greater. Well, I'm talking about how system say constraining the space the GM can use to produce outcomes is the important factor. It exists in combat in 5e not because combat is some special category of thing, but because that's where the system's say in 5e is the greatest. It's were you have a similar structure to how the system constrains the GM.

Compare the Spout Lore move to any sort of know-whats check in D&D 5e, and you're probably making a fairer comparison. I'd be happy to discuss that comparison. I won't be discussing unlike comparisons further.

I disagree, strongly. You're arguing here from the position of what's happening in the fiction and trying to group spout lore to an attribute check because a similar thing would be an attribute check in 5e, but the structure involved is entirely different. In Spout Lore, the player makes their declaration, the move is invoked, the move resolved, and the result constrains the GM. In 5e, the player make the move, and the GM just decides what happens. Even if they invoke the system for a check, the particulars of that check are largely unconstrained. The result of the check doesn't really constrain the GM either. I mean, if I asked after a Forge in 5e, the GM may call for a check, I may succeed at whatever DC they set, and then I could be told no. Why no? Because the GM thinks it should be no. This isn't analogous at all to Spout Lore. The GM has a much, much harder time saying no to a successful attack roll -- the system constrains their space for resolution.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Our games often use what I call the Vampire arrangement, although I have used it in games like RuneQuest, Worlds Without Number, Pathfinder Second Edition, D&D 4e, Exalted, Legend of Five Rings, etc. Basically play centers around a specific location all the player characters reside in or around. This place is important to them. Different player characters are positioned around different factions and have established relationships with each other, but are played as individuals rather than as a group. Sometimes they work together. Sometimes they work against each other. Sometimes they are unintentionally at cross purposes. Sometimes they just pursue different agendas.

Basically the city almost becomes like a dungeon. Each PC has connections, goals, relationships within the city that matter to them. Play becomes about seeking out those goals right here where they are at. Just interesting people living interesting lives. Player characters often either start with or achieve positions of prominence within the city.

It becomes the GM's job to basically play the city and its residents with integrity and sometimes shake it up. Like maybe an Abyssal arrives with a message from their Deathlord, precipitating all sorts of chain reactions throughout the city. Basically what I do as a GM is build webs of NPCs, factions, and intrigue around the player characters. This often spills over to the other characters.

I'm at heart a Vampire kid even if all that Golden Rule stuff never made any sense for my own games.

Thanks.

I've run campaigns not too dissimilar when I was younger; in the end, I found keeping all the balls in the air got fatiguing with the biggest part of the game being individual focus, without favoring some players over others, but I understand the principal.

I do still think that a lot of superhero games I ran with heavy bluebooking approached this closer than a routine adventuring game does, though there' was the assumption that (being members of the same team) they wouldn't be really working at cross purposes, at least deliberately, but they were often pursuing their own interests based on their background and focus in part; this would just usually feed back into group interest at some point and provide the core of the main gameplay loop. This obviously isn't the same thing as pursuing entirely independent (and potentially contradictory) goals, but it still makes the play line be heavily based on the individual interests, backgrounds and connections of the PCs.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

One way is that one person is responsible for imagining everything in the world, and then the players can ask questions about that world and be told things that this one person has imagined. This should be very familiar. But, this doesn't have anything at all to do with how the real world operates -- it's a bridge only, not a representation of how things work.

Another way (and I'm not postulating only two possibilities even when I stop here) is that the players can pretend to know things about the world like their characters should, and those things can be tested to see if they are true or false. This is also not like the real world, it's a bridge as well. This is how Spout Lore works.

So now you recognise that these are two different processes!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Again, preference matters to how you engage games, but the result of an attack roll meaning the player authors the orc is hit by the sword is exactly the same thing as the result of a spout lore move.

It is not! The causal process is completely different!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's trivial to do so. DW and AW, for instance, if played in accordance with the principles and agenda that are espoused in their rulebooks, will satisfy @Ovinomancer's criterion. And neither has "narrative level" mechanics except in a few distinct playbook moves which typically (given the variety of playbooks, and of moves-per-playbook) won't be in play.

The reason it doesn't need "narrative level" mechanics on the player side is because, in a typical RPG authority structure such as is found in D&D, Prince Valiant, Classic Traveller, AW, DW, etc the GM has the requisite "narrative level" power. That it to say, the GM can frame scenes that speak to player-authored PC dramatic needs, can narrate consequences in the same fashion, etc.

Right, this is something that is not always apparent when discussing Story Now games, at least ones that are derived from AW, or modeled after it (FitD based games). DW for instance has really very little to no mechanisms, and no general ones, which allow a player to make a move in which they establish either backstory or scene elements. There isn't some step in play where the player says something like "Aha, there's a secret door here in this wall for us to escape through!" Instead everything is actually channeled THROUGH THE GM. A player might say "Huh, we seem to be trapped in this dead end and bad things are coming, I'll Discern Realities." A check with a 7+ will let them ask one of a number of specific questions. In this situation I would expect the likely choice to be "what here is of use to me?" The GM is compelled to answer, but they could do so in any reasonable way (I would interpret 'of use' to mean they are obliged to describe something substantive, not "there's a stick of chewing gum on the floor"). Now, a secret door would sure fit that bill, and the player might have that in mind, but the GM might think of something else. Whatever that thing is, it is going to lead to some sort of pressure on the characters, or force them to make a choice, or test some bonds, etc. Maybe there IS a secret door, but it is such that it must be held open and thus one person must stay behind... which character is going to volunteer for that job! lol.

Instead, DW uses 'ask questions, use the answers' for the bulk of its player story input, plus the fact that players have total authority over their bonds, which should be significant, as well as things like which new moves they add when they level up.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Right, this is something that is not always apparent when discussing Story Now games, at least ones that are derived from AW, or modeled after it (FitD based games). DW for instance has really very little to no mechanisms, and no general ones, which allow a player to make a move in which they establish either backstory or scene elements. There isn't some step in play where the player says something like "Aha, there's a secret door here in this wall for us to escape through!" Instead everything is actually channeled THROUGH THE GM. A player might say "Huh, we seem to be trapped in this dead end and bad things are coming, I'll Discern Realities." A check with a 7+ will let them ask one of a number of specific questions. In this situation I would expect the likely choice to be "what here is of use to me?" The GM is compelled to answer, but they could do so in any reasonable way (I would interpret 'of use' to mean they are obliged to describe something substantive, not "there's a stick of chewing gum on the floor"). Now, a secret door would sure fit that bill, and the player might have that in mind, but the GM might think of something else. Whatever that thing is, it is going to lead to some sort of pressure on the characters, or force them to make a choice, or test some bonds, etc. Maybe there IS a secret door, but it is such that it must be held open and thus one person must stay behind... which character is going to volunteer for that job! lol.

Instead, DW uses 'ask questions, use the answers' for the bulk of its player story input, plus the fact that players have total authority over their bonds, which should be significant, as well as things like which new moves they add when they level up.

But instead of asking "what here is of use to me?" couldn't the player ask "is there a secret door here?" Because that would seem more similar to the forge example we've been debating.