D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[Ovinomancer]

Actually, if the GM can make the answer interesting and useful--and relevant to the question asked--the GM can make the answer anything they want. The only reason it seems constrained is that improvising such an answer is hard and most GMs don't have the bandwidth to do so.

I violently disagree with this claim. The kind of responses a GM is expected to make in Story Now games are often confused with trying to ad lib in a D&D game, where the scope is wide open and there are few to no constraints. The GM's job in story now games is much more tightly constrained by immediate play and they always have the ability to ask questions as use the answers. The job is not as hard as it's imagined to be. I was stunned at how much easier it is to run a Blades in the Dark game than is was to do even a partial ad libbing in my 5e games. It's very much different.

That isn't to say it's for everyone, I just disagree with the breadth of your claim here.

 

[prabe]

The kind of responses a GM is expected to make in Story Now games are often confused with trying to ad lib in a D&D game, where the scope is wide open and there are few to no constraints. The GM's job in story now games is much more tightly constrained by immediate play and they always have the ability to ask questions as use the answers. The job is not as hard as it's imagined to be. I was stunned at how much easier it is to run a Blades in the Dark game than is was to do even a partial ad libbing in my 5e games. It's very much different.

My point is that when asked "Is the Forge here?" a GM who needs the answer to be useful and interesting will in the absence of prep (and one generally runs PbtA games without much prep) find it easier to say "yes" than "no."

I did not say and I am not saying this is allowing the players to author the world or anything like that. The GM is still the one with that authority here, as I see it. I'm not even saying GMing a PbtA game is hard. I'm just saying saying "yes" is easier than saying "no" here.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

This thread has become an incomprehensible medley of diversions, diversions upon diversions, and inscrutable claims that seem to advance or withdraw or increase in inscrutability every other post.

It would probably be a good idea if the primary posters in this thread stop commenting to each other for a moment and succinctly put out an important/relevant claim for game design/play (or two) that they’re attempting to establish/advance and the evidence that supports that claim.

Or if you’re just trying to work through your own thoughts on a subject in real time (rather than making a claim), maybe express that as well.

That would at least give conversation some kind of form and foundation. Right now it looks like an aftermath site of a Mag 10 earthquake.

Agreed. I asked it many pages ago, phrased as 'what are the implications?'

At this point, I'm not sure trying to define these terms universally really has good effort to reward value.

The only practical use I have seen is to easily talk about play style so that you can decide if you want to join a certain game or not.

Would it be nice to have universally agreed upon terms? Sure. But like @pemerton started to list earlier, you can break down the important questions to decide whether you want to join a game into less jargony and more specific items that everyone will understand. So all you would be doing is saving a 15min session 0 discussion.

I too wouldn't mind hearing if there are other "important/relevant claim for game design/play (or two) that they’re attempting to establish/advance and the evidence that supports that claim."

 

[Malmuria]

One thing I find useful about Blades in the Dark is that it makes explicit that the story told in a session is a non linear presentation of time, and does so in a familiar way, namely through cinematic flashbacks (and the language comparing a session to film or tv in general). Just like a flashback scene in a movie, we can imagine flashbacks in the session as introducing things that had been true all along.

A game that is both very linear and backstory heavy and has an explicit role for players to introduce setting elements is Ryuutama. On the one hand, there are sheets that encourage the gm to script each encounter. But there are also specific sheets for world and town creation that involve the players in the process of world building. I think the kinds of items a town has available also depends on rolls. There are also other little things--players can introduce interactable objects at the start of any battle, the gm is supposed to also play a specific "ryuujin" that determines the tone of the story (e.g. for one of them: "love, youth, heartwarming tales, friendship, animals" etc)

 

[Malmuria]

I also don't know what to make of a story-now discussion becoming a debate about the existence of a fictional "Forge."

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No, because combat in D&D operates more like a contest than a simple ability check. It doesn't compare directly to a Spout Lore move.

I'm not sure I understand why you say this. The GRANULARITY may be different in narrative terms, the Orc is going to soon swing back, but in terms of there being a contest, the GM in the DW game is most certainly putting challenges in the path of the PCs and then we roll dice to find out what happens. With Spout Lore the player simply got to specify some constraints that will apply to the fiction going forward, that could operate in their favor on a good roll. Likewise with attempting to hit the orc, you get a good roll, you constrain the fiction going forward to paths in which the orc has just lost N hit points. Both are presumably favorable to the player, and in either case the GM can narrate, within the constraints, how things go down. In the case of the forge, the outcome on 10+ should be relatively favorable to the PC. OTOH there will be more moves coming that will complicate things! Likewise in a fight. I mean, tellingly, a DW fight uses just standard move mechanics, there is no 'combat system'. Spout Lore and Hack & Slash are thus IDENTICAL in every abstract game theoretical aspect in DW.

 

[soviet]

I violently disagree with this claim. The kind of responses a GM is expected to make in Story Now games are often confused with trying to ad lib in a D&D game, where the scope is wide open and there are few to no constraints. The GM's job in story now games is much more tightly constrained by immediate play and they always have the ability to ask questions as use the answers. The job is not as hard as it's imagined to be. I was stunned at how much easier it is to run a Blades in the Dark game than is was to do even a partial ad libbing in my 5e games. It's very much different.

That isn't to say it's for everyone, I just disagree with the breadth of your claim here.

In story now play I think it's also easier for the GM to turn some of these questions over to the players, asking for suggestions or just outright delegating it. So if the GM does get stuck there's generally an easy solution to hand. This is in part because the world is less likely to be significantly pre-defined (it's not a technique I would use when I run MERP, for example) and in part because the players are already primed to contribute in this way by virtue of signing up to play in this style.

I'm not sure if this is necessarily kosher in AW btw, but it's certainly a valid technique in other story games - like my own Other Worlds for example :cough:.

 

[Ovinomancer]

My point is that when asked "Is the Forge here?" a GM who needs the answer to be useful and interesting will in the absence of prep (and one generally runs PbtA games without much prep) find it easier to say "yes" than "no."

Well, as it seems extremely unlikely that you could anticipate this question and prep it, prep is pointless. Prep cannot be a reason to block in DW. Nor is "no" allowed because that's blocking. You cannot block on a 10+ or even a 7-9. This is what the system says. This is exactly the kind of constraint that makes it easier to run these games -- you follow from play and the system say. The hardest thing I had to do in play as a Blades GM was deal with a continued string of failures in play, and that's because the bounds are far more open and once I exhausted what was obvious, I felt like I was repeating. Turns out that got better when I asked questions and the players provided more ideas about badness.

I did not say and I am not saying this is allowing the players to author the world or anything like that. The GM is still the one with that authority here, as I see it. I'm not even saying GMing a PbtA game is hard. I'm just saying saying "yes" is easier than saying "no" here.

Well, no is right out, so... yes. The thing is, and @Manbearcat touches on this, you're still to fill the world with wonder and danger, so it's not a simple yes, but a yes that leads into more play, preferably with danger and wonder. @Manbearcat's responses in the original example are great for this -- each of the answers created wonder and danger and more play. And, interestingly, all of them were "yes" to the forge existing. The 6- was "yes" the forge is there, but it's broken and flooded. "No" is commonly used in games where the players are trying to figure out what the GM has thought of, because you either find that or don't (I guess you can partially find that). So, when exploring that, no is still a useful answer. "Is there a secret door here?" "No." Cool, you learned something about the GM's conception of the fiction. That's useful. This structure is missing in DW, though, so there's no GM's conception to learn about until after you've done something and the GM responds.

 

[prabe]

I'm not sure I understand why you say this. The GRANULARITY may be different in narrative terms, the Orc is going to soon swing back, but in terms of there being a contest, the GM in the DW game is most certainly putting challenges in the path of the PCs and then we roll dice to find out what happens. With Spout Lore the player simply got to specify some constraints that will apply to the fiction going forward, that could operate in their favor on a good roll. Likewise with attempting to hit the orc, you get a good roll, you constrain the fiction going forward to paths in which the orc has just lost N hit points. Both are presumably favorable to the player, and in either case the GM can narrate, within the constraints, how things go down. In the case of the forge, the outcome on 10+ should be relatively favorable to the PC. OTOH there will be more moves coming that will complicate things! Likewise in a fight. I mean, tellingly, a DW fight uses just standard move mechanics, there is no 'combat system'. Spout Lore and Hack & Slash are thus IDENTICAL in every abstract game theoretical aspect in DW.

I was using a genericized term to describe the granularity you're talking about, and saying that comparing a single attack in D&D 5e to a Spout Lore move in DW was a comparison both useless and unalike. My commentary was (at least intended to be) just about the comparison. If someone is saying that Spout Lore leads to "player authorship" or something similar, they are wrong--and I hope I wasn't saying otherwise.

 

[prabe]

Well, as it seems extremely unlikely that you could anticipate this question and prep it, prep is pointless. Prep cannot be a reason to block in DW. Nor is "no" allowed because that's blocking. You cannot block on a 10+ or even a 7-9. This is what the system says. This is exactly the kind of constraint that makes it easier to run these games -- you follow from play and the system say. The hardest thing I had to do in play as a Blades GM was deal with a continued string of failures in play, and that's because the bounds are far more open and once I exhausted what was obvious, I felt like I was repeating. Turns out that got better when I asked questions and the players provided more ideas about badness.

Well, no is right out, so... yes. The thing is, and @Manbearcat touches on this, you're still to fill the world with wonder and danger, so it's not a simple yes, but a yes that leads into more play, preferably with danger and wonder. @Manbearcat's responses in the original example are great for this -- each of the answers created wonder and danger and more play. And, interestingly, all of them were "yes" to the forge existing. The 6- was "yes" the forge is there, but it's broken and flooded. "No" is commonly used in games where the players are trying to figure out what the GM has thought of, because you either find that or don't (I guess you can partially find that). So, when exploring that, no is still a useful answer. "Is there a secret door here?" "No." Cool, you learned something about the GM's conception of the fiction. That's useful. This structure is missing in DW, though, so there's no GM's conception to learn about until after you've done something and the GM responds.

So you are saying, then, that by phrasing the question that way and getting lucky with the dice the player is effectively authoring the world? (by constraining the set of answers available to the GM)