D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[Maxperson]

Except in the original example given by @Manbearcat every possible roll result did confirm the existence of the forge, meaning that it was in fact written in by the player through simply declaring the action of trying to remember/look for it.

Had one of the bad-roll options been that the PC was mistaken and that, in the setting, there is no forge in this area then this isn't nearly as much of an issue.

That's not entirely accurate. From what was explained in the posts following the initial example, @Manbearcat had the option to have the PC be mistaken and the forge not be there, but stated(if I remember correctly) that he doesn't find that result to be very interesting so he opted to include the forge with something bad/dangerous about it. That's @Manbearcat's decision to have the forge be there on the failed roll, though, not the player.

 

[hawkeyefan]

And that (bolded) is a key thing: some of us simply don't and won't accept this as a premise for how to run/play an RPG and-or build a setting, because it puts the setting on a foundation of sand when what's desired instead is a sense of permanence, consistency and continuity.

Well, that's part of the issue. You don't have to play this way. But you should probably accept the premise because there are plenty of people here talking about how they do that.

Your fear that it somehow leads to setting incoherence is not accurate for others. Perhaps this would happen if you tried to GM this way. But it works perfectly fine for many other folks and there's no loss of consistency or continuity.

 

[pemerton]

IMO Most D&D players want nothing to do with authorship. At least not on any level beyond, I swing my sword at that orc. I try to look intimidating to that goblin. I search for a secret door. I move to block the door.

Let's suppose that's true. What would it tell us about the similarity or difference between playing D&D in that style, and DW?

What would it tell us about the accuracy of @Cadence's "quantum collapse" description of Spouting Lore in DW?

And how would it relate to this other post of yours:

Which seems to explain why I see so many similarities between story now and non-AP styles of D&D play.

If D&D players really don't care to declare any actions or have any impact on the fiction beyond what you describe - ie immediate tactical responses to situations that the GM describes - then presumably they don't care whether they play in APs or railroads or "living sandbox" games or anything else. Those would all be relevantly similar too, in the sense that players can declare that they attack Orcs and intimidate Goblins and search for secret doors and seek to occupy chokepoints.

What conclusion do you invite me to draw from that fact? Are all those RPGers who think there is a significant difference of play between ToH and DL wrong?

EDIT:

So the discussion has turned to whether D&D players author content in the same way as Story Now games. I think it's pretty freaking important to note that D&D players don't do so and don't even want to do so.

By "in the same way" you seem to mean about the same topics. Because the differences you've pointed to are not difference of method, but differences of subject matter.

And by "D&D players" you seem to mean other than those who cared about player-authored quests in 4e D&D. Or other than those who engaged with the PC-background aspects of OA c 1986.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

That's a bit snarky for someone who a few pages ago wasn't sure what "adventure" meant. The conversation is all over the place, and different posters are making different distinctions to one another.

Sure. I was mostly expressing my bewilderment of how confusing the conversation has gotten. Like I don't even know what we were disagreeing about!

I don't think you've interpreted @pemerton correctly at all, but I shouldn't have bothered to step in. I'll let him clarify if he cares to do so.

I don't think I have interpreted them at all, as at this point I simply do not even understand what they're trying to argue. And considering how long the back and worth has gone, I am not exactly holding my breath for the state of affairs to change.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Yes it is.


You omit here the crucial part that the player unilaterally makes up the thing of which information is being recalled, thus compelling it into existence.

Nope. On a hit the GM is compelled to provide useful information to the question asked. This may involve recalling tales of a forge that always existed. But at no point does the question cause a forge to exist. The conceptual problem you're having is that there is an already existing state of fiction where there is no forge before the question, and a forge after the question. This isn't true. There is not pre-existing fiction either way. This is the first time we're checking on that bit of fiction. The player doesn't author that, either, that's the GM's job to do, within the constraints of providing an answer that is useful to the character. The player is literally asking what they recall.

The other issue is that you're ignoring the states of failure that the check has -- which include checking on the fiction and finding no such forge exists nearby.

No, because the player is not compelling anything. Whether or not the thing they ask about exists is not within their power in any way. The GM can just say "no, there is no such forge, and in fact, this setting doesn't even have dwarves."

Why is that? Oh, look, it's because 5e give the GM sole authority over the backstory. Cool. DW does as well, only it constrains what backstory the GM can compose. You say it's different because the player compels? Incorrect. The system does, or rather, the system constrains. In 5e, when the player asks the question, the GM is authoring the answer right then. It doesn't matter if it's in his notes or he just makes it up right then, he's authoring something about the forge into the shared fiction at that moment. So is the DW GM. The difference is that the 5e GM has no constraints on their answer because the systems tells them they have no constraints. The DW GM is constrained by the system in specific ways, and those constraints vary. The DW GM could provide the same answer you have above if the move fails (except for the silly bit about no dwarves, which a 5e GM can't do if dwarves are already in the fiction). The only difference you're claiming here is whether or not the GM has the freedom to do whatever they want compared to be constrained by the system. The player is doing the same thing in both games -- asking a question about the setting.

No. That is completely different thing. It is within the causal power of the fictional character being played to do this, unlike ex nihilo forge creation.

It's impossible to remember something as a character? Odd answer.

I'm used to it just fine. This is how all GMless freeform RPGs basically work. Players just make stuff up, so it is true. I still understand where the difference lies.

Apparently you are not, because you're making a comparison to a completely different thing, and that's not how that works, either.

 

[Maxperson]

This is the second time today I've found myself wishing for a "facepalm" emoji under the like button...

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Well, that's part of the issue. You don't have to play this way. But you should probably accept the premise because there are plenty of people here talking about how they do that.

I for one fully get and accept the 'no myth' quantum setting concept. It just matters quite a bit in who and how can can cause the wave functions to collapse. Not in a sense of better or worse, but the differences matter.

 

[pemerton]

Fair. As I said, using retroactive was an error on my part. A fumble of word choice as it were.

So why use the phrase "scene editing" which is effectively synonymous?

 

[darkbard]

I think some perspective from the horses' mouths might help here.

@darkbard and @Nephis , I summon you Pikachoo!

When this scene happened in our Dungeon World game as a result of Maraqli's Spout Lore, would you describe it as "a scene edit?"

If you would/could, answer that question from two different perspectives:

1) Would you describe it as a "scene edit" mechanically? I'm referring to the nature of the generation of content itself. Did it feel like you were taking the shared imagined space and editing it. Did it feel more organic than that? Less organic than that?

2) What was your actual cognitive orientation toward that moment of play? Were you inhabiting Maraqli and Alastor up in that inhospitable mountain range at camp 2, dealing with the desperation and serious fallout from the events that had just transpired to put you in the spot you were in? A thought about your past and an exchange about a possible answer to one of your many worries? Or did that move reorient you cognitively to (I won't say your names but your actual names) a framework of "I am x and y persons in real life and we need a forge to repair armor so lets press this 'maybe get a forge?' button"?

3) When you trekked out to try to find it and discover its nature...how did that feel? Downstream product of a scene edit? Did it feel like cheating? Did it feel jarring? None of those things? Why or why not? What were you focusing on when all of this was happening?

I believe your two have become three? That head cold must be pretty bad!

1. There is nothing about the process of play that had/has me thinking about this moment of play in terms of a scene edit, mechanically or with regard to the fiction. In the week between game sessions, I (playing Alastor the Paladin) and @Nephis (playing Maraqli the Wizard) talked over the desperate situation our PCs were in, how our desire to summit the looming mountain and confront the spellcaster whose necromantic energies had expanded to threaten not only the child prodigy toy crafter Alastor had sworn to protect but the very fabric of magic and reality themselves was compromised by Alastor's various woes: HP damage and debilities accrued through combat and adventurous derring do, armor damaged by a dracolich animated by the wild energies of the spellcaster. The inhospitable environment, our protection of a train of beloved NPCs, and the looming threat of the spellcaster's magic spread our time and resources thin, and so we brainstormed what we might do to deal with these various pressures, what resources at our disposal in this game might be skillfully deployed to rebalance the scales a bit more in our direction. A means to repair Alastor's armor seemed an obvious possibility, and, considering the fictional framing (mountains, remote and inhospitable, posing a challenge to those who might approach), seeking out a Dwarven Forge of puissance, sequestered away from prying eyes (and potentially inhospitable to us as outsiders, but also potentially able to be brought into allegiance with our quest against the spellcaster) seemed a reasonable Move. Nephis had Maraqli, as a librarian raised in a monastery at the base of this inhospitable mountain, wrack her memory for anything in the vicinity fitting the above description, the aforementioned (and now legendary?) Spout Lore Move: "Didn't I read something in my studies at the Library about an ancient Dwarven Forge near here, where we might be able to repair Alastor's armor?"

This felt like thinking about the current situation of the game's fiction, stepping back and considering the working of the game's various mechanical interactions, and then reframing a mechanical input into a fictional input into the scene. Creation within the shared fiction, not editing. Filling out further details in a loosely sketched out (but nonetheless visceral and evocative) location. Is that organic or inorganic? It felt like playing the game as it's meant to be played, the various participants contributing to a shared fiction via the means at their disposal, Moves, mechanical outcomes, principles, etc.

2. I touch on this above. Additionally, I don't strive for inhabitation of character as the be all of RPGing and, in fact, consider it a bit of an impossibility. But I as player certainly felt the desperation of the forces stacked against my PC in the situation and sought a way to alleviate some of that. @Nephis, playing Maraqli, thought about how her PC's accumulated knowledge might pertain to the current situation.

3. When Maraqli rolled a 10+ on her Spout Lore move, it felt like a minor victory, a shifting in the balance of the forces pressuring us in various ways. But it also brought with it, subsequently, additional pressures through some failed rolls in crucial situations that demanded deciding between continuing our current course of action or aligning with Bjorn the giant (who now attended the Forge) in his fight against an ancient dragon that decimated his home settlement in return for his aid in repairing the armor, a Quest that nearly led to a TPK and put particular pressure on my Squire/Rising Messiah NPC Cohort.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Nope. On a hit the GM is compelled to provide useful information to the question asked. This may involve recalling tales of a forge that always existed. But at no point does the question cause a forge to exist. The conceptual problem you're having is that there is an already existing state of fiction where there is no forge before the question, and a forge after the question. This isn't true. There is not pre-existing fiction either way. This is the first time we're checking on that bit of fiction.

Yes, this is obvious. The forge is not created in fiction, but fiction of the forge is created. No one is confused about this.

The player doesn't author that, either, that's the GM's job to do, within the constraints of providing an answer that is useful to the character. The player is literally asking what they recall.

The GM is compelled by the player using the system.

The other issue is that you're ignoring the states of failure that the check has -- which include checking on the fiction and finding no such forge exists nearby.

That's irrelevant.

Why is that? Oh, look, it's because 5e give the GM sole authority over the backstory. Cool. DW does as well, only it constrains what backstory the GM can compose.

Sole authority with constraints is in fact not sole authority!

You say it's different because the player compels? Incorrect. The system does, or rather, the system constrains.

This is meaningless. Player compels using the system. Or do you think the players have no agency at any moment when they use mechanics, because they're not doing anything, the system is?

In 5e, when the player asks the question, the GM is authoring the answer right then. It doesn't matter if it's in his notes or he just makes it up right then, he's authoring something about the forge into the shared fiction at that moment.

Yes.

So is the DW GM. The difference is that the 5e GM has no constraints on their answer because the systems tells them they have no constraints. The DW GM is constrained by the system in specific ways, and those constraints vary. The DW GM could provide the same answer you have above if the move fails (except for the silly bit about no dwarves, which a 5e GM can't do if dwarves are already in the fiction). The only difference you're claiming here is whether or not the GM has the freedom to do whatever they want compared to be constrained by the system. The player is doing the same thing in both games -- asking a question about the setting.

In latter case the player is using the system to force GMs hand. That is a massive difference.

It's impossible to remember something as a character? Odd answer.

It is impossible to for remembering things causing those things to become true.

Apparently you are not, because you're making a comparison to a completely different thing, and that's not how that works, either.

It is simply a step into even more player authorial agency direction. But it is a similar thing.