D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[Lanefan]

Do you mean you don't accept it as valid or possible, or simply that you wouldn't like to play that way yourself?

I accept it as possible because anything is possible, but not as something I'd want to play or run.

I suspect I'm far from alone in this.

 

[Lanefan]

Canonically, D&D has no spell fumbles. I was talking about D&D.

Note that I specified "in my game" - it's even in the bit you quoted.

As far as a bee sting causing a thief to fall from a wall: do you take it that the thief caused the bee to sting them? If not, why would you take a Spout Lore check to mean that the PC caused the remembered thing to exist?

We don't generally get into enough detail to determine whether the thief caused the bee to sting by swatting it away or using its perch as a handhold, or whether the bee stung her just 'cause it felt like it and it's just the thief's unlucky day, or what.

I'm aware that there's controversy. I am pointing out that one particular argument being advanced - that Spout Lore means the PC is "quantum collapsing" a setting element into existence, and hence is a "silly" thing - is a bad argument.

I think it depends on the size and noteworthiness of the element being introduced, along with the motivations behind its introduction.

Size: if a player introduces a bee as the reason for failing a climb check, chances are nobody's going to give a flip. But if a player introduces a mountain that in hindsight should have been visible on the horizon days ago in the fiction, that's a problem.

Motivation: most of the time players introduce content in order to give an advantage to their PCs (the dwarf forge example is one such) over what was otherwise there (the option of going back to town). At some point - a point which differs at each table - this advantage-giving becomes blatant enough that it crosses a line into maybe not outright degeneracy but certainly sketchiness, and becomes similar in my view to a GM introducing more ogres because the party are killing these ones too easily.

A too-blatant take on the dwarf forge example would be if the player declared the PC tried to recall there being a forge right close to where the PCs are standing e.g. just behind yon boulder there. A more common example, baked into the rules in some games it seems, is where the PC "just happens" to have the piece of gear on hand that she needs at that very moment - she wills it into existence just by declaring she's using it.

 

[Lanefan]

So, will the events unfold differently if my PC is a Folk Hero Rogue, rather than a Noble Paladin with the Oath of the Crown?

You won't know until you try playing through the adventure twice, once with each character. I'm not familiar with Storm King's Thunder but thinking about pretty much any other adventure that isn't designed as a string-of-beads line I'd say the odds are very high that playing through with each of these characters would go much differently and maybe lead to quite different outcomes.

Yes the encounters/events themselves may be static, but you don't know which ones each character will even reach and-or from which direction, never mind how (or if!) each will approach different situations as they arise.

It also responds to @Lanefan, who asked why anyone would care about anything other than characterisation at the table.

Not quite - I was getting at the here-and-now run of play at the table including characterization, mid-to-high detail exploration, combat, interactions, etc.

An analogy perhaps is that I'm looking at the individual brushstrokes being made while others are looking at the whole painting.

A RPG session might involve differences of characterisation even if no dice were rolled, and the GM just dictated every outcome: eg instead of rolling to hit, the GM just dictates whether or not the Orc dodges the attack - different players would respond differently to that, portraying their PCs' fears or frustrations in different ways.

So do you @FrozenNorth, @Lanefan, @Malmuria and others therefore assert that it is, or should be, irrelevant to RPG play whether or not dice are ever rolled to determine any outcomes, as opposed to the GM just deciding and narrating? I mean, I guess that's a position someone could hold - but I'm trying to work out if you are such people.

Not guilty, m'lud.

 

[pemerton]

If that's not what Pemerton is arguing, I'm not sure what he is arguing.

It's not. You seem to be confused when @pemerton said you said things, but it doesn't seem to have extended to your own attempts to do so. I've always been very clear that who gets to author what when and how is a key differentiator between games, even between very similar games. The argument you're smashing into this is that the act of authoring anything in fiction is largely the same, that the differences are who gets to author the things. The difference, as far as authoring fiction, between a orc being hit by a sword and a forge being under a nearby glacier doesn't exist -- in both you just imagine something and share it. The difference in RPGs is how this kind of exercise of imagination is constrained. Such differences in authority and constraint exist are the backbone of my arguments. You having a large mistake of understanding here reveals a good deal about how this conversation has progressed.

I took his comments to either be about how the GM makes edits all the time, as I explained in my prior post, or about the nature of declared actions and causality.

I had clashed with @pemerton in the past on this, but now I tend to agree with him. The act of remembering a world detail originates with the PC just as surely as an attack does.

Ovinomancer and hawkeyefan have answered the question.

@Cadence and @Crimson Longinus asserted that the effect of a Spout Lore-type move is "quantum collapse". They don't believe that to be the case when the GM performs such authoring prompted by players but under no stronger constraints than being prompted. My point is that introducing stronger constraints (eg make it interesting and relevantly useful) doesn't change the authorship into "quantum collapse".

@Thomas Shey used phrases such as "disrupt", "rearrange", "scene edit", etc, all of which imply that there is some established fiction that gets changed. My point is that that's not the case.

@Thomas Shey, @FrogReaver and @Crimson Longinus seem to be asserting that authoring a moment of recollection of a past event or a long-existing thing is different as an act of authorship from authoring a moment of swinging a sword and an Orc dodging or failing to dodge. As Ovinomancer in particular has pointed out, this is not true. I made the same point with reference to Immanuel Kant's mistaken theory of geometry.

 

[pemerton]

I'm using it substatially the way it has been since the term first appeared in Adventure; inserting something into a scene by a player when it previously did not exist.

In @Manbearcat's example of Spout Lore, all the player inserts into the scene is an attempt by their PC to remember stuff about Dwarven forges. Then they make a roll. Based on the outcome of that roll, the GM tells them something about the setting. All that changes in the scene at hand is that the PC's attempt to remember crystallises into an actual memory.

In it's authorship structure, this is no different from the standard adjudication of a knowledge check in 3E or 5e D&D. What differs is the principles that govern the GM's exercise of authority over backstory, which in turn dictates what it is that a PC remembers.

The earliest RPG I know of to (implicitly) adopt such principles around the GM's exercise of authority over backstory is Classic Traveller. Here is the Streetwise skill description from Book 1, 1977:

The individual is acquainted with the ways of local subcultures (which tend to be the same everywhere in human society), and thus is capable of dealing with strangers without alienating them. . . .

Close-knit sub-cultures (such as some portions of the lower classes, and trade groups such as workers, the underworld, etc) generally reject contact with strangers or unknown elements. Streetwise expertise allows contact for the purposes of obtaining information, hiring persons, purchasing contraband or stolen goods, etc.

The referee should set the throw required to obtain any item specified by the players (for example, the name of an official willing to issue licenses without hassle = 5+, the location of high quality guns at a low price = 9+). DMs based on streetwise should be allowed at +1 per level. No expertise DM = −5.​

I have never heard that described as "scene editing" or "quantum collapsing" or "disrupting" or "rearranging". Spout Lore is no different, except for not being as limited in respect of fictional subject matter.

Its actually an argument about play stance. If you're a player who plays from Author or Director stance, there's no intrinsic reason to object to doing this as player.

But not everyone is

This is incorrect. What do I recall about Dwarven forges around here? is an action declaration that can be performed in Actor stance. Likewise, a player in Traveller can declare I ask around the local starport and warehouse district to try and find the location of high quality guns at a limited price purely in Actor stance. But in DW for the first declaration, and in Traveller for the second, a process is then triggered which includes a roll by the player; and one upshot of that roll may be that the GM is constrained/obliged to exercise their authority over backstory in a particular fashion.

That's part of the WHOLE POINT of the some of these designs - it permits actor stance play, and uses that to generate constraints on the GM's exercise of authority.

Where DW may invite players to step out of actor stance is in the "asking questions" aspect: eg if the GM narrates "Rudgarr the barbarian is unhappy to see you - tell us what you did to piss Rudgarr off!", that invites the player to step out of actor stance. But that's not the same as Spout Lore.

I should add: I take everything I've just said to be consistent, and a working out, of @Campbell's point that Who gets backstory authority, when they get to exercise, and what they get to exercise it over are not trivial differences by the way. The division of backstory authority is one of the biggest differences from game to game. It's an incredibly meaningful distinction. A system that does not require the player to exercise backstory authority, but that does permit the player to declare actions that may result in constraints on the GM's exercise of such authority, is a different thing from one which just invites the player to exercise such authority, or demands that they do so.

And as I said, people you're talking to don't consider the GM and the players the same here.

I'm aware that some people have strong view about what sort of subject matter various participants have authority over. Vincent Baker spells out the significance of that nicely here:

Roleplaying is negotiated imagination. In order for any thing to be true in game, all the participants in the game (players and GMs, if you've even got such things) have to understand and assent to it. When you're roleplaying, what you're doing is a) suggesting things that might be true in the game and then b) negotiating with the other participants to determine whether they're actually true or not.

So you're sitting at the table and one player says, "[let's imagine that] an orc jumps out of the underbrush!"

What has to happen before the group agrees that, indeed, an orc jumps out of the underbrush?

1. Sometimes, not much at all. The right participant said it, at an appropriate moment, and everybody else just incorporates it smoothly into their imaginary picture of the situation. "An orc! Yikes! Battlestations!" This is how it usually is for participants with high ownership of whatever they're talking about: GMs describing the weather or the noncombat actions of NPCs, players saying what their characters are wearing or thinking.​

But a difference of topic is not a difference of process. Whether the history of the world contains Dwarves and their forges is regarded, by many D&D players, as something about which the players have low ownership and the GM has high ownership.

Writing that the Orc dodged the warrior's sword blow is not a different process from writing that the wizard remembered the secrets of the Dwarven forges. Both describe a character performing an action (one physical, one mental). Both implicate objects and persons that lie beyond the control of the character (the Orc did not create or control the warrior or their word; the wizard did not control or create the Dwarves or their forges).

Now do we want to start trying to introduce some jargon to describe the role played by different subject matters? Eg situation, backstory etc? Well I'm happy to do so, though it won't tell us everything there is to be said - the heirloom sword is as much backstory as the Dwarven forges, and nearly every D&D player accepts that the player rather than the GM can exercise authority over that. But in any event, the whole thrust of recent threads is that introducing this sort of terminology is impermissible and dismissive!

 

[soviet]

I accept it as possible because anything is possible, but not as something I'd want to play or run.

I suspect I'm far from alone in this.

I'm honestly not sure what the point of disagreement in this thread is anymore, but I don't think it's 'Lanefan must play in this way'. So, why is it relevant whether you'd want to do so?

 

[pemerton]

It seems you have some people blocked of vice versa. That certainly might explain some weirdness in the conversation. The line was "The ability to author fiction outside my immediate character (possibly not present in all story now games, but certainly in many)." (As a think the poster didn't like about Story Now games.) Pemerton disagreed with this being a thing that happens, I disagreed with their disagreement and I think you then disagreed with me. And some other people disagreed with various people too. For several pages.

That the Orc fails to dodge is something outside my immediate character. Yet, by rolling an attack, I can make it true in the fiction that the Orc failed to dodge.

Remembering that there are Dwarven forges is something that is inside my immediate character. (It's in my head.)

So the criteria you are suggesting don't appear to carve the terrain the way that you want to.

EDIT: Ninja'd by @Ovinomancer in post 1910,

 

[Lanefan]

I'm honestly not sure what the point of disagreement in this thread is anymore,

Yeah, this one's kind of like a bench-clearing brawl where everyone's pushing and shoving but all for different reasons.

but I don't think it's 'Lanefan must play in this way'. So, why is it relevant whether you'd want to do so?

In part because, maybe naively, I assume I'm not alone in my views; and if someone doesn't put those views forward then nobody will.

 

[pemerton]

the player is not compelling anything.

Yes they are. If the player rolls a successful attack, they "compel" it to be the case that the Orc didn't doge. Even though the Orc dodging is not something under the unilateral causal control of the PC.

Likewise if the player rolls a successful climb check, they "compel" it to be the case that a bee didn't sting their PC just as they were reaching for a vital handhold. Even though the bee's presence or absence, and its stinging or not stinging, is not under the unilateral control of the PC.

This also seems relevant to @Cadence.

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah, this one's kind of like a bench-clearing brawl where everyone's pushing and shoving but all for different reasons.

I'm here to protect the quarterback.