D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism
- Thread starter Helpful NPC Thom
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Magical? Perhaps.
Magic?
I THINK NOT!
Uh oh
FrozenNorth
Hero
Yes, but I wouldn’t be able to guess in what way the adventure would be different. If I could, you would be absolutely right about heroes being interchangeable and the plot dwarfing characterization.
One way it could go however, leaning in on the fairy tales I know, would be to go “Jack the Giant-Killer”. More outsmarting the giants (many of whom are canonically dumb) rather than another approach.
I also suspect that a rogue approach may involve avoiding a bunch of combats by sneaking rather than straight-on battle.
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FrozenNorth
Hero
Not at all. You run the AP with different characters and different players, you are going to get meaningful differences.
The fact that these differences aren’t meaningful to you explains why you believe what you do, but it doesn’t make the differences any less meaningful.
You may feel like i’m just changing the colour of the drapes, but I feel like I’m going to Paris twice and you’re responding”Why go a second time? You’ve already been to that destination!”
Manbearcat
Legend
@Crimson Longinus , @FrogReaver , @Lanefan , @EzekielRaiden and @anyone else who believes in the concept of "improvised setting (possibly including NPCs and their dispositions...unclear) content generation as a state of quantum superposition", can you explain why are the following things not in a state of superposition?
* The 20 listed NPCs/Monsters on your Wandering Monster List every time Wandering Monsters are rolled in a dungeon.
* The 20 listed Hex Encounters every time you roll for Random Encounters in Hex 2b (or whatever).
* The NPC/Monster disposition when you roll Reaction or Morale.
* The 20 listed Town Encounters every time you roll for Random Encounters in Town x.
* The nature of (location and backstory and disposition) of the Innkeep, the Member of The Watch, the Travelling Peddler, the Caravan Guard or Merchant whenever play goes off backstory script to a location or person (prodded by players) that wasn't fleshed out prior (whether you make some kind of roll to procedurally generate the content in the moment or you just "GM's Choice" it and frame the place/character in because the player has prodded it).
* The location and nature of every piece of set dressing/color/NPC characterization that is suddenly invoked, poked, prodded, or otherwise required to suddenly materialize from the void of the shared imagined space as the conversation of play dictates.
How are any of these things not in this verboten state of "unestablished to ass-pull" (whether procedurally generated as required or GM's Choice) that is being claimed as exclusive to Story Now games (and has been since I was little...this is a 30+ year rodeo of this claim) but a player's invoking their PC’s memory is?
This isn't entertaining the "but this becomes EZMode" argument (because that is a 100 % aside). But I can address that one trivially. Torchbearer has Wises (which Spout Lore is the PBtA analogue of). Torchbearer is many, many, many times more difficult and more brutal and punishing than any D&D you guys have every run/played (despite the concern of these things tilting play toward EZMode). And the lethality of Dungeon World is on par with level 1-2 1e D&D or Moldvay Basic. And the hardship of adventuring in Dungeon World is absolutely much more intensive (in terms of decision-point stress and resource stress and consequence stress) than that of 1e (despite the very scary Spout Lore of Domacles hanging over the competitive integrity of play!).
* The 20 listed NPCs/Monsters on your Wandering Monster List every time Wandering Monsters are rolled in a dungeon.
* The 20 listed Hex Encounters every time you roll for Random Encounters in Hex 2b (or whatever).
* The NPC/Monster disposition when you roll Reaction or Morale.
* The 20 listed Town Encounters every time you roll for Random Encounters in Town x.
* The nature of (location and backstory and disposition) of the Innkeep, the Member of The Watch, the Travelling Peddler, the Caravan Guard or Merchant whenever play goes off backstory script to a location or person (prodded by players) that wasn't fleshed out prior (whether you make some kind of roll to procedurally generate the content in the moment or you just "GM's Choice" it and frame the place/character in because the player has prodded it).
* The location and nature of every piece of set dressing/color/NPC characterization that is suddenly invoked, poked, prodded, or otherwise required to suddenly materialize from the void of the shared imagined space as the conversation of play dictates.
How are any of these things not in this verboten state of "unestablished to ass-pull" (whether procedurally generated as required or GM's Choice) that is being claimed as exclusive to Story Now games (and has been since I was little...this is a 30+ year rodeo of this claim) but a player's invoking their PC’s memory is?
This isn't entertaining the "but this becomes EZMode" argument (because that is a 100 % aside). But I can address that one trivially. Torchbearer has Wises (which Spout Lore is the PBtA analogue of). Torchbearer is many, many, many times more difficult and more brutal and punishing than any D&D you guys have every run/played (despite the concern of these things tilting play toward EZMode). And the lethality of Dungeon World is on par with level 1-2 1e D&D or Moldvay Basic. And the hardship of adventuring in Dungeon World is absolutely much more intensive (in terms of decision-point stress and resource stress and consequence stress) than that of 1e (despite the very scary Spout Lore of Domacles hanging over the competitive integrity of play!).
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FrozenNorth
Hero
Doesn’t that mean the problem is you?
“I refuse to consider APs as outlines or as anything other than complete adventures”.
“I also strongly dislike the fact that APs don’t change based upon the character I play.”
I don't remember them arguing against quantum collapsing within the progress of the game being bad (happy to be corrected if so), but rather about particular types of quantum collapsing. Perhaps things like:
* A character trying to see what's down the hallway and checking to see if it was a particular type of monster the player wanted, and it being so if they rolled a success.
* A character trying to see if what they heard in the center of the hex was a particular thing the player wanted, and it being so if they rolled a success.
* A character trying to see if they read the monsters emotions correctly to be the particular one the player wanted, and it being so if they rolled a success
* etc...
seeming very different in a variety of ways (what the players had to consider when playing, the nature of causality, divisions of authorial responsibility, gamey-ness, etc...) from the other ways the quantum fields could collapse that they were comfortable with.
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Manbearcat
Legend
I appreciate the response but all you e done here is say they don’t bin those things all in the same bucket and then you listed some factors.
I know they don’t and I know those are the factors (among others) being claimed.
What I’m asking is “why are all other areas of the huge amount of D&D procedurally generated or GM’s Choice content NOT binned here as well?
An actual example of good faith play of the ample amount of procedural generation in an RC D&D Hexcrawl vs a Dungeon World game contrasting this “why x is binned here but y is not” would do the necessary work to demonstrate actual coherency and reasoning from first principles for this claim.
Crimson Longinus
Legend
They are in "quantum superposition." Not that I use such random tables, but it applies equally to things the GM just decides. Why would any of this be an issue? The issue is solely with mechanics that allow the player to affect things that are not within their character's power to causally affect. Not that having such mechanics is necessarily a problem, but it is different than not having them.
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