D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[Cadence]

Why you would stop thinking abut what your character would be doing or trying to look for I don't know either: the whole reason anyone is even talking about Dwarven forges is because, in actual play, two players (@darkbard and @Nephis) thought that their PCs might look for such things!

What I've said in some previous posts, is that roughly, to me:

(1) Thinking of my character looking for something useful (physically and/or in their memory) feels very different than me imagining a particular forge being in the area and then having my character remembering it being there. If it's ok with me in play saying either "I wrack my memory for anything that might be helpful like a forge" or "I spend the day searching the countryside for signs of a village or ruins that might have something that can be used as a forge", then it feels like that part of my difficulty with the mechanic goes away. [Edit: If we were in a town or village, I might say "I go find the local smithy" or if we were in a home town, I might say "I go find the smithy I usually use".]

That leaves:

(2) That doing any of the things in (1) results with great certainty in a particular hex (out of hundreds of a priori equally likely ones) having something particular like a forge, feels very different than having that hex or an adjacent the hex having something interesting/useful. If your implementation of the rule doesn't just usually give me the forge (and so doesn't feel akin to the effect of a fairly reliable djinn working for me), then I think this second thing that's bothering me goes away too.


Does my preference in (1) change anything for you about how the Spouting works as a DM? Does how often it's the exact thing vs. useful/interesting in (2) change your feelings about Spouting as a player or as a DM?

The complexity here seems to me to be all in your mind.

It feels like most of the important things in ttrpgs are in the players' and DM's minds. Having all those minds work the same would certainly make these threads shorter!

 

[darkbard]

I think I would want a lot more zero-prep practice to be comfortable having nothing set out in advance at all all the time!

I remember posting this exact same sentiment in discussions about approaching my 4E game with @pemerton, @Manbearcat, and @AbdulAlhazred many years ago now! All I can say is that it's probably easier than you think! And a relatively rules light system like DW facilitates this play. (4E play with its balance between classes and clear and precise guidelines for encounter building + Skill Challenges + DMG p. 42 Improvised actions is the most robust support D&D provides for Story Now play in my opinion, but it does have more complicated mechanics than DW, which makes this a little more difficult to see easily.)

 

[Manbearcat]

As a thought experiment let's suppose there was a game that let you attack enemies but anytime you did so you had to roll a dice and on a failure you missed AND the GM must author fiction that some cute innocent young animal somewhere dies (his choice of kitten or puppy or etc). Do posters like @Manbearcat and @pemerton have any issues with the structure of such a mechanic? Afterall, the mechanical structure is the same as the Spout Lore forge example as far as I can tell, it's just the fictional subject matter has changed.

Is that seriously what you think?

That DW Spout Lore (and all of the very specific constraints that govern outcomes) is equivalent to “miss on an attack roll and a puppy/kitten somewhere in the world is arbitrarily killed?”

This is a serious comment?

This is not a good look my man Frogreaver.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Can I ask what scale we are talking about when filling in blank maps?

I mean, if the world has a northern mountainous forest, and the player says I am a barbarian from the north mountains. And then they go on to describe how it is full of geysers and hot springs and a magic cave; couldn't that easily get plugged in?

But if they said I am a barbarian from a tropical rainforest, and just from an ecosystem standpoint, there is no place to put it, wouldn't they just be creating a new continent?

Hopefully where the characters are from and what it roughly is like there is a thing that has been established in character creation. And yeah, if there are no tropical forests, then you cannot be a barbarian from tropical forest!

 

[FrogReaver]

Is that seriously what you think?

That DW Spout Lore (and all of the very specific constraints that govern outcomes) is equivalent to “miss on an attack roll and a puppy/kitten somewhere in the world is arbitrarily killed?”

This is a serious comment?

This is not a good look my man Frogreaver.

Totally serious. Maybe you can actually provide some insight as to what you find the differences mechanically are (as judging from this post it seems you do).

 

[Manbearcat]

Can I ask what scale we are talking about when filling in blank maps?

I mean, if the world has a northern mountainous forest, and the player says I am a barbarian from the north mountains. And then they go on to describe how it is full of geysers and hot springs and a magic cave; couldn't that easily get plugged in?

But if they said I am a barbarian from a tropical rainforest, and just from an ecosystem standpoint, there is no place to put it, wouldn't they just be creating a new continent?

DW's scale isn't like hexcrawls where you're worrying about the interaction of a lot of high resolution PC build stuff and exploration turn movement rates.

The only scale that matters to DW is Perilous Journey is measured in days (and you consume a Ration for each day...which has knock-on effects for loading out your group/Cohorts and Encumbrance). Here is the map for @darkbard and @Nephis game for reference.

This map was less resolution at the beginning and we added sites as play accreted. I think it was 6ish months of play (so around 24 sessions?)?

 

[Scott Christian]

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

That seems accurate. It seems they are doing so in order to get their vocabulary to be the accepted use.

 

[Manbearcat]

Totally serious. Maybe you can actually provide some insight as to what you find the differences mechanically are (as judging from this post it seems you do).

No.

Absolutely not.

I'm not going to keep writing and writing and writing and writing and writing. I've written tons and tons and tons and tons on this subject in this thread alone. Go back and read those posts. I'm not going to keep doing this.

If you want to go back and read those and ask a very specific, very focused question I'll give you a very specific, very focused answer. But no...I'm not going to keep writing and writing and writing and writing and writing and writing. I've answered this exact, top of the atmosphere level of zoom question in excruciating detail dozens of times.

 

[FrogReaver]

No.

Absolutely not.

I'm not going to keep writing and writing and writing and writing and writing. I've written tons and tons and tons and tons on this subject in this thread alone. Go back and read those posts. I'm not going to keep doing this.

If you want to go back and read those and ask a very specific, very focused question I'll give you a very specific, very focused answer. But no...I'm not going to keep writing and writing and writing and writing and writing and writing. I've answered this exact, top of the atmosphere level of zoom question in excruciating detail dozens of times.

You haven't answered my question though. If you had I wouldn't be asking it. But that's okay. I think this thread is very near dead now. Seems no one is interesting anymore in actually answering questions or considering other perspectives. Or as has been mentioned before 'listening to reply' instead of 'listening to understand'. So I think I'm going to bow out. IMO the thread has devolved into an endless loop of the same crap on repeat.

 

[Scott Christian]

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.”

For the record, and more evidence for your view, almost all of D&D's APs state that the setting is covered with room to add new locations, your own villains, etc. They also state that you can dissect the adventure, use pieces of it, transport it, etc. Then, they also state that the DM has license to alter it.

I get that many (if not most) APs are not run that way. And that is fine. Because as @Ovinomancer said, they do market ("sell themselves") as complete stories. What we call an Adventure Path. So the majority of play probably does not center around the changes, but the things that stay the same.