D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[pemerton]

How I would characterise it relates to whether the effect is within the capability of the fictional person (PC) to causally affect. I have called things that let the player affect things outside the causal power of their PC 'reality altering' or 'narrative meta powers', but I really don't care what it is called. Call it what you want, I think the distinction is perfectly coherent and one a lot of people feel is important. So pretending it doesn't exist is counterproductive

Remembering things is within a individual's capability to causally affect. I just turned my mind to something and remembered it!

But the "memory" isn't really that; its an invitation in this case for the GM to create something new.

On this, I'm absolutely with @Manbearcat. The attack on the Orc isn't really that either - it's an invitation to the GM, to create something new, namely, a scratch on an Orc.

Its possible, after all, for the GM to simply be revealing something he'd already established but not yet revealed to the players

This is not an example of the PC or the player remembering anything. It is the GM remembering something - but normally when RPGing I prefer that it be the players rather than the GM who play the PCs - and the GM then telling the player something. The player is learning, not remembering.

Whether an orc dodges and gets missed, the sword cuts him, or the player fumbles it, this is representation of process that's actually going on in-game. Its being created in a sense, but in that sense its being created in world, the same way someone building a wall would be doing so.

The material created via the process at hand, is largely ex nihilio; it does not represent any actual process in-game. Remembering something is not creating it, but that's what happens here to serve the game agenda.

All you're doing here is reiterating a subject-matter distinction: between creating and recalling. Both are authorship, but only the latter implicates setting.

I don't think anyone is confused about this. I'm not, given that I have repeatedly contrasted backstory-first and situation-first techniques for dozens of pages now. I'm pretty sure that @Manbearcat is not either.

But you seem to think it is self-evident that action declarations that implicate setting should be treated differently from those that implicate scratches on Orcs. It's not. Both add new content to the shared fiction.

 

[Ovinomancer]

That was really not what I meant though. I don't think that there is anything incomprehensible about those games or that people wouldn't get them if they try them. I was merely referring to the mode of discussion. I know I'm occasionally perhaps needlessly flippant, but I mean the long definitional jargony arguments. Do people asking whether the games contain rules that allow players to affect things outside their character result such in the real life, or do people just explain how certain moves or wises checks work and how they're different than for example D&D?

I am not trying to win an argument here, I am genuinely asking do the people understand the difference I'm referring to a sufficient degree that it can be in practice be communicated.


(I presume the previous mod text was not an order, as my posting privileges in the thread were not revoked. If I'm mistaken I'm sure I'll find out soon enough... )

I haven't ever had someone ask me the question you're giving a prospective player outside of discussions like this, so we're in counterfactual territory. If the person was honestly looking to understand how different games function and wanted to talk, absolutely. Why not? Your question implies there's something fundamentally wrong about the concepts such that I, or others, would try to obfuscate or hide them from others out of a sense of... I dunno, shame or embarrassment? I'm not embarrassed about talking about games. I've never had to do this with a prospective player, though, because that kind of question "Will I be expected to do anything outside my character?" is just an odd one, really.

 

[pemerton]

In a D&D game for my son's group, when one player had their character storm away from the party to go find a ring of invisibility (because another character wouldn't give them theirs) I had to come up on the fly with a set of rumors about such a thing and the history and characteristics of a guy who had one and might be a reasonable target for pilfering it from, the part of town he was in, the inn he stayed in, the personality of the inn keeper and what the hoard of guests would react like when certain failed attempts to get the cloak occurred, etc... (Since they were near a major metropolis it seemed reasonable that there would be rings/cloaks of invisibility around, and that one might be owned by someone who blabbed about it but have it be reasonably possible to get it away from). At another point I had set up rumors of a vampire and had some connections set with the other bad guys they'd run into. When the same player said they wanted to know if they could use the vampire to become immortal I came up with a priestess of Hecate and her temple and personality and motivations and how that might even work on the fly.

I don't understand how any of this is different from what @Manbearcat, @darkbard and @Nephis have posted about their play experience with the Dwarven forge, except that their play was structured via a resolution process - Spout Lore - rather than via ex tempore GM discretion.

Why do you label their play as "quantum collapse" but not your own?

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.

In the play you've described, a player, as their PC, thinks of a particular thing - a ring of invisibility - being in the area and then you make up a whole lot of backstory about it.

The difference is that in your fiction the PC is ignorant of all that backstory - I assume they are a stranger to the area, otherwise their ignorance would make no sense - whereas in the DW game the PCs were not ignorant because one of them was a scholar who knew the history of the region.

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.

Here is Nephis's actual play report:

One of the things I love about ancient maps and DW are those empty spaces that need to be filled in. This was simply one of those empty spaces, particularly in our particular game, filled with archaeological dig sites and glaciers, covering numerous possibilities. As @darkbard mentioned already, this idea came up in discussion during the week between session, but it felt organic to me as a player and made sense for Maraqli as a character, having devoured books growing up and her brain already established as being filled with information, both useful and not. If I remember correctly I not only rolled well but I also made use of Maraqli’s “bag of books,” which gives a bonus similar to having skill points in any particular “knowledge” in D&D (4e, at least). So, the move was completely in character, felt organic, and I think it may have followed one of those “interesting rumors” along our journey (not the forge necessarily, but that dwarves once lived here .... I think).

So she was playing her character - the character (at least as best Nephis recalls) had heard rumours of Dwarves once living here; she was in a place filled with dig sites and glaciers; it was already established, as part of the fiction about th PC Maraqli, that she was a learned scholar carrying a bag of books.

I frankly don't see how this is different, in any substantive way, from what you describe as acceptable to you.

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.

How far did the PCs in the DW game have to travel to get to the Forge they recalled?

How often in that DW campaign, when the PCs tried to recall useful things, did the roll come up 6- and something unhappy occur or be recalled instead?

In your own play example, would it make play better if, instead of an Invisibility ring, the local rumour concerned a ring of Flying? (I mean, what are the odds that the rumours pertain to that particular sort of magical item, of all the ones that might exist?) Would LotR be a more compelling story if Gandalf's recollections in Moria, of a useful path to the East Gate, was wrong? (I mean, what are the odds?)

I don't really understand what criteria you are applying here. It seems like you are treating your own play as a prior verisimilitude-preserving, while treating others' play as a priori verisimilitude-destroying. But I can't tell why.

 

[Manbearcat]

That was really not what I meant though. I don't think that there is anything incomprehensible about those games or that people wouldn't get them if they try them. I was merely referring to the mode of discussion. I know I'm occasionally perhaps needlessly flippant, but I mean the long definitional jargony arguments. Do people asking whether the games contain rules that allow players to affect things outside their character result such in the real life, or do people just explain how certain moves or wises checks work and how they're different than for example D&D?

I am not trying to win an argument here, I am genuinely asking do the people understand the difference I'm referring to a sufficient degree that it can be in practice be communicated.


(I presume the previous mod text was not an order, as my posting privileges in the thread were not revoked. If I'm mistaken I'm sure I'll find out soon enough... )

I've GMed for probably 300 people (probably more...that is my conservative number) in my 37 years of running games.

The number of those people that I've experienced that get hung up on stances (that is the jargony stuff you're talking about) and/or have this particular orientation toward imagined stuff that is being espoused here was a very particular subset of folks and not even close to the majority.

The significant majority of people I've GMed for either (a) don't get into character much at all (probably a good 1/3 of the people I've GMed for basically play in Pawn Stance - JARGON - for the bulk of their play) or (b) are like @Nephis ; eager and excited to engage with the physical aspects of their character, the mental aspects of their character, the emotional aspects of their character, the relationships of their character and they're happy to have a game and resolution mechanics that allow them to do that. They mostly don't even consider the idea that physical interactions in the imagined space should have some kind of privelaged status of propelling the trajectory of play over the other stuff (memories, emotions, recall, relationships, willpower, inspiration) in the imagined space. As @Nephis said, things like Spout Lore HELP her get into character...they don't pull her out. She doesn't feel the kind of stance switch you're imputing to a move like Spout Lore. She feels that invoking thematic recall (regardless of its effectiveness as a strategic gambit or as new fallout that she now has to deal with) enhances her "I-am-Maraqli-ness."

Feeling differently is fine...but its not an objective trait of the mechanics. Its an autobiographical fact of a certain TTRPG player.

 

[FrogReaver]

Remembering things is within a individual's capability to causally affect. I just turned my mind to something and remembered it!

On this, I'm absolutely with @Manbearcat. The attack on the Orc isn't really that either - it's an invitation to the GM, to create something new, namely, a scratch on an Orc.

This is not an example of the PC or the player remembering anything. It is the GM remembering something - but normally when RPGing I prefer that it be the players rather than the GM who play the PCs - and the GM then telling the player something. The player is learning, not remembering.

All you're doing here is reiterating a subject-matter distinction: between creating and recalling. Both are authorship, but only the latter implicates setting.

I don't think anyone is confused about this. I'm not, given that I have repeatedly contrasted backstory-first and situation-first techniques for dozens of pages now. I'm pretty sure that @Manbearcat is not either.

But you seem to think it is self-evident that action declarations that implicate setting should be treated differently from those that implicate scratches on Orcs. It's not. Both add new content to the shared fiction.

Earlier in the thread we were discussing and I was saying d&d could produce the same fiction as story now.

your response to me was essentially yes, but it’s the ‘how’ and ‘who’ that differentiates authorship in story now vs d&d games.

I simply suggest we add another criteria to differentiate authorship, the ‘what’.

I don’t believe all fictional widgets are the same. IMO. Fictional characters are different from fictional objects are different from fictional events. Do you agree with this as a starting point?

 

[pemerton]

That feels like how it would happen in D&D to me. A player who said they were going hunting for deer hopefully (in an area that had deer) would be much more likely to have what they brought back to camp for dinner be a deer than a player who just said they were going hunting for dinner and would take the first thing they got. If the player had knowledge of that area it might not even take them much longer to get a deer than it would to just get the easiest thing. .

<snip>

Is streetwise in the city fairly analogous to hunting in the countryside?

Classic Traveller assumes the use of animal encounter tables, and Hunting creates a chance to encounter a desired animal.

The mechanics for Streetwise are as I've posted:

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.​

 

[pemerton]

Actual D&D play (often) has quite a bit of primarily improv driven scenarios. Good GM's are usually open to player suggestions much like you detail above.

But wouldn't that turn the game into one of "quantum collapse"?

 

[pemerton]

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.

What is the causal process you are envisaging, in the fiction? To me this makes no sense.

Whereas remembering things is very common. I do it all the time, practically every minute of every day.

 

[pemerton]

Earlier in the thread we were discussing and I was saying d&d could produce the same fiction as story now.

your response to me was essentially yes, but it’s the ‘how’ and ‘who’ that differentiates authorship in story now vs d&d games.

I simply suggest we add another criteria to differentiate authorship, the ‘what’.

I don’t believe all fictional widgets are the same. IMO. Fictional characters are different from fictional objects are different from fictional events. Do you agree with this as a starting point?

I've made dozens, perhaps hundreds, of post discussing different approaches to authorship of backstory, to authorship of situation, to authorship of consequences of action declarations, and how these different approaches can interact.

In a backstory-first approach, a player's action declaration I try and remember <whatever> is resolved by the GM deploying their authority over backstory, and telling the player what their PC remembers.

In a situation-first approach that constrains the GM's backstory authority, a player's action declaration I try and remember <whatever> is resolved by focusing on the situation. Can the protagonist recall the vital information? Once that is resolved - using whatever process the game calls for - the backstory is amplified to include whatever elements are necessary to support that resolution.

I've been told that my analysis is useless, jargonistic, obfuscatory, dismissive, etc.

And now you want to go back to the beginning and do what - rebuild all the analysis from scratch?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Feeling differently is fine...but its not an objective trait of the mechanics. Its an autobiographical fact of a certain TTRPG player.

So you think that who has authority to control which parts of the fiction is not objective trait of the mechanics?