D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[Lanefan]

Let me ask a slightly different way -- would you agree that all of the information in the AP is entirely independent of the PCs? That the locations, NPCs, and challenges presented in the AP don't ask what characters are present when you read through the AP?

Yes, I'd agree; and further I'd say that's exactly how it should be.

That any difference that happens in play only comes after this information is deployed and the players are making choices about what to do about it?

Yes, and this is the only part that matters both during play and after it. That the underlying adventure is the same doesn't matter.

It occurs to me this is strikingly similar to my long-held stance regarding, say, two 1e Fighters: the in-play differences between them caused by non-mechanical characterization and personality are what really matter at the table; and that their underlying mechanics may be very similar or even identical is irrelevant.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I'm personally not super enthused by Spout Lore actually. Mostly because useful here tends to lean into intent and task more than I like for a Powered by the Apocalypse game. I generally prefer stuff like Discern Realities, Gathering Information in Blades, or momentum spends in Infinity that allow players to ask direct questions and get those questions answered with reliable information. That way there are still constraints on the GM, but makes the setting feel more objective (not that it actually is). It also absolves me of trying to decide what is and is not useful since I usually do not always have (or want) a clear idea of what players are trying to have their characters accomplish.

Yeah. That information gathering abilities have some specificity is fine, probably even desirable. But the 'setting feeling objective' is kinda important to me as a player. We all know it is made up but when I'm playing a character I prefer if attention is not intentionally drawn to the artificiality.

 

[pemerton]

I'm personally not super enthused by Spout Lore actually. Mostly because useful here tends to lean into intent and task more than I like for a Powered by the Apocalypse game. I generally prefer stuff like Discern Realities, Gathering Information in Blades, or momentum spends in Infinity that allow players to ask direct questions and get those questions answered with reliable information. That way there are still constraints on the GM, but makes the setting feel more objective (not that it actually is).

That information gathering abilities have some specificity is fine, probably even desirable. But the 'setting feeling objective' is kinda important to me as a player. We all know it is made up but when I'm playing a character I prefer if attention is not intentionally drawn to the artificiality.

I think this is an area where some care is needed.

For me, nothing makes me feel more alienated from the setting - and hence conscious of its "artificiality" - than needing the GM to tell me the fundamentals of what my character knows and feels and experiences. If my PC is somewhere new, then it makes sense that the GM provides me with new knowledge. But if my PC is engaging with something that they know, that is familiar to them, then the player experience being in contradiction to that doesn't work at all.

This is where, in my view, fictional positioning - understood in a fairly expansive fashion - is crucial. And it is fictional positioning that tends to be ignored in "artificial" examples of Spout Lore or wises. At least, that is how conjectured examples like Wise-ing up or Spouting Lore about various power ups, treasures etc that are not connected to the established setting and the PC's place in it seem to me.

I don't have the same degree of experience with Spout Lore, but I find that the use of Wises that is grounded in the established fiction - of setting and PC - actually reinforce the sense of reality of the setting and the PC's place in it. Rather than the setting being a puzzle from which the PC is alienated, and which they are trying to solve, the setting becomes something that reflects and is responsive to those who live in it, and vice versa - just like places and people in the real world.

For me, there is one issue that can come up with Wises, but it's a much more technical one: namely, if the difficulty - which reflects the obscurity of the knowledge - gets too out of whack with the significance, in play, of revelation of the knowledge. I call this problem a technical one because it's of the same sort of character as (in D&D terms) a Fireball spell being easier to cast than a Burning Hands. I can't recall personally having seen this problem, but I remember years ago now the poster @LostSoul flagging the issue as one that had come up in his Burning Wheel play.

 

[FrogReaver]

For myself:
A sapling is a small thing, its presence or absence having little effect other than making this one roll work this one time. I don't know if there is a mechanical difference, since (properly speaking) the "luck roll" is a generic mechanic and the Spout Lore is not. It's also diegetic, in the sense that your luck happened to not fail you this time--but it would have been Especially Bad if your luck had failed you.
Food, water, and shelter is more of a challenge, but not much. One example, you run into someone who happens to be out there (such things happen), perhaps a trapper or the like, who is of a favorable disposition and shares supplies with you. That seems diegetic to me, you literally lucked into finding help.
As I had understood it, it wasn't the DM authoring the Forge, because the whole point was player authorship. I had thought this whole conversation was very specifically about the problems of DM authorship, and avoiding the use of Force by giving players authorship of things. Is that not the case? Is the player not simply declaring that this Forge exists, but rather receiving a favorable result from DM authorship? And if that is the case, how is it not Force? Isn't the authorship still ultimately held completely by the DM, they're just prompted to use that authorship by the mechanics triggering rather than "because I felt like it" (which is, technically, a "mechanic," just an unreliable and often unspoken one)?

You have a good point.

 

[Numidius]

Yeah. That information gathering abilities have some specificity is fine, probably even desirable. But the 'setting feeling objective' is kinda important to me as a player. We all know it is made up but when I'm playing a character I prefer if attention is not intentionally drawn to the artificiality.

For me the artificiality is mostly apparent when the creativity, the involvement at the table is lacking.
A generation of Gms unable/unwanting to follow players input, akin to spouting lore, wises checks, self authored quests, or mere suggestions.
Dramatic needs are never a factor.
Hordes of players not even contemplating the possibility of introducing content.
Campaigns end up as hard railroads, or bland setting tourism.
IME, sadly.

 

[Cadence]

For me the artificiality is mostly apparent when the creativity, the involvement at the table is lacking.
A generation of Gms unable/unwanting to follow players input, akin to spouting lore, wises checks, self authored quests, or mere suggestions.
Dramatic needs are never a factor.
Hordes of players not even contemplating the possibility of introducing content.
Campaigns end up as hard railroads, or bland setting tourism.
IME, sadly.

I think most of the DMs I've played with in D&D across the editions (starting with B/X) have let players introduce some detailed content either as background, in downtime, or notes between sessions (family, friends, home village, things about their characters religion, NPCs, etc...) , and I don't think I've ever had much at all that they greatly changed or vetoed. Beyond that, I've certainly seen lots of side-quests, shops, inns, NPCs, etc... created whole cloth on the fly by DMs in response to the players looking for something they hadn't prepped or considered would come up.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Yes, I'd agree; and further I'd say that's exactly how it should be.

This is my point, entire. It seems at least one person arguing against it actually fully agrees?

Yes, and this is the only part that matters both during play and after it. That the underlying adventure is the same doesn't matter.

Oh, I violently disagree. Like, take that statement out to a field and treat it like a misbehaving printer violently disagree. I'm perfectly fine with this construct in a D&D game, but the idea that this is the only way it's supposed to be? Naw, hard pass.

It occurs to me this is strikingly similar to my long-held stance regarding, say, two 1e Fighters: the in-play differences between them caused by non-mechanical characterization and personality are what really matter at the table; and that their underlying mechanics may be very similar or even identical is irrelevant.

Well, yeah, that's all they ever get in 1e. You've said that what matters to being different in play is, well, they only way they can possibly be different in play, especially when you deploy independent GM adventures rather than tailor to PC dramatic needs. Of course this is the result.

 

[Nephis]

For myself:
A sapling is a small thing, its presence or absence having little effect other than making this one roll work this one time. I don't know if there is a mechanical difference, since (properly speaking) the "luck roll" is a generic mechanic and the Spout Lore is not. It's also diegetic, in the sense that your luck happened to not fail you this time--but it would have been Especially Bad if your luck had failed you.
Food, water, and shelter is more of a challenge, but not much. One example, you run into someone who happens to be out there (such things happen), perhaps a trapper or the like, who is of a favorable disposition and shares supplies with you. That seems diegetic to me, you literally lucked into finding help.
As I had understood it, it wasn't the DM authoring the Forge, because the whole point was player authorship. I had thought this whole conversation was very specifically about the problems of DM authorship, and avoiding the use of Force by giving players authorship of things. Is that not the case? Is the player not simply declaring that this Forge exists, but rather receiving a favorable result from DM authorship? And if that is the case, how is it not Force? Isn't the authorship still ultimately held completely by the DM, they're just prompted to use that authorship by the mechanics triggering rather than "because I felt like it" (which is, technically, a "mechanic," just an unreliable and often unspoken one)?

Just to clarify (and, I hope, not belabor the point) re the setting where this particular Spout Lore-ing was done (some of which has been mentioned, some of which I don't think has been):

• The Library to which Maraqli was attached (as an adventuring scholar) was one of the few repositories of history, information, etc. in this setting and was, despite the name, primarily a university of place of study and a library (to support the research of the scholars).
• Maraqli's mentor was an archaeologist and the Mountain was riddled with former dig sites and potential ones, with increasing difficulty as they were built further and further up its sides (well, maybe not riddled but there were and had been quite a few: archaeology was an established thing.).
• The adventuring scholars of the Library were tasked not only with whatever individual tasks they had but also with increasing the store of knowledge at the Library (e.g. coming back with oral histories, taking notes of fauna, checking out potential sites for future archaeological digs, etc.).
• Maraqli's primary task was to get to this particular dig to warn of a potential danger, since the extreme weather of the site was interfering with any sort of other mundane or arcane means of communication, but her background task was always to carryout the mandate to look for ways to increase the Library's stores of knowledge, etc. (see above).
• Prior to this journey up the Mountain, Maraqli armed herself with books specifically chosen for this particular locality in terms of flora/fauna, terrain, history, mythology, etc. This "Bag of Books" was used to aid her Spout Lore attempt.
• Neither Maraqli as PC nor I as player created the Dwarven Forge out of thin air by declaring it existed: I rolled a Spout Lore to see if a rumor of the existence of such, found in one of these books, were possibly true. We had already established in the fiction, that these books were not always exactly factual or infallible: this meant that a) @Manbearcat/GM could easily say "nope!" even on a success, if he gave us other useful and interesting information, but even more so on a failure or moderate success. (isn't this similar to the question "I think I saw blacksmith somewhere in this village" (as one might easily assume there'd be) or "is there a cleric who can heal my cohort?" (as there may or may not be)
• (as previously mentioned) The journey to see if we could actually locate the Forge was arduous and dangerous, so not easily found. However, built into the fiction already was a few days wait for our group of cohorts to join us at the dig (whole 'nother story!), so once again, we had some extra time and Maraqli's mandate as an adventuring scholar of the Library to explore this possibility of knowledge/information for the Library, as well as the great need to repair Alastor's armor (particularly important due to an arcane nemesis that was targeting him).
• and, of course, there's impetuous and curious Maraqli herself who never met a rumor she didn't want to follow (as we had already established in the fiction).

I think this is an area where some care is needed.

For me, nothing makes me feel more alienated from the setting - and hence conscious of its "artificiality" - than needing the GM to tell me the fundamentals of what my character knows and feels and experiences. If my PC is somewhere new, then it makes sense that the GM provides me with new knowledge. But if my PC is engaging with something that they know, that is familiar to them, then the player experience being in contradiction to that doesn't work at all.

This is where, in my view, fictional positioning - understood in a fairly expansive fashion - is crucial. And it is fictional positioning that tends to be ignored in "artificial" examples of Spout Lore or wises. At least, that is how conjectured examples like Wise-ing up or Spouting Lore about various power ups, treasures etc that are not connected to the established setting and the PC's place in it seem to me.

I don't have the same degree of experience with Spout Lore, but I find that the use of Wises that is grounded in the established fiction - of setting and PC - actually reinforce the sense of reality of the setting and the PC's place in it. Rather than the setting being a puzzle from which the PC is alienated, and which they are trying to solve, the setting becomes something that reflects and is responsive to those who live in it, and vice versa - just like places and people in the real world.

So, given that I had chosen to play a scholar without much offensive power (to begin with, anyway) and who deliberately beefed up her "I know Stuff" skills prior to this Perilous Journey so she could utilize her personal strengths, her Spouting Lore in this context is not extracurricular, not artificial. This is not a case of a player's usurping a GM's authority and such, but what I think is a fairly good example of what @pemerton describes above, of a PC "engaging with something that they know, that is familiar to them," and thus organic and reliably set in the context of place and character.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I think most of the DMs I've played with in D&D across the editions (starting with B/X) have let players introduce some detailed content either as background, in downtime, or notes between sessions (family, friends, home village, things about their characters religion, NPCs, etc...) , and I don't think I've ever had much at all that they greatly changed or vetoed. Beyond that, I've certainly seen lots of side-quests, shops, inns, NPCs, etc... created whole cloth on the fly by DMs in response to the players looking for something they hadn't prepped or considered would come up.

The difference between being allowed to add a bit of color, or requesting the GM provide you some content, it very, very different in scope and feel from actually being able to direct the focus of the game and to introduce meaningful and impactful content at nearly every moment of play.

I could describe to you what our Duskvol in our Blades game looks like and you could read the setting material, and the delta is large. However, without the experience I've noted above, you'd probably think that this result was because the GM had a cool storyline and we made some big choices in how that played out here and there and this is where it ended up. But, you'd be wrong. The shape of the city is almost entirely our doing -- what we wanted, how we did things, the complications that arose -- all of this was formed in play. The GM was reactionary, not proactive, in the creation of our Duskvol. The same GM is running other Blades games, and they are very different and even have major institutions in the city with a different feel because of the difference in engagement and the dramatic needs of the characters.

Again, obligatory statement that this doesn't make Blades a better game, it makes it a different one. 5e is still very pretty.

 

[Cadence]

The difference between being allowed to add a bit of color, or requesting the GM provide you some content, it very, very different in scope and feel from actually being able to direct the focus of the game and to introduce meaningful and impactful content at nearly every moment of play.

I would believe it isn't nearly as much or as frequent in the games I've been in. It is just made to sound in some posts like it isn't "significantly" there at all.

I caused a DM to make up a back story for an urchin I returned to their parents that evolved into my character adopting the child and them working with me on all kinds of things about hiring folks to help care for and train her while my character was off adventuring. Another DM was certainly not expecting my cleric talking another party member into helping him sacrifice himself for knowledge a la Odin. A third DM gave out bonus experience points if we would bring in things to help tie the back story into our characters, let them put challenges in that were needed, and better describe the world. A fourth wrote the main NPCs/villains to directly tie into the character backgrounds we had.

Sure, the PCs along the way went through some classic Conan adventures, worked on stopping something Ragnorak-esque, and were trying to stop the forces of evil from conquering our homelands that any PCs in it would have done -- but we signed on to the game knowing that was coming and we made a lot of choices along the way that made the DMs have to prep more and not use big chunks of prep they had.

And sure, I'm guessing anyone going through those would have hit many of the same chapter endings - but wouldn't have been set on a path to eventually (if the game had continued) to try and lead a slave uprising in the north, ended their part of the game by gaining vengeance for their families death after returning, and had how their characters decided to discuss what happened when they returned potentially greatly change what would happen in a potential years-down-the-road follow-up.

Is the most important part of LotR the destruction of the ring? Or is it the cleansing of the Shire and what happened in the appendices?

Anyway, I think I'm rambling now.

In D&D groups I've been in there are times folks have really wanted to DM because of a world they wanted to build, times as players they've wanted to put lots of detail into a characters background to give the DM time to build things up just for them, and times they've wanted to just dungeon crawl and solve something/beat things up without worrying about that. It sounds like the part missing is the part of players actively doing "the story building while the actual play is occurring at the table" <add all the details you've been so generously adding in>. I haven't liked the games like Fate and 13th Age that stumble in that direction without doing it all out like you've described, but you've convinced me to at least try DW or Blades or whatnot if someone in our group is running it at some point.