D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[FrogReaver]

I know this is rich coming from me (fully cop to it)...but I can't parse your sentences (or how they relate to my question).

And after the "can't parse it", I don't see how a rhetorical question (regardless of what you're saying) answers my question.

I'll pose my question again. If anyone could answer it clearly and without a rhetorical question, I would appreciate it.

Why must I submit a sufficiently acknowledging/deferential preamble to the hegemony of modern majority share D&D before my contributions (on old school D&D or Story Now D&D or Storyteller Imperative or Skilled Play or competing play priorities or Force or whatever) should be considered relevant?

it would be helpful if you stop making this so much about yourself I can’t really comment in a way that doesn’t make it far too personal when that’s done.

 

[Cadence]

I mean lol...seriously Crimson Longinus of the internets.

That is your response. Is your friendly (lol?) public service announcement above indicative of a "relevant contribution?"

Here is a public service announcement for you: People see <shrug> emoji and "just sayin' ", and they don't think "definitely not douchey!" So, my advice to you for your contributions to be relevant would be to drop the shrug emojis! Particularly after sarcastic remarks!

Lucky for everyone at ENWorld, you don't get a vote on whose words are relevant and whose are not. I'm quite confident that my contributions over the years meet the standard of "relevant" despite not genuflecting in quite the way you would like me to (for whatever reason)!

And the 80s have a hell of a lot of purchase in all manner of culture, D&D included, in our world thank-you-very-much!


EDIT - And to be clear (because you didn't answer my question). You feel that if I don't genuflect sufficiently to your liking in an acknowledging preamble of some kind, that the ENWorld userbase will consider my contributions irrelevant. Why_is_that? Why is genuflecting to majority share D&D before I talk about my "old-ass 80s D&D" or my "newfangled ivory tower RPGing" the prerequisite for "relevant contributions?" How does that work? Draw me a map.

@Cadence , you xped this so I assume you agree? Could you elaborate on that? Could maybe @FrogReaver elaborate on that? Why must I submit a sufficiently ackowledging preamble to the hegemony of modern majority share D&D before my contributions should be considered relevant?

It feels at times like the discussion is about very broad classes of games and the range of differences. It feels at other times it is about two purified versions. It isn't always clear to me why the definitions made from one person's choice of the later should be broadly useful to discussing the former.

 

[Manbearcat]

it would be helpful if you stop making this so much about yourself I can’t really comment in a way that doesn’t make it far too personal when that’s done.

Uh huh...that is what is happening here Frogreaver. This is all about my narcissism! Its not about the social phenomenon that is underway at all so lets ironically call me a narcissist and focus on that!

Alright, let me put my giant narcissism away for a minute and lets see if I can get an actual answer to what I'm looking for.

Why must A PERSON submit a sufficiently acknowledging/deferential preamble to the hegemony of modern majority share D&D before THEIR contributions (on old school D&D or Story Now D&D or Storyteller Imperative or Skilled Play or competing play priorities or Force or whatever) should be considered relevant?

Can I get an answer now?

 

[Manbearcat]

It feels at times like the discussion is about very broad classes of games and the range of differences. It feels at other times it is about two purified versions. It isn't always clear to me why the definitions made from one person's choice of the later should be broadly useful to discussing the former.

But this doesn't answer my question. What work is the genuflecting to/acknowledging of the hegemony of modern majority share D&D doing to give my contributions on topics x, y, z relevance?

How does genuflecting give subsequent words relevance? Relevance downstream of genuflection. That is what I'm looking for.

I can absolutely speculate upon an answer (I've got a few surmises as to what the answer might be), but I would like the author (preferably...but he's not giving an answer) or someone who agrees with that premise to unpack it for me.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I know this is rich coming from me (fully cop to it)...but I can't parse your sentences (or how they relate to my question).

And after the "can't parse it", I don't see how a rhetorical question (regardless of what you're saying) answers my question.

I'll pose my question again. If anyone could answer it clearly and without a rhetorical question, I would appreciate it.

Why must I submit a sufficiently acknowledging/deferential preamble to the hegemony of modern majority share D&D before my contributions (on old school D&D or Story Now D&D or Storyteller Imperative or Skilled Play or competing play priorities or Force or whatever) should be considered relevant?

Look. If you want to go to Marvel forums and only discuss how The Incredible Hulk (1978 series) differs from Lars von Trier's style, you can do that. But it will lead to confusion. Especially if you try to discuss MCU with assumption that that the 70s Hulk series is basically the same thing.

And I'm not saying that the 70s Hulk show or Lars von Trier's films don't matter and one shouldn't discuss them. But the discussion might be more accessible to larger Marvel fanbase if you actually contrasted them to the modern MCU.

It just seems that in these threads a lot of time is wasted by people talking past each other, and personally I don't feel that is really an ideal way to conduct a discussion.

 

[FrogReaver]

Uh huh...that is what is happening here Frogreaver. This is all about my narcissism! Its not about the social phenomenon that is underway at all so lets ironically call me a narcissist and focus on that!

Alright, let me put my giant narcissism away for a minute and lets see if I can get an actual answer to what I'm looking for.

Why must A PERSON submit a sufficiently acknowledging/deferential preamble to the hegemony of modern majority share D&D before THEIR contributions (on old school D&D or Story Now D&D or Storyteller Imperative or Skilled Play or competing play priorities or Force or whatever) should be considered relevant?

Can I get an answer now?

Uh huh...that is what is happening here Frogreaver. This is all about my narcissism! Its not about the social phenomenon that is underway at all so lets ironically call me a narcissist and focus on that!

Alright, let me put my giant narcissism away for a minute and lets see if I can get an actual answer to what I'm looking for.

Why must A PERSON submit a sufficiently acknowledging/deferential preamble to the hegemony of modern majority share D&D before THEIR contributions (on old school D&D or Story Now D&D or Storyteller Imperative or Skilled Play or competing play priorities or Force or whatever) should be considered relevant?

Can I get an answer now?

Here’s what I believe will happen. You keep commenting about yourself i eventually respond in that context, someone reports me for being to personal/whatever, I get modded.

I like discussing with you, but when the conversation starts going this way I’m going to have to back out. When/if I no longer feel at risk of being modded by continuing the conversation I’ll be happy to continue.

edit: removed overly personal content.

 

[niklinna]

Right. It's just that your binary distinction omits how (I'd wager) most people actually play. Most people don't play gygaxian map and key dungeon/hex crawls anymore (and haven't for decades) nor do they play Story Now indie games. So it's not super helpful.

The problem in the analogy is not the binary distinction as such, it's that Pictionary and Telephone are two separate games you don't see played at the same time, whereas the modes of RPG play they are analogies for are just that, modes of play, which you can weave together in a single game.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Look. If you want to go to Marvel forums and only discuss how The Incredible Hulk (1978 series) differs from Lars von Trier's style, you can do that. But it will lead to confusion. Especially if you try to discuss MCU with assumption that that the 70s Hulk series is basically the same thing.

And I'm not saying that the 70s Hulk show or Lars von Trier's films don't matter and one shouldn't discuss them. But the discussion might be more accessible to larger Marvel fanbase if you actually contrasted them to the modern MCU.

It just seems that in these threads a lot of time is wasted by people talking past each other, and personally I don't feel that is really an ideal way to conduct a discussion.

Right. So, you're immune to this talking past and have decided the best way to correct others is to gatekeep the allowable conversation topics by excluding still valid approaches to play? Or are you actually claiming that you could not run a Classic approach dungeon crawl with 5e? I'll agree it's got some holes and defangs some aspects of the system compared to, say, B/X, but in general I have to strongly disagree. Location based, map-and-key play is still very relevant to current edition.

 

[Maxperson]

Gotcha.

So let me be clear for everyone conversing and everyone reading along.

When I'm talking about Story Before and comparing it to Pictionary, I'm not talking about any person's specific play (eg Maxperson's). I couldn't say what is happening at your table (or CL's or SC's). It sounds to me that you guys tables experience significant drift in the course of play. I can't tell when/how/why that happens (I can tell if I'm beholding the game or reading robust play excerpts...but not through just conversation) in the course of your play, but that appears to be the play that you guys are representing.

When I talk about Story Before and compare it to Pictionary, I'm talking about my own RC Hexcrawls and my own Moldvay Dungeon Crawls. Outside of Reaction Rolls, Morale, and Wandering Monsters "hitting" (which have an element of procedural Story Now to them), those games are 100 % Story Before kindred to Pictionary:

1) I pregenerate a ton of map and key and themed (not themed as it pertains to the PC...generically themed w/ D&D's tropes) content.

2) I (effectively), to borrow PBtA parlance, make (hopefully) deft soft moves to telegraph threats/downstream content inherent to (1) in order to (a) pique interest/provoke and (b) flag elements of danger (type, scale, nature, etc).

3) Players explore it using the rules and procedures of play to draw inferences, deploy guile and gambits, solve puzzles and defeat obstacles; play skillfully (or fail to do so and suffer the consequences).

4) Rinse/repeat 2 and 3 until all aspects of play are resolved (with the game coming to an end).

This was how games were primarily run in basic D&D and earlier. Once 1e came out, though, and it became a world building exercise where you adventured as part of a larger world, interacting with kings, peasants and more, the primary method of play ceased to be map and key. You'll see oddball corner case play that's still like that, but by and large the traditional method of play is some combination of the two methods.

I'm just describing a healthy phenomenon (in particular, the majority of my D&D play...all of it, in fact from 1984 until late 90s) inherent to D&D play.

My experience was that it was just how basic and earlier D&D was played. From 1984(outside of basic) until now, with many different DMs, was primarily a merging of the two methods to some degree. In fact, since we had all played 1e and were just experimenting with basic, we tried to play basic outside of the dungeon crawl, but the rules really weren't helpful there, so it was something we had to force onto the system.

 

[FrogReaver]

This was how games were primarily run in basic D&D and earlier. Once 1e came out, though, and it became a world building exercise where you adventured as part of a larger world, interacting with kings, peasants and more, the primary method of play ceased to be map and key. You'll see oddball corner case play that's still like that, but by and large the traditional method of play is some combination of the two methods.

My experience was that it was just how basic and earlier D&D was played. From 1984(outside of basic) until now, with many different DMs, was primarily a merging of the two methods to some degree. In fact, since we had all played 1e and were just experimenting with basic, we tried to play basic outside of the dungeon crawl, but the rules really weren't helpful there, so it was something we had to force onto the system.

It’s also important to note that many players today have never experienced play anywhere near what was being done pre 1984. I know I haven’t. So for me it rather feels like the comparisons and forgesque framework are either inaccurate (initial reaction) or more likely accurate for pre 1984 play but extremely outdated when talking about more modern play.