D&D 5E Roleplaying in D&D 5E: It’s How You Play the Game

[Lanefan]

This is consistent with what I posted earlier: those "open-ended" knowledge/perception checks are really request for more prompting/content-injection from the GM. That's why I'm generally not a big fan.

To me at least, this suggests an approach similar to Lanefan's, where the GM's conception of the fiction is a focus-point for player action declarations, at least some of which have the purpose of eliciting more of that conception from the GM.

On the whole that is an approach that I try to avoid.

Which is fine; but given that to me the detailing of setting is the DM's responsibility this seems on the surface to be an attempt to elude this responsibility and-or push it on to the players, whose job it isn't.

Your first category of action declarations - genuine asinine and blind-to-game-world - typically are not a big issue for me. I see that more as something that comes up in club-style games with players who don't take the game or the medium very seriously.

Which would be me, some of the time. I'm not often (if ever!) looking for a capital-letter Serious Dramatic Angst-ridden experience when I play, I'm after some laughs and some derring-do and some occasionally-ridiculous things done or attempted by often-ridiculous characters. That said, I still want all that to have a solid and consistent base to stand on (usually represented by setting-as-physics) and to be consistent within itself.

Your second paragraph raises different sorts of possibilities that seem apposite in various different RPGs. Although the stakes you have in mind look like they might be "procedural" rather than "dramatic"/"narrative" stakes - eg like the chance of falling that @Lanefan has posited as inherent stakes in climbing a wall. My preferred approach to "say 'yes' or roll the dice" is the BW approach (itself derived from DitV), where the focus is on narrative stakes and not procedural ones.

Without procedure there is nothing for the drama to stand on.

Take European football. There can be periods of several minutes where a team does nothing but pass the ball around near midfield (this is the procedure piece) until all that passing leads to a moment of excitement when the defense breaks down and all that buildup has allowed the attacking team to manufacture a real chance on goal (this is the drama piece). In D&D it's the same: there's sometimes a fair bit of procedure involved before a dramatic or exciting moment emerges.

If all you want in football are the exciting bits you're better served by skipping the game and watching the highlight clips on TV later. A true fan watches the whole game, and appreciates the less-exciting parts for what they are: an integral part of the game without which said game would hold considerably less interest.

The same is true of D&D IMO: skipping the procedural pieces produces a lesser experience.

 

[Lanefan]

If the door was there, the door was there. It's not a new fact, it's a discovered truth -- the fact is that the door was always there.

Except it wasn't always there; and this is where I run hard aground on this whole concept.

If the door was always there then someone in the fiction had to know it was there prior to now - the people who built it, anyone (usually the place's current occupants) who currently uses it, and so on. But if the door only springs into existence right now then nobody who in theory knew of it sooner could have made use of it even though they might have had its existence been known.

Put another way: if a search reveals a secret door now which neither DM nor players knew was there before, there's no way to retcon that if the door's there now it would have been there yesterday when the PCs passed through this area and the foes could have used it to escape, or to set up an ambush. Unless you're assuming the occupants of a place always know nothing about its secrets until the PCs reveal them, which is fine once in a while but seems a bit ludicrous if it's the case every single time.

This isn't different from normal D&D play -- if the players go through a dungeon corridor, they have a set of facts. It might turn out a later search reveals a secret door there, and the difference is that the GM put it there and hid this fact from the players whereas in SYORTD, no one knew until the dice say so (or the GM says yes, in which case the door is just flavor).

Unless, again, the door has been used in the meantime by the occupants of the place.

I'm playing right now in a dungeon crawl where for quite a while the opposition always seemed to be one step ahead of us. It took us ages to realize the reason for this: the place is riddled with secret passages and well-concealed spyholes; and the opposition had been using these to watch/track our movements and then figuring out where we'd go next, and either lying in wait for us there or clearing out, whichever was more to their advantage.

How do you square this with a setup where the DM doesn't and can't know about the spy passages until some check initiates their presence, and thus can't have the opposition make use of them?

 

[Krachek]

Which is that, do you think? I mean, I play and run 5e, and enjoy it. I'm also running an Alien's game, which is similar to D&D in that it's the GM that determines the fiction. I also enjoy playing in and running Blades in the Dark and some PbtA games. Looking forward to some Dogs in the Vineyard and Torchbearer as well. Oh, and I'm looking at some Stars Without Number as a potential game to run. So, which is my favorite style, again?

The way you describe the need to put pressure on PC and to control the pacing of the game, is a play style on its own. So you DM DnD with a tactical, ressource management play style, and it feel to you like the only way to play DnD.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I had hoped it would be obvious I mentioned this in order to exclude it.


Confusion isn't right. I am thinking of ambiguity, mystery, and open-endedness. Broader rather than narrower themes. Think of Dogs in the Vineyard versus D&D. (Broader doesn’t mean better.)

What should be at stake, possible next phrases, what is being addressed, is less defined or constrained. What the characters are about is less determined. The world may be less like our own, it may contain genuine mysteries. How do fey behave? That may differ markedly group to group.

Where there may be marked differences, and abundances of novel situations, "'no', and don't roll" is an essential tool. "Say 'yes' or roll" relies on their being no genuinely ambiguous or mysterious situations.



There is something semantic here getting in the way of communication. Is it right that you both use "fictional positioning" in connection only with things simulated in the game-world, and not connected with what is going on i.e. the narrative?

For clarity, I use fictional positioning to include narrative and simulated (in-world) stake setting. In general terms, I am thinking about where players go all in, or they hedge or hold back, or they become flummoxed and err, or they are sharp and cool and unerring, they are attentive and focused, or they are forgetful and lose sight of what's key, and so on.

Yes, that could be something procedural - such as how they scale the wrought iron fence - but I don't see it so narrowly. What price are they willing to pay to get inside Marlinspike Hall? Do they recall learning about the dobermanns likely roaming the grounds? Players choose and their choices inform what is at stake.

The height of a wall or a dobermann's hit points are I suppose part of the overall fictional position, but they are not what I am thinking of. I am thinking of the very large freedom players must enjoy to make things worse for themselves. To put more at stake, or dial things back a notch. To matter, those must be able to lead to a yes, or change the terms of a roll.

I would distinguish narrative concerns from fictional position in that fictional position is about the details of the fiction. You are in front of a locked door, is the game's focus on how you open locked doors and such? Or is the focus on WHY are you opening doors, and what are your motives, what is the effect on your character's mentality, family, society, spirit, etc.? Narrative is also about tension and the build up and release of it, about creating conflict and then resolving conflict (in a dramatic sense).

Maybe 'drama' is a better word than 'narrative', I'm not sure. 5e is in any case a very 'classic' game in that the mechanical focus is almost entirely on resolving fictional position, that is adjudication of events in the game. This is contrasted with systems which have more of a focus on other things. DW for example has a strong focus on relationships between PCs and how they evolve and what that evokes.

 

[Ovinomancer]

The way you describe the need to put pressure on PC and to control the pacing of the game, is a play style on its own. So you DM DnD with a tactical, ressource management play style, and it feel to you like the only way to play DnD.

Not quite. The alternative to what I'm talking about is that there's never a need to track hp or uses per day or spell slots because these never run out and are never seriously challenged. What I think you're driving towards is a Classic or OSR approach where these things are still important, still strong pacing signals, but where the GM is doing all of their pacing consideration in prep, not in play.

 

[clearstream]

I would distinguish narrative concerns from fictional position in that fictional position is about the details of the fiction. You are in front of a locked door, is the game's focus on how you open locked doors and such? Or is the focus on WHY are you opening doors, and what are your motives, what is the effect on your character's mentality, family, society, spirit, etc.? Narrative is also about tension and the build up and release of it, about creating conflict and then resolving conflict (in a dramatic sense).

So that is a substantial difference between us. To me it's all imaginary: all fictional. A fictional character has fictional motives for opening a fictional door to resolve a fictional conflict. To me the game is symbolic: an imaginary creature is a symbol not just a simulation. A barrier is a barrier in the mind. The best wall I ever designed was my Wall of Tongues. A low wall easy to chamber over, but your tongue will leave your mouth and appear carved on the wall.

The player fictional positioning I think of is everything the player says or commits to that can bear on the what happens next. I know the stakes - dramatic and ludic - when I know the player's intended fictional positioning. I usually allow some redrafting, as the facts in play are clarified. And besides, characters can hesitate, think things over, look closer.

Maybe 'drama' is a better word than 'narrative', I'm not sure. 5e is in any case a very 'classic' game in that the mechanical focus is almost entirely on resolving fictional position, that is adjudication of events in the game. This is contrasted with systems which have more of a focus on other things. DW for example has a strong focus on relationships between PCs and how they evolve and what that evokes.

In a mode where some facts are known by DM and not players, we sometimes say "no." In any mode we say "no" or expand in response to declarations that are blind-to-fiction or limited by mechanics. To other declarations, we say "yes" or "roll" when we have settled on stakes and characters commit. Where procedure can matter - as in D&D - we considered in-world circumstances and character approach: possibly leading to a different response.

To me, fictional must be broad and is too broad. Perhaps we should say dramatic-positioning and ludic-positioning? (Ludic = game-world circumstances + character approach + more or less effective use of mechanics.)

[EDIT: Found the word I wanted.]

 

[clearstream]

Except it wasn't always there; and this is where I run hard aground on this whole concept.

If the door was always there then someone in the fiction had to know it was there prior to now - the people who built it, anyone (usually the place's current occupants) who currently uses it, and so on. But if the door only springs into existence right now then nobody who in theory knew of it sooner could have made use of it even though they might have had its existence been known.

Put another way: if a search reveals a secret door now which neither DM nor players knew was there before, there's no way to retcon that if the door's there now it would have been there yesterday when the PCs passed through this area and the foes could have used it to escape, or to set up an ambush. Unless you're assuming the occupants of a place always know nothing about its secrets until the PCs reveal them, which is fine once in a while but seems a bit ludicrous if it's the case every single time.

Unless, again, the door has been used in the meantime by the occupants of the place.

I'm playing right now in a dungeon crawl where for quite a while the opposition always seemed to be one step ahead of us. It took us ages to realize the reason for this: the place is riddled with secret passages and well-concealed spyholes; and the opposition had been using these to watch/track our movements and then figuring out where we'd go next, and either lying in wait for us there or clearing out, whichever was more to their advantage.

How do you square this with a setup where the DM doesn't and can't know about the spy passages until some check initiates their presence, and thus can't have the opposition make use of them?

You may highlight a worthwhile distinction between dramatic and the ludic concerns. The dramatic doesn't care about system-state because it is acausal. There is a seeming that when the troll strolled into the room, that the troll is in the room because it strolled there, but in asystematic narrative we learned the troll strolled, we learned it was in the room, in our minds we connected those phrases dramatically, but there were no systematic dynamics in play. I can as well say the troll is on the moon: nothing prevents it. There is no distance between room and moon. There is only the test of what we find allows us to suspend disbelief.

What I am calling ludic concerns require that if the troll strolls into the room in this moment, in the game-world (which may be map, board, or models, or any consistently imagined space) then the room was within strolling distance and it is not possible for troll to stroll to the moon in this moment if that is too far for its defined means of travel. Similarly, characters can't find a secret door in a room in the game-world where none existed before, because if it did exist before that should have impacted earlier fiction. Any roll still comes up "no". The door's existence isn't conditioned solely on dramatic-facts, but also on ludic.

Stateful (ludic) versus stateless (dramatic.) Contingency versus unity of "fiction" and "world" state.

[EDIT For focus.]

 

[Krachek]

Not quite. The alternative to what I'm talking about is that there's never a need to track hp or uses per day or spell slots because these never run out and are never seriously challenged. What I think you're driving towards is a Classic or OSR approach where these things are still important, still strong pacing signals, but where the GM is doing all of their pacing consideration in prep, not in play.

I don't really think that "say yes or roll the dice" is compatible with D&D at all, with the noted exception of 4e.

I still believe that a secret door find out when PC really need it can be enjoyed by some play style.

Hack and slash players wont mind if there are more treasures and fight ahead. If there is no door they don’t mind either, they will fight, eventually roll new characters and go on.

Immersive storytelling players can use the event at their advantage. Luck, faith, temptation by a unknown devil. Those players usually avoid willingly to think on meta gaming point of view, so they will roll with the discovery and justify it from their character point of view. They won’t mind if there is no door, those players often throw speculative shot at the DM, and most of the time they are discarded.

Something in between players can respond differently to a helpful secret door.
Those who won’t like it are the ones that seek rewards from their cautious preparation and strategies. For those players the DM will need to work harder to give a helpful hand, it will need to be linked to previous actions and decisions.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I still believe that a secret door find out when PC really need it can be enjoyed by some play style.

Hack and slash players wont mind if there are more treasures and fight ahead. If there is no door they don’t mind either, they will fight, eventually roll new characters and go on.

Immersive storytelling players can use the event at their advantage. Luck, faith, temptation by a unknown devil. Those players usually avoid willingly to think on meta gaming point of view, so they will roll with the discovery and justify it from their character point of view. They won’t mind if there is no door, those players often throw speculative shot at the DM, and most of the time they are discarded.

Something in between players can respond differently to a helpful secret door.
Those who won’t like it are the ones that seek rewards from their cautious preparation and strategies. For those players the DM will need to work harder to give a helpful hand, it will need to be linked to previous actions and decisions.

What you're proposing here is largely incoherence, though. By that I mean that players have no basis to understand which mode of play will be deployed at which moment. This can be fine if no one cares, but I don't find it particularly useful in discussion of how RPGs can play because it fundamentally discards any principled approach to play and stands in the field of "system doesn't matter." If system doesn't matter, then there's no statement that can be made that any given RPG system or subsystem achieves any real usefulness. That's definitely a position that can be taken and defended, but seems inapt for a discussion of how you can approach the play of the game because it discards that as a concept in it's premise.

 

[Ovinomancer]

You may highlight a worthwhile distinction between dramatic and the ludic concerns. The dramatic doesn't care about system-state because it is acausal. There is a seeming that when the troll strolled into the room, that the troll is in the room because it strolled there, but in asystematic narrative we learned the troll strolled, we learned it was in the room, in our minds we connected those phrases dramatically, but there were no systematic dynamics in play. I can as well say the troll is on the moon: nothing prevents it. There is no distance between room and moon. There is only the test of what we find allows us to suspend disbelief.

What I am calling ludic concerns require that if the troll strolls into the room in this moment, in the game-world (which may be map, board, or models, or any consistently imagined space) then the room was within strolling distance and it is not possible for troll to stroll to the moon in this moment if that is too far for its defined means of travel. Similarly, characters can't find a secret door in a room in the game-world where none existed before, because if it did exist before that should have impacted earlier fiction. Any roll still comes up "no". The door's existence isn't conditioned solely on dramatic-facts, but also on ludic.

Stateful (ludic) versus stateless (dramatic.) Contingency versus unity of "fiction" and "world" state.

[EDIT For focus.]

This feels like a false dichotomy, to me, in that these categories don't really apply in any consistent way to the play of RPGs. I could not separate out a given moment of play into either, or rather, I could make arguments in either direction for a given moment of play. To follow along with @Lanefan's arguments about the secret door in his response to me, his arguments don't track. Of course someone knew about the door, but it doesn't follow that anyone alive or nearby knew about it. Ancient secret doors or forgotten ones are common tropes in the genre, and there's nothing special here that requires that this door be one that current participants are aware of. That argument just fails out of the gate due to a forced narrow focus. As for not noticing it earlier -- this is routine in even classical/trad play. You didn't notice it going past the first time, but when you search for it, you can find it. No, @Lanefan's argument is the same old one -- it's about prep's value as a game truth even when not yet revealed to the players. It's essentially arguing that SYORTD doesn't work because you don't want to play SYORTD but instead a different way. That's a valid decision, but how the different way works doesn't impinge at all on SYORTD's approach. It's like saying that apples cannot exist because fruit is orange, and that's because the only fruit is oranges. I mean, valid within it's circular premise, but not actually a valid argument against the existence of apples.

And that wraps back around to your dichotomy here -- it's not a matter of causal versus acausal, but a matter of when cause is established. All RPGs are both ludic and dramatic, in differing amounts, but one cannot escape the other because all RPGs are dealing in fiction, not actual causal systems. We trick ourselves into thinking they are causal because we imagine a series of steps, but often forget that most of this rationalization of causal chains starts as often by imagining the effect and working back to a cause. I mean, if I sit down to prep a session for a game of D&D, and decide to do a dungeon, I usually don't start way back in the causal chain and work forward to find out where the dungeon is, how it's laid out, what history it has, and what it's current state is! No, I establish a dungeon is here and some facts about this dungeon (it has goblins!), and then blend it into what has already been established, often working backwards and forwards along the causal paths during iteration in design. The end result of this normal prep is a site that is both dramatic and ludic. Same with SYORTD. If something is already established, that doesn't change -- it's established, and can be used to ludically walk forward in play. If not, we can establish it through play, and that will also establish some causal pathway. It's not at all true that SYORTD is unconcerned with causation -- this can be a key impactor of play! It is true that the manner of determining causation is much closer to the establishment of fiction, and not at all tied to the GM's off-table play during prep. The GM establishing details prior to play, and the manner those are established, are not really any different in these terms than how things are established in SYORTD play -- there's no real causal chain, only rationalized ones, and often order of rationalization is inverted. If anything, SYORTD is slightly more honest about this facet of how fiction is created than the mythology that has built up around prep and worldbuilding.