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

[AbdulAlhazred]

So how, then, in that different set of procedures can a GM have the opposition proactively do anything to stop/hinder/gain an advantage over the party before the party interacts with them? Or is the opposition supposed to be passive (or. even, non-existent) until the PCs meet it?

Take my example of the spyholes above, where the opposition were able to keep tabs on us and react to what we were doing almost before we did it. How in your set of procedures can the opposition a) become aware of our presence without us realizing it and then b) use an unknown-to-the-PCs (and players) feature of the setting in their attempt to thwart us?

Lets look at Dungeon World. The GM is encouraged to carry out preparation, which consists of SOME mapping (with holes, meaning the maps/descriptions should be fuzzy enough to allow for elaboration during play). The GM can prepare 'Fronts', which are basically just groups of bad guys or other 'forces in the world' that may oppose/threaten the PCs. Dooms can be established for them which will trigger on basically a timer.

The GM is NOT empowered to say something like "no, you cannot find anything useful here because there IS nothing useful." If a player makes a DR check, and is owed an answer, the GM MUST provide one, but it can be anything which is compatible with the agenda and practices of DW. Presumably GMs will not generally contradict their own prep, but they MAY HAVE TO DO SO. GMs also frequently 'make moves', which is how new fiction is often introduced.

So, if the GM had in mind that the PCs were being spied on via this set of secret tunnels, he can make moves consistent with that. He can decide to only reveal these tunnels when it is dramatically interesting for him to do so. Frankly, he's probably got MORE POWER here than a classic Gygaxian DM who probably should not keep these things concealed beyond the point where the PCs fulfill preestablished (or rule supplied) conditions for finding them. The DW GM is probably going to find that his agenda and practicality dictate introducing this fiction to the players under certain conditions, but its not really mandated. And if he chose to supply some other explanation for the enemy's foreknowledge (like revealing the existence of a spy in the party) instead, then maybe those tunnels never existed at all!

My point is, it is quite easy to surprise players and characters in DW. Now, you MIGHT actually, in some other games, keep this secret at all. Maybe the players know, maybe they even invented this explanation themselves (that could actually happen in DW, but the GM would probably have to invite such a revelation). I think generally players and characters have similar knowledge in most games, but it really isn't a requirement.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is something I find janky, but you'll have to bear with me for a moment.

When Chess is played, in potential is every possible game. Suppose I dutifully record the moves and the game concludes. I now have a distinct linear narrative. Or to put it another way, on what grounds do we say it is not a story? Perhaps not a very good story, but that is a qualitatively different matter. The story will include the cues, right? The board was like this. The pieces started thus. This pawn moved here. A few seconds later, that one moved there.

Take a richer game, record it, and we have another - better - story. In a sense, games are mechanisms for generating stories. In the phase space of a game is every possible story that can be told with those symbols and dynamics.

Saying then that fiction is one thing and game cues another is from this perspective really odd. If the cues are not symbolising the fiction, what are they doing!? When I erase the cliff, it means it's gone. Or it means nothing. But this isn't right. In games the game state matters. The rules address the state. Some rules only come into play in given states. Any supposed cue/rule separation is also doubtful.

I think the FUNDAMENTAL FEATURE of RPGs is that the above is not true. I will just go back to a day in 1975 when I was introduced to a little game called 'D&D'. This was THE revelation of D&D, that there could be a situationally open-ended game in which there were both rules and NO FINITE GAME STATE. That the rules included arbitration mechanisms, and in part ARE arbitration mechanisms (I think this is the gist of Vince's view of rules) which allow for the creation and play of the game through these dynamically instantiated, and dynamically invented, states.

According to that view, Chess and D&D are FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT ANIMALS. So your argument, IMHO, fails. I think this is something that is often held by RPG players too, who do not consider chess to be an RPG, even though you might be able to 'tell a story of a chess game' that describes warriors battling and fortresses overthrown. The reason being that chess is finite and that the rules do not include any sort of fiction and thus there can be no feedback from fiction to the state of what Vince is calling 'cues' (IE the board in chess). In fact we can see this in even another way, in that you can play chess in your head (well, some people can) but this doesn't create any added dimension to the game, there are no imaginings that take the game beyond what could be represented on a board involved, it is simply a form of mental discipline to do away with the physical cues.

I think so, yes. I think the cues are important in themselves as symbols, and fiction adheres to them. Erasing the secret door and drawing an unbroken wall has meaning. Games as artifacts are tools. If the cue isn't the fiction then a mistake has been made: we have the wrong cue.

But the imagination is BEYOND any cue, it can take infinite states and isn't constrained by cues. I mean, I can remember a day, long ago, when DMs at our club would INSIST that you must have a figure for your PC, and that it must LOOK RIGHT, or else you could not play! I don't think this is usual or part of the established norm in RPGs generally, it was something taken from wargaming (like in Napoleonics where you really DO NEED to have a stand of Old Guard or else they cannot appear on the field of battle).

Agreed it doesn't follow just from the rules. It is the rules as participants grasp and uphold them. That's also true of boardgames, and it's acknowledged that human players will often inaccurately or opinionatedly apply the rules.

I think it is fair to call instances in board games 'mistakes' or 'cheating' however, and that games played in such a way are non-canonical in some sense that is not true for RPGs, generally.

It goes both ways. Cues are tools of the ritual. Wield the tool one way and participants applying the rules know something happens, another way, something else. The dice come up 7, that drives change.

I don't see the point here, really. It is non-controversial that RPGs often employ such mechanisms. They exist to help the players decide what fiction to enact, don't they? Again, as you pointed out above, things are not always done by the rules! This is, IMHO, because the rules don't always produce the desired outcome, and this view has been endorsed since 1974 AFAIK...

 

[pemerton]

game cues often have set parameters, and a symbolic form. Symbol + parameters crystallises a narrative idea.

<snip>

RPG crucially let's players join cues with parameters to lazy narratives. They pick up their character and it is no longer just a bunch of numbers, and it is more than just an aide memoire. The resultant pawn or avatar - player-character - is incompletely defined but perfectly playable.

If a player is playing a RPG then their PC is (except, perhaps, in the most extreme pawn-stance+map-as-board style of play) more than a bunch of numbers. Their PC is a character in a shared fiction, who has a fictional positioning and hence a potentiality of action.

I'm not sure that this shows the PC sheet to be more than an aide-memoire, however.

cues can be steeped with fiction, and instantiate narrative. If they're not doing that, why have them?

Well, I've given one answer: to add colour.

In the case of rolling dice, typically it's to add tension/suspense/uncertainty. Or - if we think of, say, damage dice in D&D - to impose consequences in a roughly consistent but not strictly constant fashion.

Maps can also perform a function similar to a diagram in geometrical reasoning - they can exhibit relationships which are entailed by the content of the shared fiction but not yet intuited by the participants. To give a toy example: if we know that Dyvers is 40 miles due west of Greyhawk, and Five Oak 30 miles due south, then a map might help us realise that the distance from Five Oak to Dyvers (at least as the hawk flies) is 50 miles.

Charts that map relationships - be they family trees, or charts of enemies and allies - can perform a similar function. In this respect cues are no different from other forms of indexing, cataloguing, etc.

 

[Hriston]

I don't think doing this in 5e is coherent, but it's perhaps something you could do. I say this because doing so would be ad hoc, and nothing else in the ruleset supports it. If you're looking for a game that does this, you'd be better served actually looking at a different game that already has this as part of it's agenda. Of course, there is a pervasive idea that 5e is everything possible, and it's a better call to try to force 5e into different molds than to commit the sacrilege of even looking at a different game.

I agree that removing player roleplaying authority is unsupported when not called out specifically, but what do you think about testing the PCs' personal characteristics (TIBFs) by presenting situations in which decisions that accord with TIBFs are not only rewarded with inspiration but also result in complications, i.e. they are less than optimal in terms of classic gameplay. Might not that also put the PCs' strength of character under pressure in a way more fully supported?

 

[Hriston]

D&D has historically been so combat-focused, they might desire similar forced moves and hard outcomes in the social dimension.

The RAW supports it, albeit they will have to diverge from the RAI that as we know does not.

They might, and yet I don't know of anything in combat that creates a conflict between the decisions of a player and the imagined decisions of their PC.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I agree that removing player roleplaying authority is unsupported when not called out specifically, but what do you think about testing the PCs' personal characteristics (TIBFs) by presenting situations in which decisions that accord with TIBFs are not only rewarded with inspiration but also result in complications, i.e. they are less than optimal in terms of classic gameplay. Might not that also put the PCs' strength of character under pressure in a way more fully supported?

Again, if the table wants that, I guess. The problem is that this is mostly ad hoc and totally separated from the rest of how play is structured. Making a game about investigating character isn't just a tacked on subsystems being repurposed (and BIFTs are both tacked on and pretty weak as a subsystem). Rather, the stakes of the game need to revolve around this, and such a tweak doesn't mean that the rest of the game still isn't whatever the GM prepped. This would also be a loss of agency with no concomitant gain.

D&D isn't about exploring character in this way. Nothing in the game is focused here. Trying to add it in as a dash of spice, especially by reducing agency, just seems like it should be contraindicated.

 

[clearstream]

For the sake of argument let's say that fiction is invested in cues. And nuance that by saying that the parameters of a cue are informationally incomplete and - while patterned - can be ambiguous. Fiction adheres to cues, and is suggested but not fully described in them.

We leverage the incompleteness and ambiguity to lift the narrative beyond what game as artifact, with rules grasped and upheld, can ordinarily deliver.

Game as artifact thus provides reification or handles to allow rules to manipulate fiction. That allows it to be systematically and progressively addressed: added to and modified.

Some cues are able to be cast out of neurons and synapses, but without the game tools (artifacts, cues) persisting, and systematically and progressively adding to and modifying, fictional detail (and complexities therein) is limited.

@AbdulAlhazred @pemerton answer to your comments.

 

[Hriston]

pIsn't this what happens when a Charm, Fear, Dominate or similar effect occurs?

In those cases, at least, the reason seems to be (i) to establish a fiction that fits with some conception of witches and wizards who influence minds and emotions, and dragons that cause terror, and the like, and (ii) to limit the player's "tactical" space - in some cases at least to severely limit it! (Eg classic D&D Charm or modern D&D Dominate.)

There are ways to do (i) without (ii) - eg Burning Wheel has some of them - but I don't think I've seen them implemented in any version of D&D.

EDIT: I've read your post just upthread of this one. I think we see some beguilement etc differently.

I think we might see them differently, yes. For me, the distinction is between voluntary versus involuntary thoughts, actions, etc. The effects of charm person, dominate person, and fear are almost entirely of two sorts: either they are purely mechanical, imposing advantage or disadvantage on some roll or other, or they dictate or prevent certain actions by the target. So, for example, the target of charmed person might want to attack the caster but is unable to do so, or the target of fear might not want to drop what it's holding but is forced to do so by the spell.

The possible exception to this is the effect of charmed person that causes the target to regard the caster as a friendly acquaintance. While I view this effect as a cognition that is non-consensually placed into the mind of the target, it could conceivably result in the target taking some voluntary actions that it might otherwise not have taken. Mostly, I think it applies to NPC targets of the spell, setting their attitude to "friendly" for the purposes of social interaction, but I could see an interesting case to be made for applying the "friendly" tag to a PC target, essentially turning the PC into an NPC, subject to being influenced socially by the caster for the duration.

 

[Hriston]

Again, if the table wants that, I guess. The problem is that this is mostly ad hoc and totally separated from the rest of how play is structured. Making a game about investigating character isn't just a tacked on subsystems being repurposed (and BIFTs are both tacked on and pretty weak as a subsystem). Rather, the stakes of the game need to revolve around this, and such a tweak doesn't mean that the rest of the game still isn't whatever the GM prepped. This would also be a loss of agency with no concomitant gain.

D&D isn't about exploring character in this way. Nothing in the game is focused here. Trying to add it in as a dash of spice, especially by reducing agency, just seems like it should be contraindicated.

I agree with most of this, but I'm wondering why you view what I described as involving a loss of player agency?

 

[Ovinomancer]

I agree with most of this, but I'm wondering why you view what I described as involving a loss of player agency?

In 5e, the only agency the player has is in the realm of determining what a character thinks, feels, and tries to do. Your proposal would allow other players (primarily the GM) to abrogate this when they wanted to. To me, this is a loss of agency for the 5e player because they gain no benefit from this (gaining Inspiration is already baseline). So, it's a trade to offload character choice for no other increase in agency.

In games that feature this kind of thing, agency is usually strongly compensated by having the game be about what the players choose for it to be about. This isn't present at all in 5e. But this, I mean of course the GM could choose to use their authority to do so, but there's no constraint on the GM to do so. This wraps back into just being at the GM's whim. You could have a strong social contract that could constrain this, but that's outside of the game and you can do whatever you want here anyway regardless of the game.