D&D 5E 5e* - D&D-now

[Charlaquin]

But what, actually, is the rule? How do you enforce "no meaningless narration"?

How do you enforce the banker giving players $200 when they pass Go in Monopoly? You just do it, because it’s what the rules say to do. If you don’t, you’re house ruling.

In fact, how do you define "meaningless narration"?

According to the opening post, the play group decides that amongst themselves.

 

[clearstream]

But what, actually, is the rule? How do you enforce "no meaningless narration"? In fact, how do you define "meaningless narration"?

There are differing views on that, and I'd like to add something else to reflect on, which is the notion of untethered narration. Narration that doesn't contain the results and follow from the conversation. What constrains a 5e* DM from untethered narration? What forestalls anarchy?

And then again, if they cannot define what is meaningless, how can 5e* DM possibly uphold the DMG 237 rule - "Only call for a roll if there is a meaningful consequence for failure." What differentiates a meaningless consequence from a meaningful one?

 

[clearstream]

Through grasping DMG 237 and PHB 174 as regulatory rules, they are reconciled as follows:

• DMG 237 contains a restrictive regulatory rule, with the effect of saying when not to call for a roll. Don't call for a roll, unless there is a meaningful consequence for failure.
• PHB 174 contains an imperative regulatory rule, with the effect of saying when to call for a roll. Call for a roll, when there is a chance of failure. (This rule is repeated in restrictive form, in DMG 237.)
• DMG 237 contains another restrictive regulatory rule, with the effect of saying when not to call for a roll. Don't call for a roll, when a task so inappropriate or impossible - such as hitting the moon with an arrow - that it can't work.

The rules are clearly structured in DMG 237. The logic there is straightforward: it's like starting lights for Formula 1 racing. Is the first light out? Great! is the second light out? Are all lights out? Go!

PHB 174 adds a complication by flipping one of the three rules to the imperative. Extending the F1 analogy, is the first light lit? Great! Is the second light out? Is the third light out? Go! Once the flip is noticed, interpretation is straightforward.

 

[Faolyn]

How do you enforce the banker giving players $200 when they pass Go in Monopoly? You just do it, because it’s what the rules say to do. If you don’t, you’re house ruling.

Passing Go is a specific action that is is extremely obvious to all players just by looking at the board, dice, and where the pawns are. However...

According to the opening post, the play group decides that amongst themselves.

When combined with this, this rule is extremely unhelpful. It is not obvious what counts as meaningless to the game, scene, or individual.

For instance, take this line from the OP:

"That off-duty guard is the one you befriended earlier, do you let her spot you or just sneak on by?"

Is this @clearstream's point? Only narrate if your narration gives the PCs a choice to act upon, and then, you the DM must offer that choice to the PCs? Which since he said this:

And then again, if they cannot define what is meaningless, how can 5e* DM possibly uphold the DMG 237 rule - "Only call for a roll if there is a meaningful consequence for failure." What differentiates a meaningless consequence from a meaningful one?

Might very well be the case.

Although these are very different situations, because a failure on a roll, like passing Go in Monopoly, is an obvious event clear to everyone: there is a DC attached to the roll; you either beat it or failed. And I would think that it should also be obvious here what is meant by meaningless: if the failed results require additional rolls or complications.

The party is confronted by a locked door! But it's got a really cheap lock that requires like a DC 10 to pick, and the party has a rogue with high Dex and expertise in lockpicking. There's no time crunch here--nobody is around to discover the party and attack, no clock ticking down to a disaster they can only avoid if they get past the lock, no traps, and the lockpicks are of decent enough quality that they're not going to easily break, even on a roll of 1 (assuming you even use critical failures). You could have the rogue roll the dice to pick the lock... but you don't really get anything out of it if you do. The game isn't enhanced in anyway, and by rolling the die, you slow the game down, even if only by a minute. So this, in fact, can be described as a meaningless roll. When I read that section in the DMG, I immediately understood what they meant by meaningless in this situation.

But when it comes to narration... well, does @clearstream mean "only narrate if you can give/dicate a choice to the players on how to act?" Does it mean "don't try to flavor text the area the PCs are in, give physical descriptions of NPCs, set the tone for the scene?" @Charlaquin, would you consider it meaningless to provide flavor text, physical descriptions, or scene tones?" I wouldn't.

 

[Charlaquin]

Passing Go is a specific action that is is extremely obvious to all players just by looking at the board, dice, and where the pawns are. However...


When combined with this, this rule is extremely unhelpful. It is not obvious what counts as meaningless to the game, scene, or individual.

The group could easily define “meaningful” in a way that is obvious, if they so desired. The entire message here seems to me to be “agree as a group on a set of parameters for what constitutes appropriate narration, and then stick to them.”

But when it comes to narration... well, does @clearstream mean "only narrate if you can give/dicate a choice to the players on how to act?" Does it mean "don't try to flavor text the area the PCs are in, give physical descriptions of NPCs, set the tone for the scene?" @Charlaquin, would you consider it meaningless to provide flavor text, physical descriptions, or scene tones?" I wouldn't.

I don’t think all flavor text is necessarily meaningless, but nor do I think all flavor text is meaningful. What does the flavor text convey? If it doesn’t contain information the players can do something with, I probably wouldn’t consider it meaningful. But that’s pretty academic. What would be an actual example of flavor text the players can’t do something with? Off the top of my head, I don’t know what that would look like.

 

[Faolyn]

The group could easily define “meaningful” in a way that is obvious, if they so desired. The entire message here seems to me to be “agree as a group on a set of parameters for what constitutes appropriate narration, and then stick to them.”

See, I'd love some examples as to this, though.

I don’t think all flavor text is necessarily meaningless, but nor do I think all flavor text is meaningful. What does the flavor text convey? If it doesn’t contain information the players can do something with, I probably wouldn’t consider it meaningful. But that’s pretty academic. What would be an actual example of flavor text the players can’t do something with? Off the top of my head, I don’t know what that would look like.

Flavor text typically conveys the tone and mood of the scene as well as locations and actions of objects, NPCs, etc.

But if you can't come up with of an example of "meaningless" flavor text, then why create a rule about it?

 

[Charlaquin]

See, I'd love some examples as to this, though.

I set a rule for myself to always re-establish the environmental description after describing the outcomes of a player’s action to restart the play pattern. This might be something that, in the hypothetical game where deciding on parameters for “meaningful narration” was an expectation set by the rules, I would put forth as a possible parameter.

Flavor text typically conveys the tone and mood of the scene as well as locations and actions of objects, NPCs, etc.

Sure, and if for your group that is sufficient to constitute meaningful, that would be something you could agree to if you were playing “5e*.” To other groups, that might not be sufficient, and they might decide (for example) that narration must also be actionable to count as meaningful. It would be up to the group to set those terms together.

But if you can't come up with of an example of "meaningless" flavor text, then why create a rule about it?

I didn’t, @clearstream did. I just clarified because some folks seemed confused about what he was saying.

 

[clearstream]

See, I'd love some examples as to this, though.

Flavor text typically conveys the tone and mood of the scene as well as locations and actions of objects, NPCs, etc.

But if you can't come up with of an example of "meaningless" flavor text, then why create a rule about it?

I'll explore some examples that are meaningful/less for me. I can't promise they will be for you, because ultimately meaning lives in your conversation. To get the context right, 5e* interprets "narrates" in this way

• say something meaningful
• the rule is an imperative regulatory rule: a green light or arrow to go from system to fiction
• it's a guarantee: players can respond to what DM narrates as meaningful

Prior-conversation:
Player-characters were haggling with a stone giant, one character got really greedy, and the conversation went south. She's huge, has 126 hit points and a giant-sized club. One character - a fighter - leapt to interpose themselves between the giant and his squishier friends.

Example 1:
Fighter on higher initiative slashed at her with his longsword, hitting. All see that he rolls 1 on the 1d8.
DM narrates "You roll 1 on the 1d8."
I find this meaningless as it restates information about game state that is available to all. It's not the kind of narrative I'm thinking of.

Example 2:
Fighter on higher initiative slashed at her with his longsword, hitting. All see that he rolls 1 on the 1d8.
DM narrates "Monica, your turn next."
I don't mind that DM is bookkeeping the process for the group, but again this isn't narrating the result. It might be done as well, but shouldn't be done instead of. Even bookkeeping, DM could have kept the conversation in the fiction by using the name of Monica's character, Demeter. Saying something meaningful about the results implies containing or following from those results. Regulatory rules don't have to be all or nothing (driving through a green light at 10 miles an hour is as much driving through it as at 50), but I feel this does too little to satisfy the rule. There are other cases where "Dem, your turn next" might be meaningful enough. Say where the fighter misses.

Example 3:
Fighter on higher initiative slashed at her with his longsword, hitting. All see that he rolls 1 on the 1d8.
DM narrates "Okay, that's 1 plus dueling plus your DEX. Six."
I find this meaningless as it restates information about game state that is available to all. It's not the kind of narrative we're thinking of.

Example 4:
Fighter on higher initiative slashed at her with his longsword, hitting. All see that he rolls 1 on the 1d8.
DM narrates "Ram's slash barely scratches her. She presses forward unabated. She's huge: you can't hold her back."
I find this meaningful in the following ways

• Barely scratched: players learn that she has a lot of hit points remaining, and this may be a tough fight.
• Presses forward: it's hopefully clear to players what's coming next.
• She's huge: creatures can barge past those two-sizes smaller than themselves, so this reminder telegraphs that the squishier characters might find themselves targeted.

The way in which these elements are meaningful is that they matter to the player-character's fictional positioning: A player's position is the total set of all of the valid gameplay options available to her at this moment of play. Valid means legitimate and effective. Ram (the fighter) can see that they will be ineffective trying to hold the giant back, even though it would be legitimate for him to try and do so. It upholds and returns to our fiction (F > S > F) and I think will carry forward the overall flow of events in combat that together will form our story.

Example 5:
Fighter on higher initiative slashed at her with his longsword, hitting. All see that he rolls 1 on the 1d8.
DM narrates "Ram's slash barely scratches her. She laughs 'I didn't realise you were so weak! Why fight small man?' and couches her club."
I find this meaningful too, but it goes in another direction. Here DM has decided that she feels her point is made, and is willing to go back to haggling. How does DM know to narrate this instead of example 4? For me, that depends on prior conversation and established fiction. In this DM's world, it seems that stone giants are a more nuanced people.

Example 6:
Fighter on higher initiative slashed at her with his longsword, hitting. All see that he rolls 1 on the 1d8.
DM narrates "Due to the unique page numbering scheme of this book, the electronic pagination of the eBook does not match the pagination of the printed version."
I mention this to repeat the question above in another light. How does DM know to avoid this narration? Why isn't the conversation anarchy? It should be clear on reflection that meaning lives in your conversation. This example is one of meaningless narration. When I see an example like this, I am tempted to say it is not narration at all. But if I'm saying that "narration" is my word for only meaningful speech-acts, I should accept the 5e* interpretation and retract my demand for examples of meaningless narration.

Example 7: (moving the scene forward)
Giant hits Horatio - a squishy - for a third time. Horatio's got like three or four hit points remaining. All see that the giant rolls a crit.
DM is silent. Everyone at the table knows that Horatio is down.
I find this meaningful even though the DM chose to say nothing. How can silence be narration? DM is conjuring a solemn moment. There's no need to state the obvious, and I assume in a minute DM will say something that moves the conversation forward. Perhaps pointedly not discussing the roll or the damage dealt. Perhaps turning it over to Horatio to narrate their fall. Perhaps the damage roll will take Horatio negative more than their positive hit points, instantly killing them (no death saves). If so, that will need narrating. Horatio's fall matters to their fictional positioning: their list of valid gameplay options is cut short.

What is meaningful is normally something that matters to fictional positioning. When a 5e* DM interprets - only roll if there are meaningful consequences - they're probably thinking about consequences on immediate or even deferred or remote fictional positioning. But what about colour?

Example 8:
After the loss of Horatio (it was instant death) the party return to their beloved villa by the Greenstone Sea.
DM narrates "It's summer. Warm sea breezes play over the vines and passion-fruit flowers. On the broad veranda are four chairs."
Here DM is intending only colour. They don't have anything in mind for these details, although they are right for their world.
Ram responds "Four chairs, gods, one of those was always for Horatio. Do you remember, Dem?"
And the conversation follows from there. Perhaps that detail leads to group to find out something about Horatio that takes them to a new adventure? A year later, Ram's player comments "Those chairs again. Imagine if you'd never mentioned them, I wouldn't have... and then Dem wouldn't have..."
This colour has the promise of being meaningful, because of the guarantee. 5e* mandates that what DM narrates is meaningful, so when a player responds to a detail, it turns out to matter. I chose this example inspired by one that Baker crafted about retroactive meaning; he said

The GM says "in the room there's a table and a few chairs, 4 chairs in fact, and one wall is all mirror, of course it's one-way, they can watch you through it," and we all nod. Yes, yes, all true.

...in roleplaying, every move is uncertain until you make it and find out. This means that the significance of an established fact is ungiven until the game's over, until you can look back and see how everything came to fall out. A year later: "wow. Do you realize, if there had been a closed-circuit camera in that room instead of a one-way mirror, how differently everything would have gone?"...

And then as another poster put it, colour can "reinforce the sense of 'reality' or vibrancy of the shared fiction; and to give the players something relatively concrete to support their knowledge of the fiction and to remember who's who." Which are cases of unconditional meaningfulness. Again, colour finds its meaning in mattering to the fictional positioning. How will we know what to say? What follows? All the things said before then. Warm sea breezes might make it feel more legitimate to say - "Ram's going for a swim." Contrast with "Sleet lashes across the veranda, and the chairs there are tipped all ways by the gusts." "Ram's going for a swim" feels very different. I've mentioned validity (legitimacy and effectiveness), but there is something else too. I read the second "going for a swim" as defiance rather than indulgence. There's danger for sure. 5e* DM narrates meaningfully when they say something that has implications or consequences, or is permitted to have.

I aimed here to produce examples from a barebones case. More detailed results, that mandate or work to legitimize system or fiction constraints (class features, spells, all kinds of rulings within the scope of skills, predefined and improvised actions), will hand DM meaningful narration on a platter. Even so, any examples are likely to be incomplete or unsatisfying taken out of context, because what will be decisive on "meaningful" are principles that hold true for you, agreements at your table, and the specifics of your prior conversation.

 

[Faolyn]

Example 1:
Fighter on higher initiative slashed at her with his longsword, hitting. All see that he rolls 1 on the 1d8.
DM narrates "You roll 1 on the 1d8."
I find this meaningless as it restates information about game state that is available to all. It's not the kind of narrative I'm thinking of.

This isn't narration. This is just stating the result of a die roll. At most, it's bookkeeping. Also, what DM does that? Unless it's followed by "OK, you did one damage and... I can't math today, hang on a mo."

Example 2:
Fighter on higher initiative slashed at her with his longsword, hitting. All see that he rolls 1 on the 1d8.
DM narrates "Monica, your turn next."
I don't mind that DM is bookkeeping the process for the group, but again this isn't narrating the result. It might be done as well, but shouldn't be done instead of. Even bookkeeping, DM could have kept the conversation in the fiction by using the name of Monica's character, Demeter. Saying something meaningful about the results implies containing or following from those results. Regulatory rules don't have to be all or nothing (driving through a green light at 10 miles an hour is as much driving through it as at 50), but I feel this does too little to satisfy the rule. There are other cases where "Dem, your turn next" might be meaningful enough. Say where the fighter misses.

This is also not narrating. This is keeping the game moving along. Now, I agree, I use the PC names since it (hopefully) keeps the players immersed in the game--but it's not narration. Not in the dictionary definition of "the action or process of narrating a story." There's no story in these OOC moments. This is mechanics. And because this is a game, not a storytelling exercise, some discussion of mechanics is necessary. At least until we can get all that fully automated.

Example 3:
Fighter on higher initiative slashed at her with his longsword, hitting. All see that he rolls 1 on the 1d8.
DM narrates "Okay, that's 1 plus dueling plus your DEX. Six."
I find this meaningless as it restates information about game state that is available to all. It's not the kind of narrative we're thinking of.

Again, this isn't narration. Also again, who does this? The player does the math. Unless the player has dyscalculia, in which case it's just polite--but then, another player should be doing the math, not the DM, who has too much to do already.

I fully agree on examples 4 and 5.

Example 6:
Fighter on higher initiative slashed at her with his longsword, hitting. All see that he rolls 1 on the 1d8.
DM narrates "Due to the unique page numbering scheme of this book, the electronic pagination of the eBook does not match the pagination of the printed version."
I mention this to repeat the question above in another light. How does DM know to avoid this narration? Why isn't the conversation anarchy? It should be clear on reflection that meaning lives in your conversation. This example is one of meaningless narration. When I see an example like this, I am tempted to say it is not narration at all. But if I'm saying that "narration" is my word for only meaningful speech-acts, I should accept the 5e* interpretation and retract my demand for examples of meaningless narration.

I have a hard time imagining any DM actually saying this, unless you're gaming with an AI. And again, this isn't narration. Not everything the DM speaks during game time is narration.

At this point, I have to wonder if the 5e* rule is "The DM does not talk unless it is directly for the game." In which case... no. The DM is a player too, and maybe your table doesn't allow any OOC conversation and demands 100% immersion all the time, but many tables find the social aspects of the game to be nearly as important, as important, or more important than the actual gameplay.

Example 7: (moving the scene forward)
Giant hits Horatio - a squishy - for a third time. Horatio's got like three or four hit points remaining. All see that the giant rolls a crit.
DM is silent. Everyone at the table knows that Horatio is down.
I find this meaningful even though the DM chose to say nothing. How can silence be narration? DM is conjuring a solemn moment. There's no need to state the obvious, and I assume in a minute DM will say something that moves the conversation forward. Perhaps pointedly not discussing the roll or the damage dealt. Perhaps turning it over to Horatio to narrate their fall. Perhaps the damage roll will take Horatio negative more than their positive hit points, instantly killing them (no death saves). If so, that will need narrating. Horatio's fall matters to their fictional positioning: their list of valid gameplay options is cut short.

I disagree here, because yeah, it could be meaningful, but it could also be anything else. Silence isn't narration; it's whitespace, where the listener imparts their own meaning to it.

I agree with #8.

 

[Manbearcat]

2 Things:

1 - Meaningful should be subbed out and consequential subbed in. Does this narration consequentially impact the present gamestate, the trajectory of play, the decision-space and suite of moves available to participants, does it provoke them thematically? If the answer isn't yes to any of those things, its not consequential.

2 - The difference between soft moves and hard moves is very well demarcated in PBtA texts whether its Apocalypse World or derivatives (eg DW). I've written about this in extreme detail on these boards so I'm not going to rewrite the essays of work I've put into this. But here is the instructive text in DW:

DW p164

Generally when the players are just looking at you to find out what happens you make a soft move, otherwise you make a hard move.

A soft move is one without immediate, irrevocable consequences. That usually means it’s something not all that bad, like revealing that there’s more treasure if they can just find a way past the golem (offer an opportunity with cost). It can also mean that it’s something bad, but they have time to avoid it, like having the goblin archers loose their arrows (show signs of an approaching threat) with a chance for them to dodge out of danger.

A soft move ignored becomes a golden opportunity for a hard move. If the players do nothing about the hail of arrows flying towards them it’s a golden opportunity to use the deal damage move.

Hard moves, on the other hand, have immediate consequences. Dealing damage is almost always a hard move, since it means a loss of HP that won’t be recovered without some action from the players.