D&D General How has D&D changed over the decades?

[pemerton]

I just think most players put their PC first in most circumstances, and PC authority games make this more likely.

I assume the second occurrence of "PC" should read player?

And are you reporting your experience, or your conjecture?

 

[pemerton]

In general, the player's first focus is on the success of their PC (and somtimes, of the party) and on the immediate here-and-now elements that go into as best as possible ensuring that success.

When I play my character, I'm focusing on being my PC. "Success" in this context seems like a metagame intrusion; I try to do what seems true to my PC.

 

[pemerton]

Yes to all of them. What I want to know is how different are they from FATE?
Do players still take turns at being the allmighty?
How is actually sharing responsibility so much better than having one person to coordinate everything?
How do you avoid the "I Win!" button, because other posters with much more experience, and much recent experience have seen it too. And not just one/once.

I've posted various actual play examples upthread, from Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy, Burning Wheel and Torchbearer. Which one(s) did you have trouble following?

 

[Thomas Shey]

You can not be a jerk at the table, while still focusing your RP efforts on your PC's interests. Its a spectrum. I just think most players put their PC first in most circumstances, and PC authority games make this more likely.

There's a big difference between "Thinks of their character first" and "doesn't think of other people." The first is only a problem when the second is true.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I assume the second occurrence of "PC" should read player?

And are you reporting your experience, or your conjecture?

Yes, I meant player the second time.

I have never played a non-trad game with non-trad players, so it is conjecture based on the players i do have experience with. And they would have a very hard time not using player authority for their own advantage, and especially to their PCs individual detriment. I would likely have the same trouble. To me, it seems an alien play style.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Yes, I meant player the second time.

I have never played a non-trad game with non-trad players, so it is conjecture based on the players i do have experience with. And they would have a very hard time not using player authority for their own advantage, and especially to their PCs individual detriment. I would likely have the same trouble. To me, it seems an alien play style.

Good! That's an excellent place to start. I'd recommend looking at Ironsworn. It's free and complete at that link. It also has a solo play version that can help ease into learning about how these kinds of games can play (they don't all play exactly like this, but there are similarities).

 

[Umbran]

The type of gamer you're describing is an entirely different species in my experience.

I find most players have capacity to have fun in the styles being described. However, they won't just spontaneously happen on their own. Like any other consistent game style, it takes some intention and choices to match.

And there's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy that can happen. If, you, say, are the GM, and you think your players cannot enjoy engaging in this sort of game, you will not present that sort of game. If never presented the opportunity, they never get to try it, much less learn where the fun is to be found in it.

 

[Cadence]

So, we're talking about "Trust the GM" and "Never Trust Players" and you respond with... scheduling? Um, okay.

You asked in #2794 why we sit down with players we don't trust. I said we pretty much always pick a DM we know something about (as a player or DM), but sometimes pick up players we know nothing about.

Or is this an attempt to say that the GM is the most important person present so they deserve trust, while players are unnecessary individually so they don't? Struggling to find what you're saying here.

No, it was an attempt to point out the logistics and why its less risky in terms of running a continuing game or campaign to take on a player of unknown quality than it is to take on a GM of unknown quality. A particular game can usually progress if a single player is gone for any reason, but not if the GM is.

Given that, it feels like the math says if you want a continuing game to happen and you have several trustworthy people and several folks of unknown trust, your estimated odds of a successful game are larger with a trustworthy GM than with the GM of unknown trust.

Being trustworthy is a necessary but not sufficient quality to be a good GM.
Being a GM doesn't make one trustworthy.

One isn't trustworthy because they're the GM.
But hopefully the group (of three other player and a GM that a new player is seeking to join) picked someone to GM in part because they trusted them.

And they're taking you without prior experience.

They at least have the other people in the group vouching for the DM. (If one person shows up at a restaurant with 3 repeat customers eating there, the new arrival knows at least three people like it. Granted, it might be awful and the three might have actively bad taste in restaurants... so the new person might not want to be in an eating club with them anyway.)

Seems there's an equal chance in your thought experiment for a player to be bad for for that player to find out the GM is bad. So long as we accept the entirely made up numbers, of course.

Would the three other players at the table continue playing with a bad GM if they were good players and had any other choices? (If we're imagining an established table).

If we're imagining an all new table, then the good player joining a group of 3 + DM would have a 10% chance of a bad DM and 27.1% of at least one bad player among the three (using equal individual bad probabilities of 10%). If you crank the bad DM chance to 25%, there is still a higher percent chance of at least one other bad player at the table (still 27.1%). All with made-up numbers of course.

Would you expect the chance of a randomly selected player to be bad to be about the same as that of a randomly selected DM? If not, what ratio would you go with?

We're talking about "Trust the GM" and "Never Trust Players."

Being trustworthy is a necessary but not sufficient quality to be a good GM.
Being a GM doesn't make one trustworthy.

A campaign can often survive removing one untrustworthy player. A campaign can often not survive removing the GM. (Although another player could step up and run a new one).

I'm speaking to exactly why I think this happens. It seems you were trying to say it's all just percentages, without examining whys, so I thought I'd do that.

I hope I clarified.

 

[Cadence]

When I play my character, I'm focusing on being my PC. "Success" in this context seems like a metagame intrusion; I try to do what seems true to my PC.

That feels like that's what @Lanefan was getting at in #2826 and #2827. It feels like almost everyone in this thread, for all of their other differences, agrees on that being the thing to do.

 

[hawkeyefan]

No, I also play.

More or less, yes; I'm there to play my character(s) to the best of my/their abilities* in the setting given them by the DM. I actively try to turn off my DM-brain as a player, with varying degrees of success.

* - by this I don't necessarily mean playing them to their mechanical optimum; I mean playing them as themselves first and in the process trying to be at least somewhat entertaining.

This last bit about being entertaining is the kind of thing I'm talking about. I'm talking about contributing to the events of play.

I do. The character is mine, the setting it's operating in is not, nor is it any other player's, and nor should it be.

An odd thing happened here. I was talking about the game, and you split it up into characters for the players, and setting for the DM. But I'm talking about the collective activity of the game.

The moment the setting starts becoming part-mine (as a player) one of two things happens: either my status changes with regards to the other players at the table (which simply cannot end well in any way), or if we can each say "the setting is part-mine" it becomes a pointless exercise in arguing and cat-herding as we try to pull the setting in a number of different directions equal to the number of people at the table. And when the setting is built with the expectation and goal of being robust and consistent enough to endure through an open-ended (i.e. undefined but ideally very big) amount of time, play, characters, and players this becomes untenable.

But your assertions here have clearly been proven not to be true for other players and GMs or other games.

So is this something you think is specific to you and your players, or to D&D in general?

My responsibility as a player pretty much starts and ends with showing up on time, being entertaining and engaged, having half a clue about the rules as they pertain to my character, and not being an asshat.

I think the DM's say in how the games go is at least equal to, if not greater than, the sum of the players' say. It's easier for the DM to save things whent he players have a bad night than it is for the players to save things when the DM has a bad night.

Do you think so? I'm not sure what metric you'd be using, but I also think we'd be splitting hairs. If all the players are not engaged, I can't really see the game as better where only the GM is not engaged.

I don't think so.

Why not?

Perhaps, but someone still has to have ultimate control over the setting if only to keep it consistent, which means having veto power over any proposed additions or alterations. That person is, most logically, the DM; and if players can't or won't accept this then sorry, I can't help 'em.

Well, I don't think anyone is arguing for removing the GM as having final say. Also, no one's talking about some kind of situation where the players can't or won't accept the GM's authority, but are talking about a situation where the GM knowingly shares some amount of authority with the players.

I do view games I'm not running as less "mine", but that mostly manifests in how much effort I put in, not how much I pay attention to what I'm doing is impacting other people. I'm far more haphazard as a player than a GM, but I don't entirely abandon my responsibility to everyone else.

It absolutely depends on the game you're playing, but what I was really talking about was commitment to the game and contributing as an active participant, which you mention in the last part of your post.