D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[Aldarc]

Your post supported the DM advice in the 5e DMG, and suggested that style would only get stronger in the revision. You also used Matt Mercer, the current most famous 5e GM, as an example. How does that not read as supporting that style over others?

You are correct that I used support to show that being a fan of the players and their characters is not out of place in the text and play culture of 5e. None of this says that it's the only way to play the game. You unsurprisingly were quick to jump to that conclusion on your own, hence my point about how you are making assumptions.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The setting, and the PCs reaction to it.

I asked what else besides the PCs would the game revolve around. The PCs reaction to the world would be that. But the setting? How does the game revolve around the setting, except in how the PCs interact with the setting?

And I was explaining why I don't like something, not suggesting that something some people like didmt

That's fine. But maybe allow others the same courtesy. Ultimately, your opinion that player contribution to world-building is somehow meaningless doesn't bother me... I may disagree, or think you're wrong or whatever, but it's your opinion and you're entitled to it.

So if someone thinks that heavy DM world building is meaningless... they're just as entitled to that opinion. Ultimately, what I'd like to see is these discussions shed of all the offense taking and pearl clutching that tends to happen.

I believe a neutral referee who does their best to be fair is better than a "fan" who wants the PCs to succeed with just the right amount of adversity so the game is sufficiently dramatic.

I think this mistakes what it means to be a fan of the characters. It's not about soft-balling the challenges or adversity they'll face. I mean, think of fiction that you enjoy... characters who you are a fan of and the adversity they face. As a GM, I'm rooting for the characters because I care about them and their exploits, but that doesn't mean I'm going to take it easy on them.

That, and if someone did actually explain soft and hard moves, I missed it.

Soft and hard moves are those made by a GM at certain points in the game. Generally, a GM can make a move when:

• the players look to them for what's next
• there's a lull in the action
• the players hand them a golden opportunity
• the dice call for a move

Then the difference between a soft move and a hard move is generally that a soft move sets something up, prompting action by a character, and a hard move follows through on something.

So a soft move might be "The orc snarls at you and raises his wicked looking axe... what do you do?" or "The guard cocks his head as if he may have heard something, and he walks over to the railing above you... what do you do?"

A hard move would then follow if in either of the above situations the player did nothing about the threat, or else they tried something and rolled poorly. So the hard moves would be "You try to stab the orc, but your position is wrong and the orc knocks your sword aside and then brings his axe down onto your shoulder, and you feel the crunch of metal and bone!" or "You press yourself against the wall in the shadows, but the guard sees you! Before you can do anything more, he cries out 'Intruder!' and then raises his crossbow, aiming it in your direction!"

Those are the basics. Moves are what you can do in the game, just as we'd use the term for many other games from Chess to Street Fighter. The players have moves that get triggered when their characters attempt something in the game. The GM has different moves that they can make in response to the players.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I assume your are just talking about not wanting your players ideas and creativity and that you can in fact separate the characters identities from the players identities.

If that is the case, while a respect that you have a method you prefer, it might open you up to new ideas if you share the reigns a bit. I definitely started gaming as the DM that created the world, cosmos, and had control of everything. I do in fact really enjoy world building. However, I found that my world's became even more lively, engaging, and immersive when I shared some of that task with others. Reality has a multitude of opinions and perspectives, it is hard (actually impossible) for one person to recreate that diversity in a fantasy world. DMs can do it well enough for the purposes of a game, but I found that the realities I create for our games became "more" when I added other perspectives as well.

Now, as part of session 0 or sometimes even before, I share my ideas of the world/cosmos with the group and take in feedback and ideas. I then incorporate those ideas into the world. It has made my worlds, and my games better.

I think what people sometimes fail to get is that everyone understands, and have generally mastered, trad/classic styles of D&D play. I know I have around 20 years of experience GMing that way, and I know many of the people who post about 'narrativist' or Story Now type games, and they all have this kind of experience too. I'll let them speak for themselves, but in every case we've all played D&D/Basic/AD&D/2e/3e etc. extensively enough to be as expert at it as pretty much anyone on these forums. So, things like this, what is being said here, it rings very true.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Reality has a multitude of opinions and perspectives, it is hard (actually impossible) for one person to recreate that diversity in a fantasy world. DMs can do it well enough for the purposes of a game, but I found that the realities I create for our games became "more" when I added other perspectives as well.

Yeah, AGAIN, this rings SO TRUE. My own GMing, and the worlds and situations and such that have come out of it, has been vastly richer because everyone was participating on a largely level playing field. I mean, not all narrativist games actually put setting in the hands of players, certainly not in a formal way, nor are they all 'low myth'. Still, the realization of the world in terms of how it works, the people in it, the conflicts, etc. hugely benefits from other player's BUY IN. I totally believe that can be achieved by really talented groups without playing a game that says anything about it, but there's an extra layer, that degree of 'plot independence' where NOBODY at the table knows what is about to come up next until it does. No game that pre-prepares all its material in classic D&D fashion gets to that point. Its pretty amazing when the GM can be totally surprised and everyone is like "wow, that was crazy and unexpected" at the end of a session. In our BitD game, we had this final session, and nobody knew how things would end, we had all just sensed that "this story is reaching an endpoint." That is really true Play to Find Out What Happens, and the setting gained all sorts of layers of nuance that weren't there in the material we started with.

 

[Oofta]

Oye, you all complain about terminology! Here's what Dungeon World actually says:

"Be a fan of the characters
Think of the players’ characters as protagonists in a story you
might see on TV. Cheer for their victories and lament their defeats.
You’re not here to push them in any particular direction, merely to
participate in fiction that features them and their action."

Its not being nice to them, its not 'wanting it to win' etc. It is being a fan. I bet all of you who spend lots of time and energy on your settings are 'fans' of those settings, right? I bet you are! Its fine too. You're not proposing that this makes it impossible for you to be objective about how the setting works or what's in it, right?

I am just as capable as that of being a fan of the characters. They're cool and quirky, and when they attempt to put the keystone back in the cap of the Well of Stars and screw up, they probably get to die too! OK? Sheesh.

I've been thinking on this a bit, because I don't think of myself as a fan of individual characters. I don't focus on individual characters much at all. I want the players to have fun of course. I try to set up things that the group will enjoy, I do throw things in for specific characters now and then when it makes sense for what is happening in the campaign. Downtime is pretty exclusively focused on what individual characters are doing.

But I'm not doing this like a TV show. I'm not telling a narrative story, I approach things from a different direction. I think of the world first, I set the stage. I think of the other actors on the stage, the movers and shakers in the world, the individuals and groups that are going to provide opportunities, obstacles and threats to the group. I try to figure out how to make those aspects important, motivating and interesting. What rumors, potential threats, possible chances for glory or gold can I throw out there. Then I let the players decide what they want to pursue. For that matter during my session 0 I discuss broad themes and type of campaign with the characters, but once we choose a general direction it doesn't get modified by whatever characters the players create.

Hopefully we end up at the same place, a fun and engaging game. Maybe we're really saying much the same thing from different perspectives. But my approach feels much more akin to the standard approach to D&D because the nature of the game is different. D&D is DM centered world narrative with as little or as much input from other players as the group wants, DW is shared world narrative. Which goes back to my other thoughts on this: if you bring in systems from other games they have to relate to how D&D actually works. DW feels much more constrained on one true way of running the game, D&D is not and never really has been. And ... now I'm just rambling. Feel free to ignore the last few sentences.

 

[Oofta]

I asked what else besides the PCs would the game revolve around. The PCs reaction to the world would be that. But the setting? How does the game revolve around the setting, except in how the PCs interact with the setting?



That's fine. But maybe allow others the same courtesy. Ultimately, your opinion that player contribution to world-building is somehow meaningless doesn't bother me... I may disagree, or think you're wrong or whatever, but it's your opinion and you're entitled to it.

So if someone thinks that heavy DM world building is meaningless... they're just as entitled to that opinion. Ultimately, what I'd like to see is these discussions shed of all the offense taking and pearl clutching that tends to happen.



I think this mistakes what it means to be a fan of the characters. It's not about soft-balling the challenges or adversity they'll face. I mean, think of fiction that you enjoy... characters who you are a fan of and the adversity they face. As a GM, I'm rooting for the characters because I care about them and their exploits, but that doesn't mean I'm going to take it easy on them.



Soft and hard moves are those made by a GM at certain points in the game. Generally, a GM can make a move when:

• the players look to them for what's next
• there's a lull in the action
• the players hand them a golden opportunity
• the dice call for a move

Then the difference between a soft move and a hard move is generally that a soft move sets something up, prompting action by a character, and a hard move follows through on something.

So a soft move might be "The orc snarls at you and raises his wicked looking axe... what do you do?" or "The guard cocks his head as if he may have heard something, and he walks over to the railing above you... what do you do?"

A hard move would then follow if in either of the above situations the player did nothing about the threat, or else they tried something and rolled poorly. So the hard moves would be "You try to stab the orc, but your position is wrong and the orc knocks your sword aside and then brings his axe down onto your shoulder, and you feel the crunch of metal and bone!" or "You press yourself against the wall in the shadows, but the guard sees you! Before you can do anything more, he cries out 'Intruder!' and then raises his crossbow, aiming it in your direction!"

Those are the basics. Moves are what you can do in the game, just as we'd use the term for many other games from Chess to Street Fighter. The players have moves that get triggered when their characters attempt something in the game. The GM has different moves that they can make in response to the players.

Thanks for the explanation, but it still doesn't tell me much about limitations on the GM. Would any of this have changed the results of the OP's scenario and follow-up session? How?

 

[Oofta]

Yeah, AGAIN, this rings SO TRUE. My own GMing, and the worlds and situations and such that have come out of it, has been vastly richer because everyone was participating on a largely level playing field. I mean, not all narrativist games actually put setting in the hands of players, certainly not in a formal way, nor are they all 'low myth'. Still, the realization of the world in terms of how it works, the people in it, the conflicts, etc. hugely benefits from other player's BUY IN. I totally believe that can be achieved by really talented groups without playing a game that says anything about it, but there's an extra layer, that degree of 'plot independence' where NOBODY at the table knows what is about to come up next until it does. No game that pre-prepares all its material in classic D&D fashion gets to that point. Its pretty amazing when the GM can be totally surprised and everyone is like "wow, that was crazy and unexpected" at the end of a session. In our BitD game, we had this final session, and nobody knew how things would end, we had all just sensed that "this story is reaching an endpoint." That is really true Play to Find Out What Happens, and the setting gained all sorts of layers of nuance that weren't there in the material we started with.

I get plenty of "crazy and unexpected" results all the time. Usually it's followed by my saying "You did what? REALLY?"

P.S. I know you're likely talking about a player adding to the narrative of the world, just couldn't resist the joke. Still not my cup of tea, glad you enjoy it.

 

[Autumnal]

This isn't my experience. In the same way that every episode I watch of (say) Arrow involves the Green Arrow and team getting up to exciting hijinks, so I want every session of adventure-oriented RPGing to involve exciting hijinks.

If the RPG is less about adventure and more about drama or pathos, I want that too. Every time.

This. This this this. When I started gaming, the idea was that players would do the drudge work of low-level play Long enough and thereby earn the right to more exciting adventures with the chance to be more proactive. It was a revelation in the ‘90s when friends introduced me to the idea that you could start off characters fit to do cool stuff right away and have their story be a curing and adventurous from their very first session.

That could mean starting at higher levels, when playing D&D. It could also mean retooling things so that level 1 is more exciting and adventurous. Games don’t have to be weighted down with lead-ins that are by design not as much fun as what comes later.

When I wrote one of the revised Vampire: The Masquerade clanbooks, line developer Justin Achilli had a style guide for us covering principles and thematic goals as well as grammar and formatting issues. The one that’s really stuck with me: Don’t make your readers jump through hoops. They proved they were cool enough by buying the book and playing with it. Don’t set up any further hurdles. I feel that that’s a great general rule.

 

[Mort]

Player narrative control has always been a divisive subject in regard to D&D.

I remember starting a thread on this board (back in the 3e era). I posed the, I thought innocuous, question of can a PC find a shortcut in an alley (say with a streetwise check) when the DMs map doesn't show one.

It was a split thread, with many in people favor but also quite a few vehemently opposed to giving the player even that kind of control.

 

[Oofta]

This. This this this. When I started gaming, the idea was that players would do the drudge work of low-level play Long enough and thereby earn the right to more exciting adventures with the chance to be more proactive. It was a revelation in the ‘90s when friends introduced me to the idea that you could start off characters fit to do cool stuff right away and have their story be a curing and adventurous from their very first session.

That could mean starting at higher levels, when playing D&D. It could also mean retooling things so that level 1 is more exciting and adventurous. Games don’t have to be weighted down with lead-ins that are by design not as much fun as what comes later.

When I wrote one of the revised Vampire: The Masquerade clanbooks, line developer Justin Achilli had a style guide for us covering principles and thematic goals as well as grammar and formatting issues. The one that’s really stuck with me: Don’t make your readers jump through hoops. They proved they were cool enough by buying the book and playing with it. Don’t set up any further hurdles. I feel that that’s a great general rule.

I agree that PCs should be doing cool things. On the other hand, I don't think cool things has much to do with power level. I've started people as 0 level kids in some campaigns and even though most challenges were a junkyard dog and a snowball fight they were doing cool things. They also encountered a "ghost"* that set up a lot of the campaign theme and permanently mutilated a couple of PCs* and had to be rescued by a valkyrie.

In any case, my point is that cool things can happen at any level. At least they can for me and I try to make them happen for my players as well.

*Not the MM version. A custom monster I didn't stat out until much later because it was way above their pay grade.
**For some reason they had asked for it, they just didn't expect it to happen in the intro sessions.