D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[pemerton]

I think there's plenty of room for setting design that is focused on building elements for players to interact with that may not see play if players do not pursue it or to provide dynamism in the setting that has knock on effects players may discover if they play skillfully. A setting element does not have to be known to be motivated by the needs of play.

there seems to be an underlying assumption that the players will never experience the majority of what is designed unless it is specifically prepared at the moment, in collaboration, or for the next 2-3 sessions. Which I disagree with strongly. PCs can interact with situations and NPCs that are informed by circumstances that players may never discover.

There seem to be a few different things being canvassed in these posts:

* Setting elements that are prepared by the GM in advance may end up not being known to the players, simply because the players declare actions for their PCs that leads to different setting elements becoming the focus of play. These setting elements thus end up not mattering to play, but they might have - it wasn't and perhaps couldn't have been known in advance that the players would not declare actions that made the ignored setting elements salient. The paradigm example in D&D play would be a dungeon room that the players end up simply never having their PCs explore.

* Setting elements may be prepared by the GM in advance with the expectation that it is likely they will end up not being known to the players, because it would take skilled play on the part of the players for them to declare actions for their PCs that oblige the GM to reveal the setting element in question. The paradigm in D&D play would be a secret door concealing a valuable treasure. These setting elements matter to play even if the players never learn about them, because they create the scope for skilled play.

* Setting elements that are prepared by the GM in advance, and that are not known to the players, may be used by the GM to make decisions about setting elements that are known to the players. (DW has a version of this, in the form of "fronts") - in that way they "mattered" to play.​

The second and the third of these can combine (as I think @Campbell is suggesting): an element of the third type might also be an element of the second type, and hence something the players can learn about through skilled play. A secret treasure room probably isn't a good example of this; but a secret villain might be.

This is quite relevant to the OP, and to similar sorts of issues that can arise in a type of fairly traditional, fairly mainstream RPGing. If a setting element is doing a lot of work in my third category (eg the GM is imagining very active secret villains) and is very opaque as an instance of my second category (eg the action declarations the players would need to make to learn about it are less "skilled" and more somewhat lucky or arbitrary - this can happen, for instance, if the GM is changing the fictional parameters around the setting element a lot) then the players can lose their grip on the fiction, and essentially become subject to GM dictation of what happens next.

This is something on which I think it should be possible to give quite detailed and effective GM advice, but I don't recall ever having come across such advice myself. (Maybe it's somewhere on the web, and I'm mostly thinking of rulebooks.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And that right there is my objection. If there's no reason for something to happen then something shouldn't happen, even if the Rogue fails on the lock. The result of that failure is that time passes and the PCs/players are stuck having to proactively think about what to do next, perhaps even to the point of turning away and abandoning whatever it was that had them trying to get through that door.

And my objection to your objection is, damned that's a boring and uninteresting world/adventure! I mean, IF NOTHING ELSE, the characters become fatigued, their torches or water skins begin to give out, etc. Its hard for me to imagine a situation where I'd have to resort to that level of silliness, but there's no such thing as complete stasis. You rolled, you FAILED, you're done. Or else DW is perfectly fine with 'fail forward' as an answer, though on a 6- its probably going to look more like "Suddenly the lock turns, someone is opening the door from the other side!" or something like that. NOTHING is simply NOT AN OPTION in an RPG, it just isn't.

"No change to the status quo" is a valid outcome of an action.

Nope, its boring and non-optimal play in my book. I mean, I don't make a habit of judging anyone else's play, but beat me with a stick if such a situation arises, I've failed as a GM at that point!

OK. This wasn't clear in prior descriptions of how things work.

To the bolded, why?

What I mean is, DW (or AW 2e, which I was just reading, awesome stuff) there's an unending sequence of dialog, which will surely trigger moves. Now, every move is obviously not identical, but what I mean is, every player will experience moving through fiction, declaring actions, and resolving triggered moves. Its just like every player in Monopoly will go 'round and 'round the board, even if they land on different squares each time. So, there IS strategy in DW, probably the fighter wants to Hack & Slash and Defy Danger +STR a lot because triggering those moves usually gets her what she wants (STR of +3 will get you exactly what you want MOST of the time on a +STR move). However, one way or the other, you're going to be making moves. So they are 'mechanically similar'.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Not true. I just need Relevant and Useful advice. And vague advice does not help.

Well, I think you did get some pretty useful advice. It might have been hard to make it concrete enough for you, but I think we could pretty well demonstrate that there was a percentage of it that was quite substantive and could have been adopted, perhaps with a few minor corrections for things people didn't know.

Like....ok.....I have not heard anything as to what will happen Saturday. I guess there is a chance the players will show up and say "lets play". So what if that happens? Nearly every single poster her just says "talk to them". Like it's some sort of magic.

Fair enough, maybe they love you and they will come back for more. I mean, it IS possible, lol. I've lived long enough to that I've seen a lot of weird behavior from people, and there is, as we say, no accounting for taste.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

From what I've heard from you and others, as a player you're just supposed to do stuff in the narrative and the GM tells you when dice are needed, right? Then you are not supposed to be thinking about the mechanics of your character at all, which is addition to feeling very alien from my perspective, kinda assumes the GM is the only one who actually knows how the game works.

Well, I look at it like this, people in the real world are not Angels, Battlebabes, Brainers, Choppers, Drivers, Gunluggers, Hardholders, Savvyheads, etc. either. So I'm perfectly happy if the players don't have to constantly be thinking like I was when playing a 5e Battlemaster (OK, how many superiority dice to I have left, how likely is a rest, do any of my maneuvers give a significant benefit this round, etc.). None of that is in character or even close to in character, nor is it even clear how it relates to the fiction. AW or DW are very clear about how things relate to the fiction, and don't demand that players think out of character, AT ALL, aside from maybe when they actually roll dice.

As for who knows the rules? I mean, I would presume that players know their playbooks, their special moves are printed there so they can see them, and select which ones their character knows (at start or when going up a level). Frankly, the game could probably proceed fine without the players knowing much else, technically. Again, playing the rules isn't one of my objects in these games, I'm there to RP my character and let the rules handle what the rules handle. Practically speaking, I as a player, bother to learn at least the parts of the rules I'm likely to want to know. I'm not inclined to consider it much of my business if anyone else does or doesn't know stuff, though obviously the GM needs to know all the moves in a PbtA well enough to trigger them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well, I look at it like this, people in the real world are not Angels, Battlebabes, Brainers, Choppers, Drivers, Gunluggers, Hardholders, Savvyheads, etc. either. So I'm perfectly happy if the players don't have to constantly be thinking like I was when playing a 5e Battlemaster (OK, how many superiority dice to I have left, how likely is a rest, do any of my maneuvers give a significant benefit this round, etc.). None of that is in character or even close to in character, nor is it even clear how it relates to the fiction. AW or DW are very clear about how things relate to the fiction, and don't demand that players think out of character, AT ALL, aside from maybe when they actually roll dice.

As for who knows the rules? I mean, I would presume that players know their playbooks, their special moves are printed there so they can see them, and select which ones their character knows (at start or when going up a level). Frankly, the game could probably proceed fine without the players knowing much else, technically. Again, playing the rules isn't one of my objects in these games, I'm there to RP my character and let the rules handle what the rules handle. Practically speaking, I as a player, bother to learn at least the parts of the rules I'm likely to want to know. I'm not inclined to consider it much of my business if anyone else does or doesn't know stuff, though obviously the GM needs to know all the moves in a PbtA well enough to trigger them.

I understand, thank you. Definitely not my kind of game.

 

[pemerton]

Well, I look at it like this, people in the real world are not Angels, Battlebabes, Brainers, Choppers, Drivers, Gunluggers, Hardholders, Savvyheads, etc. either. So I'm perfectly happy if the players don't have to constantly be thinking like I was when playing a 5e Battlemaster (OK, how many superiority dice to I have left, how likely is a rest, do any of my maneuvers give a significant benefit this round, etc.). None of that is in character or even close to in character, nor is it even clear how it relates to the fiction. AW or DW are very clear about how things relate to the fiction, and don't demand that players think out of character, AT ALL, aside from maybe when they actually roll dice.

As for who knows the rules? I mean, I would presume that players know their playbooks, their special moves are printed there so they can see them, and select which ones their character knows (at start or when going up a level). Frankly, the game could probably proceed fine without the players knowing much else, technically. Again, playing the rules isn't one of my objects in these games, I'm there to RP my character and let the rules handle what the rules handle. Practically speaking, I as a player, bother to learn at least the parts of the rules I'm likely to want to know. I'm not inclined to consider it much of my business if anyone else does or doesn't know stuff, though obviously the GM needs to know all the moves in a PbtA well enough to trigger them.

This is how I like to play BW (as a non-GM player).

I know who my character is, and I know what their strengths and weaknesses are as a person - I can read this off the PC sheet.

And then I just play them. It's the GM's job to either say "yes", or call on me to roll the dice; and to tell me what the difficulty is. If they ask my advice or input, of course I can and will give it; but I'm quite happy not to have to do so.

The only thing I have an eye on that is at all like your 5e superiority dice is my pool of Fate and Persona, and I only need to think about that when I've already been called upon to roll the dice, and so am already thinking about non-fiction mechanical things.

 

[Olrox17]

UPDATE!

Well, no one contacted me, but two of the players did show up today. Confused. No one knows what the others are doing or want to do. So maybe the group broke up?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is how I like to play BW (as a non-GM player).

I know who my character is, and I know what their strengths and weaknesses are as a person - I can read this off the PC sheet.

And then I just play them. It's the GM's job to either say "yes", or call on me to roll the dice; and to tell me what the difficulty is. If they ask my advice or input, of course I can and will give it; but I'm quite happy not to have to do so.

The only thing I have an eye on that is at all like your 5e superiority dice is my pool of Fate and Persona, and I only need to think about that when I've already been called upon to roll the dice, and so am already thinking about non-fiction mechanical things.

Yeah, certainly in BitD I am quite aware of my stress track and harm, and which resources I've consumed (armor box, special armor box, etc.). But as you say, I don't sit around calculating what the next chess move is, I play my character! Maybe I accept a Devil's Bargain instead of pushing because I know I've burned a bunch of stress, but I also know the bargain the GM is cooking up will fit.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, this would be a perfectly logical thing to do in a PbtA game, provided that you had some way for the PCs to know this. In MotW, there's the Reveal Off-Screen Badness move for Keepers, which I would use, at least, to tell the PCs that while they're fiddling with the door, they can hear the sounds of things moving around, objects being dragged, the clink of metal coins being moved, someone shouting orders to retreat, then another door, further in, opening and shutting as footsteps moved away, thus letting the PCs know that their quarry is getting away (but maybe not for good).

That's a blundering bunch of opponents, making that much noise while they try to leave quietly...

But if you simply have Mr. McBaddy move away without the PCs knowing... at that point, there's no practical difference between him leaving and him never being there in the first place.

Sure there is: if they had reason to believe (or knew for a fact) that he was there, but now he isn't, that's a significant difference.

As you can see, there are many possibilities besides a monster attack. When they rolled a 6 or less while trying to pick a lock:

• A needle trap could go off (Deal damage)
• A pit trap could open up underneath them (Separate them)
• The lockpick could break (Use up their resources)
• Their close examination of the lock saw signs that others had tried to pick it before and failed (Reveal an unwelcome truth)
• Their close examination of the lock causes them to hear movement on the other side (Show signs of an upcoming threat)

I'm willing to bet you do these things anyway in your D&D games--you just didn't consider them to be moves.

The needle and-or pit trap would be pre-written; the broken lockpick would likely only come on a serious fail (rolling very low is a bigger fail than not missing by much); the signs of others having tried before would have already been noticed (or not) if the Thief had examined the lock before starting to pick it (which most would); and it very likely wouldn't be the examining of the lock that caused movement on the other side, it'd instead be the rest of the party being a noisy enough to be heard by those on the other side (who would get what amounts to a 5e-like passive perception check).

So you have a very unusual setting, then.

Not unusual in my experience. Sorry to hear it's unusual in yours.

 

[Lanefan]

That's not even remotely what I was talking about. Because all this up here? Is just keeping the camera on the PCs. It doesn't matter if Bob the fighter died and got replaced by Jane the cleric; they're still just the PCs. It also doesn't matter if you run two different groups in the same setting, because they're still just the PCs.

I think what's hanging this up a bit is that some of us differentiate between "the PCs" and "the party". Yes, the camera tends to stay on whatever party is being played at the time; but things can happen off-camera too.

The PCs are over here. I would be completely shocked if you chose to shift the camera to the adventures of a group of NPCs way over there whose actions have no bearing on what the PCs are doing, have done in the past, or will be doing in the future. In other words, you don't seem the type to do cut scenes, flashbacks, or flash-forwards.

Correct.

Which means all those things that are happening in the background, all that worldbuilding, still never gets shown. Unless you're into hour-long infodumps or you give the players massive bluesheets of world knowledge every so often.

Well, they do slowly amass a lot of info - or can, should they choose to pay attention.

I mean, I love worldbuilding. I do lots of it. But I've also found that too much worldbuilding for a game or story locks you in and can prevent you from being as flexible as you want it to be, because you may suddenly realize you need to do a certain thing, or that a certain thing you had done doesn't actually work as well as it should.

Yeah, I've hit this before; and learned from it to do my best to think ahead while worldbuilding to account for what I might need it for in the distant future (i.e. when ten real-world years have gone by and the PCs are high level) as well as what I need it for right now.

This can be as simple as just placing a few high-level adventure sites on the map for later use, even if you're not sure what you might run there quite yet. In my current setting I tossed an ancient ruined city on the map in a faraway place and wrote a bit about it in the player-facing history: it was a center of high learning (think Oldtown in GoT except with Bards too) that got overrun by Trolls and raiders several centuries ago. Right from the start I had in mind the idea of running an adventure there but it was probably about 7 real-world years into the campaign before I finally came up with something that made sense both as a good in-fiction reason for a party to go there and as to what could be there to find if-when they did.