D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[pemerton]

they are not saying that there shouldn't be drama or thematic occurences in their games, just that it is not the GM's job to serve them up to the players on a silver platter for the players to pick and choose at as they so desire.

That is, the players pick from what the GM offers. That's the railroad.

IMO the GM serves up a world that lives and breathes as it's own entity, the players create their own drama and themes by the actions they take to interact with that world, and the GM narrates back to them the organic consequences of their actions

This is contradictory. Consider my PC I posted about upthread, who wishes to get vengeance for the death of his spouse, who hates the Elven Ambassador to the port, the father of his spouse whom he blames for his spouse's death, and who when his mind is elsewhere quietly sings the Elven lays.

If the only options I as a player have to choose from are whatever the GM has come up with, then I can't play out the themes and dramatic needs of that PC. Unless the GM is shaping situations and stakes so as to ensure that I can. In which case it's no longer a railroad, it's exactly the sort of RPGing that I enjoy!

EDIT to add:

i didn't mean that the GM shouldn't be creating plot hooks, sure, werewolves in the forest to the north, the crime ring in the city to the south-east and the dragon on the mountain to the west, but it's not the GM's duty to make events of the world to cater to the player's own arcs and goals if the players aren't pushing themselves towards instigating and interacting with those things on their own iniative

Right. This is the railroad. And the players cannot create their own drama and theme. They're stuck with the ones the GM has written, none of which speak to a Dark Elf become embittered and spiteful because of the death of his spouse.

 

[Lanefan]

Maybe is the key word, and those maybes tend to be about forcing them to make hard choices:

It's like saying that "the pass of Caradhras is blocked by Saruman's magic. It looks like the only paths left are to go past the Gap of Rohan or through the Mines of Moria. What do you do?"

What I do is not put it that way in the first place. It'd go more like "It seems the pass of Caradhras is blocked by Saruman's magic. What do you do?"

Then, if they ask about other paths I'd have Gandalf (the useful NPC) remember the Mines and maybe someone else - Boromir? - would think of Rohan. But if they don't think to ask about, or discuss between themselves, other paths (unlikely, but I've seen crazier things happen) I ain't gonna hand it to them.

But leaving it at "it's blocked, what do you do" leaves open the options of their pressing forward regardless, or staying put and hoping Saruman gets distracted by something else, or whatever else they might think of.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't think this is contradictory in any way to the idea of being a fan of the characters.

Maybe if we rephrase it... "Enjoy the fictional exploits of the characters." Does that seem outrageous to you? Does that seem contradictory to your approach?

That's a much better phrasing than "be a fan".

 

[pemerton]

"Be a fan of the characters." It explicitly tells the DM to be enthusiastic about the PCs and their goals.

I've bolded the key phrase. That is what "being a fan of the characters" means. And in AW and DW (I can't speak to other PbtA games) it is the players who establish their PCs' goals, desires, dramatic needs, etc. So being a fan of the players means establishing and resolving fiction having regard to those play-authored concerns.

AW and DW (I can't speak to other PbtA games) reinforce this by describing GM moves in terms that are relative to exactly those player-authored concerns ("badness", "opportunity", "cost", etc).

 

[Pedantic]

....but that's exactly what it is. What you call "task resolution" is simply having a conversation about the fiction. As long as things can be resolved simply by talking about what is present (or not present) and making decisions about it, there is no need to invoke mechanics. It's only when that conversation hitches on something invoked, one might say triggered, that the moves roll out. The instant you're done with a move, you go right back into the fiction, and things proceed again.

And GM moves, as said, are far more like stage directions. Critical for a good performance, but you wouldn't ever want to read the names aloud. Doing so would be irritating at best and likely corrosive to the player experience.

Well that's deeply confusing. That's the part where you play the game, generally speaking. You have a goal, you then string together the most effective way to get it done, each move lets you evaluate whether you're doing a better or worse job of doing that.

This reads like a proposal to remove...most of the game, and focus solely and entirely on the bit where you set goals. Which, now that I think about it, is probably true and the point. I've said a few times that I'm generally uncomfortable providing intent as input to actions, as the intent is reflected primarily in the choice of action in the first place. I've posited a few times that the primary thing that separates a TTRPG from a board game is that players have the ability to set their own victory conditions, and for play to continue past each one being achieved or becoming impossible, and that the process of setting those victory conditions is where narrative lives. My character wants something, so they take steps X, Y and Z to get it, and play is in figuring out those steps and trying to make the best ones.

So, to invert my position, if you don't care about the execution, you could abstract it. Instead of allowing a player to demonstrate their intent through a set of choices, you can ask them what it is directly. You remove every element of the game that isn't the unique province of TTRPGs, and just rapidly iterate on the goal setting portion, essentially cutting gameplay down to one abstracted roll each time.

Assuming I'm on a reasonable track, this may be the most sense this concept has ever made to me. It's treating a thing that I think is important as interchangeable in a way I don't care for, but I see how you can get to that point.

 

[Lanefan]

Not necessarily. There is no drama or theme in the play of White Plume Mountain, but solving the puzzles and beating up the monsters can be fun. Similarly for X2 Castle Amber.

I'll give you White Plume, but there's loads of dramatic potential in Castle Amber! I mean hell, the whole module revolves around what was no more than a great big family drama, and given that the PCs (almost certainly) meet numerous members of said family while exploring the Chateau, it's pretty easy to draw the players/PCs into that family drama unless said PCs are the shoot-first-ask-questions-never type.

 

[pemerton]

This idea that something has to happen on a failure is a really odd obsession IMHO. If I try to remember where I put my book down and don't remember, nothing directly happens.

I don't see how that is relevant.

One of the most obvious things about all narrative fiction, compare to real life, is that real life is in many ways rather random and tedious, whereas narrative fiction generally aspires to be deliberate and engaging. (There are deliberate exceptions, like some sorts of absurdism, but I'm happy to put those to one side for the purposes of this conversation.)

My interest in FRPGing (and other RPGing) is an offshoot of my interest in narrative fiction. I want to enjoy exciting, engaging fiction. And I also want clear procedures of play at the table.

(Occasionally, as a departure from my normal preferences, I will do some RPGing that is essentially about puzzle-solvig - eg White Plume Mountain. But that is not really relevant to this thread: the OP's sort of RPGing has nothing in common with WPM.)

 

[pemerton]

Calling a DM alone determining what is in the library is not a railroad by any stretch of the imagination.

If my declared action is "I search for spellbooks" and the GM decides the answer to that unilaterally ("alone"), whether by consulting their notes or making up what they think is "logical" on the spur of the moment, then that absolutely is a railroad. The GM has decided everything that happens.

 

[Baron Opal II]

I've bolded the key phrase. That is what "being a fan of the characters" means. And in AW and DW (I can't speak to other PbtA games) it is the players who establish their PCs' goals, desires, dramatic needs, etc. So being a fan of the players means establishing and resolving fiction having regard to those play-authored concerns.

Players do this in D&D, too.

Well, this thread is locked in the familiar circle, two camps arguing that their preferred mechanic is better / valid / misunderstood.

Good day.

 

[pemerton]

I think the problem is not with the principle, but with the heading. The phrase "be a fan of the characters" is also completely unintelligible for me taken out of context. You need to have the extra explanation connected to it in the rulebook or as you gave now to make it make sense. As such, referencing to the rule by that name make sense to someone familiar with the game, but is highly problematic in a public forum where someone might read this without context, and try to find some meaning in it at face value. After all "be a fan of the characters" seem like a sentence that has a shape that could stand on its own.

The insistence that everyone who wants to talk about some sort of RPGing that is not D&D c 1985 reheated and turned over on the plate needs to "explain their terms" gets a bit frustrating.

Apocalypse World and Dungeon World are not obscure RPGs. The methods they use are not secret and arcane. Most of the posters in this thread have participated in innumerable past threads discussing how they work.

The real problem that people have interpreting the phrase be a fan of the characters is that, because their familiarity with RPGing appears to have missed the whole post-2000 design movement, it simply doesn't seem to occur to them that it might be possible to GM a RPG in a way that centres the characters as authored by the players. Because - as this thread has shown over the past 10 or so pages - the GMing techniques that they are familiar with are limited to the GM authoring the content independent of player's concerns as evinced in the build and play of their PCs.