D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[pemerton]

Because achieving a goal the hard way, after failures and nothing happening can be rewarding. Because it doesn't feel as artificial

Oofta, is this you showing your respect for people who play RPGs differently from you, by calling the way they play artificial?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That's not how it works. If call you the "n" word and say "Hey, I don't mean anything by it" that doesn't make it okay.

This is getting preposterous. If you all want to hide behind such rhetoric, just realize it isn't going to work out. I don't constantly, in fact I can NEVER REMEMBER EVEN ONCE telling someone that their definition of something was insulting or 'wrong'. I've stated that some definitions don't make that much sense and proposing different criteria for some things, but it was NEVER intended to be derogatory or insulting, and it was never a slur on anyone. So there's no need to start making THOSE comparisons!

 

[Pedantic]

I think this is a game in the sense of an "amusing pastime". It's also a game in the sense of being a voluntary activity, undertaken for amusement, and constituted and governed by rules.

There's not much of an obviously competitive element, though.

Defining "game" is a whole separate 80 page thread, and looks different depending on the base kind of game forum you're on, but I'd personally point to "quality of decision making" as the most important factor. Competition is usually a means to that end, by creating a metric to weigh decisions against easily in the form of the other player's decisions and a shared goal, but I certainly wouldn't say it's definitional.

Regardless, for the purposes of this audience, it's ridiculous not to call anything in the TTRPG umbrella a game, though I might say what you're talking about doesn't actually prioritize "gameplay" specifically.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

Other Game. The GM waits for the players. The players then say "lets go get the bandits south of town". The GM nods and says "yes". Annnnnddd....ok, here is where it gets fuzzy. So this type of GM is pure random improv, right? They never make up anything before hand. So they players just randomly say whatever on a whim, "we say some bandits are hiding in the barn". And the GM says "yes" and the players have an improv fight where the GM just says random numbers for each needed bandit stat?

If this came up in a Burning Wheel game that I was running (I'm more familiar with BW than AW or DW), we'd have established during our first session, as we were creating characters, that (1) there were bandits south of town, (2) that they were part of the situation in the game, and (3) various relationships between or beliefs about the characters, the town, and the bandits. We'd all have some idea of what sort of bandits were there, what their MO was, and why we were concerned about them. As some of my prep for that game between the first session and the second, even if I didn't know the players were going to go bandit hunting, I'd be remiss as GM if I didn't have some bandits written up for when they came up in play, identify some of their leaders, and figure out what they want. I may not stat them out fully, as it's highly unlikely that there'd be a full on combat right away, but I'd have information in my notes to be able to play the bandits because the players and I already know that this is what the game is about right now.

It's possible that the bandits may not be part of the situation at hand — maybe the local lord is getting a little bit heavy-handed, overtaxing the locals and sending his men out to hassle the townsfolk and steal their crops, and that's what's going on, and one of the characters was burned with lifepaths that suggest connections with outlaws and other criminals. And then, in play, in response to the situation, the player playing that character asks if he can contact local outlaws to start working against the lord. Maybe I didn't expect this, but the game is flexible enough that I can assign reasonable stats and skills for them in play on the fly to the extent needed and then flesh them out before the next session.

As far as the GM saying "yes" when asked if there are bandits in the barn, that's a violation of the rules as written in both these situations, because the GM's only supposed to say "yes" when there's nothing at stake. Otherwise, you roll the dice. If the game's about the bandits, then where they are is wicked important and can't be resolved by saying "yes." In the second scenario, it's different, but still important, and there would need to be dice rolled to determine whether you find the bandits and their disposition. And however either situation developed, game play will then move along according to the rules. If there was a fight, we'd use the rules for Fight! or Bloody Versus or Range and Cover. If there was a parlay, then a Duel of Wits might be appropriate. Just like D&D, BW has systems and rules for how actions are resolved, even if how you get to those actions and resolutions is explicitly driven by player priorities.

 

[Umbran]

This is one of the most utterly infuriating conversations we've ever had, and I must say, for you, that's really impressive.

Mod Note:
You know full well that making the discussion personal is a problem.
But you did it anyway.
So, it looks like you need a break from this discussion. If you were on board with taking that break on your own terms, you should have done so before writing this. So, it will be on moderator's terms.

Really, folks, disengage before you blow up.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

Where I want FRPGing to, in effect, be more akin to real life only with some fantastic elements tacked on. And that means accepting the random (good) and tedious (not so good) bits as part and parcel of the whole.

And I also want clear procedures of play at the table.

Yeah, those help too; which then raises the nigh-endless arguments of a) what those procedures should be and b) when/how they should be used.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

Well, no she hasn't.

She's decided whether any spellbooks are present and if so, where they are; but she in no way has decided what action you're going to declare. You did that, and the very fact you had the agency to freely to do that means you're not on a railroad.

 

[Lanefan]

Why can one person not, unilaterally, make a situation charged? Eg if an assassin is sneaking up on me to kill me, that is a charged situation (in virtue of the intentions of the assassin) even if I'm blissfully unaware.

In the episode of play, the situation is charged because Marie is there to visit grief upon Isle. (Hence Baker's reference to how the music would change if it were a film; just as it would in the assassin example I described.)

Were it a movie, I-as-audience would notice that change in music; but an RPG is not a movie, and as the characters in the fiction shouldn't IMO have that cue to go by then in the interests of keeping character and player knowledge aligned nor should the players (or GM, in this case).

 

[bloodtide]

The fact that you can't conceptualize a game that is about more than hunting down bandits says a lot about your DMing style.

Well...because I see it as impossible for a non written down improv adventure to ever work for anything complicated.

Like take an even slightly complex story: Two noble families striving for dominance of a small city. The only way to do this is to have one person, a GM, write it all down. They have to make the city and both noble families. You can't just have the players randomly run into characters and have the players just randomly say "oh it's aunt Beth". Same way you can't have the players "just say" city is a huge exporter of grain and then minutes later just say "the cities only trade is in metal ores".

 

[Micah Sweet]

Just to clarify that we are not in fact a monolith, I find this idea anathema and continue to pine for a long list of explicated DCs, without which I think the experience is made significantly less interesting.

I'm not saying I make up the DC on the spot; that remains static based on the task. I'm saying that if the players have no reason to know how difficult the task is, I don't tell them ahead of time. If they do, I do. In neither case does the DC change.