D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[Aldarc]

This sounds almost like a reverse appeal to popularity. Instead of "it's popular therefore it must be good", here it's "it's popular therefore it's not allowed to defend itself".

Sorry, not buying it.

It's a statement that reflects the power dynamics at play. This doesn't mean that you aren't allowed to defend your preferences But it does mean that you should be aware of your choice to throw the weight of your market dominance around to punch down at less popular play preferences in our hobby from any perceived slights.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't fully agree with this. Nearly every RPG that I'm aware of actively elides many of those activities, in the interests of "excitement" or "engagement" or similar sorts of concerns. (To continue the comparison to film, there is no RPGing I'm aware of that resembles Warhol's Sleep.)

OK, now there's a space an absurdist could slide into: the WDRPG*, where by design you roleplay doing nothing while still roleplaying, with the "win condition" being the game that lasts longest.

It'd be the RPG equivalent to the old videogame Desert Bus, which consists of driving a bus from Tucson to Las Vegas for eight hours, then driving it back again, lather rinse repeat until either the bus goes off the road (it constantly pulls to the left so the player has to remain alert) or the player falls asleep. The only variety is that every now and then a bug splatters on the windshield.

There's a group here in town called Loading Ready Run who each November do a charity marathon around playing Desert Bus - they're usually good for keeping that damn bus going for nearly a week, playing in shifts. Info here:

Desert Bus for Hope - LoadingReadyWiki

wiki.loadingreadyrun.com

* - World's Dullest RPG

Furthermore, the worlds of RPGs are normally highly contrived, in order to generate opportunities for action adventure.

To a point, this is true. Haven't been able to figure a good way around it yet.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I agree with this 100%.

First page of the DM’s section for MotW and other PbtA games is:

• Here is your agenda as DM: this is what you should be aiming for;
• Here are the core DM principles.

This very much clarifies the DM role and what should be “top of mind” as you act as DM.

The 5e DMG doesn’t do this. It COULDN’T do this: when it came out in 2014, it was supposed to be the compromise edition to bring the 2e, 3e, Pathfinder and 4e players back into the fold, and those games simply don’t agree on a core DM agenda or common principles.

Something as simple as “Be a fan of the players” is not consistent with the “DM as neutral referee” playstyle.

This inconsistency of approach continues all through the book, with certain passages supporting fudging die rolls while others come out against it.

Yup. For every instance where they do offer guidance, there's another where they offer the opposite, or contradictory guidance.

So things like "...your goal isn’t to slaughter the adventurers but to create a campaign world that revolves around their actions and decisions, and to keep your players coming back for more!" along with other advice never appears in the DMG?

There is nothing at all like the clarify of the presentation and specificity that appears in most of the PbtA games that I'm familiar with, the kind that @FrozenNorth mentioned above. Clearly defined goals and practices for the GM. The advice in the DMG is scattered across many pages, buried in dense text, and contradicted by other passages.

When and where have I ever said anything like that?

I think it's more about the way this stuff gets approached. The privileged way D&D and the common approach is assumed. "This is a D&D Forum" and "niche games" or "bespoke games" and the acceptance of trad jargon but dismissal of other kinds as "forge waffle" and the like. The apparent inability to recognize that one is disparaging narrative games as "artificial" or "forced" while demanding that trad play not be described in a negative way.

That stuff absolutely reads as if you see one correct way of doing things, no matter how often you add the PS "There's no one true way".

Yes, it does. You have a weird, Manichean perception of a “bad DM”, sitting in the dark, twirling his mustache about how he’s going to screw over the players. Of course, no rule is going to stop that guy, but he’s also a comparative rarity.

Good rules will however assist with the considerably more numerous:

• newbie DMs who think that DMing is about telling the cool story they have in their heads rather than what the characters want;
• stressed DMs that are worried that allowing players to do something cool not covered by the rules “this one time” will create a precedent that will be exploited “against them”;
• time-crunched DMs who spent too much prep time on world-building to the detriment of the stuff the party interacted with; and, of course,
• non-DMs who see a book’s worth of impenetrable and poorly-organized cruft and decide that there is no way that they will try DMing.

I think it was @Lanefan who commented earlier in the thread that this is stuff we all learned by trial and error. And I think that is a part of it, for sure. But I can tell you, I wish I knew about a lot of things I've learned in the past few years when they were first being discussed and introduced. A lot of the issues I had with RPGs during the latter oughts through the mid 2010s were being addressed and I didn't know about it till years later.

I think there's a survivor's bias that happens sometimes. "I had to learn this over 30 years, you shouldn't be able to learn it in 3!!!"

 

[Oofta]

Yup. For every instance where they do offer guidance, there's another where they offer the opposite, or contradictory guidance.



There is nothing at all like the clarify of the presentation and specificity that appears in most of the PbtA games that I'm familiar with, the kind that @FrozenNorth mentioned above. Clearly defined goals and practices for the GM. The advice in the DMG is scattered across many pages, buried in dense text, and contradicted by other passages.

I will agree that the DMG could use improvement but they were stating that the advice was not there at all. D&D is much more open about the fact that different people can and should play the game in a manner that suits them.

I think it's more about the way this stuff gets approached. The privileged way D&D and the common approach is assumed. "This is a D&D Forum" and "niche games" or "bespoke games" and the acceptance of trad jargon but dismissal of other kinds as "forge waffle" and the like. The apparent inability to recognize that one is disparaging narrative games as "artificial" or "forced" while demanding that trad play not be described in a negative way.

Artificial is not a pejorative. It just means "not real". It's a game, there's no reason for anything in the game to feel real. I used that term because to me it feels a bit heavy handed in the metagame sense, a disconnect from the perspective of the character in the world. That if I can't remember where my book is I stub my toe. I feel the same way about inspiration in D&D.

That stuff absolutely reads as if you see one correct way of doing things, no matter how often you add the PS "There's no one true way".



I think it was @Lanefan who commented earlier in the thread that this is stuff we all learned by trial and error. And I think that is a part of it, for sure. But I can tell you, I wish I knew about a lot of things I've learned in the past few years when they were first being discussed and introduced. A lot of the issues I had with RPGs during the latter oughts through the mid 2010s were being addressed and I didn't know about it till years later.

I think there's a survivor's bias that happens sometimes. "I had to learn this over 30 years, you shouldn't be able to learn it in 3!!!"

I can't help it if you seem to be biased and read things into what I say. All I can do is continue to stress that it's just my opinion and preference and repeatedly state that there is no one true way.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Artificial is not a pejorative. It just means "not real". It's a game, there's no reason for anything in the game to feel real. I used that term because to me it feels a bit heavy handed in the metagame sense, a disconnect from the perspective of the character in the world. That if I can't remember where my book is I stub my toe. I feel the same way about inspiration in D&D.

Except it's all artificial. So stating that one is more so than another is a pejorative. Oh, and then there's the part where people pointed out to you that it's a pejorative. Did you just ignore that? Or did you think that you didn't need to adjust your opinion for how they feel?

I can't help it if you seem to be biased and read things into what I say. All I can do is continue to stress that it's just my opinion and preference and repeatedly state that there is no one true way.

I don't think it's that I'm reading things into what you say. I think it's there. I don't know if it's always your intention... but that's the thing about privilege like that... it's assumed there is a default of some sort and anything else is different in some way.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Interesting thing, I read this in the Moldvay B/X book which also talks about the DM as referee:

This sounds like being a fan of the players in a game that conflates player skill with player character skill. This advice could fit perfectly in with Dungeon World!

The DM is the person who does what now? Keep the action flowing?

Now one difference here between B/X and Dungeon World is that would not say that it's the DM's job to create an exciting adventure. Instead, it says that the DM should fill the player characters' lives with adventure.

I don’t own Moldvay, so I can’t read it myself, but I am definitely willing to believe that it is more transparent about the DM’s agenda and core principals than the 5e DMG, which, as I mentioned, was written to try and appeal to the extremely disparate playstyles that existed in 2014.

 

[Faolyn]

The bolded sentence seems, to me, to contain an internal contradiction. (Or at least a rather serious tension.)

But anyway, it's not true even in D&D that there is a baseline nor that the GM establishes and interprets the setting. 4e D&D works with a different baseline. AD&D OA works with a different baseline. The concept of a different baseline was well-known in the early 80s, when the book "What is Dungeons & Dragons" was published.

I think you're conflating the setting with the GM.

I often run Ravenloft, which has a different baseline than "standard" D&D. But I also make my own changes to it, sometimes radical changes, which means that I'm establishing and interpreting the setting. Thus yes, the GM is establishing and interpreting the setting. And I'd do so even more radically if it were a homebrew setting--which I also do a lot.

Nor is it the case that in "nearly every single game" the GM has this function. Here are some RPGs that take a different approach: Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World, Dungeon World, Agon 2nd ed, Classic Traveller (published 1977).

Well, first off, pointing out five games out of the literally thousands of RPGs out there does, in fact, mean that the GM has this function in "nearly every single game."

And yes, even in PbtA games, GMs have this function. In my Monster of the Week game, I made the setting, inasmuch as one can make the real world into a setting, by deciding the location (a fictional county) and the types of monsters in the setting (almost entirely not "traditional" monsters). My players had a lot of input because they wanted certain things to exist, and for nearly all of those things, I said "sure, sounds good." For a few of them, I said "things don't quite work like that in my setting." For instance, I don't have fey, but I have creatures that some people think are fey, because I assume that humans in this world are as capable of making up legends and fairy tales and misunderstanding reality as well as humans in the real world are. If the players ever assume there's going to be a Seelie Court, they'd be wrong, but that doesn't mean that the Expert who decided that his background included dealings with the fey was wrong.

And yes, I decide the story conflict and the stakes involved in that, but the players decide the player conflict and the stakes involved there. These two things are not contradictory! I can have the threat of a monster and the players can do their own thing at the same time.

But what this also means is that the players need to come up with reasons why their characters work together. As a PbtA game, it's easy because each playbook has the history section and we spent a session going through them and coming up with connections. We wouldn't just have someone like that dark elf who has no reason to go to the Isle of Dread or whatever, because the players need to work together as a group in order to have a group game--it's not a solo writing session, and treating your character as the lone wolf is rude to the other players.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

This sounds almost like a reverse appeal to popularity. Instead of "it's popular therefore it must be good", here it's "it's popular therefore it's not allowed to defend itself".

Sorry, not buying it.

Given the gleeful joy that some people have taken in rubbishing FKR games*, I am always shocked, amazed, and chagrined at the chutzpah of people who make this complaint.

It's the Goldilocks complaint- some things are "just right" I guess?


*There have been numerous thread where people bash on FKR, because it's apparently okay that the small indie developers that give away their rules-lite systems get to be attacked. Seems weird to me, but what do I know?

 

[Lanefan]

There are many ways this character might develop. In the last session, for instance, his attitude to Alicia changed. More than once she collapsed unconscious from the strain of spell casting (such that only by using the Song of Soothing could Aedhros bring her back to consciousness, which he needed to do so that she could help him in his plans), and she was humiliated in other ways too. But nevertheless, she did help with his plans. His Belief about Alicia is now Only because Alicia is not utterly without capability can I endure her company. That might change further; so might his Instinct not to use Song of Soothing, if he finds that Alicia continues to need his help. Maybe that could even change his views about hurt and vengeance! Or lead to better self-awareness.

But for any of this to happen, the play needs to be about these things. To create opportunities for their expression. Which is the whole orientation of Burning Wheel, and the focus of the system's advice both to GMs and players.

If Aedhros finds himself sailing out at sea it will almost certainly be related in some fashion to Alicia, who is a weather witch and has as one of her Beliefs that I will one day be rich enough to BUY a ship. Shipwreck could be a consequence of a failed check (it's one that I've used GMing in Burning Wheel), but it would be adjudicated and applied using the methods of the system that I have already explained. Suppose, for instance, that Alicia and Aedhros are travelling on a ship with the Ambassador, and Alicia's player fails a Weather Watching check, and hence (in the fiction) Alicia fails to anticipate the impending storm, which is to say (at the table) the GM narrates a shipwreck as a consequence: the three characters being washed up on a strange shore could be a possible way that things develop; it clearly has potential. But I've already described a situation that has almost nothing in common with the module X1.

Yet what's stopping that shipwreck putting them on Isle of Dread?

The "storyboard" @Lanefan has sketched has nothing to do with Aedhros (or Alicia) as characters.

It has everything to do with Aedhros; I missed that Alicia was also involved.

It involves a pointless quest (go to city to get records), a fetch quest (clearing name), some pirate sub-plot, a desert island detour, more pointless info-gathering with Elves, a quest to some Elves, and then a pre-planned framing of a "final confrontation". It is a storyboard which is almost never about Aedhros and is about whatever the GM wants it to be about (family secrets, riches, pirates, etc).

All of which could be introduced as complications to/around Aedhros' quest, which is why I'd sketch them out as ideas. The side quests are also intended as options to give the campaign room to spin out longer.

I suppose I should note here that I don't play or DM RPG-as-self-involved-soap-opera; except when it comes to interactions with other PCs I expect the characters to be looking outward more than inward. This is largely personal preference, as I generally loathe self-examination soap opera be it in real life or as entertainment.

It shows no grasp at all of how Burning Wheel is played; and the idea that you would interrupt the sort of play I am describing via an excursion through X1 - a module which is about hexcrawling through a pulp-style tropical island, on the basis of a discovered "treasure map" - is frankly just bizarre. (Burning Wheel could probably handle it in some form, though some of its machinery might spin a bit idle; but I wouldn't be brining this character to that table. If I wanted to play that game, I would build a completely different PC with a completely different suite of attributes and build elements.)

Sometimes life throws you a curveball.

If I-as-DM say up front something like "OK, Aedhros' quest will be front and center for the most part but at the same time expect the unexpected to happen now and then", then what?

There seems to be an implicit premise in the questions posed by @Lanefan and @Micah Sweet that there is some sort of virtue in a player being indifferent to the situation the GM frames them into, and a concomitant taking of exception to the notion that play should in some fairly robust sense be about the character that the player has established (via build and play).

Not so much; it's more that there's a realism in a character (and thus player) sometimes getting seriously diverted from what it wants to focus on, and having to deal with that diversion (which might take a while both in-game and in reality) before resuming its original course. And those diversions are highly unlikely to be self-inflicted by the player they have to originate elsewhere; usually the GM, though occasionally another player might cause one.

A very simple, if mundane, example of what I mean. My focus right now is on typing this post but an externally-caused diversion arises: it's time to make lunch. So, I go and make - and eat - lunch, then come back and resume what I was previously doing. In the meantime some notifications may have come in that I want to follow up on, so again this post has to wait a bit. Eventually, however, it gets finished.

Just like Aedhros' journey, which also isn't going to be a straight or even continuous line.

 

[FrozenNorth]

So you're arguing that the DM authored which race, class, abilities, spells, etc. of each PC? Because if he didn't, he can't have authored everything. At least some of those letters were authored by the players. Further the players inevitably bring up things the DM didn't think of that would be in the setting. The DM isn't the sole author of those things, either.

You have argued strenously on these boards tgat the DM has complete authority to disallow any races, classes and spells he wants.

So, yes, accordingly to your world-view, the DM does author everything and only allows players to act within the parameters that he chooses to set.