D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[Vaalingrade]

It needs to be though.

Unlike all the other mentioned games that put strict limits on the role playing to make the game exactly what the author(s) want to to exactly be, D&D can be anything you want to make it be.

D&D can be goofy and silly; it can be casual and lite, it can be gritty and dark, it can be hard fun, it can be easy button fun, it can be a balanced part of something, it can be an unbalanced shock and awe, and hundreds of other things.

I don't think you've met my friends; Champions, FATE, BESM, and GURPS.

 

[Lanefan]

What do you mean, "what's stopping"? There's no real shipwreck, no real wind, no real waves or tidal forces.

So the question is, Who authors where the shipwrecked characters land, and why?

I've explained in some length why X1 has absolutely no relevance to the play of the game in which my PC is Aedhros.

This is just my point: just because you're playing Aedhros doesn't mean everything in the entire game has to revolve around him*.

For one thing, what are the other players supposed to think? If each of them takes this same attitude, hoo boy - I'd not want to referee that argument!

For another, it puts the GM in a very subservient position in that the role becomes merely one of catering to (or pandering to, whichever) the players' story arcs and-or whims, rather than being able to put her own idea for a story arc in there as well. And while I've joked elsewhere about AI GMs being the Next Big Thing, in this case it seems that's what you in fact would prefer to have: a GM that doesn't think for itself beyond the input you-as-player have given it to work with.

And for another, approaching it this way also serves to put a hard end point on the game - namely if and when Aedhros dies - even though the GM might have other excellent reasons to want to keep it going.

* - and to suggest that it should really comes across as more than a bit self-centered, even though you probably don't mean it that way.

Aedhos is not on a "quest". My play doesn't need side quests.

The way you described him and his goals etc., the story you seem to want to tell with him very much looks like a quest; that being to avenge his spouse. If I'm the GM I just take that and run with it.

The "story board" you set out could have the three words removed and subbed in - instead of Aedhros, Elves and father-in-law we could substitute in Ged, wizards and the shadow that escaped when he miscast a spell as an apprentice - and literally nothing else would need changing. That's enough to show that it has nothing to with Aedhros. It's just a sketched-out conception of an utterly generic action-adventure in which you plug in a couple of proper names in place of <X> and <McGuffin> in the schema.

What's that quote - there's only something like six stories you can tell, and every story ever told or written is just a dolled-up version of one of those six? Which means, every story is essentially a more elaborate version of the same fill-in-the-blanks exercise you're deriding here.

 

[bloodtide]

I don't think you've met my friends; Champions, FATE, BESM, and GURPS.

I was talking about games with strict limits in the rules. For example, any game that has strict rules for what a GM can or can't do. Even more so the games that say the GM can only make moves after being lead by the players, "By the Fiction".

 

[Vaalingrade]

I was talking about games with strict limits in the rules. For example, any game that has strict rules for what a GM can or can't do. Even more so the games that say the GM can only make moves after being lead by the players, "By the Fiction".

You also said D&D 'needs to' be peoples' first game because D&D is somehow unique in being generic. Which it does a bad job at, what with it's mechanics tidally locked to certain tropes largely unique to the genre of 'is D&D'

For another, it puts the GM in a very subservient position in that the role becomes merely one of catering to (or pandering to, whichever) the players' story arcs and-or whims, rather than being able to put her own idea for a story arc in there as well.

If that's what it takes to teach them some humility and how to play a cooperative storytelling game without bogarting control, then let's do this.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And he can.

And yet he has no control over what they choose. He does not author their characters any more than the rules do. Setting parameters =/= the DM authoring their PCs. Not even close.

I mean this seems like a ridiculous argument to me. You are literally arguing that if the game has even a single limitation, the players cannot author anything. By that logic no player can author anything in any RPG that I am aware of, because they all possess built in limitations. All such "authorings" by the players are done within the parameters that the designers chose to set.

OK, so you argued a definition that was something like "A railroad is when the GM restricts player choice to an extreme degree." So, what is extreme? Are you now arguing that extreme is only reached when there are ZERO choices? How about 1 choice? 2, 3? How about the actual effectiveness of these choices. You claimed also that a 'false choice' (go left or right without knowing which leads to death/escape) is a choice. What if this is the only sort of choice the GM gives you? Is it still not a railroad?

You seem to only be arguing that this point about the definition of 'extreme' as far as I can see.

 

[Maxperson]

OK, so you argued a definition that was something like "A railroad is when the GM restricts player choice to an extreme degree." So, what is extreme? Are you now arguing that extreme is only reached when there are ZERO choices? How about 1 choice? 2, 3? How about the actual effectiveness of these choices. You claimed also that a 'false choice' (go left or right without knowing which leads to death/escape) is a choice. What if this is the only sort of choice the GM gives you? Is it still not a railroad?

You seem to only be arguing that this point about the definition of 'extreme' as far as I can see.

Lack of agency is the key. What I said was that he forced you down a path of his choosing, removing agency. This is backed up by the Forge definition @pemerton linked, the google definition, the definition that I've seen 99% of posters over multiple boards use, and the 5e definition from the DMG.

And I made no claims about a false choice. The choice was a real one. Uninformed =/= false.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

A style of play, apparently, that takes influence from the Free Kriegsspiel wargames. Minimal rules to allow players more freedom, a lot of GM authority to ensure realism and to allow for off-the-cuff rulings, and players have to trust the GM to be fair.

According to the results of my googling, at least; I haven't met any GMs who've used that term for themselves.

You have to be careful with this. See Free Kriegsspiel is a wargame, developed by the General Staff of the Prussian Army. It is called 'Free' because the earlier Kriegsspiel (trans 'Wargame') was a fully closed rule-based TT game where the referee basically just adjudicated 'fog of war' (who can see who). This proved largely useless as an actual training device. So the Prussians gave the referee more power, hence the adjective 'Free', and this would also in principle allow the opponents to try open-ended stuff. There is still a very large and thorough rule book, but the referee was allowed to 'adjust' the rules in order to take account of situations that were not adequately covered by the written rules, to judge hard to quantify valuations like the effects of morale, etc. Note that these referees were HIGHLY trained Staff Officers of a working army, and the subject matter of the game was ONLY military operations. Thus the referee is the equivalent of a PhD level expert on the whole subject matter of FK!

There is certainly a line that can be traced from FK referee to D&D referee/GM, but there are huge differences, which apply to any TTRPG. The biggest one is that the referee cannot possibly be a complete subject matter expert, especially on the subject of an imaginary magical world! The subject matter of RPGs is simply too vast for that.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Oh man, did this stuff take me a while to wrap my head around as a long-time D&D player who started playing around in a lot of PbtA playgrounds.

Once I grokked it though I really ended up liking it. Once again, it's a very different way to approach how the game is played, but when it's in action, and everyone has bought in to the system, it's so smooth. I can't say I'd never go back to D&D combat, I can and have and will again. But I think, ultimately, I prefer it this way.

Certainly not for everyone, though.

D&D combat is fine, I don't have an issue with it either. It is, however, NOT the ideal way to handle all sorts of genre. For one thing, the way levels and hit points work high level people are pretty much able to ignore attacks. There's no defined way in 5e to assassinate a 10th level PC, the character is NOT going to be killed, even by the nastiest of surprise attacks. At best it would have to include magic, poison, probably both before death was even on the table. This is actually fine for a power progression game like D&D, but it precludes a lot of interesting options for sure! PbtA games which feature combat (some don't) are much less likely to be portraying neigh invincible super-heroic PCs. Even a level 10 Dungeon World PC has maybe 3-4 points of armor and 25 hit points, where monsters that he's likely facing can easily do more than 10 points of damage in a single move, and if the fiction reads like "you couldn't possibly survive this" then you don't... (well, you get Death's Door, have fun!). Its much more a game of action/adventure where combat is definitely going to happen, but it isn't the overwhelming focus.

Like in our Stonetop game, there was a violent confrontation in the first session, and now in the 2nd session a pretty big battle, but these aren't the FOCUS of the game, they are simply situations that can come up sometimes.

 

[Faolyn]

You have to be careful with this. See Free Kriegsspiel is a wargame, developed by the General Staff of the Prussian Army. It is called 'Free' because the earlier Kriegsspiel (trans 'Wargame') was a fully closed rule-based TT game where the referee basically just adjudicated 'fog of war' (who can see who). This proved largely useless as an actual training device. So the Prussians gave the referee more power, hence the adjective 'Free', and this would also in principle allow the opponents to try open-ended stuff. There is still a very large and thorough rule book, but the referee was allowed to 'adjust' the rules in order to take account of situations that were not adequately covered by the written rules, to judge hard to quantify valuations like the effects of morale, etc. Note that these referees were HIGHLY trained Staff Officers of a working army, and the subject matter of the game was ONLY military operations. Thus the referee is the equivalent of a PhD level expert on the whole subject matter of FK!

There is certainly a line that can be traced from FK referee to D&D referee/GM, but there are huge differences, which apply to any TTRPG. The biggest one is that the referee cannot possibly be a complete subject matter expert, especially on the subject of an imaginary magical world! The subject matter of RPGs is simply too vast for that.

I'm just telling what google told me.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Lack of agency is the key. What I said was that he forced you down a path of his choosing, removing agency. This is backed up by the Forge definition @pemerton linked, the google definition, the definition that I've seen 99% of posters over multiple boards use, and the 5e definition from the DMG.

All of these definitions seem to have in common that they rely on a valuation of a degree of autonomy or lack of autonomy (and see below). Thus we are arguing about DEGREE, not KIND here.

And I made no claims about a false choice. The choice was a real one. Uninformed =/= false.

Yes it is. In fact this is a well-known principle of biomedical ethics, that an uninformed choice is equivalent to removing the agent's autonomy to act, and is usually seen as a violation of consent requirements, possibly even a criminal act in some cases. This is just basic stuff, no information, no choice, no autonomy, settled law.

In the context of D&D your position is refuted trivially. If the GM simply rolls a d6 and picks a door based on the outcome, there is no material difference in the quality of the decision being made, yet magically their choice vanishes! This is clearly a pretty decisive reductio ad absurdum.