D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[AbdulAlhazred]

They don’t let you leave American social history programs alive without reading him.

No such barbarity is inflicted on math and science majors. We drew the line at Rawls!

 

[pemerton]

I don't think they intend for omniscience to be required. The problem is that their stated requirement includes the need to be omniscient. What they have said is they need to be informed so as to be able to make a meaningful decision. Well, what does informed mean?

So, one answer to the question you asked could be obtained by looking at actual RPGs that (i) satisfy this desideratum, and (ii) have been mentioned in this thread.

So, consider Burning Wheel. Suppose that I'm playing Thurgon, and Thurgon is in Evard's abandoned tower, looking around while Aramina regains consciousness (having overtaxed herself trying to cast a spell fighting off a demon that was loitering near the tower). One of Thurgon's Beliefs is Aramina will need my protection, one of Aramina's Beliefs is I'm not going to finish my career with no spellbooks and an empty purse! while another is I don't need Thurgon's pity. Thurgon's other Beliefs and Relationships include stuff about his family and his mother, Xanthippe. So I declare an action for Thurgon, "I look around the tower for spellbooks."

Now first, the GM needs to decide whether to "say 'yes' or call for a roll of the dice. Noticing that spellbooks are a key thing for Aramina, and knowing about the complicated relationship between Thurgon and Aramina, the GM sees straight away that something is at stake here, and so it would be inappropriate to say "yes". So a roll is called for. If it succeeds, then intent and task are realised: Thurgon finds spellbooks for Aramina. But as it happened, the roll failed. So the GM narrates a consequence in accordance with the rules, which state that the focus of failure should be on intent. So the GM say, "You don't find any spellbooks. You find some letters in a child's writing, apparently written to Evard, that address him as "Daddy" and are signed with an X". I can't recall all the details any more, but it's pretty clear that "X" is Xanthippe. In other words, it seems that the evil wizard Evard is in fact Thurgon's maternal grandfather!

So in this example of play, I knew what was at stake: Aramina's desire for spellbooks, Thurgon's relationship with Aramina, and Thurgon's relationship with this mother. I understood the context within which failure would be framed.

The procedure in AW and DW is different. But suppose that, as a result of roll, the player doesn't get all that they wanted for their PC, and the GM has to make a move in response. As I've mentioned several times upthread, GM moves in AW are along the lines of "announce badness", "put someone in a spot", "offer an opportunity, perhaps with a cost", "take away their stuff", etc. And (as per the principle Be a Fan of the Characters), these normative notions - badness, a spot, opportunity, cost, etc - are to be understood relative to the players' desires and aspirations for their PCs. If the GM isn't sure exactly what these are, the game includes a GM-side procedure: ask questions, and build on the answers.

The GM is also required to elaborate later moves by reference to earlier established fiction. This is especially the case for hard moves, which should follow from prior soft moves where the threat or risk (not the one in the GM's imagination, but the one that is part of the in-play situation) has not yet resolved itself.

So, again, the players know what is at stake: it's their desires and aspirations for their PCs, as currently implicated in the unfolding fiction and the current in-play situation.

In other words, that it doesn't matter if it is the GM who is deciding all the consequences. Now of course anyone who wants to is free to play that way, but it can hardly be surprising that there might be others who regard that sort of play as a railroad: everything in the fiction is coming from the GM, with the players making essentially random suggestions as to which bit of their stuff the GM should bring into play.

So can I read this to be that you're advocating for player knowledge to deliberately exceed character knowledge?

No. I'm not advocating for anything. I'm expressing a preference for an approach to play, and especially to framing and action resolution, of the sort described in this post.

 

[pemerton]

Are their published adventures for your preferred games? How does that even work, if the player is so involved on authoring the fiction?

Yes there are. I have many actual play posts which talk about the use of scenarios from the core book and the Episode Book for Prince Valiant. Here's one: https://www.enworld.org/threads/prince-valiant-actual-play.654732/

The Crimson Bull is one of the best conceived published adventures I've ever played, as it has a very gentle, extended process of framing, and then a climactic shift to the crunch in which the resolution occurs. It shows how travel can be part of colour, rather than a fundamental component of resolution as so many RPGs tend to make it.

It was quite intense when we played it at our table.

 

[pemerton]

By not letting the hole have a bearing on the game. Let's say you managed to dig a deep hole in the ground, using only your fingers. If the GM doesn't want the fiction to include the hole, then nobody falls in, traffic moves around it, nothing interesting is found at the bottom, no interesting events occur because of the hole, and not having the guards/mayor/local council/whoever stop/fine/arrest you for making it. You made a hole, but it means nothing to the game.

<snip>

That's railroading. Coming up with the world on their own, however, and telling you what you know about it isn't.

So let me put it another way: if the GM comes up with the world on their own, and tells me what is in it, and uses that stuff they've authored to establish all consequences, then whatever I bring to the table, in my conception of my PC, my aspirations for my PC, etc, are like your example of the digging of the hole. Nothing about the game changes because of them.

 

[pemerton]

Sure. But you can't possibly expect that you will create all of it and the GM will create none of it? What would you do if you and another player have conflicting ideas about what's going on right here?

I have never said that the GM creates none of it.

As to conflicting ideas among participants, there are any number of ways to resolve that. In AW, for instance, the GM askes particular players questions. In Burning Wheel, a player makes a Wises check and another player can have their PC aid, or not. And at my table, in many context, we just talk it out.

 

[pemerton]

just don't see it as being consistent with the concept of the controller of any character always rolls for that character, which seems so blindingly obvious as a precept it's unexpected that I have to type it out.

And once again there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamed of in your philosophy . . .

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm having trouble keeping up with the madcap pace of this thread, but this bit interested me, so I'll dive in.

I typically play in relatively traditional games where the GM has much of the authority over the fiction. I wouldn't say all of the authority because it's more collaborative than that. Typically the group chooses a genre together (maybe from a menu of options from the GM) and then the players design characters in consultation with the GM. The GM puts together some sort of adventure, taking into account the genre expectations and particular characters, and play begins. Play involves players declaring actions and the GM narrating consequences, mediated by dice and rules.

Within this structure, I'm curious where the line is between a merely "cosmetic" change and something that alters "the overall direction of play." Some examples to consider:

1. A PC buys new clothes or decides that they whistle while they walk. Maybe the clothes affect NPC reactions. Whistling might prompt wandering monster checks. Neither is likely to cause any big changes to the GM's scenario. Safely in the "cosmetic" category?
2. PCs decide to do further research in town before heading off on some quest. Based on some good die rolls and GM improvisation, they learn something significant which changes their strategy (or gear or spell choices, etc.) such that their odds of success have improved significantly (or the cost of such success has been reduced). The adventure is unaltered in the sense that the GM already has a map and background info and NPCs and whatnot, but it will play out quite differently due to the choice to do some research. Still cosmetic? Or is this a substantial change?
3. In the midst of their quest, the PCs encounter a dangerous adversary. They elect to engage in conversation rather than combat. Through brilliant role-playing and/or dice rolls in combination with the GM's understanding of the adversary's personality and goals, they forge some sort of agreement or truce. This has shifted the plot significantly. Perhaps patrons or allies of the PCs will be upset. Perhaps the adversary will double-cross them. The GM will have some work to do before the next session to think things through.

Each example, to some degree or another, includes an element of surprise for the participants. The players did something that was potentially unexpected and this generated additional fiction. I can imagine any of these events happening whether the GM was running a home-grown adventure or something published. I can't quite put my finger on whether/how the cosmetic ⇿ substantial axis directly relates to the concept of railroading. (I admit that the latter term is not one I worry about much, despite its hot-button nature on the internet.)

So, this is an interesting question. I think that the range of examples you give obviously falls squarely within the 'trad' range (they could come up in classic play, or I guess neo-trad play). They wouldn't come up in quite the same way in narrativist play. Stonetop, because it has a fairly established starting fiction to some degree (the PCs are inhabitants of a bronze-age type village, and the regional geography is outlined, along with a few basic customs and relationships between cultural groups). However we invented all the actual NPCs and PCs (obviously) ourselves.

So, we needed to send some NPCs on a mission to acquire some resources (this is part of Stonetop, helping to develop the village over time). My character decided to Know Things about a dangerous group of people that would be a threat. This resulted in learning some bad stuff (I rolled badly) and in order to mitigate that, my character chose to recruit a foolish villager that another player had invented as an NPC to be a rival/foil for his character. This guy was supposed to distract the threat. After some political dealings to get the town elders to endorse this plan we sent the guy off. Now, when we finished tonight's game, the check to see what happened to him also came up bad, he never returned. Note how none of this was a GM constructed plot (actually the initial opportunity WAS presented by the GM in response to an event check that happens at the start of each season).

Me, and the other players collectively each had some minor part in creating this NPC's identity, nature, and mission. Now we have a plot! Its probably not the major story arc of the campaign, but who knows? The NPC's family is pissed, and they're going to soon find out that Meda convinced him (and manipulated him). This is what character-centered play is like. I'd note that this is just ONE example. We are 3 sessions (including the start of play) into the game and there are already, easily, 4 or more similar threads. Most of them had some kernel of a detail of scene framing that came from the GM that got extrapolated, but these scenes are NOT prepared, there was ZERO design on the part of the GM to instantiate any story line. We just took fairly small things, a starving girl wandering into town, a bear living in a cave we wanted to shelter in, a missing child, and they evolved into more weighty stuff that tested the PCs beliefs, resolve, and conceptions of the world. Now, the GM did provide a plot that motivated us to go out of town and DO something significant, but even that is built on a character background choice.

 

[pemerton]

What if, as @Faolyn said, you're not in your home town (as is very often the case in many RPGs). Do you still author fiction then, even if your PC has no reason to know about the fiction you are authoring?

So your characters never travel anywhere new?

I mean, if your entire game takes place in a single location... sure, why not.

<snip>

most games involve at least some traveling, and many games are entirely travelogues. The "hobo" part of "murderhobo." Even my game has the characters traveling from one town to another in it.

<snip>

It's not Space Aliens if you're going from one country to the next.

So in order for the "GM narrates more-or-less everything" method to be consistent with immersion, the PC have to be strangers?

And what about customs? (Unless we're playing The Dying Earth, these won't be wildly different as one travels from place to place.) And religion and what the gods want (in the "GM narrates more-or-less everything" approach, clerics are radically alienated from their faith and their divinity - as is demonstrated by the fact that a PC can't hold, let alone, win a theological debate with a NPC cleric unless the GM just argues the point with themself!). Etc.

I've played in these sorts of games, I know how they work, my experience of them as non-immersive railroads is not conjecture.

 

[Aldarc]

It's not that I don't understand any part of it, I just don't see it as being consistent with the concept of the controller of any character always rolls for that character, which seems so blindingly obvious as a precept it's unexpected that I have to type it out.

However, it's entirely consistent with "only players roll," which is not only pithier, but also more straightforward and even more blindingly obvious as a precept.

It's even entirely consistent with the core game loop found in most PbtA games:
(1) The GM establishes the situation.
(2) The GM presents a problem (soft move)
(3) The GM asks the player, "What do you do?"
(4) The Player declares their actions.
(5) The GM determines if the PC's actions trigger a move.
(6) If the PC's actions trigger a move, the Player rolls.
(7) The GM (and Player) resolve the consequences based on the results.
(8) Repeat starting from (1).

Combine that with the idea of no mechanical in-play difference between a PC and an NPC, (a.k.a. what's good for the goose is good for the gander) and yes, this is the type of rule I'll fight against.

Then you would no doubt agree (for consistency's sake) that players should likewise have no in-play difference in authority over fictional elements outside of their characters like the GM, since you believe so fervently that what's good for the goose is good for the gander, right?

Inconsistent all the way. If the players make attack rolls to hit NPCs then consistency demands and insists that the GM makes attack rolls to hit PCs.

No. It's not. Consistency doesn't demand or insist anything of the sort. It has neither agency nor will. You demand it because of your own idiomatic game design aesthetic preferences that are not universally shared or recognized.

"Only players roll" is just as consistent of a game design choice as your game design preferences. You don't like it? Fine. But don't you dare act like there is only One True Way for roleplaying games to be designed with any sense of consistency. Get over it and cut it out.

(side question: what happens when two PCs fight each other?)

Read the game rules and find out.

 

[Lanefan]

How is this supposed to represent anything different from what I said. To quote you:

This is you asserting exactly what I just stated, that you believe agency is all or nothing, with the result being as I stated. My position remains both unchanged, and uncontested, that you cannot have agency without sufficient information to make an informed choice.

How much information does it take to meet the threshold of "sufficient"?

If the answer is "all" then sorry, that's just not gonna happen very often if ever - similar to real life, that way - rendering this definition of agency as meaningless.

If the answer is "some" then that represents a sliding scale between 1% and 99%; and at 1% the answer might as well be "any at all".

My position is that you still have agency even if the answer is "none", provided you're still free to make a (perhaps random) choice rather than have that choice made for you.

This is still the universal standard! As several of us have said before, what this implies in terms of the resulting sort of game is circumstantial. In a classic Dungeon Crawl you probably don't care, you will be expected to investigate and learn, or use tactics to mitigate negative outcomes, and that's kind of the point of those games.

Unless I'm playing a fool as my character (which I've done many a time ) I'd hold the bolded as true no matter what system or playstyle I'm in; as that's realistically what any halfway wise character would try to do in the fiction, and thus to be true to the character that's what I'd have it do as its player.

And a system or GM that doesn't let me (try to) do these things is denying me my agency as a player to declare my character's actions.