"Oddities" in fantasy settings - the case against "consistency"

[Bedrockgames]

Of course they can, I'm talking about what PoV is being evinced in the discussion, not what people could do with any particular game, nor even specifically what any of you ARE doing. I mean, how can I comment on that?

Again, look at what PoV I was giving. You stated a bunch of things I didn't say and claimed them as my position, you then postulated what lineage of thinking informed my gaming point of view.

 

[Bedrockgames]

But there has been quite a bit discussion about how "special" the characters should be, which actually seems to be mainly about how much their backstories should direct the course of the campaign. There is no right or wrong answer to this. In one hand it is good thing if the character backstories organically drive the campaign. They are the main characters in any case, so might as well tie everything to their backstories, right? The reason to not do this, is the same than the reason to have no overarching GM "main story." It is restrictive. The game will be about that, and there will be little breathing room for anything else. If you want to run more episodic or sand boxy campaign, this is a bad fit. On the other hand if you want an ongoing narrative where the characters are in the focus, it is probably a good idea.

Even in sandbox it won’t necessarily be an issue. I run sandboxes pretty regularly but am often quite open to suggestions around background that make the character important or significant in the way the last mage might be. I’d say the only difference is where that leads will be a result of organic interaction and development over the course of the campaign. And the way it is arrived at isn’t through ‘conflict’ or any kind of attempt to wrestle for it, but with a simple q&a (ie the player might say ‘would it work for me to be x, or is there anything in the setting like y where I could be the last remaining A of B). Generally in my sandboxes there is the conventional, GM is arbiter of the setting, players are arbiters of their characters, but there are gray areas like character background. And I have run the same sandbox setting with a different dynamic, where players can be arbiters of the setting through the words their characters speak, using a variation of the Hillfolk rules kludged to our existing system. IE if Zheng Bao, a PC, says “but brother you have forgotten about The Order of the Golden Lantern, they will want this artifact as well and may send men against us” then the order of the golden lantern, which didn’t exist before in the setting, now exists: similar things could be stated in terms of background. Using this latter approach, setting consistency would very often be explained post hoc and a very low priority for us

 

[hawkeyefan]

There is no "must" to any of this, and no one is saying otherwise. I'm pointing out that I've run into this idea of "the player has an idea for their character that overturns some aspect of the setting" before, and in my experience it's been more of a drawback than an asset. I'm sure that it can be made to work (almost anything can be, if everyone's on board and willing to put in the effort), but I don't see it as being worthwhile for the effort involved, especially when the bulk of the benefits can be reaped in other ways that are less prone to causing problems.

The GM isn't overturning convention because the GM is (to make a major generalization) the one who figures out what the conventions of the setting are in the first place. World generation, in my experience, isn't a collaborative process. While a good GM will typically have a conversation with the players ahead of time about certain aspects of it, they're ultimately the ones who have to do most of the work ahead of time. If they're the ones who ultimately arbitrate, then they're not overturning anything, unless it's some aspect of a pre-fab campaign that they're altering.

There's no must.... but world generation must be done by the GM?

It's not just being unique, it's being unique in a way that has them turning some aspect of how the world works on its head. When your character is a walking demonstration that how everyone thinks the world works is not in fact the case, they're much more likely to stand out, which makes their impact outsized compared to the other party members.

The setting isn't set in stone. Nothing is being overturned. It's being developed.

It's not competitive, it's comparative. If you're close friends with the first and only space alien humanity has ever seen, you're pretty much going to be defined as "that one guy who's the space alien's friend" rather than whatever your name is.

I don't know... I think Elliot is a character everyone remembers, and clearly the main character of E.T.

Which is all the more reason why you don't need to overturn some aspect of the setting to achieve that. And I'm curious what background in 5E is explicitly predicated on you being the last mage in the world?

I didn't say that there was a 5e background that indicated you were the last mage in the world. I said there are 5e backgrounds that grant renown or reputation that would be greater than that of other PCs.

I think I've been pretty clear about that. It's fine if no one in the group minds, but in my experience, being supporting cast members to another PC gets old, fast.

I generally think of PCs as both main characters and supporting characters. The focus shifts pretty significantly at times.

Sure, they can do that. Or they can not have to do that extra work in the first place, because they're not being outshined by someone else from day one. I'm just sayin'.

I mean... that sounds pretty passive.

It might sound that way, but again, it's another thing to experience it over and over and over during the course of play.

I mean, any campaign has a risk of being repetitive. This doesn't seem to be something unique to this premise.

It probably has, but my impression is that it kicked into a higher gear right around the turn of the century. But that's just me.

I don't know. I think when so much of the game is up to the GM, it's not very surprising when the players get possessive of their one source of input into the game.

No, I like my version better. But your decision to caricature the preferences of others says more about your own outlook than theirs.

If you consider me applying your logic in a slightly different way is me making a caricature... well, I don't know what to tell you.

 

[darkbard]

The GM isn't overturning convention because the GM is (to make a major generalization) the one who figures out what the conventions of the setting are in the first place. World generation, in my experience, isn't a collaborative process. While a good GM will typically have a conversation with the players ahead of time about certain aspects of it, they're ultimately the ones who have to do most of the work ahead of time. If they're the ones who ultimately arbitrate, then they're not overturning anything, unless it's some aspect of a pre-fab campaign that they're altering.

I don't know what to make of your stating this so far into a thread in which the process for setting conventions and world generation has already been discussed as game system and playstyle dependent. This thread has already, for example, discussed how in Dungeon World the first session includes drawing the map for the game's setting together, collaboratively. What are the limits of "your experience"? Only those things you prefer in your own games? Those things of which you become aware but dismiss for whatever reason?

It's one thing to say you prefer a sort of game where the world generation is set by the GM solely. It's another thing altogether to claim world generation isn't a collaborative process (regardless of whatever equivocating your "in my experience" is doing here).

 

[Alzrius]

There's no must.... but world generation must be done by the GM?

Not what I said. Did you overlook the part where I overtly characterized that as a generalization, and then flat-out acknowledged that the GM should talk to the players first?

The setting isn't set in stone. Nothing is being overturned. It's being developed.

Eventually the setting does have to be given the impression of immutability, at least where certain considerations are concerned. Otherwise there's no sense of continuity to anything, and the point of having a campaign becomes much harder to maintain (again, in my experience).

I don't know... I think Elliot is a character everyone remembers, and clearly the main character of E.T.

Who's the movie named after, again?

I didn't say that there was a 5e background that indicated you were the last mage in the world. I said there are 5e backgrounds that grant renown or reputation that would be greater than that of other PCs.

Which just goes to show that you don't need to overturn setting convention if that's what you want for your character.

I generally think of PCs as both main characters and supporting characters. The focus shifts pretty significantly at times.

When one character has it written into their backstory that they and they alone overturn what everyone else believes to be impossible, I suspect the spotlight will shift back toward them more often than not.

I mean... that sounds pretty passive.

No it doesn't. It's avoiding working twice as hard for half the reward.

I mean, any campaign has a risk of being repetitive. This doesn't seem to be something unique to this premise.

No, but it lends itself quite easily to that problem. Is that worth the reward? The player of the PC in question might think so, but as for the rest of the group, I'm less sure.

I don't know. I think when so much of the game is up to the GM, it's not very surprising when the players get possessive of their one source of input into the game.

The players have a great deal of input into the game, insofar as what their characters do. It's why there are so many stories about GMs trying to deal with sudden curveballs from the PCs' actions, especially when they've gained more power over time. To suggest that they're somehow hamstrung if they can't start out as being able to redefine the world itself strikes me as overblown.

If you consider me applying your logic in a slightly different way is me making a caricature... well, I don't know what to tell you.

If I thought that's what you were doing, I wouldn't have called it a caricature. But simply restating someone else's point by inverting two parts of it with no further commentary doesn't really suggest anything, except being pointlessly contrarian.

 

[Alzrius]

I don't know what to make of your stating this so far into a thread in which the process for setting conventions and world generation has already been discussed as game system and playstyle dependent. This thread has already, for example, discussed how in Dungeon World the first session includes drawing the map for the game's setting together, collaboratively. What are the limits of "your experience"? Only those things you prefer in your own games? Those things of which you become aware but dismiss for whatever reason?

It's one thing to say you prefer a sort of game where the world generation is set by the GM solely. It's another thing altogether to claim world generation isn't a collaborative process (regardless of whatever equivocating your "in my experience" is doing here).

I'm honestly not sure what to say to your seeming objection to my pointing out things based on my own experience. I mean, leaving aside that I've repeatedly acknowledged that things are going to be different for every group and every player, I'm not sure what else I could say. Certainly, I'm not making declarative statements about how things must be (like some other posters, which you seem to be fine with) or how they should be. If you find that my experiences don't match up with your own, that's only be expected, but it's foolishness to call that equivocating.

 

[Wolfpack48]

If the GM proposes a game without magic, there's always that one player who's got to play the last mage. And you know what? That's good. Before the game has even started we have a spark of conflict - we have the player getting involved in shaping the situation.

No, this is a player who wants to be a spotlight hog. If there was some other constraint, they'd want to be the exception to this, too.

 

[Shardstone]

Right… it’s got a plausible explanation.

I mean, the real reason is that Tolkien needed him to be that long-lived for the story.

Then he made him that way, and came up with an explanation.

He didn’t just rely on the consistency of his world to inform that decision. And, as an author, was free to revise and iterate his ideas many times prior to publication, assigning some sense of chronological causation… it’s just not relevant.

I've found that people who don't actively write stories, or who haven't done so in the past, believe that if an author doesn't have it all figured out at the beginning then it's illegitimate. It makes no sense, but it's how many people think. If you come up with a reason after creating something or writing something, it's considered "cheating" by many. It is very weird and flies in the face of virtually any creative process.

 

[Alzrius]

I've found that people who don't actively write stories, or who haven't done so in the past, believe that if an author doesn't have it all figured out at the beginning then it's illegitimate. It makes no sense, but it's how many people think. If you come up with a reason after creating something or writing something, it's considered "cheating" by man. It is very weird and flies in the face of virtually any creative process.

For what it's worth, I've seen this too, and I've been equally puzzled. I've conversed with more than one author who's spoken fondly about "discovery writing" (as I've heard it called when they work out how things are unfolding as they're writing).

 

[CreamCloud0]

I feel like asking to be ‘the last mage’ in a world without magic is like asking to be ‘the last giant mech pilot’ in a regular game, it insinuates far too much about the world and that can’t just be brushed off by saying don’t think about it too hard, and if you’re asking to play it then i think either you didn’t read/listen/care about the world premise when it was being discussed or you misunderstood it, otherwise you wouldn’t be asking to be the mage in a magicless world.