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

[pemerton]

If we can ignore setting conventions at our leisure then what's the point of having setting conventions? (or is that your end point, that we shouldn't have them; that setting conventions shouldn't exist?)

As is often the case in discussing RPGing, it helps to distinguish the fiction from the table.

The fiction - the setting, the gameworld - has conventions, or norms, or general rules. I've given examples from JRRT's works, such as that only Elves can sail the straight road to Aman. Some things in the fiction break those conventions or generalities.

The table has conventions -eg We're playing Prince Valiant, so the genre is broadly Arthurian.

What is the relationship between the first set of conventions, and the second? The answer is: whatever people want it to be.

 

[Alzrius]

How can they not be viable, if there are actual people actually RPGing - including some posting in this thread - who are using an approach close to, or the same as, @hawkeyefan's, and who are informed by ideas similar to those in the OP: collaborative world-building, treating ideas and "norms" of the world as jumping-off points rather than rigid constraints, etc.

If they're not only not working, but causing negative issues for some people - including some posting in this thread - then that's worth being brought up in the context of the discussion, at least when someone calls such things "the enemy" of creative, meaningful play.

Now, I suppose you can nitpick the semantic use of "viable" as a term, but that strikes me as sidestepping the issue rather than engaging with it.

If 100 people assert that something is not viable, but one or two others are actually doing it successfully and even to their benefit, than it follows that the 100 are wrong.

Leaving aside the aforementioned note about this not being a measurement of who has greater experience (and even if it was, there's little to say that the OP's idea is so wildly successful), the OP presents an idea. Others have mentioned why they think the idea doesn't work for them. So to them, it's not viable. You seem to be reading an objective statement where there is none.

What's wrong with participants in a voluntary leisure activity getting what they want?

Nothing is "wrong" with it, but sometimes it's not going to happen, and that should be okay. In a group activity, sometimes people will want different things, and sometimes when that happens not everyone gets what they want.

 

[pemerton]

talking about who has more experience with something isn't a valid reason for saying why someone else's opinion on a topic (with which they themselves have experience) carries less weight.

Yes it is.

I mean, someone who has hundreds of hours experience (say) cycling generally has more, and more useful, things to contribute to our understanding of cycling as an activity than someone who just learned to ride last weekend and who still wobbles crazily as they get their bike moving.

Of course there are exceptions: some people are prodigies, and others are hacks whose hundreds of hours have taught them little or nothing. But in this particular discussion, are you asserting that you are a prodigy? If not, are you denying @hawkeyefan's conclusion, inferred from your posts, that you have little experience with the collaborative approach that he has described? And if not - so you are neither a prodigy in respect of that approach, nor particularly experienced with it, what is the basis on which you assert that it is not viable? What distinguishes that assertion from mere speculation or conjecture?

 

[CreamCloud0]

If the player expresses an objection to the GM's pitch before everyone agrees to the premise, then fine - all of these things suggest they don't want to actually play the game the GM is pitching. Time to consider a new pitch.

But if they all agreed to play a human space game using Traveller, and then the player says they want to be a Vargr, then I don't see why they should be accommodated. They're ultimately just voicing their objection to the premise late or voicing second thoughts. And if a player consistently behaves this way, then there's probably a bad fit between them and the rest of the group dynamic.

while i mostly agree with your statement this one line i bolded specifically sticks out to me, in that it somewhat implies that the pitch is what should always be the thing reconsidered, i mean yes, accomodate the whole group as best you can but does this means if one player doesn't want a particular type of game the entire rest of the table doesn't get to have it either?

 

[Alzrius]

Obviously I cannot definitively speak to every possible GM out there, but I don't find this to be the case. I think it is a concern that people have when they have GMed a highly prepped game, but I honestly don't do something in inventive or descriptive terms than I did when I prepped stuff, its just happening quick. I agree that you can gain experience with the sorts of things to fling out there to make stuff hop, but really this is not rocket science. Relax, and just DO IT. Once I did it once I realized this is just not hard.

I think that's certainly a nice idea, but in my experience it doesn't live up to the reality, at least for most GMs who haven't been actively working for a notable length of time to develop their skills. Being thrown a curveball, and needing to respond to it immediately, strikes me as being a learned skill, which means that the baseline is that you don't have that skill.

 

[Alzrius]

The GMs that I play and talk to are generally familiar with techniques - which are set out in many pretty well-known RPG rulebooks - for making "just in time" decisions about the fiction.

Did they start out being able to do that, or did they have to work to learn how to do so (and do so artfully, so that they were able to react immediately in a way that kept the game going without disruptions)? Because all of the GMs that I know needed to work on being able to do this.

 

[pemerton]

If they're not only not working, but causing negative issues for some people - including some posting in this thread - then that's worth being brought up in the context of the discussion, at least when someone calls such things "the enemy" of creative, meaningful play.

<snip>

Leaving aside the aforementioned note about this not being a measurement of who has greater experience (and even if it was, there's little to say that the OP's idea is so wildly successful), the OP presents an idea. Others have mentioned why they think the idea doesn't work for them. So to them, it's not viable. You seem to be reading an objective statement where there is none.

I find very curious this turn in language, from I don't like it (a statement of preference) or even I haven't successfully done it (an autobiographical statement about attainment) to It isn't viable.

I personally find it a rather obscurantist usage. And I don't think it is widely used even in other RPG contexts.

Eg suppose I started a thread saying "OSR play is not viable", and appended a footnote saying "I've not had good experience with OSR play." Do you really think that most OSRers would treat my footnote as synonymous with, or as otherwise justifying, my thread title?

 

[pemerton]

I think that's certainly a nice idea, but in my experience it doesn't live up to the reality, at least for most GMs who haven't been actively working for a notable length of time to develop their skills. Being thrown a curveball, and needing to respond to it immediately, strikes me as being a learned skill, which means that the baseline is that you don't have that skill.

Did they start out being able to do that, or did they have to work to learn how to do so (and do so artfully, so that they were able to react immediately in a way that kept the game going without disruptions)? Because all of the GMs that I know needed to work on being able to do this.

Most worthwhile human activities are learned skills. Running a Gygaxian dungeon is a learned skill - I know, as I don't have it (or at least don't have much of it).

Writing a scenario in the traditional "storytelling" style is also a learned skill; as is GMing them. I've played with GMs who are masters at it, and others who are terrible.

These days, when I mostly play with my long-time friends, there is one of them who GMs me. The only RPG he has ever GMed is Burning Wheel. And so yes, he did start out being able to "do that", ie to GM as conversation rather than as script.

 

[Alzrius]

It's not about claiming that I know better than you. It's about having more experience with the kinds of games we're talking about. Based on your comments, it seems you have very little to no experience with that kind of game.

See? You've just claimed that you know better than me, right after saying that it's not about that. Hence why pointing to your own experience as a comparative for "I know better" is not only pointless, but detrimental to the conversation.

I could certainly be wrong... this is why I asked if you would agree.

If you have such experience, I'd like to hear what games, or what methods you used and how they worked, or didn't. So far, most of your claims seem to be suppositions rather than direct experience, as I said.

Except, as I noted, this isn't a matter of who has more experience with something. I've already posted about my own experiences multiple times over the course of this thread. Yet you don't seem to be aware of them, which in turn showcases the futility of saying "but you don't really know what you're talking about, whereas I do," which is what this particular approach boils down to.

No, because anyone also needs to learn to GM the way you're advocating for. It's still has to be learned... does that make it an issue that needs to be dealt with, too?

To the extent that no one is born knowing how to GM, yes. World-building is also a skill. That said, I'm of the opinion that it's a skill that's easier to develop, if for no other reason than you can work on that one in private to a greater extent than you can work on dealing with surprises on your own (which, make no mistake, you can do, but putting it into practice requires those situations to occur, and by their very nature they're unexpected and unpredictable).

I know a few GMs who can do that! I can also do it! What really helped was playing the kinds of games that actively work that way instead of actively working against it. And also letting go of the idea that this alternate method is somehow harder or more fraught than traditional GMing, rather than just different.

Sure, but this ignores that people tend to gravitate to different styles (and games) for a reason. For some people, the alternatives that you're championing aren't going to be palatable, and while there's certainly issues in trying out new things, there's also an argument to be made that recreational activities are about staying in your comfort zone, since that's where you're comfortable.

Considering that most of us here took years to learn how to GM trad games well, I don't think we should consider traditional games as some kind of "easy entry" so much as "most likely first entry". I don't know if learning how to GM differently is as hard as you're saying. I expect it will depend on the individual and their specific circumstances quite a bit.

I think that there's a reason why the most popular games are the most popular, in terms of why they've become the main points of entry into the hobby. Not all of that has to do with the style of gaming (arguably, a lot of it has nothing to do with that), but at the same time I think that the style can't be completely discounted either.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So the reason I like to run games where I prep the salient facts regarding the session in the advance is not that I can't improv. I can, and I'd say I can quite well. I don't think my players generally could tell whether something is prepped or improvised. But the reason for the prep is to make things more interesting for me as a GM. I set the starting conditions, I won't alter them, and then the PCs are introduced in the mix and we see how the situation unfolds. I'm also a big softie, so if I would just improvise whether a bad thing happens and how bad it is, I might flinch and softball things. If it is based on immutable facts of the situation then it is easier for me to let bad stuff to happen.