How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

[Thomas Shey]

So why, then, do the societies in D&D worlds more closely resemble modern ones than mediaeval ones in their basic social arrangements?

And why do they have so much more production taking place than their actual, narrated, technologies would appear to suggest?

In the first, because it was presumed that players would be more comfortable with them. In the second, a combination of people not knowing enough about the topic to do it right, or not caring. The fact both of these are the case does not actually change the position; they just show other motives and/or sloppiness (the second, I should note, can in some cases be answered by the presence of magic even to the degree commonly shown).

 

[Corinnguard]

That doesn't necessarily follow. Its easy enough to have "physics operates except where magic happens". The idea magic is an extraphysical element that operates outside of the normal laws of such is not exactly unknown. You can question, depending on how common magic is, how useful the distinction is, but in that context the fact that the dragon doesn't care about those laws of physics does not make them irrelevant, it just makes there two distinct sets that sometimes interact.

In the novel Operation Chaos by Poul Anderson, things like magic and dragons were covered by a different brand of physics called paraphysics. If something wasn't covered by physics such as how a dragon could fly, it was covered by paraphysics.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Yep. It's poorly written and at direct odds with what the examples show, which are tests of prior player established motivations for their PCs. When every single example shows a test, you have to throw out the badly written words prior to those examples. Not once did the DM in those examples actually create a motivation.

No he just used a motivation as an excuse to use his canned material. If Mialee hadn’t died, there would have been some other reason for the players to meet the cleric with the wererat problem. If they needed an item instead of resurrection, it would have been a merchant instead of a cleric. And so on.

 

[Maxperson]

No he just used a motivation as an excuse to use his canned material. If Mialee hadn’t died, there would have been some other reason for the players to meet the cleric with the wererat problem. If they needed an item instead of resurrection, it would have been a merchant instead of a cleric. And so on.

You are assuming. Nothing in that section says that. Further, even if there was another test of player established motivation to get them there, it's still a test of player established motivation. And...........................they can still say no and go somewhere else.

That section doesn't tell the DM to try over and over until they get there. That's you placing your bias into the mix. That section only gives examples of testing their motivations through DM established content. It doesn't tell them to railroad the players.

 

[Pedantic]

No he just used a motivation as an excuse to use his canned material. If Mialee hadn’t died, there would have been some other reason for the players to meet the cleric with the wererat problem. If they needed an item instead of resurrection, it would have been a merchant instead of a cleric. And so on.

If you construct an understanding of agency that specifically precludes the GM from creating content, then it's pretty trivial to claim the players don't have any.

How much must the GM adjust their content to shift in response to player/character motivation for it to count? Moreover, does it provide more agency when a payer chooses not to engage with something, or when they're never offered a chance to engage in the first place?

 

[TwoSix]

You are assuming. Nothing in that section says that. Further, even if there was another test of player established motivation to get them there, it's still a test of player established motivation. And...........................they can still say no and go somewhere else.

That section doesn't tell the DM to try over and over until they get there. That's you placing your bias into the mix. That section only gives examples of testing their motivations through DM established content. It doesn't tell them to railroad the players.

It certainly seems to lean towards “I wrote up a cool wizard’s tower, how do I make them explore it” rather than “This PC is a wizard looking for the secret to immortality, let me write up a ancient wizard's tower for the PCs to explore."

I mean, is it really contentious that focusing play on player's stated priorities was not a major thing circa 2000? That the normal paradigm was that the DM came up with a plotline and setting and adjusted it around the margins to get the PCs onboard?

 

[Maxperson]

It certainly seems to lean towards “I wrote up a cool wizard’s tower, how do I make them explore it” rather than “This PC is a wizard looking for the secret to immortality, let me write up a ancient wizard's tower for the PCs to explore."

I mean, is it really contentious that focusing play on player's stated priorities was not a major thing circa 2000? That the normal paradigm was that the DM came up with a plotline and setting and adjusted it around the margins to get the PCs onboard?

What I'm saying is... What's the functional difference between, "This PC is a wizard looking for the secret to immortality, let me write up a wizard's tower" and "I wrote up a wizard's tower and l can tie it in the the PC wizard's desire for immortality?"

The DM's motivation is different, but both instances result in a wizard's tower that ties in to the player's stated priorities. The result is the same.

 

[Corinnguard]

How much must the GM adjust their content to shift in response to player/character motivation for it to count?

Probably by a fair amount because there will be always be the possibility of a player wanting to do something that they didn't anticipate. The DM, for instance, might anticipate three different outcomes that could happen if the players perform a certain action at the wizard's tower. But when that action comes about, the players do something that results in a fourth outcome.

Moreover, does it provide more agency when a payer chooses not to engage with something, or when they're never offered a chance to engage in the first place?

When an unexpected outcome shows up in a game session, it's more agency to the player. However, when the DM railroads the players by only allowing one outcome, they aren't given a chance to do anything else. The DM ends up supplanting player agency this way.

 

[thefutilist]

No, you've linked that to action declaration unilaterally. Success or failure in this case clearly means the player does or does not get access to some piece of information. If you want the least controversial example, let's use monster identification, and assume success means the player will know the enemy's statistics and weaknesses, and will thus be able to consider their action declarations more carefully. A successful result is better for the player, but no action occurs.

The player is communicating a strategy with their build choices. They have opted to trade other potential benefits (in more active skills or whatever other character resource they spent for those abilities) in exchange for more information. Ideally, a game that allows such a trade should provide something of value in that information. I'm not sure why this is controversial, this is exactly the same as a character picking a passive benefit, like a +1 to all rolls of a given kind, to an active benefit, like a 1/day maneuver. In fact, this exact choice is often available in other kinds of games, especially RPGs.

I think I get where you’re coming but I’m always going to have a suspicion that people are ok with knowledge checks because the first game they played when they were 14 had them.

I think some old game stuff has had a kind of theoretical reassessment, where what seems to be really dumb on the face of it, is not only functional but does some really interesting things with the medium. In the particular case of knowledge checks it’s hard for me to have the conversation in good faith.

That being said, what’s kind of interesting is:

In the case where the player is totally unaware of the perception check occurring at all, what function does the check serve? Now I think GM side checks can be ‘good actually’ but I’d like to see a reasoned explanation as to why. What makes me curious here is that I can see the case for GM side random tables but when that’s moved to knowledge, it seems to tread heavily over stuff that more obviously seems good. In this case isn’t it almost always more interesting to see what people do with the knowledge? I mean I guess not but it’s a perspective I can only understand if I squint hard.

 

[Lanefan]

The GM as Storyteller was at least prevalent enough during Second Edition's reign to support a magazine wholly devoted to the concept (White Wolf Magazine) and to get a whole category in the Six Cultures of Play. It's also a sizeable chunk of the commentary on these boards (adventure paths, getting players back on track, fudging, nudging, etc.) and has been since I started following them (when they were still Eric Noah's 3rd Edition News boards).

Anecdotally it's also the play culture I originally hail from (being a Planescape/Vampire kid) way back when and has been the predominant play culture I encountered both in Michigan and Colorado. The indie and OSR scenes are becoming larger locally in the last 5 years or so, but most of what I have seen has been games where the social mores revolve around biting a GM's adventure hooks and casting a lot of Find Plot.

Interesting. I sometimes feel a bit lucky to have mostly skipped over that era by starting in 1e (early 80s) and staying there until 3e.

I tend to run more Story Now and Social Crawl oriented games though.

Now there's a term I've not heard before. Please elaborate.