I'm aware of that. If it's not in the player's control, then - assuming that some human participant in the game has control of it - it must be in the GM's control. Which is what @hawkeyefan, @Manbearcat and I have been saying. Manbearcat and I have also posted rulebook text, from two DMGs, that sets out the same idea.
How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?
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Crimson Longinus
Legend
So they just force-feed at modicum?
In most games they don't. Characters will bring their own themes and their actions influence what's at stake.
I don't think there is anything wrong with my understanding of logic, perhaps you're not just being as clear as you think? I didn't read your post containing such a logic structure, I just read it mainly as slander.
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Yet you fairly confidently assert that your D&D play is more realistic than my BW play. So either your assertion is based in ignorance, or it is not an assertion about the content of the fiction. I've always assumed the latter: that by "realism" you don't mean the content of the fiction, but something about the manner in which it is produced - that is, the procedures for prep, for play, and for how those two things are related.
For instance, it seems to me - from your many posts - that you regard the first of the two episodes of play I set out immediately below as more realistic than the second:
* The GM draws up a map of a city square, and notes where there is a hiding place between the corners of two adjacent-but-not-quite-touching buildings. And the GM makes a note that, if a PC enters this square at night, there is a 30% chance that one of the ninjas who has been tracking the PCs - for reasons connected to stuff that has happened in an earlier session - will be hiding there, hoping to ambush the PC. Subsequently, when in play a player declares that their PC goes to the square, and everyone agrees that it is night time, the GM rolls the % dice, and they read 15 (and so fall within the 01 to 30 band to "trigger" the 30% chance). The GM therefore asks the player to make a Perception check, and - based on the result of that check - proceeds to resolve the ninja's attempted ambush of the PC.
The GM prepares, inspired by events in a recent session, makes notes on a front - the front includes ninjas among its threats. The front has an impulse *to relentlessly pursue its targets, and as a GM-move to ambush someone. Subsequently, in play, a player declares that their PC goes to the city square. The GM describes it being night-time - the square is empty, the silence oppressive, the shadows threatening. The player says "I look around - if I need to get out of here, what's my best way out?" The GM applies the principle If you do it, you do it and so tells the player - "OK, you're reading the situation. Roll the dice!" The player rolls, and fails, and so - as per the rules of the game - the GM is entitled to make as hard and direct a move as they like. So the GM consults their prep, notes their front with its impulse and its move, and so tells the player, "You are looking around, trying to identify your possible way out, and then something strikes you in the neck. A dart!" And then they go on to resolve a ninja's attempted ambush of the PC.
The GM prepares, inspired by events in a recent session, makes notes on a front - the front includes ninjas among its threats. The front has an impulse *to relentlessly pursue its targets, and as a GM-move to ambush someone. Subsequently, in play, a player declares that their PC goes to the city square. The GM describes it being night-time - the square is empty, the silence oppressive, the shadows threatening. The player says "I look around - if I need to get out of here, what's my best way out?" The GM applies the principle If you do it, you do it and so tells the player - "OK, you're reading the situation. Roll the dice!" The player rolls, and fails, and so - as per the rules of the game - the GM is entitled to make as hard and direct a move as they like. So the GM consults their prep, notes their front with its impulse and its move, and so tells the player, "You are looking around, trying to identify your possible way out, and then something strikes you in the neck. A dart!" And then they go on to resolve a ninja's attempted ambush of the PC.
These two episodes of play don't differ in their fictional content. Nevertheless, as I said above, I am reasonably confident that you - @Micah Sweet - would regard the first as more realistic than the second. Given the lack of difference in content, this must be because of how they differ in their procedures.
Those difference can be spelled out fairly easily. The two episodes differ in the way the GM preps: the first is fairly typical for D&D, the second fairly typical for Apocalypse World or Dungeon World. They also differ in the way the GM approaches framing: in the first, the presentation of the city square by the GM is neutral, and the GM relies on the % dice to tell them whether or not a threat is present; in the second, the GM presents the square as sinister, thus instigating the player into action. They further differ in the way that action is resolved: in the first, the GM deploys the hidden element of the framing (the ninja they have rolled up, but not yet announced), and calls for a Perception check based on that deployment; in the second, the GM calls for a roll based on the player's declared action, and then draws on their prep to make a move that is appropriate to the result of that roll. This move includes introducing an ambushing ninja into the scene.
I personally don't find the label "realistic" a very helpful way of distinguishing the two approaches to prep and play. But it is at least pointing to a an actual difference, even if - in my view - misdescribing it. Unlike some of the other claims about "realism" in this thread.
Thomas Shey
Legend
Then you're not going to be able to engage with those that do, and your attempt to participate in a discussion with them the way you have comes across as at best cynical and at worst disingenuous, and I don't see why anyone who does should continue to participate in discussion with you about it.
These are related.
I prefer a method of action resolution in which the player either succeeds, or is set back to some extent. There are different technical ways of doing this - eg the AW soft/hard move approach; the BW "intent + task" + "say 'yes' or roll the dice" approach; the 4e skill challenge approach - but they are all similar in their core: if the players declare an action, and the dice are rolled, then either the player gets what they want for their PC, or else their situation is set back in some fashion (or perhaps both).
Connected to this approach is the notion that revealing the hitherto unknown, where that is a setback for the character (eg they are being ambushed), is a possible consequence of a failed check. If the GM is framing but is not bringing home a consequence as per the procedures of play, then the GM makes a "soft" move - they suggest or point to a possible consequence as being at stake, but don't bring it home. This provokes/instigates some sort of response from the player.
This goes to what I said upthread: you can assert all day and all night that there is no difference between - on the one hand - what the 2nd ed DMG set out, with its Orc-seeming Ogres, its doppelganger "prisoners", and its mysterious dust cloud that the players have their PCs observe until the GM reveals what it is, or what the 3E DMG advises with its GM-authored fetch quests, and - on the other hand - the sort of play that is set out in Apocalypse World, or Sorcerer, or Burning Wheel, or HeroWars/Quest.
But @Micah Sweet can tell the difference. And I can tell the difference. I have played with GMs who used the approaches set out in those DMGs. These are GM-controlled games: the GM establishes what is at stake, establishes what matters in any given scene and in any moment of resolution, establishes the consequences of success as well as of failure, and uses off-screen fiction to which only they have access in doing all of the preceding.
I've not used the word "task" at all (other than in the compound "intent + task" just above). I've talked about action declarations. I have also consistently referred to saving throws - but saving throws are against a consequence. And as I've said, ignorance is not a consequence; so why do I need to save against it? If I want my PC to remain ignorant, why is that not my prerogative?
The GM has already decided that knowledge of this thing is not common knowledge, as they have decided not to tell the table about it. So why, then, am I not allowed to decide that my PC doesn't recognise or recall this thing? What happened to me being in charge of what my PC thinks and believes?
Well this brings us full circle. The GM can describe things. The players can declare actions. But neither the idea of "save vs ignorance", nor of the GM declaring an action (an attempt to remember) for my PC, is something that I want in a game. To me, it smacks of the sort of GM control over parcelling out information that @hawkeyefan first mentioned many pages upthread.
And just to be clear: I can conceive of the notion that some sentences in the GM's notes have a number next to then, with that number telling us the % chance (either universally, or character-relativised via a knowledge-check system) that any given player gets to be told that sentence. I can even conceive of this being generalised to every sentence (perhaps with a convention that no notation means a uniform 100% chance, or "common knowledge"). What I'm saying is that this has ZERO appeal to me. And this is for the reason that @hawkeyefan was the first to set out in this thread.
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I'm not the person who goes around telling others that their games are unrealistic in comparison to mine!
But if someone tells me that there game is more realistic than mine because in their game there exists an imaginary notion of "paraphysics" - well, I think I'm entitled to reply.
This strikes me as nonsense that intentionally ignores pretty much what everyone has been saying.
Even in trad games, it is entirely possible (and often desireable, and not at all rare) for the PLAYERS to determine the goals and the stakes and for the GM to respond to those things. Just because you have never experienced that and are obviously deeply biased against traditonal RPGs does't make that fact any less true. You can berate people all day that they are playing the wrong game if they want agency, and they can and should completely ignore you and go on enjoying the traditional games they are playing and the player agency they are experiencing.
Honestly, you should spend less time touting your preferred games and listening to what other people are saying about the games they play. You might actually learn something -- you know, that same thing you want other people to do by experiencing play the way you like it. Maybe, just maybe, the doctor should take his own medicine.
I think this understates the issue. He asserts that he cares about cause and effect of what the characters are involved with. But some of the things the characters are involved with include money, agents of local lords (eg guards, bailiffs, etc) and other things which directly implicate the social, political and economic structures of the setting. But those things aren't reasoned out by him in accordance with some working model of such matters: they are just made up, using as points of reference a handful of works that we are all reasonably familiar with (REH's Conan, JRRT's Middle Earth, perhaps a National Geographic special about some spectacular surviving castle).
This is why I deny that "reality" is the default. Some received tropes are the default.
Here is a direct quote from @Micah Sweet:
Can you explain how that relates to this, from you:
As far as I can see, it is you and not me who is ignoring what he has said!
Similarly, @Lanefan has a series of posts in this thread that express the merits, and even inevitability (as he sees it), of the GM framing scenes that are no-stakes, or low-stakes; or of framing scenes where the players don't know what is at stake. Likewise, @Crimson Longinus has a series of posts explaining why it is reasonable and sensible for the GM to parcel out information based on calling for knowledge checks from players.
I am not ignoring those posts. I am responding to them: they exemplify the idea of GM control over information that @hawkeyefan has been talking about for many pages of this thread.
I'm not "biased" against traditional RPGs. I just don't enjoy them. And I am able to point to features of the received approaches to play that explain why.
But if you want to point me to all the player-driven 2nd ed AD&D play that's out there that I missed out on, please do so.
How would I do that? it happened and happens at peoples tables. i can tell you that i personally ran my 2E campaign that way -- a campaign that literally spanned 20 years, 2 editions of D&D and ultimately 2 editions of Mutants and Masterminds as we advanced in times -- with the vast majority of it driven by my players. How? Why? Because NOTHING in trad games stops player driven goals and stakes. It isn't a thing.
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