How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

[Maxperson]

Because it refutes it. The default D&D setting is not reality. It is imagination, where the imagined elements are taken from a pretty well known set of folk tales and literary works inspired by them.

Reality or imagination is a False Dichotomy. It's not one or the other. There's a whole spectrum of realism in fantasy settings.

 

[Maxperson]

Maybe instead of describing it as a scale, we can describe it as something more like a mosaic? Because a scale implies that one can have more than another. You're framing it as a quantifiable thing that can be measured, and one game can come out ahead of the other. But that's not really the case.

We all pick and choose the little bits that work for us or make sense to us, and we ignore the ones that don't.

Like, upthread @Lanefan pointed out how he isn't concerned about the socioeconomic trappings of feudalism. However, based on past conversations, we know he wants consistency in fiction and so on. He cares about cause and effect of what the characters are involved with, but he doesn't necessarily care about how the lord in the local castle maintains the upkeep of his holdings other than some hadwavery at "taxes" and so on.

Except for certain games that might lean into the absurd a la Monty Python, I don't think there are any GMs in this thread who don't want some sense of realism about the game. We just have different ideas on what helps maintain that.

So yeah... scale kind of sets it up as a comparison, and I don't think that's served us any good. Mosaic isn't an ideal term, but it kind of hints at bits and pieces, rather than some kind of accrual of "realistic points" or the like.

You're just trying to weigh every aspect of a setting as if it's a whole when it comes to realism. You can't do that. You can have 6(arbitrary numbers here) combat realism, 4 gravity realism and 8 socioeconmic realism.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

This. All of it.

 

[Maxperson]

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!

You do realize that @Reynard was talking in general there, not solely about Micah, right? All of us run games differently. We aren't clones who only run games in the way you like to slam them.

 

[pemerton]

Here is a Rorschache Test on GM Control.

I actually don't think it's a Rorschach test, because I don't think it is an ambiguous or amorphous image onto which the reader is invited to project a pattern. It's more like a boundary marker: if you read it and see it as a recipe for GM control, then that tells us something about where you draw the line between what counts as GM or as player control in a RPG.

I mean, let's go through it (and, just for completeness in this post, all quoted text is from p 99 of the 3E DMG):

Motivation is what drives the adventure - it's what gets the PCs involved in whatever you have designed for them to do. If the PCs aren't motivated, they won't do what you want them to do. . . .

Tailored motivations are ones that you have specifically designed with your group's PCs in mind. . . . a tailored motivation is good for ensuring that the PCs end up in the adventure you have designed and for letting the players feel like their characters have a real place in the world . . .​

The second-person pronoun here is addressing the (prospective) GM of the 3E D&D game. The quoted text clearly presupposes that the GM has designed something for the PCs to do - namely, an adventure that they will end up in - and that this is what the GM wants the PCs to do. We are not told, in this passage, what the actual design principles are for these adventures. The text does seem to imply that design comes first, and motivation second, but that could just be poor writing.

The word "motivation" is itself ambiguous. It seems that the same word is being used to describe both a property of the PCs - an inner state, that is, their wants, hopes, expectations etc that move them to action (early on, the passage reminds us that "Greed, fear, revenge, need, morality, anger, and curiosity are all powerful motivators" - these are all examples of inner states) - and also a property of the situation the GM has designed - a feature of the situation that is external to the PCs but will motivate them by inviting or inciting them into action.

We might conclude that this passage is saying something a bit like (what I understand to be) Kevin Crawford's advice in the "Without Number" RPGs - about prepping between sessions based on the evinced desires of the players for what they would like to do next time. (I've seen @Campbell post about this, and hopefully he can confirm whether or not what I've said in this paragraph is reasonable.)

That is, it could be that the GM is prepping for the next session, and wants that prepped content to be something the players will cheerfully have their PCs engage with, and hence builds elements into their prep that will invite or incite the players to do things with their PCs, given what the players have said they would like their PCs to do next.

What pushes a little bit against that is the reference to "the adventure" and the related reference to "what you [the GM] want them [the PCs] to do". My understanding of Crawford's advice is that it is mostly oriented to the prep of places and perhaps situations; whereas this DMG text seems to be talking about how sequences of situations ("the adventure") which the players will take their PCs through (by doing the things the GM "wants them to do").

Let's turn to the examples, and see if they help:

The PCs are a hardened group of mercenaries, not interested in [other-regarding concerns]. However, they are quite interested in gold . . .

the . . . PCs seek a means to raise [their companion Mialee from the dead]. . . . you mention that they have heard of a good hearted cleric . . . [who] is willing to raise Mialee, but only if the PCs help him [against] wererats . . .

the party has finished clearing out a wizard's tower and has lots of treasure. Therefore, you don't lure them into the next adventure using the promise of gold, but instead with the rumor that the wizard isn't dead . . . and has sworn revenge . . .

[the] brother [of the Dwarven PC] comes to the PCs, explains that a terrible tragedy has befallen [a Dwarven city], and asks for their help.​

The first two examples posit the simplest possible motivations - gold that the PCs want, and a service that the PCs want but cannot simply purchase - and then use those as entry points into a situation, or a whole series of situations, that seem to have nothing at all to do with any player-authored motivations. The good-hearted cleric seems to be purely an invention of the GM's, and the wererats seem likewise to be a purely GM-conceived and introduced element.

In the actual play of these two examples, as presented, the motivations generate a "hook" for the GM to "lure" the PCs into the planned adventure. But the adventure itself seems not to speak to those motivations at all. This seems absolutely to be a case of "design first, motivation second". There is no player-driven RPGing evident here. It is 100% GM control.

The third example is under-specified for my purposes. What is the significance of the tower? Why were the PCs clearing it out? Who is the wizard? How did the PCs' dealings with the wizard end up in the previous session? From the detail provided, this could be a total railroad, or could be something much more player-driven. That said, the use of the word "lure" is not promising - it suggests that whatever it is that the GM has prepared doesn't speak to the players simply on its own terms, but rather needs this "hook" or "lure" of the wizard's revenge to be built onto it. . . .

The fourth example is also under-specified. Who authored the brother? The city? What is the nature of the tragedy, and how does that relate to player-authored concerns? Without that information, we can't tell who is in control here.

GM has exclusive authorship over all content (from situation to setting to main plot to auxiliary content and even authoring PC motivation to facilitate engagement with their prep

I agree with respect to the first two examples. I also think that this is the general tenor of the repeated references to "the adventure", and to the GM undertaking "design" of adventures and of motivations; and also of the use of the world "lure".

But with the third and fourth examples it is not clear. They are under-specified. It's possible that the author didn't notice this, or didn't think it mattered. Given the first two examples, and the overall tenor, I don't regard those latter two examples as showing us in any clear fashion how a GM might undertake prep in a way that would lead to player-driven RPGing. Read with the rest of the passage, they do seem to indicate an easy on-ramp to a railroad.

 

[pemerton]

Reality or imagination is a False Dichotomy. It's not one or the other.

You've lost me.

 

[pemerton]

You do realize that @Reynard was talking in general there, not solely about Micah, right? All of us run games differently. We aren't clones who only run games in the way you like to slam them.

I don't think I've said anything in this thread about how you run your game, and I know I've said nothing about how @Reynard runs his.

That said, your accounts of how you GM your games seem to me to be pretty consistent with what I saw going on in the AD&D 2nd ed era. To me it seems to involve a great deal - a very great deal - of GM control over play.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Because it refutes it. The default D&D setting is not reality. It is imagination, where the imagined elements are taken from a pretty well known set of folk tales and literary works inspired by them.

I'm not sure why you keep insisting that gamers who don't agree with your beliefs are either thinking about their own preferences wrongly or are simply playing incorrectly. This continual refutation of other people's opinions about their own playstyle seems weirdly antagonistic to me. Why do you care if someone's opinion about their own game differs from your opinion about their game?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Maybe instead of describing it as a scale, we can describe it as something more like a mosaic? Because a scale implies that one can have more than another. You're framing it as a quantifiable thing that can be measured, and one game can come out ahead of the other. But that's not really the case.

We all pick and choose the little bits that work for us or make sense to us, and we ignore the ones that don't.

Like, upthread @Lanefan pointed out how he isn't concerned about the socioeconomic trappings of feudalism. However, based on past conversations, we know he wants consistency in fiction and so on. He cares about cause and effect of what the characters are involved with, but he doesn't necessarily care about how the lord in the local castle maintains the upkeep of his holdings other than some hadwavery at "taxes" and so on.

Except for certain games that might lean into the absurd a la Monty Python, I don't think there are any GMs in this thread who don't want some sense of realism about the game. We just have different ideas on what helps maintain that.

So yeah... scale kind of sets it up as a comparison, and I don't think that's served us any good. Mosaic isn't an ideal term, but it kind of hints at bits and pieces, rather than some kind of accrual of "realistic points" or the like.

Sure. Whatever makes you feel better about what other people are saying.

 

[pemerton]

I'm not sure why you keep insisting that gamers who don't agree with your beliefs are either thinking about their own preferences wrongly or are simply playing incorrectly. This continual refutation of other people's opinions about their own playstyle seems weirdly antagonistic to me. Why do you care if someone's opinion about their own game differs from your opinion about their game?

The question of whether or not some bit of fiction is "realistic" is not a statement of preference, like whether or not a cup of tea is too hot or just right.

If you (or some other poster) doesn't want to discuss whether or not your fire-breathing dragons are realistic, then stop talking about how your games are so much more realistic than mine (and others)!