How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

[Micah Sweet]

I find it hard to believe, as a GM, that you require your players to work through every second of their PCs' lives.

Surely you say things like, "OK, is everyone done? Good. Then, the next morning you leave town . . ." or "OK, is everyone done? Good. Then, the next morning when you wake up . . . ".

If someone responds "No, hang on, before we leave town I want to . . . " or "No, hang on, before I go to sleep I want to . . ." that is exactly the player agency I was describing. The player is not ready for the next scene, and lets you know as much.

As I said, the term has a connotation I don't care for, hence my dislike of the term.

 

[Lanefan]

How do you move from scene to scene in a game?

Some ways are obvious… you move to the next door and open it, and we have a scene dealing with whatever’s inside.

Not necessarily. IME dungeon crawling often isn't so much individual "scenes" as it is one long continuous camera shot covering their actions in the previous room, their moving to this door, their checking and then opening this door, their checking of this new room, their actions in this new room, their move to the next door... etc.

But outside such a structure as a dungeon crawl provides to play, how do you handle it? Let’s say the PCs are back in town after their most recent expedition.

Do you prompt them? “Anyone got anything they want to sell? You know the market is open until sundown.”

I never need to prompt for this; and they're always prompting me to tell them what's available to buy!

Between-adventures downtime almost always has some tasks that need seeing to: treasury evaluation and division; training (for thems as needs it); and shopping for things both magic and mundane. This all happens in what we call "rubber time"; we deal with one thing at a time but it's understood they're all happeing side-along; Raven is training while Korgi looks for items and Tulsana-Melkolf-Nesta* get the treasury evaluated. Once those are done...

* - these are all current in-play characters in my game; thought I might as well give 'em a shout out...

Do you ask in an open ended manner. “Does anyone have anything they want to do in town?”

... I'll ask if there's anything else anyone wants to do while here, while bracing for almost anything as an answer. Some common things are character turnover/retirement/recruitment, checking in with family and-or friends, information gathering, thievery, follow-up on things left hanging during previous visits here. Usually, somewhere in all this the seeds of next adventure will emerge (if they haven't already), be it by something they decide to do or by something I planted or whatever.

You don’t roleplay every moment of the PCs’ existence, so you must have some means of skipping things. Some way of deciding what to skip and when. What is it?

I'll skip things but only after the players have had an opportunity to not skip them.

For example, if they're walking the six days it takes to get from Torcha to Karnos, each in-game morning I'll narrate the weather. This gives them the opportunity to decide to change course and go somewhere else, or to have an in-character discussion, or whatever (they know they're free to interrupt such narrations at any time) while at the same time providing some background atmosphere**. If I hear nothing, and my dice tell me nothing's going to bother them today, then I take it we're OK to skip to the evening (or even to the next morning), and so I do.

** - the sun might always shine on TV but it don't always shine in my game world.

Whatever it is, once it’s determined, the next thing you do is scene framing.

“You arrive in the outdoor market with just a few minutes of sunlight left. Some of the merchants are already packing up their wares for the evening.”

Scene framing = scene setting, then. Fine with me.

 

[aramis erak]

My question was more about who decides what scene is framed, specifically because there seems to be an issue about GM authorship here.

In BWR, as clarified by Luke himself... scene framing is defaulted to the GM, but Circles or lores can be used by players to frame scenes in stock BWR; in Burning Empires, every participant frames scenes. Same in Mouse Guard.

There's a lot of use of Lore skills to define things in how Luke has described play

 

[Micah Sweet]

“Aren’t necessarily consistent” doesn’t mean “are never accurate”.

I have done the whole gating information behind rolls thing. Decades of it. I am choosing the way I do things not out of some sense of misplaced “realism” but rather because I find it boring as hell and would rather play be fun.

I’m uninterested in keeping the nature of things from my players unless there’s a compellinng reason. For me, with this loosely sketched example that won’t die… I don’t care about the purpose of the circle. I care about why it’s there and what it means for the characters and what they’ll do about it.

Can one of them disrupt the circle safely and render it powerless? That’s the interesting mystery to me, and that’s what I’m going to drive toward. Something more meaningful.




So what? That’s still what you’re doing. How you do it is a personal choice, but it’s all the same thing.

“Has everyone done what they want to do in town before you get on the road?” is the same as “Are we all ready for the next scene?”

Gee whiz, Micah.

They are not the same, to me. The words you use convey a tone, and I care about what tone I convey.

 

[Lanefan]

I don’t think it’s aboutGM authorship, so much as what prompts the GM to author something.

I think that’s the big difference in many games, and it can be difficult to notice. Especially in online discussion rather than in play.

Someone earlier (@TwoSix I believe, please correct me if I’m wrong) talked about a GM framing a scene at a wizard’s tower because that’s what the GM had prepped, or framing a scene at a wizard’s tower because one of the PCs had a reason to go to the tower.

Of course someone immediately said “what’s the difference, it’s still a wizard’s tower”. But that’s just because of the nature of the example.

Suppose none of the PCs had any reason to be at a wizards tower? In that case, for many games, it would be poor form for the GM to frame a scene there. Not without some compelling reason for one of the PCs.

When you say "frame a scene there", do you mean having the PCs at the tower's door, or do you mean merely mentioning that the PCs see a tower in the distance while walking from A to B?

To me, plonking them at the tower door isn't on unless a) that's where they were planning to go and b) nobody objects to skipping the travel they had to do to get there.

But mentioning the tower's existence as they pass by it? Hell yeah. For sandbox-style play mentioning things like this is essential, and for other play mentioning the tower gives the players the opportunity to divert their PCs to go there...or not; maybe it just serves as atmospheric background as they carry on.

I've had entire adventures spring from my casual mention of some random element they pass during travel (a tower, a ruin, a shipwreck, whatever) and the players/PCs deciding on the spot to abandon whatever else they were doing and investigate it.

 

[Campbell]

My question was more about who decides what scene is framed, specifically because there seems to be an issue about GM authorship here.

The GM does the framing but must do so in regard to established player character beliefs (and with the sole purpose to challenge those beliefs). This is explicit in the text. The game both establishes the GM's authority over scene framing and constrains it to addressing the enumerated belief statements players have listed for their characters on their character sheet.

 

[hawkeyefan]

They are not the same, to me. The words you use convey a tone, and I care about what tone I convey.

I mean they’re the same in that they serve the same function. Meaning you can now proceed with full understanding of what others mean when they use the term, even if you never actually use it yourself.

 

[hawkeyefan]

When you say "frame a scene there", do you mean having the PCs at the tower's door, or do you mean merely mentioning that the PCs see a tower in the distance while walking from A to B?

To me, plonking them at the tower door isn't on unless a) that's where they were planning to go and b) nobody objects to skipping the travel they had to do to get there.

But mentioning the tower's existence as they pass by it? Hell yeah. For sandbox-style play mentioning things like this is essential, and for other play mentioning the tower gives the players the opportunity to divert their PCs to go there...or not; maybe it just serves as atmospheric background as they carry on.

I've had entire adventures spring from my casual mention of some random element they pass during travel (a tower, a ruin, a shipwreck, whatever) and the players/PCs deciding on the spot to abandon whatever else they were doing and investigate it.

It would mostly depend, but generally you present it to them as a thing they can interact with or not, at their choosing. So most likely, they’ll see it from a safe distance.

But this can vary depending on the game and the procedures involved.

Something very much like this came up in my Stonetop session last week. While Foraging, the Ranger rolled a mixed result. So he was able to find some supplies, but the roll also indicated something else happened. There’s a list to pick from, and I felt “discovery” made the most sense.

So I framed the scene accordingly. Something like “As you retrieve the rabbit you shot, you notice a strange structure, or part of one anyway, sticking out of a nearby hill. The stones of the structure are marked with the runes of the Makers.”

The Makers are a kind of titan-like race that once populated the land and accomplished all manner of miracles with magic that isn’t understood by mortals. Now, I Framed this scene to entice two of the characters based on their Instincts. The Ranger himself has Adventure as an Instinct (which to me is the most bland in the game, but that’s what he chose) and the Seeker (a kind of sage/artifact wielder) whose instinct is Curiosity.

On the other hand, the Blessed (a nature priest) has Protection as his Instinct. So while the other two wanted to investigate, the Blessed thought it was a bad idea. The fourth member of the group is the Lightbearer (a priest of the sun and light) and her Instinct is Hope, so she didn’t have a strong feeling about it either way.

So I framed the scene deliberately to entice two of the characters. And it worked… they investigated.

Now, let’s say that on the original Forage roll, the Ranger rolled a Failure. In that case, I could have made a harder move. If so, I would have had the ground beneath him give way and have him fall into an underground structure. He would have been separated from the others before they knew there was anything wrong. And of course, there would be something down there… something hungry.

So it really depends on the dice and what you’re looking to do with a scene. You frame things accordingly.

 

[Maxperson]

You've literally quoted my clarifying question and then labeled it as accusation.

It was clarifying the first time you asked it and received an answer. That second time it was just you trying to gotcha the guy.

 

[Maxperson]

So if a player calls for a knowledge roll to see if their PC knows if fire and acid will affect the troll and the GM says "no, because that's metagaming, your character wouldn't know that," is this a rules issue or is this a conflating of player/character knowledge? Or is a player not allowed to call for such a roll at all because there can be no conflating what a character knows with what a player imagines their character might know?

These are legitimate questions, but undoubtedly I'm trying to suss out where the lines are for who is allowed to have control over a PC's knowledge.

The player is not allowed to call for rolls, because 5e rules say the DM calls for rolls. The player says what his PC is doing. The DM calls for a roll or narrates the result of the declaration. If a roll is called for it happens and the DM narrates the result of that.

There is also no metagaming going on there.

Player: "Chundungus racks his brain trying to remember all he can about trolls."
DM: "Okay. Give me a intelligence(nature) check.

If that roll is successful, he tells the player what he remember about trolls, which could both include fire and acid vulnerability, or maybe just one if the DC had levels of success and the player didn't roll well enough.