How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

[Maxperson]

Could you guys disagree about something more interesting, please? Magic circles were more fun than the terminology.

Sure! Here are some magic circles. What do they do?

 

[Campbell]

Sure! Here are some magic circles. What do they do?

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Make you fat.

 

[pemerton]

So here's the original magic circle post:

I could tell you the dragon has 100 hp and AC 17 - but wouldn't it be more helpful for me to tell you that it's trapped in a magic circle of imprisonment? That it is flying overhead while you are hidden from it in a rock cleft?

The point, as I said in the same post, is that

no one disputes that the fiction matters to action declarations in a RPG.

However, my post prompted this reply:

If you told me out-of-character that the dragon was trapped in a magic circle of imprisonment, it wouldn't be helpful because I would be trying to play in-character and my in-character self would not know about the latter. They would just notice that the dragon was unable to come closer to them and the rest of their party. What would they do, you might ask. They would try to find out by making the appropriate skill checks. If they were a spellcaster, they might use some divination magic like Detect Magic. And once they learned all they could, then they and the rest of the party would try to figure what to do next.

In other words, Corinnguard chose to correct my (imaginary) GMing: that the PCs wouldn't recognise that the dragon is trapped in a magic circle of imprisonment, and would only notice that it was unable to come closer to them.

There was also this follow-up:

It's quite possible that the PC might not recognize the sigils that are being used in the circle of protection. The sigils might belong to a runic language they might not be familiar with initially.

<snip>

I haven't come across any new info about how many runic languages the average person in a setting might know.

<snip>

That said, I don't think they would be forbidden from trying to learn what they are looking at. I could see them sketching out each sigil on paper, and then taking their sketches to someone who might know more about them. This could happen in their downtime between adventures or even during their adventure as a possible side plot. The DM could then award them by having them understand and use this new runic language from that moment on.

This seems to have been the starting point for the discussion about how may peasants it takes to read a runic circle in . . . someone's? . . . D&D setting.

I still don't know what the basis on which I was being corrected, though. Even in the most orthodox D&D play, my understanding is that it is a GM's prerogative to decide that the PCs recognise the inscription as a magic circle of imprisonment.

 

[Maxperson]

Make you fat.

 

[billd91]

Make you fat.

In other words, well marbled. And that means donuts make you TASTY!

 

[James Gasik]

Well, technically there all PCs know magic, though some of it isn't in a spellcasting way. But yes, I'd expect a lot of them to have at least some idea about things like barrier circles and the like.

5e has what, three whole classes who aren't magical, and of them, each of those three could be. Heck some races even have innate magic. So by this logic, most 5e D&D characters would have some idea about things like barrier circles...

 

[Lanefan]

Yet, as has often been said, that impression is false. Perhaps even a false dogma?

Upthread I even posted about this in relation to Burning Wheel, and provided some actual play examples.

You may well have, but to be honest my eyes tend to glaze over a bit after the first paragraph or two in those long posts.

Maybe you didn't read them? Perhaps I should have rolled a knowledge check for you.

I'll roll it for myself, thanks.

Nope, failed. Bring on the hard move!

 

[Lanefan]

This surely depends on the individual in question.

But anyway, here is a bit about prep from Apocalypse World (p 136):

A front is a set of linked threats. Threats are people, places and conditions that, because of where they are and what they’re doing, inevitably threaten the players’ characters - so a front is all of the individual threats that arise from a single given threatening situation.​

​

Creating a front means making decisions about backstory and about NPC motivations. Real decisions, binding ones, that call for creativity, attention and care. You do it outside of play, between sessions, so that you have the time and space to think.​

​

A front has some apparently mechanical components, but it’s fundamentally conceptual, not mechanical. The purpose of your prep is to give you interesting things to say. As MC you’re going to be playing your fronts, playing your threats, but that doesn’t mean anything mechanical. It means saying what they do. It means offering opportunities to the players to have their characters do interesting things, and it means responding in interesting ways to what the players have their characters do.​

​

Accordingly, when you create a front, follow your own inspiration. Choose the things that are suggestive to you, that put you in mind of apocalyptica, romance, violence, gore, danger, trauma. Choose the things you’d just [freaking] kill to see well done on the big screen, and skip the things that don’t spark your interest.​

Notice that there is no rejection of the idea that time and space to think can matter. There is no rejection of the GM (MC) incorporating their ideas into their prep.

And notice how there is a clear statement of the purpose of the prep: to give the GM interesting things to say.

That all sounds good; but when you get right down to it, isn't the bolded true of pretty much any prep in any system?

Because if it is, then isn't the above AW piece really just presenting an alternative method for doing what a GM would be doing anyway?

This feeds into the game's basic procedure of play, which requires the GM to say things at certain times - things about what happens next in the fiction. The purpose of prep is to give the GM those things to say. This is elaborated on p 142:

[M]ake moves for your threats exactly like you make your regular moves:​

​

• When it’s time for you to talk, choose a move (a regular move or a threat move, it makes no difference) and make it happen.​

​

• If the players have handed you a golden opportunity (like if they blow a roll, or if they let you set something up and follow through on it), make as hard and direct a move as you like, the more irrevocable the better. Otherwise, make your move to set yourself up and to offer them the opportunity to react.​

​

• Address yourself to the character not the player, misdirect, and never speak your move’s name. Always.​

The bolded here is where I veer away, in that when it's time for me to talk I want to be able to say things that aren't necessarily a here-and-now move or threat; including among other things providing colour, atmosphere, description, or simple narration of the setting's reaction to what the players/PCs just did even if that reaction consists of "nothing happens".

The colour-atmosphere-description pieces are also a result of prep giving me things to say.

...

At an appropriate level of abstraction, this can be seen to be similar to the collaborative approach for establishing setting and situation found in Burning Wheel. At a more fine-grained level of technical analysis, it is different of course, and more precisely structured.

But it does show that the notion that AW (and similar games) eschew the GM contributing ideas is simply false. As I have posted many, many times before, what distinguishes these RPGs is their processes of play: how ideas are created, when and why they are brought "onto the stage", how those ideas are used in action resolution, etc.

It's the "how ideas are created" piece where different GMs are going to vary in their approaches, as some approaches will simply suit some GMs better than others.

Personally, my preference is to have things fairly well nailed down ahead of time for two reasons: one, if I've done the set-up and prep right the session kinda runs itself, meaning I can (to a small extent anyway) sit back and enjoy the entertainment until-unless things go in unplanned directions; and two, because experience has taught me that the more I wing it, the faster I run aground on inconsistencies and talking myself into corners. The "two" here is because I'm very good at forgetting what I said half an hour and half a beer ago and am largely incapable of talking and writing at the same time, meaning my in-session note-taking is nigh non-existent.

 

[Lanefan]

He'd learned to use every weapon, and somehow become tougher than any other farmer by a factor of one and a half to two (since OD&D did not actually have any examplar normals).

Not every weapon by any means.

Remember, in old-school D&D even a Fighter was limited in how many specific weapons he-she could be proficient with (four at 1st-level in 1e, not gaining another until 4th-level).

Farmer Bob might, while defending livestock on the farm, have become proficient in club, trident (a.k.a. pitchfork), sling, and spear as his four weapons; and given that even as a 1st-level Fighter he'd only be rolling a straight d10 for hit points there's every possibility he'd be just as tough as his neighbours, i.e. not very, unless he had a good Con score.

 

[Lanefan]

Sure! Here are some magic circles. What do they do?

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Aren't those just the alternate material components for casting Goodberry?