mamba
Legend
because you play a different style of game
D&D General Player-generated fiction in D&D
- Thread starter pemerton
- Start date
KYRON45
Hero
City walls are built to keep people out. Why would regular people need a ladder to get over it? They could just go out one of the gates couldn’t they? So my answer to this would be no.
Market stalls are usually placed where there is the most traffic. This is usually along a road or in the market district not against the defensive wall. So my answer to this would probably also be no.
Now; it’s a city busy enough to need a wall and I agree with Sly Flouish when he says that a DM should be the PCs biggest fan. As such maybe there’s a wagon or a pile of debris or a building near the wall they could jump from.
At this point it all comes down to how important is it that the party gets over the wall this way and how much do I care?
Now know “some people”
want their character building decisions to matter so I would figure out who has what skill that might help or hinder the situation and ask them to roll against it. I believe this is what they call a DC or skill check. 
. As a DM I am also at the table to have fun. Maybe I want the party to fail so as to see what hilarity might be the outcome so I make the DC high. I also might not care that much knowing that if party gets thrown in prison I’ll then have to hear them winge about having their gear taken away from them.
Now if you’ve had the fortitude to read all of this (I applaud you) you’re probably asking…dude…what’s your point? To which I would reply…I am often told I have none.
Thank you. Remember to tip your servers.
We had posters who literally stated that the only reason a GM didn't allow players to contribute to world building outside of their PC's sphere of influence was doing it because they wanted to protect their "precious world". Not only is that insulting, but the same broad sentiment has been repeatedly stated that the only reason people don't have shared world building is basically because they've only ever played D&D and don't know how great shared world building is. It's BS.
D&D isn't designed as a narrative game such as PbtA games. The default is, to quote the DMG "The DM creates a world for the other players to explore, and also creates and runs adventures that drive the story. ... You’re the DM, and you are in charge of the game." That doesn't mean you can't do whatever makes sense for you and your group, if you want players to design their own region, describe the towns their visiting, create the NPCs or adventures go for it! It's your game, follow your bliss.
Thing is, I simply disagree. I, and my players, like the separation of
In response to "quite frequently character needs and wants are paper thin and pretty meaningless."
Then you've been playing with different people with different goals than I have. I'll take a PC I ran recently. He certainly had a tragic backstory and his personality was affected by it. His wife and child had been killed by (skipping in-game lore) bandits who had been hunted down by authorities. He felt guilt because he hadn't been there to protect them and anger that he had not had his vengeance. So he became a vengeance paladin.
But needs? Wants? Eh. He wanted to hunt down others that would do harm to innocents and see that justice was done. But that to me is pretty thin motivation, it didn't really tie into any specific goals or desires. There was no one to hunt down, they were already dead. He wanted to help where he could to stop anyone else from suffering like he did, but so what?
I also had no need or desire for personal growth. If during the campaign if his attitude changed, great, if it didn't it didn't matter to me one bit. But I had a lot of fun with the PC even though outside of my character background story (verified with my DM) I never contributed once to world building outside of what my PC did or said.
Guess I have had it different. A good number of players find even making a character "too much work". Plenty will get someone else to make the character or use a bot. And they will refuse to do anything like a description or backstory. And if they do they will say something like "he looks like Conan".
So making the game world is way out of the question.
Though it's odd that most examples on this thread are not of players creating anything. It's just the player sitting back and saying "dm create" and the DM saying "yes player". I'll never get that. But guess whatever rolls your D20.
I have had a player or two with lots of ideas. And they would try the "DM create X for me". I'd just laugh and come back with "make it yourself". And very few would. After all the idea of "D&D Homework" drives most players crazy: The idea they might do 'D&D stuff' at home in their free time when not playing the game.
Odd, I've been encouraging this sort of play forever. There is an ancient Dragon Magazine article about actions in combat, using the % dice for how hard the action is. I set the base at 50% of doing any action with added percents for equipment, environment, and sub actions. And most players love it as they can try all sorts of wacky actions.
That 4E example seems a bit much....moving, attacking, damaging, and knocking back a foe all for an acrobatics check? Why even have attack rolls and AC then?
Vaalingrade
Legend
The acrobatics check is to close on the ogre, then you roll the attack like normal. That's a truncated expanation.
Maybe it's the other way around, right - as in, the RPGers I know enjoy playing PCs with needs and wants, and so that's why I enjoy foregrounding PCs' needs and wants.
Different games have different goals and styles. I have never in decades of play in D&D with dozens of different people had "foregrounding PC's needs and wants" be important to the game. Players as a group decide direction and goals in the games I run all the time, but most games I play in are usually far more linear than that with a predefined setting and overall goals. We're trying to get out of Ravenloft, we've been hired to do X, we have to save Faerun from an apocalypse because it's the third Tuesday of the month.
That doesn't mean we aren't enjoying the game or that we would enjoy a game that puts the PCs more front and center which is something that simply doesn't appeal to me. If it works for you, great. But for people playing D&D? Which is what this particular forum is theoretically dedicated to? It's highly unusual.
But it really doesn't matter, you really just said the same thing @mamba did from a different perspective.
Well, I wasn't particularly thinking about a city's defensive wall. I was thinking of a wall around a compound.
But there are any number of reasons why a ladder might be found in <this urban place> - someone is trimming a tree, or unblocking a spout, or taking eggs from a nest. Likewise a market stall - in my imagination, at least, a D&D city is going to look more like (say) Nairobi than like (say) Chicago, and in Nairobi market stalls pop up in all sorts of places one might not initially expect.
From the point of view of RPG procedures, the question is whose imagination as to what is to be found where is to lead the rest of the table in sharing an imaginary picture of things. This thread is about player-generated fiction as an answer to that question. With the relevant mechanic, in a 4e skill challenge, being a skill check.
I personally don't see what it adds to the game to kibosh the players' idea of a market stall, and replace it with the GM's idea of a wagon.
This goes to the question of, who is responsible for the focus of action. This thread is about player-generated fiction including the players choosing the focus of action. So I don't think it comes down to what the GM cares about or thinks is important; in the context of this thread, I'm attending to what the players care about and think is important.
Yes, you've already said this, quite clearly.
The topic of this thread is about an alternative approach.
I assume you're quoting the 5e DMG?
This is a D&D general thread. The OP quotes the 4e D&D rulebooks quite extensively - they advocate a greater degree of player control over backstory and what is possible in action resolution than the Apocalypse World rulebook does.
4e clearly is designed for - and advocates - a reasonably high degree of player-generated fiction.
mamba
Legend
I did not mean to imply causality, I only meant that the type of game you play is different, without giving a reason as to why
People who prefer a certain way of playing will eventually find each other while bouncing off other tables, regardless of who is the chicken and who the egg
