D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Lanefan]

Perhaps. But the more pre-prepped things are, the further away from sandbox it is, and the closer to railroad it is. Pre-prepping is not sufficient for railroading--but it is necessary.

Oh, I dunno - if I wanted to I could railroad 'em just as well while making it up on the fly, I think.

 

[Manbearcat]

And the most effective way of dealing with that is using the same techniques that other disciplines have been using for decades for small group interaction. One of which is that there is no special time to handle issues; it is a process you engage in before, during, and after the shared activity. Another is that you learn to read the circumstances to figure out which techniques will be needed. And the goal of all this is to maintain social harmony so everybody can focus on the group's goals and participate.

Perhaps this is the way your unique cohort has resolved things, but this bears zero resemblance to the way small group interactions in the myriad disciplines that I've been involved with have been handling things for decades. I've been involved in multiple sports at various levels. I've been in involved in other sports at a "weekend warrior" level where culture has to develop and iterate in real time and then cement. I've been in BJJ for 20+ years. I'm a climber of almost 6 years now (the most recent discipline I've taken on). I've been involved in academic research projects and peer review of forensic reports in the private sector.

In all of these, the approach is to develop a system that the small unit can onboard and operationalize that eventually becomes rote, overwhelmingly self-automating. Reduce exceptions and the need for their attendant mediation and associated dispute resolution to the absolute minimum...because these are failure points for productivity, taking up bandwidth and handling time which generates inefficiencies which potentially cascade into further problems (often social). At the same time, be aware of the perils of social hierarchy and the sort of terrible leverage and coercion (whether that be of the Cargo Cult variety or the group brigading variety) dynamics that come with it.

This might, in part, explain our extreme differences in approaches to facilitating functional TTRPGing!

 

[Micah Sweet]

I understand the position--but to be real blunt, I'll take the one that seems likely to get the job done more frequently, and expecting people to be willing to accept accountability in a way they view as confrontational (and all evidence I have is that the majority of people will tend to) is not that.

As such, I'd rather the situation simply come up less often, and the less often a GM has to make ad-hoc decisions, the less often it will.

Making ad-hoc decisions is a big part of being a GM IMO.

 

[Micah Sweet]

To make it clear, I don't expect rules to substitute for accountability; I expect them to make it less frequently necessary in the first place, as long as its about error or bad judgment (as contrasted active malignant approaches). I largely agree with the rest of what you posted, but I don't think expecting most people to follow that with any consistency is something that is going to happen most of the time.

Probably true, but in the end it only has to work for you and your group when it's social. When it's a mechanical constraint it supposed to unavoidably apply to everyone.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Perhaps this is the way your unique cohort has resolved things, but this bears zero resemblance to the way small group interactions in the myriad disciplines that I've been involved with have been handling things for decades. I've been involved in multiple sports at various levels. I've been in involved in other sports at a "weekend warrior" level where culture has to develop and iterate in real time and then cement. I've been in BJJ for 20+ years. I'm a climber of almost 6 years now (the most recent discipline I've taken on). I've been involved in academic research projects and peer review of forensic reports in the private sector.

In all of these, the approach is to develop a system that the small unit can onboard and operationalize that eventually becomes rote, overwhelmingly self-automating. Reduce exceptions and the need for their attendant mediation and associated dispute resolution to the absolute minimum...because these are failure points for productivity, taking up bandwidth and handling time which generates inefficiencies which potentially cascade into further problems (often social). At the same time, be aware of the perils of social hierarchy and the sort of terrible leverage and coercion (whether that be of the Cargo Cult variety or the group brigading variety) dynamics that come with it.

I've been involved in a combat sports too but I would definitely not describe "In all of these, the approach is to develop a system that the small unit can onboard and operationalize that eventually becomes rote, overwhelmingly self-automating. Reduce exceptions and the need for their attendant mediation and associated dispute resolution to the absolute minimum...because these are failure points for productivity, taking up bandwidth and handling time which generates inefficiencies which potentially cascade into further problems (often social)." as the way we resolved things

I am not saying you are wrong, or Rob is right, but I don't think this approach is as universal for things as you think

 

[Lanefan]

Finally, I heard first-hand accounts of groups who played for decades with the same group of characters. And I am still not clear how that is managed on both side of the screen.

Raises hand...

For the players, it usually involves two key things:

1. Having multiple characters in the setting that can be cycled in and out, and
2. Not expecting to level those characters up very often.

For the DM, it's a bit more complex. The biggest enemy of indefinite-length campaigns is level advancement going beyond what the game system can reasonably handle without the wheels coming off, and so slowing it down is vital. Some ideas of mine on this are, in longer form, here:

Running the Game

The other main requirement for the DM is a commitment to running the campaign in perpetuity, until you either run out of ideas for the campaign or its levels get system-breakingly high or until no-one wants to play in it any more.

With my campaigns, the players get to a point where they feel that they have accomplished what they wanted to do with their characters between a year and three years after the start of the campaign (with weekly or bi-weekly sessions). As a result the campaign has a stopping point that feel right. For the Nomar campaign, that point came when the inn was finished being built, which was the focus of the players for the last third of the campaign.

In a perpetual campaign, at the point that the inn was completed those characters whose focus had been the inn would retire and new ones brought in, while other characters who weren't so focused on the inn would continue.

 

[hawkeyefan]

If the DM has a detailed world and then the player wants to be part of a barbarian clan that didn't exist previously, and the DM then modifies the world to fit them...they will feel less natural and less integrated.

I don't think that needs to be the case at all. I've done this plenty of times in the past, and I don't think it's every been an issue.

These days, I just don't do a lot of world building until I have input from the players, so it doesn't even require making any changes.

I did consider that; I switched term from player to character deliberately. As a player, I feel my choices are more meaningful in a world that is more defined. Giving me more power to control the world results in fewer meaningful choices.

More power to influence narrative results in more meaningful choices with respect to storytelling, but less with respect to gaming.

I don't really know what distinction you're making here with "storytelling" and "gaming".

But my point is that I'm a player of a game. How I impact the game is always going to be as a player. So, it's best to look at it that way.

I think separating what's happening at the table and what's happening in the game world is key to these discussions. There's a lot of blurring of the lines and it doesn't help.

I rolled a 20. The king must give me his kingdom!

This is always the example that gets rolled out in these discussions... and yet, has anyone ever played in a game where this happened?

I mean, I suppose there could be examples... but generally speaking, this is not the kind of thing anyone is talking about.

More interesting, yes. But is it true? There are some people who would easily cave. And there are people who would rather die than break that kind of precept.

Why not let the dice decide what kind of person the NPC is?

It's just using an extreme case to show that the general principle is unsound. If the king holding onto his kingdom isn't railroading, then the priest upholding his vow isn't either.

I don't know. We have to ask what's the reason that this NPC's disposition matters so much. And I mean this from a game play perspective, not from the fictional perspective.

For a king ruling a kingdom, it's easier to see. He is a bigger game piece in that sense... his influence on the game is larger and therefore requires more rules and or consideration.

The priest who doesn't want to drink? Why is that important to play? In my experience, this is very often "because that's what the GM imagined about them". And if that's the only or even the primary reason, then I can see it as problematic. It's forcing things in specific ways rather than others, and for no good reason.

As a GM, my goal isn't to determine every aspect of every NPC ahead of time. My goal is to portray a feasible world that facilitates play. The NPCs aren't "my characters" for me to play as I see fit. They are there for game play reasons.

As a player, I have no interest in wandering around inside the GM's novel.

I am sorry but this just isn't true in my experience. Especially if you are running the game trying to emphasize giving the players freedom to choose. The idea that we have to be worried about crypto-railroads is just absurd in my opinion. I think these conversations are much better if we take people at their word about this stuff. You aren't in my head, you aren't in @AlViking or @robertsconley's head. You don't know what is happening when we make these kinds of choices.

Do your players?

I do not think sandbox advocates in this thread are railroaders, but I do think they provide cover fire for the sort of railroader I was when I started to running games based on the advice I found in games like Vampire. I have run the sorts of crypto-railroads mentioned upthread. Played in many of them as well. Thought that was how you run roleplaying games for a long time. Acting like these are not real concerns and not reflective of real play is silly.

Yeah, I've played in these kinds of games, and I have run them myself quite a bit. It was pretty much the prevailing mode when I really got into gaming heavily. It's definitely something that happens, and denying it doesn't help at all.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Do your players?

I think they have a much better sense than you do. And when you do this long enough with a group, you build trust.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Making ad-hoc decisions is a big part of being a GM IMO.

Not in mine. Its an occasional necessary evil, but if I have to do it frequently, as far as I'm concerned the game system isn't doing its job for the most part (the fact I'm forced to it as much as I am is one of the things I don't find a virtue in 13th Age).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Probably true, but in the end it only has to work for you and your group when it's social. When it's a mechanical constraint it supposed to unavoidably apply to everyone.

And I'm back to saying that if, for the most part, it doesn't, you're either using the wrong system or have a group that wants to different a things to really work well together.