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

[AlViking]

If someone has more power, we expect more of them. As I said, when a player has the routine ability to make things bad for one or more others that a GM does, then I'll expect more of them (and more constraints on them) too.

You may expect more of them, I don't. It's not about power either, I respect anyone who is willing to step up and GM and will always give them the benefit of the doubt and then some. I will also go out of my way to help them in any way I can if I think I can, I will support them, I will do my best as a player to make the game enjoyable. I enjoy DMing but a DM does put in far more work and effort than players so I cut them a significant amount of slack.

 

[AlViking]

As I've said before, if I had to trust the judgment of my GMs unlimitedly, I'd never play at all. I don't trust anyone's judgement that much, including my own.

I trust my GM to do the best they can. I don't expect them to be perfect or never make a mistake.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Not much to say beyond our experiences differ.

Sure, except my experience shows that it is entirely possible. And I don't think that I or my players are exceptional in some way. So I wonder what makes that the case for you.

By gaming, I mean making a series of meaningful choices in the context of the game world. E.g., I choose to do X or Y. By storytelling, I mean developing information about the world. E.g., deciding my character grew up in a barbarian clan.

Chess is a game; only gameplay decisions are made. Unless you want to like, decide that you're playing as France and England in the hundred years war or something.

Chess is an interesting example. Two sides, equal in all ways, with total and complete view of the board. Nothing is hidden from either side. And the game still functions.

Because in my mind, the NPC with the trait that I'm unaware of as a player creates ambiguity about my available moves that doesn't exist in chess. In chess, I always know exactly what move I can make, and where it leaves my piece in relation to other pieces. There's no surprise because of some unknown element.

So, I think the chess comparison actually does more to support my comments.

Narrative games have much more storytelling. There are rules for adjudication so you aren't just making things up, but the players have much more control over the content of the fiction.

So it's less storytelling if the GM authors the content?

I don't think the amount of "storytelling" as you call it is different from game to game. I just think that in one example, the GM is responsible for the lion's share, and in the other, it's spread out among the participants more.

Just an extreme example to show the point--NPCs having strong desires is not a railroad.

They can certainly contribute to it. Which is why the GM should always be considering such things.

The example is not well defined enough at the moment. Is it a religious tenet that fleshes out the world? Does it relate to the characters backstory? Is it demanded by his order?

Yes, this is why I said that IF the reason is solely, or even primarily, "because this is how the GM imagined it" then that's not a good answer.

If there is a compelling reason, then so be it. Also, and most importantly, if it's known to the players. That's the key. It's what makes the chessboard clearer, to lean on your analogy once more.

My point is that these are things the GM should consider. So many folks in this thread and others are advocating for a specific style of play, and then not showing any kind of consideration for how their choices as GM may impact that style of play.

If sandbox play is about player driven play... about letting the players direct what play is about... then a GM needs to be considering this at all times when he's preparing. Even a trait of an NPC. Maybe he likes the idea of the priest who won't drink... okay cool, that maybe makes an interesting character. But that's not the sole consideration he should have. He needs to consider how that NPC and his traits may impact play.

Interesting, because this is the complete opposite of what I see these kind of fixed things creating. If lots of aspects of the world are subject to the players creative control, and they can do this while the game is in motion, then the activity is more group storytelling. Its not the GMs novel; but it is the gaming groups'.

In contrast, if things are fixed, then gameplay becomes more possible. The rook moves like so, and this gives the players certain choices they can make. The priest doesn't drink, and that gives us choices about how to approach them.

I want play that is collaborative. I don't want to script a bunch of NPCs ahead of play as lonely fun and then watch as my players slowly suss out all their traits just so that they then know how they need to interact with them. I want to get to more interesting stuff... so I'm going to communicate to my players what they need to know about an NPC when I introduce them. There's no need to be coy about this stuff.

I don't know what your experience is with games you're labeling "narrative", but your description of them seems off.

 

[pemerton]

I'm trying to think of a recent real world example where a group of people has abandoned their previous set of beliefs and chosen the polar opposite, in a way that would have seemed impossible before, but I'm drawing a blank.

Everyone know that the real world of our actual lives and history is far too implausible to provide a model for a FRPG!

 

[Bedrockgames]

I trust my GM to do the best they can. I don't expect them to be perfect or never make a mistake.

I am just there to have fun and play a game. I am not going to have a struggle session over agency or worry about railroading unless I am feeling like my choices don’t matter.

 

[AlViking]

Huh? Pulsipher is contrasting the "living novel" style - which he dislikes, but tries to faithfully describe - with what he calls the "wargame" style, which is a style that today would be described as a sandbox.

The key thing that differentiates them, for Pulsipher, is the capacity of the players to make informed, and hence meaningful, game play choices. In the living novel game, because the GM responds to action declarations just as the GM thinks makes sense in the moment, the players can't know what the results will be until the results are narrated.

Whereas the wargame style uses all the techniques that were well-known in that period (ie late 70s/early 80s) to try and ensure that players can reasonably know what the likely prospects are of their action declarations.

I can find no reference, no detailed explanation of what Pulshiper did or did not write. There is nothing online that I can find about his "living novel" style. Your one sentence description sounds like what everybody else would call sandbox style.

What counts as reasonable knowabilityseems to me obviously context-sensitive. But if, to learn what the results of some action declaration will be, the players have to follow extensive GM breadcrumb trails of clues, then I think the play experience is no longer a sandbox one. Because play has become GM-driven, not player-driven.


I don't know what you mean by "procedural restraint", and so don't know whether or not the various approaches I've talked about do or don't use them.

You are the one that keeps insisting that there must be procedures spelled out in the rules that restrain the options of the GM for it to be a sandbox. If there are procedures and rules designed to restrain the GM's power that's ... wait for it ... procedural restraint.

And if you're agreeing with me that the GM making things up as takes their fancy is at odds with sandboxing, then I don't know why you're posting as if you disagree with me!

I don't agree. It's not made up as "takes their fancy" which continues to be insulting, and even if it is improvised on the spot it will hopefully be based on a knowledge of the situation and any NPC involved. In a sandbox the GM should not have predetermined outcomes or reactions to character declarations or statements so frequently reactions must be improvised.

 

[AlViking]

No. But I do want the GM to stick to the action resolution rules.

No one in this thread has argued for that. So I don't know who you think you're disagreeing with.

What I said, upthread, which generated this particular strand of conversation, is:
See how I said nothing about transparency of the fiction.

What I did say something about was the method for determining the outcomes of a player's declared action for their PC.

So what I am inferring is that you can't imagine a way of having outcomes of action declarations be potentially knowable by the players, that doesn't involve the GM just telling them in advance all the fiction that the GM has authored and will be extrapolating from.

But I'm familiar with several such ways.

EDIT:

See, this is another case of non-sequitur. I said nothing in any of my posts about who gets to author NPC motivations - in fact, all my posts have assumed that it is the GM who is doing that.

My post talked about how a declared action is resolved.

The players know exactly as much as I think the characters would know. Some of that will be past knowledge, some from my description of the scenario, some based on a knowledge they should typically have. If I'm uncertain as to what knowledge they have I'll ask for a check.

Sometimes they will know quite a bit, sometimes they will know next to nothing. The GM makes the call of what they know. The declared action is resolved by the DM in D&D which is not exactly news.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think both approaches would be valid. I mean the GM knows enough about Giles Corey to know he wouldn't plead, a player making a character like this might know enough. How much control characters actually have over their will when under duress is as common debate so I can see both sides. But I don't see anything inherently railroady or wrong about just saying 'this guy can't be bribed' or ' this guy will never admit to being a witch'. Some people are that stubborn. And that is what we see with Corey. His death is about as horrific as way to die as one can imagine, and it was slow, and they tortured him, and demanded he plead. But he didn't. People in history martyr themselves, refuse to plead guilty under torture, etc. It is not common. But you care making a character and in control of their personality

And the guy's last words were supposedly "More weight"

Sure, but for me, my game isn't about finding out if this NPC can resist torture. My game is about the players and what their characters do. So what does the NPC having this trait accomplish for the game?

Now, if they have somehow struck up a friendship with Giles, and he matters to them, that's great! But then me having a story where he's going to be tortured to death is seems pretty predetermined to me. I'd rather see what happens to him as a result of play, and then if it did involve capture and torture, to let the dice determine that. Again, otherwise, you've predetermined his storyarc, which seems an odd thing to do.

Such absolutes seem at the very least to block certain avenues of play. The guard who cannot be bribed... okay, that cuts off a possible way past this obstacle. Can we find another entrance and a different guard? Do we have time to wait for a shift change? Can we take him out without alerting anyone else? The trait shapes play. And that's fine... it should do so. But the more you do it, and the more you're determining ahead of time, the more you're defining how play must go.

Is that enouh for play to become a railroad? One instance of an NPC with a given trait? Likely not, no. But the prevalance of such in the wider campaign? That's a concern.

And for me, the absolute bewilderment on the part of sandbox advocates that this is something that should be considered is surprising.

 

[pemerton]

It does seem the kinds of game you favor do tend towards this GM-perscriptive approach, yes. It is considerably less common in more traditional styled games, where this sort of thing is more often phrased as advice or suggestions IME.

I think we all know that it is common for D&D and D&D-adjacent rulebooks to be incomplete, in the sense that there are things that have to be done to play the game - such as the GM coming up with heuristic to determine whether or not the outcome of a declared action is uncertain - which the rulebooks don't tell the game players how to do.

What counts as incompleteness can be context-sensitive. Backgammon rulebooks don't normally explain how to roll dice, as it is assumed players are familiar with this - in practice I think many people learn how to roll dice as young children playing snakes-and-ladders and the like. The original D&D rulebooks assumed some familiarity with some elements of play, because they were written for people already familiar with wargaming.

With modern D&D books, though, the incompleteness seems to be clearly for a different reason: the publisher wants to sell the books to as many people as possible, who are playing a variety of different games using a variety of different processes and heuristics, and so refrains from stating any of those in the rulebooks as the way to play the game. It's like a more elaborate version of decks of cards, which can be bought without including any rules on how to actually play a game using them - the manufacturer of the cards want to sell to bridge players and rummy players and poker players.

But even if the rulebooks don't set out a process of play, the actual play of the game requires that some process or processes be adopted. Eg in 5e D&D, the GM must actually decide, in some fashion or other, whether or not the outcome of a player's action declared for their PC is certain or uncertain. For reasons that escape me, though, many posters seem not to want to talk about the actual processes that they or others use.

 

[AlViking]

I don't think @AlViking is equivocating. As I just posted, I don't think AlViking is familiar with other possible ways of resolving declared actions - other than in combat, and probably some other physical endeavours like forcing open stuck doors, where I'm confident that AlViking doesn't rely on GM pre-authorship of what is or isn't possible to determine what happens.

I know there are other ways of resolution. I prefer D&D's design.