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

[pemerton]

You don't think people would bristle at the dollhouse play comparison? I remember being at a table of gamers and the GM's wife busted our chops by picking up the miniatures and saying "oh you have dollies for this game" she was being facetious and it was funny but it was also chop busting because she knew grown men wouldn't like having their activity described as playing with dolls.

Huh? Because real men don't play with dolls? Only little girls do?

 

[hawkeyefan]

But your preference that a GM be mechanically constrained in their actions is not "better" than my preference that the constraints should be social instead. And I don't see a lot of potential for the changing of minds either.

I didn't say it was.

And there is no "meant to be" regarding character traits or how fully-realuzed and portrayed a PC or NPC is. Both players and GMs decide that for themselves for each character, and neither is inherently more important than the other, even if in practice the PCs usually get more screen time. I'd much rather think of both PCs and NPCs as people in a fictional world than simply as game pieces whose sole purpose is the varying degree of importance they have to the players.

No, with that I disagree. NPCs are not as important to play as PCs. Nor should they be as important to the GM as PCs are to the players.

The reason is that the GM effectively has unlimited NPCs that he can freely introduce and create and assign stats and traits and so on. They serve a function in play. They are definable by their relation to the PCs. They may be enemies or allies or obstacles of some sort or a number of other things. That is their purpose for play. Yes, they need to have their place in the game world... the made up fiction of the game... but they also have game play purposes. Without the PCs, they don't have that.

So to me... a GM's conception of an NPC and how they behave and what they think... should largely not be set ahead of time. AA few surface traits, a goal of some sort... and that's all that's needed. anything else? We can find out in play.

 

[pemerton]

It's a railroad if the player doesn't always have a chance to succeed

Who posted this?

 

[Bedrockgames]

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.

Only if you are only allowing for one or a narrow set of paths. In sandbox play, you generally aren't doing this

 

[pemerton]

the definitions of sandbox and railroad that i have come to understand from my years of exposure to them:

sandbox: a game without a planned path or hard meta goals, where the characters just exist in the setting and are free to travel and do what they wish to (as much as an inhabitant of that setting is free to do anything), any goals are self-appointed.

railroad: a game where the player's choices, actions and rolls have little to no impact on how events will unfold from the way that the GM decides they should happen.

This seems rather straightforward. Can we hear specific objections to these definitions?

Because on this account every game is a sandbox as long as the GM doesn't ignore the players' choices. So a game in which the GM riffs off the players' choices in whatever way takes the GM's fancy will count as a sandbox.

Which lumps together two approaches that some of the best theorists of "wargame" RPGing - eg Lewis Pulsipher - saw as starkly contrasting approaches to play.

This lumping together only makes sense on the assumption of hard-scripted Adventure Paths as a norm, and so everything else is a departure from that norm.

 

[AlViking]

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.

Let's say you try to bribe a guard. But this is an important post and the person the guard is employed by is paranoid enough that once a month they have a cleric come in and cast Zone of Truth which just has the guards walk through the zone and answer "Have you upheld your employment agreement". It's a simple yes or no question so the cleric could be done in a short period of time as they quickly shuffle through dozens of guards for one casting of the spell.

The guard may not be particularly loyal, but he knows if he takes the bribe he won't be able to answer the question in a way that preserves his employment and potentially his life. In a world where Zone of Truth is not a particularly high level spell I think this could be fairly common practice. So yes, bribing a guard may be off the table in many situations because it's a logical conclusion given setting assumptions that they couldn't get away with taking a bribe. It has nothing to do with limiting options, it's about considering how magic could alter the world.

In the real world some people are susceptible to bribes, but is that 5%, 20%, 50%? Heck if I know, but if you're a well paid guard who takes their job seriously (or is significantly afraid of punishment) I don't believe it approaches anything near 100%.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Why do I need to know before hand that someone might have Giles Corey level obstinacy? Sometimes people surprise you. Part of the fun of a sandbox, for me at least, is not just making informed choices (which are important) but also the gamble of a stand-off, not knowing what to expect from someone. Part of what makes trying to bribe a guard risky, and in a game exciting, is you don't know if it will succeed. There is a real chance he turns you in.

Right... but most games would say to let the dice resolve that uncertainty. When it's just "well I envisioned this guard as a highly principled fellow with a young son who he strives to always teach to do the right thing, so he immediately turns you in" it's a bit dissatisfying.

Let the dice tell us. I roll low to bribe the guy, he looks at me and says "Something I tell my boy every day... you have to do what's right, no matter how easy it would be to do what's wrong. Move along... your coin has no value here."

Or if it's important for some reason that this guy can't be bribed, then narrate a scene of him clubbing someone who attempts to bribe him as the PCs approach. Communicate this to them... they can then make an informed choice.

 

[The Firebird]

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.

The point of the chess example was not that perfect information is a game and imperfect information isn't. Pick poker, if you like.

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

The activity the players are engaging in is less of a storytelling activity and more of a game.

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.

I don't agree with your characterization of my position ('players need to slowly suss out NPC traits to interact with them successfully'). I don't think this conversation is progressing; we're just repeating ourselves. We're interested in fundamentally different things out of our games. That's ok.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Huh? Because real men don't play with dolls? Only little girls do?

Grown men generally do not play with dolls and would probably not like their hobbies being compared to doing so. I don' think this is at all controversial.

 

[The Firebird]

Who posted this?

It's been many pages now. But the point that started this discussion was that having too many fixed character traits for NPCs or too specific scenarios (like a siege) was a railroad because it limited player options.