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

[The Firebird]

could work, but is not really the same thing, ie you did not learn about this particular guard unless he happens to be McBribe

Yeah. My point is more that if the NPCs are fixed and details are known, the players have ways to learn about them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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?

My game is about an imaginary world, largely created by me, and how the players interact with world through their characters.

 

[TwoSix]

Sometimes even social accountability is hard to accept, true. But I'd still rather deal with a social dispute that can be talked about and resolved than a set of rules constraining your actions right there in the book.

The nice thing about formalized rules is that by agreeing to play under them, all the participants accept that implicit accountability to follow them.

There’s little to no social awkwardness in saying “Actually, that spell only goes 60’, so that action won’t work.”

 

[pemerton]

Easy. You just declare your actions, have your character try what it would try, and see what happens next.

If my action declarations are essentially blind, I'm not playing a game, in the sense that I am not exercising control over how the content of the shared activity - in the case of a RPG, that's the shared fiction - is unfolding.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Those processes are IME bespoke, as in unique to the table and the GM. I know I've explained how I GM (when allowed free rein anyway). Have others here refused to do so when asked?

 

[pemerton]

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.

What is the relationship between the last two sentences, and the first one?

Classic Traveller's bribery rules, for instance, create a risk - a real chance - of the PC who attempts the bribe being turned in.

But the rules begin from the premise that the GM does not decide in advance what the NPC will do when offered a bribe.

 

[pemerton]

Ok, sure, but how do you make this decision? If it's "in the moment" is it whim? Feels right? What are you bringing to bear to figure this out if it's not part of like, prep or tags or something? Random rolls on a table? Do the players have a way to figure out that this person is going to shut down all their ideas that poke against this suddenly upright guard that didn't exist 5 seconds ago? Do they have a way to determine the guards here are incorruptible, is it a reaction table they know is part of play? Random dice and you're narrating the outcome based on pass/fail?

Why does it matter?

Because some approaches are conducive to game play. Others are conducive to me, as a "player", being told a story by the GM. And I want to spend my time as a player doing the first rather than the second. And when I GM, I also want to spend my time facilitating the first and not the second.

 

[pemerton]

I like to use reaction tables personally.

Is this because you think there's a difference between using reaction tables, and making the decision unilaterally and in secret as a GM?

Or is it impossible to talk about why you personally like to do it one way rather than another?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I didn't say it was.



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.

All I can tell you is that I make my NPCs, like everything else in my setting, fiction-first. How they relate as game pieces to the PCs is secondary.

 

[Bedrockgames]

What is the relationship between the last two sentences, and the first one?

Because not knowing that contributes to the risk. If I have intelligence suggesting otherwise, it is a less risky proposition. Both are fine. You want both circumstances in a campaign. Sometimes players should have ways of getting more information about something like this, but sometimes that information isn't going to be available. I like having some cases where blind choice is a factor, even if in most the choices will be more informed.

Classic Traveller's bribery rules, for instance, create a risk - a real chance - of the PC who attempts the bribe being turned in.

But the rules begin from the premise that the GM does not decide in advance what the NPC will do when offered a bribe.

And that is totally fine. Like I said. These different approaches can all work. I am not saying this approach is wrong. I am saying the other approach is okay too