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

[Campbell]

Basically, when a GM sits down and engages in world design and/or scenario design then they are doing the same thing a video game level designer does. They are setting the operational and information environments that players will be interacting with. This is a crucial responsibility that affects the impact of the choices that players have available to them. All anyone is saying is the authority that comes along with your ability to set the stage is a responsibility to what the gameplay environment looks like.

That GMs have game designer / level designer responsibilities that extend their in-play referee responsibilities. That they should own the impact of those decisions.

This is all I have been saying. To me this stuff is like Trad GM 101.

Also, my metric has always been discoverability of this stuff. That you make a good faith effort to learn about your environment before acting.

 

[mamba]

The current model, as far as I can tell, seems to exist to put upper limits on player power;

if that was the goal, I don’t think they succeeded

by not specifying the precise climbing rules, you can always put a harder climbing obstacle in, instead of having to contend with a player who can't fail to climb things.

the two appear unrelated, I can have precise climbing rules and still have the possibility of failure.

 

[TwoSix]

Well this is the sticking point. In the guard example, in my version, the players can learn the information by investigating the guard schedule. But it seems to me that in your version, the GM just shares it with them without them putting in any effort. That seems...odd to me, because you'll have to contrive a route for them to learn the information other than investigating. (Maybe the guard is someone they knew as a kid? They play in the same poker game?).

Indeed, it seems opposed to player driven play to me, because the players don't have to play the game to get the information they need.

Considering the fact that the topic of the thread is the essential conservatism of broad swathes of D&D players.

The essential continuing conservatism of the D&D player base is the idea that the point of play is map-and-key exploration of a predetermined space/setting in order to "solve" a challenge.

You don't have to play to discover information that the GM has already determined.

 

[robertsconley]

No, I think I'm the one acknowledging the larger picture.

The GM's decisions are his. Any consequences of those decisions are his responsibility.

The GM can consider whatever factors he wants in his decision making... I'm not saying that he shouldn't. But those factors are his choice to consider.

So if a decision is made and realism is the primary factor, and this somehow leads to dissatisfaction with a player (they feel they were denied critical information to make a meaningful move, etc.) then it's the GM's decision that led to this, not realism.

GM owns the decisions they make and their consequences, including what factors they used in that decision. But player dissatisfaction doesn’t automatically mean the decision was wrong or unjustified. That’s why the context of the decision needs to be evaluated to understand better why the player is dissatisfied in the first place.

 

[mamba]

As for the other, I already answered that. I already said, in that very post, that it is reasonable for there to be some dead-end areas in the kinds of places one might describe as "a dungeon".

so the dead end being a cave-in that is not marked on your map is fine, it does not need to be a wall that also appears on your map?

How does the DM placing a cave-in not make it a railroad but the DM having a gelatinous cube migration make it one? Is this decided by the probability of the obstacle rather than the outcome of it existing?

I will instead repeat the core point: why is it that the DM absolutely must be trusted, whereas players almost never are trusted?

I don’t think players should not be trusted. As to why trust the DM, to me it is a prerequisite to play with them. Initially they have not earned that yet, but either they will, or I would stop playing with them because they no longer have it

Why is it so acceptable to view ANYTHING the players do with a chary eye, "curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal"-like, but the DM's efforts are so sacrosanct, they can only be questioned if you have an itemized list, AND you can only do so at approved times and places, AND your only other recourse is "voting with your feet"?

the questioning to me should be outside the session so it does not interfere with it, there also might be some tradition involved. I see the DM more like a referee / umpire

 

[TwoSix]

So if a decision is made and realism is the primary factor, and this somehow leads to dissatisfaction with a player (they feel they were denied critical information to make a meaningful move, etc.) then it's the GM's decision that led to this, not realism.

Or, to slightly reverse this, if I as a player think that a GM decision led to unsatisfying gameplay, I don't have to accept "But it was realistic!" as a satisfactory defense of the decision-making.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Considering the fact that the topic of the thread is the essential conservatism of broad swathes of D&D players.

The essential continuing conservatism of the D&D player base is the idea that the point of play is map-and-key exploration of a predetermined space/setting in order to "solve" a challenge.

You don't have to play to discover information that the GM has already determined.

I largely think that a lot of this is a by-product of lingering practices that made sense in the early days... withhold information until/unless the players ask or use some resource to find out... that no longer really apply.

When you're playing a map and key dungeon crawl type game, it makes sense to withhold information unless asked. That's the challenge of play.

But D&D has largely moved away from map and key style play as the default expectation. Yet there are many practices that remain despite that change. Withholding information is one of them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Occam's razor. Of answers with equal explanatory power, the simpler answer is usually correct.

So the simpler answer is the least charitable one? Now that is a personal choice.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Again, all of this is fine if it matches player-GM expectation. It's only an issue if there is a misalignment there. Which, if we're talking about player-driven play (I'm gonna use that term here instead of sandbox), then it would seem that in these instances that you're talking about, it's that realism is prioritized over player-driven play.

not at all because a sandbox is going to have concrete details. Sometimes I move able details. I get that you would prefer a method that doesn’t let something like this emerge through Gm choice but that is just a preference. I play in sandboxes all the time and the GM deciding something about an NPC, even if it is something that ends up thwarting what the players want to do, would just regarded as part of bringing the world to life. As long as it isn’t a situation where the GM is regularly making the least generous choices in that respect. Again overall patterns matter here. Ina sandbox the GM is expected to give the players earned victories and not thwart them for plot reasons. But active NPCs with strong motivations are absolutely in keeping with sandbox

 

[TwoSix]

so the dead end being a cave-in that is not marked on your map is fine, it does not need to be a wall that also appears on your map?

How does the DM placing a cave-in not make it a railroad but the DM having a gelatinous cube migration make it one? Is this decided by the probability of the obstacle rather than the outcome of it existing?


I don’t think players should not be trusted. As to why trust the DM, to me it is a prerequisite to play with them. Initially they have not earned that yet, but either they will, or I would stop playing with them because they no longer have it

Dungeons are kind of a terrible example.

Generally, if the party is in a dungeon, I'm low-key expecting that the focus of play IS on map-and-key exploration of a pre-determined space. Unless the game has specifically been telegraphed as using the dungeon as a framing device for a different type of gameplay (a la Dungeon World).