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

[TwoSix]

This, more than anything, is why I hate when these discussions end up in binary poles. I hate the gameplay loop placing the generation of challenge in resolution creates. It feels miserable to play, it discouraged players from doing things unless they stop holding success as a goal, and it punishes them for doing the wanting I set above as their primary job. Players should be excited to deploy mechanics to defeat obstacles, they should delight in having the right spell prepared, bringing the right item, or spotting how their talent can be used to circumvent a problem means this thing they're engaging with is not a problem. It is equally problematic if the resolution system is undefined and the GM makes it up on the fly as it is if the system is designed to put them in a worse position by engaging.

Fair.

I, personally, don't like the assumption of challenge/success-driven play outside of games in the OSR/NSR paradigms. For 5e, as an example, I don't think challenge play is the right paradigm; its ruleset and procedures push it in more of a performative/thespian play direction.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Specifically in the context of trad play used for sandboxes, like Stars Without Number (and other OSR games like Into the Odd) or any game using Blorb Principles with highly prepped material what I want is success or failure to be based on my skilled negotiation of the fictional environment. If I reach a loss condition I want it to be because I screwed up along the way, not because there were undetectable landmines somewhere in the path. Same for my successes. I do not want undiscoverable benefits to intercede on my behalf.

I want both success and failure to be earned.

It is possible to not detect something that is nonetheless detectable.

 

[The Firebird]

I don't see anything wrong with assuming a correlation, especially one that tracks with my observed experience. (And, to be clear, I'm talking temperamentally conservative, not politically, as per the OP.)

If your observed experience is different than mine, that is of course a useful insight for discussion.

Indeed, it does not match my experience.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This whole thing is confusing, because after querying why I said a thing, you said basically the same thing. And now, when I'm pointing that out, I get this confused and confusing response.

In reply to @Micah Sweet, you posted this:

But when I posted basically the same thing, further upthread, you asked me why I would bother posting such a thing.

The answer is - for the same reason that you did!

But that's not what you did; you posted a parallel with combat and acted like it proves something, and people who don't consider combat and social encounters parallel have made that abundantly clear before, so this does what?

My post to Micah was noting that his actual objection was too broad to be applicable, but I'm well aware he draws a line between the two kinds of things and hammering away on it with him (and numerous others here) who've made that clear in the past seems perverse.

 

[hawkeyefan]

but for a lot of us player driven means acting through our characters in a setting that feels it has its own life. For that to be the case some choices are going to have to thwart my ambitions. If every choice is doing that, fair it is a problem. But to me it isn’t a player driven sandbox if we arent everything seems to go our way. Maybe I bribe three guards in the first six months of play. I won’t bat an eye if the fourth guard I try bribe just isn’t having it: that will feel very plausible to me and not like it is interfering with the players being in the drivers seat

I'm not saying everything needs to go the players' way. Nor am I saying that ambitions can't be thwarted.

I'm saying that using hidden information to do so isn't ideal so far as player-driven play is concerned.

And to use your example of guards... I ran a game a few months ago where one of the characters was very persuasive. He would indeed smooth talk or lie to get past guards, sometimes with bribes, sometimes without. These instances were all resolved by dice rolls... they went his way, and he got what he wanted. After he'd done so several times, I thought it would be interesting to have him run into a guard who wasn't susceptible to bribery or persuasion. I made it clear that was the case. Then I asked him... what do you do?

To me, that's far more interesting a situation to face than some unknown situation. I'd rather see what the player comes up with knowing the situation than just see if they can figure the situation out.

Neither example is just giving the player what they want.

I think there's two very different framings of what "player-driven" might mean.

One is about the DM designing a very large setting without a lot of pre-set scenes, like an adventure path/module does. This is what I tend to the think of as the Elder Scrolls model; where the focus of play is on "discovery" of the pre-generated lore and story hooks. The player agency and freedom is the ability to discover that lore, and accept or reject hooks in any particular order the players like. I don't tend to think of that as "player-driven", but it does offer more apparent agency than your classic Dragonlance style AP.

The other is more of what you and I a few others here would generally mean, where the contours of the setting are established in play in order to frame challenges and conflicts to the PC-engendered goals.

Yes, I think that's becoming increasingly obvious. It seems that proponents of sandbox gaming are less concerned with player-driven play or player agency than I would have expected prior to this discussion.

 

[TwoSix]

Which is what I do. A better game with better rules for me, ones that don't involve restricting the GM's ability to run the game using their own judgement.

Which would seem to be an argument for FKR play?

The "worst of both worlds" would seem to me to be a ruleset with detailed character building options and then a bunch of DM guidelines that amount to "Eh, you'll figure it out! Good luck!" But that seems to be a pretty popular paradigm!

My gut instinct is that popularity is because character building and world building are both fun activities to do on their own, without any need to sit down at a table and actually play.

 

[mamba]

I'll make it a stated assumption. If people were less skeptical, other types of games would be more popular.

I think it has a lot more to do with marketing and a game being ‘good enough’ than with skepticism

 

[TwoSix]

What does conservative or skeptical have to do with not liking something you like? That makes it sound like you have an unwarranted feeling of superiority because we don't happen to have the same preferences.

It doesn't have anything to do with not liking what I like. It's the lack of desire to continually try new things in favor of the familiar that makes one conservative.

I would classify anyone who only plays PbtA games and doesn't want to branch out to new systems "conservative" as well.

 

[Umbran]

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.

And I expect my players to have fewer issues about "power" than that.

When I am running a game, I have power. But I am not using it against the players. My power is used for their benefit. I only get benefit if they do!

If you are coming to my table worried about how much power I have... please leave the table, and find someone else to run a game for you who finds that tension constructive.

 

[Bedrockgames]

And all I'm arguing is that every time you put something into the game that's not changeable by the game's resolution method, you weaken the ability of the game to be described as "player-driven" as opposed to "player-discoverable".

I would be happy to describe Skyrim, for example, as a trad-style sandbox, but I wouldn't describe it as "player-driven".

Not all. There is nothing about a game being a player driven sandbox, that means players should have a mechanical widget to determine if they can bribe the guard. Like I said both approaches work and interact with the player driven quality in different ways. One sacrifice you make when you have say a robust skill styes or something that lets them bribe the guard on a roll, is you can take away the meaning of their words. In most cases we won't be talking about a guard who is unbrideable, we will be talking about the GM establishing other traits, the reason you might want the GM to be able to establish those traits is that can inform how that NPC reacts to things the players do. Which does create the sense of interaction with a real person. But it also gives weight to the things the payers actually choose to say and do (rather than have that largely handled by the die roll). I am not saying it is the best option. There will be cases with both approaches where you encounter issues. I just think there is nothing wrong or anti-sandbox about saying the GM can establish NPC traits, even strong ones.