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

[Bedrockgames]

I was reading that as geographical exploration. As I said in another recent post, it's not something I'm generally interested in, as either player or GM. A bit of it from time to time, in the form of unknown locations or super secret lairs or what have you, fine... but as a major goal of play? Not really my thing. Nor essential to a sandbox or player-driven play.

I am not super interested in this either and I don't see it as essential. I think you need a world. But that world could just be a Jianghu penned over a map of historical chine or your chosen setting. This is why I use hexes for distance in travel but wouldn't describe my campaigns as hex crawls.

I think what's causing the confusion here is the word established. Because in your first sentence, when you say established traits, I want to respond that if the traits are established... the principled nature of the guard, let's say... then there's no issue. But you mean established as in set by the GM prior to play regardless of whether the players know. To me, established means it's been made clear to all participants... it's been established in play.

I just mean the GM has this detail pinned down prior to it coming up

If you are not aware of given NPC's trait and then you make a roll and learn about it... how do you know if it was established by the GM beforehand or if he just established it on the spot?

You don't know for sure. That involves trust. The GM can show his work, and I sometimes do so that this is clear to players. But it is part of building trust I think. For me long as the GM is genuinely putting things down before hand, it is fine. And there may be cases where the GM has no choice but to come up with something after the players are already clearly going for the bribe (and as I said I would be much more cautious in those instances). But this is why I talk about pinning it down in that sandbox blog post I linked. It is about making sure if the players are about to make a blind choice of some kind, you have set it up as fairly as possible. I don't mind for example if I am snooping around a house looking for a suspect and there is a shed, and I go in, a murderer stabs me with a knife because I opened the door incautiously and he was genuinely there (even if the GM adlibbed the house and scene, if he noted that detail before I was making my decision, it feels more fair to me than if he made that decision because I opened the door incautiously and he wanted that kind of a moment). As long as I can look back in hindsight and say "well if I had been more cautious things might have turned out differently".

And yes, it does have to do with the roll... the roll indicates the chance of something... that there's a possibility, not one certain outcome. If a roll is made, it should feel like the roll mattered.

I understand, and I am not saying rolls are bad. But try to appreciate for some players there is tension between a roll deciding a social outcome, and their characters words and actions doing so. Some systems are better than others art bringing those together of course. But to me there is no replacement for freeform RP in this area of the game.

Immersion is something that's going to vary from person to person, so that's tough to say, but it seems like yet another priority separate of player agency.

Immersion is pretty connected in sandbox play to agency though. At least the way it tends to get used. I am not even someone who is super picky about it. But if you play with people who value immersion you will find this very quickly so it is something to be mindful of when managing a sandbox campaign

 

[Lanefan]

And I don't. That's the whole point! I have no idea what "I try to make my world realistic" means.

Because, to reference TVTropes, Reality Is Unrealistic. There are huge, vast, megalithic swathes of reality which people outright reject. Remember that the sounds of horses on cobblestones are almost never actual shoed horses on cobblestones, because people are so used to the clacking coconut-shells sound, and don't have any context for what actual horses sound like trotting around. It is, quite literally, a situation where what is actual reality would be rejected for being "unrealistic"!

There's a tourist attraction here in Victoria where you can be taken on a horse-and-carriage ride through different parts of town. I've heard those horses more times than I can count and the sound their hoofs make on the paved road is very close, if not identical, to what I often hear in movies or TV shows.

I'd say - without knowing anything about it - the odds are high to extreme that the sound departments of most studios have a collection of 'stock' sounds that they insert when required, four of which would be the recorded sound of hooves on a hard surface at speeds 'walk', 'trot', 'canter', and 'gallop'.

And so, at least in this particular case, I reject your claim that reality is unrealistic.

 

[Bedrockgames]

And are you using "living world" and "sandbox" interchangeably here? Because if so, this is the first I've heard that roleplay and characterization are important to sandbox play.

So living world is definitely an important part of sandbox. For some people living world might even be interchangeable as a term. But I think many would say the living world part is the effort to keep the sandbox in a dynamic state. And definitely characterization and role-play are considered important parts of sandbox. Some people might prioritize RP more, but I dont' think I have ever been in a sandbox campaign where it wasn't highly valued and where characterization of NPCs isn't valued. But me personally, I consider the creation of living NPCs one of the single most important things for making these campaigns work (which is why I prefer living adventure as a term)

For agency, again I think it is key to separate characters and players. I want the players to have agency. PCs and NPCs don't have agency.

Yes but I think it is clear we define that agency very differently. Someone like Rob experiences agency by being able to act through his character in the setting, and he can correct me if I am wrong, but constraining the GM or giving him things like meta currencies that his character doesn't wield in the first person, aren't things he would say add to his agency.

Again I think the immersion aspect is important here. If you feel different it is fine. But I definitely think of NPCs as having agency and of PCs as having agency. That is the whole point of treating NPCs like living characters. Again, doesn't work for you. Totally fine. But I think you are drawing your definitions around your preferred style of play and not seeing why some people like this style (and why this style can also be said to value agency very highly)

 

[AlViking]

I'll try this one more time: in my view, this isn't protecting against intentions; its protecting against judgment. And I do, indeed, think you somewhat need to read the GMs mind to know how good the latter is.

I don't know why its controversial that someone can have the best of intentions and still make mistakes, and the more decision making they're doing, the more opportunity for this arises.

(And before someone tries to drag me off on the other topic paralleling this, I'm not talking about campaign planning or NPC design (though I think good rules can help minimize errors there too), I'm talking about this in terms of resolution of events and how consistent and transparent they are).

I guess I just don't see the need for a restrictions enforced by rules for the style of game I play. If I screw up I'll compensate in some way. If I really, really screw up I'll just do a time-out and let people at the table know that I made a major mistake and ask how we want to deal with it. The only guard rails I've ever needed is the social contract between GM and players. I guess I'm drawing a blank as to when one of those two options wouldn't be adequate.

But there's different approaches even if I don't see when or how it would be necessary.

edit - may I'm just totally missing the point, an example of what you mean might help. Or not.

 

[Micah Sweet]

At some point, if you're going to talk about them at least, they kind of do. You don't have to want to do that, of course.

There is a difference between casual discussion and jargon-filled game theory analysis, not the least of which is the implication that the latter is somehow superior to the former.

 

[Lanefan]

I mean, one of the common results of including the ridiculous in a work is humor, I certainly grant that, but in this case I would absolutely find such an inclusion offensive, not humorous.

Would you find a deity of alcohol offensive?

My setting has three - Dionysus (faux-Greek god of wine) and Ironhorse (Dwarven god of beer* and hockey) are well-known, and there's an obscure Celtic one as well (the way my campaign has gone, the entire Celtic culture and region has been pretty obscure mostly because almost nobody has interacted with it other than passing through the region as fast as they can - it's become the Akrayna equivalent of the flyover states).

* - a bunch of us invented this guy while getting drunk at the pub one day in about 1986, and I played the first-ever Cleric to him. Our band at the time did a rockin' theme song "God of Beer" for him, which even got a bit of play around town in the late 1980s.

 

[Lanefan]

Exactly. I have heard enough nightmare DM stories to know GMs don't always act in good faith. I've PLAYED with DMs that don't act in good faith. I have more bad DM stories than bad player stories, and I have plenty of bad player stories.

I must be lucky then, as the only truly bad* DM I've known was also a bad player.

Perhaps oddly, however, I've known more than one bad player who went on to become quite good DMs.

* - as opposed to simply incompetent, which can be excused.

 

[Lanefan]

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

Not playing, though, would tend to make that information even harder to discover.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

There's the issue, then: those practices do still apply, and always will in a D&D-like game.

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.

Citation needed for the bolded, I think.

And even if the bolded is true (which I very highly doubt), withholding information that the characters wouldn't and couldn't have in the fiction would still seem to make sense from an immerion and role-play prespective.

 

[AlViking]

See the more the GM defines the NPCs in ways that I can't interact with, and the more he keeps that information from me, and the more he relies solely on his own thoughts about how an interaction will go rather than deploying some kind of randomizer or similar process... the more I feel like I'm passively part of a GM's story.

Some of the agenda you're siting above seem contradictory to me.

And are you using "living world" and "sandbox" interchangeably here? Because if so, this is the first I've heard that roleplay and characterization are important to sandbox play.

For agency, again I think it is key to separate characters and players. I want the players to have agency. PCs and NPCs don't have agency.



That's fine. I prefer to share a lot of information. I think the characters would generally be privy to a lot more information than is typically provided by the GM. So expecting them to ask when the shortage of information may be my fault seems odd.



No. We're talking about games. We make decisions as players or GMs. We should acknowledge that we are responsible for those decisions, not anyone or anything else.

If I make a decision as a GM and it's based on my sense of plausibility of the game world... the decision is mine, not the game world's.



The examples that were talked about were a guard who cannot be bribed, and a priest who would never take a drink.

So equally realistic (arguably more realistic) would be a bribe who can potentially be bribed or a priest who may potentially take a drink.

There's almost always room to make a decision that allows for player agency versus one that doesn't. That's the choice I'm talking about owning above.

Having a chance to succeed at something that is attempted has nothing to do with player agency unless there is never a chance to succeed when it doesn't follow the GM's predetermined path. Nothing is stopping you from attempting to bribe the guard.