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

[TwoSix]

Or maybe, just maybe, we've tried or read up on the alternatives and don't care for them. What's exhausting is repeatedly being told that we're too ignorant to know better.

Conservative and skeptical, not ignorant. We already established that yesterday.

Mazel tov to you and your wife, by the way.

 

[Campbell]

As a general note I think it is important when referring to player agency to indicate what kind of agency is being discussed.

There is the agency that the players has while roleplaying as a character in the campaign.
Then there is the agency the player has while using the system.

The two are not synonymous, and it is important to keep them straight, as two people can argue past each other if one is talking about a campaign featuring rules where the worldbuilding of the setting is shared among everyone in the group. And the other is talking about what players can do as their character.

To the individual who enjoys shared worldbuilding, a campaign that only focuses on the player can do as their character has more limited player agency. For the individual who focuses on what characters can do, a campaign using a system that limits what characters can do (but not players), as part of a focus on creating a specific types of narrative, will appear to have more limited player agency.

Context is crucial.

Given the context of this conversation it feels like you are missing something here, given that a large portion of it has preceded from the question of how play that precedes from what is established (and what is discoverable within the information environment) and how skilled play of the fiction is either rewarded or not rewarded. That for many of us when we are discussing agency it is how reliably we are able to effect the sorts of change in the fictional environment through our characters actions in a predictable way. That's where concerns about the information environment come into play.

Basically the journey from:
My character wants to achieve X
How do I get there through skilled play where my efforts are not frustrated in the same way they are in a railroaded environment?

That's the sort of agency I care about in more conventional play. Where good play is rewarded and bad play is punished.

Always bringing it back to content authority issues is not helpful.

 

[robertsconley]

Given the context of this conversation it feels like you are missing something here, given that a large portion of it has preceded from the question of how play that precedes from what is established (and what is discoverable within the information environment) and how skilled play of the fiction is either rewarded or not rewarded. That for many of us when we are discussing agency it is how reliably we are able to effect the sorts of change in the fictional environment through our characters actions in a predictable way. That's where concerns about the information environment come into play.

Basically the journey from:
My character wants to achieve X
How do I get there through skilled play where my efforts are not frustrated in the same way they are in a railroaded environment?

That's the sort of agency I care about in more conventional play. Where good play is rewarded and bad play is punished.

Always bringing it back to content authority issues is not helpful.

To evaluate whether skilled play is being rewarded fairly, you have to look at what the player can do in the campaign and the context in which those decisions are made. To be clear, I’m using “player” deliberately, not just in the sense of roleplaying as their character, but in terms of everything the player can do as a participant in the campaign.

From there, we can evaluate the kind and degree of agency the player actually has, and whether that agency supports skilled play that is meaningfully and fairly rewarded.

It doesn’t need to be elaborate, it just needs to be enough to give the reader an understanding of what the player is doing at the table to affect their character’s outcomes.

 

[Manbearcat]

I don't find collaborative world building immersive, that doesn't mean other people can't. But what I have seen is when people come up with ideas that conflict or just don't really fit with the narrative and the loudest person gets their way. Maybe there are other limitations and restrictions for that which weren't part of the session I did at a con.

What I would say to this is four-fold:

1) Every time we (the collective commenters) do this, commentary always circles back to the "I don't find x immersive" move. Every_single_ time. I get it. You (and others) have an autobiographical feature of your cognitive orientation to playing RPGs that makes it so you require a very particular systemization and set of techniques to feel immersed. I get it. Again and again and again and again. Its cool. No problem.

But as the second part of your lead sentence points at (as well as I and others have pointed at a million times), this isn't something consequentially interesting to talk about when it comes to games. This is a you thing. It is an interesting feature of you. This isn't a game thing. Immersion is compatible with this sort of play. Just not for you.

It is just a conversation dead end. I don't understand why this happens all the time in these conversations.

2) I would very much advise against anyone taking cues about a game from a convention experience. It is basically the worst conditions possible. You have a time crunch and an experience crunch that is going to generate very particular pressures upon play that won't manifest in actual play. You have the dynamic of one or multiple or all players not being sufficiently familiar with system to principally play the game...either skillfully or perhaps even functionally at all. You have a GM that may or may not know the system as well as they should, but regardless they are saddled with this player dynamic and this time/experience crunch dynamic. You have the social pressures of totally weird game theory where complete strangers are cast together in a collective endeavor and they're trying to facilitate something that is alien both in terms of procedures and in terms of collective chemistry...and there is probably going to be at least one person who isn't governed by self-awareness and "best foot forward" (like the HAY LOOK AT ME GUSY loud dude who dominates conversation and play and makes things terrible for everyone...and no one can rein him in).

The odds that any given game churns out the functional (let alone skillful) version of a novel RPG game would have to be very, very remote.

So here is simple counterfactual for your unreliable con experience. I've run these types of games for over twenty years. I've averaged at least 3 hours a week of running one of these games (I run a lot of games...a lot). If you do that math, that is a whole_lot_of hours. I've probably born witness to "the loud guy getting their way" perhaps a handful of times...4-5ish seems about right. In that span, that is not a lot.

3) Consider this. If you have this kind of concerns about "a loud guy dominating collaborative worldbuilding" in a game I just made up off the cuff which features a democratizing of an incredible small amount of procedural "bad guys" generation (one brief moment at the outset of Early Game to generate a few tags to abstractly render this metaphorical Sword of Domacles of the "the bad guys" upon the imagined space...then one at the beginning of the End Game where we roll dice to come up with their scale and dice pool attributes)...how is that you're ok with the traditional GM model who is the equivalent of "the loud guy" at every_single_moment of play?

In that situation with the traditional GM model, the process of worldbuilding isn't the briefest of interludes...it is the fullness of play.

In that situation with the traditional GM model, the ownership of worldbuilding isn't democratized...it is unilaterally owned and deployed by the equivalent of "the loud guy."

In that situation with the traditional GM model, it is hardwired onto play that "the loud guy" gets the megaphone.

In light of that, it becomes very difficult, very quickly for me to take your lament about "the loud guy at the con game during the worldbuilding" particularly seriously in terms of impacts.

Lastly here, I would give the same advice to evaluating system/game based on the canned adventure they come with. Adventures overwhelmingly look like railroads and play like railroads...because they're constructed as such overwhelmingly because adventure-writing hews toward dot & node connecting from a set of initial conditions to a vaguely prescriptive endpoint. It is at least as likely, if not more likely, that the problem you're detecting with system is actually a problem you're detecting with adventure writing at its core.

So read a game and run it yourself before you draw conclusions. Don't go to a con. Don't index the crappy canned adventure in the back of the book (or wherever).

4) Finally, as I pointed at about, the game of The Fisherman and The Fighter features a significant amount of traditional play at its core and only an incredibly small amount of coalitional worldbuilding (that is mostly just procedural...what is novel is that there is some level of democratized input as well as the process being table-facing). Overwhelmingly, it should look like good, non-railroaded play that hews to the traditional model in large part:

* GM preps with conflict-charged situation and NPCs with motivations.

* GM plays that situation represents those NPCs through their motivations and capabilities.

* Players build motivated characters with competencies, connections, assets.

* Players play those motivated characters as they advocate for their beliefs, aspirations, relations through their competencies, connections, and assets.

---

@The Firebird , not going to get to your reply today I don't think. I've got things to get done in the next three hours > I'm going climbing after that > I've got a game of Scum & Villainy to GM at 8:30 PM EST > then bed as I have to catch an early flight tomorrow morning. I'll be completely occupied while I'm away so there is no way I'll be able to digest and compose a response during that period; through Tuesday late. Maybe I'll get back in here on Wednesday of next week? If so, I'll get to our conversation then. Apologies.

 

[Campbell]

As an unrelated aside, I do not understand how loud guy dynamics becomes an issue with Apocalypse World style collaborative world building (where the GM still retains content authority) because the GM is meant to ask specific questions to specific players. It's never a free for all. Creative differences can absolutely be a thing (and you do need creative alignment in your group) but the loudest gets their way thing should be impossible under both declaring actions and answering questions based on the outlined procedures meant to be used in the games.

 

[AlViking]

Conservative and skeptical, not ignorant. We already established that yesterday.

Mazel tov to you and your wife, by the way.

You may have established that (and while I disagree with the phrase I appreciate it), but that's not what I was responding to. It was

As with far, far too many things, I find that the issue isn't the approach itself. It is the unfamiliarity of the approach.

You are used to doing all of these things exclusively through freeform. So anything that isn't freeform automatically feels weird, because it is unfamiliar.

The problem is the unfamiliarity, not the approach itself. And that, that exact thing, "I don't like it because I'm not familiar with it"...

is the exhausting conservatism of D&D fans, per the thread topic.

Which is absolutely conflating conservatism with ignorance because we refuse to even consider other options. Which is kind of common fallacy, the "You only disagree because you don't know better".

 

[Lanefan]

As an unrelated aside, I do not understand how loud guy dynamics becomes an issue with Apocalypse World style collaborative world building (where the GM still retains content authority) because the GM is meant to ask specific questions to specific players. It's never a free for all.

Until it is.

I mean, you can ask questions of a specific player but if the loud guy jumps in and answers for that player, or - and I've seen this many a time - if the player you just asked defers to the loud guy, then whether it's party strategies or setting-content creation or a roleplay scene it's still the loud guy driving the bus no matter what.

If I'm a fellow player my usual response is to simply fight the loud guy on his own terms, i.e. be just as loud myself. Then again, I see the "spotlight" as something to be actively fought for (if-when you want it) rather than passively received.

Creative differences can absolutely be a thing (and you do need creative alignment in your group) but the loudest gets their way thing should be impossible under both declaring actions and answering questions based on the outlined procedures meant to be used in the games.

This might be a case where design theory and in-play practice don't and can't always line up.

 

[Remathilis]

Ime OotA is a pretty poor sandbox precisely because of the way it is setup. It gives the players a goal which is opposed to exploration and gives them time pressure to move as fast as possible.

It's still a module, its not designed to be a complete open world experience. If it was, it would just be a gazetteer of the Underdark.

I tend to look at it from the perspective of video games since I started with those first. An adventure like OotA (and many of WotCs APs) have GTA-like (or Final Fantasy like) element of a linear plotline but dozens of sidequests to run parallel. You can focus the main quest only and finish the game quickly, or explore all the side areas at your leisure and return to the plot when ready. Is that unrealistic? Sure. But modern players are used to that kind of design so the idea that you sidetrack to places not directly part of the plot is a easily understood.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

As an unrelated aside, I do not understand how loud guy dynamics becomes an issue with Apocalypse World style collaborative world building (where the GM still retains content authority) because the GM is meant to ask specific questions to specific players. It's never a free for all. Creative differences can absolutely be a thing (and you do need creative alignment in your group) but the loudest gets their way thing should be impossible under both declaring actions and answering questions based on the outlined procedures meant to be used in the games.

Right, I'd be more concerned, with an inexperienced MC, that they would fail to allocate bandwidth to everyone effectively. That they might softball less assertive or confident players, etc. Obviously you can, theoretically, have a player so loud and pushy that it derails play, but I seriously doubt that trad play process is going to fix that!

 

[AlViking]

What I would say to this is four-fold:

1) Every time we (the collective commenters) do this, commentary always circles back to the "I don't find x immersive" move. Every_single_ time. I get it. You (and others) have an autobiographical feature of your cognitive orientation to playing RPGs that makes it so you require a very particular systemization and set of techniques to feel immersed. I get it. Again and again and again and again. Its cool. No problem.

But as the second part of your lead sentence points at (as well as I and others have pointed at a million times), this isn't something consequentially interesting to talk about when it comes to games. This is a you thing. It is an interesting feature of you. This isn't a game thing. Immersion is compatible with this sort of play. Just not for you.

It is just a conversation dead end. I don't understand why this happens all the time in these conversations.

Failing to see your point. Most of the posts on this thread are just things we all repeat ad nauseum.

But you are right. I dislike a lot of other aspects of what other people praise. Like the systematized approach. The idea that, for example, everyone knows what is required to bribe virtually every bureaucrat in existence or that for anything you attempt to do you always know what the chance of failure is or that you know exact consequences. Ooh, did I also mention that I dislike collaborative world building? I'm sure if I thought about it or refreshed my memory on specific aspects games I could come up with more.

In other words, I dislike a lot of things about games not in the D&D adjacent sphere that I've tried. I just bundle it all up and use "not immersive" as a shortcut.

2) I would very much advise against anyone taking cues about a game from a convention experience. It is basically the worst conditions possible. You have a time crunch and an experience crunch that is going to generate very particular pressures upon play that won't manifest in actual play. You have the dynamic of one or multiple or all players not being sufficiently familiar with system to principally play the game...either skillfully or perhaps even functionally at all. You have a GM that may or may not know the system as well as they should, but regardless they are saddled with this player dynamic and this time/experience crunch dynamic. You have the social pressures of totally weird game theory where complete strangers are cast together in a collective endeavor and they're trying to facilitate something that is alien both in terms of procedures and in terms of collective chemistry...and there is probably going to be at least one person who isn't governed by self-awareness and "best foot forward" (like the HAY LOOK AT ME GUSY loud dude who dominates conversation and play and makes things terrible for everyone...and no one can rein him in).

The odds that any given game churns out the functional (let alone skillful) version of a novel RPG game would have to be very, very remote.

So here is simple counterfactual for your unreliable con experience. I've run these types of games for over twenty years. I've averaged at least 3 hours a week of running one of these games (I run a lot of games...a lot). If you do that math, that is a whole_lot_of hours. I've probably born witness to "the loud guy getting their way" perhaps a handful of times...4-5ish seems about right. In that span, that is not a lot.

3) Consider this. If you have this kind of concerns about "a loud guy dominating collaborative worldbuilding" in a game I just made up off the cuff which features a democratizing of an incredible small amount of procedural "bad guys" generation (one brief moment at the outset of Early Game to generate a few tags to abstractly render this metaphorical Sword of Domacles of the "the bad guys" upon the imagined space...then one at the beginning of the End Game where we roll dice to come up with their scale and dice pool attributes)...how is that you're ok with the traditional GM model who is the equivalent of "the loud guy" at every_single_moment of play?

In that situation with the traditional GM model, the process of worldbuilding isn't the briefest of interludes...it is the fullness of play.

In that situation with the traditional GM model, the ownership of worldbuilding isn't democratized...it is unilaterally owned and deployed by the equivalent of "the loud guy."

In that situation with the traditional GM model, it is hardwired onto play that "the loud guy" gets the megaphone.

In light of that, it becomes very difficult, very quickly for me to take your lament about "the loud guy at the con game during the worldbuilding" particularly seriously in terms of impacts.

Lastly here, I would give the same advice to evaluating system/game based on the canned adventure they come with. Adventures overwhelmingly look like railroads and play like railroads...because they're constructed as such overwhelmingly because adventure-writing hews toward dot & node connecting from a set of initial conditions to a vaguely prescriptive endpoint. It is at least as likely, if not more likely, that the problem you're detecting with system is actually a problem you're detecting with adventure writing at its core.

So read a game and run it yourself before you draw conclusions. Don't go to a con. Don't index the crappy canned adventure in the back of the book (or wherever).

4) Finally, as I pointed at about, the game of The Fisherman and The Fighter features a significant amount of traditional play at its core and only an incredibly small amount of coalitional worldbuilding (that is mostly just procedural...what is novel is that there is some level of democratized input as well as the process being table-facing). Overwhelmingly, it should look like good, non-railroaded play that hews to the traditional model in large part:

* GM preps with conflict-charged situation and NPCs with motivations.

* GM plays that situation represents those NPCs through their motivations and capabilities.

* Players build motivated characters with competencies, connections, assets.

* Players play those motivated characters as they advocate for their beliefs, aspirations, relations through their competencies, connections, and assets.

---

@The Firebird , not going to get to your reply today I don't think. I've got things to get done in the next three hours > I'm going climbing after that > I've got a game of Scum & Villainy to GM at 8:30 PM EST > then bed as I have to catch an early flight tomorrow morning. I'll be completely occupied while I'm away so there is no way I'll be able to digest and compose a response during that period; through Tuesday late. Maybe I'll get back in here on Wednesday of next week? If so, I'll get to our conversation then. Apologies.

I could pick apart your example of The Fisherman and the Fighter and point out the different bits and pieces that I would dislike. While I appreciate the effort, it does nothing to change my opinion on what I want out of a game. While the con event was an example of a behavior that caused me not to enjoy the experience, I have also read free rules and watched live streamed game and tutorials on how to play. There's a whole lot of other things for the other games I looked at that I didn't care for. Some games were too shallow for more than a few hours of play here and there. Others are too limiting for me on what I could attempt. Some were just the wrong genre. For example I didn't care for a golden age superhero game where, following through the flaws and secret identity of my character, I could have accidentally killed what I thought was a werewolf only to be told that had I killed them it would be the worst thing possible. I'm sure I could go on, but like I said above it's easier to just say I don't find many games I've tried or looked at to be immersive.