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

[Faolyn]

Castle Amber is fun too. So is White Plume Mountain. This doesn't affect whether or no they're realistic, though. Obviously they're both absurd! And so is B2.

But this isn't about realism then, is it? Let alone "hyper-realism".

I mean, if we actually focused on how the "monsters" behave, then as @Hussar says the whole situation would be so ridiculously unstable it would collapse within weeks. Or if, as @Lanefan says, these people are hunter-gatherers, then most of them would move on after a short while.

So "how the monsters behave" seems like it also has some specialised meaning, which begins from some game-derived premises about how dungeons are set up, how monsters hang out in dungeons, and all these other absurd things - but then, bracketing for all of that, the Orcs are meant to act like XYZ rather than ABC. Like, it would be "unrealistic" for the Orc leader to give up his "crown" just because a charismatic PC talks him into it.

But we can't actually create some serious account of the Orc leader's motivations that would explain why that is; as by bracketing everything else there's no account of the leadership possible at all! (Eg we can't think about how survival of the Orc tribe might motivate their leader, as we can't think about what "survival of the Orc tribe* even looks like, given that we've had to bracket all of that because there's actually no realistic account of how they live.)


For me, reading these posts, it's hard not to just see special pleading.

The drum of "realism" gets beaten again and again: it's a basis for action resolution by way of GM decision-making; it's constraint on setting design; a lot of the RPGs I like have this problem that they're not "realistic" for reasons XYZ. But then it turns out that "realism" is just being used to describe conforms to my common-sense, pulp and fantasy fiction, wargame-y tropes.

I've got nothing against common-sense, pulp and fantasy fiction, wargame-y tropes: D&D continues to flourish by relying heavily, though no longer exclusively, on them. But the invocation of "realism" as a normative standard for RPGing, in the face of this sort of defence of absurd things, becomes pretty frustrating.

Well, in this particular case, it is "is it realistic (and/or insulting) for a fantasy religion to do this thing that a person might consider to be absolutely ridiculous?" But since that would involving delving into actual religious beliefs and doctrine, it's a discussion that will have to happen somewhere else.

But anyway:

I realise that the points I've made in this post are probably not relevant for most people GMing or playing B2 (although they may have been relevant to @mamba; and mamba's experiences are just as real as anyone else's). I also realise that for a novice GM, who is not familiar with RPGs at all, or who has no familiarity with narrating NPC behaviour beyond one or two "if, then"-type statements found in a railroad-y module or AP, the instruction to "think of the Orc leader as a real person" can be a helpful starting point.

But no one posting in this thread is a novice GM. No one here is looking for help in how to move beyond canned "if, then" statements for how to adjudicate their NPCs. In the context of this thread, talking about realism in the context of a module like B2 just doesn't get much traction. And trying to tell me that my play of Lareth the Beautiful in Torchbearer 2e must be less "realistic" than how he would be handled in D&D, because of the resolution system being used, borders on the condescending.

Personally, I don't think that the system has much, if anything, to do with how a character's personality is played. Even when we limit it to strictly talking about NPCs that are entirely under GM control. Now, I have no idea how TB's social system works at all--I haven't read the game. My belief is that while some systems may be more in-depth and therefore more realistic to the way people communicate (in the same way that some combat systems are more in-depth and thus represent actual combat more accurately), the results aren't going to be inherently be better or more realistic.

 

[zakael19]

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.

Deliberate Spotlight management basically fixes this, yeah. I was surprised to see spotlighting come up in the 2024 DMG, but it’s pretty cool to see in there.

 

[pemerton]

I would say that if a player has attempted something their character can do, the character has agency. Full stop. It doesn't matter if they are successful at achieving a goal, it doesn't matter how the result was adjudicated as long as it was adjudicated for reasons other than the GM choosing the result based on the direction they want for their preconceived notion to be achieved.

The GM may have decided that for story reasons the character will automatically fail or that they will automatically succeed. If the GM is doing it for reasons of plot and story, the character lacks agency. If it does or does not work because of a GM's judgement call based on the scene as presented success or failure is not relevant. Something being hidden from the player does not negate agency, being surprised by something unexpected has nothing to do with agency. Being able to respond to that surprise as your character desires without concern about the overall narrative of the game is what grants agency to the character.

But this post sounds an awful lot like your oft-repeated preference for a style of play and that if you don't do it the way you want it done there is no agency. Note that I'm talking about character agency, not player agency which I think is a good distinction mentioned above.

I don't know what character agency means, sorry.

But even without that understanding, I think I can understand your post: the player has agency if (i) they are allowed to declare actions for their PC, and (ii) the outcome is determined in some fashion other than the GM having a direction they want the plot/story to go in.

To me, it seems that (i) is a baseline for playing a RPG, and that (ii) is present in any RPGing that is not DL-esque or AP-esque railroading. I don't know if you agree.

 

[Umbran]

I don't think it's a good idea to belittle someone else's idea of "harm" and whether or not it truly puts it in the same rhetorical space as being sexually harassed at the table.

Words mean things. He didn't say that the GM can cause "borkforble", because "borkforble" is not a word anyone knows, and means nothing to anyone here.

Ergo, the word "harm" was chosen for its meaning. And if you are using the same word for two different things, that is implicitly saying those things are, in some sense, the same.

If you don't want people to consider that they are somehow equivalent, don't speak about them with the same words.

That's just opening a HUGE can of worms that risks putting you in the same rhetorical space as people who deny the harm of racially charged language being used for orcs and microaggressions.

Maybe I stand corrected. Let us take it that, for this person, it is harm - it is at least on the scale of microaggressions and sexist jokes at the table. What, then?

Well, how do mature adults deal with things? They talk to each other. If you are coming to my house for supper, I expect you will tell me what food restrictions you have, so I can avoid doing harm to you. If you don't want to tell me why the restriction is there, that's fine - I don't really need to know if you are Jewish or Vegetarian, I need to know not to serve you pork, though.

If a player has some hot buttons or triggers they want to avoid, I don't need to know the details, but I feel it is appropriate for them to tell me they would like an X-card, or lines and veils, or other similar tools to be put in use. And as a GM, I owe them some clear thought on it, and if I don't feel I, or my table, can be safe for them, I should decline to run for them.

(When I am running a game where I don't know the folks well, there's usually an X-card on the table anyway - I am happy to try to keep my players safe.)

So, if you feel a mediocre game experience does you harm, then my point stands - you should tell the GM that you feel that's harm! They have to be given the opportunity to decide if their game, and that table, are sufficiently safe from the level of issue that you consider to be harmful to your person.

 

[pemerton]

I don't know because I am not criticizing your RPG.

Well, when I read posts like these I see a lot of normativity:

He is talking about how in life sometimes you have information, sometimes you don’t. If the GM is always making scenarios where the players don’t have access to information, then sure maybe something is off. If the GM is trying to make a plausible world and doing it when it feels realistic to do so, or at a realistic frequency, there is no problem there nor is there anything he has to own up to.

we are establishing that the GM is using realism as the or one of the main criteria for the decisions. He is basing that decision on what he considers to be realistic. So realism is the thing driving it. Look if I am a player and the GM makes a call based on realism, and it negatively impacts my character in some way, I am not going to be bothered the way I would if he just made the call out of a desire to negatively impact my character. In the former, the GM is giving me a game experience I was looking for. One where the world feels like a believable place, and one byproduct of that is some of his calls on realism aren't going to go my way.

 

[Campbell]

That around the horn advice linked up thread might be decent advice in the context of more conventional play. But in the context of the GM asking questions in games inspired by Apocalypse World it is terrible advice. The GM asking a player asking a player a question is not engaging in collaborative world building for its own sake. The entire point is to establish character relevant premise in order to effectively make a move that speaks to that character's conceptual premise. It's a prelude to conflict.

This is even worse advice when it comes to moments where the spotlight is on a particular character and someone interrupts someone else's action declaration. Because the resolution mechanics call upon the GM to make moves in response to player moves which will change the context of the next person to act.

It is inconsistent with the core structure of play and how action resolution works.

Beyond that, at least for me personally, the everyone gets a voice in every decision style of collaboration is not the sort of collaborative model I enjoy. Suggestions are sometimes fine, but like I want to respond and integrate people's ideas but I also need the collaboration to be snappy and not invite people's shut down reflexes.

 

[AlViking]

I don't know what character agency means, sorry.

But even without that understanding, I think I can understand your post: the player has agency if (i) they are allowed to declare actions for their PC, and (ii) the outcome is determined in some fashion other than the GM having a direction they want the plot/story to go in.

To me, it seems that (i) is a baseline for playing a RPG, and that (ii) is present in any RPGing that is not DL-esque or AP-esque railroading. I don't know if you agree.

It seems to me you want player agency. The player should know what's going on, what the odds are, should know what's about to happen. It doesn't matter what a person in the imagined world would know, it doesn't matter what the character perceives.

Railroading vs sandbox is, IMHO a different story and one that really comes down to how decisions are made. Are they made because of the current scenario, either by rules of the game or by the GM? Then it's a sandbox. Are the decisions (always) made because the GM wants you to follow this predefined path? Then it's a railroad. It does not matter whether the player knows how the decisions were made. I do not set up scenarios based on what direction I want the story or narrative to go. I build scenarios that fit the scenes I expect to come into play based on the decisions and actions that have brought us to the current point.

I don't know how else to explain it. If there's a pit trap it's because the area is inhabited by kobolds and it's one way they can take out larger enemy opponents. It's not because I don't want your character getting to the end of the hall.

 

[The Firebird]

To work out whether, how, and to what degree the player exercised agency, we need to understand how and why the GM made the decision that they did, and what way - if any - the player's goal, in saying what they did, mattered. If the GM is using procedures or heuristics that make no reference to the player's goal, then the tentative conclusion would be that the player didn't exercise much agency.

This is the same thing EzekialRaiden was getting at yesterday--the need for a heuristic. And I think the answer is the same. For large sandbox worlds, the heuristic at a certain point is "the referee's judgement" and the game requires players to trust that as a heuristic to succeed.

I've played with DMs I could trust and it works great. I've played with ones I couldn't and it didn't go that well. Avoiding those bad experiences were part of why I went for narrative games in the past--I liked having more codified rules because as a player it felt like it defined and protected my agency.

The drum of "realism" gets beaten again and again: it's a basis for action resolution by way of GM decision-making; it's constraint on setting design; a lot of the RPGs I like have this problem that they're not "realistic" for reasons XYZ. But then it turns out that "realism" is just being used to describe conforms to my common-sense, pulp and fantasy fiction, wargame-y tropes.

I've got nothing against common-sense, pulp and fantasy fiction, wargame-y tropes: D&D continues to flourish by relying heavily, though no longer exclusively, on them. But the invocation of "realism" as a normative standard for RPGing, in the face of this sort of defence of absurd things, becomes pretty frustrating.

I can see why you dispute the use of the term. Verisimilitude is probably better. I think it is easier to define with reference to what it's not. When I say realism, I mean something that is not railroading (the DM creating unrealistic obstacles to keep us on track) and that aspects of the world are not modified based on what the DM thinks will cause more drama. I mean combats are not structured for balance as in combat-as-sport games.

The term 'realism' is used to some extent a reaction to these other things.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't know because I am not criticizing your RPG. Are people saying your games aren't realistic period? Or are they saying you system would disrupt their own sense of realism?

That's a good question. For my part I would say that @pemerton 's game style disrupts my personal sense of realism, primarily because it seems to me the focus of the mechanics is on character(and in particular "soft" character mechanics like motivations, goals and feelings) rather than setting.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Well, when I read posts like these I see a lot of normativity:

Those posts are all about the style of sandbox Rob and I are talking about because I was asked to explain and defend some points about them. They weren't general statements of 'ought' for other campaigns. And I wasn't assuming the norms expressed here were the norms for everyone. I was trying to explain why I would be okay with say the GM given an NPC a trait that completely thwarts what I was trying to do, but also point to when I would start to see that as a problem. I wasn't saying that you should also walk around with my sensibilities on this