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

[Bedrockgames]

Honestly, making up some exotic lore to justify weird results is one of my favorite parts of DMing. It's one of the main reasons I like to keep my campaign setting so loose.

There is nothing wrong with making up lore on teh fly. Even in a sandbox it is going to come up if it is an explored aspect of the setting. I just mean in the kinds of sandboxes we are talking about you aren't typically going to invent an NPC on the fly in a sandbox, then invent the lore to justify the NPCs belief (that is why we keep saying things logically flow from the world: it doesn't mean everything about an NPC is going to stem from an existing fact in the setting, but if you are starting to get into an NPC religious beliefs, you are going to refer tot he setting's gods and belief systems when deciding what those are)

 

[robertsconley]

How is that impartial?

You ask how this is impartial.

I’ve already answered that upthread. If you’re not sure where to find it, I’m happy to link it. But I’m not going to repeat it, because that’s not the real issue here, and going over it again would just put us back into the same cycle that led me to write about impartiality in the first place.

What’s become clear to me is that we have a fundamental difference in philosophy when it comes to running tabletop campaigns.

You wrote:

“There is no DM impartiality when the DM is the sole source of all information. It's not possible for the DM to be impartial.”

If you believe that, then no argument I could make will convince you otherwise. Everything you’ve said makes perfect sense working from that assumption.

But my contention is this: a referee can be impartial, even as the sole source of authority. It requires specific techniques and habits, which I’ve outlined earlier in this thread.

This is a crossroads. Either you believe it’s possible for a sole authority to act impartially, or you don’t. And if that foundational point isn’t agreed on, then nothing else we’ve been debating will land, because we’re not even talking about the same thing.

If you're interested in how to maintain impartiality while being the sole authority at the table, I’m happy to share how I do it. But that conversation only works if you’re open to the idea that it can be done.

And if you're not, that’s fine too. Just be upfront about that belief. It'll help avoid frustration, especially when talking with people who do believe impartiality is possible. Because if you treat impartiality as categorically impossible, then every argument built on its possibility becomes irrelevant to you by definition.

Which brings me back to your post. I’m not addressing the specific points you raised, because unless we resolve whether impartiality is possible, nothing else matters, at least not in the discussion we’ve been having.

That said, even if we don’t agree on this point, I still think we have useful things to say to each other. There’s a wide range of techniques, tools, and system elements that work regardless of philosophy. For example, you might find my use of random tables helpful in your games. Or maybe we both have solid subsystems for something like running a formal gathering like a dress ball.

Philosophical disagreement doesn’t mean practical incompatibility.

 

[AlViking]

You have argued that a religion that would condemn a person’s family to hell if that person (but not the family) drinks a glass of mead under extreme duress is within the realm of fantasy realism.

Why isn’t a stranger that has such a pressing need that you take a drink that they would threaten your family not also within the realm of fantasy realism?

If a stranger is so dead set on making me drink they're threatening my life there must be a reason for it. Either they are bat-naughty word crazy and just like to mess with people in which case they may just decide to kill me for fun anyway or there's some other reason. The drink is really a magical potion that will turn me into a monster. Something.

Has anything like this ever come up in an actual game? Do you seriously think it would? We can always come up with hypothetical questions about things that will never happen, I can only answer how I would make a decision. In this case? Consider it from the point of view of the NPC. I would try to look at this from the point of view of the NPC. Most likely I'd think about the odds of the NPC accepting the drink taking all the details about the scenario and if I think it's uncertain roll the dice. I wouldn't do it because the plot demanded a decision one way or another since I don't have a plot.

 

[AlViking]

Here’s the post.

It was an example from this thread, not from a real game, but it mimics how such traits come to be in actual games, particularly in sandbox games.

The PCs interact with tons of minor NPCs that the GM creates on the fly and therefore don’t have existing traits. The PCs interact with NPCs that do have traits in unexpected ways that aren’t covered by those traits.

When PCs test those traits (which is a normal part of sandbox play), the GM then tries to justify the traits, including by creating lore to justify the trait.

While GMs that run sandboxes regularly have to come up with details on the fly, it doesn't mean those details can't be grounded in established or predefined fiction. The traits should generally fit the role the NPC has in society and the relationships that they would be likely to have.

Let's say you go to a dive bar and try to bribe the bartender to give you information on Bob. If this is just a typical dive bar, there's at least a good chance the bartender will give you info. But let's say that Bob is also Dread Robert who will kill anyone who looks at him funny. Suddenly a bribe doesn't have much of a chance of success if the bartender things Bob could find out. Another scenario is that the dive bar is just a front for the local thieves' guild and the bartender isn't a snitch.

But if it's just a random dive bar and Bob isn't someone important to the bartender or someone the bartender isn't frightened of? It will probably work but I might leave it up to the dice to determine because most of the time it's not a big deal but now and then you'll come across one that refuses to be a stoolie. Some of that decision making is also going to be about keeping the game moving as well, if the characters are dead set on tracking down Bob and I can't think of an in-world reason they won't be successful it may just happen automatically. It's not like every single decision a GM makes has to be set in stone according to rigid principles.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You ask how this is impartial.

I’ve already answered that upthread. If you’re not sure where to find it, I’m happy to link it. But I’m not going to repeat it, because that’s not the real issue here, and going over it again would just put us back into the same cycle that led me to write about impartiality in the first place.

What’s become clear to me is that we have a fundamental difference in philosophy when it comes to running tabletop campaigns.

You wrote:



If you believe that, then no argument I could make will convince you otherwise. Everything you’ve said makes perfect sense working from that assumption.

But my contention is this: a referee can be impartial, even as the sole source of authority. It requires specific techniques and habits, which I’ve outlined earlier in this thread.

This is a crossroads. Either you believe it’s possible for a sole authority to act impartially, or you don’t. And if that foundational point isn’t agreed on, then nothing else we’ve been debating will land, because we’re not even talking about the same thing.

If you're interested in how to maintain impartiality while being the sole authority at the table, I’m happy to share how I do it. But that conversation only works if you’re open to the idea that it can be done.

And if you're not, that’s fine too. Just be upfront about that belief. It'll help avoid frustration, especially when talking with people who do believe impartiality is possible. Because if you treat impartiality as categorically impossible, then every argument built on its possibility becomes irrelevant to you by definition.

Which brings me back to your post. I’m not addressing the specific points you raised, because unless we resolve whether impartiality is possible, nothing else matters, at least not in the discussion we’ve been having.

That said, even if we don’t agree on this point, I still think we have useful things to say to each other. There’s a wide range of techniques, tools, and system elements that work regardless of philosophy. For example, you might find my use of random tables helpful in your games. Or maybe we both have solid subsystems for something like running a formal gathering like a dress ball.

Philosophical disagreement doesn’t mean practical incompatibility.

I agree with Rob you can be impartial. Does this mean a GM is going to hit the perfect ideal of impartiality? No. It is like going north. North is the goal, it is what drives your decisions as you navigate, but you won't reach North. by the same token, you can look at two GMs and one might be clearly more impartial than another. So it is possible to strive for impartiality and work as hard as you can to maintain it. And that involves in my opinion asking yourself if you are truly being impartial when you make important decisions. I've been in games run by Gms I would label impartial and I have been in games with ones who clearly are not. And the difference is night and day

 

[FrozenNorth]

Your earlier phrasing, “character-centric storytelling”, already points to a different priority. When I read the opening of your post, my immediate thought was:

Sure, a referee can value in-world logic, but it's clearly subordinate to the goal of supporting character-centric storytelling.

That’s no different in tone or substance from my saying I prioritize world logic over a character’s narrative.

Let me express this differently: If a certain outcome enhanced a character’s narrative but flat out contradicted a fact that had been established in play, do you believe that the proponents of character-centric play would discard the fact?

I can’t speak for everyone, but definitely in my case the answer is no.

 

[robertsconley]

There is nothing wrong with making up lore on teh fly. Even in a sandbox it is going to come up if it is an explored aspect of the setting. I just mean in the kinds of sandboxes we are talking about you aren't typically going to invent an NPC on the fly in a sandbox, then invent the lore to justify the NPCs belief (that is why we keep saying things logically flow from the world: it doesn't mean everything about an NPC is going to stem from an existing fact in the setting, but if you are starting to get into an NPC religious beliefs, you are going to refer tot he setting's gods and belief systems when deciding what those are)

No there isn't anything wrong with making up lore on the fly. But with my experience with sticking to the same setting acoss decades, I find that my bias creep in. It not deliberate, but no matter how broad I try to make my foundation, there are things I just don't consider

To overcome this, I collect random tables of all kinds, organize them in useful ways, like a group for NPC personality, a group for villages, a group for temperate forests, etc. Then, I will write a program to roll on all of them at once and generate a word salad.

Reading the results acts as creative spur to overcome my bias, to consider "the road not taken" more often. But don't get me wrong, I am still the one making the content on the fly at the end. A few years back, a player noticed the difference and asked me about it. When I ask the group, they all confirm the player's impression that while the campaign still feels like me running it, the variety of stuff happening has definitely increased.

So I highly recommend developing an equivalent.

 

[AlViking]

You ask how this is impartial.

I’ve already answered that upthread. If you’re not sure where to find it, I’m happy to link it. But I’m not going to repeat it, because that’s not the real issue here, and going over it again would just put us back into the same cycle that led me to write about impartiality in the first place.

What’s become clear to me is that we have a fundamental difference in philosophy when it comes to running tabletop campaigns.

You wrote:



If you believe that, then no argument I could make will convince you otherwise. Everything you’ve said makes perfect sense working from that assumption.

But my contention is this: a referee can be impartial, even as the sole source of authority. It requires specific techniques and habits, which I’ve outlined earlier in this thread.

This is a crossroads. Either you believe it’s possible for a sole authority to act impartially, or you don’t. And if that foundational point isn’t agreed on, then nothing else we’ve been debating will land, because we’re not even talking about the same thing.

If you're interested in how to maintain impartiality while being the sole authority at the table, I’m happy to share how I do it. But that conversation only works if you’re open to the idea that it can be done.

And if you're not, that’s fine too. Just be upfront about that belief. It'll help avoid frustration, especially when talking with people who do believe impartiality is possible. Because if you treat impartiality as categorically impossible, then every argument built on its possibility becomes irrelevant to you by definition.

Which brings me back to your post. I’m not addressing the specific points you raised, because unless we resolve whether impartiality is possible, nothing else matters, at least not in the discussion we’ve been having.

That said, even if we don’t agree on this point, I still think we have useful things to say to each other. There’s a wide range of techniques, tools, and system elements that work regardless of philosophy. For example, you might find my use of random tables helpful in your games. Or maybe we both have solid subsystems for something like running a formal gathering like a dress ball.

Philosophical disagreement doesn’t mean practical incompatibility.

Personally? I would say that no GM can be 100% impartial but I also don't think any game system can be 100% impartial. Even a game that relied completely on random procedural generation is probably not completely impartial because the results of the procedure are predetermined. A game isn't likely to be successful if there's a 1 in 10 chances of any action the players declare has the result of "rocks fall, everyone dies". There are, of course, exceptions to every rule.

That doesn't mean we can't have complete impartiality as a goal and come close to it. Oh, and I have this post bookmarked if that's what you were referring to, I need to make time to read through some things.

 

[FrozenNorth]

If a stranger is so dead set on making me drink they're threatening my life there must be a reason for it. Either they are bat-naughty word crazy and just like to mess with people in which case they may just decide to kill me for fun anyway or there's some other reason. The drink is really a magical potion that will turn me into a monster. Something.

I’m simply pointing out the inherent contradiction that you seem to be willing to accept fantasy realism in one case but not in the other.

Maybe they are under a fey geas that requires them to drink alcohol with the first person they see. That seems on brand for fey.

 

[Umbran]

But, there are a number of others who have been pretty insistent on characterizing sandbox play as a very specific, narrow thing.

So, a question then...

Why do you care that your game gets called a "sandbox" or not? Is what your game gets classified as by people who aren't in it going to change your games any? Is there any value to your players for EN Worlders to call it a sandbox? Are you trying to literally (or metaphorically) sell something, and want that word to gain traction for your "sales"?

To use Shakespeare..
The tragedy of Railroad and Sandbox, Act II Scene II:

"Thou art thyself, though not Gygaxian.
What's Gygaxian? It is nor dice, nor sheets,
Nor screen, nor maps, nor any other part
Belonging to a game. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Sandbox would, were he not Sandbox call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Sandbox, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself."