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

[TwoSix]

These are both close, but there's an essential element missing that I think is the source of so much of the swirl in these discussions. The important bit is the primacy of an interactable world with immutable traits, not that the GM made up that setting.

It is an incidental part of the form (owing as much to the Czege principle as anything else) that this is usually resolved by a GM creating the setting; if there was some other means of creating a setting that could produce as compelling an appearance of completeness as a GM allows, then it would be used instead. The goal of play is served by the GM as a technology, and failure to meet it reflects a limit of the tool, not an intrinsic part of the goal. Focusing on the distribution of authority does a disservice to the gameplay loop the player is trying to engage with in the first place.

Yea, I would agree with this. The source of the setting notes isn't nearly as important as the fact that those notes can be asserted in play as a mechanic for resolution.

But I would also clarify that I generally find an extant campaign setting more palatable for my own play style over a pure DM creation because of issues of transparency as well. An exposed setting is a setting I can utilize as a player to drive play. I'm generally not looking for game play focused on discovery, whereas I think "living world" proponents consider setting discovery a major focus of play. (And from what I know of your posts, @Pedantic, I think your play orientation may be somewhat orthogonal to both those approaches.)

 

[wicked cool]

So some paper to run their games like a fist

What I don’t understand is how you handle it and what if your players protest

The tough bleep attitude doesn’t sound fun at all

Your the dm here so you should gave a gentle hand in the basics

I cast magic missile. Oops I forgot to add the 3rd missile. If your attitude is tough naughty word then that’s pretty bad. My players wouldn’t put up with that and why should they because I’m the ruler?
I guarantee if they rolled for 4 missiles and you caught it after you wouldn’t say the same

 

[hawkeyefan]

Fair enough, you care about the theme of the campaign and as result you actively promote that.

While I care that my players have fun, I don't have any particular preference for how they have fun in my settings. And yes that would include exploring the lives of Basket Weavers. So impartiality works well for me. However, because of my experience, once it becomes apparent what they are trying to do. I will help when wanted. Usually by coaching or advice outside of refereeing the campaign. Particularly if there are novices to tabletop roleplaying involved.

Sure, that makes sense based on what we've discussed in the past.

To clarify one thing, the premise of play is one that the players are on board with... in the case of Spire, I suggested a few different games to play, and asked them which they thought would be the most interesting. They chose Spire... largely based on the premise, which is closely tied to the setting. So, for me... it's less about "how they have fun" so much as "this is what we chose for the game to be about because we expect it will be fun". None of the player characters are going to retire to try to settle down and become basket weavers or anything mundane like that... or at least, if they do, they'd likely be retired and become an NPC, and the player would create a new PC to replace that one.

I think this is one of the areas where we part ways in regard to what is sandbox play. For you, I think the idea is that there's this whole world of options for the players to visit and explore. And while there are necessarily limits of some sort on the geographical space, it's generally considered to be large enough to effectively be unbounded.

For me, I don't really view that as important. Or at least not any different than what I'm doing. Like when your players agree to play in your Majestic Wilderlands campaign, they're agreeing to play in that setting, which I would take to mean an entire campaign world or at least a continent or two, with the elements that it involves. When my players agree to play in my Spire campaign, they're agreeing to play in that setting, which consists of an individual city (though one with a bleeding tear in reality beneath it, which causes some spatial and temporal wonkiness).

Leaving your Majestic Wilderlands game world isn't really an option. The players can go wherever they like within that world, subject to fictional means and resources, but they cannot leave that setting. My Spire game is no different in that regard... the players can go anywhere within Spire they like, they can pursue whatever actions they want... but they're not expected to leave the setting.

My impartiality comes in with the sense that they can go wherever and do whatever... I don't have things that they MUST interact with. When we began play, I provided them with an immediate specific goal just so we could hit the ground running, and then another goal that was more open-ended that they could pursue any way they liked. Beyond that, I never needed to prompt them in any way... they started bouncing off NPCs and factions and forming their own goals and so on. All of this revolved around the premise of play.

I like an open world setting in that sense... but I think I prefer some kind of premise to be in place rather than just "do whatever". I think games benefit when there's some mutual goal or drive that everyone agrees to. Players may have their own goals for their characters, but all within the lens of the basic premise of play.

 

[Manbearcat]

What you talked about is useful information. However, when it comes to things like "character-centric story-telling," what the poster thinks it means is more important because I am having a discussion on their points, not what somebody else said about the matter.

This is exactly why I asked earlier that people state their assumptions clearly, so we don’t have to guess what someone means by terms like “character-centric storytelling.”

In the discussion I was engaged in, the poster didn’t object to my summary of what that term meant. They criticized other points, sure, but not the definition. That tells me my understanding was accurate in the context of that conversation. If they had objected, I’d have asked for clarification before responding further.

The definitions you’re referencing are useful, but when I’m replying to someone’s post, what matters most is how they are using the term, not how it’s defined in another framework. Otherwise we end up arguing over terminology instead of engaging with the actual points being made.

Ok, I’m just landing and seeing this.

I want to clarify briefly. It’s not “character-centric” in isolation. It’s that in concert with “arc(s)” and “storytellling” where the issue arises.

I don’t have time to connect those dots, but I hope the (exhaustive amount) I’ve written on this issue can do the work. Or, if need be to clarify, someone else can connect those dots for me.

Play passionately, but hold on lightly, and play to find out what happens is a functional, system-neutral principle when it comes to players.

 

[robertsconley]

So some paper to run their games like a fist

What I don’t understand is how you handle it and what if your players protest

The tough bleep attitude doesn’t sound fun at all

Your the dm here so you should gave a gentle hand in the basics

I cast magic missile. Oops I forgot to add the 3rd missile. If your attitude is tough naughty word then that’s pretty bad. My players wouldn’t put up with that and why should they because I’m the ruler?
I guarantee if they rolled for 4 missiles and you caught it after you wouldn’t say the same

My strong recommendation is that the last paragraph yields far better result in terms of everybody having fun with the campaign.

I use the word coach deliberately. A good coach teaches techniques but leaves it to the player to practice or use them.

For example, at WizardCon 2025 last week, my second event had just two players, and both were shy and not very proactive. In a way, it was good that the other players for the event didn't show up, because these two would have likely retired to the background despite my efforts to make sure they got included.

They were unsure and not particularly decisive outside of anything they had to learn. But after the first hour, thanks to my coaching, they did quite well. My technique is to point out options, explain their consequences, and let them decide. Within the first hour, they appeared to get the hang of it, and the coaching was minimal after that.

For example, the first situation they had to deal with was an encounter with two young adults—a peasant boy and a noble girl. After they saved them from a band of marauding orcs, they were not sure what to do with them. I first told them their choices were basically anything they could do if they were standing on the road with the two. You could take them along with you. You could let them go on their way—they are following the same road you traveled to this point. You could find a place nearby that is safe for them; you passed a couple of farms and hamlets along the way. Or anything else you think of.

So they talked with the two (roleplaying in first person) and decided the best thing to do was let them go on their way, as they felt the road had been safe up until that point. But they found out the two were running away from the village they were heading to, so they decided that at some point they would let their parents know where they were.

Which was interesting, because I had run this adventure eight times before, and none of the other groups did that. Either they took them along with them to the village, or found a safe place nearby where they could stay. They were concerned about them running away, so they didn't want to let them go off on their own.

But this group was like, "OK, it’s fine you're running away, it’s safe going back the way we came, cya."

This made subsequent events in the village play out differently.

However near the end of the adventure, they were sneaking around the villian's lair, the Russet Lord and for some reason decided to talk to the cook. The only problem was that the kitchen was in earshot of the throne room where the Russet Lord was. And it wasn't as misunderstanding of a verbal description. I was using map and minis and they could see where the entrance to the throne room was and knew the Russet Lord was in there.

But after I reviewed the situation again they still went ahead and open the door to the kitchen where the Russet Lord's cook, a brownie, was cooking. The cook isn't hostile and the player handled it well in a nice bit of roleplaying and even made a friend when they gave the cook a bag of fresh apples from their rations.

But it also alerted the Russet Lord who could hear this and he summoned them into his throne. It was that moment one turned to the other and said "I guess we should have been more quiet."

In previous run throughs, this happened to another group as well, but the seven other groups took great care sneaking through that area before the final confrontation with the Russet Lord.

And the WizardCon group did trimuph over the Russet Lord although it was touch and go after the Russet Lord lightning bolted half the part. The whole encounter involved a lot of roleplaying at the beginning, and the players did an outstanding job. But the fight enused because the cost the Russet Lord was asking was too high.

Hope this answered your question.

 

[robertsconley]

Ok, I’m just landing and seeing this.

I want to clarify briefly. It’s not “character-centric” in isolation. It’s that in concert with “arc(s)” and “storytellling” where the issue arises.

I don’t have time to connect those dots, but I hope the (exhaustive amount) I’ve written on this issue can do the work. Or, if need be to clarify, someone else can connect those dots for me.

Play passionately, but hold on lightly, and play to find out what happens is a functional, system-neutral principle when it comes to players.

OK, but to be clear, my point is what mattered in that conversation, what @FrozenNorth meant by it. I had to take a guess, as it isn't a term you can just look up by googling it. And it seems like I was close enough for the conversation to continue. Because while we continued to have a debate, it wasn't about that.

 

[Campbell]

So games like Burning Wheel and Apocalypse Keys are not character centric storytelling. We're not doing things to inject drama. We're addressing the premise of the characters. There's no narrative to serve. We're playing to find out who these characters are under pressure, but it's not about drama or what makes for a satisfying narrative. It's not about character arcs. It's about following them on their journey.

Now what my home group does in our L5R, Vampire and Final Fantasy games is character centered storytelling. There is a narrative we are building together. A sense of arcs we're building to, weaving things together.

These are very very different things. The nuances of these things matter a lot to people like me. These things are being casually conflated by people in this thread.

 

[TwoSix]

Ok, I’m just landing and seeing this.

I want to clarify briefly. It’s not “character-centric” in isolation. It’s that in concert with “arc(s)” and “storytellling” where the issue arises.

I don’t have time to connect those dots, but I hope the (exhaustive amount) I’ve written on this issue can do the work. Or, if need be to clarify, someone else can connect those dots for me.

Play passionately, but hold on lightly, and play to find out what happens is a functional, system-neutral principle when it comes to players.

How I've always interpreted (and played) "character-focused", but not "arcs and storytelling" is as "Don't start with the end in mind."

I think there are some games that get framed as "The players pick their goals, and the DM just puts challenges in front of them until they do that." That's not what the target of play should be. The goal is to have players that react to the challenges right in front of them because the characters care, and have characters that change in that crucible.

 

[Thomas Shey]

There are some folks who wouldn’t consider what I do to be sandbox either. And it is a term whose useage can vary a little (I have noticed for example many 5E players have a slightly different take than many OSR people. The way I navigate it is clearly qualifying how I approach sandbox, because I get that by introducing more active drama, a lot of sandbox people are going to see that as undermining the concept (and I understand why as well because it is a subject I wrestled with myself over the years). But if you are bringing value to the table you will persuade people. You are bringing a no prep approach which I am sure will have value for certain people (like I can easily imagine a sandbox GM who simply doesn’t have the time to prepare or who is less fond of the prep part than they used to be).

Back during the days when I'd sometimes run sandboxes (its a style that requires a more self-motivating group of players than the one I have currently runs to), I'd do a lot of macro scale prep (this is the larger scale map, these are the Powers That Be, these are encounter tables, some terrain based, some customized for the quirks of a specific area) but a lot of times I'd have very little micro-scale prep done and, honestly, just pull up something that seemed appropriate when the players did something that seemed likely to run into it (I'd place a set of ruins on the map and really have nothing in particular planned for it, but the PCs would decide exploring it was interesting, so I'd roll some random encounters and elaborate on them. I didn't have every hex keyed or sometimes even any notes about particular towns (though I often had some vague ideas what they were about).

I've never been one to bother with a lot of location/situation prep until I know someone is going to use it (it they were exploring that ruin and found a stairway leading down in a crumbled tower--which I might have just made up on the spot--and it was near the end of the session and they indicated they'd want to go down and see where it lead to, then it might be worth taking the time to construct a small dungeon for next time). On the other hand, when running sandboxes, I've also never really had any, well "plans" in any real sense, so...

But if I run a horror scenario, it is very unlikely to be a sandbox. If I run a Ravenloft campaign, it won’t be as a sandbox. Sandbox is good for certain types of play but I need other approaches too

Yeah, I've mentioned before that some people seem to think RPGs begin and end at sandboxes. That pretty much walls off some whole genres and subgenres if you lean into it seriously.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The problem is, it's irrelevant when any of this was decided.

The entire point of describing the floor as rickety-looking was to slow the party down. That's the whole point. It doesn't matter if the DM did this on the fly or was reading from notes. The decision to make the floor unsafe looking was 100% the DM trying to influence how the players act. It had nothing to do with realism or anything else. It was entirely done to channel the players.

I do have to note back in the days when I was running sandboxes, I might very well do that with no real "purpose" at all, just because "it's an old unmaintained wooden building, so the floors might be bad". I don't think that meaningfully describes me trying to influence the players behavior. You can, of course, think I had a subconscious purpose there, but that's an untestable hypothesis.