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

[Maxperson]

But all of those responses are 100% sourced from the DM. There is no impartiality, other than whatever the DM considers to be impartial. Those "naturally emerging outcomes" are completely coming from the DM. They aren't natural at all. They are 100% dependent on the DM to create them. That's neither natural nor impartial.

True, the DM can strive to be impartial. Absolutely. But, there's no check on that. There's no way to know that the DM is being impartial or not. We can hope that the DM is being impartial. And, I suppose, so long as the players are happy, questions of impartiality are largely moot. But, at no point is this process impartial or natural.

What the DM feels is impartial can in fact be impartial. Knowing whether he is or is not being impartial doesn't change the level of impartiality that the DM is giving.

When I run NPCs, I know the personalities that the important NPCs have, as well as their motives and desires. I will roleplay interactions with the PCs as someone with those traits would react. Personally, though, I have no desires for how the outcome will be.

If the party goes to the local lord to persuade him to do something, I don't desire them to succeed. I don't desire them to fail. I don't desire them to partially succeed. I don't desire a fight. I don't desire a fight not to happen. What happens, happens based on what the PCs say and do, as well as what the NPCs goals, desires and personality are. It's fun to see what develops.

 

[Hussar]

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.

Fair enough. I can see that the GM can strive to be impartial but I see it is aspirational not something you can ever achieve in a system where the GM is not constrained in any meaningful way to actually be impartial.

Which I suppose is a rather long winded way I’d agreeing to disagree.

 

[Hussar]

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."

Well I care because I got accused more than a couple of times of onetruewayism and accused of denigrating play styles and games. Things I never actually did. But when some of the same people who have accused me of these things then tell me that I’m not even capable of running a sandbox, the hypocrisy becomes pretty apparent.

So that’s why I care.

 

[Hussar]

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.

But that’s not the example. There’s no misunderstanding here. @Lanefan specifically stated why he described the floors that way.

 

[Hussar]

No. It's almost always going to be to see if the guard is bribable in the first place.

If the guard is known by the DM to be bribable, there isn't going to be a roll. The guard is bribable and you just negotiate the amount.

If the guard is known by the DM to not be bribable, there isn't going to be a roll. The PCs fail.

It's when it's some schlub guard that the DM has no idea if he's bribable or not that there is a roll. If they beat the DC, he's bribable. If they fail, he isn't.

Wow. I do not play that way. It never occurred to me to play that way. How does my persuasion check determine the moral character of an npc?

 

[pemerton]

This is my issue with the discussion. I am happy to smooth out disagreements and not impose my sensibilities on others. But our I agree with this. This kind of terminology does not feel like an adequate description for what I ma doing

For years, many posters have queried the use of terms like "narrative game" and "narrative mechanic" and "story" and "storytelling" and "arc" and the like, by you and other posters. Most recently @Manbearcat not very far upthread of this post I'm replying to.

Presumably there is some reason why you and other posters continue to use that terminology.

Others also have their own reasons for using the terminology that they do.

 

[Hussar]

Except that a whole lot of people 1) enjoy discovering things and uncovering information, and 2) enjoy setting their own goals based on a sandbox situation.

I've played in groups who sat down and looked at a map, then said things like, "The Forest of Bone Garden" sounds interesting, let's go and see what's there." We had a blast.

Of course.

What they didn’t do was point to an unmarked bit of forest on the map and say, “hey let’s go here!”

They went to an obvious point of interest that the dm had prepared (or at least named). Had the forest not been named, you wouldn’t go there.

Iow, the content is still generated by the dm. You weren’t just exploring. You had a specific goal in mind.

 

[Hussar]

I guess, at the end of the day, I just don’t see what the problem is with admitting that the dm is never really impartial. To me it’s far more important to realize that no I’m never really impartial and recognize that.

From there I can see how my biases are impacting play and try to ameliorate those biases.

A living world, to me, cannot be even remotely impartial because all of those events have a single source. And that source will have biases. @Bedrockgames above mentioned he would never use zombie hordes. That’s a bias. Others have mentioned various options they would or would not do. These are all biases.

And that’s perfectly fine. It’s totally understandable. But to then pretend that these aren’t biases, by trying to hide behind claims of “realism” or whatnot that are anything but, are not helpful.

I see it more that a certain subset of gamers has staked out certain terms as good and definitional to their play styles and then fiddle with the definitions to support that.

 

[The Firebird]

I guess, at the end of the day, I just don’t see what the problem is with admitting that the dm is never really impartial. To me it’s far more important to realize that no I’m never really impartial and recognize that.

From there I can see how my biases are impacting play and try to ameliorate those biases.

A living world, to me, cannot be even remotely impartial because all of those events have a single source. And that source will have biases. @Bedrockgames above mentioned he would never use zombie hordes. That’s a bias. Others have mentioned various options they would or would not do. These are all biases.

And that’s perfectly fine. It’s totally understandable. But to then pretend that these aren’t biases, by trying to hide behind claims of “realism” or whatnot that are anything but, are not helpful.

I see it more that a certain subset of gamers has staked out certain terms as good and definitional to their play styles and then fiddle with the definitions to support that.

Your definition of impartial and bias may be defensible in a Platonic sense. But it says that authorship itself can't be considered unbiased. Any novel will be; any film will be; any game setting will be.

Because it captures all possible types of bias, including things like "I had a bad experience with a zombie movie as a kid", it isn't practical for examining the types of bias that we may (or may not, not legislating here) find most worrying in RPGs.

For example, things like creating a secret passageway so the PCs can achieve their goals, or declaring a gelatinous cube migration so they can't.

When I say I want realism or unbiased play, I'm really talking about these other things.

Likewise, when we say a documentary or book is biased, it typically means something like "author X is neglecting key pieces of the story because of their views", rather than "Hemingway's background in WWI influenced his writing".

 

[AlViking]

For years, many posters have queried the use of terms like "narrative game" and "narrative mechanic" and "story" and "storytelling" and "arc" and the like, by you and other posters. Most recently @Manbearcat not very far upthread of this post I'm replying to.

Presumably there is some reason why you and other posters continue to use that terminology.

Others also have their own reasons for using the terminology that they do.

It's not like there's a dictionary of terms for people to use. It doesn't help that if someone doesn't use the "correct" term we aren't told what term should be used we're just repeatedly told we're wrong.

So if people are using the term narrative or character driven incorrectly maybe you should clearly explain what terms you feel are correct.