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

[EzekielRaiden]

No.

Then why wouldn't real world rules apply to the real world relationship between a real world GM and a real world player?

I'm saying the trust is about a fantasy. It's about what we are imagining with the game. It isn't as if you are being asked to trust a stranger to walk next to you while hiking.

No, I'm asked to do something dramatically more intimate than that: to trust a person with control over a major chunk of my leisure time for an extended period.

Like I'm genuinely baffled how you would think "walking in a public place with people you don't know also walking toward the same or similar destinations" requires more trust than "giving someone significant emotional leverage over you and allowing them nearly total control over your enjoyment of roughly one evening a week". Frankly, I want to know what horrible places you've hiked in that you would feel any need for "trusting" anyone who happens to be hiking in the same place at the same time.

If you can't or don't trust the DM, you have no business being in that game. Distrust for no reason disrupts games. Distrust because the DM did something to earn it also disrupts games.

Again you assume my natural state is distrust. It isn't. It is 0 trust. Distrust is a far bigger thing than merely a lack of trust. It is being actively suspicious about every action, to some degree or other. I distrust a random phone call from a number I don't recognize because I know that phishing scams are a thing and I want to protect my phone number. (I have been quite successful in this regard; I only rarely get spam calls/texts, and 95% of them are for the person who had this number before me...over 11 years ago.) I distrust an unfamiliar person walking around in my front yard, examining things without any reason or justification for being on the property. (As with the previous, this is a real thing that has happened before, not some hypothetical invention, I actually have dealt with a person trespassing for reasons I could never determine, but they never came back, so I just moved on with my life.)

A DM I have just met and don't know? There is no distrust. There is no trust. There isn't anything either way, because we have no relationship yet. There is just initial courtesy, the acceptance of a tenuous situation, the allowance of some activities without comment one way or another, until enough data to begin building trust or distrust has been collected.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't know that we do have dramatically different ideas of what harm means. I provided for exceptions to my statement, so what happened to that player might fall under the exception.

We still might have dramatically different ideas of what harm means, but your example doesn't show that.

Then I don't understand. I know this sort of thing happens. I've seen it happen to several players. Both in the relatively long term past (e.g. 20+ years ago) and in the recent past as well. GM horror stories are a dime a dozen.

This is like saying "I mean I know restaurants without food safety reviews might occasionally have issues with food poisoning or allergens, but it's not like they cause harm other than that". My friend, that IS (one of) the major harms caused. Your "exception" is frustratingly commonplace.

 

[Lanefan]

I think another feature, which is brought out in your example, is that the default starting point for a certain sort of sandbox is low stakes player decision-making. Play begins with the players in a position where they need to acquire information, and they do that by making low stakes action declarations that will prompt the GM to reveal that information.

In Gygax's PHB advice on Successful Adventures, he draw an express contrast between player goals of obtaining information, and - once that information is obtained - the different, and higher stakes goal, of acquiring a particular loot, perhaps by targeting a particular dungeon denizen.

Here's a scenario that also starts in a room, with decisions to be made - but they're not low-stakes! Burning Wheel The Sword Demo Adventure PDF

When players sit down with me to play this demo, I give them the following preamble:​

​

You’ve journeyed long through this crumbling, ancient citadel, down through ruined chambers into muck-filled tubes. You arrive, at last, in the wreckage of this collapsed temple. Laying on the shattered altar, in the chamber before you, is that which you seek: The sword!​

​

After the preamble, I lay out the characters and describe each one in brief. After the players have chosen their characters, I instruct them to read their Beliefs. Then I simply ask, “Who gets the sword?”​

​

Mayhem ensues, and suddenly we’ve got game. . . .​

​

I’ve found it useful to start the scene with the whole group in the doorway to the chamber - still in the tunnel, really. The Roden, if he’s in play, should always be in the lead.​

Here are some of the Beliefs:

The Dwarven adventurer: This sword was a treasure of my clan for generations, stolen by foul Roden and abandoned here. I’ll restore it to its rightful place among my people.​

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The Elven bard: This sword was made by my father. Using its markings, I will demonstrate its origin to my companions so they cannot dispute its ownership.​

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The human gambler: Master Kogan of the gambling house is going to break my knees if I don’t pay off my debts. I’ve got to get paid in this venture! and also I was the one who figured out where this treasure was; it belongs to me!​

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The Roden cultist: To enter the Fields of Paradise, I must present my Visionary with this fabled sword.​

These players have options as to which path to follow. They can cooperate, argue, fight, try to betray one another, etc. But I don't think it has the character of a sandbox.

That demo scenario has everything required for a one-session CvC brawl (which, for an intentional one-off, could be a blast!) but I don't see much potential for anything more lasting there other than for whoever escapes with the sword.

Also, a key element of some people's play (including mine) is that not everything has to be high-stakes or even have stakes attached to it at all. High-stakes situations are, often, the climax of a long run of lower-stakes situations; and those lower-stakes situations (in the above scenario, these would be most of not all of what got the PCs to the room with the sword in it) can still be lots of fun to play through.

 

[Maxperson]

No, I'm asked to do something dramatically more intimate than that: to trust a person with control over a major chunk of my leisure time for an extended period.

We have a very different idea of what a "major chunk of my leisure time" means if you think that a few hours counts. Untrustworthy DMs reveal themselves fairly quickly and then you leave the game.

Like I'm genuinely baffled how you would think "walking in a public place with people you don't know also walking toward the same or similar destinations" requires more trust than "giving someone significant emotional leverage over you and allowing them nearly total control over your enjoyment of roughly one evening a week". Frankly, I want to know what horrible places you've hiked in that you would feel any need for "trusting" anyone who happens to be hiking in the same place at the same time.

No DM has ever had emotional leverage over me in even a minor way, let alone significant. It's a game. I don't give the DM control over my emotions. Trust yes. Control over me, no.

A DM I have just met and don't know? There is no distrust. There is no trust. There isn't anything either way, because we have no relationship yet. There is just initial courtesy, the acceptance of a tenuous situation, the allowance of some activities without comment one way or another, until enough data to begin building trust or distrust has been collected.

For me that initial courtesy is courtesy trust. I don't view it as any different than the trust I extend to my best friend who I've known for 31 years. I wouldn't suspect him of fishy DMing, and I wouldn't suspect you of fishy DMing, so where's the real difference?

I think it might be tomato tomahto at this point for how we approach new DMs. And players for that matter. As DM I extend that same courtesy trust to new players.

 

[pemerton]

Also, a key element of some people's play (including mine) is that not everything has to be high-stakes or even have stakes attached to it at all.

I'm not sure how that is an also - my post began by noting that low-stakes play is a feature of sandbox RPGing.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think it might be tomato tomahto at this point for how we approach new DMs. And players for that matter. As DM I extend that same courtesy trust to new players.

Sure as hell could've fooled me with the way you and others talk about how harmful and disruptive players are.

 

[CreamCloud0]

This is incredibly wrong. Stuff happens, but it's not forced on you. A horde is coming, leave town. Hide. Fight it. Or hear about it decimating a town 100 miles away. Just because it's happening does not mean it's happening right were you are at, or that you have to interact with it in any way.

Maybe you care that the duke's daughter is getting married because time has advanced in the game. Maybe you don't. Maybe you care that a massive hurricane struck the coast and flooded four cities and will go there to help. Maybe you won't. Maybe you happened to be there through pure happenstance.

A linear adventure has only forward and back, and a living world is so far from that it's not even funny. At no point does it ever look at all like a linear campaign.

@Hussar

i might compare 'living world' vaguely to a game like CIV, you're running around passing turns with your units(party) but meanwhile the rest of the world is still taking their turns too, typically unconcerned with what your party is doing, encountering and dealing with all their own random events, Rome angered one of their gods and is dealing with that, Asgard expanded their borders, Atlantis finalized those trade routes with Italy, Paris went to war with those hordes and got overrun, all that living world stuff happened while your guys spent a few weeks in the mountains mapping them for your pal in China.

the world turns, but it doesn't turn around the party.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

But the goal was to explore a place. You can't say that exploration doesn't count as exploration in any situation where the goal is to explore. Or, I mean, you can, but it's an argument that makes no sense.

Let me try to clarify then.

The characters were not "just exploring". They were traveling to a specific location to explore that specific location. The only reason they went to that specific location is because the DM deliberately called it out as a place of interest - it has a cool name, it's probably somewhere that would be interesting to go.

That's not exploring. Exploring isn't traveling to a specific destination.

 

[AlViking]

Correct for what?

If you mean, correct for describing how Burning Wheel plays, well I've posted the relevant rules, plus examples of play, multiple times in this thread. Including, again, just upthread of this post.

The core is that the player determines priorities for their PC, and the GM then frames scenes that speak to those priorities. The resolution system then builds on this, by way of (i) "say 'yes" or roll the dice", ie the dice are rolled when something is at stake, as determined by the player's priorities for their PC which the GM is addressing via the scene they've framed, and (ii) intent + task, with negation of intent being the key requirement for a consequence of failure.

If you want jargon to describe this, scene-framing story now is probably as good as any.

This broad approach can work for RPGs other than BW, though there will be differences that may affect the actual play experience quite a bit. As I've posted in this thread, Torchbearer is somewhat similar but certainly not identical to BW.

And here's a thread about using an approach similar to this for 4e D&D: D&D 4E - Pemertonian Scene-Framing; A Good Approach to D&D 4e

Scene-framing story now is quite the mouthful and doesn't really say anything. You use jargon like "resolution system", "player priorities", "intent + task" which, since you don't describe anything sounds just like the standard D&D play cycle. Resolution cycle is either combat, exploration or social encounters. Player priorities in a sandbox are handled by the group deciding which direction to go. Intent + task just sounds like the player declaring what their character says and does. But then you say it's all different or somehow BW is sandbox when D&D is not or cannot be.

Let's look at the answer you just gave.

Of course posters are free to conflate whatever it is that they want to conflate. But it then seems odd for them to complain about others being insufficiently sensitive to the things they care about!


I'll talk about Burning Wheel, and Torchbearer 2e.

As I've already posted, the core of BW, in terms of the (asymmetric) roles of player and GM, are set out on pp 9-11 of the (Gold) rulebook:

In the game, players take on the roles of characters inspired by history and works of fantasy fiction. These characters are a list of abilities rated with numbers and a list of player-determined priorities. . . .​

​

One of you takes on the role of the game master. The GM is responsible for challenging the players. He also plays the roles of all of those characters not taken on by other players; he guides the pacing of the events of the story; and he arbitrates rules calls and interpretations so that play progresses smoothly.​

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Everyone else plays a protagonist in the story. . . . The GM presents the players with problems based on the players’ priorities. The players use their characters’ abilities to overcome these obstacles. To do this, dice are rolled and the results are interpreted using the rules presented in this book. . . .​

D&D describes the different roles in the game in much the same way.

And in a sense, that is really it; the rest of the rules are just details, techniques for actually making this work.

So consider the necromancer Thoth (Lifepaths (5)= Born Noble, Arcane Devotee, Court Sorcerer, Rogue Wizard, Death Artist):

Beliefs​

I will give the dead new life​

Aedhros is a failure, so I will bind him to my will​

Cometh the corpse, cometh Thoth!​

​

Instincts​

Always sustain Wyrd Light (because afraid of the dark)​

Always collect bits and pieces​

Always read the Aura​

​

Character Traits​

Base Humility​

Cynical​

Inscrutable​

Spooky​

Sounds a lot like D&D's traits, bonds and flaws. However most people, myself included, only truly develop their character in play and I've found the traits and flaws or Beliefs/Instincts/Character Traits are so vague and nebulous that there's not much to build on.

Which is something you can do in a sandbox, I just don't think it's necessary. I don't build a world around characters but I do include potential threads that would speak to a specific desires.

So when I'm GMing for my friend playing Thoth, my job is to frame scenes ("present problems') based on these priorities - that in some fashion put them under pressure, or establish stakes that bear upon them more or less directly. Some of that I can do by looking to my prep and my notes - for instance, there is an established Death Cult in the setting (Hardby and surrounds in the WoG, which we have been playing in for a while now; the Death Cult is adapted from KotB, which in our setting is on the edge of the Abor-Alz), and I have NPC death priests and the like written up, and so in the last session we played of this particular game I had one of those NPCs berate Thoth for the carelessness and brazenness with which he was collecting corpses and taking them to his workshop to try and raise them as undead. That puts pressure on the belief I will give the dead new life, and also the trait base humility (perhaps also inscrutable, cynical or even spooky).

There is no sense here of an "arc" or of "telling a story". There are not obstacles in the way of some goal. Nor is there any adventure in the literal sense. There is Thoth going about his business, but not finding life easy.

Sounds similar typical D&D sandbox that most people have been describing.

The role of goal or intent, in Burning Wheel, is not in relation to how scenes are framed. Rather, it applies to resolution (as per pp 24-25, 30-31, 72):

When declaring an action for a character, you say what you want and how you do it. That’s the intent and the task. . . . Descriptions of the task are vital. Through them we know which mechanics to apply; acknowledging the intent allows us to properly interpret the results of the test. . . .​

​

A task is a measurable, finite and quantifiable act performed by a character: attacking someone with a sword, studying a scroll or resting in an abbey. A task describes how you accomplish your intent. What does your character do? A task should be easily linked to an ability: the Sword skill, the Research skill or the Health attribute. . . .​

​

what happens after the dice have come to rest and the successes are counted? If the successes equal or exceed the obstacle, the character has succeeded in his goal - he achieved his intent and completed the task.​

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This is important enough to say again: Characters who are successful complete actions in the manner described by the player. A successful roll is sacrosanct in Burning Wheel and neither GM nor other players can change the fact that the act was successful. The GM may only embellish or reinforce a successful ability test. . . .​

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When the dice are rolled and don’t produce enough successes to meet the obstacle, the character fails. What does this mean? It means the stated intent does not come to pass. . . .​

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Unless there is something at stake in the story you have created, don’t bother with the dice. Keep moving, keep describing, keep roleplaying. But as soon as a character wants something that he doesn’t have, needs to know something he doesn’t know, covets something that someone else has, roll the dice.​

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Flip that around and it reveals a fundamental rule in Burning Wheel game play: When there is conflict, roll the dice. There is no social agreement for the resolution of conflict in this game. Roll the dice and let the obstacle system guide the outcome.]​

Obviously the resolution in D&D works a bit different but what you talk about here (which I'm sure we've seen many times) but it's also quite vague. It doesn't really tell me anything. In a D&D social encounter I could say that the characters may try to bribe the guard to gain entrance via the back door and it either works or it doesn't. There's no indication or reason given as to difficulty so we're left guessing that whatever they try is possible. The text doesn't provides any limits or restrictions it just repeats that if there are stakes roll dice. Which to me indicates anything the players may want to do is possible ... which then we're vehemently told is not true.

Something being at stake sounds like "When in doubt ask for a roll", if nothing is at stake it sounds like "Don't ask for an acrobatics check to walk across the floor" from D&D.

I would also note that here you're talking about "When the dice are rolled and don’t produce enough successes to meet the obstacle, the character fails." when above it's stated there are not obstacles.

So when I, as GM, frame those scenes that are based on those priorities Thoth's player has determined, the result will be conflict - for instance, the NPC death priest berates Thoth, while Thoth is trying to persuade the priest to allow him (Thoth) to take away yet another body for practising Death Art on. The intent is that the death priest allow Thoth to take away the corpse; the task is a series of arguments and other rhetorical devices, presented and (mechanically) resolved via the Duel of Wits subsystem. If Thoth's player wins, then he achieves his intent; but as it turned out he lost soundly, and so agreed to allow the body to be laid to rest in its ancestral catacombs. (The existence of catacombs beneath the city is another bit of lore established earlier in our play in Hardby.)

There are multiple dimensions of character change in BW. One is that the player is free to rewrite Beliefs and/or Instincts at the point of any lull in the action. Another is that, among the ways to earn Persona (a type of "metacurrency") are Embodiment and Mouldbreaker (from p 64):

Embodiment​

When a player captures the mood of the table perfectly and further drives the story onward, one persona point is awarded. Moments like great speeches, desperate decisions or gruesome revenge fall into this category. This is a tough award to get, as a player really must go above and beyond in his roleplaying.​

​

Moldbreaker​

If a player comes to a point in the story where his Beliefs, Instincts and traits conflict with a decision he must make - a direction in which he must go -and he plays out the inner turmoil, the conflict within his own guts, in a believable and engaging manner, then he earns a persona point.​

​

Other players, as well as the GM, may nominate each other for this award. A majority vote at the table awards the point. To earn the reward, the player must really push his character.​

Not sure how this works when you have 6 or more players at the table since I can't possibly base scenes on the priorities of every individual player. But I also don't worry about that because the party as a group has decided current goals by choosing a plot thread.

What follows in this scene sounds a lot like social combat, with multiple steps of randomly determined results.

Metacurrency, persona points that players is quite different from the D&D idea of the character's actions and words being the only thing that matters in world.

Now, as I've already posted, I wouldn't normally think of BW as a sandbox game. It doesn't have the right sort of focus on place and journey. Torchbearer 2e, as I've also posted upthread, I think can be a sandbox. But it nevertheless has a lot of overlap with BW. Characters have a Belief, and Instinct and a Goal - each can be changed at the start of the session. And characters of 3rd or higher level have a Creed, which can be changed during a respite (roughly each 8 or so sessions). In addition, the way the game works - its interlocking resource and recovery cycles - means that all characters need loot, to pay for things. The Scholar's Guide, p 218, makes this point about how these priorities interact:

In Torchbearer, we give you four tools you can use to make your expeditions more than just loot hunts and massacres. Beliefs, creeds, goals and instincts all contain the potential to hook in players and push play to another, more intense level.​

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If, during an adventure, you find an opportunity to present a player with the choice of either playing a belief or acquiring loot, then you’ve offered what we call a meaningful decision. At this juncture, the player must decide what is most important: satisfying that belief or scoring some loot.​

Level advancement is dependent upon accruing Fate and Persona; and these are earned in the following ways, among others (pp 84-5):

When a character stands up and takes action in a manner driven by their belief, they earn one fate point. . . .​

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Making a test toward achieving a goal but not accomplishing it, earns one fate point. . . .​

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If a character acts against their belief in a dramatic fashion - if they make a decision in the game that’s counter to what they believe - and they let everyone know about their inner struggle through their performance of their character, they earn one persona point. . . .​

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A player earns a persona point for an internal crisis:​

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*If their character stands up for their creed in a moment of crisis.​

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*If their character’s creed is violated, voided or broken and they demonstrate the inner turmoil born from this revelation.​

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Adventurers do not need to succeed, but they must take clear, unequivocal action motivated by their creed to qualify for this reward.​

(Earning loot does not, in itself, play any role in PC advancement.)

Here are the Elven Dreamwalker Fea-bella's belief and creed:

Creed: These are dark times – the free peoples must stand together!​

Belief: Only the rich get anywhere in this world – I must become rich!​

And here are the Dwarven Outcast Golin's:

Creed: Elves are lost in dreams; they need grounding in reality.​

Belief: Elves are unstable!​

So the interactions and confrontations with Celedhring (Fea-bella's uncle, it turned out, now a Barrow Wight who, according to the pronouncement on the doors that lead to his tomb, "lies . . in communion with the Outer Dark"; with Megloss, the rival Dreamwalker; and with Lareth the Beautiful, the half-brother Fea-bella didn't know existed until she found reference to him in the books written by his human father, the seer Pallando, Beholder of Fates; are not just adventurous challenges. They invite responses from the players that express, embrace or struggle with these beliefs and creeds.

A question that I think some RPGers have - perhaps some in this thread, even, though I don't know - is what will make this sort of game "go"? As in, if the GM doesn't have an "arc" of adventure mapped out (like the DL modules, or many APs); or doesn't have some outcomes in mind, how does the game happen? This is where the technical details of resolution matter - by introducing consequences on a failure, the GM "reframes" the situation so as to step up pressure, or introduce new pressure, and the players respond to that with more action declarations, and so events unfold. These games aren't feasible if the action resolution methods are treated just as "advice" that the GM and player may follow, or not, as they feel like.

Related to this is that rates of failure on tests are high in these games - I don't keep a log, but I would say 50%+.

Torchbearer 2e, unlike BW, also uses events tables to help make the game go: that's part of what makes it more sandbox-y, and less intensely player-driven, than BW. But for TB2e as well as BW, the statement from the BW rules quoted above is true: There is no social agreement for the resolution of conflict in this game. The dice must be rolled. That's what drives play; not some prior conception on anyone's part of what will or "should" happen.

Again with TB, lot of text that says that they have different goals, metacurrency persona points. But you don't compare or contrast anything to D&D, you talk about resolutions but don't give concrete example and quite frankly it just becomes this wall of text that's hard to read.

There is no way I'm going to use scene-framing story now ... sorry if I'm not sorry. I guess "story now" is okay even if I think it's a pretty meaningless distinction. Meanwhile I looked up what sandbox games mean and it's pretty simple. You can read the whole blog post here but the important bit is

• Player-driven adventures: The GM lays out the toys in the sandbox (the world, NPCs, Factions, problems/adventure hooks, etc.), and the players decide what to build with those toys (the shape of the story).
• High player agency: Players are free to act and solve problems in whatever way they see fit, or not at all. There’s no need for the GM to contain the player’s creativity to meet their own expectations for the story. In fact, the GM should have no expected story in mind at all, beyond predictions towards how the world will react to the players’ plans.
• A living world: The world must react to the players’ actions, and to the players’ inaction. Regardless of what the players do, the NPCs and factions should have their own goals that they are working towards in the background, which may or may not be interrupted by the players’ own machinations. The world should not revolve around the players, but must take their presence into account. The world must always be changing, not a static background that only moves when a light is shined on it.

Which is not really focused on the mechanics, it's telling you how the game plays out and what the goal of play is.

 

[AlViking]

Then I don't understand. I know this sort of thing happens. I've seen it happen to several players. Both in the relatively long term past (e.g. 20+ years ago) and in the recent past as well. GM horror stories are a dime a dozen.

This is like saying "I mean I know restaurants without food safety reviews might occasionally have issues with food poisoning or allergens, but it's not like they cause harm other than that". My friend, that IS (one of) the major harms caused. Your "exception" is frustratingly commonplace.

I've seen plenty of people be jerks at various points in my life. It has little to do with gaming or if we are in a game whether the person is DM or not. The role of the player doesn't really change anything and who makes the final call on rules during play makes no difference. If someone is being abusive no game rule is going to make a bit of difference.