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

[EzekielRaiden]

Harmful and disruptive DMs won't have nearly as many such stories to tell as they won't have had the opportunity to acquire them; given that their players will likely all have left long since.

Er...no.

Firstly, every DM has many, many players--usually five times as many, at least. The odds that a given DM will encounter a bad player are much higher than that any player will encounter a bad DM. Like, if we consider both groups to be 90% amazing and only 10% poor-or-worse, then any given player would need to go through 6-7 distinct games to even have a 50% chance of getting a poor-or-worse DM. By comparison, a GM only needs 6-7 distinct players to have better-than-even odds of running into a poor-or-worse player, meaning a single campaign could easily do the trick! Given most campaigns last at least a couple months, and usually rather longer, a player could go years between bad GMs. A GM running multiple pickup games could run into multiple bad players every year.

Second, and more important to this specific bit? The chronic DM shortage means no bad DM will actually suffer from lack of players. Like...ever. They can just keep shopping around, and new players will still appear. The one and only way to achieve what you're talking about is to exclusively work in a tight-knit public gaming community, e.g. an FLGS situation or library or the like specifically where the gamers there actively engage with one another on the regular, where word-of-mouth reputation will eventually drive out the bad apples. Any other situation--even an FLGS, but one where most games are totally disconnected from each other and nobody really communicates between/across groups--reputation cannot achieve the result you speak of, and thus the same bad DM will keep cycling back in. If the well of players dries up there, they'll look elsehwere, or go online, where there are nigh-infinite hordes of players desperate to get a DM/GM/ST/etc. of some kind.

Not-so-harmful DMs, however, can keep going for the long term and over time will inevitably encounter all sorts of different player types, some of which in hindsight (or even in the moment) their games would have been better without.

What about slightly harmful DMs? DMs with one or two nasty habits, but otherwise good people? DMs who are absolutely phenomenal at 9 out of 10 things, but they do nothing by halves, so the 10th thing is painfully, aggressively bad? What about DMs that genuinely mean well, but have built up bad beliefs about what they "have" to do in order to make a game good? What about DMs who sincerely believe that their player-antagonistic behavior is actually good, and would stop if they ever were given evidence that their behavior is actually bad?

Because that's the problem with offloading EVERYTHING to the social contract. It's not the absolute dirt-worst scum of the earth folks. Those rarely get to the point of even being able to cause trouble, because they screw up so badly so quickly.

It's the people who are mostly good but with a few really really bad points, or the people who fully sincerely mean well but do bad things thinking they're good things, or the people who believe they have to do some things they think are bad in order to get the best result, or the people who are just kinda below-average without being so bad as to raise any red flags (what one might call yellow flags everywhere, but not a single red). Those are the people the social contract struggles mightily to deal with--and which rules are in fact quite helpful to assist with. Because those people are all the kind that, intentionally or not, do some bad stuff behind the black box, which the social contract simply can't deal with. The very fact that it IS black-boxed IS what makes the social contract struggle so badly to deal with it.

Dragging that into the light IS what helps us address those issues. And I've learned, much more keenly than I would like, that the one thing the social contract resists more than anything else is dragging stuff into the light that would "lower the mood" or "disrupt" things or "make mountains out of molehillls" when it's really more like mountains getting passed off as molehills.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Only because there are real world consequences for violating those rules.

Nope.

There are functionally no real-world consequences for violating the rules about being quiet in a library. The only consequence for 99.9% of violators is dirty looks and social disapproval. Yet the rules still stand, and people not only obey them, they actively discourage disobedience in others.

They make a difference with DMs who will follow or mostly follow the rules. The DMs who care about the game and the players. Not with abusive DMs.

Abusive DMs are 0.1%.

DMs who care about the game and the players but still do wrong things benefit from rules.

Those people are DRAMATICALLY more common than "abusive" DMs.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Ideally the map is strewn with places that have cool-sounding names,

Not really sure what difference that makes.

The first time I drove from here to Indianapolis for GenCon (both a route and area I'd never seen before) it sure felt like exploring.

But were you exploring? Or were you driving to Indianapolis for GenCon?

Because when I'm "exploring" something--be it physical or abstract--I'm fundamentally moving without a specific destination, if a side-path comes up that interests me, I'll take it. E.g. I was exploring Powell's City of Books (lovely place for anyone that likes reading...which I'd assume includes most of us on this forum!) and decided to go into a room I'd never been in before to see what kinds of books were there. They didn't end up interesting me, but it was still interesting and worthwhile to take a look.

Now, once you got to Indianapolis, I'm sure you had time to do other things besides GenCon, and thus you may have (say) gone exploring the restaurant scene or looked for a park or something to relax in for a little while or whatever. That would certainly be exploring! But it would be exploration disconnected from the journey to GenCon, because that was a journey with a specific destination in mind and no interest in forking off on whatever road sounded interesting or exciting.

 

[robertsconley]

Can you please stop posting false things about me, and what I've said in this thread?

What I've actually said, in this thread, is that a sandbox is a game which foregrounds place and journeying, and player choices about those things. And I've identified various possible approaches - classic hexcrawl, Ironsworn, Torchbearer - and haven't ruled out others.

Given that I hate classic hexcrawling, and have never played Ironsworn, I don't see how you can say that I am saying sandboxes must be what I prefer. And I've also posted that my favourite FRPG is Burning Wheel, which is not a sandbox RPG at all!

Since a link wasn't supplied, I had to search the thread. @pemerton is probably referring to this.

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:

While not a definition, as he is saying what BW is not, the phrasing implies that it’s a campaign that focuses on place, the locations in the world, and journeying, the act of traveling from one place to another, along with the choices players make about where to go.

All these elements are part of a sandbox campaign, but it is not the whole picture and omits crucial details.

In the living world sandbox campaigns I run, what matters just as much, if not more, is that the world has a life of its own. In short, life doesn't wait around for the players. NPCs move on with their goals, whether the players, as their character, interacts with them or not. If the players ignore a brewing war or leave a town in trouble, those things still play out. They don’t freeze until the players come back. That’s the heart of it: a World In Motion, reacting to what the players do or don’t do as their characters.

To focus on traveling to locations for adventuring paints an incomplete picture. As I stated previously in Post #3,745, the crucial difference is that the system used by BW and Torchbearer mandates conflict (as defined by those two systems) as central focus. Everything that is prepped, adjudicated, or roleplayed is focused on that. In contrast, conflict in sandbox campaigns is emergent, resulting from the situations that the players, as their characters, choose to get involved with. These two goals are not compatible and lead to different techniques being emphasized or used.

What do sandbox campaign focus on well there are several variation including my own living world style. But all of the share a common focus on allowing the players as their characters to set the direction of the campaign by their choices. In otherwords conflict (as defined by BW/TB) is emergent from what the players choose to do as their character.

Now I use the phrase "as their characters" a fair amount. What does it mean? What it doesn't mean is first-person roleplaying. That is a stylistic choice that different groups may or may not use. I emphasize it in my living world campaigns. Others do not. What it means is that decisions are made in the first person. In other words, the players consider the situation that their character is in and decide what their character would do solely on the basis of what their character knows, what they are capable of, and using any goals or beliefs defined for the character. They may be expressed in the third person, the first person, etc. But it is the viewpoint of the character at that moment that is the foundation for the choice.

This is why conflict is emergent, one choice leads to one kind of conflict, and another choices leads to a different conflict. The nature of either conflict will be shaped by the situation not the character.

All of this is adjudicated by an impartial referee. As I noted in my previous post, the criticism levied here is that players' goals are always subordinate to the referee's goals. What is being forgotten in this criticism is that players always have a choice. The referee doesn't make it for them. Because the referee is impartial, if the player decides to go left instead of right as their character, the referee will respect that choice and describe the new situation accordingly.

 

[SableWyvern]

Because this wasn't actually the point of what I was trying to explain.

The point that was being made is that the DM must strive to be absolutely objective in setting creation. That the world should exist outside of the players and their characters. And that world should have nothing to do with the characters unless the players decide to interact with it.

My argument is that setting design is never objective. That the DM will always create material based on the DM's predilictions and biases and that's a good thing. The DM SHOULD be creating game worlds that are interesting and that the players want to interact with.

The problem was, that whole point got lost in the weeds in this whole exploration side bit which was never the actual point in the first place.

Well, my counterpoint remains similar.

You say that "The point that was being made is that the DM must strive to be absolutely objective in setting creation. That the world should exist outside of the players and their characters. And that world should have nothing to do with the characters unless the players decide to interact with it."

Was anyone arguing that this must be the case in all games, or were they arguing that their preference is to play like that? I'm confident it is the latter and, if anyone is actually arguing the former it is, again, ridiculously simple to show that there are other, perfectly valid methods of playing games.

If I'm right, and these people are simply explaining their preference, I will ask you the same question I just asked about exploration -- why do you feel it so important to prove that the method of play they prefer doesn't even exist? Do you honestly believe these people (and there are a lot of them, with combined centuries of actual play experience) are all deluded and don't comprehend what it is they're really doing, and need to be shown they're delusional? Or is it possible that, just maybe, they understand what they're doing and the thing they're doing results in a style of play they enjoy?

If, in order to prove your point, you find yourself arguing that exploring something doesn't count as exploration if the goal is to explore; or arguing that travelling through a new area in the real world is not a form of exploration, it might be worth considering that your entire position is on shaky ground.

Personally, if I say that my setting design, and the way I run games, is fair, impartial and objective, I mean that I intentionally strive to be fair, impartial and objective; that I feel I manage to be fair, impartial and objective enough; that my players feel that I'm being fair and objective and that, as a result of these efforts, my game has a particular style and feel that I and my players enjoy. Someone who turns and around and says to me something along the lines of "Oh, but you're not really 100% objective, everyone has biases, so everything you claim you do is impossible and you should embrace your predilections and biases," then I just feel I'm speaking to someone with no capacity to understand gameplay experiences or perspectives outside their own.

If you can point me towards anyone actually claiming it's the responsibility of every GM "be absolutely objective in setting creation" I will happily join you in disagreeing with them. However, perhaps you should consider that some of us who do things a little differently to you actually understand what we're doing and have discovered through years and decades of play that the methods we use work very well.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Nope.

There are functionally no real-world consequences for violating the rules about being quiet in a library. The only consequence for 99.9% of violators is dirty looks and social disapproval. Yet the rules still stand, and people not only obey them, they actively discourage disobedience in others.

Abusive DMs are 0.1%.

DMs who care about the game and the players but still do wrong things benefit from rules.

Those people are DRAMATICALLY more common than "abusive" DMs.

Well, you are welcome to only engage in play that uses codified rules in the text to keep these DMs from doing the wrong things. That method does not appeal to all of us.

 

[The Firebird]

Yes, I'm idiosyncratic whereas you and others are universal and objective!

In this case your definition of railroading appears highly idiosyncratic. That's not to say ours is objective. Just more widely used. Ime.

At that point, there is no shared fiction. There's just a note in a book.

So are we adding another term to your statement--the essence of a railroad is GM control over the shared fiction?

This action declaration presupposes that there is a goblin, and a pit trap.

Yes, I assumed they were defined previously. Does it matter by whom?

3) and (4) introduce new bits of fiction, but they represent the bare minimum that a player can do in a RPG - that is, declare what their PC is trying to do.

Ok, but they are still players exercising control over the shared fiction, hence not railroading by the definition you offered.

I suppose you'll say you're defining it as a spectrum, and on the spectrum this is rather close to railroading, and therefore you describe it as railroading.

Anyway I'm feeling I'm much more interested in trying to get you to give a definition of railroading than you are. So unless you are interested I'll end this bit of the conversation.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Well, you are welcome to only engage in play that uses codified rules in the text to keep these DMs from doing the wrong things. That method does not appeal to all of us.

Again you use "keep"--as in, totally absolutely permanently prevent. Perfection, as always, used to completely dismiss useful tools that help.

Perhaps it would be useful to the conversation if you stopped treating it as perfection, and instead treated it as exactly what I've always said it is. A useful tool. Something helpful in the toolbox.

Because this "rules are the worst thing ever, stop" stance is getting pretty tiresome when it so heavily depends on always dismissing all rules as icky bad things that hold people back from ever doing anything cool or fun or beneficial.

 

[The Firebird]

Yes, I did this. It almost killed the game, because the upshot was a near-TPK, not due to any misplay by the players but solely due to the overwhelming power of the NPCs. (Which, of course, is not an "objective" thing - it followed from my prior choices as GM, in the manner @hawkeyefan described upthread.)

Because we were all friends, the game survived, but the whole thing left a sour taste in everyone's mouth - especially the players.

Were.the potential consequences telegraphed to the PCs beforehand? I find that can reduce these sorts of scenarios. Unless there was really no way they could have known they'd anger the faction until after the action had taken place?

 

[The Firebird]

It's not a "meta division". It's an analytic characterisation of the role that the NPCs actually served during the course of play. It's not unique to Burning Wheel; it's a feature of RPGing.

It's not a characterization that I find useful to my games. Indeed I find it actively harmful, because it encourages me to treat some aspects of the world as less important. My goal is to present the world impartially, so asking myself "is this important or just color" is working against that.

Or maybe color is one of those jargon terms that means something very specific to you. In this case I'm not sure what it is. If you do mean something specific, a concise definition would be helpful.