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

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

By definition, some aspects of the world are less important than others. It's simply the nature of engaging in narration, which every DM ever has had to do.

You simply cannot give equal detail to everything. You can't. It's physically impossible. Some things will be central to the ongoing unresolved situation(=conflict) and others peripheral to that situation(=color). Some things will start off as part of conflict, and become color over time, as their relevance fades. Some things will start as color and become involved in conflict over time, as their relevance grows. Some things will vacillate. It is the nature of description itself that details with less relevance get less attention.

This applies to everything, not just people. Some streets are more relevant than others in a city; most are just color, but a few are relevant enough to get stuff like names, even though (in principle) every street needs a name or number so people know where to go to get to places. Some businesses are more relevant than others. I'm sure you don't have a comprehensive employee list complete with names, backstories, hopes, dreams, etc., etc. for every tailor or even any tailoring shop in a given large city, even though you'll have rich merchants wearing fancy clothes which had to have come from such a tailoring shop at some point. Some nobles are more important than others; the party may only meet one or two of any given rank, but if it's a High Medieval European manorialism/vassalage system there will (pretty much guaranteed) be numerous barons and counts(/earls) at least, if not higher titles like marquess/marchioness or duke/duchess--but it's exceedingly unlikely that more than a small handful of the actual vassals of the King/Emperor/Grand Duke/etc. will ever get names, let alone titles and lands and retinues etc.

None of this means "color" is unimportant collectively. Color as a whole is exceedingly important. You can't neglect it. Let me repeat that: you cannot neglect color if you want a successful experience. But just because you can't neglect it doesn't mean it gets the same intensity or quantity (or quality!) of effort. In the world of storytelling proper, as in writing novels or screenplays or the like, you can almost always tell when someone has neglected the color and focused only on the so-called "important" bits. It will feel simpler, and if that becomes noticeable, it'll probably feel hollow. Sometimes minimal color is fine; little to nothing is made of the other vassals of King Claudius in Hamlet, for example, or indeed a variety of other topics that should be Very Relevant to the heir to the throne, and nobody's taking Shakespeare to task for failing to lift a finger to describe that stuff. Conversely, sometimes color really does need to be absolutely everywhere in order to make a world feel concrete and grounded, and (as always) Tolkien remains the standard by which we judge fantasy stories for that, where he poured out thousands of hours on things that really, genuinely, don't matter to the conflict of the story (like the different branches of the Elven languages and how they diverged from one another), but are a huge part of why the story feels weighty and meaningful.

Recognizing that color isn't part of the core of the story doesn't mean color is meaningless. It's not. It's supremely meaningful. It's just not the beating heart of the story. It's the periphery. Calling it such isn't an insult. It's simply a fact.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

That was my bad. I thought you were talking about real rules. While I don't shout, neither do I keep it down in a library. Similarly, I walk in the exit doors at stores all the time. Rules without consequences don't mean anything.

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.

This I agree with you about. They do do wrong things, but they also learn from their mistakes and then do better, because they aren't abusive DMs.

It's that 0.1% that are pretty much the entire problem, and they don't pay attention to rules.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

If that 1-to-5 ratio holds up then clearly, absent any other factors, there's going to be about 5 times as many bad players as bad DMs, hm?

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.

The answer, of course, is to play with people you know, preferably live rather than online. And if none of those people want to play with you then it's probably time for a long hard look in the mirror.

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.

If a DM is phenomenal at 9 out of 10 things it's probably worth letting the 10th thing slide as that DM is a keeper; most DMs are phenomenal at only a few things (or, like me, at probably none) and are simply good enough to get by at the rest.

Other than that, you're always going to hit situations where what's fine for one person is awful for another. I mean, you're on record as greatly disliking character death; which while fine for you personally could mark you as a problem player at some tables where characters dying all the time is a simple fact of...er...life.

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.

Where I've learned to mostly just ignore the minor stuff and not let it fester, because nobody's perfect.

 

[Maxperson]

yes, but the premise was that the decision was not impartial to begin with (“If a GM is railroading and the players make an attempt to overcome an obstacle that follows the rails and the GM decides that it automatically succeeds, is that not still a railroad?”)

I just saw this. What you describe might or might not be impartial and/or a railroad. If the player describes what his PC is doing in such a way that it should automatically succeed, then the isn't being biased about saying yes. If the player describes what his PC is doing in such a way that the outcome is in doubt, and the DM says the PC automatically succeeds, then he is being biased in the outcome since success was a possibility. If the player describes an auto fail, but the DM auto succeeds it anyway, that would be forcing the PC down a rail.

 

[Lanefan]

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

Yes.

I was, in effect, doing both at once. It's possible.

Exploration doesn't have to be detailed. I'd never seen the Iowa cornfields before driving through Iowa for the first time; now I have a sense of what they're really like even though I never walked around in one.

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.

Powell's is the big bookstore in Portland, right?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

If that 1-to-5 ratio holds up then clearly, absent any other factors, there's going to be about 5 times as many bad players as bad DMs, hm?

But each DM encounters more players, and each player encounters few DMs. The effects are precisely equal and opposite, and thus cancel out.

The answer, of course, is to play with people you know, preferably live rather than online. And if none of those people want to play with you then it's probably time for a long hard look in the mirror.

Really, now? Really. You're going to accuse anyone who doesn't have a large, physically-present, local group of good friends who are all already invested in one specific game system of having character faults?

Is that really the argument you want to make? Because it sounds to me like you're saying anyone who hasn't lived exactly the same life as you must have a damaged character. That's not a great argument to be making. In fact, I would call it openly insulting.

If a DM is phenomenal at 9 out of 10 things it's probably worth letting the 10th thing slide as that DM is a keeper; most DMs are phenomenal at only a few things (or, like me, at probably none) and are simply good enough to get by at the rest.

Aaaaaand now we get EXACTLY the problem I just called out.

"It's probably worth letting the 10th thing slide". Yes. That was the point. Addressing this through social contract means the times problems DO happen, we have to let them slide. We have to focus on the good and never pay attention to the bad. We have to stop being such complaining whiners bringing down the mood and rocking the boat etc., etc., etc.

That is precisely the problem. It's literally what I posted about in that very post.

Other than that, you're always going to hit situations where what's fine for one person is awful for another. I mean, you're on record as greatly disliking character death; which while fine for you personally could mark you as a problem player at some tables where characters dying all the time is a simple fact of...er...life.

There is a dramatic difference between "DM who does something seriously Not Good" and "DM who has tastes and preferences that won't be for everyone."

Stop trying to turn "DM secretly fudges all the time to force the outcome they want" into being precisely identical to "DM runs a system where deaths are commonplace." The former is a behavior problem. The latter is merely a difference of taste. These two things are not the same.

Where I've learned to mostly just ignore the minor stuff and not let it fester, because nobody's perfect.

Except that ignoring it is precisely what MAKES it fester!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yes.

I was, in effect, doing both at once. It's possible.

But the two are different things. You have now explicitly recognized that fact.

"I am going to place X" isn't exploring. "I am looking around at stuff that strikes my fancy" is. While you may incidentally do some exploring on the way to a destination, it is just that--incidental. The point of the journey is the destination, and as Hussar was pointing out, the vast majority of that journey is focused entirely on reaching the destination, not on finding out interesting information about the local areas you pass through to get there.

Exploration doesn't have to be detailed. I'd never seen the Iowa cornfields before driving through Iowa for the first time; now I have a sense of what they're really like even though I never walked around in one.

Okay. I never said otherwise?

Powell's is the big bookstore in Portland, right?

The "City of Books" is, yes. Powell's in general is a whole franchise of bookstores with many locations. The one in Portland is special because the building covers an entire city block and is several stories tall. (Of course, a significant portion if that space is their book warehouse and/or textbook-focused sales, which aren't generally of much interest to the casual book-shopper like I usually am when I go there--but none of that diminishes the fact that it's a bloody huge bookstore.)

 

[Hussar]

Was anyone arguing that this must be the case in all games, or were they arguing that their preference is to play like that?

They were arguing that all sandboxes MUST be played like that. It was repeatedly stated. To the point where I pointed out that something added to the game - a squeaky floor- wasn't objective, by the words of the person advocating that the DM in a sandbox must always be objective, and I get dog piled.

I totally agree that in adjudicating rules, the DM absolutely should strive to be objective. But in setting creation? There is little to no objectivity. DM's add things to the game that they think will be of interest to the players. That, right there, makes the notion of "objectivity" a non-starter.

In a sandbox game where the DM was actually objective about setting creation, you would find interesting stuff to do just about as often as you found nothing of interest. Because, well, that's the way an objective world works. Yet, that doesn't ever seem to happen. We have endless random encounter tables, every location on the map is something interesting and has some sort of adventure in or around it. The Keep on the Borderlands has the Caves of Chaos within easy walking distance.

Because of course it does. We're playing a game. A game where most of the time nothing happens, which is what an objective world would look like, would be boring. So, no, we're not objective when we create worlds. We create worlds to DO stuff in. That's the point of that world.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

In a sandbox game where the DM was actually objective about setting creation, you would find interesting stuff to do just about as often as you found nothing of interest. Because, well, that's the way an objective world works.

Indeed, you would find pretty much nothing of interest much more often than you find anything interesting. Because that is the nature of the real world. The vast, vast majority of locations, events, processes, and interactions are completely uninteresting. Hell, human beings spend, on average, a third of their lives laying down in dark rooms doing nothing. They spend hours and hours on trivial, boring tasks like cooking or cleaning. A meal takes far longer to cook than it does to consume.

Most of the world is, fundamentally, boring as hell. This is a supremely good thing for us folks actually living in that world. If most of the world were interesting, it would instantly become overwhelming. It's good that we only spend a small proportion of our lives focused on interesting things.

But this has a critical consequence for so-called "realistic" games: You either have to show all of that nitty-gritty detail, the hours and hours of boring empty nothing between moments of interest....or you have to in some way not show all of that. This isn't "you either show all of it or you show none", to be clear: I'm just saying, either you roleplay out every sleep and every urination and every KP duty...or you choose, to some extent or other, to not show all of it.

And as soon as you make that step, no matter how little, you have started filtering out what is uninteresting from what is interesting. You have started selecting parts of the world to be the central focus, and other parts to lie on the periphery, untouched or at least touched far less than the central stuff.

That choice is not and cannot be objective. Because, in our world, objectively, no piece of information is or can be "central". It's all equally happening. But a game is not and cannot be about literally everything--and even if it could be, pretty much nobody would want that.

We are embarked, @SableWyvern. We cannot choose not to filter--we have to filter if the game is going to be remotely comprehensible, let alone fun. But as soon as we have a filter, any filter at all, the question becomes what are you filtering for, and why?

And in essentially all cases, that filter is filtering out things which aren't interesting enough to be worth talking about, which is subjective. Indeed, we're filtering out an enormous amount of information--nearly all of it, actually. No game, no matter how richly-detailed, comes even remotely close to being actually any kind of simulation of a world. But it can give the impression of being a really good world-simulation. And that impression is subjective.

 

[SableWyvern]

They were arguing that all sandboxes MUST be played like that. It was repeatedly stated. To the point where I pointed out that something added to the game - a squeaky floor- wasn't objective, by the words of the person advocating that the DM in a sandbox must always be objective, and I get dog piled.

Well, as stated, as far as I'm concerned, if anyone is actually claiming all sand boxes must be created and GMed with complete, 100% impartial objectivity at all times, they're flat out wrong. I haven't seen anyone claiming that but, if I missed it, I stand in opposition to such statements.

But in setting creation? There is little to no objectivity. DM's add things to the game that they think will be of interest to the players. That, right there, makes the notion of "objectivity" a non-starter.

Indeed, you would find pretty much nothing of interest much more often than you find anything interesting. Because that is the nature of the real world. The vast, vast majority of locations, events, processes, and interactions are completely uninteresting. Hell, human beings spend, on average, a third of their lives laying down in dark rooms doing nothing. They spend hours and hours on trivial, boring tasks like cooking or cleaning. A meal takes far longer to cook than it does to consume.

Most of the world is, fundamentally, boring as hell. This is a supremely good thing for us folks actually living in that world. If most of the world were interesting, it would instantly become overwhelming. It's good that we only spend a small proportion of our lives focused on interesting things.

Within the playstyle being discussed (ie, one were the GM is aiming to act as impartial arbiter), you decide on a setting, you create ground rules for it and then you develop it according to those rules. You may choose some set of rules for development that exist independently of yourself as referee/worldbuilder but, the fact remains, you are picking your ground rules and axioms on the assumption that they will result in an entertaining game. This is self-evident; I honestly don't believe anyone in this thread is arguing otherwise.

But this has a critical consequence for so-called "realistic" games: You either have to show all of that nitty-gritty detail, the hours and hours of boring empty nothing between moments of interest....or you have to in some way not show all of that. This isn't "you either show all of it or you show none", to be clear: I'm just saying, either you roleplay out every sleep and every urination and every KP duty...or you choose, to some extent or other, to not show all of it.\

"Realistic" in this context doesn't mean "exactly like the real world in every way". This, also, should be quite self-evident.

.or you choose, to some extent or other, to not show all of it.

Yes, you do. And this is something else that is also so completely self-evident that perhaps it's worth interpreting other people's comments with the assumption that they understand this, and simply don't feel the need to state such self-evident things.

But, I'm not really interested in getting into an ongoing semantic debate about this kind of minutiae. All I'm really seeing here are a bunch of straw man arguments. "You can't be objective unless you're 100% objective." "Your world can't be or feel realistic unless it's 100% like real life." These aren't positions anyone actually holds.

I was only drawn into this discussion because of the claim that exploration isn't exploration if the goal is to explore. @Hussar seems to have clarified they don't really hold that position and, in any case, I've reach the end of my interest in that semantic argument, so I will leave you all to it.