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

[EzekielRaiden]

Respectfully, I think you are getting this impression because you are reading a stricter definition of realism into the fixed world approach than anyone has suggested is necessary. Micah mentioned choosing an option than wouldn't bring the campaign to a halt if there were multiple realistic choices. I'm on board with that, and I think AlViking, others, would be as well. Obviously people want a world that is not strictly realistic in that it has interesting adventuring sites too.

Again, I don't think that's at all obvious--and I think numerous people in this thread have pretended that that not-strictly-realistic element is a teeny teeny tiny fraction, a "9% vs 99%" sort of distinction, when it's significantly closer to a "50% vs 60%" distinction--still a very meaningful improvement, but not a near-total-removal, indeed only removing a relatively modest proportion of the (alleged) unrealism.

In many cases here, I find several things being overlooked because of their supposed obviousness or self-evidentiality, but then I see arguments which absolutely do not act like those allegedly obvious or self-evident things are even a consideration.

 

[The Firebird]

It's not that I'm judging your approach (or anyone's approach) for not being 100% realism. It's that I'm judging an argument for a particular approach, which claims that it can get VASTLY ENORMOUSLY superior percentage realism, when in actuality it's trading one point here, two points there, while large percentages remain unavoidably non-realist, even before we consider the outright fantastical elements.

And for that matter, I don't think anyone has made the argument that it has a vastly enormously superior percentage realism. Certainly not with all caps! The point is more about the orientation of the player to the game world than % realism. The world should feel independent of the player. That's pretty easy to achieve by making it so the players don't define key elements of the world during play. Prior is ok.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And for that matter, I don't think anyone has made the argument that it has a vastly enormously superior percentage realism. Certainly not with all caps! The point is more about the orientation of the player to the game world than % realism. The world should feel independent of the player. That's pretty easy to achieve by making it so the players don't define key elements of the world during play. Prior is ok.

@Micah Sweet, @Lanefan, and @robertsconley absolutely have made that argument. I'm fairly sure @mamba also has.

They have explicitly rejected approaches like those described by @pemerton as being not just incapable of generating that feeling, but actively antagonistic to the very possibility of ever feeling that way.

 

[Lanefan]

I certainly agree that "the things I, Lanefan, wrote down" are written down separately from what the PCs say, and (presumably) written before said PCs were written, barring parts extrapolated or randomly rolled later of course.

My question is whether that then implies a thing which exists--in any sense at all--separate from actually being played in, or whether it is something that objectively doesn't exist in any sense (let alone existing apart from play), but which has been engineered to generate the feeling of existing apart from play even though it doesn't.

Something either exists as a real physical thing or it doesn't.

Many of the maps and papers about my current game-world existed as real physical things before anyone ever played in that world.

Now had this all been in my head and not written down then you'd have a much better argument that it didn't actually exist, but as that's not the case your argument holds no water.

 

[pemerton]

I’ve done my best to explain how I run living world sandbox campaigns

Yes, I've read your posts and some of your blogs.

how sandbox campaigns function in general

Well, you haven't explained how (say) Ironsworn works. Which must mean you think it does not support sandbox RPGing. But @Hussar in this thread asserts that it does support sandbox RPGing. And I've been persuaded to agree with Hussar.

how the world reacts independently, how player choice drives the action, and how the referee adjudicates outcomes based on prior state and consistent logic, not narrative priorities.

The last bit, yes.

The world doesn't react "independently", though - that's just a metaphoric way of stating that the referee says things based on the application of certain heuristics.

As for player choices driving the action: it's clear that player choices prompt the GM to say things - but what those things are is authored by the GM. The extent to which the players nevertheless control or guide what it is that the GM says can vary quite a bit, depending on reasonable knowability of (i) what the material is that the GM is working from, and (ii) what the heuristics are that the GM is working with .

But I’ve come to see that your focus remains rooted in the question of who holds authority, whether over the shared fiction, as you phrase it, or the narrative, as others do, alongside the assumption that all RPG adjudication is ultimately a form of shared fiction/narrative control.

All RPGing involves a shared fiction: that's part of what distinguishes this genre of games from others, like boardgames and purely mechanical wargames.

But you are correct that I have been talking about who controls the shared fiction - although this is not the same as authority, for reasons I've already explained (just as, in bridge, I am the one who has authority to play my cards, but I don't always control the play of my cards - eg if a suit is led to me then I'm obliged to follow suit).

That framing, which treats every technique as a variation of story authorship, means there’s nothing further for you to learn from what I’ve laid out, because you continue to translate it into terms I’m explicitly not using.

With respect, you're not my teacher. I don't know when you started GMing your sort of "world in motion" RPG. I was doing it in 1990. Your posts succeed in setting out your thoughts. They are not introducing me to an approach that is new to me - I've been familiar with these sorts of approaches for some decades.

This is not a criticism of your posts and blogs. It's just a statement of how I am encountering them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Isn't this literally what this thread is about?

The tag says 5e general. That covers a lot of systems, not all of them WotC.

 

[AlViking]

@Micah Sweet, @Lanefan, and @robertsconley absolutely have made that argument. I'm fairly sure @mamba also has.

They have explicitly rejected approaches like those described by @pemerton as being not just incapable of generating that feeling, but actively antagonistic to the very possibility of ever feeling that way.

Incapable of generating a feeling of realism for them. I'd throw my hat into that ring as well. It says nothing at all about whether or not it would feel realistic to other people or whether other people would care one way or another.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'd say the systems (and the plausible extrapolation) are very distinct, and in very meaningful ways. That's the reason people like both of them. If there were no perceived benefits to the BW approach, it wouldn't see such steadfast support. People prefer either approach because they do things differently.

I mean, they aren't literally identical techniques. My argument was that folks have--repeatedly--asserted a fundamental difference in kind, not in degree, between these approaches. Over and over and over again. Indeed, the frequently-given insult to BW or PbtA/FitD/etc. is that people don't want a world where stuff gets invented out of thin air in direct defiance of observables (e.g. a tower that observably wasn't there a minute ago is there now), with players having "total control" etc. etc., things that are completely false about both games. These are not people making a narrow, subtle, restrained argument that there are multiple approaches.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Incapable of generating a feeling of realism for them. I'd throw my hat into that ring as well. It says nothing at all about whether or not it would feel realistic to other people or whether other people would care one way or another.

Except that then people use the word "objectivity"/"objectively"/etc. and similar things.

Which means it isn't just "for them". It's realism for everyone. Because it's allegedly "objective" or lacking in "objectivity".

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Hear, hear! That's largely our lot as well.

Well, then, I'm glad you've had games which serve that purely-casual interest since literally the hobby began.

Kinda seems like a "how dare you have your fun" to take to task folks who want something beyond just purely-casual silly fun times.

It's more muted in this thread than in some, but the indie-games crew sure like promoting what they do and telling us how great it is.

Ah, yes, because old-school fans never crow about how their approach is:

• more objective than any other approach
• a REAL challenge rather than the fake crap contemporary games use ("treadmill", "lockstep" design, etc.)
• won't "coddle" you
• involves somehow more real or sincere roleplay, as opposed to reductive system-lever-pulling

I mean, the execrable "Quick Primer on Old School Gaming" was LITERALLY an active polemic against all contemporary gaming, actively contrasting the worst possible aspects of contemporary gaming with the absolute best possible presentation of old-school gaming.

Pot, I'd like to introduce you to my good friend, Kettle.