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

[zakael19]

Which OSR do you have in mind here? There are tons of different schools of thought on this stuff even within the OSR

As I mentioned before, I'm citing from the Principia Apocrypha / Dolmenwood guidelines for GMs. The former widely cited among the current community as a place to go, the latter as a set of rules for a current OSR game. But "give your players all the info they need to make informed, creative decisions" is pretty ingrained in like everything I've read.

To quote from the former:

Player Agency

Only with sufficient information from the Referee can players make informed decisions.

Clear descriptions: Present everything the PCs can perceive from their current vantage point, focusing on creatures, objects, and environmental features they can meaningfully interact with. It is usually best to present an overview of a scene then ask players if there’s anything they’d like more detail on.

Telegraphing danger: While it is important to maintain an element of mystery and surprise in the game, the Referee should provide clues to players about potential dangers. For example, a monster’s dangerous magical powers might be foreshadowed by PCs coming across the bodies of former victims. Players who pick up on clues can then make informed decisions about how to approach the situation, including further investigation or retreat.

 

[Lanefan]

For me, it's not about trust. Especially since I don't want that heightened level of authority when I am DMing.

It's because I feel play flows the best when the player and DM are both heavily involved, and when narrative control and the driving of play volleys back and forth between participants. There's no need for refs or judgements, we all just play and leave the "refereeing" to the ruleset.

That must be a very comprehensive and detailed ruleset you're using, then, to cover off every eventuality and possibility and corner case. Even the M:tG tournament rules havne't managed that, though they do their utmost best and have the staggeringly-large page count to prove it.

 

[Bedrockgames]

As I mentioned before, I'm citing from the Principia Apocrypha / Dolmenwood guidelines for GMs. The former widely cited among the current community as a place to go, the latter as a set of rules for a current OSR game. But "give your players all the info they need to make informed, creative decisions" is pretty ingrained in like everything I've read.

To quote from the former:

Dolmenwood is pretty new I think. I haven't heard much of Principe Apocrypha but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. So I don't know much about those products. That said I do not see anything from the above that is in confclit with what I am saying. Giving players in setting information their characters would have is generally pretty reasonable old school play. They are talking about giving players information their characters would have in the above which I don't think is saying be super generous. To me that reads more as make sure you aren't leaving out any details they would know based on what they see

Just for clarity when I think old school I think stuff like OSRIC, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, etc. And of course Rob Conley's Majestic Wilderlands material.

For me the OG here is Matt Finch's old school primer. Which I would definitely recommend to people.

 

[pemerton]

In each case, the players are exercising control--they understand they are going to face some consequences and that they aren't going to be able to anticipate those fully in advance. The fact that they can't tell you exactly how many KGB agents will be sent after them doesn't mean they don't know the consequences. Just like if you raid a dungeon and it gives you a bunch of rolls on a treasure table, you know it will be worth raiding even though you don't know exactly what you get. Or you know that if the enemy magic user casts prismatic spray on you it is going to be nasty, although you can't predict exactly how.

The standard of knowability you are applying is not really comprehensible to me given how knowability works elsewhere in RPGs. And life.

To me, if the possible consequences range from an agent might try and poison you in a park through a van will pull up and discharge a dozen agents trying to kidnap you to a coup will occur in your homeland, and a battalion of soldiers come after you, then I don't really know what the consequences are.

And I don't really feel the force of your treasure point: classic D&D has things like the wand of metal and mineral detection, and potions of treasure finding, for a reason.

The GM didn't leave any breadcrumbs; they are just portraying the world.

These aren't mutually exclusive. The latter can easily be an instance of the former.

The players don't have to learn about these locations at all if they don't want to. They are in control of their actions.

The players want to play a game. So they have to make moves - otherwise everyone is just sitting at the table with nothing happening. If the moves are to be informed, then the players need to understand, to some reasonable degree, what their position is - what will happen if they make this move rather than that move.

If getting to that state itself requires, say, 6 hours of play, as the players follow the GM's lead as to where the information can be found - first, go to the hedge witch, who will send you to the library, where you'll discover the thieves stole the book, so you have to go to the guild, where the guildmaster will send you on a quest before you can be shown the book - the fact that the players can choose to declare other actions becomes neither her nor there, if the other actions are simply going to lead to a different path of breadcrumbs.

Here's and example of the sort of thing I mean: the players want information to help make an informed decision, and in order to do that all this other play has to happen first, which is not about them exercising control over the fiction but just about doing whatever has to be done to prompt the GM to provide the information

What I have seen very often is that the group or a player in the group will want to find X that his PC wants, and will go to the library or a sage to find out where X is located. Sometimes X will be one of the locations already detailed on the map, in which case the player is driving play to that location, not the DM's name. Often, it won't be on the map and the DM will have to add it somewhere, also driving play to that location.

 

[pemerton]

Predictable Outcomes of a Module
A module I injected into my campaign provided the following predictable outcomes.
1. Find out what Thay was doing with the Cult of the Dragon;
2. Destroy the undead dragon army Thay was building;
3. Make an alliance between the Council of Waterdeep and the Thay Resurrection;
4. Make an alliance between the Council of Waterdeep and Thay;
5. Stop Thay Resurrection's plans to summon a powerful fiend in order to combat their splinter group which was working with the Cult of the Dragon to summon Tiamat.
6. A Combination of the above.

Actions of Party
They uncovered 1 and then managed to do 5 because the party inadvertently led the Thay (government) to the headquarters of the Thay Resurrection (rebel forces) before escaping with a teleporation spell.
PCs knew they were being chased/followed.
They knew Thay and the Thay Resurrection were sworn enemies.
Are you saying I should have told them what would happen 2 months down the line? (see below 1ST and 2ND consequence)

Consequences
After two months word came out that the Thay Resurrection had indeed been crushed by Szass Tam (the Lich Lord ruler of Thay).
1ST Consequence decided by GM.

An emissary of Thay arrived 2 months after the events in the module to attend a Council of Waterdeep requesting Thay join their fight against the Cult of the Dragon/Tiamat.
2ND Consequence decided by GM.

Current Storyline
Players never raised any objection to Thay joining the Council and tacitly agreed with their silence to Thay requisitioning one of the newly built teleportation circles to move large quantities of military personnel for the war effort.
They are aware mechanically how Thay's inclusion in the fight will assist the final battle and it is significant.

However, it is Thay afterall, so there is a 3RD consequence but I'm not prepared to let that information become table knowledge because (I feel) that defeats the purpose of roleplaying to find out how their choices affect the storyline and the challenges they face.

Would you inform your players the 3RD consequence BEFORE they have made their choice so they could have genuine control over the impact they have?

EDIT: I should add as the story has unfolded, besides whatever has happened within the Council meeting, the party will be responsible for communicating the necessary military co-ordination and teleportation circle details with Thay so the PCs can indeed do their own thing here. As I have said they are aware of Thay's mechanical might for their inclusion or exclusion in the final battle, but I'm not prepared to give them hidden backstory (true motives & goals) of Thay. They have not earned the right to know that. All they know and have heard is, that Thay cannot be trusted.

I'm not saying that anyone should do anything. I'm trying to understand and talk about various approaches to play.

When you talk about things happening after one month and two months in the fiction, I don't really have any idea of how this matters to play, how it relates to anything the players have put at stake, etc. I mean, presumably whatever the players had done in the previous setting, you as GM would keep telling them about interesting stuff happening that would prompt them to make action declarations for their PCs. Are your consequences just this, but you're flavouring the interesting stuff to reflect what came before? Were the players trying to get Thay onto the Council of Waterdeep? Or from the player point of view would it have been just as interesting/exciting to play a game where, at the 1st consequence stage, Thay instead exercises mind control over an existing member and exerts influence that way?

From what you've posted, I can't tell.

 

[Faolyn]

Right; the GM is applying their judgement to adjudicate the world. Different GMs could play them differently. Just as 'success with a complication' is a rule in Blades, but the specific complication that manifests will differ based on GM.

True. It would be pretty boring, though, if the complications were all the same!

 

[Faolyn]

Sure, but there aren't really locations, right? There's just different lists of content available, kind of like the way a menu works. Select the swamp, and you'll get things like lizard men and willow wisps and so on. Select the pasta section and you'll get things like lasagna and linguini and so on.

They're ingredients, then, that can become fully fleshed-out locations.

You don't ever have to detail the home of the brother's killer, or anything else to do with the brother in a trad-sandbox. This is a way in which the players are limited. They are able to determine where the characters go within the setting the GM has made... their characters have autonomy.

I guess I don't understand what you mean by autonomy and limited, then, because those two things are opposites in my mind. Unless you meant to say unlimited or don't have autonomy.

But they as payers can have more agency than that. Players can shape play in ways beyond what their characters can do, if the game (or GM) allows for that.

Pretty much any game can allow for that, unless you're going wildly outside of the game's genre.

 

[TwoSix]

That must be a very comprehensive and detailed ruleset you're using, then, to cover off every eventuality and possibility and corner case. Even the M:tG tournament rules havne't managed that, though they do their utmost best and have the staggeringly-large page count to prove it.

"Roll a d6. On a 4+, the player dictates what happens next; on a 3-, the DM does." is a fully comprehensive rule set.

Rules don't need to dictate outcomes, they only need to dictate the exchange of authority to make statements.

 

[TwoSix]

Dolmenwood is pretty new I think. I haven't heard much of Principe Apocrypha but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. So I don't know much about those products. That said I do not see anything from the above that is in confclit with what I am saying. Giving players in setting information their characters would have is generally pretty reasonable old school play. They are talking about giving players information their characters would have in the above which I don't think is saying be super generous. To me that reads more as make sure you aren't leaving out any details they would know based on what they see

Just for clarity when I think old school I think stuff like OSRIC, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, etc. And of course Rob Conley's Majestic Wilderlands material.

For me the OG here is Matt Finch's old school primer. Which I would definitely recommend to people.

It's pretty hard to be involved in the OSR online space and miss the Principia. It's pretty much Matt Finch's primer 2.0, and directly influenced a lot of the more popular NSR works like Knave and Cairn.

Principia Apocrypha: A New Expression of Old School RPG Playstyle Principles

Principia Apocrypha is a new, free Primer for OSR and other Old School Style RPG Gaming in the form of a collection of Apocalypse World-s...

lithyscaphe.blogspot.com

 

[The Firebird]

To me, if the possible consequences range from an agent might try and poison you in a park through a van will pull up and discharge a dozen agents trying to kidnap you to a coup will occur in your homeland, and a battalion of soldiers come after you, then I don't really know what the consequences are.

I don't understand what action you're thinking of where there is such a wide degree of variation. But still, you do have real knowledge: if you've seriously harmed a faction that is capable of causing a coup and sending a battalion of soldiers after you, then you're playing with fire.

And I don't really feel the force of your treasure point: classic D&D has things like the wand of metal and mineral detection, and potions of treasure finding, for a reason.

Are these useful prior to choosing to travel to the dungeon? They've not appeared in my games.

If getting to that state itself requires, say, 6 hours of play, as the players follow the GM's lead as to where the information can be found - first, go to the hedge witch, who will send you to the library, where you'll discover the thieves stole the book, so you have to go to the guild, where the guildmaster will send you on a quest before you can be shown the book - the fact that the players can choose to declare other actions becomes neither her nor there, if the other actions are simply going to lead to a different path of breadcrumbs.

This seems like a highly contrived look at information gathering to me. Typically if you are researching a specific thing, it won't be this 'all for the sake of a bucket' kind of scenario. And you will gradually pick up information about the setting by existing in it, by learning rumors, meeting NPCs, and so forth. Even your PCs background knowledge.

It seems like you are constructing a contrived scenario where the PCs know nothing and using that as the default to claim they are making uninformed choices.