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

[hawkeyefan]

Where I'm of the mind that as long as it's engaging for those involved, anything goes. I don't care if it's not pushing the adventure or story forward right this minute; we've potentially hundreds more sessions to see to that.

I'm also of the mind that the Lord of the Rings movies could (and maybe should) have been six-to-eight hours long each, in order to tell the full story and not skip over bits.

That's fine if that's your preference. Nothing wrong with it. My preference is simply different.

Maybe @Faolyn would be so kind as to repeat her description of it - the tea-drinking session.

Fair enough, though if your players wanted to engage in something like the tea-drinking session would you actually shut them down and force them to move on?

Yes, most likely. Again, it depends on what the purpose of the scene is and what it's contributing to the game. If it involves conflict of some sort, I'd be more inclined to let it continue. If it's literally a couple of characters chatting over tea with nothing of consequence, then yes, I'd call for an end to the scene and move on to the next one.

"That particular bit of wisdom" is what allows true-to-character roleplay to exist without having to take the intentional metagame step of compartmentalizing player knowledge away from character knowledge, something that IME almost everybody is more or less bad at.

I don't find such compartmentalization particularly difficult... I mean, aren't you the one who talks about GM impartiality? How do you accomplish that? If GMs can do it, players can do it.

But also, I don't find it all that necessary.

The setting can be the game and play can still be player-driven.

That may be possible, yes, but I think it requires certain elements that many here are eschewing... so I'm not sure how common that may be.

If the players can choose to interact with the world however they want through their PCs, and they choose to bite at one of the adventure hooks provided by the GM, that is IMO player-driven, because it was the choice of the player to follow that hook. If going off-road is always an option, how can it not be player-driven play?

Well, you're kind of starting in media res, no? That the setting is already constructed and a hook is already presented to the players. What about prior to that?

If we look at the game differently than many typically do.... like if we forget the geography and factions and NPCs and all that for a minute. Just think of all of that as information. Much of the game revolves around how this information is determined. I'm thinking of three methods.

First, the GM determines this information, and then shares only what he wants with the players.

Second, the GM determines this information, and the players can prompt the GM to share some of it based on actions they declare for their characters.

Third, the GM determine some information on his own, and then some information based on player prompts, and then during play the players can prompt the GM to share some of it based on actions they declare for their characters.

To me, the first two are GM driven. The first is probably flawed in some way (a railroad or similar) or otherwise intentionally limited (a con-game with a set time, etc.). The second is more of a mix of GM and player, but the players are still limited to learning only what the GM creates. The third involves a greater level of collaboration between GM and player.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Well, yea. There’s only three ways to decide the outcome of what happens in an encounter in a roleplaying game.

1) The GM decides.
2) The player decides.
3) A resolution method (dice, cards, Jenga towers, etc.) decides.

The rules of a game tell us when and where to do each of those three things. They also arbitrate the limitations on 1) and 2), and the processes to use for 3).

One of the reasons for rulings over rules is so that flair can be considered by the gm in the rules implementation. The idea is if the player is describing their character as doing more than simply swinging a sword, it may warrant a modified approach and a mechanical resolution that offers more specified outcomes than the system provides

 

[AlViking]

Well, yea. There’s only three ways to decide the outcome of what happens in an encounter in a roleplaying game.

1) The GM decides.
2) The player decides.
3) A resolution method (dice, cards, Jenga towers, etc.) decides.

The rules of a game tell us when and where to do each of those three things. They also arbitrate the limitations on 1) and 2), and the processes to use for 3).

In the BW example, it seems like the important stuff comes down to number 3 and it is not influenced by step 0.5 that you didn't include. That step 0.5? Everything that has happened up to that point, what the characters have said and done. That lack of influence combined with all important turning points being reduced to a check is a major reason why I wouldn't want to play that style of game. Getting to the point of #3 is influenced by step 0.5, it is not influenced by 0.5. Correct?

 

[Micah Sweet]

No one ever said it wasn't a sandbox. (And I followed the chain of quotes to be sure.) @Hussar even said it was a great idea!

It's simply not a case of a game that is player directed. "Players having agency to explore" is not "player-directed".

I think it is. This is once again an issue of conflicting definitions that people assign value to, and it will never end.

 

[The Firebird]

To draw a correlation to D&D, the feel I get is that it's like a combat encounter where the player can add flavor to the game with descriptions and flair, but the important actions are all handled by dice rolls. That description and flair can add to the game but it has no impact on the outcome of the encounter.

Well, yea. There’s only three ways to decide the outcome of what happens in an encounter in a roleplaying game.

1) The GM decides.
2) The player decides.
3) A resolution method (dice, cards, Jenga towers, etc.) decides.

The rules of a game tell us when and where to do each of those three things. They also arbitrate the limitations on 1) and 2), and the processes to use for 3).

I think there's a deeper point to @AlViking's post. It brought to my mind the Rules Elide essay, which has gotten some discussion.

To summarize, the main idea is that rules elide (or avoid) parts of the world that we don't want to or can't deal with otherwise. For example, it isn't fun to talk through how exactly a player would pick a lock--what they are feeling for, where they put pressure, etc. So we include a rule like "roll for X". Likewise, we don't describe precisely what we are doing in combat, like "I advance two steps, feint with a sword thrust, then move to an overhead chop". Instead we roll to hit.

Adding narrative mechanics is saying that we don't want to deal with the blow-by-blow of simulation. E.g., we don't want to have to decide exactly why the innkeeper is responding this way in context; we just roll and discover. We don't want to have to decide how many guards the Crows put on duty; we make a Prowl check and find out.

This is good because making these simulationist decisions is hard, especially for the DM to do impartially.

But it's bad because it makes the creative actions a player make less meaningful. Going back to the combat case, my choice to 'feint' is meaningless when the only resolution mechanism is roll to hit. If my character doesn't have a way to do that specified by the rules, then it doesn't matter how I say it.

I think people rejecting the more narrativist approach are reacting against this perceived lack of agency.

 

[robertsconley]

What you're asking me to do is to use language that you approve of to describe my game. But why would I do that? Would you?

Don't be disingenuous. I asked what you would prefer me and others to use when referring to your idea of collaborative creation to reflect your view accurately.

If I said to you that I find living world to be a vague and unclear term... please come up with another term that accurately summarizes your preferred play style... you wouldn't agree to do so, and nor should you if you don't actually agree.

If that were what I was asking you to do, that would be a relevant point of discussion. But that is not the case because you haven't offered a label or a short description yourself. So it is impossible for me to ask you to change something that doesn't exist yet.

Moreover, your criticism implies that something definable does exist.

If needed, you could always say "player-directed as hawkeyefan has described it", I suppose... it acknowledges that it's specifically my take on the idea of player-driven play and that may not match yours or others' ideas on the topic.

That does indeed clarify it. Thank You

I just wish that clarification had come without the assumption of bad faith. It would have made for a smoother discussion.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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 is very much not my experience, especially as very few players I've encountered actually want the degree of collaboration and control you seem to want from them. A lot of folks just want to sit down and throw dice and jokes for a few hours. Pushing them to make independent decisions for their PCs is sometimes tough. Pushing them to make party decisions on what to do and where to go (as in a sandbox game as I define it) is often very difficult. Pushing them to seize the reins if partial narrative control over the entire experience can be nigh-impossible.

A lot of folks (nearly all of them IME) want the GM to do these things.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Which is why I think all of this really just boils down to personal preferences that we attach measurements and labels to. When I play a character I want the only interactions with the world around me to be what my character says and does. It's not better or worse than any other preference, it's just what I want.

And yet we keep going around and around on this when it is clear to me that preference and personal value is all that this is about.

 

[The Firebird]

I think there's a deeper point to @AlViking's post. It brought to my mind the Rules Elide essay, which has gotten some discussion.

An example I gave earlier in Blades had the player trying to get past two guards. They are choosing whether to sneak (Prowl, mechanically) or to shoot the guards (Hunt). Suppose they have the same score for each.

They choose to Hunt. They roll one die and get a 4--success with complication. They take down the guards, but the referee decides the shift is about to change, and they only have 5 minutes before the attack is discovered.

The player thinks, hmm, I wonder if sneaking would have been better. But in that case they'd still get a 4--success with a complication. In this case, maybe they sneak past, but it turns out a surprise inspection is happening tonight, and the whole place will be crawling with guards.

Now compare the same in a fixed world approach. No surprise inspection is scheduled. The shift will change in 5 minutes because that's what the DM wrote in their notes.

In this case, shooting the guards is worse than sneaking past them. If I shot them, and then the shift changed and the alarm was raised, I'd think "hmm, maybe I should have approached this by sneaking". Because the world is fixed, that would be a better outcome even on the same roll. Hence, my choice to sneak or hunt matters more.

But wait! You say. You as the player had no way of knowing when the shift would change or if a surprise inspection was coming. So really you are just choosing blindly, and there is no weight to your choice--it is all DM fiat.

Not really. Because the world is fixed, I could have scoped the place out to determine the shift changes or acquired a copy of the guard schedule. Depending on the system, Divination magic may have helped. I also could have waited until just after a shift change.

As a player, I feel more agency in these scenarios. I feel that I, and not the rules, am driving play.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That wasn't what I was intending to say.

I'm merely saying that the idea that any DM can be "objective" in how they drive forward the fictional state, even just using mental heuristics to "model" the setting outside of PC participation and at-table play, is inherently flawed.

Sounds like the 100% perfection straw man is at it again, ready to tell everyone they shouldn't bother with trying to make a plausible and verisimilitudinous setting for their game, because they couldn't possibly get it exactly accurate.