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

[Bedrockgames]

Simple or not, the core is true. The rest is details.

No, the details here matter

 

[AlViking]

Clear point of delineation between viewpoints, then. If the DM is the final arbiter, you’re playing the DM. That’s the point of the game.

The DM is also playing the other people sitting at the table. It's called "mutual respect" and "doing your best to ensure everyone at the table is enjoying themselves".

It's not perfect but you're putting a negative spin on it.

 

[TwoSix]

The DM is also playing the other people sitting at the table. It's called "mutual respect" and "doing your best to ensure everyone at the table is enjoying themselves".

It's not perfect but you're putting a negative spin on it.

It’s not a negative spin. It is what it is.

Why would I put a negative spin on a play style that about 75% of my tables use?

 

[Old Fezziwig]

And if the game is intentionally designed so as to reduce or remove player agency, why would anyone ever play such a game?

I don't know how this could be answered satisfactorily? For instance, a character's Steel is generated at character creation, and the rules are player-facing. If my little dude's going to try to do murder but has a low Steel, then I know going in this might be a challenge for him. I can understand it not being to taste, but these are the resources the game uses and the play Crane has designed it for. In play, I don't find I have less agency in BW than I do in any other game. I find where and how I can exercise that agency to be different than other games -- I have different levers to pull than I do in D&D or Stonetop or Savage Worlds.

So, player agency gets sacrificed on the altar of efficiency. Bleah.

Whenever I hear talk of "move play along" or the like, I imagine a DM impatiently looking at a clock and thinking "We're behind schedule - we have to get through six more pages of adventure tonight and all they want to do is argue!". To me, unless it's a con game or similar that has a hard-set time limit, there should never ever be a 'schedule' of havng to achieve x-amount of in-game progress in y-amount of real-world time.

The campaign lasts as long as it lasts, and if it goes ten sessions longer because of all the in-character roleplay they did, to me that's a very strong positive - it shows they enjoy roleplaying the characters they've got - rather than something to complain about.

I can see where you got there from what I posted, but I'm not interested in efficiency for its own sake or achieving so much play in such-and-such time. What I am interested in is meaningfulness. I accept that my criteria for this may differ from other people's criteria. To be clear, I'm not advocating for a game without any color or a game that's solely conflict (using it to mean tactical action); what I want is the two to be in balance. I have board games and video games for games without color or games with only conflict. I want my RPG play to have teeth is all.

Questions:

(1) If the PCs in a BW game decide to go to a tavern, who decides what the tavern is like? If the PCs get to describe a tavern, then why can't the PCs get to describe the guardhouse?

(2) Can the GM decide that the tavern the PCs went to has a secret basement room where they hold illegal kobold fights? Or do the players have to decide that? And if the players get to decide that there's a secret basement room where they have illegal kobold fights, then why can't the PCs get to decide what the guard's schedule is like? (Or if in BW such a thing would be left up to the dice, then why can't the dice decide the schedule's detail?)[1]

(3) Why would you consider this to be lower risk and lower stakes than two people arguing about mending armor--something you yourself was high-stakes. Getting in to a guardhouse and getting the schedule is basically a mini-heist, which most people would think to be fairly high-stakes.

--

[1] Or does BW make it so it's impossible for there to be any secrets like this to be found no matter who wants them to be there?

1) It would depend, in both cases. Generally, BW is very traditional -- the GM would be responsible for scene framing, including describing the setting, but it's possible a character's lifepaths or relationships might make the description something that could come from the player. For instance, the character is a guard in this town or their brother, who they have a relationship with, owns the inn.

2) Yes, there could be a secret basement kobold fighting ring, but this would only be germane if it was related to the situation in the game and the characters' beliefs. Maybe the situation is that there are dead kobolds popping up down by the river and a character has the belief that "Robert the Tavernkeeper is hiding something foul; I'll uncover his nefarious deeds!" It would be totally reasonable for the secret basement room to be brought into play. If no one's interested in this and the game's not about it, then it probably wouldn't be brought into play, save maybe as color. For the guard schedule, if it's not important, then we're in a "say 'yes'" situation; whatever the players propose is fine. If it matters to something else but isn't the focus of the scene and the GM doesn't know, we could be dealing with a Die of Fate situation (basically, a 1 in 6 chance of whatever being true -- is this door locked? are there guards here? -- I used this whenever I wasn't quite sure where a player was going with something and it hadn't been established in play). If it is important, then I'd expect players to scout and research and do all their normal due diligence in planning how to approach the guard tower and we'd go from there.

As far as secrets, BW is less suited to revealing secrets of these types than other games. It doesn't do dungeon crawls particularly well, and it doesn't pay off excessive prep. It's possible for there to be surprises, and maybe that's a better thing to think of than secrets?

But when it comes to the example I have to go back to the same question I had before. A duel of wits comes across as a kind of social combat. Why you got into that duel, what the duel is about, all of that can be influenced by what the character said and the history of the game. But when resolving the duel itself, I see nothing in the example that indicates that what the character says, or anything from the characters past actions prior to the duel has any direct impact on the outcome of the duel. Quite possible I'm missing something but I don't see it.

Assuming my understanding is correct, it's not a bad thing if that's what you want. But just like the dice determining the choices my player has available, I don't want social interactions to be that bound to a set of rules. I need a set of rules for combat in D&D because I wouldn't know how to evaluate results otherwise, but I don't want to play a game where social interactions are forced to follow the same pattern.

I think we're butting up against some of the ellided material I mentioned earlier and the limits of APs that you mentioned earlier: this is a 1-on-1 game that's based around a campaign setting and characters that BWHQ has been using since the 1990s. So there's a ton of history wrapped up in it (e.g., Si Juk was responsible, along with Vega, for kidnapping the Emperor and delivering him into hiding), and the positions Rich has taken in play are directly related to his previous interests and actions (in Part 1, the Princess, who's functioning as regent, tasks Si Juk with finding her brother, the Emperor). Some of it's there, but I grant that it may not be clear, and it may not be useful, and Crane doesn't cover everything exhaustively (sometimes he talks mechanics when narrative might be more interesting, IMO).

If you don't want social conflict rules, BW is never going to be of interest. You don't have to play with DoW, you can do straight skill tests and opposed tests, but resolution is going to be handled the same way, so I don't expect that'll be more satisfying.

 

[AlViking]

It’s not a negative spin. It is what it is.

Why would I put a negative spin on a play style that about 75% of my tables use?

The phrase "playing the DM" puts a negative spin on it.

 

[Pedantic]

I don’t have a solution because there isn’t a problem. GM arbitrated games work, and in the hands of a proficient GM, can work well.

But let’s not obfuscate what it is. The GM is the final authority. A player’s plans are contingent on the GM agreeing they work. There’s no way to avoid that. So why not just own it?

I didn't think that's the case. Firstly, because I'm quite bullish on handing resolution off to systems without handing off content, but more importantly because that isn't the design intent. It's not a matter of "owning it," that simply isn't the intended play loop; a GM that judges imperfectly for the game's goals creates a failure of play.

The problem is that you can't have a highly interactive, impartial game world that yields consistently to player agency without a GM striving to create one. You can't resolve the issue by setting aside the goal in favor of a different one; problematizing the premise doesn't answer it. Asking the GM to model a living world is a limited solution that does not work consistently.... and also the only current method that gets close to giving players an impartial board state to act on that can provide meaningful feedback on the quality of their decisions.

 

[hawkeyefan]

If the GM is adjudicating the world consistently, you aren't playing the GM.

What does this mean?

Consistently in what way? How do you know if it’s consistent if you aren’t aware of all the factors that play into his decision making?

 

[The Firebird]

The problem is that you can't have a highly interactive, impartial game world that yields consistently to player agency without a GM striving to create one. You can't resolve the issue by setting aside the goal in favor of a different one; problematizing the premise doesn't answer it. Asking the GM to model a living world is a limited solution that does not work consistently.... and also the only current method that gets close to giving players an impartial board state to act on that can provide meaningful feedback on the quality of their decisions.

That's right. Putting the decision making on the system instead does spare you from the arbitrary GM. But it doesn't offer the same experience as a good GM.

That's not to say the experience is worse when you do more narrative things. Just different.

 

[The Firebird]

What does this mean?

Consistently in what way? How do you know if it’s consistent if you aren’t aware of all the factors that play into his decision making?

If you're looking for certainty, you won't find it. Some amount of trust is necessary.

 

[The Firebird]

The session was played over a year ago. I didn't note all the action declarations at the time, and don't recall them now. Given the compromise described, you can work out what some of them pertained to: stuff about Fea-bella and the evidence of her relationship to Lareth; stuff about the pirates, and tithing.

In terms of general methodology, I refer to this post of mine not far upthread:
I'll also add - it seems strange, when you are saying that you have no knowledge of some process other than my account of it, to try and rebut my account by pointing to my account. I mean, you might ask "What did the players have their PCs say in the conflict with Lareth?" To which I would reply, as I have, "It was a year ago and my memory has faded." But to suggest that I'm lying or confused about my own play is weird.

Anyway, here's another couple of examples, of trickery contests:

I was asking the question and noting it was not in the text, not saying you were confused about your play.