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

[hawkeyefan]

Leaving it up to a roll of dice doesn't mean I "learn" anything other than I rolled under or over the check. I'm glad it works for you but it wouldn't mean anything to me.

Well, if you rolled low, then it would mean your character wasn’t as brave/loyal/hard/whatever as they thought they were.

It’s been said (I won’t mention by who, but his name rhymes with Shmincent Shmaker) that RPGs have rules to allow for the unwanted result to occur.

That’s what play is about… the wanted vs. unwanted results.

If something is at risk in play… meaning that there’s the possibility the unwanted happens… then you’re playing the game to find out what happens. The player, the GM, and the system all contribute to this.

Leaving it up to just one party? There’s no risk. For a GM, it’s a railroad. For a player, it’s power fantasy disguised as play.

Just another example that we want different things out of our game time.

Yes, that was precisely my point.

That's where trust comes in again. So much of play comes down to it, Nd no amount of system constraints on the GM can make it irrelevant.

It’s not about trust, though. I don’t currently play with anyone I think is operating under bad faith. I don’t expect that to change.

But disagreements about what’s a valid move don’t require bad faith by anyone.

If the people that have been involved in this discussion somehow wound up at a gaming table together, I’d assume everyone would be operating on good faith. Yet, look at how we disagree.

Clearly, there’s a broad range of what RPG play can be.

You know it's consistent when the outcomes of your decisions consistently make sense.

Consistently in what way?

Like, you always adjudicate the same way? Or like, what you’ve decided makes sense within the setting and the events around it?

Because for a lot people, they want things to make sense as a game primarily.

A lot of people are talking about how players can't make informed decisions in this style of play, but those advocating it know that players are in fact making informed decisions.

Well, no. I’ve not said that players can’t make informed decisions in this style of play. I’ve been pointing out how folks are defending the GM’s right to withhold or otherwise hide information from the players. Which clearly impacts players’ ability to make informed decisions.

What I have been saying is that the GM should remain aware of how his decisions about the fiction impact the game. And that they should place that as their primary concern… assuming that player agency is important.

Players need information. The GM is the source of their information. If the GM decides to not share some relevant detail, the justification of “but that makes sense in the game world” doesn’t cut it. There are always ways to share information and have it make sense in the game world.

Provide the necessary information for players to play the game. Looking at the blorb principles of play, looking at the principa apocrypha… both present ways to achieve sandbox play of the kind being talked about that still retains high player agency. And so much of it is about providing information and not keeping things unknown from the players.

And sure, it's always possible the that the GM is actually an AI cyborg spitting out results based on a complex random number generator and the results are utterly arbitrary, only looking consistent. But if they appear consistent in every meaningful sense and the players consistently feel as if they are making informed decisions, and the outcomes of their decisions appear logical and consistent with the reality of the world then saying "but maybe it's not really, truly consistent" is no more relevant than asking if all the items in your cutlery draw still exist while the drawer is closed. Maybe they vanish from reality, but it makes much more sense to assume they're there the entire time.

This is why I’m asking about consistency… because I think it seems more about plausibility. Consistent with what has happened to play… is that what you mean?

Because there’s usually a range of options that could result from most actions. How do we determine which of those is what happens?

I mean… in combat, we don’t just leave it up to the GM to adjudicate. There are rules and processes to be followed.

Strange how combat rules never evoke this matter of trust. They are simply accepted as being an element of the game.

Have they done anything to break your trust?

I know exactly what it means. You're asking me how to know--to verify with certainty--that the GM is ruling consistently. You can't. Sorry.

No, I’m not asking for certainty. I think the word “know” is tripping us up here.

What would it take for you to suspect the GM might be inconsistent? Like, what would you expect to notice first if you thought there was such an issue?

 

[Faolyn]

I can't follow all of this. You're referring to my reply to a question that @Micah Sweet asked about non-Burning Wheel play, as if I was describing BW play.

If the player wants to FoRK their Guards-wise or Schedule-wise into their Stealthy check to do whatever it is they're doing (I've lost track of the details of the conjectured scenario) then of course they're welcome to.

Also: both you and @Lanefan seem to be taking the stakes of something - high stakes, or low stakes - as an independent quality of some consequence. In Burning Wheel, it is relative, though - relative to player-determined priories for their PC. See, eg:

I wasn't, really. I was trying to find out why you decided that one action was high stakes and one was low stakes.

I gave the mending of the armour as something that is high stakes as between two particular characters - this was something that actually happened in play. Thurgon - the character with the dented armour - had the belief Aramina will need my protection. Aramina's relevant Belief was I don't need Thurgon's pity. The context of the argument was Aramina's desire to go somewhere that Thurgon was concerned would be dangerous; such that, at least, she should mend his armour before they headed off there.

The argument bore directly upon the conflict between the two characters, flowing from their respective beliefs - a conflict about the nature of their relationship.

<double mega facepalm>

That's... not a discussion about mending armor at all. Not even remotely That's a discussion about personal autonomy. Thurgon wants to control Aramina's movements. Perhaps he has good reason for it because Aramina is being a doofus and wanted to go to Certain Doom Valley. Or perhaps he's just overprotective. Or perhaps he's a sexist jerk who doesn't think a girl should go off on her own. I have no idea. I don't care. Completely not important. But the discussion was not about the armor.

Look, you kept saying "mending armor" when talking about how Burning Wheel was, well, here's what you said:

The game also supports more "intimate" play than typical approaches to D&D, in at least two ways: <snip> For instance, a scene in which one character tries to persuade another to mend his dented armour can have as much heft in play a a scene in which the two characters fight for their lives against some Orcs.

And as it turns out, this is absolute baloney. The characters were having a discussion about Aramina's desire to do something that Thurgon didn't want her to do, particularly without adequate gear. This sort of discussion happens all the time in every game. Including D&D. Probably especially D&D. I've had this discussion multiple times in my current game! (My character is Chaotic Neutral (Good) of the "ooh, a shiny thing over there, let me go touch it!" variety. This amuses the other players but annoys their characters.)

In fact, this is such baloney that I have to wonder whether you are truly so oblivious you actually think the discussion was about mending armor or if you were deliberately lying about the discussion to make BW look better and "more 'intimate'."

To reiterate what I and @Old Fezziwig have said - what is at stake in the heist, that speaks to beliefs? If the answer is nothing, then we don't spend time on it.

Even if the players want to, not because they have a deep-seated Belief but because they feel like it?

If so, then the game is not player-driven.

And that's actually a shame, because it's quite possible to turn a tiny "side-quest" into something that can be a boatload of fun and/or have deep meaning later on.

I think @Old Fezziwig gave a pretty complete reply to this.

But just to reiterate and perhaps elaborate a bit on that reply, the key question is why are we paying attention to the PCs in this tavern? And why is the idea of illegal kobold fights a thing we're caring about?

We're not. My question was, who gets to decide if a thing exists in Burning Wheel? Particularly a thing that the players don't know exist.

If the game says that the GM makes that decision, meaning that the GM can say there's a secret illegal kobold fighting ring in the basement there for the players to discover if they want to snoop around, then having the GM come up with a schedule inside of a guardhouse isn't "GM-driven" play that is inappropriate for a BW game. Especially since, in this example, the players have said that they want to go look for the guard schedule so they know what guard to avoid/bribe/kill/whatever in order to get over the border.

If the game says that the players make that decision (or can make that decision along with the GM), then that means the players can go into the guardhouse to get the schedule of their own volition, making it player-driven play that is appropriate for a BW game.

If nobody is allowed to make that decision, meaning that there shouldn't be secrets or mysteries in the game at all because all things need to be established first, well, that sounds pretty darn boring to me. I don't think it's this one though.

 

[Maxperson]

But those... those are both boardgames... which would put them in the same hobby...

Depends on your hobby. If your hobby is word games, Scrabble fits and Monopoly doesn't. If your hobby is boredom, the reverse is true.

 

[Faolyn]

So, in your game, there's likely a rule that says something in the neighborhood of, "When your character runs out of hit points, they are dead." Upon agreeing to play the game, the player agrees to, and is expected to abide by, that rule, even if, at the moment it is invoked, that isn't what they really want.

There's not a whole lot of light between, "You agree that your character is dead," and "You agree that your character has been convinced." Being convinced is probably rather less final, as well.

Agreeing to be dead is more traditional, sure, so most of us are used to it, and just accept it as the way games are done. But the form is basically the same - occasionally, the rules remove some player agency for some effect. That's normal, in games - there are mechanical consequences that players cannot dodge. Go directly to Jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

Now maybe this particular loss of agency may not be the sort you want, but it is not, broadly speaking, much different than any other unwanted effect that might be inflicted on a character.

Most players don't want their characters to be mind controlled by an NPC or other PC, especially when it's not magical in origin. In fact, being mind controlled by another PC is generally considered PvP, which often isn't allowed at tables unless there's consent by all parties involved. And just because you choose to play the game doesn't mean you automatically consent to every single thing that goes on in the game.

Also, you're probably aware that in many games, death is something that needs to be agreed upon by the player--and D&D 5e itself makes death notoriously easy to avoid because more and more players nowadays aren't cool with their characters getting killed because of a random die roll.

 

[Maxperson]

Dude, I'm right here! This is also not what I've said.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

 

[Maxperson]

Everyone here is of course welcome to weight my opinion by whatever metric they deem fit, based on their opinion of my posting history.

 

[Maxperson]

Do you mean like how failing in combat in D&D requires you to play your character as dead?

 

[Maxperson]

But let’s never forget that “achieve via smart decisions” means “convincing the DM that was a smart decision.”

That's pretty reductive. "Convincing" the DM generally means "What any reasonable person would conclude."

 

[SableWyvern]

This is why I’m asking about consistency… because I think it seems more about plausibility. Consistent with what has happened to play… is that what you mean?

Because there’s usually a range of options that could result from most actions. How do we determine which of those is what happens?

I mean that the players are able to make decisions from the perspective of their characters with what feels like the same degree of reliability as those characters would have were those characters and the world they existed in real; and that the outcomes of those decisions feel consistent with the outcomes one would expect were the characters and world real rather than imaginary.

You're welcome to use whatever word for that you feel fits.

The consistency of GM rulings on the things that happen in the gameworld should aspire to be as consistent as the laws of physics in our real world, to a sufficient degree of fidelity that players can feel they're making legitimate decisions from the perspectives of their players [edit: of course I mean: ] characters.

Disclaimer: I'm not saying all GMs should apsire to this generally, that this is the correct way to play, etc... I'm talking about they way I, personally, look to run the sorts of games being discussed.