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

[Micah Sweet]

Remembering that I noted - you get to like what you like.

But, it isn't like my friend hadn't tried cheese dishes before either. It took his not knowing it was a cheese dish for him to give it a fair shake and like it. And even then, when he learned the thing he didn't like was involved, he changed his opinion! The dish he'd just told us was tasty suddenly became unpleasant to him. Nothing about the dish or it's flavor changed. Only his perspective.

This is a pretty common effect - once one has formed an opinion, later examples will tend to be interpreted to conform to that opinion. I can go into the neurology of it, if you like.

It sounds like you're saying my preference is meaningless because I can be manipulated, purposefully or otherwise, into changing it. In your example it seems clear to me that your friend's disdain for cheese is considered foolish at best because they liked the cheese dish until they were made aware of the contents.

 

[Umbran]

I don't agree with that. For a lot of us, there's a rather marked difference between mental and physical. We wouldn't bat an eyelash at our PC being killed, or even being grappled and dragged across a room. Someone ordering the PC to cross the room and then being forced to walk across if he doesn't want to due to a failed "mind control" check, though, is a huge no no for us.

The point is that in terms of game structure, they aren't particularly different. The structure isn't alien.

So, from there, it becomes very much a matter of personal preference, just as you note it. The other guy isn't doing something intrinsically weird. You like chocolate, and they like pistachio. There's nothing terrible about pistachio as a concept, even if you don't like it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Fair, maybe it is better to say: "the main innovation is not about player agency. It's about moving adjudication from the GM to the system".

Moving adjudication can both increase and decrease agency. When the players can make meaningful actions just by interacting with the DM, it decreases it. When they can't, it increases it.

Honestly, stepping back from any of the usual debating points, the difference seems to me to be in the content and intent of the adjudication. Taking Dungeon World as the easiest to look at, what is the difference in GMing DW vs GMing B/X D&D (as a fairly elemental example of classic/trad design)?

DW simply makes it the job of the GM to focus their scene framing and prep on concerns articulated by the players through their characters. The milieu/genre of the two games is effectively identical. In B/X the GM concerns center on presenting prepared material which embodies challenges the GM has imagined and devised in order to entertain the players.

It is the what, in general terms, the nature of the question "why this?"; and the resulting technical aspects of play which varies. None of this has to do with 'realism' or 'character autonomy' or whatever in any direct way AFAICT.

 

[AlViking]

First off, please realize that I'm speaking of broad tendencies and trends in human cognition, not about any specific choice by any specific person.

I'd say "actively rejecting" is probably seen in several different behaviors. Including, say, repeatedly spending time on the internet telling folks you don't really know that you don't like a thing, even when they are not offering to give it to you. That would seem... pretty active (even proactive), to me.

I wouldn't presume to know what you are doing. I don't know you.



I'm going to have to set the 4e comment aside, because I'm not on board with it being "narrativist leaning" in the same senses as PbtA or BitD are.

If I'd have to classify behaviors as being indicative of a pattern? Well...

• If you are skimming a list of games that will be played at your FLGS, and there's loads of choices, and you just don't bother to look at the "narrativist" games, I'd call that pretty passive rejection.
• If someone you know has a table of people you'd like to play with, and offers you a seat, and you reject it over the "narrativist" forms of the game, that would seem pretty active rejection.
• If, say, pemerton and I were talking about some bit of narrative-related game design, and you stepped in to tell us how you wouldn't like it, because it is narrativist, I'd call that pretty active as well.

I have repeatedly, and sincerely, said that folks get to like what they like. Their reasons are their own, and I don't really care what they are.

If you aren't interested in talking about how we come to judgements, feel free to ignore this. It isn't about you, personally. It is about how human minds generally operate.



But, you see, that's not what happened.

In this particular dinner, we had three different starch-dishes on the table. The rice had cheese in it, the other two dishes clearly didn't. Nobody had any religious or health restrictions, so we didn't label ingredients. We just expected that he'd avoid the one dish, in favor of the other two. There was enough for all, regardless. No effort was spent to urge him to try the cheesy rice. He self-selected it, and enjoyed it, until he figured out that cheese was probably in it, and only then did he reject it.

Which is to say, he rejected it over the idea of cheese, even after earlier accepting the reality of cheese.

First, I threw in 4e because it has nothing to do with whether or not it's a narrative game or not. I could have said the same thing about Pandemic Legacy which was kind of funny because I enjoy the regular Pandemic game now and then. But I digress. I don't think I need to spend years playing other games to know I don't enjoy them. I can read up on things, try to get a better understanding of how they work on forums, think about what I enjoy about the games I play and make a reasonable decision.

But if someone rejects a game just because it doesn't sound appealing? So what? It's not my call and they may be missing out on something but it doesn't matter to me one way or another.

 

[Micah Sweet]

What does "actively reject" even mean? I reject Thai food because I tried it at a few different places and didn't like it. I can even explain how to me all the spices just blend into "hot" with no additive value. Am I actively rejecting it? If I've played some more narrative style games here and there, read up on PbtA and BW style games and realize they just don't work for me am I actively rejecting them? I played D&D 4e for a couple of years and it just never really clicked so I don't want to play it or anything similar. Same question.

Seems like a lot of people are really invested in this idea that we don't like a specific <food, game system, version of D&D> it can only be because we just don't know any better. Every once in a while like with your friend and cheese it may be true. But the majority of times? People are willing to change if they find that they actually like something. But if they just plain don't like it? Telling them "Try it you'll like it" is just annoying.

Exactly my point. Saying, "you can like what you like" in this context feels like a band-aid covering, "this person would change their mind if they knew better".

 

[Umbran]

Base principle is clearly not the only factor in play regarding acceptance of certain mechanics.

No, it is not. No argument there.
But being incorrect about base principle complicates discussion of mechanics.

As in, if you claim/assume that something is a difference of base principle, but isn't, the conversation becomes difficult, because inaccurate premises lead to inconsistencies in analysis.

 

[Maxperson]

So is this guy actually longing after Narrativist play but unable to comprehend what he's doing. If he did find a way to make thos moments come more reliably, without feeling contrived, would he find his play a lot better? Is it so significant 'because' it's a once in a blue moon kind of thing. Like if his play was more orientated around it he'd be like, ah screw this, I want more solving. It's hard to say.

This is what some of us were saying upthread. Those moments stand out so much, because they are uncommon to rare. The huge moments are fantastic. When those moments are commonplace, none of them stand out from the rest of the game.

It's also not as if we don't have a ton of fun and enjoyment with the normal flow of the game, so it's not like we're bored out of our minds until a huge moment comes up. We're just trucking along have a grand time and when one of those pivotal moments happens, it gets talked about sometimes for years, because it was truly special.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Shouldn't a person's agency in life be our standard of agency ? In Hillfolk I can go well beyond what I can do in life simply by saying things. And I like that. But I would not call that agency (or at the very least I wouldnt' say that gives me more agency than someone in an open sandbox)

Your ability to influence play of a game as a player is different than your ability to influence the real world as a person.

There's only this confusion over RPGs because part of play includes portraying a fictional character. This is why, to examine agency, you have to set aside the character and look at what the player can do to impact play.

Then we can look at different degrees of agency, and different limitations, and what they mean for play.

Also, agency should be limited in some ways... that's a part of play. Everyone tends to approach this topic as "more agency is more gooder" but it's totally a matter of preference. Limiting player agency to match that of the characters is perfectly fine as a preference... but it involves limiting player agency. That doesn't make it bad.

But to add my thoughts--Ime you get 90% of the way there just by asking. Not every GM wants to run a consistent world. If you ask they'll say things like "that combat seemed way too easy for you so I added a half dozen more guards". They'll tell you they value narrative or character moments first, and that they these are more important than consistency.

So what's the basis for consistency here? That there only be 6 guards instead of 12. Is it the GM's initial prep? Is it the likelihood that the location in question would only have 6 guards and not 12?

It seems like it's the GM's prep, but I just want to make sure I'm following you.

So really the concerns only come up if 1) they claim to be consistent but are lying or 2) they are genuinely trying to be consistent but aren't doing a great job. If (1) is the case then you've got larger problems; but it's never happened to me. If (2) is the case, then you communicate. They want to improve and the conversation will likely be productive.

Yes, number 2 is far more my concern. I don't even know we have to categorize it as "not doing a great job", although that may be the case, but even just "doing it differently than players would expect or prefer".

Yes, discussion is key. But I think one of the possible solutions is to be generous with information as a GM.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean, referencing back to the thread topic, I think these discussions matter because an extremely large portion of the player base aren't aware that these other approaches exist. IMX, this is super common even with people who have been playing D&D for decades.

So for every person who is in the camp of "I know what you're talking about, and I just don't like it" (and I totally accept that you fall in that camp; I do not believe your preferences are based on any sort of ignorance), there are 10 other people who are like "I have no idea what you're talking about."

And I'm saying this as someone who was initially negative about 4e, but got exposed to some of these "newfangled" narrative ideas on these very forums and 4e became my favorite edition.

I started out cautious on 4e, played and ran it for about 2 years, and ended up negative on it, to the point where I'm now wary of games that remind me of the parts of 4e I don't like.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't frame scenes, either. We can all go back to a session or part of a session and describe what happened, the dialogue, etc., just like a scene, so I have no problem calling specific parts of the game scenes after the fact.

After the fact is important to me. I'm not writing a screenplay.