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

[robertsconley]

I have not framed sandbox style play as “ideologically suspect”. I’ve repeatedly pointed out that it’s a perfectly valid way to play, and one that I engage in myself.

However I do think that a large part of what you’re talking about is GM led play. The focus of play is the setting more so than the characters. Again, that’s not bad.

And although the players do have the freedom to move about the setting and engage with different elements, their ability to do so is largely dependent on the GM.

This is why I don’t think it’s as player driven as is often claimed.

I’ll take your word that you’re not framing sandbox play as ideologically suspect, but you're still misrepresenting how agency works in my campaigns. The referee maintains the world, but the direction of play comes from the players. They aren’t constrained; they choose what to pursue, and the world reacts accordingly.

Calling that GM-led overlooks the core point: the players decide what happens. The world doesn’t guide them; they guide themselves through it. That’s player-driven, just with a different structure than what you’re used to.

 

[Lanefan]

We're getting somewhere but you're still misunderstanding a few things.

Pretend me and my group are playing 5E or whatever edition you play in. Forget techniques for the moment. The defining feature is the group reward, I'll state this again because it's the thing that you need to beat people over the head with. Narrativism doesn't refer to a set of techniques. It refers to a group reward. If the group notices and enjoys that the beggar leaders decision is thematic/ethical, then that's a Narrativist reward. This can happen in all sorts of play and it doesn't mean you're playing Narrativist, to play Narrativist just means you want to more reliably generate that reward.

May I back this up a step and ask what you mean by "group reward" here, as opposed to any other type of reward? And are you referring to in-fiction reward, at-table reward, or a combination of both?

Yes, the beggars were in danger if the Demon Wolf turned its attention to them. But even in your reductive example, that danger wasn’t constructed to generate a moral dilemma. The beggars were there because, a few weeks prior, it was plausible for them to be fencing loot for the local bandits. It was bad luck that they happened to be present during the Demon Wolf’s attacks, which led to the chief’s son being killed. The leader then chose to stay and seek revenge, and the clan agreed to support him.

This is interesting because there is no 'few weeks prior', there is just stuff the GM or scenario writer made up. You can't cite the reason as being 'it was plausible they were fencing loot' because there is no loot to fence. When not in the prep stage I'm more sympathetic to appeals to plausibility but in the prep stage it makes no sense because there is nothing to extrapolate from.

Well, if one preps with the sense that there is a 'few weeks prior', i.e. there's a history and associated causality sequence that got things to where they are when the PCs might interact with them, and during prep one imagines through that sequence and then makes sure one's notes agree with it, then if-when the PCs interact with it you're on solid ground if they try to follow back up that chain of events to determine why things are as they are. Intricate detail isn't required - a vague idea will do.

In this example, this would arise if the PCs thought to wonder why the beggars were here in the first place; you'd have that info at the ready and not be stuck trying to make things up in the moment. It serves if nothing else to give the players a sense that there's more going on in the world than just what the PCs are interacting with right this minute, even if a lot of the fiction might never get any farther than the GM's head and-or notes.

 

[Lanefan]

But I imagine that most games that rely on sandboxes would likely wind up having many nodes and many paths to the point where it’d be hard to track them all.

Exactly.

Now let that run for 15+ years and try deciphering the plate of spaghetti those paths and nodes have become. It's worthwhile, but it ain't always easy.

 

[Micah Sweet]

OK, sandbox: the GM authors an environment filled with locations. This environment generally allows for fairly free navigation, such that the PCs, acting as a group, have the option to interact with these locations when and if they wish.

That's a part of it, but what is ALSO relevant, and gets pushback is the question of the direction and content of play. I assert that, absent certain types of techniques which are not usually present in trad forms of play that the GM generally has an outsized role here. You can describe that how you want, ideology be damned.

Heck, Doskvol (BitD) has the first part of this, albeit created by the game's developer. But it plays far differently than Majestic Wilderlands due to different techniques used in play to decide what happens, and who decides it. Nobody is attacking sandbox by describing that as more player driven and this, reasonably, higher player autonomy. It's just a logical way for us to describe it.

When you say "outsized" in regards to the GM's role, can I assume you mean "bigger than you would personally like"?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is one of the reasons I asked. I feel like there are two things being discussed, and they are a bit related. I will start out saying I do think GM authority is pretty central to what made D&D work and helped distinguish it for me from things like boardgames (I mentioned before that fiery moment in my mind when I first played, and it was all about how the GM being empowered to respond to me saying what I wanted to do, to take that anywhere, made the experience feel boundless and immersive for me). But I think different editions have approached this in different ways. It seems like we are largely talking about rules light versus, not rules heavy, but rules comprehensiveness; and High GM authority versus checked GM authority. I mentioned 3E because I quite like 3E, and while I had my complaints, one of the things it did, was put such emphasis on rules and the GM doing things like balancing out encounters, as well as empowering players through things like class dipping and the rise of 'wish lists' that it really did shift the zeitgeist for a time (I would even say 5E's lighter, more empowered GM approach feels like a response to this, as well as a response to things that were happening in 4E). I guess where I am going, is 1) part of this is there is a baked in component to the game that will probably make this always an issue for some folks to an extend (the game functions around high GM authority, and for many people, whether folks think this is good or bad), that is the game. But it has also approached it in different ways and there have been editions people came together on from different camps, and the pendulum is always swinging back and forth. 3E strikes me as a possible middle ground here, though perhaps others will disagree. Simply because I know I was invested in it and enjoyed it (wasn't thrilled with teh AP adventure structure that become the norm, and I think WOTC isn't good at adventure content, but the system worked and gave me years of successful campaigns). And I feel like that was also a time where I felt as GM I had the least full authority in teh game I had had in some time (and sometimes this was annoying because I felt like I was working for the players more, but on the other hand, the system was so flexible you could use it to create any campaign world you wanted: I had a great time putting together wuxia campaigns during 3E, for example, because of the way multi classing worked. And there was an energy in the fandom too at that time.

Obviously there were other downsides. Like it was the height of the d20 era and me trying to get players to play HKAT! was nearly impossible if it didn't have a d20 logo (which it did not). I even had to run Cthulhu as a d20 just to do Cthulhu (though in fairness that was actually a pretty good d20 product all things considered)

One day in 1975 some other kid brought a copy of D&D to a campout. I was astounded. Not by some process based on a DM doing whatever, or the allocation of roles to DM and players. The essence of it was, and remains, the combination of game and open-ended situation. D&D followed an established design pattern with a referee, though in wargames the players generally decide what the basic situation is. Anyway it's the open-ended nature of play that is, far and away, the central feature.

 

[Campbell]

When I run Apocalypse World my GM moves are not in service to a particular theme or narrative arc. What happens is emergent of player characters interacting with coherent and consistent world. We're just creating that world with certain aesthetic goals in mind and keeping it somewhat unfixed to ensure our aesthetic goals can be met while keeping the world consistent and coherent. We build out from the player characters' lives instead of the other way around, but that does not mean we are giving up a world that lives and breathes. It just lives and breathes in a way that is consistent with our aesthetic goals.

The circumstances and situations that are framed are authored, but the responses and the fallout are emergent. This is consistent with how Stars Without Numbers works (in my experience of running it according to its text). The processes, timing and aesthetic goals behind the situations we author are different, but that the situations are authored is not.

There are multiple ways to make a world live and breathe, not one singular way. I think the top-down world design methods are pretty decent at adventuring situations, but they often fall short when it comes to more personal, messy sorts of situations with characters who have messier lives. Different approaches to world building have different sorts of strengths in terms of what they model well (in my personal experience).

TLDR

Just because make the character lives not boring is part of the agenda does not mean make the apocalypse world feel real is not also part of the agenda.

 

[thefutilist]

May I back this up a step and ask what you mean by "group reward" here, as opposed to any other type of reward? And are you referring to in-fiction reward, at-table reward, or a combination of both?

So by reward I mean 'type' of fun. I for instance, you're watching a few good men, there's a scene where Kaffee has to decide if he wants to question the Colonel. As you're watching that you have anticipation, you want to find out what happens, when he decides there's a type of pay off (thematic pay off). Or say when Frodo is standing before the lava and you're wondering if he can throw the one ring in. Or whatever it is. That's the individual reward.

Say you're watching in the cinema and everyone cheers when Robocop says 'Murphy', that's group reward. You all know what that means and are enjoying it together.

To take a different sort of reward. You're playing a roleplay game, say Robert's scenario above. It could be that someone persuades the Beggar leader to leave and the individual reward isn't like it is when watching fiction but is more along the lines of a tactical appreciation. Like, ah that was was what did it, good move. If everyone has the same sort of reward, we're on the same page as to 'what' is rewarding, then we have group reward.

 

[Bedrockgames]

One day in 1975 some other kid brought a copy of D&D to a campout. I was astounded. Not by some process based on a DM doing whatever, or the allocation of roles to DM and players. The essence of it was, and remains, the combination of game and open-ended situation. D&D followed an established design pattern with a referee, though in wargames the players generally decide what the basic situation is. Anyway it's the open-ended nature of play that is, far and away, the central feature.

But what made it open ended was the GMs ability to take what you said and figure out how to resolve that (whether through rules, fiat, etc). To me that was the essence of it. It is what separated playing D&D from something like King's Quest (and technically I wasn't playing D&D but the power dynamic between players and GM was the same)

 

[thefutilist]

Well, if one preps with the sense that there is a 'few weeks prior', i.e. there's a history and associated causality sequence that got things to where they are when the PCs might interact with them, and during prep one imagines through that sequence and then makes sure one's notes agree with it, then if-when the PCs interact with it you're on solid ground if they try to follow back up that chain of events to determine why things are as they are. Intricate detail isn't required - a vague idea will do.

In this example, this would arise if the PCs thought to wonder why the beggars were here in the first place; you'd have that info at the ready and not be stuck trying to make things up in the moment. It serves if nothing else to give the players a sense that there's more going on in the world than just what the PCs are interacting with right this minute, even if a lot of the fiction might never get any farther than the GM's head and-or notes.

Yeah, that's my default way of doing it. Some games do ask for different ways.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The language is already captured. It was captured before we got here. It's an artifact of a culture of play that normalizes GM storytelling and has modified what agency means contextually away from its dictionary definition so that when people like younger versions of myself express their frustration that they feel a lack of agency because they are not making much of an impact on the shared fiction that their expectations are too high. It's language that reinforces cultural values.

Then when we opt to use other language designed to fit our points we are told it's not neutral to use things like GM force or nudging. We get told that we must use language that leaves no space for us. That describes in any way what other forms of gaming bring us that we are not getting from the dominant modes of play.

Even terms of art like GM Moves or Kickers are viewed with suspicion.

Well, there are entire threads here filled with posters railing against any invention of any new terms whatsoever. Many of those posts were made by posters who have posted in this very thread! But hey, it's also bad if I use existing words in a slightly new way. Basically it amounts to 'shut up' unless all I want is to parrot orthodox views.