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

[Micah Sweet]

I certainly couldn't do it. Superhero settings just crumble under any examination, I struggle to maintain the correct mindset. There's just never enough there, when you've got the whole palette of gameable interactions instead of consuming media that's already been cleaned up to fit the right shape.

The superhero genre is pretty much the only one where I'm willing to relax my usual desire for verisimilitude, because in practice you have to enforce genre conventions if you want play to ever resemble the fiction. I've never met a group that, given characters with superpowers in an otherwise modern "grounded" setting, didn't immediately start exploiting them in perfectly logical but genre inappropriate ways.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well I specifically wouldn't say that. Or rather, without context it makes no sense to say that because we're talking about techniques. I have no idea whether there are any techniques that could 'improve' your play, assuming you even found it desirable.

The most common way of getting Narrativism in trad play is to front load the contrivance in prep and then have no contrivance at all during play. In fact there are arguments that certain types of contrivance in play would be destructive to the whole endeavour.

'Living world techniques' are very similar to how you'd prep but you're making sure that the initial situation is tense in such a way that no matter what happens, it has some kind of pay off. Even if a character says 'screw this I'm off to start a stray dog sanctuary', then the character is constructed in such a way that this is a meaningful decision.

So in this regard. The Narrativist critique is 'hey I notice you're prepping a lot of tense geopolitical events rather than say, the types of fish found in the various rivers and their migration patterns.' Almost as if you're prepping for 'adventure stuff' rather than 'fishing stuff.'


Also if I make a character that has the background:

I want vengeance on my brother (the current King, rules in a climate of peace), he killed our warmonger father (the last King). I do actually want peace though and my anger issues mean I'm bad at leading people.


Then can I do that within a 'living world'. If I can, then aren't we at the breaking point for contrivance?

If I can't and must make an 'adventurer' who doesn't fit into the created geo-political landscape because the GM already has the world all prepared. Then isn't that itself a contrivance?

I'm not saying, it's all contrivance so throw away this living world nonsense and create a Sophies choice scenario each scene.

I am saying that to the extent that you must alter the world (during prep) to accommodate a character with drives, ambition and capacity, then that's the extent to which you've already stepped over the Narrativist threshold.

How much alteration do you really have to do? I just make a world, and ask the players to make characters that would plausibly fit into it. I also wiggle room in the setting to add some personal motivation stuff (if a PC is hunting their father's killer, said killer will be in the setting somewhere), but this is relatively minor, and doesn't change the character of the setting.

 

[Campbell]

So, most Narrativist designs, are more concerned with characters as individuals. The concept of all the players part of a group is not even part of the default setup for Sorcerer, Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World or Monsterhearts. Even games like The Between, Dogs in the Vineyard or Apocalypse Keys that are built around the player characters being part of a group do not assume alignment and assume a degree of conflict between the characters. We do not really ask the group what it's doing we ask what an individual character is doing in this moment.

However, we do assume a degree of the group of players being invested in all the characters. But as spectators, when it comes down to the individual characters we want to see how they clash, what bring together, what pulls them apart.

 

[robertsconley]

Apathetic players in general are not an issue with my Living World Sandbox. Apathetic doesn't mean they don't have goals; otherwise, they wouldn't be playing tabletop role-playing campaigns in the first place. The goals are generally pretty basic, i.e., grab an ale at the tavern, head out, and loot treasure. But that's good enough to drive the campaign forward with Living World.

However, there is still the issue of getting the group on the same page and functioning as an adventuring party. In most cases, the apathetic player doesn't care what the party is doing as long as it is an adventure. But sometimes, it doesn't jell for a variety of reasons. So, while Living World Campaign may be better at incorporating apathetic players into the campaign, it's not a free lunch or a magic wand, either, and issues still may arise.

 

[Campbell]

Where would you place the living adventure I described in the above post Campbell: within or outside this framework?

I think adjacent in terms of technique, but likely not in terms of creative goals. Ambition and greed can be fine passions after all when they are not just justification for adventures. The primary question for me is if our conception of who these characters are is a question, an answer or if we do not particularly care either way. What separates Narrativism out as like a creative goal is that when we say a character is greedy or honorable we then create situations that put that to the test intentionally. Prove it is basically the creed.

 

[TwoSix]

So, most Narrativist designs, are more concerned with characters as individuals. The concept of all the players part of a group is not even part of the default setup for Sorcerer, Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World or Monsterhearts. Even games like The Between or Apocalypse Keys that are built around the player characters being part of a group do not assume alignment and assume a degree of conflict between the characters. We do not really ask the group what it's doing we ask what an individual character is doing in this moment.

However, we do assume a degree of the group of players being invested in all the characters. But as spectators, when it comes down to the individual characters we want to see how they clash, what bring together, what pulls them apart.

I mean, I'd say any RPG that isn't either solo or 1 GM - 1 player should have either explicit or implicit assumptions that the player characters are going to have some rationale to work together.

I know that some tables do the "you roll your character up by yourself, and you all meet for the first time in the tavern during session 1". But even those tables don't normally have "well, we have a paladin and an evil cleric, the paladin player is going to bounce, good luck!" There's an implicit understanding that the players will try and do something to resolve the tension.

If they don't resolve it, and a character leaves the party, it's an awkward semi-fail state, not a triumph of "Look at our verisimilitude!"

 

[TwoSix]

I think adjacent in terms of technique, but likely not in terms of creative goals. Ambition and greed can be fine passions after all when they are not just justification for adventures. The primary question for me is if our conception of who these characters are is a question, an answer or if we do not particularly care either way. What separates Narrativism out as like a creative goal is that when we say a character is greedy or honorable we then create situations that put that to the test intentionally. Prove it is basically the creed.

Particularly important to how I normally play is that when "Prove it" occurs, and they don't, that's not a fail state. That's just an opportunity for the character to grow and change.

 

[Campbell]

I mean, I'd say any RPG that isn't either solo or 1 GM - 1 player should have either explicit or implicit assumptions that the player characters are going to have some rationale to work together.

I know that some tables do the "you roll your character up by yourself, and you all meet for the first time in the tavern during session 1". But even those tables don't normally have "well, we have a paladin and an evil cleric, the paladin player is going to bounce, good luck!" There's an implicit understanding that the players will try and do something to resolve the tension.

If they don't resolve it, and a character leaves the party, it's an awkward semi-fail state, not a triumph of "Look at our verisimilitude!"

Sorcerer does not even assume the characters know each other at the start of play!

So fundamental to understanding a lot of these games is that there's no adventure to go on. People are simply living their fairly exciting lives but still living their lives. Their paths will cross as they strive to achieve their personal ambitions, but they might be allies sometimes, enemies at other times and sometimes just pursuing different roads.

That's in part why we are generally looking at smaller groups (3-4 at most usually) and constrained areas like a high school for Monsterhearts, a hard hold for Apocalypse World or generally the same city for Sorcerer. It's more like tabletop Dogwood.

 

[robertsconley]

So, most Narrativist designs, are more concerned with characters as individuals. The concept of all the players part of a group is not even part of the default setup for Sorcerer, Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World or Monsterhearts. Even games like The Between, Dogs in the Vineyard or Apocalypse Keys that are built around the player characters being part of a group do not assume alignment and assume a degree of conflict between the characters. We do not really ask the group what it's doing we ask what an individual character is doing in this moment.

That is something Narrativist design does better. I can accommodate PvP conflict in my Living World Campaigns, but that runs into the same bandwidth issue I talked about earlier. So while it has happened, it is infrequent.

The basic issue is that with my focus on players feeling like they are visiting the setting as their character, the unstated subtext is that the group is visiting the setting together. So, like going on a family trip to a vacation spot, accommodations have to be made. While I am very good at managing split parties at sessions, some situations can only be resolved by having separate sessions, so players are unaware of what each group is doing. The exceptions are either direct conflict, where both groups are brought together to handle, or indirect conflict, where the actions of one group impact the immediate social circle of the other group.

 

[Maxperson]

AI being inconsistent doesn't mean the AI is wrong. It means the term is used inconsistently. Although I don't think the usage is inconsistent, it's more of a case where there's a more broad reading and a more specific reading of the term.

In this case, it's wrong. We know the established and common usage for railroad, and it isn't @pemerton's private definition. Nor is it any other AI generated definition. The common usage has been and still is the common usage for the term. AI error doesn't change that.

Language evolves because a person or persons makes a choice to use a word in a different way. Language is malleable because ideas are malleable.

Only if huge numbers of people make that choice. If an individual or small group does, it dies out with them and nothing changes at all. In this case, nothing has changed. The common usage of the term railroading is still how the overwhelming majority of folks use it.

It certainly demonstrates that the different use cases are prevalent enough to have been picked up by the broad algorithm used to train the LLM. That doesn't prove correctness (because how one use case over the other be correct?), it simply proves that both use cases have previously existed.

But we know the correct common usage, so we know it is wrong in this instance.