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

[Thomas Shey]

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.

It can be really hard to get some adjacent ones to work that way, either; if you start digging into most pulp adventure games, the conventions there are almost as pronounced (which isn't a surprise given there relationship between the two). And any horror genre other than action-horror has some baked in pretty soundly, too.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

The biggest problem can be some such players are really waiting for the hook. If they have to go look for it, they'll coast to a stop.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

There's kind of a third case; games where the GM is running for multiple PCs but they're mostly just timesharing; they aren't members of a group in any meaningful case. I've run those, but honestly, its more of a pain in the behind than its worth IMO.

 

[TwoSix]

There's kind of a third case; games where the GM is running for multiple PCs but they're mostly just timesharing; they aren't members of a group in any meaningful case. I've run those, but honestly, its more of a pain in the behind than its worth IMO.

I’ve done that as well, although it was a while ago. It’s why I’m a stickler now for how not running games that are more “high-concept” and have a starting rationale for PC cooperation.

 

[Bedrockgames]

See, I don't think that. I am sure various forms of play can, and often do, produce interesting and dynamic situations. I'm strictly interested in how they arise and where they come from, and their thematic nature. Typical sandboxes focus on GM originated concerns, and -as @robertsconley points out- don't care about thematic elements at all beyond genre.

I am not talking about thematic elements. A lack of literary theme, doesn't mean the setting is dead, or it is all about GM originated concerns. I am talking about living elements in the setting. When you guys talk about what me or Rob are doing, it is like the prep is just there to be discovered or interacted with. What i am saying is that doesn't capture what I think is happening. Because there is not only a much more involved interaction, but the players are also causing these things to go in directions they never would have otherwise (if they decide to abduct a bandit's daughter, that radically alters the flow of events, and the Bandit leader is an independent character who is going to respond). And the characters in the setting are also active, pursuing goals and agendas.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

An outsized role in what, exactly? This is not about challenging your statement. If we want to avoid talking past each other, we need to be specific: what is the referee controlling, and what are the players controlling? Too often “referee control” gets thrown around without clarifying whether it’s about narration, adjudication, pacing, or the setting.

As I’ve said before, just like with railroading, this isn’t a simple on/off switch, it’s a matter of nuance. The impact of referee procedures depends entirely on the creative goals of the campaign.

The point of Blades in the Dark is to recreate the feeling of a heist story in the world of Doskvol. Its mechanics, including flashbacks, flow from that goal. Sharing narrative authority is part of the system’s design, and clearly, that style resonates with many, given how much it's created a family of Powered by the Dark RPGs.

By contrast, the point of my Living World Sandbox campaigns is to present a setting that feels real, where players feel like they’ve been there as their characters. Everything I do flows from that. I handle the World in Motion because the players only have access to what their characters could plausibly know. Their agency comes from choosing what to pursue and how to act, not from framing scenes, asserting authorial control, or sharing the fiction.

And to be clear: player agency in my campaigns goes far beyond just “choosing where to go.” If the players wander into a village of basket weavers and decide they want to become basket weavers, that’s the campaign now. It’s not a joke, I’ve run campaigns where the players built and ran an inn after retiring from mercenary life. The game shifted entirely based on their choices. That’s not limited agency. That’s deep integration into a world that reacts.

Well, consider that example, the characters wander into a village of basket weavers. This is a fictional construct of the GM's. While you can no doubt articulate reasons for said village to exist here, it is far from the only possibility. But adding to this is the sort of things that the process of play you are using does. In, say, Dungeon World the basket weaving would either be color, or maybe address some thematically relevant thing like a PC backstory or a bond. But in trad play where these things are peripheral, things focus naturally on material and operational concerns.

So what we see is that the GM's conception of the world is far more influential in trad forms of play, like living world, than it is in Narrativist play. I'd also say that, generally, Narrativist play has a much simpler and naturally more gamist relationship to system and process. PbtA is great because of the beautiful universal simplicity of process. Players can always get from situation to stakes to mechanics easily and directly. This can be a much more obtuse process in other sorts of systems (FitD etc generally share this, though system complexity varies).

Nobody, certainly not me, is doubting that your approach does what it says it does in a core sense. I am a bit leary of some of the broader claims, based on long experience, but I am certainly not trying to tear anything down. Frankly I think a very clear view of these things allows us to more effectively get what we want.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

Exactly. This kind of milieu is just as 'alive' and presents just as deep an opportunity for discovery and dynamic situation as any top-down approach. I think top down design can sometimes be a good way to achieve certain goals in RPGs, but the most fruitful approach often mixes the two. Doskvol attains its dark struggle against oppression vibe from the setting as well as the game structure.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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)

The power dynamic was Dave's way of accomplishing that, but it is far from the only way, and wasn't what interested me. Random dungeon generators, perhaps coupled with a concensus mechanic,ight do as well. Obviously people have developed many workable approaches.

 

[Campbell]

There's kind of a third case; games where the GM is running for multiple PCs but they're mostly just timesharing; they aren't members of a group in any meaningful case. I've run those, but honestly, its more of a pain in the behind than its worth IMO.

I think it kind of depends on how many players you have and their ability to be invested in each other's characters. I wouldn't run Sorcerer for more than 3 players, but 3-4 is basically my sweet spot as a GM and a player. I also tend to not to run games with complex combat systems or where characters are off in very different parts of the setting.

Smaller player counts are also probably related to me not really wanting players who kind of just follow along. They're taking a seat away from a more active player.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The power dynamic was Dave's way of accomplishing that, but it is far from the only way, and wasn't what interested me. Random dungeon generators, perhaps coupled with a concensus mechanic,ight do as well. Obviously people have developed many workable approaches.

You can still have random dungeon generators. I am fine with those tools. What I am talking about is the GM having the ability, when the player says I want to do X, to figure out a way to make that happen. The power dynamic is definitely a very important, I would say even the essential thing, and what makes that happen. This to me is why RPGs are so different from other media. A computer game can't do that. Even now they can't do it to the extent of a human mind (though AI is certainly catching up). That can definitely be tweaked and played with, and you can experiment with shifting power to players or constraining the GM. And that is all fine. But I still think the key tool that makes RPGs so wonderful is the ability to do that. Having a GM with this kind of power in the game is an enormously powerful tool for bringing the world to life and facilitating player agency. It is a feature, not a bug IMO