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

[EzekielRaiden]

All you're doing is just reaffirming that you've created a definition of agency that is not widely shared to "prove" that the game you prefer has "more agency".

Really?

Because to me pemerton has done nothing of the sort.

Is player agency on equal footing? Or is it subservient to the DM's vision of the setting?

Because everything I've seen indicates the latter is what people mean when they talk about "realism" being the highest priority in gaming. The DM's vision is all-important. Player agency is something to attend to after ensuring that that vision remains clear, concrete, and consistent.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Really?

Because to me pemerton has done nothing of the sort.

Is player agency on equal footing? Or is it subservient to the DM's vision of the setting?

Because everything I've seen indicates the latter is what people mean when they talk about "realism" being the highest priority in gaming. The DM's vision is all-important. Player agency is something to attend to after ensuring that that vision remains clear, concrete, and consistent.

This is kind of our point, the language of the debate is being framed to make everything about player and GM power dynamics over how the setting/or ‘the fiction’ is controlled. You are painting a high agency style out of the conversation (sandbox) with language . That is how you know something is wrong with the definition of terms: something that is one of the highest agency adventures structure is being framed as low agency purely by definitions

 

[SableWyvern]

I'm not suggesting that anyone must accept anything as true.

The comment where you did so was a bit earlier in the conversation, prior to the first part of said conversation that I quoted.

"Living world sandbox"-er explains how their approach to RPGing supports more player agency than DL-esque or AP play - that's A-OK, unbiased reportage.

BitD-er or BW-er explains how their approach to RPGing supports more player agency than a living world sandbox - that's outrageous bias!

This is the part where you imply that it's hypocritical of @AlViking to complain about you claiming their style of play (which is intended to focus on providing agency) has far less agency than your preferred style, and indicating that the reason it is hypocritical is AlViking had the audacity to suggest a Living World Sandbox style of play offers more agency than some old modules that have for decades been held up as the original poster child for limited agency.

You are making that case that anyone who accepts AlViking's comparison as valid should also accept your comparison as valid. There is no other way to interpret the comment.

Now, you might choose to say, well, technically, you never actually said, "You must accept my criticism as valid and true." But you absolutely are trying to position not accepting it as unreasonable and hypocritical, which amounts to the same thing.

It is a disingenuous, rhetorical trick.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The comment where you did so was a bit earlier in the conversation, prior to the first part of said conversation that I quoted.



This is the part where you imply that it's hypocritical of @AlViking to complain about you claiming their style of play (which is intended to focus on providing agency) has far less agency than your preferred style, and indicating that the reason it is hypocritical is AlViking had the audacity to suggest a Living World Sandbox style of play offers more agency than some old modules that have for decades been held up as the original poster child for limited agency.

You are making that case that anyone who accepts AlViking's comparison as valid should also accept your comparison as valid. There is no other way to interpret the comment.

Now, you might choose to say, well, technically, you never actually said, "You must accept my criticism as valid and true." But you absolutely are trying to position not accepting it as unreasonable and hypocritical, which amounts to the same thing.

It is a disingenuous, rhetorical trick.

I mean, when one side reports the awesome of their stuff and nobody challenges or questions it (and indeed treats any such challenge or question as inherently unfair), while the other side reporting theirs gets pilloried...

Yeah, I really do think there's a criticism here that you're blithely rejecting.

 

[thefutilist]

How does one derive this crucible or create a world/setting as needed to present a premise to test? Is it via collaboration or is the GM shifting the story towards this crucible via the failures on the rolls?
Are there specific techniques which are employed to create this question via the setting?

In my sandbox campaign, I'm constantly scouring the characters' Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws to see if/and how they can be applied as the natural story emerges (players are encouraged to do this too, but I'm the primary driver since I find and enjoy that internal character test). The players and I are not actively driving the story to test their Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws. If the story presents that test and I'm alert to the opportunity, I do so. I have found the players at my table actually enjoy that struggle.
It is not a perfect process at all since the game was not designed for that.

If you want hard crucible then manbearcat and pemerton are your guys, although I think you'd need to change up how you're running the system. Otherwise just create npcs you like, that have understandable motives, that 'possibly' conflict with different player characters motives. Then just play the npc's as you would a player character.

If you're trying to do this in an existing campaign where the players move together as a group. Then you need to create a situation for them to arrive into. How you do this is as follow: This is a very brief version.


Think about what's causing a disruption. Somebody (an npc) is taking action that a lot of people are opposing and supporting. I hate magic because it's lazy and trite and normally I wouldn't use it but if you're doing D&D then how about.

A pacifist necromancer is raising the dead because being dead is awful. He wants to bring about immortality and banish grief, death, suffering from the world. So imagine some town where's started his base of operations. There's zombies and skeletons. He's got a lot of townspeople supporting him because death is awful. They want immortality and/or their loved ones back, or utopia on earth.

So the first question: are any of the PC's going to join him? he can bring back their loved ones (maybe as ghosts or whatever at the moment but if he can access more magical knowledge who knows)


Then reach into the pc's backgrounds and pull characters from there or plausibly from there, or have a connection to them but also a stake in what's going on.


If a PC is a rogue then have a sexy rogue who wants to sleep with them, is tormented by the people she's killed, supports the necromancer. Best of all is if she's someone they know from their past.

If a PC is a paladin then have a detachment of paladins there. Their orders are to slay the necromancer and try/execute the townsfolk to stop the rot from, spreading. The Captain doesn't want to do it though, he's fine with slaying the necromancer but he considers the townsfolk innocents. Also he has a second in command. Her family were murdered by cult fanatics and so she does see people with 'rotten' ideologies as morally culpable.

and so on.

EDIT: Oh and write down questions for the npc's if they occur to you.

SEXY ROGUE

will they sleep with the pc rogue?

what will become of their guilt?

THE SECOND IN COMMAND

what will second in command do if captain doesn't try the townsfolk

 

[SableWyvern]

I mean, when one side reports the awesome of their stuff and nobody challenges or questions it (and indeed treats any such challenge or question as inherently unfair), while the other side reporting theirs gets pilloried...

Yeah, I really do think there's a criticism here that you're blithely rejecting.

So, to be clear, you feel that a typical Actual Play and the original Dragonlance modules inherently offer high amounts of player agency?

 

[AlViking]

Really?

Because to me pemerton has done nothing of the sort.

Is player agency on equal footing? Or is it subservient to the DM's vision of the setting?

Because everything I've seen indicates the latter is what people mean when they talk about "realism" being the highest priority in gaming. The DM's vision is all-important. Player agency is something to attend to after ensuring that that vision remains clear, concrete, and consistent.

Depends on how we measure. Believe that everything ever done by the character leading up to a decision point should impact the chance of success? D&D there is more agency.

Think that the player helping to define the world is required for agency? Traditional D&D has less.

I could go on but it just depends on what you value. More or less agency is meaningless and, as far as I can tell, only been used by people who want to prove that their game is somehow superior.

Within the context of a specific set of rules I think there may be some basis for comparison. But across games with completely different goals and approaches? Irrelevant.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So, to be clear, you feel that a typical Actual Play and the original Dragonlance modules inherently offer high amounts of player agency?

I never said that at all! In fact I've said pretty much exactly the antithesis of the second, repeatedly.

But what I'm getting at is this: One side is allowed to use whatever terms they like, and when challenged about alleged flaws in those terms (such as vagueness or lack of descriptive utility), they flatly reject all such criticisms and declare that everyone must simply put up with those terms, without even a single effort at circumlocuting around them. (Unless that happened in any of the several times I've checked out of the thread...but I sincerely doubt it.)

Whereas those very same people who demand that their terms be accepted without criticism....then police the terms of the people they're discussing against, rejecting anything and everything as "pre-judging" the argument or "defining away" the problem etc.

Meaning, only one side is allowed to wield the power of the dictionary unchallenged.

Yours.

That's not fair. That's a "disingenuous rhetorical trick".

 

[SableWyvern]

I never said that at all! In fact I've said pretty much exactly the antithesis of the second, repeatedly.

But what I'm getting at is this: One side is allowed to use whatever terms they like, and when challenged about alleged flaws in those terms (such as vagueness or lack of descriptive utility), they flatly reject all such criticisms and declare that everyone must simply put up with those terms, without even a single effort at circumlocuting around them. (Unless that happened in any of the several times I've checked out of the thread...but I sincerely doubt it.)

Whereas those very same people who demand that their terms be accepted without criticism....then police the terms of the people they're discussing against, rejecting anything and everything as "pre-judging" the argument or "defining away" the problem etc.

Meaning, only one side is allowed to wield the power of the dictionary unchallenged.

Yours.

That's not fair. That's a "disingenuous rhetorical trick".

OK, so I said that a very specific comparison pemerton made was unreasonable.

And you are trying to argue with me over something that has nothing to do with that specific comparison.

Go argue with those "very same people who want their terms accepted", don't go trying to twist something I've said into an argument about something else that you're having with someone else.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Depends on how we measure. Believe that everything ever done by the character leading up to a decision point should impact the chance of success? D&D there is more agency.

Except that that is absolutely false about things like Dungeon World. I don't play Burning Wheel, so I can't comment on that.

It's also laughable to say that "everything ever done by the character leading up to a decision point should impact the chance of success". That's never been true of any edition of D&D--not with the extreme way it's phrased. Some things matter. A hell of a lot of things don't. That you have a +4 modifier does not in the slightest care about where that modifier came from. That you have Advantage does not in the slightest care where it came from--and, in particular, infinitely many sources of Disadvantage are cancelled out by even one singular source of Advantage (or vice-versa).

It would help your case to not state it in such radical terms.

Within the context of a specific set of rules I think there may be some basis for comparison. But across games with completely different goals and approaches? Irrelevant.

Yeah, sorry, I just don't accept this. Hardcore relativism of all stripes has never made a compelling argument, and hardcore design relativism isn't any better.

We can still make comparisons. Those comparisons may require nuance or subtlety. That doesn't mean we should stop making them. Otherwise, every game is already perfectly itself. It can never be criticized. It can never be analyzed. It can never be understood or improved or studied. It just is, a whole, perfect, unassailable, undiscussable unit unto itself.

At which point, pack up the boards ladies and gentlemen, we've defined away any possible utility they could have other than "look at this cool thing", which Instagram is infinitely superior for.