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

[zakael19]

No, for them it absolutely would remove the fun from the experience. Perhaps it wouldn't for you. We're all different.

There was no "for me" in their statement. People on this forum (and maybe the internet in general) are really goddarn fond of absolute statements on subjective topics. I try my best to avoid them and talk instead from my personal POV or how I understand things because that's how I was taught to have constructive conversations.

 

[hawkeyefan]

No they aren't. There's is no part of "the player controls what his PC says and does" that touches on "the player authors the fiction outside of the PC," and vice versa. They are two very different things.

Sorry, let me clarify. Both are subsets of "player agency" as both are ways in which a player may influence the game.

See above. The two types of agency cannot happen at the same time. You cannot both author the fiction outside the PC in the same moment as you are saying what the PC does or says that affects things. They can occur closely after one another, but so can multiple instances of one or the other.

Time is finite. You cannot have more agency in one game that the other, because the two agencies are mutually exclusive in the same moment of time.

Maybe you're some magic man that controls time and creates time loops or does other crazy stuff that no one else can. I doubt it, though.

I don't know what you're on about.

Nice Strawman. I'm not talking about a living world. I'm talking about a sandbox. In fact, if you were actually going to start reading to understand instead of reading to reply, you'd have read that I said that when the game shifts to be more linear with the passive players, the living portion of the game still happens. So of course a living world doesn't grind to a halt due to players not being proactive. A sandbox does, though. A sandbox cannot happen if the DM is initiating things.

If the living portion of the world still happens, then something like what I've described should spring up.

I don't really understand the distinction you're making between living world and sandbox, but it seems nonsensical to me. Also, a GM can certainly initiate things in a sandbox... to say otherwise displays a serious gap between our view of what a sandbox is.

You said that in less 10 seconds of game gnolls could seek out giants, persuade them to attack, and then the giants could get to town to attack it. Because that's how much time happens when nothing is happening. The players aren't sitting at the table in the inn for the days or weeks it would take for all that to happen.

No, not in less than 10 seconds. If a GM is running the world, then these kinds of things will have been happening in the background all along. So things are happening out in the setting, as established per whatever processes the GM may use. If the players stop being active, then something happens. This is one of the great things about this type of game. The GM can initiate things and make the players react.

If instead we're talking about at the start of play, the players have their characters sit there like lumps, then again, the GM should have something happen to get them to act. Hopefully, that gets the ball rolling, and then the players see different paths forward to choose from.

You did say 10 seconds, because that's how much time passes while the PCs are just sitting at the table and the players are staring at me. And it was during the staring time that this is all happening.

No, the 10 seconds came from you. I think you'd likely say something like "if you were reading to understand rather than respond, you'd have understood".

The idea that you didn't get the context, combined with your other comments, imply to me that you don't really understand the concept of the living world.

If I'm going to initiate something, it's not going to be something that takes days or weeks to happen when only a few seconds of game time are happening.

In a living world the DM doesn't just decide to backdate time and have something occur in the past that did not already happen, so the gnolls didn't decide to retroactively have approached the giants.

Okay... again, two things.

First, why not? Just say "you lay about town for a few weeks, when suddenly, a bell rings out... it's the alarm bell from one of the lookout towers! Cries of 'Gnolls!' can be heard from near the wall. What do you do?" Time is mutable... as the GM, you can set the pace however you like if the players aren't doing anything.

Second, as I've explained, this scenario with the gnolls would be something that would already be "in motion". This would happen over sessions of play if the players chose not to interact with those elements of play. It could be very easily summarized like this:

1. Gnolls are raiding caravans along the western road
2. Emboldened, the gnolls have begun to attack homesteads and farms not far from town
3. The gnolls use their pillaged funds to hire a couple of giant mercenaries to bolster their force
4. The gnolls attack the town

As a GM, you'd track these events and mark the progression from one step to the next, provided that the players don't get involved in some way. If the players do get involved, then you'd determine the impact that involvement would have on this track of events.

It would 1) have already have had to be planned, and 2) could not be aimed at the PCs like that. If either one of those isn't happening, it's not part of a living world.

I don't agree with your number 2 at all. You seem to be operating under the impression that the GM can't instigate events in a living world, which I think is quite wrong.

I'm curious what @Bedrockgames and @robertsconley have to say about your description of it.

If I'm initiating something to get the game moving with passive players, it cannot be part of the living world unless it just coincidentally was something pre-planned for that specific moment and the PCs just happened to proactively go there. None of which occurs when PCs are passively sitting at a bar.

I mean, one instance of a MG initiating things to hopefully get things going doesn't cause the sandbox to burst into flames, Max. If the players don't instigate something, or at the very start of play, you can incite some action.

If it never moves past that, then sure... the living world approach would seem to not be working for these players.

Right. I said that. It's just not 1) a living breathing part of the world, and 2) not a sandbox any longer.

I also said that in my experience, passive players don't switch to proactive. Your experience may be different, but in mine if they aren't proactive from the get go, I have to initiate things a lot over the course of the entire campaign.

Well, I think people can adapt and/or improve. I also think that players can be encouraged to be reactive or proactive or inactive. The GM plays a huge part in this.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm not sure what action you're talking about, though.

I mean, here is a rough presentation of the sequence of events in play

I, the player, declare an action - "I - Aedhros - murder the innkeeper".​

​

The GM says, "Hang on - do you have the Steel for that?" and calls for a Steel test. Given that something is definitely at stake for this PC, that is an appropriate call for a test.​

​

I roll the dice - in the fiction, Aedhros is screwing up his fortitude - and fail - Aedhros hesitates.​

I don't see how this is any different in its structure from something like this in D&D:

I, the player, declare an action - "I charge the dragon".​

​

The GM says, "Hang on, it gets a tail sweep reaction if someone closes with it - what's your AC? <rolls dice> It hits you with its tail sweep for <however many> hp of damage, and knocks you prone in you fail a DEX save vs <this DC>."​

​

I roll the dice - in the fiction, my PC, having been struck by the dragon's tail, is trying to keep his balance - and fail. So my PC is knocked prone.​

Do you also describe this sort of routine stuff in D&D combat as "system driven"?

These are vastly different in one key way:

In the murder example, the inability to act is (by system decree) due to something internal to the character: he hesitates.

In the dragon example, the inability to act is due to something external to the character, namely a bloody great dragon tail knocking him flat.

The argument being made is that, barring (again, external!) magical or supernatural effects, things internal to the character are and should remain entirely the purview of the player.

 

[Pedantic]

Nothing you say in a TTRPG matters until or unless the table or the relevant authority agrees it does. In a 4e skill challenge, what you say matters because it affects the fiction and then the relevant skill being rolled - the outcome between "threatening a street ganger to get info about the cult leader" vs "bribing a street ganger to get info about the cult leader" vs "shadowing the street ganger to his meeting with the cult leader" is fundamentally different fiction, scenes on success/fail, and skills being used. Plus you know, the GM can always deploy a +/-2 in response to fictional statements that make a situation better or worse, or say "oh, I'm going to use my Hard DC here because your approach is pretty tricky!"

When you rely just on "words" we're circling right back to the question of how players can comprehend the rule-state and take consistent knowable action to achieve their ends. IN a 4e skill challenge, I know what my skills are & what the DCs for a Standard check are, what the outcome of a Win on the challenge is, and where the party is trying to go. When you're adjudicating off "what I say is all that matters" then the player is hoping to fumble along to get to what the DM is looking for. Maybe if you've been all playing together for ages that gets consistent, but otherwise it's the black box @EzekielRaiden keeps talking about.

I spent years writing about the weakening of agency skill challenges represented, precisely because there are so few tools available for players to force their desired outcomes, and when 5e came on the scene, I saw it's skill model of 5 generic DCs as simply moving further in that direction. I don't see see how setting the number of skill checks to get to a negotiated outcome is a sea change over negotiating check by check, or after an unknown number. The actual player levers to pull are still sharply limited.

I don't think those are the ends of the spectrum. If anything, they feel pretty close to one end, with an objective, action-by-action specified, skill system on the other.

 

[AlViking]

Nothing you say in a TTRPG matters until or unless the table or the relevant authority agrees it does.

There is no such thing as a perfect system, for me the GM taking the content of what is said is preferable.

In a 4e skill challenge, what you say matters because it affects the fiction and then the relevant skill being rolled - the outcome between "threatening a street ganger to get info about the cult leader" vs "bribing a street ganger to get info about the cult leader" vs "shadowing the street ganger to his meeting with the cult leader" is fundamentally different fiction, scenes on success/fail, and skills being used. Plus you know, the GM can always deploy a +/-2 in response to fictional statements that make a situation better or worse, or say "oh, I'm going to use my Hard DC here because your approach is pretty tricky!"

I had games where statements were made that should have ended the challenge. It didn't make a bit of difference, it was still a roll of the dice and get one success or failure. After a while we just started saying "I make a persuasion check" because there was no reason to put any effort into it. When the rules were initially released there was no explicit option to add or subtract to the check that I remember (it's been a while).

When you rely just on "words" we're circling right back to the question of how players can comprehend the rule-state and take consistent knowable action to achieve their ends. IN a 4e skill challenge, I know what my skills are & what the DCs for a Standard check are, what the outcome of a Win on the challenge is, and where the party is trying to go. When you're adjudicating off "what I say is all that matters" then the player is hoping to fumble along to get to what the DM is looking for. Maybe if you've been all playing together for ages that gets consistent, but otherwise it's the black box @EzekielRaiden keeps talking about.

To me what's boring is looking at my character sheet to see what I'm best at and whether it matched up to the allowable skills. Unless of course I could talk the DM into using something I was good at.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I don't agree with your number 2 at all. You seem to be operating under the impression that the GM can't instigate events in a living world, which I think is quite wrong.

I'm curious what @Bedrockgames and @robertsconley have to say about your description of it.

I am a little unclear on what you guys are discussing here. Personally I would take a light approach to saying when it is no longer a living world. Like I said before, I call my campaigns Drama+Sandbox and I think there is room for different ways of conceiving of a living world. It looks like this part of the discussion is about time, and causality. Again, I am not super prescriptive here. But for me, I generally want my players to feel like they are inhabiting a real world with cause and effect, not a simulation of reality, but a place where if they know a bad guy is tracking them down and was days behind, that that NPC is going to be limited by the geography. So in that sense I think I get what @Maxperson may be saying, which is less the GM can't instigate, but that the GM is still bound by his own rules of cause and effect within the sandbox (feel free to correct me if I am wrong @Maxperson. So he seems to be saying, the GM shouldn't just decide a bunch of Trolls show up for no reason. Personally if that is what he is saying, while I agree with some of it, I wouldn't say you can't have some things pop up unexpectedly. I still use random encounters in my games. And sometimes those require a bit of backwards explanation in time (because they weren't a consideration until I rolled on the table). But for things like the NPC I mentioned, I am not just going to have them show up because it is convenient. There is wiggle room here though. Sometimes I run my campaigns in what I call "Chang Cheh" mode. And in these, I have no compunction about deciding that a bunch of masked men or ninjas just pop out from the walls because it is cool.

Sorry if this response is a bit tortured, but I am not 100% sure I understood the line of conversation because I wasn't following the back and forth between you guys. Happy to add clarity if that is useful. At the end of the day, I think not being super prescriptive about sandboxes or living worlds is helpful.

 

[hawkeyefan]

It doesn't work one way for everything else. And it is contested in RPGs, though I think our use is much closer to standard than yours. However I can at least acknowledge it isn't a resolved issue. Definitional arguments are fraught.

Player agency is what it is. It doesn't change based on the game you play. What form the agency takes and how it works within the scope of the given game may be different... like, me dribbling and shooting in basketball is a different thing than moving my knight in chess... but they are both examples of player agency.

The idea that your view is the standard is what makes me think that challenging that idea fits this thread. I'm saying I don't agree with that view. I don't think changing the definition of agency to fit only a subset of agency actually sheds light on play.

Case in point. I don't deny the game element. Whether that means RPGs ought to be design liked boardgames, or agency thought of in terms of agency a player might have with a board game, a whole other story. For ages people on my side of the fence, defined away your play style by leaning into the RP side of roleplaying, which I also think is a bad rhetorical tactic.

It's not about designing an RPG like other games. It's about viewing the agency present for players in a game in the same way we do for other games.

I realize that RPGs function in different ways than other games, but all kinds of games function differently. We can still look at them and see how a player exercises agency in the game.

It isn't special pleading because it is different from other games. And all games are different from one another. Agency in a computer game like kings quest is different from agency in Clue. And agency in D&D is a heck of a lot different than both those things. I am not saying rules don't matter or that you can't make a case for rules enhancing agency. But I think you are taking a very rigid view here, that treats things which are clearly different as though they were the same thing.

How a player exercises agency is different from game to game, yes, but the definition of it does not.

 

[Faolyn]

No I didn't. I quoted the rule that says the GM calls for Steel test. (Of course other players, or the player themself, are free to suggest to the GM that a Steel test would be appropriate.)

You also said that a player "put on their GM hat" and insisted on the roll.

Insist =/= suggest.

Actually, I have. At least twice in replies to you:

No. This was about an unusual two-player game held when the rest of the group couldn't make it. It was not a reply to the question of what happens in a regular game.

Again, this claim is false. Here is a post made in reply to you:

And in this, you fail to get the point.

No. Here is what I actually posted:

​

This post was in reply to you posting that "Aedros (I am not going back to look up spelling) has "hurt for a hurt" and "never admit I'm wrong" as traits. With those traits, saying he might hesitate--that is, second-guess himself and think that he might have been wrong in choosing to attack--was out of character".

I didn't post anything about the effect of traits on Steel tests. As I just posted in reply to @CellarHeroes, there are traits that can reduce hesitation, and also traits that can change the list of hesitation options. Aedhros has no trait that reduces hesitation when attempting cold-blooded murder.

"Hurt for a hurt" indicates a willingness to become violent. "Never admit I'm wrong" indicates that he won't hesitate, because hesitation occurs when a person is unsure about their intent.

Together, both of those traits strongly indicate that Aedros isn't going to hesitate before murdering someone.

Correct. In fact, Alicia used her magic to persuade Aedhros to spare the innkeeper.

And that would be fine (assuming your table is OK with PvP). Except that's not what happened.

What happened is Alicia's player stopped Aedros by insisting he make a Steel test. When he failed, he hesitated for four rounds (or actions, or whatever the term is). Alicia used that time to cast a spell.

In other words, the player used an out-of-character ability (the ability to make another PC take a specific action) to give her character an in-game advantage.

If the player's only action had been to say Alicia cast the spell to stop Aedros, or to say, out of character, "no, don't kill the NPC," that would be OK. Alicia's actions would be in-character, and the player's actions would not compel a roll that could cause Aedros' player to lose control of his character.

It was in the capacity of GM, in a round-robin GMed game, that Alicia's player called for the Steel test.

And so here, what, nearly two weeks later? you bring up this fact. Which no, you didn't say before. Did it ever occur to you to say "Normally players wouldn't be able to insist on checks, but this was a two-person round robin game so we were both acting as GMs"?

I've spelled it out in laborious detail: if the general rules for making a test are satisfied (which I have posted dozens of times now, including multiple times in reply to you); and if the circumstances are such as to enliven the possibility of a Steel test (which I have set out in general terms in reply to you and others).

It baffles me that you think this remains unclear.

Well, your inability or unwillingness to include important information is a major block.

Yes they were. As I've already told you, multiple times, committing cold-blooded murder is a trigger for a Steel test (see pp 124-5 of the Revised rulebook; I am not going into the other room to also quote the page numbers from Gold). Initial Steel is also higher for a character who has committed murder in the past; and there are multiple traits that reduce Hesitation when committing murder.

I know that, for whatever reason, you think I'm lying about the rules of the game, and that you know them better than me. But I wish you would stop saying that I've not answered this or that question, or provided this or that information, when - as per the re-posts in this post - it is obvious that I have.

No. I think you're fine with things in a game you like, even though you condemn those same things in games you don't like.

 

[Lanefan]

There are no "artificial constraints". But the PC was not carrying any vessels. He was planning to take the mage to the Naga intact - hence why he was hoping to get to the tower before the assassin did.

First I've heard of (or noticed) the bolded bit - I thought he just wanted some blood from the guy.

The assassin was in hand-to-hand combat with another PC. But there was something keeping the PC from catching the blood, namely, his lack of a vessel! That's why he looked around for one.

You still haven't* directly answered my question from upthread about whether in-character prep ahead of time (i.e. always carrying a belt pouch containing an empty vial, sponge, and scalpel) would or could have solved this for the PC without a roll.

* - or if you have, I missed it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

To butcher a famous quote (was it Dick Chaney's), there's known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Suspecting the info is incomplete or inaccurate makes it a known unknown, and they can (and, one hopes, will) follow up on that and try for confirmation or clarification.

But if there's no reason to suspect their info is wrong or incomplete it becomes an unknown unknown, there's no reason to follow up or confirm unless they're very paranoid, and so any decisions they make will be based on that faulty or incorrect info.

A real-world example: ten-ish years ago while driving to Orlando I was trying to find a specific hotel in south Atlanta. My means of navigation was an up-to-date paper road atlas (my car didn't - and still doesn't - have GPS or any of that and I wasn't about to pay international data roaming rates) and it told me I wanted Highway [X, where X is a number I've now forgotten], which crossed the freeway at Exit Y. So I get to Exit Y and the sign tells me the crossing road is Highway Z; that can't be right, so I keep going along the freeway.

Took me what seemed like half the night (and a lot of gas!) to figure out that Highways X and Z were the same bloody road, the atlas used one number while the Georgia dept. of highways used the other. Faulty information causing an unknown unknown, sending me on a wild goose chase.

I think we agreed to disagree on this one quite a while back.

The dice roll doesn't dictate their behavior or reaction; it tells me (and them) what they're reacting to.

Yes, but you're missing the key point here, real world examples are irrelevant. This is not the real world, it is some fiction invented by another person. There's no causality, and there is an agenda (whatever that is, I'm not judging those) as well as game related and other constraints. Arguing about how reality works is just category error.