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

[Faolyn]

Does "the mechanics produced it as a consequence of NPC action" land as "within the actual fiction"? (I'm not being snarky, there seems some ambiguity there to my eyes).

Yes. It's only when a condition occurs due to GM fiat and things along those lines that it stops being within the fiction.

 

[Faolyn]

BW doesn't allow for avoiding rolls through the deployment of gear and resources. The benefit of planning ahead is improving your chances of success (+1D or more) or making things easier (-1 Ob or more).

Ah, so BW is built for people who lose their glasses on top of their heads.

 

[thefutilist]

This is really well said, and I would like to connect it back to the core assumption behind my Living World sandbox approach, especially for the casual gamer who might be reading along.

What you’re describing is how I handle adjudication. The idea that the circumstances of the setting, what has already been established, do not just provide background detail, they actually shape and sometimes dictate what happens next. When I say the world has causal continuity, I do not mean it is real in any metaphysical sense. I mean that once something exists in the world, it behaves as if it is real. Players can rely on that. The referee cannot just handwave it away. A locked gate is locked. A patrol has a set route. A drought causes real shortages. These may be imaginary elements, but they carry consequences because the world treats them as facts.

This is the core of the Living World sandbox. The players make choices in a world that behaves consistently, even when they are not present. The referee is not there to sculpt their story but to keep the logic of the world in motion based on what is already true.

One thing worth adding, for anyone thinking about how this plays out in practice, is that the referee is not deciding outcomes on the fly. The current state of the world shapes their rulings, the consequences of past events, and the procedures they have committed to. That is what keeps the game from feeling arbitrary. It is not that the referee has no control, but that their control is grounded in a consistent framework. That is what gives weight to player choices and makes the results feel earned.

All of this follows from my core assumption: once something is true in the world, it stays true until something in the world changes it. It is treated as real because we choose to treat it as real. The consequences follow because we choose to follow the consequences. Taken together, this creates a distinct style of campaign and play that stands on its own merits. It also provides a foundation for players to judge whether the referee is being fair and reasonable as the campaign unfolds.

It seems this is true of all roleplaying games. Can you give an example of a sequence of play (however brief), or technique, where it's not true?

 

[Old Fezziwig]

Ah, so BW is built for people who lose their glasses on top of their heads.

I don't have a clue why I'm catching drivebys from you.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Sure, I am not saying there is anything wrong with the mechanic, or that something like that would happen in D&D without some adjustment. I suppose if the player were legitimately feeling that self doubt, that would be a way for you to have it in a game where there is more 1-1 between the player and the characters thinking. My only point was I think by any reasonable definition, removing a players control of thoughts or action is an interruption of agency. Like I said thought, that doesn't mean a game doing that in one case, is automatically low agency (and context might even mean it is enhancing it somehow). But what I was pushing back against was a statement made earlier where the players ability to control the character simply weren't even a consideration in the definition of agency because all that was being considered was game play

I understand that it is not some wildly unreasonable proposition to say this. I'm not sure I think it is straightforwardly true either though. I have certainly gained the ability to depict my character as being conflicted or having doubts in a pretty hefty way that doesn't really exist in your favored system. I think, largely, you just end up with different choices, not less choices or less weighty choices. And honestly, there's some verisimilitude that is gained!

Tonight my 1KA character, Hino, became incensed at the way the enemy treated their levies like cannon fodder (literally) and spoiled an ambush trying to take out their leader. I posed that as an 'Indulge your Attachment', in this case her Loyalty to the common people of Iga. By succeeding, she was forced to take the shot, which failed and lead to a bloody action which cost her 50 men, and possibly her life (we'll find that out next week when we play). Now, I as a player lost nothing, I pointed out this conflict and made a check. That's how we roll here, we RP and play it as that demands. Still, I could have described things a bit differently and served up my revenge colder, which would have been tactically smarter. I guess we learned Hino isn't always cold-blooded.

 

[hawkeyefan]

But part of the problem with this conversation is you guys start out with a definition and assume it is the default.

Shouldn’t this apply to you, too?

Like… why is it a problem for anyone other than you to start out with a definition and assume it is the default?

Don’t you see the issue there?

 

[Bedrockgames]

When you say "not deciding outcomes on the fly" here, and the rest of this, does that mean that when you need to rule/decide on something (are there bandits here? what has happened to the town since the adventurers last came through? what dangers threaten the realm? etc) you're referring to hard notes / tables / etc that tell you in a broad-brush map & key style way? Or is it a heuristic of "last time we were here they saw X, but per my living world procedures Y party has done Z, so I need to describe the changes?" Some combination?

Personally I don't think there is one right way to do this. But I tend to think in terms of characters and groups. If I am worried about stuff like political events, or other large scale developments, those are all fine as long as it makes sense (i.e. I wouldn't have my nomadic hordes attack the empire from the west if it was established they were greatly weakened, but I might have them do is if it were established that something else was making them more desperate for survival). And if I did decide this would happen, I either roll out using my simplified mass combat rules or simply ad hoc assign dice pools based on numbers and organization to each side, then roll off (and I would likely ask the players to roll not telling them what it is for). A lot of times for world events I have tables I roll on at the start of each year and just put them on a calendar. And other events might emerge organically as things happen in the campaign.

But most of my stuff is at the martial world level. So if there is an organization growing in the region, and becoming a threat, I'd use my judgement and decide if any of the other sect leaders decide to take action and then what they do about it. I have something called Shake Up tables I would likely use here as well, to kind of automate this process. So at regular intervals I ask players to roll and it indicates change or lack of change in the martial world (things like people leaving one sect to side with another, one sect attacking another, sects forming new alliances, etc). The table is just a tool though so if I have a good handle on events that are happening, I will simply decide what actions sect leaders are taking rather than roll. I am not particularly precious about this though. One thing of note happening each week of play is usually enough

Mostly I am focused on things immediately affecting the party. So if they have done something to cause a problem or attract attention, it is possible npcs or organizations in the setting could be taking action against them, seek to help them, or even seek help with them. If I have an NPC who is antagonistic to the party, I am not thinking in terms of "okay an ambush happens when the party cross through the mountains" I am thinking in terms of what resources that NPC has. Sometimes I even assign the NPC to a person in my gaming circle to run remotely. Once I know the resources, I think in terms of their motives and goals and effectively have them making their moves behind the scenes or no behind the scenes as a live player in the campaign.

So in one of my last campaigns the party crossed a woman name dLady Yang, whose father they had killed while one of the players was working for him (her father was a local bandit leader). Lady Yang was very powerful but wasn't going to go after the party herself as she had lots of important matters to tend to and viewed the grudge as more of an obligation than something she was passionately pursuing. So she hire a bunch of assassins. To figure out what assassins she was hiring, I created some tables for myself (not something I think was necessary but something made this more engaging for me personally as a GM), and this helped determine whether these were singular assassins, groups, and what their levels were. Some people were existing characters in teh setting, some were made as I rolled on the table. So when they were confronted while wandering through a wilderness region int eh south by, Fa Is The Plume Smoking Assassin, it was after she had been tracking them for a time (and to do that I had her make survival rolls to follow leads to find where the party was, then I had her make survival rolls to follow the party, and I gave the party detect rolls to sense her following: I can't remember if they spotted her in advance, but I do remember they spotted many of the assassins Lady Yang sent, who were trailing them. Also if the party had been taking any special efforts to be evasive this would have been considered.

 

[zakael19]

Literally every argument / discussion ive seen about agency outside of this board (non-exhaustive, sample size of 1) is in the context of “railroad vs non-railroad / how much can the players drive the direction of the game.”

 

[Bedrockgames]

Shouldn’t this apply to you, too?

Yes, which is why I have been offering a much more open definition and talking about how agency can mean different things int he context of different games.

Like… why is it a problem for anyone other than you to start out with a definition and assume it is the default?

I am trying very hard to be conciliatory in my approach. I think I have done a lot of reading across the aisle in terms of playstye and defition. But I also think there are places that demand push back (like if someone says controlling a characters thoughts and actions aren't agency if losing them area product of gameplay). This feels like a very athletic argument to me

Don’t you see the issue there?

I do. And I am aware of the problem me staking any ground in definition can produce. But I am largely just doing it to challenge a questionable defitnion that pretty much diminishes the amount of agency operating in multiple style of play in favor of another set of styles. I am saying I think this dichotomy is a false choice, and that agency is actually a lot more nuanced that that depending on what a game is trying to do. But I do think it is also true that by and large, when players say "I don't feel like I have enough agency in this campaign" they mean their ability to control what their character is doing in the setting, where they go, what goals the party is setting, is limited. And I have dfeitiely seen people complain about stuff like fear affects impacting agency. I am not saying all games must serve this definition, but I think it is odd to exclude control of a characters thoughts and actions from a definition. I mean I think you can say in some games, that isn't going to be as important to agency because other things are being explored. Where it gets wonky is failing to acknowledge that as being agency in a sandbox for example

 

[Bedrockgames]

Literally every argument / discussion ive seen about agency outside of this board (non-exhaustive, sample size of 1) is in the context of “railroad vs non-railroad / how much can the players drive the direction of the game.”

but you are ignoring how players in a sandbox typically control the direction of play: through their character's actions