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

[pemerton]

I’m saying that in a Living World framework, we treat the setting as if it has internal logic and continuity.

And as both I and @thefutilist posted - in posts to which you have not replied - this is no different from anyone else's RPGing. All RPGing outside of "dungeon of the week" and the most ludicrous funhouse dungeons like Castle Amber or White Plume Mountain does this.

That logic isn’t authored moment to moment, it’s extrapolated from prior events, procedures, and in-world reasoning.

This sentence clearly means something to you. Its meaning is not clear to me, because I don't know what it means to author a logic moment to moment.

But anyway, I posted a detailed exposition of Burning Wheel play here <D&D General - [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.>, and it shows how the setting has internal logic and continuity that is extrapolated from prior events (eg pertaining to the city, and its streets and catacombs, and the presence of Jabal's tower, etc) and procedures (like the success or failure of tests rolled by the players) and in-world reasoning (like the fact that the passage of time will enable a person to recover from being drugged; or that a catacombs/sewer complex will have grates where those underground can look up and those in the street can look down).

No doubt you think the Living World does things differently from BW. I think so too. But your description isn't making the difference clear at all, because your description applies just as much to BW, as per my previous paragraph.

The world doesn’t change because I, the referee, decide it does. It changes because something in the world logically follows from something else. That distinction matters.

The distinction, as you word it, makes no literal sense: because the world can't change on its own. It is an authored thing.

What I take you to mean is this: that the referee does not make arbitrary decisions, but rather makes decisions that can be explained by reference to the logic of the world, and extrapolation from that. The reason I take this to be what you mean is because (i) it is the standard approach to GMing a "living world" sandbox, and (ii) it seems to be what you are talking about when you refer to logic, consistency, extrapolation etc.

Given your earlier repudiation of what you call "meta agency", I also infer - though you've not stated it - that what is just as important is what the GM excludes from consideration, namely, that something might be interesting or that something might pose a moral quandary for the paladin or that something might offer the potential for a satisfying climax to a dangling question that the players have been puzzled by.

For reasons that are not clear to me, though, you seem very hesitant to just come out and speak plainly about what factors you regard it as appropriate to consider, and what factors you regard as off-limits. You prefer to cloak this all in metaphor.

Saying “there is no world that exercises causal potency” is a complete rejection of that model.

No it's not. It's just a request to explain it literally rather than via metaphor.

You’re collapsing adjudication into authorship, pretending that just because the referee is the one rolling the dice or consulting the tables, the world has no independent frame of reference. That’s not how I run my campaigns, and it’s not how a lot of sandbox referees do it either.

I'm not collapsing anything into anything.

A key part of adjudicating a RPG is authoring. Deciding, for instance, that the giants make friends with the PCs is an act of authorship - it is, quite literally, the creation of a piece of fiction, and so is a paradigm of authorship.

You want everything to flow from declared authorial intent.

I don't know what this means, and unlike some of your other statements I can't form a reasoned conjecture as to what it means.

But I'm not talking primarily about what I want. I'm talking about different principles that a GM might use in deciding what they should say happens next in the shared fiction. I've talked about some that I think you use, and also some that I think you regard it as important to avoid. I'll say more about those immediately below.

You’re trying to reframe this as if we agree on everything but the procedures. We don’t. This isn’t a mechanical disagreement, it’s a fundamental difference in how we treat fiction at the table.

This is why, upthread, in reply to you, I posted this:

I think we have different views about how to use fiction during play.

And of course, those differences in how to use the fiction are differences in procedure. And in heuristics. As a GM, I enjoy having regard to considerations like this will make for an interesting moral quandary for <this PC> or this will test the extent to which <this PC> is prepared to stick to their principles. Whereas I am pretty confident that you reject those principles.

Furtheremore, I think you have at least two reasons for rejecting them, one a "meta" reason (about what a referee should do) and one a "setting" reason (about the nature of the setting):

(1) You think that the referee should be neutral towards the players; and the considerations I've mentioned aren't neutral but rather are deliberately and obviously intended to put the player of the PC in question under pressure in respect of how they think about and play their PC;

(2) You regard the world's logic as essentially indifferent to these sorts of moral or thematic questions, and so it would be contrary to that logic for you to make decisions about the setting which do have regard to such questions.

 

[Maxperson]

So, a question then:

Do you have total control over your own thoughts and actions? Do you always succeed at the things you want to succeed at and fail at the things you want to fail at? Do you only feel fear when you wish to, and never when you do not wish to?

Two things.

1) Total player control over the PCs thoughts and actions =/= the PC having total control over his thoughts and actions. The PC doesn't have total control. The player through his agency does.

2) There are some things that no matter who does them, just will not get me angry, even though they get other folks angry. I have total control in some areas. The PC therefore would also have total control over some areas, and the player gets to decide which.

 

[pemerton]

You’re backpedaling. You literally described referees who “seek to fool themselves” as being like children who believe Santa Claus is real. That is the textbook definition of self-deception. Denying you said it doesn’t change the record, it just confirms you don’t want to own the implications of your own analogy. If you meant something else, you chose your framing poorly. But don’t pretend this is me “boxing at shadows” when the language came from you.

No I'm not backpedalling, and no I didn't say that you or anyone else is engaged in self-deception. (And I notice that you don't adduce "the record".)

And to the extent that I affirmed the conditional a GM who tried to fool themselves into believing in their imaginary world would resemble a child who believes in Santa Claus you seem to agree with me! But the only reason I was even contemplating such a scenario is because other posters raised it, by insisting that imaginary things exert actual causal power.

For instance, here is @Lanefan on belief in Santa Claus:

Imaginary things cannot have actual causal effects. By definition, they are imaginary, and hence have no more real effects than do <spoiler alert> Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

The GM can imagine circumstances in the setting, and on the basis reach a view as to what should happen. That's a method of making a decision. Authors use it a lot.

In my view the two bolded bits are presenting the same concept in different words: that the GM imagines her way through the fiction's causality sequence that led to things being as they are at the moment to be narrated or described, such that if that causality sequence becomes important for some reason (e.g. the players in-character start investigating what led up to this moment) she's already got it covered.

They're not the same thing in different words.

Here's an illustration that shows why: I have an idea of Santa Claus, and that leads me to leave presents for my children by their bed on Christmas Eve.

That doesn't mean that Santa Claus exercised any causal power! That means that I, a real person, made a decision, driven by (among other things) an idea in my head.

In the minds and imaginations of your children, however, Santa Claus is who caused those presents to appear; he and his elves made them at the north pole and then brought them to your house on a reindeer-drawn sleigh, squeezing down the chimney to leave the presents under the tree (or by their beds, in your case).

The children are immersed in the fiction and can there see cause-and-effect. You, here analagous to the GM who set up the fiction, know it's all fiction but you still maintain that fiction for your children's benefit and thus still have to track that causality sequence in your head in order to keep it consistent when telling it to the kids.

I replied to that last post in this way:

And this is to me very bizarre. I've never heard of a RPG game where the GM is actually setting out to keep it secret that the fiction is fictional. I mean, children compare notes with one another about whether Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are real, and sometimes can tell you how old they were when they worked it out. (The adults in my family were good at dressing up in red, hanging something white around their chin/neck to resemble a beard, stuffing a cushion down their shirt front, etc, so - based on some sightings I'd made waking up as a child on Christmas Eve - I had a firm conviction in the reality of Santa Claus that I abandoned embarrassingly late compared to some friends.)

But at the RPG table, all the participants know it's just made up. The GM's not fooling anyone in that respect.

So as you can see, at every point in the conversation I have been reiterating the difference between what is real, and what is imagined, and emphasising that the way we reason about what is imagined is by doing just that: we reason about what is imagined. We perform actual cognitive and creative processes in our actual brains, leading us to actual authorial decisions.

It is other posters who are trying to insist that, in some sense, Santa Claus exerts real causal power. And that there is some analogy to be drawn between imagination in RPGing and being tricked by one's family into believing that Santa Claus is real.

 

[Maxperson]

They're not the same thing in different words.

Here's an illustration that shows why: I have an idea of Santa Claus, and that leads me to leave presents for my children by their bed on Christmas Eve.

That doesn't mean that Santa Claus exercised any causal power! That means that I, a real person, made a decision, driven by (among other things) an idea in my head.

False Equivalences still remain false. We aren't talking about reality here. We're talking about things happening in the fiction. And if fictional Santa Claus in your D&D game had an ability which caused everyone in the setting to leave presents on Christmas, then imaginary Santa Claus has a causal power in the imaginary game.

 

[pemerton]

False Equivalences still remain false. We aren't talking about reality here. We're talking about things happening in the fiction. And if fictional Santa Claus in your D&D game had an ability which caused everyone in the setting to leave presents on Christmas, then imaginary Santa Claus has a causal power in the imaginary game.

I'm not denying that people can imagine X causing Y. We do it all the time.

I'm simply saying that imaginary things don't exert actual causal power. Which seems to be controversial only among some posters in this thread.

But once it is accepted, then it follows that the imaginary world cannot be a reason why a person at a table says X rather than (say) Y. What causes them to say one thing rather than another must be some actual thing in the actual world.

In the context of RPGing, it can be helpful to talk about what those actual things are, because we can then get better at our craft.

EDIT to say a bit more:

One thing that can make me say X rather than Y is that I believe that X is more interesting than Y. Another can be that X relates to some imagined place, and is a better fit with how I imagine that place to be than is Y. Yet another can be because I decided to roll on a table to see what I should say, and the table told me to say X rather than Y. And of course there can be many other sorts of reasons.

Just as we can talk about what the reasons are that prompt a Burning Wheel GM to say X rather than Y - one important reason is that the game imposes upon them a duty to frame scenes that speak to player-determined PC priorities - so we can talk about what the reasons are that prompt a Living World GM to say X rather than Y.

I think that an important category of reason that Living World GM's have regard to is what they take to be true of the fiction. But it seems to be controversial to say that, for reasons that are opaque to me.

 

[Maxperson]

Over 45 years ago, Lewis Pulsipher described that sort of lottery play as low-agency RPGing. I think he was correct - the players exercise very little control over how the shared fiction unfolds.

And the phrase "lottery" is apt in that respect: a lottery is, by design, a device for eliminating the capacity of participants to affect the outcome.

He and you are wrong, because if the players just yank that lever down, they exercised full agency to do so. Why? Because they chose not to investigate the room, so they didn't find the little holes in the ceiling that the acid will drop down on them through. If they had, they could have blocked the holes and affected the outcome of yanking that lever.

In my experience, the vast majority of the times players hit lotteries in RPGs are because the players didn't try to figure things out, or gave it a half effort.

 

[robertsconley]

I'm looking forward to your engagement with my interest in discussing the heuristics and rules that govern GM decision-making in "living world" play.

I've identified plausibility as one heuristic; but made the (obvious) point that it does not normally generate unique outcomes.

I've also suggested conformity to tendencies that might be extrapolated from the GM's setting notes and from what has happened in play so far. I don't think you've said anything in response to that.

I've asked about whether doing something because it will be fun, or interesting, is acceptable - or rather is unacceptable "meta agency" - but you've not replied.

This sudden shift to technical discussion doesn’t erase the pattern that came before, comparing my approach to childish belief, denying internal consistency in the setting, and mischaracterizing the Living World model as incoherent. If you want to move forward with a serious discussion, fine. But don’t pretend that’s how this started.

As to multiple plausible outcomes: I either pick one or roll the dice. But I see what you’re doing, looking for an angle to sneak in an “aha” moment that authorial intent is secretly at play. It’s not. Living World techniques don’t turn the referee into a biological CPU, but they do expect them to exercise what Aristotle called practical wisdom.

The emphasis is plausibility first, discretion second. My recommendation is to roll half the time and choose the other half based on what’s most fun or engaging within the set of plausible outcomes, fun that aligns with the group’s goals, not imposed narrative.

You roll because humans have biases. If you want the setting to feel like it’s alive, bigger than you, it has to produce outcomes that break out of your preconceptions. Periodic use of the dice keeps that feeling.

As for “conformity to tendencies” That’s not a new point. That’s core Living World procedure, looking at prior events, NPC goals, and world logic to drive what happens next. That’s not authorial discretion, it’s extrapolation from the current state of the world. The outcome isn’t picked because it supports drama, a theme or story, it follows from what’s already in motion. You’re describing what I’ve already laid out, just rephrased to make it sound like it falls under your framework. It doesn’t.

Nothing I’ve described is an example of meta agency. Meta agency is part of player agency, it’s exercised by the players, not the referee. Players may talk to me during or after a session about their goals, that’s meta agency in action. But most of what I learn about their interests comes from listening to their in-character decisions, how they talk among themselves, and, when necessary, directly asking them, especially after consequential events.

That’s not authorship. That’s leadership. And it’s part of what a referee should be doing when running a Living World sandbox: paying attention, facilitating engagement, and responding to what the players actually care about within the logic and momentum of the world.

I encourage you to ask further questions, but understand that at this point, I don’t consider your posts to be in good faith. Nothing you’ve written reads as anything other than an attempt to defend your viewpoint and control the framing. I’ve answered your questions for the benefit of other readers, not for your sake.

If you want to change that impression, it’s on you to demonstrate that you’re willing to engage without mischaracterization or rhetorical sleight of hand. That’s going to take work.

If you don’t like that, I’m not particularly sympathetic given how you’ve handled yourself in this thread, both with me and with others. And if that’s a problem for you, I strongly recommend using the ignore feature.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm not denying that people can imagine X causing Y. We do it all the time.

I'm simply saying that imaginary things don't exert actual causal power. Which seems to be controversial only among some posters in this thread.

But once it is accepted, then it follows that the imaginary world cannot be a reason why a person at a table says X rather than (say) Y. What causes them to say one thing rather than another must be some actual thing in the actual world.

In the context of RPGing, it can be helpful to talk about what those actual things are, because we can then get better at our craft.

EDIT to say a bit more:

One thing that can make me say X rather than Y is that I believe that X is more interesting than Y. Another can be that X relates to some imagined place, and is a better fit with how I imagine that place to be than is Y. Yet another can be because I decided to roll on a table to see what I should say, and the table told me to say X rather than Y. And of course there can be many other sorts of reasons.

Just as we can talk about what the reasons are that prompt a Burning Wheel GM to say X rather than Y - one important reason is that the game imposes upon them a duty to frame scenes that speak to player-determined PC priorities - so we can talk about what the reasons are that prompt a Living World GM to say X rather than Y.

I think that an important category of reason that Living World GM's have regard to is what they take to be true of the fiction. But it seems to be controversial to say that, for reasons that are opaque to me.

PC fails a save against a suggestion spell where the suggestion is to say, "Help! Help! The elves are killing me!" The PC's player then says, "Help! Help! The elves are killing me!"

How is that not a reason from the imaginary world why a person at the table says X rather than Y?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

As somebody who has been in and around a segment of society who deals in violence on a professional level for a long period of time, the assertion you’re responding to is even more incredible. The military has developed entire long scale training regimens to try and get past the need to, dare I say, Steel oneself to kill (and often fail). Tons of ink has been spilled on how most people do not have it in them to kill in even hot blood!

I recall reading that at the end of WWII the US Army studied the behavior of soldiers in battle and concluded that some very small percentage of US soldiers during the war ever willingly fired their weapons with any intent to actually kill someone. People would shoot, basically at random or in the general direction of the enemy, but very seldom would they shoot to kill.

The Army took this data and went back and studied human behavior, what motivates people, how to indoctrinate them, and totally redesigned basic and advanced infantry training, such that by the early '50s during the Korean War they had increased the amount of deliberate lethal small arms fire by infantry by some large percentage.

 

[Maxperson]

Stating "you don't have as much agency as you might think you have" isn't diminishing your agency; it simply makes you feel as though your agency is being diminished because your internal framework as to how play works is being challenged.

"Sandboxes have near-maximal agency within the framework of trad GM-world creation play" is something I would generally agree with. The social contract of sandbox play allows for more in-fiction agency than one where the table agrees to run through module X.

"Sandbox play has near maximal agency for TTRPGs" is something I'm going to disagree with, because it seems to have blinders on to a lot of TTRPG play.

No. Not blinders. Just an understanding that there are two major types of agency. Player agency(outside of the PC) and character agency(Player agency through the PC).

A traditional sandbox game is at or near 100% character agency. Since you can't have more than 100% agency, and player facing games include player agency, player facing games have less character agency. Every period of time a player uses some mechanic to author something into the game outside of his character, is a period of time where the PC could have been exercising agency, but isn't.