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

[Old Fezziwig]

I refuted that one years ago. PCs go around from town to town looking for odd jobs, staying in one place for only a short time. They're murdertransients.

I think this correction is suggesting a more derogatory use of murderhobo than I intend. As I understand it (thanks, Wikipedia!), murderhobos are migratory but interested in work (presumably murder for pay, so roll your Steel*). Murdertramps are migratory and would prefer not to work, thank you (except maybe murder, but in this case perhaps we should label it as avocational -- do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life). Murderbums would prefer not to work or travel and need to be moved on (there goes the neighborhood).

* I'm inordinately pleased with this parenthetical, because of the second Roger Miller-ish "King of the Road" reading. Our murderhobos would not be opposed to rolling steel, either. They do, indeed know every engineer on every train.

 

[Maxperson]

And yet a character can become Frightened against the player's will. Specifically because they failed a roll, since that was the big thing that stuck in someone's craw earlier. How is that possible, if the player has total control over the character's thoughts and actions?

Frightened against their will through valid in-fiction causes(magic, supernatural, etc.) is fine. It's social skills, lion roars and the like that are not.

More broadly, how can the character ever fail at a task the player desires them to succeed at? If the player has total control over their actions, how is it that not just some actions, but many actions, will simply fail to work?

Their action is to try something. Their action is not to succeed or fail at something. Success or failure comes AFTER the action.

So full agency is allowing the players PC to attempt to take a running jump over the Grand Canyon to land on the other side. He has taken his action. The result, plummeting to his death, is what comes from that action.

Mental state is different than physical in this regard. Unless magic/supernatural/etc. effects are in play, the player gets to decide what his PC thinks or feels, within the fiction and absent metagaming. He still does not get to automatically succeed in actions that attempt to persuade, intimidate, the minds of others, unless he has some sort of spell, class ability, item, etc. that provides an exception.

 

[pemerton]

Letting players trash the scenery - there are no status quo's in Apocalypse World

Yeah, I was thinking of this one yesterday evening cycling home.

I, and others, have said time and time again that our sandboxes are not built around the desires of specific characters. There is no contradiction even if different people will have different approaches. I see diversity as a strength not a flaw.

Well, I think it's a flaw to try and bring them all under the same taxonomical label!

The phrase "narrative RPG" has the same flaw - one reason I don't use it.

When I create a world map I take into consideration real world weather patterns and base in on real world conditions assuming my fantasy world is close to Earth's climatic systems unless it's a purely supernatural realm. I don't put a desert in because I want a desert campaign, I put a desert in because the mountains block moisture or because the region is around the 30 degrees north or south of the equator. As far as economies and whatnot, I do try to base local economies on what would make sense which includes things like thinking about how much farmland would be needed to support a population (even if we assume magic increases crop output) something many fantasy maps ignore.

Nobody is claiming 100% realistic or completely impartial worlds. Doesn't mean we can't make that a goal and starting assumption.

Sure. I'm not a meteorologist or climatologist, but I'm pretty well trained in political history and social theory, which informs how I think about government, society, religion, economics etc in my FRPGing. But I would not describe what I'm doing as a simulation of anything - eg when I think about a feudal kingdom, and incorporate my knowledge of actual history, I don't think of myself as "simulating" the processes that governed mediaeval Britain or France or Syria, etc; when I introduce an important religious actor or order I don't think of that as a simulation of St Bernard or of the Knights Templar, etc.

So I think I find phrases like "copied from" or "based on" or "inspired by" more explanatorily useful than "simulation of". I think it's another case where a metaphor gets used in a way that distracts from accuracy.

As just one practical example - when my friend and I started our Aedhros and Alicia game, here is how we arrived at the initial set up:

He burned up a Weather Witch (City Born, Arcane Devotee, Rogue Wizard, Weather Witch). I decided to make a Dark Elf (with his agreement, as per the rules) - Born Etharch, Spouse, Griever, Deceiver. To earn the Grief to make the move to Griever (3 minimum) I had no lamentations, was Born Etharch, and had a history that included tragedy - my spouse died.

<snip>

We agreed that Aedhros had travelled on the same ship as Alicia had been working on as a weathermage. Like Aedhros, she started with zero resources and no shoes, and with only rags as clothes. I asked her player why she hadn't been paid. Because bottom has fallen out of the market in soft cheese, so the cargo can't be sold. To work with this, I first got agreement that the port we had arrived in was Hardby (where the action of one of our other BW campaigns is centred). Then, as the ship master, I explained to the crew - including Alicia - that the wedding of the Gynarh (a plot point in our other game) had been delayed, and hence no one was paying for the cheese that had been brought from the green fields and fat cows of Urnst. Some were promised they would be paid tomorrow, but Alicia was told her passage was her pay!

So we drew on a different campaign's events to help establish the starting situation - the postponement of the wedding of a powerful figure affected the sale of the cargo that a ship had been carrying, thus explaining how Alicia finds herself at the docks with no money and no pay owing.

In doing that, we have established some in-fiction causal explanations that make some sense. But I would never describe it as a simulation.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm not belittling anyone's processes. I'd just like people to describe them, instead of using ellipsis and metaphor like "the world responds to what the players have their PCs do".

I mean, "simulating a realistic world" seems to just be another way of saying "making things up about a world and trying to ensure those things are realistic". Like, no one is running models of the sort that engineers, economists and other natural and social scientists use when they run actual simulations - are they?

Depends on what you mean by running models. DMs are modeling the real world in a very simple way, so DMs are using models for what they do, they just aren't as complex as the ones engineers and scientists use. The latter are trying for a hell of a lot more realism than DMs are going for.

 

[pemerton]

But the lands and kings and beasts themselves have no more existence than the number which is simultaneously greater than seven and less than four.

This claim is I think actually is controversial in the philosophy of fiction, because some philosophers think that fictions can be analysed using the method of possible worlds; whereas there is no possible world which contains a number fitting your specifications.

But I agree with your broader point.

 

[pemerton]

I made a decision about the fictional world before the player ever said what his chosen enemy was and I saw no reason to change it. Do you have a point you're trying to make? Anything at all that adds to the conversation?

I could be wrong, but I took @TwoSix to be reiterating the fact that the fiction is authored in virtue of GM decision-making.

Because that point has been treated as a controversial one by some posters in this thread.

 

[AlViking]

I could be wrong, but I took @TwoSix to be reiterating the fact that the fiction is authored in virtue of GM decision-making.

Because that point has been treated as a controversial one by some posters in this thread.

I'm done arguing semantics. Have a good day.

 

[Bedrockgames]

@zakael19 I will try to get back to your posts but my initial impression is a thing like clocks might be more used as a tool by a typical living sandbox GM. I have developed dozens of methods for handling things like factions for example but I tend not to formalize everything. I have a box of tools and I tweak them anytime I use them. Sometimes I don’t use them. So for instance a sect trying to take over a city in a campaign, that is a problem I need to figure out how to address. I usually at baseline will deal with it through opposed dice pools with other factions. But I might just decide in some casss. In others I might break it up into increments of successes based on missions and goals they are engaged in. Or I might shift it all to a shake up table. I would say the tools in a given campaign for me are always different

 

[thefutilist]

I suspect there is some cross-over some things, but also a lot of things are probably very different due to game philosophy issues (there are some things I see people do in Blades in the Dark, I think would be rare or non-existent in most living world sandboxes: doesn't make them bad, just means the crossover you are observing may be more murky if we really look into them. Also the descriptions you guys have provided of your approaches with PbTA generally hasn't lined up in my mind with these ideas (but it is possible we are talking passed one another)

Can you explain clocks to me again, because when I read about them in I remembered them being something different. My understanding was it was a way of tracking progress on things (and I do think many sandbox GMs do use things similar to clocks, but pinning it down is a different concept if I understand clocks correctly (which I might not). Pinning it down is my phrasing. I don't believe it is a unique concept to my sandboxes but it is a principle I think is shared by many, even if it is talked about in different ways. Here is my explanation

Impartiality would include play to find out I suppose. I would want this explained again though because my impression is it is a technical term that might have specific meaning (whereas I am just taking the literal meaning of the phrase here). But impartiality isn't just about that. It is about fairness, about not taking sides, not wanting the game to go in a particular direction, letting the dice fall where they may, it is about running your NPCs honestly, and applying the rules as justly as you can, etc. For example, it isn't just play to find out, but also it is about being even-handed if two players come into conflict and trying to make sure both are treated fairly.

I suspect the trash the scenery thing might be different from there is no status quo. I would need an explanation of that principle. But trashing the scenery means, you aren't precious about things, the players can go into Long Ma Hall and try to burn it down if they want (even if long ma hall is a very important setting feature).

You are going to have got explain how clocks pertain to NPCs having their own goals and I need to know what pass decision onto NPCs is. When I say this, I mean it in the sense of living NPCs. NPCs function similar to PCs, not in the sense of being protagonists in the campaign, but in the senes of the GM runs them freely, they are trying to do things, they are pursuing their goals and agendas. They aren't stuck in one place. They don't just show up because it is cool or convenient. They aren't just there to be antagonists. If the players interact with an NPC one way, he might befriend them, another, he might be their enemy. And it isn't like you have a list of 'ifs', you simply extrapolate from what you know about the NPCs personality how they would respond. I think it also tends to emphasize that NPCs are people who can be reasoned with.

@zakael19 answered a lot of this already. Here's some small snippets from the book that point toward the general attitude.



In order to play to find out what happens, you’ll need to pass decision-making off sometimes. Whenever something comes up that you’d prefer not to decide by personal whim and will, don’t. the game gives you four key tools you can use to disclaim responsibility:

you can put it in your NPCs’ hands,

Just ask yourself, in this circumstance,
is Birdie really going to kill her? If the answer’s yes, she dies. If it’s no, she lives. Yes, this leaves the decision in your hands, but it gives you a way to make it with integrity.


It may seem backwards, but it’s especially important to disclaim responsibility

for the fates of the NPCs that you like the best. It’s the central act of discipline that MCing Apocalypse World requires: when you write a question as a stake, you’re committing to not answering it yourself. You’re committing to letting the game’s fiction’s own internal logic and causality, driven by the players’ characters, answer it.

That’s the discipline and also the reward. Your control over your NPCs’ fates is absolute. they’re your little toys, you can do anything to them you choose. Raise them up and mow them down. Disclaiming responsibility for the two or three of them you like best is a relief. And when you write down a question you’re genuinely interested in, letting the game’s action answer it is uniquely satisfying.

 

[Maxperson]

So while I know part of this towns militia, I might not know exactly what would happen if they were all killed. I did not plan for that. I have to think about the relationship with the next settlement. Given that, how likely is help to come if someone asks?

How soon will it arrive? I don’t know as I type this. Might have to roll some dice and make calculations.

Pardon me friend, but we aren't coming to help. They have a lot of resources and have been a thorn in our side for the last 50 years.