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

@Faolyn, you're just wrong.

I'm not "houseruling" the Duel of Wits. I'm playing it as per the rulebook and designer commentary.

From Gold Revised p 389: "Though the Duel of Wits cannot make a character like or believe anything, it can force him to agree to something" - such as mending armour.

From p 388 - "The Duel of Wits is an extended conflict mechanics used to resolve debate and argument in the game (and at the table)."

From p 398 - "The losing side must then abide by the terms the winning side set forth at the outset of the duel. The winning sie has won this test, and like any other test in Burning Wheel, their intent is made manifest."
Again I ask, when a Duel of Wits forces a character to agree to something, how long does that agreement have to last before the character can disagree again?
Why you are trying to "educate" me on a RPG that I've been playing for years, whose rulebooks I know back the front to an almost obsessive extent, I don't know. What are you trying to achieve?
If all Faolyn has to go by is the basic rules while you have more in-depth info, it's a bit much to get annoyed at her for making statements based on the in-theory-complete rules she has.
 

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The big difference is allowing the players to have the options to choose their own path. Which is a great way to run a game. I still believe that the traditional sandbox practice requires far, far too much upfront work for me to ever try it. I'll stick to my approach which requires a lot less up front work. The downside of my approach is that I'm not quite sure how durable it is over the long term. I'm not very confident that I could play an 18 month campaign using Ironsworn. I don't think so, but, I haven't tried, so, I don't know. That's the upside to the traditional approach. You have so much material that it's pretty much guaranteed to be a lengthy campaign. Great. I mean, my Out of the Abyss game is pretty sandboxy (although fairly limited) and I'm pretty sure it's going to last for quite a while.

Then you should not do the traditional sandbox and do what you are doing. Like I said before, if you want to do ti a different way, I don't see the issue. I think it is great. One reason I prefer the traditional approach is I do find it helpful for longer term play. You have to take good notes but having a prepped world for me is a good foundation.

But this notion of "objectivity" or "setting logic" just doesn't really work.

Why not? It works for me and Rob. I don't even use setting logic all the time, but when I do it works fine

It's not like my Candlekeep Mysteries campaign didn't have tons of setting logic.

Just because Rob believes in applying objectivity and setting logic to how he manages a living world, that doesn't mean your Candlekeep Mysteries campaign can't also have setting logic. If we look at what you and rob are doing under a microscope, it is possible you guys are emphasizing different aspects of setting logic or something, as you both seem to have different interests, but I don't think objectivity and setting logic is unique one style of play

But, since it absolutely wasn't a sandbox, it's not really a priority. But, the setting logic was there.

Sure, and and it wouldn't have to be a priority in a sandbox if you didn't want it to be. There is nothing stopping someone for example from running a surreal sandbox. And if it is there that is cool. Rob is prioritizing it more it sounds, but for some people that might be too much focus on it.
My point always has been though that "setting logic" is a misleading term. There is no "setting logic" when the person who creates the setting, runs that setting and makes every single decision about the setting is the same person who is not subject to any sort of double checking.
They are supposed to be keeping themselves in check and their players will also be keeping them in check too because the players know what kind of campaign they are in. And it is about the why. It is about what is guiding your decisions.
 

Actually, the exact opposite of that.

The fiction doesn't make anyone do anything. Imagining prompts someone to do something.
It's the same bloody thing!

We're imagining the fiction. Because we're imagining that fiction and not some other fiction, we think and say and do things we would not if we were imagining some other fiction. It's nothing more than meaningless semantics to say it's imagination making us do things rather than the specifics of what we're imagining, and tying it to the fiction makes it far easier to grok.
Here's another example:

A person visits a "haunted house". They "see a ghost", and are so terrified that they collapse from a heart attack.

What actually happened: a person entered a building. They had an experience - heard a noise, saw a shadow, whatever - and they formed the belief that there was a ghost. And due to that belief, they became so terrified that they suffered a heart attack.

No doctor is going to enter, in their medical records for that patient, a ghost caused them to have a heart attack. That would be grounds to bring an application to have the doctor stripped of their licence to practice!
And yet that's by far the shortest and clearest way of saying what happened.
Imaginary things don't have real effects. Because they don't exist.
Tell that to the guy who just dropped dead due to an imaginary thing.
 

If all Faolyn has to go by is the basic rules while you have more in-depth info, it's a bit much to get annoyed at her for making statements based on the in-theory-complete rules she has.
It’s perfectly reasonable to be annoyed at Faolyn for making critical statements about your GM calls for a system she knows absolutely nothing about.
 


A principal purpose of the Duel of Wits rules is to resolve disagreements between PCs. As per what I quoted just upthread.

And this is from p 180 of The Codex:

Creating rules for resolving social conflict has an accidental, unintended effect on our games. We found the rules also settled player disputes at the table. . . . Presenting a fair system for resolving arguments between players has had a few knock-on effects. It's sped up our games immensely. . . . we can just disagree and, if we disagree forcefully enough, jump into a Duel of Wits to resolve it. This speedy resolution has, in turn, caused another strange effect: We disagree more now. Not just because we're old and curmudgeonly, but because we know we can have productive disagreements now. We can argue, cajole and plead and we know it'll get resolved in a satisfying manner so we can move on and keep playing.​

Are you now going to tell me that Luke Crane is wrong about how Burning Wheel works?
I can't help but notice you ignored the other question here. The book very clearly says the audience thinks the winner of the argument is correct and all awesome and stuff for having presented such an amazing argument. If two PCs are presenting their argument to a third PC, is the third PC required to think the winner is correct?
 

I do not doubt the extrapolation. I don't doubt that procedures are in place to limit creative input at the instance of play to insure fairness. However, I think there will be a range of equally plausible things that could happen - that there is never one most plausible thing that could happen in any moment. That there are likely unstated principles involved in choosing between equally plausible outcomes (or even unconscious ones). in particular, if we are engaging in a lot of first-person roleplaying than we are fundamentally involved in a creative act because there are always a pretty wide range of reactions that would make sense for any given person in any given situation. We are both embodying and creating our characters at the same time.

That is not to say that the processes don't matter or we're doing the same things. The creative principles are also likely very very different, likely apposite of one another.

At least, looking back at my own sandbox play, I see the impact of my creative voice (despite attempts to restrain it in a principled way) in the scenarios I designed and the characters I brought to life as a GM.

I also think that process and plausibility are different things. A given process might help us retain more plausibility but whether a given event is plausible or not is based on the established details of the setting and what we know of its internal logic. Rolling on a weather chart does not make it running more plausible than a GM simply deciding it is raining on a whim or to establish a particular tone if it makes sense that it would rain this time of year. It might be more helpful to have the chart if we are playing through several days consecutively (as an aid to maintain plausibility). But if we are eliding time and space regularly it is likely to not be very helpful.
 
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Yes, I created the world, but once it’s built, I treat it like a working machine. The people in it, the places, the factions. they all follow logic based on what’s already been established. I don’t decide what happens based on taste or drama; I decide based on what would reasonably follow. That approach is called internal realism, it says that once a system is in place, you can still apply consistent logic and make fair judgments inside it, even if the system itself is fictional.

This is a question for anyone who wants to answer.

Here's my living world V Narrativist test.

Krangen is the ruler of a vast Empire that he forged himself through valour and rage. He responds to any slight with violence and his rule is cold and hard, although some do say it's just. He lost his wife a decade ago and has a young teenage daughter who is his joy, the only person he really shows compassion for.

The magicians of the Ever Dream Order need to kill an Emperor to summon the decrepit demon Thirseer. They send a magical assassin to kill Krangen. The assassin uses a huge fireball which fails to kill Krangen but does kill his daughter.

so

What does Krangen do?

Or if you need a more specific question, does Krangen take revenge?

Give reasons as to why if you want or feel free to explain any other methodology you'd use.
 

Constructivism is a view that has its origins in the philosophy of mathematics. Roughly, it's the idea that there are no "external" mathematical entities that provide truth conditions, or correctness conditions, for mathematical propositions. (So it contrasts with standard approaches in physics and engineering, which treat the external world as providing truth/correctness-conditions for scientific models and theories.)

Adherents of constructivism in its stronger form reject the validity of certain types of indirect proof, on the grounds that unless you have a direct proof that "constructs" the relevant proposition, it's invalid to infer to it's existence - because that would be positing a type of externality to mathematical entities that constructivism denies. The most famous strong constructivist of this sort was Wittgenstein.

More generally (ie beyond phil of maths), constructivism is (roughly) the idea that certain procedures or processes are validating of their outcomes without there being any independent correctness conditions for those outcomes. What makes this more than just a defence of the arbitrary is that the "certain procedures or processes" have to be specified in a manner that makes it plausible to regard them as sufficient to validate their outcomes. In constructivist accounts of scientific method, it is the account of how scientific method renders observations and experience tractable, and amenable to theorising in a way that has problem-solving power, that explains why the outcomes of scientific investigation should be treated as knowledge rather than mere arbitrary conjecture. But this idea is not obviously applicable to RPGing.

But there is a simple application of the constructivist idea - that is, that certain procedures validate their outcomes without the need for independent correctness conditions - that does have relevance for RPGing. This is the example of a fair bet: if the bet is fair, and participation truly voluntary (and if we ignore bigger contextual questions like where did the participants get their money from to make the bet in the first place), then (i) there is no correctness condition, independent of the process, that tells us who should own the stakes after the bet is resolved, and (ii) once the bet is resolved, the resulting distribution of the ownership of the stakes is validated simply by the fact that it is the outcome of a fair bet.

The example of betting generalises to a lot of game play, including RPGs. One frequent use that RPGs make of dice rolls is to produce outcomes - changes to the shared fiction - that are accepted as valid by everyone because they follow from the roll and with no independent correctness condition. The best known example is combat: thus, even if the PCs eke out an unlikely win against the giants, we don't say normally say "Hang on, that makes no sense - we'd better ignore the dice rolls and substitute our independent judgement as to how this should have worked out." Rather, we treat the dice rolls as sufficient to validate the outcome.

The extension of this sort process-based/constructivist approach beyond combat is a recurring issue of disagreement. But there are a number of RPGs that make it pretty crucial across the board - some mainstream ones like 4e D&D, and some "indie" ones like Apocalypse World and many of its offshoots, Burning Wheel and its associated family of games, etc.

The idea of process-validated outcomes can also extend beyond dice rolls. For instance, in standard D&D play if a player correctly follows the rules for writing down a memorised spell on their PC sheet; and then correctly follows the action declaration rules for making it true that, in the fiction, their PC casts the spell, then the spell takes effect in accordance with its rules. The same thing happens in Prince Valiant when a player spends a "storyteller certificate" that they have earned in accordance with the rules - for instance, when Sir Morgath's player spent a certificate to Kill a Foe in Combat then it meant that he bested Sir Lionheart (the greatest knight in Britain) and then when he did it again he bested the giant crocodile while swimming in his armour in the Black Sea. The fact that the procedure validates the outcome means it's not open at the table for anyone to say "Hang on, Sir Morgath only has so many combat dice, whereas Sir Lionheart and the crocodile have many more, so he couldn't have beaten them!" Rather, just as in the case of combat resolution via dice rolls, the fiction needs to accommodate the outcome. (In the case of Sir Lionheart, for instance, Sir Morgath's player narrated it thus: As my lance splinters on his shield, a small bit of wood flies through his visor into this eye and brain, killing him.)

One recurrent source of disagreement among RPGers is the extent to which the GM is entitled to suspend procedures, or to ignore their outcomes, in order to make sure that the correct outcome is arrived at. This includes debates about "fudging", but goes beyond it: for instance, can a GM veto a player's attempted spend of a stortyteller certificate, or a player's declaration that their PC casts a spell? Those who are inclined to say yes - who see the procedures as sometimes, even often, useful heuristics but don't regard the outcomes as being validated by the procedures alone - are not constructivists (at least in the domain of RPGing).


(Internal realism is a view in philosophy of science that was advocated for a while by Hilary Putnam. It's not far wrong to regard it as a version of constructivism: though it is a bit less concerned with process than constructivism in the strictest sense, it has a similarly close connections to Kantian ideas. I don't think it helps us much in understanding RPGing.)
 
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