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

[Old Fezziwig]

I lose a DoW and agree to do whatever you tell me to do.

That effect lasts until one of us dies? Or until we're separated for x-distance or x-amount of time? Or ... ?

It's not very satisfying, but -- until the prevailing circumstances in the fiction are different. I suppose death would always work, but that's wicked extreme. Let's say my little dude has a belief that Prince Johann is the rightful king and should've gotten the throne before his older brother Jürgen for technical legal reasons. He makes this argument in front of the parliament and pooches it. They won't hear anything of it. He can't convince them, and the consequences of the duel are that speech against the king is outlawed. Maybe a change in government brings more willing ears to power. Maybe the king gets in over his head in a war with Florin and Guilder. Maybe my little dude goes off and finds hardcore proof. These would all be fine ways for it to come up again : the situation is not the same.

 

[pemerton]

Well, obviously; because the hesitation forces you to delay your attempt and thus gives others time and opportunity to interrupt.

But it doesn't stop the attempt. And I though all you "character agency" advocates were all about the attempt. That what follows from the attempt is neither here nor there.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I agree with you that it doesn’t break world logic. But the GM picking one is the GM determining how things will go. Determining the direction of play.



And when combined with the above, determining the direction of play does seem to lean toward GM as storyteller. I don’t think that it must be so, but I think it’s likely… and I don’t even know if we can say if it’s happening or not.

If you’ve created the NPCs and know their traits and goals, then you know how they’re going to react to things. And since you also created all the other elements of the setting, you know how everything will go. You can just turn on the machine and let it run.

Yes, the PCs can impact this. They can change things up… but, you’ve already accounted for this, right? Not these specific PCs, but you’re arranged all this stuff for a group of PCs. So that’s likely part of the thought process throughout, too.

No, most of the time you have no idea if a given NPC is going to have an interaction with the party. And you don't factor in the party or a party when you make them. You might consider if there is some gaming potential there, but that is about as far as it goes. Mostly you are just trying to give them clear motives that will help you run the character if the players do interact with them. And my experience with this is it is always a surprise what the players will do, and where that interaction ends up going. I have no idea what is going to happen before play stars.

 

[robertsconley]

If you’ve created the NPCs and know their traits and goals, then you know how they’re going to react to things. And since you also created all the other elements of the setting, you know how everything will go. You can just turn on the machine and let it run.

Yes, the PCs can impact this. They can change things up… but, you’ve already accounted for this, right? Not these specific PCs, but you’re arranged all this stuff for a group of PCs. So that’s likely part of the thought process throughout, too.

I don’t know the outcome. The PCs are involved. It’s that simple.

If they weren’t involved, say the party is in Blackmarsh and something’s happening way off in Eastgate, half a continent away, then yes, I might know how that situation resolves. There are no player decisions affecting it, and the consequences won’t ripple outward to Blackmarsh for months of game time. And vice versa.

But in Blackmarsh, where the players are, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Their choices, their actions, their timing, all of that creates uncertainty. I might have goals and traits set for NPCs, but how those play out depends on the context the players shape.

This idea of uncertainty is one of the oldest points I talk about with sandbook campaigns.

Then I construct a time line of what will happen as if the PCs didn't exist

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My axioms of sandbox campaigns First off a referee has to be willing to let his players trash his setting. If you are going to get bent ...

batintheattic.blogspot.com

2012

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[pemerton]

What is it about AW’s dice resolution mechanic that makes it fit the process-validated outcomes for you? Is it merely the openness, or something more I’m not quite grasping? There’s a lot of GM adjudication and interpretation happening around partial hits / Hard Moves. Clarity of stakes is hoped for but not always given on the negative side, which is part of why I think Harper has been refining his explicit stating of position/effect over the years.

The core element I'm seeing is if you do it, you do it - so at certain points in play the dice have to be rolled. And they then generate an outcome, which has to be accepted into the fiction.

That outcome can be specified at varying levels of generality, but I can't think of a case when it can be just anything.

The contrast would be with an approach when the dice are rolled if people feel like it, and the outcome factored in in the manner and to the extent that they like.

 

[Faolyn]

No, not at all. I’m surprised that’s what you took away from my post.

My point is that the world doesn’t actually react, the GM makes decisions or uses procedures to depict how the world reacts. Which may seem silly to point out, but I’ve noticed a tendency for some folks to attribute such things to the world.

As you say above, which I bolded, the GMs make their worlds react.

A GM avoiding ownership of that decision making is what I was calling BS.

Imagine a land filled with warring nations, until some powerful figure unites them into a single empire with them as the Emperor.

Now imagine a group of PCs who, in the midst of doing PC things, kill the Emperor. And their spouse. And their heirs. And their goatee'd vizier, quite possibly only because he has a goatee. They also make a big announcement to the public, so the public knows what a good deed the PCs just did. (Look: PCs are not always that bright.) They adopt his dog, though--they're not monsters--and name it Snuffles Throat-Ripper. They may or may not try to actually take over the throne, but it's just as likely they just go on to the next adventure.

Realistically, the land should quickly go back into warring nations, right? At the very least, some of them will want to take advantage of the power vacuum the PCs left behind (or the PC's own lack of experience in leading an empire, should they try it). There will be ripple effects in adjoining nations. People that the empire had oppressed may rise up in the chaos and try to take back what is theirs, while people who had prospered because of the empire's protection and patronage are likely to suffer without it. Etc., etc. Even if the emperor and their family got raised from the dead, there would be at least some changes.

This, IME, is what people generally mean about the world reacting on its own without the GM. They aren't claiming the world actually exists outside of their heads or on paper. Nobody actually believes that their fantasy world is real, unless, as I said, they have a very specific type of mental illness. Nobody is truly trying to say "I have no control over my world." (Except for those occasional creeps who use excuse in order to include noxious elements like "it's realistic that women are second-class citizens who get raped a lot!")

What the GMs are saying is that there will be at least a somewhat logical chain of events that should naturally happen after a major event happens, and that not following that chain of events wouldn't work. Like, in the empire in the aforementioned bout of murderhoboism. If the GM decided that, afterwards, the entire empire immediately becomes a corpocracy simply because the GM thinks that would be cool to turn it into a fantasy cyberpunk thing and magically hack crystal balls, at the very least skepitcal eyebrows would be pointed in that GM's direction, because that doesn't follow from the previous events.

 

[pemerton]

Well, that is read as an attack on our playstyles, since railroading is generally thought of as a negative. Seems pretty straightforward, especially with your bespoke definition of railroad.

Do you think that saying play is "nonsensical" or "meaningless" is not generally thought of as a negative?

I mean, I'm not saying that you find it railroad-y, just that I would.

 

[pemerton]

Affirming a vision sounds arbitrary and without logical basis, neither of which are the case.

Huh? Why is it more arbitrary to affirm a vision than to faithfully adhere to what has gone before. Isn't the latter a special case of the former?

 

[thefutilist]

I don’t know the outcome. The PCs are involved. It’s that simple.

If they weren’t involved, say the party is in Blackmarsh and something’s happening way off in Eastgate, half a continent away, then yes, I might know how that situation resolves. There are no player decisions affecting it, and the consequences won’t ripple outward to Blackmarsh for months of game time. And vice versa.

But in Blackmarsh, where the players are, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Their choices, their actions, their timing, all of that creates uncertainty. I might have goals and traits set for NPCs, but how those play out depends on the context the players shape.

But how do you choose for the npc's?

I have a mental model of them in my head and so if it's conversation then I'm just kind of inhabiting them and just saying what I think they'd say. The mental model is heavily concerned with their current priorities in a way that's maybe a bit different than the way I model other humans in the real world but it's very similar.

If I have to make a decision for them I just do what 'feels right.' with attention paid to how that converts to action.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The direction was determined by the players and the GM reacted. This is the part you guys keep overlooking.

No, I’m considering player actions.

Look at the example @thefutilist offered not far back. The arcane assassins fail to kill the cruel king… but kill his daughter. How does the king react?

Let’s say the assassins are the PCs.

How does the king respond to the PCs’ actions?

This can be determined in any number of ways. But assuming the GM is going to decide based on what’s been established… most of the information is going to be things the GM has already decided.

Yes, the players acted and it is significant, and the GM is considering that. But so many other factors being considered don’t come from the players… they come from the GM.

So when we see how the GM decides, given that he’s determined nearly all the things that matter, I think it’s silly to diminish the role the GM is playing in all this.