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

[dave2008]

So if the DM had a detailed write up on the setting, all of his rulings, and the results of the adventures, an outside individual couldn't easily figure out how to use that information to use that information to run his own adventure that was logically consistent with the setting?

If he could, there is internal setting logic that exists outside the DM and the group, because a complete stranger can easily figure it out. If he can't, well let's just say that I don't think that someone wouldn't be able to do it.

I've seen it done for decades with the Forgotten Realms and other pre-written settings that they see for the first time and then run successful adventures that meet the internal logic of those settings. They've built off of what is written, logically extending those pre-written things for their games.

No, I don't think that is possible. I believe you think it is possible, but I don't. Simple as that.

However, for all practical purposes it does work for many people.

 

[dave2008]

Sure, I get that it may work for people... but I don't know if that says much. I think the relevant thing is why it works for you (meaning the general you).

Ultimately, IMO, that is all that needs to be said. I mean I know what works for me, but that doesn't mean what I like is what someone else likes. I can't tell you why you like something.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm maybe not communicating what I (and @pemerton) are saying.

In the 'moment' of making an NPC decision, you're not thinking about the players, you have total disregard for them. If you were thinking about them, then you'd be warping the world in relation to them right?

Say I'm playing a Narrativist game and I'm thinking about what the Countess should do next. If I think 'well on Sam's character sheet it says they obey and respect the nobility, how about I have the Countess order them to clear the beggars off the street, that's a sweet moral choice.' My decisions are based on an end goal, create a moral quandary.


But, it will be plausible. So our Narrativist is using plausibility + moral quandary FOR THE PLAYERS

Or there's another type of Narrativist play where the decision is plausibility + statement about the human condition (note that this has nothing to do with the players)

When you make a decision, there is nothing 'but' the plausibility, which is why it's an exclusion criteria.

Plausibility + (nothing)


Yes of course on a group level you and your players find this fun and interesting otherwise you wouldn't be doing it.

Disclaiming responsibility is a term of art, I meant it as shorthand for taking the decision out of your hands, it's not meant to be read in a negative way and Apocalypse World considers it a vital part of the process when playing to find out.

On emergence for emergences sake. You got me there and I stand corrected. It's the players ability to set goals without the world 'forming itself around them', such that they 'get what they get.' + the joy of exploration of a lived in world.

On this point of emergence, I think the Narrativist play I am familiar with has a lot of this! In fact, it's hard to characterize it any other way. While I defined Hino as a female Ji-Samurai native of Iga, and loyal to the Iga Free League, everything else emerged. The basic setting (end Sengoku Period Japan) supplies a good bit of general context, but none of the particulars.

In our case the characters have evolved along various trajectories, manifesting different traits, history, etc. Hino grew a whole connection to the spirit world, for example, and a weird connection with Suetsuna. Now she's somewhat modified her dislike of Yoshimoto. I won't say this character has changed radically, but her situation is very emergent.

My Stonetop character went from conman despised by most of the village to holy man in the course of play. That was entirely emergent play. Same for me other characters.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I mean, when you look at the rest of the galaxy, Earth starts to look pretty implausible.

This is a hugely important point. Nothing in the world is actually likely to happen, it is all vastly improbable chains of events. It's just that something happens.

 

[dave2008]

Okay. This does circle back to one of the other things ("plausible"), so it's a bit difficult to work with, but it's something, so I won't complain too much.

Plausibility is deeply subjective, as I understand the term. Things I might consider implausible, you might consider plausible and vice-versa. This is especially true if we refer to it as "broadly plausible", meaning we aren't requiring a narrow lens here. E.g., Dictionary.com gives "plausible" the primary definition of "having an appearance of truth or reason; seemingly worthy of approval or acceptance; credible; believable"--tying it to entirely subjective things like appearances, worthiness, approval, believable, etc. The second definition definitely isn't something you want to bring in so I won't touch that.

But there's a second component here, which is...more or less what I've referenced several times now as "DM effort required", namely, "the fantasy physics and assumptions of the campaign world (setting)", as you put it. What things are part of the fantasy physics? Well...whatever you're told are part of it, which means...anything the DM decides to include. So the plausible cannot really limit anything, unless the DM is just bad at getting you to think they know what they're doing or talking about. Almost anything can become plausible with the right preamble. That's why the second definition I alluded to above isn't something you want to invoke, as it notes that a "plausible" argument, for example, is implicitly an argument with only the superficial appearance of truth and nothing underneath, sort of a damning with faint praise situation (as in, if it were more than merely plausible, one would expect to use the stronger word instead.)

"Realism", if it does in fact find its root in plausibility, establishment of patterns of inputs and outputs ("fantasy physics"), and "assumptions of the...setting", is...thus not really that much of a limiter. Yes, it will limit some things, some of the time; I'm not trying to say it's literally 100% pure anything goes. But it's also a pretty weak limit. That's why I bring up DM effort here. Almost anything can be massaged into plausibility with enough DM effort. This becomes exponentially easier when you have grandfathered exceptions like "magic", where literally some players will get all up in arms about something until the DM says "it's magic" and then suddenly every complaint (IMO pretty inexplicably!) just evaporates. If magic is a part of the world's physics, it has to have rules too, just declaring something "magic" isn't enough--but D&D fans seem to accept the loosest, most ridiculously unbound, most uncodified systems of magic without a peep of criticism (one, of several, reasons why magic in D&D remains overpowered.)


It's fine. Your replies have been courteous and you have endeavored to explain, and you have recognized useful contributions I have made. I'm probably not going to read the rest of the thread, but I am happy to respond to this. There's a reply I owe Lanefan for a similar response, but that might have to wait until after I get some sleep.

I tried to think about how I could concisely explain myself better and I just don't know that I can. I like the vagueness of things that are "broadly plausible" within the confines of the fantasy setting we are playing in. I don't want or need hard and fast criteria or rules for these things. We don't need a limiter and I would prefer not to have one. My players trust me and I them. If we disagree with something we discuss it and resolve it together.

I do want to say you keep saying: the DM does this and that or the DM decides this or that. That is not my experience. In our group, the DM adjudicates, but if a decision needs to be made it is a whole group effort.

So what is plausible is not one persons perspective, but the whole groups.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

This is a hugely important point. Nothing in the world is actually likely to happen, it is all vastly improbable chains of events. It's just that something happens.

There were three popes in two-and-a-half months in 1978. Weird stuff happens.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No, I don't think that is possible. I believe you think it is possible, but I don't. Simple as that.

However, for all practical purposes it does work for many people.

How can it work while simultaneously being impossible?

 

[JConstantine]

My question is: what does this actually look like in play? Suppose I’m standing over the group running a Blades in the Dark campaign, what does “deliberately get their first trauma” look like at the table?

I want to make sure I understand this, because to me it resembles a rule incentive, very broadly, like classic D&D’s “gold for XP,” especially the variant where you only get XP if you spend the gold. In that system, the XP mechanic is clearly designed to incentivize specific behavior. So I’m wondering what mechanics in BitD are incentivizing players to rush toward their first trauma, and what “trauma” specifically means in that context.

So, it is absolutely a rule incentive in that vein. To explain, it is probably better to work backwards.

There are four XP triggers:

• When you make a desperate action roll.
• Your playbook-specific xp trigger. For example, the Cutter’s is “Address a challenge with violence or coercion.”
• You expressed your beliefs, drives, heritage, or background.
• You struggled with issues from your vice or traumas.

That last one is the relevant one. To quote the book:

Mark xp for this if your vice tempted you to some bad action or if a trauma condition caused you trouble. Simply indulging your vice doesn’t count as struggling with it.

Basically, it's XP for roleplaying. Characters don't start with trauma, and once a character racks up their 4th trauma condition, they're forcefully retired from play. The way a character gets a trauma condition is by maxing out their stress track. Technically, stress is acquired, but gameplaywise, it's basically a resource that's spent in order to do things, like pushing oneself (similar to Year Zero engine games) in order gain an additional die or better effect on the current action being attempted, or activating special abilities, or paying for flashbacks.

So, how this works out in play for a certain type of BitD player is that during the first session or two, they play as recklessly as possible, using their stress to do all the things, in order to max out their track and gain that first trauma condition. That then gives them an additional element to roleplay and gain XP for. And, of course, XP is wanted in order to improve the character mechanically, like most RPGs. Once they have that first trauma condition, they pull back on the stress usage because of the limit on trauma conditions.

I still keep “monster/NPC XP,” because that’s something my players strongly want. But I’ve modified it so that any method of overcoming an NPC antagonist, combat, negotiation, trickery, earns the reward. It’s about resolution, not the method used.

This is what I do for my D&D and adjacent games, too. I want players to be more than murderhobos.

To be clear, I’m not asking this to diminish BitD but to help me understand it better, especially when people compare or contrast it with how I run my living world sandbox. I often see claims that what I’m doing is “basically the same thing as system X,”

I think there are certainly commonalities, at least on the GM side, though there are clear divergences too. BitD is very procedural with it's score-downtime loop, which works for the premise, but would probably be anathema to your approach.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Wow, this is a thing? I haven’t seen this in any of my groups or mentioned much around the discord, but I acknowledge the community is pretty big at this point. How strange. I definitely prefer how Deep Cuts handles both harm and trauma XP triggers.

I've seen it mentioned online in places. It's not something I've encountered a lot in actual play. Most players seem to want to avoid them since each one brings the character closer to death or retirement. My group just started a game a few weeks ago, and we played last night, and we had our first instance of a character gaining a trauma. This was our third score, and we have four players.

I even actually suggested it to him based on a discussion we had about his character. He's playing a Hound, and is a former Bluecoat. Because he was somehow framed or set up and lost his job, his goal is to play him as a bit paranoid. I advised him he could take a Trauma if he wanted and then he'd get XP for playing the character that way. He hadn't really thought of it that way.

So last night, he wound up spending enough Stress to take a trauma. I don't think our conversation was the sole reason for that... circumstances were such that his character was in a position to make a key move and he wound up having to resist a consequence, and it put him over the max Stress... but I'm sure it played a part in making him comfortable to do so.

My question is: what does this actually look like in play? Suppose I’m standing over the group running a Blades in the Dark campaign, what does “deliberately get their first trauma” look like at the table?

Each character in BitD has a reserve of willpower or grit or reserves of energy that the game calls Stress. This is a player used resource... the GM can never dictate the spending of Stress... it's always up to the player. It can be used to Push for an extra die when making an action roll, or to Push for Effect, which improves the Effect (impact, level of success, etc.) of an action. It is also used to fuel some special abilities, and finally, it's used to Resist Consequences. Once you've spent 9 Stress, your character is out of the action temporarily... which often means for the remainder of the Score, but not always... and then they take a Trauma.

A Trauma is a negative status descriptor that becomes a permanent part of your character going forward. They are: Cold, Haunted, Obsessed, Paranoid, Reckless, Soft, Unstable, and Vicious. Once a character has taken four Traumas, they are no longer capable of criminal life... they either die or retire, as appropriate.

Until that point, however, the Trauma serves as another possible avenue of gaining XP. One of the XP questions at the end of a cycle of play is "You struggled with issues from your vice or traumas during the session." So if they use their Trauma to complicate things in play, they can earn an additional XP, or two XP if they do it more than once.

So some players like to try and get a Trauma early in play because it gives them an additional way to play their character, and another possible source of XP. Such players are going to try and spend all their Stress so they take a Trauma early on in play.

As I said above, this is something I've seen more online than in actual play... but obviously, it happens. In the game I mentioned above, our Hound character (a scout or ranged attack specialist) was in an overwatch position on a Score that consisted of a Negotiation between two warring factions, and our crew auctioning off an arcane artifact to one of the two. Another faction crashed the meeting and summoned some hostile spirits to attack everyone. Spirits are so dangerous that they require a Resistance roll by the player for the character to even be able to act against them. So that used up a good deal of the Hound's Stress. Finally, he found the culprit who had summoned the ghosts... a young girl dressed all in black (they dubbed her 'Wednesday')... as the rest of the crew fled the scene to avoid the ghosts, he decided to shoot the girl, to try and sever her control over the ghosts. He pushed to do this, and then when he received a success with a consequence, he made final Resistance roll to avoid it... that roll put him over 9 Stress, and he took a Trauma.

But the Score was over, and the crew was successful, though they had to flee from the harmful spirits. How this looked is much like any other RPG, with the players declaring actions and talking about what's happening. The major difference would likely be to an open discussion about Stress and its use... my guess is that your games generally lack such player facing resources, so they'd not often be discussed in play.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Ultimately, IMO, that is all that needs to be said. I mean I know what works for me, but that doesn't mean what I like is what someone else likes. I can't tell you why you like something.

Oh, absolutely... ultimately, that's the only justification anyone needs.

But, in the context of why I asked @Micah Sweet is because he didn't offer anything other than to tell me that I was wrong to make a suggestion that it's not the best advice... which I would think we'd all agree is an opinion as valid as anyone else's.

I know you just kind of jumped in to offer your take, and I get that. I totally respect your opinion and Micah's as well... but his contributions to the conversation seem to only be about trying to scorn those who disagree with him. So I was asking him specifically to actually say something.