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

[pemerton]

I think basically this view is, in part, outdated. Techniques and approaches to running RPGs, and thus the associated game designs, have evolved a huge amount in the last 20 years. In 1995, maybe even in 2005, I'd have agreed with you on a lot of this.

But the reality is a game like Dungeon World is simply not described by your view at all. The actual approach is super general and rarely gets in the way. It's not a set of rigid rules in the sense you all seem to mean. It's more of a supporting framework for how the participants interact and the game flows.

The actual mechanics are also extraordinarily general, and yet always applicable, unlike systems that try to handle endless specific situations, which I agree with you don't really work well.

Agreed.

There are other dimensions to this too.

For instance, look at Burning Wheel. To make a RPG work like BW, there need to be dice rolled at the moments of crisis/climax. This is what enables "say 'yes' or roll the dice", "intent and task", and "let it ride" to kick into action. Which, in turn, requires departures from some D&D approaches: every action declaration needs to have dice rolls to support it, including things like casting spells; and those action declarations need to be able to succeed based on a roll, including ones like "I look for a vessel"; and even the simplest actions, like that one, need to have some chance of failure (eg no +10 Perception vs DC 5).

It turns out that it's not completely trivial to come up with a design that fits these requirements. For instance, the way that 4e did it was to make all non-combat moments of crisis skill challenges, which achieve the chance of failure by distributing the checks across multiple participants on the premise that not all of the players will be able to auto-succeed on all of the checks that they have to make in the challenge. And that premise in turn sets up further design requirements.

If someone wants to run a RPG where the main focus is on the players resolving the problem/puzzle that the GM is presenting to them - "finish line"-oriented play, to re-use a term I used upthread - then these design challenges and the way that various RPG systems have met them won't be of much interest.

But for other sorts of play, where "GM decides" resolution is pretty anathema to the goals of play, these design challenges matter. And there has been a lot of development since the RM and RQ and similar sorts of systems were conceived of 40 to 50 years ago.

 

[AnotherGuy]

In our most recent game the PCs had to provide an argument to change the mind of individual NPCs out of a group (a Council) on any number of issues which the NPCs had an issue with. These issues were listed on a spreadsheet for ease and represented the intuitive knowledge the PCs had about the Councillors and their positions.
The challenge wasn't about testing the players' memories but about them coming up with a plausible (there's that word again) argument.

So the way it worked at the table was, a player presented their argument to the table and the table democratically decided if it was a sound argument for the issue being tackled, taking into account the traits of that NPC whose mind they wanted to change.
In the fiction characters spoke amongst themselves about which arguments they were going to enter in private with which Councilor (also a decision point). Sharing ideas, tactics and input.

In that exercise I saw my players start making the discussions with each other I would be making with them re plausibility and the evaluation of the argument they wanted to present. And all but 1 time (out of 11) the table voted unanimously.
They stepped up.

What I'm trying to say rather long-windedly through this example is that you can start small with trusting your players to maintain the integrity of your setting (as a Trad GM). It's a learning curve like everything else.

The mechanics were also player facing
01-05 Lose an influence
06-10 Standard Fail
11-15 May attempt again, persistence, but the DC shifts 5 higher for everything.
16-20 Gain 1 influence
21+ Gain 2 influence

Each character had x number of attempts during several in-fiction meeting intermissions, so they couldn't game the system by only having the PC with the best persuasion score attempt this. There were other mechanics as well that played a roll, but it was all player facing and represented the intuitive knowledge of the PCs.

 

[JConstantine]

The only player I ever really had seriously argue about decisions and mechanics was the guy who knew the rules really well.

Full disclosure: probably about 90% of my time at the table has been as a player, but I've always read the books to the point that I was often as knowledgeable of the rules, if not more so, than the GM. I have never argued, but have questioned adjudication. But that isn't really what I was talking about. Any piece of adjudication has implications going forward, and knowing the rules is not the same as being in the GM chair, but a complete lack of reading the book means a player is going to be severely disadvantaged in understanding the ramifications of a decision, which makes consulting them... less constructive than it could be, shall we say.

 

[SableWyvern]

Something very funny: people talking about how they’ve played with the same group of players for decades and you should get to know people before playing with them to establish GM relationships and trust also constantly assuming players are somehow terrible and cannot be trusted.

Speaking for myself, when I've said anything like this, I've been saying that I simply have no interest in playing with strangers, in general. My gaming is something I do with my friends.

But during the lengthy initial discussion of trust, the people you're referring to, including me, also said we would extend trust to new players and only withdraw it if it was proved it was undeserved.

I've argued strenuously that getting along with people at the table really isn't that hard.

 

[pemerton]

Narrativist games at least stridently yell at the GM to not prep plot and force directions of play on the players. I’ve seen OSR games explicitly state the same thing. Does that count?

But that's just a general approach that can be applied to other systems as well if you want.

My experience in this respect is different.

For instance, suppose that, in AD&D, a player casts Transmute Rock to Mud on a cliff, with the intention that the formerly-rock-now-mud will slide and flow down, destroying and or sweeping away whatever is below it. There is no easy way in AD&D to resolve this other than via GM decision-making - the GM has to decide how successful the player's stratagem is.

The same is true in RM (which is where I actually have more experience of this sort of thing than in AD&D).

And the point generalises to a whole host of action declarations - probably most of them, once they deal with things other than one-on-one or small-groups-skirmish combat, or fairly simple physical activities like jumping, climbing short distances, or pushing things over.

There are various devices that experienced GMs learn to use, like - say - establishing ad hoc percentage chances of success. But what I personally have found is that offloading the GM decision-making onto general resolution systems found in more recent RPG designs has been a more effective and more satisfying way of avoiding GM decision-making as a principal determinant of the directions of play.

I'm honestly still pretty fuzzy as to what benefit is received from adding additional constraints to the GM. Why would you want restrictions on what you can do running the game?

Well, of course the game designed with the specific intent of constraining the GM does so more than a system that empowers the GM to make judgement calls as they see fit. I can't see anyone disputing that.

I will dispute any claim that one method is inherently superior to the other.

Superiority is generally relative to a goal or purpose; and goals and purposes differ.

In my case, one goal for most of my RPGing is to enjoy myself, with my friends, establishing some shared fiction that is exciting and interesting and isn't anything that anyone thought of in advnce or came up with on their own.

This is done by playing a game, in the sense of a relatively structured group activity that assigns roles and tells the various participants what to do in their roles. So what you call "constraints on the GM" I just call playing a game by its rules. And why do that? For the same reason as I play any other game by its rules - because playing the game is a pleasurable, intellectually and emotionally satisfying activity.

When I read the GM in a RPG should not be subject any rules or constraints, what I take that to mean, literally, is that the GM should be able to introduce whatever fiction they like at any point, based on what they think best responds to whatever moves other participants have made. I don't know if that is what is actually intended, but as I said that seems to me to be the literal meaning. That might be fun for some RPGers, but is not what I am looking for in RPGing.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Did I mention I had 6 hours of (bad) sleep last night? Sorry if I took it the wrong way.

Nah I wasn't clear enough in my first post, completely understand. All good.

 

[SableWyvern]

When I read the GM in a RPG should not be subject any rules or constraints, what I take that to mean, literally, is that the GM should be able to introduce whatever fiction they like at any point, based on what they think best responds to whatever moves other participants have made. I don't know if that is what is actually intended, but as I said that seems to me to be the literal meaning. That might be fun for some RPGers, but is not what I am looking for in RPGing.

But you do know it's not intended that way. Clarity and additional nuance has been added repeatedly by a range of posters, but you keep leaping on specific phrases and words and choosing to interpret them in the most extreme or silly way you can, in order to do things like accuse people of being unable to tell fantasy from reality

 

[zakael19]

Full disclosure: probably about 90% of my time at the table has been as a player, but I've always read the books to the point that I was often as knowledgeable of the rules, if not more so, than the GM. I have never argued, but have questioned adjudication. But that isn't really what I was talking about. Any piece of adjudication has implications going forward, and knowing the rules is not the same as being in the GM chair, but a complete lack of reading the book means a player is going to be severely disadvantaged in understanding the ramifications of a decision, which makes consulting them... less constructive than it could be, shall we say.

I really appreciate that in a game like Stonetop (derived from Dungeon World), the entire useful core rules (the Basic Moves etc) fit on a single sheet; everything the players need to know about their character is on their sheet; and the adjudication is straightforward and clear. Same thing with BITD. Such clear player facing mechanics mean that you don't really need to read too much, and referencing as needed is quick!

 

[pemerton]

But you do know it's not intended that way. Clarity and additional nuance has been added repeatedly by a range of posters, but you keep leaping on specific phrases and words and choosing to interpret them in the most extreme or silly way you can, in order to do things like accuse people of being unable to tell fantasy from reality

My experience is this: that someone (eg you, or @Micah Sweet) posts that you don't want any constraints on the GM.

I reply taking that literally, and - as per this post of yours I'm replying to - you tell me you don't mean it literally.

Then I try and talk to you about constraints, perhaps drawing comparisons to my own experience or conjecturing principles and heuristics that seem like they might be applicable to a trad-ish sandbox-sort of game. And you (or Micah Sweet or whomever) tell me that I'm wrong, and that no such principles or heuristics apply.

Hence pushing me back to the literal reading of the claim. Only to be told it's wrong. Etc.

So I guess I'll ask up front: what constraints do you think govern the GM playing in a trad-ish sandbox-sort of game?

 

[JConstantine]

Thanks. I am glad you picked it up. I think RBRB is especially in that direction because the martial world in that is pretty much all about the characters. Yeah, when I read blades in the dark, it was kind of hard for me to get into as a system (which doesn't mean much, me not gelling with a system doesn't mean it is bad or anything like), but I recognized it was doing things that were very much in the ballpark of what I was interested as a GM. So I don't see any conflict with what they are doing and I am doing. I am probably just much looser with my approach to procedures and tools.

Obviously, the mechanical expressions differ, and there's divergence like BitD's score-downtime loop being far more procedural than your approach, but I see so much overlap. BitD encourages GMs to provide opportunities (i.e. hooks), but also follow the players' lead, no different from your approach; it allows initiating action with NPCs (i.e. what some seem to consider GM-driven); RBRB sects have write-ups pretty similar to BitD's factions, complete with assets and situation; BitD's entanglements table is literally an encounter table, like you use; and so on.