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

[thefutilist]

I need to read AW again, more carefully, but I think you can both hold prep lightly and still say what your prep demands, for certain types of prepped material and provided that the prep has not yet been established in play. Until it hits the table, until someone says it, it can be scuttled or adjusted (it might have to be if the preceding play makes it impossible in the fiction).

The way I run AW regarding prepped NPCs is the ethos, personality, relationships to other characters and resources are all solid and binding. You can't change them behind the scenes unless something on screen would cause a change AS IF it happened on screen.

But this is the thing I rant about all the time, unless a game has really good reasons why not to, it's best (imo) to play NPC's as if they're the same as player characters. They have their own plans, ambitions and all that stuff.

 

[JConstantine]

First, yes the setting is given some detail. But it's far from fully detailed. Elements are sketched so that they can then be used by GMs and players however they see fit. It's all a starting point, and this is made very clear in the book.

I agree. Forgotten Realms, it is not. It's very much wide as an ocean lake, deep as a puddle, but I've seen Blades players claim it was a detailed setting.

Second, I think it very much matters that it's not the GM who created these things.

Frankly, it seems this is where the barrier to understanding is.

I believe I put it a bit more strongly than "meant and expected to interact with the setting", which you snipped,

No, I quoted you verbatim. I'm not going to complain about people misrepresenting me and then do exactly that myself.

The sandbox play being advocated for seems to be a vehicle for the GM's prepped material.

There are different posters advocating different approaches to sandboxes. And it's clear you see it as a vehicle for GM material because you think it's meaningfully different from material provided by an author, which I don't. It just requires the GM to not be precious about their creations or as BitD puts it "don’t hold back on what they earn".

But I think that you are very much cherry-picking and ignoring significant portions of the book which are contrary to your point.

Not at all. I've contemplated going through the book and doing a compare and contrast, though it'd take bloody ages through text. I'm actually starting to wonder if anyone besides @zakael19 and myself have actually read the book.

Don't over-prep is what I usually see, along with the idea of potential fiction and holding on lightly.

I see both "no prep" and "low/light prep" in roughly equal amounts these days, but it was heavily tilted toward the former previously.

 

[JConstantine]

The way I run AW regarding prepped NPCs is the ethos, personality, relationships to other characters and resources are all solid and binding. You can't change them behind the scenes unless something on screen would cause a change AS IF it happened on screen.

But this is the thing I rant about all the time, unless a game has really good reasons why not to, it's best (imo) to play NPC's as if they're the same as player characters. They have their own plans, ambitions and all that stuff.

Sounds just like what sandboxers are advocating.

 

[JConstantine]

That is a good idea. I added a sidebar (not sure if I found every essay but grabbed as many as I could)

That's great, thanks.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Can you clue the PbtA and FitD folk in on that? The amount of times I've heard/read "don't prep" is vexing. It's really no different than the Alexandrian's "prep situations, not plots".

Seems @hawkeyefan disagrees with you on that one.

Just go by the game text! DW is a low/zero myth game, for example. You start play at a blank slate, no pre-existing fiction. During session 1 some things will obviously be established. After that the GM can draw some general maps and develop some fronts. These should have 'holes', that is the way it works. So, yes, DW includes prep, but only so that the GM can supply quality answers. Prep must honor the same agenda/principles/techniques as all other GM activities. This is just basically where you think up the cool move that speaks to the fighter's bond with the halfling.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No, it's not. That entire section is about establishing the next score, not BitD's equivalent of GM moves. That's the "Telegraph Trouble" and "Follow Through" GM actions.

I never said the GM "must". People really need to stop misrepresenting others' comments.

Again, I never said it was "the" way. I said it's presented as the default in the Running the Game section.
Chapter 4: The Score has this:

That first one is player-led, but I'm not seeing much different from someone in @robertsconley game pointing at the map and saying "let's check out the Temple of Doom". The second two are what @hawkeyefan seems to consider GM-led.


I agree. That's why I said the player-driven approach is the ideal.

This is pretty much how my V:TM sandbox goes. Players may discover something about a NPC, say, but it's up to them how they utilise it in their ambitions.

This is really going to vary by group, especially since most players don't read the book.

There you go with the misrepresentation again. I never said anything about fights. Nothing about an encounter necessitates that it be a fight. So, no, I haven't misunderstood entanglements. If anything, you've misunderstood encounters.

So, you see me as trad, @Micah Sweet sees me as a Narrativist. People love their pigeon-holing, huh. But no. As I've said previously, I try to approach each game in the spirit it was intended. That means reading the book and taking it as face value without any preconceived notions.

---

I want to highlight these parts separately, because they showcase something else I've noticed among BitD fans. I've already mentioned how there's a trend to tell those coming from a trad-leaning background (especially 5e only) that they need a change of mindset, and to unlearn their approach, but Narrativist-leaning players, especially those coming from PbtA are often bringing in preconceived notions themselves. BitD is not strictly a Narrativist game. It takes several steps back towards trad, and, frankly, is a weird hybrid. I'd posit that it's like Nar 60:40 trad, so it breaks down less with narrativist leanings, but that doesn't make it Nar.

Yeah, we're not going to agree and I think you are missing a very key piece in terms of the degree of control over fiction that trad relies on, which is radically different from, and recontextualizes basically all of this other stuff. Nor does most trad play envisage anything like the maze of entanglements, pressures, and spinning plate balancing that BitD assumes.

But in a more general sense my experience is that, yes, there's a range of play that extends from trad to nar, but if you start at the nar end, and then incorporate a bunch of things that people can see as trad, you don't end up at the same place as someone going from trad to vanilla nar. The core is different, things may correspond, but they end up being used differently.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

But in a more general sense my experience is that, yes, there's a range of play that extends from trad to nar, but if you start at the nar end, and then incorporate a bunch of things that people can see as trad, you don't end up at the same place as someone going from trad to vanilla nar. The core is different, things may correspond, but they end up being used differently.

Does one necessarily start at a specific "end" though? I mean, a lot of games I've looked in the last few years, they've gathered a lot of stuff from trad, narrative (and please let's not call it "nar" lol) and even games that don't really fit into either (like 4E D&D), and it's unclear where the starting point was, only the destination.

Or is it just that BitD specific started at the PtbA end of things?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

If you're talking about the task resolution, it's pretty damn trad. The only difference really is that it explicitly requires the GM to explain how dangerous a situation the character is in (position) and how effective what they're attempting is going to be (effect).

I'm not sure it takes a different approach, per se, but it certainly relies on far more hard framing than your standard D&D session. I'll freely admit to learning that the hard way, but it was a lesson learnt damn quick in the first session. I care about not crossing the line and infringing on player agency, so I default to a fair amount of soft framing, but man does Blades sputter if you do that. You cannot do the typical exploratory "so you're in [location], [description of area], what do you do?". It's very much "here's the obstacle, naughty word's about to hit the fan, how are you dealing with it? [Repeat]."

Those exploratory situations happened quite a bit in our play. Do you go up the stairs or down the hall? BitD isn't a game that is built around a lot of exploration as a core activity, but it is very present. One of the best scores in our game was an overland trek! It wasn't a hex crawl but it involved exploring different regions, finding things, and using resources. It was a great session or two, certainly didn't sputter or anything.

But note how the game structure works, the score is providing goals and structure. Info Gathering has already given us a choice of routes.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

AW takes the opposite approach to prep lightly or Blades potential v actual prep. Always do what your prep demands is a must say. Which really translates to, say what your NPC's demand and say what your Clocks demand.

Right, it's telling you not to wuss out! If Drago would slit Frank's throat, that's what happens. If the players haven't secured the hard hold against the carnivorous locust swarm, guess what?

 

[Lanefan]

I'm not interested in a deep analysis of my processes ...

I second this motion.

All in favour?