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

[pemerton]

And this prompted me to use a technique from one of the narrative games I believe @EzekielRaiden mentioned long way upthread (although it may have been @hawkeyefan, my memory is rubbish) whereby you are allowed to ask the player to provide a reason for their high knowledge check and they get to flesh out some character background during play.

I'm pretty sure this is Spout Lore from Dungeon World.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Something else that occurred in our game last night, the party came across a drow word.
Now the understanding of this drow word, would help with an insight check later on, and out of the party members the surface elf and the orc were the only ones who understood elvish but not necessarily drow.

In any even, I made them make a standard Intelligence check but gave the elf an additional 1d6 for expertise (mechanising their race). Despite the 1d20+1d6+5 modifier for Intelligence the player of the orc rolled higher.

And this prompted me to use a technique from one of the narrative games I believe @EzekielRaiden mentioned long way upthread (although it may have been @hawkeyefan, my memory is rubbish) whereby you are allowed to ask the player to provide a reason for their high knowledge check and they get to flesh out some character background during play.
So I followed that advice, I asked the player of the orc, who is predominantly your hack-n-slash guy but is coming into his own, to give me a reason why his orc would understand the drow word.

He hadn't yet fleshed out his backstory like the others in the group, but this useful technique encouraged a player like him to at least put something on the page which was great for the table and for him. So thanks for that!

My pleasure--I believe I did give an example of that, discussing the "Spout Lore" move (specifically, our half-elf Battlemaster explaining why he knew stuff about gems). But I wouldn't be surprised if hawkeyefan also spoke of things to this effect too, so it could easily have been just one contribution among many.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I live in London. Lots of dramatic stuff happens here but if I go somewhere I (a) aren't going to encounter it (b) on the very small off chance I did, it's not going to be an adventure.

I'm not a particularly dramatic character. If I created a character that could be considered dramatic, say a police detective (or adventurer), then I am actually making decisions based on what's dramatic.

Even if I was a detective, I'm still not going to encounter dramatic stuff just walking down the street. No adventure hooks with star crossed lovers when I'm going to get my shopping. In fact such a world would be highly contrived in such a way that it produces the dramatic. In fact more contrived than the RPG worlds I play in where you don't stumble on anything that could be called an adventure hook.

But when you sit down to play a game, do you sit down to play an ordinary person living an ordinary life in downtown London who would, even if subjected to a fully-justified call to adventure, be thinking to themself, "oh sweet Lord this is going to be SO EXPENSIVE" or what-have-you? Do you sit down to play a thirty-something office worker who's struggling with personal finance issues and just wants the annoying guy on the bus or the train (or what-have-you) to stop talking for God's sake?

Like it's all well and good to use "this would be insanely weird if it happened in my real life" but...we don't play games to look at typical people. 99.99% of PCs are anything BUT typical--either because they start that way, or because their lives become that way, usually in quite short order. Even the ultra-grim-and-gritty early-edition PCs are crazies who dive into murder-holes hoping to get rich quick before the holes (or the denizens thereof) murder them. They are, already, by dint of being adventurers, unusual people.

The existence of dungeons IS "this would be a good story." Perhaps this is what you are arguing, perhaps it is not--I'm a little unclear now upon rereading both what you wrote and what you replied to. So perhaps this argument should instead be directed at @CreamCloud0?

On the second part, it would be good for the story, I don't do any of that because 'good for the story' can only mean I'm judging what's happening in contrast to other stories. Which means I'd be creating knock-off pastiche and not amateur art.

Would it?

Sincerely: Would it?

There is a distinct difference between "this conclusion definitely occurring would be good for the story" and "this inciting event would be good for the story". The former is setting a rigidly-fixed path and doing whatever it takes to ensure that that path is walked as you envisioned it. The latter is, as I've said previously, a call to action--a spurring of the characters to do SOMETHING, whatever that something might be, to respond to a threat in the world around them. You don't care what the something is, as long as it's interesting.

That's quite clearly different from "creating knock-off pastiche", I would say. It doesn't need to have any particular association with any prior work (though I imagine many of us are familiar with a great many inciting incidents from fiction, which could inform this). Instead, it is the opening salvo of a conversation--a conversation that cannot happen without the support and assistance of the other participants, namely, the players. Different players would produce a different conversation, because they would choose differently--and each different choice then changes what the next threat, the next inciting incident, would look like, until in short order you have an experience that looks totally different even when starting from 100% perfectly identical components.

That's why Dungeon World has all those "dungeon starters" floating around out there. (Personally I don't find most of them all that interesting, but I'm picky when it comes to dungeon starters, I'll admit! Far too many of them are WAY too grim and gritty for my taste.) They're all an example of a common starting point, a common inciting incident, which functionally guaranteed will lead to radically different adventures, even if the same GM runs the same starter, so long as the players are different.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I cannot possibly be the only person to see an inherent contradiction in these two statements.

One those are statements by two entirely different people, who have said they don't run things exactly the same. But I am not seeing the contradiction. GM as storyteller, is a very specific type of game, where the players are there for the GMs story. You don't have to believe it, but the kind of sandbox play I and Rob are talking about were actively avoiding that type of campaign. Having stuff prepped, doesn't mean you are telling the players a story.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I cannot possibly be the only person to see an inherent contradiction in these two statements.

I certainly do see a contradiction, yes.

The former, as I read it, says: Absolutely NO storytelling, at all, whatsoever. Nothing story AT ALL, period, end of discussion. Do not even think of story. Anything that might even vaguely smell of story? Delete it from your brain, yesterday.

The latter, as I read it...is literally starting up a story, weaving in the inputs from the players, developing characters with goals and interests and preferences, fleshing out a world in which interesting events will inevitably occur,

There's only a contradiction if you consider a location or an NPC to be a story.

I mean...they are?

Everyone is the hero of their own story. Every location is the place where stories play out. And when you are making these things with thought to the things that are relevant to the PCs and their interests, you are most definitely considering those PCs' stories, and what would interact with that story.

I do not understand how that can't be, to some degree, storytelling. It isn't 100% perfectly pure nailed-down beginning-to-end novelization. I agree with that.

But I thought we had already established that arguments based on whether or not something was 100% perfect were presumptively invalid?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

One those are statements by two entirely different people, who have said they don't run things exactly the same. But I am not seeing the contradiction. GM as storyteller, is a very specific type of game, where the players are there for the GMs story. You don't have to believe it, but the kind of sandbox play I and Rob are talking about were actively avoiding that type of campaign.

Bolded bit: Uh....no?

It can also be a different thing.

A thing where the GM gives the players a platform in which to tell THEIR story, not by the grossly insulting phrase people around here love to use (the whole "willing a tower into existence" thing or other base canards), but by putting the PC in the protagonism hot seat, throwing a threat at them, and finding out what the player chooses to do about it.

The thing you describe is only true if you presume that all story is fully prewritten. That is not true. There are two other kinds of story: that which arises purely from retrospective analysis (which is very very much what old-school D&D is about--your story is never preplanned and never experienced in-the-moment, it is only a story when you reflect back upon it), or that which arises in the moment of play.

These three things are referred to as Story Before (fully prewritten), Story After (fully post-mortem, as it were), and Story Now (story happening in the moment) in Forge circles and the like. I know some people are really hostile to any form of jargon, but this jargon is quite useful in this specific context, because it emphasizes that there are multiple different ways that "story" can come about--and two of those ways have nothing to do with the GM enforcing their unpublished novel on the players.

Having stuff prepped, doesn't mean you are telling the players a story.

Nor does a storytelling game require that the GM is "telling the players a story".

It can, instead, be that the GM and the players are collectively telling a story, through the act of play. Hence: play to find out what happens. The story arrives as we play it, not before, not after. (Though obviously you can still record and remember a story that arrived as you played it.)

 

[Bedrockgames]

Bolded bit: Uh....no?

It can also be a different thing.

A thing where the GM gives the players a platform in which to tell THEIR story, not by the grossly insulting phrase people around here love to use (the whole "willing a tower into existence" thing or other base canards), but by putting the PC in the protagonism hot seat, throwing a threat at them, and finding out what the player chooses to do about it.

The thing you describe is only true if you presume that all story is fully prewritten. That is not true. There are two other kinds of story: that which arises purely from retrospective analysis (which is very very much what old-school D&D is about--your story is never preplanned and never experienced in-the-moment, it is only a story when you reflect back upon it), or that which arises in the moment of play.

These three things are referred to as Story Before (fully prewritten), Story After (fully post-mortem, as it were), and Story Now (story happening in the moment) in Forge circles and the like. I know some people are really hostile to any form of jargon, but this jargon is quite useful in this specific context, because it emphasizes that there are multiple different ways that "story" can come about--and two of those ways have nothing to do with the GM enforcing their unpublished novel on the players.


Nor does a storytelling game require that the GM is "telling the players a story".

It can, instead, be that the GM and the players are collectively telling a story, through the act of play. Hence: play to find out what happens. The story arrives as we play it, not before, not after. (Though obviously you can still record and remember a story that arrived as you played it.)

You are using forge terminology around story. I think it is very clear Rob and I don't use that kind of language. So when I said storyteller, I can tell you 100 percent clearly what I meant by it. I meant the GM is there to tell the story like you had in a lot of modules in the 90s. I mean, sure words can mean different things. But I know what I meant when I used a word, and weather I was contradiction myself (or for some reason if I was contradicting Rob)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You are using forge terminology around story. I think it is very clear Rob and I don't use that kind of language. So when I said storyteller, I can tell you 100 percent clearly what I meant by it. I meant the GM is there to tell the story like you had in a lot of modules in the 90s. I mean, sure words can mean different things. But I know what I meant when I used a word, and weather I was contradiction myself (or for some reason if I was contradicting Rob)

Okay but now you're doing that thing again--where only your terminology matters, and if I don't understand it or don't agree with it, I'm SOL, but if you disagree with my terminology or don't understand it...I'm also SOL.

This is the "heads I win, tails you lose" type of argumentation I got rather annoyed about multiple times upthread. Particularly when others then complained about myself and others doing that very thing!

 

[Bedrockgames]

Okay but now you're doing that thing again--where only your terminology matters, and if I don't understand it or don't agree with it, I'm SOL, but if you disagree with my terminology or don't understand it...I'm also SOL.

No I am not. I made a casual statement about my approach using the term storyteller. Then a poster put my post next to Rob’s and said my statement contradicted what Rob said about preparation. Given what I meant and intended, it wasn’t a contradiction. That doesn’t mean I am saying only my use of language matters. I get you guys have terms you use around story differently. But what was in question was what I said and whether it contradicted Rob’s statement

This is the "heads I win, tails you lose" type of argumentation I got rather annoyed about multiple times upthread. Particularly when others then complained about myself and others doing that very thing!

Again, I am not doing this.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Also to be clear here I wasn’t talking about modern storytelling games. I was talking about stuff you had in Ravenloft modules in the 90s and what was in the air in the 90s for GM advice. And even then, I ran some of those modules again a while back and defended the GM as storyteller because I realized there was still value in that approach (something I noticed going back to those old Ravenloft modules was when you run them that way they are dripping with atmosphere that is hard to get in other approaches). But the point was this style of play, where the GM takes a heavy hand on the story, is what sandbox peopke were actively trying to avoid in sandbox discussions