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

[Bedrockgames]

I am unclear as to why a long-form campaign is incompatible with illusionism.

It isn't. The point is players in a long form campaign, are operating with a lot more knowledge about the setting than players in a one shot

 

[Bedrockgames]

The claim was that, because players have choices, GMs functionally have no power at all--"all that power is worth naught."

Which is patently ridiculous when GMs, literally for decades, have practiced invisible railroading, where the players THINK they're making decisions and driving the plot etc. etc., and the actual result was already perfectly determined in advance by the GM....the GM is just very good at twisting, folding, and rearranging the things players "chose" so that the consequences just so happen to be what the GM planned all along.

What power does player choice have in the face of an invisible railroad?

Can you quote where that was claimed. My reading was he was just saying the players also have power. If they choose to mutiny, murder and cannibalize, that has a massive impact on the direction of the campaign. So my question was, where was the invisible railroad in the example that was given?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Nope! Wrong. Incorrect.

My point isn't that this is anything like what the world is.

I am asking--I have been asking, for quite some time now--for the alleged constraints/limitations/fnord that you and others have repeatedly asserted are the thing that mean the GM's choices are not driven by what they choose to happen, but rather in some way "forced". I believe that was a word used to describe it--that the GM has no choice but to do X instead of Y, even though they might like to do Y, because of something that gets in the way. No matter what they might do, no matter how much effort they might expend, they'll just never be able to do Y because something forces them to do X.

Thus far, every single answer has been built on...a thing the GM has complete and absolute control over and which is not in any way separate from them. Context? GM decides what counts as context and what doesn't. Setting? That's literally something they wrote, or something they're re-writing from someone else's work. (E.g. I don't imagine that @Maxperson would merely accept it even if Ed Greenwood himself declared that, say, an alien species colonized a sparsely-inhabited portion of the Realms--nor would I expect him to never ever deviate from, say, the monster design of trolls to say that this troll is weak to lightning and cold rather than acid and fire, merely because--I am making this up, to be clear--all trolls in FR are weak to acid and fire.)

Players can declare actions, yes. But those actions can only be declared within a context entirely developed by the GM--and the consequences of those actions are, likewise, entirely within the GM's purview to control. It doesn't require outlandish things for the GM to still be fundamentally in control here.


You build the world, populate it, make all decisions for all sapient and non-sapient beings, develop new parts of the world when you feel like doing so, decide what information the players will be allowed to learn or forbidden from learning, set the terms for any action they take, create and enforce all consequences of any action they take, and have complete control over what qualifies as relevant context for every single one of the foregoing things.

Yes. Characters take actions. You're still responsible for both 100% of the inputs that go into those actions, and 100% of the outputs that result from those actions. Because it all has to come out of the black box before players are even potentially capable of learning anything about it--and thus of doing anything about it. You cannot act when you have genuinely zero information.

I don't recall claiming traditional GMs are forced to do anything. They are encouraged to use their own judgment, leavened by the social contract, to make their decisions, but they're not forced and I don't want them to be (as a GM or a player).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

First, the DM does not have complete and absolute control over context. Not even close. If I declare that my fighter goes up and flirts with the barmaid, I have made that part of the context that the DM has to include. It would be extreme bad faith for the DM not to include it, and that's rare enough not to bother worrying about. As well as being so incredibly obvious that we could, and would, all just walk out of the game if a DM ever tried that.

And if the DM tells you, "What barmaid?", what would you say?

You've been one of the folks quite ready to trash anything that you think looks like players "inventing" things in the world.

Second, I have changed a few things about the Realms. No Spellplague or Sundering for example. That doesn't mean that the 99.999% of the written lore that I haven't changed has become mine instead of Greenwood's, TSR's and WotC's.

Which means there's nothing in it unles you gave the sign-off first.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Can you quote where that was claimed. My reading was he was just saying the players also have power. If they choose to mutiny, murder and cannibalize, that has a massive impact on the direction of the campaign. So my question was, where was the invisible railroad in the example that was given?

As requested:

In my youth I ran an adventure where the PCs got on a ship. The ship was basically a railroad, it was meant to do nothing more than get the PCs from point A to point B (another continent). Then the PCs decided to mutiny. They took control of the ship, killed everyone and turned to cannibalism. This was a sandbox move.

No matter what the GM decide to prepare or not, the PCs actions are what form the story. That's the thing. Sure, sometimes you hear GMs say that "if you don't want to pick up on my adventure hooks the door's over there," but even then it's still the PCs/players actions that brings that conclusion. A GM has all the power in the world, apart from controlling the players and the PCs, and with that, all that power is worth naught.

Note, Kromanjon, I am not trying to re-litigate this with you. I am only quoting the post because Bedrockgames asked for the place where that was said.

 

[Maxperson]

For me, it was a moment when my players were being all awed by my awesomeness, and I pulled the curtain back and said, "This is how I did it."

I'm not sure if they even cared. But as soon as I spoke, their adulation immediately meant nothing to me, because I could see how it was built on nothing worth being proud of. And that, for me, was the death of illusionism in my games. Even if my players were still OK with it, I was not.

For me it was when I realized that illusionism was just another form of railroad and that I wanted their choices to matter. That was decades ago and I haven't looked back.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Question: What, exactly, prevents the GM from developing a reason why there would be goblins there, even if previously there definitely weren't? The players cannot see the notes, they'll never know that a new development contradicts that--like literally, it's not possible for them to know that. Even if the GM has already explicitly said in the most absolute and certain terms, "There are absolutely no goblins in <region>", it's been explicit that you don't want a "machine" world, you want a world controlled by a person. What stops that person from deciding, a week after saying "there are absolutely no goblins in the High Forest", that an expedition has been sent from Goblinia to the High Forest? As far as I can tell, nothing stops them from doing that. They then develop this expedition further--the goblins are trying to keep a low profile so they hide their numbers, forage, avoid settlements. Presumably they want something in the High Forest.

First off, you can show players your notes. I do it all the time. Second, if you are really pinning details down before hand, players can usually figure out you are doing things like making stuff up after the fact. The pieces generally fit together more. But literally, all the GM has to do here if a player is skeptical for some reason, is show the map and or notes to the player. But the important fact is, the GM doesn't have to lie about this stuff. The GM can be an honest broker here, and often is. You make it sound like "if the GM can lie, you must assume he is lying"

But what stops them is the social contract of a sandbox. A GM in a sandbox is supposed to be running the setting in an honest way, and genuinely honoring player agency. If the goblin encounter was going to happen either way, then the GM isn't honoring that and isn't running the setting honestly

 

[robertsconley]

since you started this tangent by claiming your game was more empowering because you have to set up encounters in a specific way that was different from how @robertsconley set up his.

I went back upthread to trace the origin of this subthread, and given the direction it’s taken, I believe it’s worth responding to the following post directly.

When @hawkeyefan asked robertsconley why/how he decided that the PCs would encounter the lovers as they did, robertsconley appeared to feel obliged to produce quite a complicated explanation in terms of GM tracking of backstory:

It’s not complicated at all. Deceits of the Russet Lord begins with a situation already in motion. One of the events is a young couple fleeing the village of Woodford after being encouraged to do so by Andalis, a servant of the Russet Lord. Their journey begins at a specific moment in time, as described in my earlier post.

In a standalone scenario, such as one run at a convention, the inciting incident is a commission from the bishop tasking the group with collecting overdue tithes. As there's usually no reason for the party to delay, they leave promptly, and the encounter with the star-crossed lovers reliably occurs. Had the party delayed, I would have gone along with it. For one-shot sessions, the only likely reason to delay would be to gather more information about the abbot.

In a campaign, there are multiple ways the party could intersect with the situation in Woodford. The first time I ran this adventure, the encounter with the couple was the inciting incident, and the party became focused on getting them to safety and returning them home.

To summarize the setup:
Andalis, following the Russet Lord’s command, encourages the couple to flee, knowing this will likely provoke Sir Osdir, the girl’s father, and the bailiff into arresting the boy’s father, Hanleric the Smith, on charges of kidnapping and corrupting the knight’s daughter. This will be the final spark in an already volatile situation caused by indifferent monks and Sir Osdir’s petty mismanagement, setting off a peasant revolt. When that happens, Andalis will alert a nearby orc encampment that Woodford and its shrine are vulnerable.

What unfolds as a result of the party encountering this situation depends on their choices, and when I’ve run it multiple times, it has played out differently each time, often in very different ways. But the focus isn’t on testing the players’ beliefs and motivations. It’s about letting them experience the situation as it exists at that particular moment in time and seeing how they choose to respond.

Where does the encounter "exist", such that the players are able to have their PCs "bypass" it?

This question assumes encounters exist to serve a specific function, which reflects how RPGs like Burning Wheel structure their fiction around challenging character beliefs and motivations.

By contrast, in my Living World sandbox approach, the goal is to bring the setting to life in a way that makes the players feel like they are visiting a real place. Encounters are bypassed all the time because, as in life, you can choose not to engage, or your actions may cause you to miss something already in motion, like a runaway couple leaving before you arrive.

Which of us is the more empowered GM?

Neither. We each accept specific responsibilities based on the structure of our campaigns. The creative challenge involved in fulfilling those responsibilities is what inspires us and keeps us in this hobby.

To me, this is an example of what @Campbell posted about upthread, of treating a certain sort of RPG - basically, conventional D&D - as normative.

The typical reply here would be to argue that D&D is normative because it dominates the hobby in terms of popularity, publishing, and visibility.

But that’s not your point, or Campbell’s. You're using “normative” in the sense of issuing value judgments. In plain terms, you’re accusing @AlViking of saying D&D is the only correct way to play. But that’s not what he’s saying, and you know it. Otherwise, you would have said so directly, instead of framing it in a way that derails the discussion into debating D&D’s market dominance rather than actually engaging with @AlViking’s position.

And you don’t seem to have a real rebuttal to his position, because both his and your approaches work equally well, given their respective assumptions.

The concept of bypassing an encounter is an interesting one.

When I GMed Prince Valiant, I made decisions as a GM about who the PCs encounter, intended to frame them into interesting situations that would require the players to make choices about how their knight errants respond.

that would require the players to make choices about how their knight errants respond.

Why?

More specifically, why do you require the players to make choices about how their knights errant respond? I’ve explained why I run Living World sandbox campaigns: I want players to feel like they’re visiting a real, evolving world. What motivates your preference for requiring players to make dramatic character choices? What is the purpose?

Upthread, @thefutilist wondered what it would be like to play my style of campaign. One of their concerns was whether they’d have to ask questions and do investigations before "getting to the good stuff." But that’s not a problem, because for my players, asking questions is part of the experience. They want to feel like they’re exploring a place either geographicall, socially, or both.

It’s like visiting Greece: you can take a tour bus from your hotel straight to the Parthenon, or you can walk the streets of Athens, talk to locals, and experience the life of the city. The first is efficient and curated; the second is more physically demanding but immersive. Neither is better. They’re simply different ways to experience a place and have their respecitve upsides and downsides.

Your Prince Valiant sessions aren’t about the players living in King Arthur’s world as their characters, they’re about testing how they respond as their character to specific dilemmas within Prince Valiant's version of that world.

And it sounds like a good premise for a campaign. Just as a good as running a campaign in a way that feels the players feeling they just have visited the world. Understanding why you feel the way you manage your campaigns I think will further everyone's understanding of your approach.

 

[Bedrockgames]

As requested:



Note, Kromanjon, I am not trying to re-litigate this with you. I am only quoting the post because Bedrockgames asked for the place where that was said.

Okay, here is what I will say then. In that example there was no invisible railroad. The was one and the players got off it by eating the crew of the ship. Provided the GM is letting players truly make those kinds of choices, then you don't have to worry about an invisible railroad

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Good faith and losing the players who would just get up and leave if a DM tried that. They knew where they were going and if the land suddenly appeared right when they mutinied to avoid going there OR appeared in front of them after they turned the ship, or if a storm drove them there, it would be very obvious that they were being railroaded.

Would it, really? Like seriously, would it? Because ships get blown off course all the time, and the destination could very easily be a place known for treacherous waters or the like. After all, all of that is within the DM's notes which can be rewritten if the players haven't encountered it.

I don't know why they just didn't start fishing.

Just randomly throwing nets over the side of a ship in the middle of an ocean is not actually a reliable source of food. And, as noted, you're still going to run out of water sooner or later.