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

[EzekielRaiden]

Can you please provide an example of this in play?

I have. Several times.

Party meets in a tavern. GM describes the tavern and notes that one of the patrons is an old man with one arm. This is understood by many old-school GMs as ample information for the party to know that the old man with one arm is an essential source of information that cannot be ignored. I--if I had not been explicitly told this by such GMs--would never have seen it as such, and would just have interpreted that old man as colorful background, a cool bit of set-dressing. These GMs have explicitly informed me that failing to talk to the one-armed old man would be a major--likely fatal--mistake.

Open dialogue between GM and players.
GM: I haven't thought this all through or how it may pertain, I will have to get back to you; OR
GM: I'd like to make this work x way, can we quickly brainstorm on how this may work and importantly to ensure it follows abc restrains so its internally consistent for our campaign?

Wait, really?

Genuinely hold the phone here. I thought this level of collaboration was absolutely, positively unacceptable under any circumstances. Is that not the case?

Encourage Q&A at the table, provide the menu visually, repeat menu of choices, encourage dialogue at the table, correct players at the table while they're conversing with each other...

I mean I don't really have a very high opinion of "a menu of choices" as being the kind of sandbox folks here have insisted upon, but alright I guess. What does "encourage Q&A" mean? Like what do you do to do that? (This, at the very least, is something that would be personally, directly useful to me, because I have a player who profoundly struggles with brain-locks-up issues during play. Like I describe the scene and a potential problem to be resolved and half the time he genuinely cannot think of ANYTHING to say. At all, period--zip zero zilch nada, brain completely empty. When he does have ideas, they're great! But he locks up so often it can be a challenge to run the game for him, so literally ANYTHING you can tell me about how to encourage Q&A would be incredibly useful to me.)

I just imparted a lot of options on the PCs in the session before last, the conversation in and out of-fiction were thorough, I had an excel spreadsheet up with the options via my monitor available for everyone to see.

I was given to understand this was too much limitation, by a pretty significant degree. Is that not the case?

 

[Umbran]

Can someone explain the trilemma issue to me?

The three-prongs:
1) The players are not given prompts by the GM - players have no clue what to choose to do, and "anything they want" is not a sufficient answer, as one cannot make an informed choice without information.
2) The GM prompts everything in existence in the sandbox - the players are overwhelmed with choices/information.
3) The GM prompts some manageable sublist of everything - the players end up assuming those are the only things available, and the sandbox reduces to "pick a mission I prepare for you" play.

"Q&A" is also not a sufficient answer, as without information, you cannot frame useful questions. The GM is the player's eyes and ears, and so must prime the pump, and that leads to the three prongs, above.

The question is then how to manage to keep focus on player choice, while avoiding the three failure modes above. What are the techniques used?

 

[AnotherGuy]

Depends. Did they still need to avoid being heard? Are there truly no guards who ever look at the vault? Did they not need to consider shifts or timing? Seems to me that they'd need to do at least these three things:

1. Thoroughly case the joint, to determine the ideal timing for the heist, and to confirm that it isn't warded against teleportation
2. Examine the layout of the building, presumably including guard postings/locations, to make sure they could "teleport in, steal the mcguffin and teleport out" as you say
3. Acquire such a powerful spell (presuming something D&D-like, teleport is a 7th-level spell) so that it can be used to evade the physical barriers in the way--all without having ever visited the teleport location, which would be a difficulty...unless they somehow did visit it, at which point they've interacted with all the stuff you've said they weren't supposed to have interacted with

At the very least, points 1 and 2 would seem to be an interaction with those physical and/or watchman barriers between themselves and their prize. As I said above, it's not the boneheaded ultra-direct way--but it's still an interaction because they are consciously dancing around the fight.

Above, I gave an example of a "bypass" that required ignorance, but I don't necessarily think that's the case. I could also see one where (for example) the GM forgot that one of the players (say the party Rogue) had already received a carte blanche from the Queen. So the GM prepares a complicated fight and/or chase sequence and/or a need to sneak around etc., but the Rogue spends his token of the Queen's favor to request an immediate audience. The whole foundation of the encounter--the need to attack, evade, flee from, bribe, etc. the guards--has been outright negated, not simply addressed in a way that isn't the maximally straightforward approach. There is, I admit, some interaction here--but it's genuinely in an outright no-sale, "nope, NOTHING happens" kind of way, rather than a "solved by diplomacy instead of violence" or "snuck past rather than ploughed through".

Point being, at least to me, a bypassed encounter isn't just "we solved it in a nuanced way". It's "we negated the encounter completely".

As a GM, I don't think I would award XP for the party using the carte blanche to negate any possible encounter with the guards. That doesn't seem like an action which results in putting one's abilities to the test, nor one that develops the characters' motives. Perhaps specific contextual details could persuade me differently (e.g. the Rogue is legitimately trying to romance the widowed Queen, so spending this token of affection this way is super meaningful for him), but on its face, without further complicating detail, I don't think I'd award XP for it--and that's pretty tightly linked to it being bypassed. Conversely, sneaking past stuff, bluffing past stuff, navigating sewers, performing a teleport-based heist rather than a B&E heist--all of those things still strike me as earning XP, at least in the way I would expect those actions to play out at most tables (almost regardless of the GM's style.)

When a GM uses the words bypassed/avoided the encounter, GENERALLY, the actions of the PCs saw to it that the combat never happened. They avoided it, they bypassed it.
Now one can use it in the sense of any type of encounter (social, explorative, trap etc) but in my experience it is mostly used to describe combat encounters usually planned for, but sometimes not.

I do not think we need to come up with semantical arguments about negated/completely/engaged...etc
The words to describe this already exist, you can google it and see such examples of use for yourself by non Enworlders, it is used in common parlance by players of D&D at large.
The posters here who have issue with it, don't know what to tell you man... Use it don't, don't use. We will be using it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I have to ask: do you just think people are lying about how they run games, or that their players enjoy what they do? Because that's what seems "inescapable" as a conclusion from what you're saying.

No. I'm saying that I see several clear issues, which seem like they should warrant techniques of some kind (processes, procedures, guidelines, rules-of-thumb, best practices, etc., etc.) to deal with. I have instead been told that it is literally impossible to even attempt to communicate with me about this, that it is 100% pure ineffable intuition that cannot be shared or communicated, it can only be (apparently) witnessed and spontaneously grokked in-action.

Asking for clarification failed spectacularly. So I have instead focused on "well, this seems like it would be a problem, what is done about it?" That has been rather more successful, mostly from robertsconley and to a lesser extent (no shade, just noting robert's posts have been solid gold recently) from Enrahim and Bedrockgames.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

When a GM uses the words bypassed/avoided the encounter, GENERALLY, the actions of the PCs saw to it that the combat never happened. They avoided it, they bypassed it.
Now one can use it in the sense of any type of encounter (social, explorative, trap etc) but in my experience it is mostly used to describe combat encounters usually planned for, but sometimes not.

I do not think we need to come up with semantical arguments about negated/completely/engaged...etc
The words to describe this already exist, you can google it and see such examples of use for yourself by non Enworlders, it is used in common parlance by players of D&D at large.
The posters here who have issue with it, don't know what to tell you man... Use it don't, don't use. We will be using it.

Do players earn XP for "bypassed" encounters?

I would argue that those they do not earn XP for are bypassed. Those they do earn XP for--regardless of the method by which they obtained that experience, assuming it is commensurate with other approaches--were not bypassed.

 

[Guest 85555]

The three-prongs:
1) The players are not given prompts by the GM - players have no clue what to choose to do, and "anything they want" is not a sufficient answer, as one cannot make an informed choice without information.
2) The GM prompts everything in existence in the sandbox - the players are overwhelmed with choices/information.
3) The GM prompts some manageable sublist of everything - the players end up assuming those are the only things available, and the sandbox reduces to "pick a mission I prepare for you" play.

"Q&A" is also not a sufficient answer, as without information, you cannot frame useful questions. The GM is the player's eyes and ears, and so must prime the pump, and that leads to the three prongs, above.

I think Q&A is an adequate solution for me and for most peopke who engage this style. That is effectively the players eyes and ears. You still have to consider initial presentation, which POV plus potential passive rolls can consider. But the whole point is to let the players help direct things by saying what they are looking for. I can give a more detailed answer when I get back. But this is why I said sandbox probably isn’t a good fit for Ezekiel: because the solutions are going to be good enough for most people who run sandbox but I think he wants a level of detail you would need VR for. And there is nothing wrong with what he wants. But if I were a salesman, I wouldn’t sell him a system focused on sandbox as it just seems like it would create too many problems for him at the table. So I just honestly don’t think our solutions will solve the problem for him

 

[zakael19]

That would rather blow up the whole "what's around the next corner" exploration piece, which is IMO and IME a key element of dungeon crawling.

Fairly recently I ran an adventure where the players did get the map in advance...or what they thought was the map. The premise was that due to some divine instructions they were going to a very well-known local adventuring site, a set of old ruins so well picked over that it is nowadays used as an informal get-your-feet-wet site for brand new neophyte adventurers.

Needless to say, getting a map of the site in advance was trivially easy, as parties had been bringing maps of the place back for decades. And the map the PCs got was perfectly accurate...as far as it went.

What they didn't know was that about 2/3 of the actual site was secret, below the "training ground" bits; the sort of thing neophytes would never find but a powerful lot like these PCs probably would, and eventually did. It also greatly helped that by sheer luck they had a Zeus Cleric along, as the site was - before it was ruined - originally built as a Zeus temple and monastery.

Would it? I assure you for a HMTW game it absolutely does not. Again, I read so many of your posts and I’m struck over and over at how you’re a poster child for the sort of “D&D conservatism” the OP identified. Almost nothing you post comports to the sort of experiences and play that I’ve encountered; and then you abjure so many ideas of how specific segments of play may change in newer games to have an excellent experience.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

LOL. No, they don't blindfold anyone. They even have handy signs at the end of the aisles. What they don't do is give you a detailed map of the entire store, you have to look down the aisles to find what you want. If you get really, really stuck perhaps you can find someone to help you.

So, just so we're clear here:

Your players are capable of looking at the world, of seeing what is in it, of touching things and rearranging things etc., without having to ask you what is true or not true first? I mean if they already asked you in the past (and remember) that still counts as having to ask you first.

Because that was kind of the point here. Players do not and cannot have information about the world until you, the GM, tell them. That is simply not the case when you go to the store. You can look at the aisles without needing to have an interpreter collect all of the information for you and then deliver it to you secondhand.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think Q&A is an adequate solution for me and for most peopke who engage this style. That is effectively the players eyes and ears. You still have to consider initial presentation, which POV plus potential passive rolls can consider. But the whole point is to let the players help direct things by saying what they are looking for. I can give a more detailed answer when I get back. But this is why I said sandbox probably isn’t a good fit for Ezekiel: because the solutions are going to be good enough for most people who run sandbox but I think he wants a level of detail you would need VR for. And there is nothing wrong with what he wants. But if I were a salesman, I wouldn’t sell him a system focused on sandbox as it just seems like it would create too many problems for him at the table. So I just honestly don’t think our solutions will solve the problem for him

Yet I find Ironsworn quite fun--and it is, in my opinion at least, even more of a sandbox than the "traditonal GM" approach being discussed here.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm still wondering how you can make meaningful choices in real life when those same conditions exist (you don't know all that is, of what you observe, you can only be truly informed about part of it, of that part, you don't know how much can be used/interacted with/etc).

In real life, I'm not dependent on getting 100% of my information secondhand, and having every single one of my choices filtered through the judgment and evaluation of another person. I'm the one in control of how informed I am. Yes, I must sometimes (indeed, frequently!) trust the expertise of others--but I can review that expertise and judge entirely for myself whether it affords someone authority on a subject or not.