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

[SableWyvern]

Okay.

Can you tell me what those expectations are?

Because I'm fairly confident that that sort of thing is an actual answer to my questions for things about processes, procedures, guidelines, best-practices, etc. Like...a player who's never ever played sandbox before. What do they need to know? What do you tell them to make sure they're as prepared as you can make them to enjoy this, rather than getting lost, confused, frustrated, or stymied?

There is no single set of universal expectations. One of my first tasks as GM before every single new campaign is to make sure everyone is on the same page about the particular style, expectations and the like that will apply.

However, as I just edited into my previous post, there are certainly some associated expectations with the scenario laid out in the Primer:

What is especially noteworthy is that quick and hard-to-avoid death to things like slimes is part and parcel of the type of play being espoused in the Primer, and there is an expectation that the loss of low level characters isn't a big deal, and that players will learn from their experiences. Asking the one-armed man is great; if they fail to do so, they still learn the lesson, it's just learned a harder way.

But, if you want more detail on exactly what expectations it's talking about, the best way is probably to just go read the thing.

You say you want examples, but you still haven't even acknowledged the 2 years of campaign reports I posted when you said you wanted that kind of stuff, so it doesn't seem that there is any value in me seeking out more information I use for expectation-setting and making it available to you.

 

[zakael19]

Is this a common practice? Do other GMs share their unredacted GM notes with players? Hell, do they share redacted notes at any point, ever? I am genuinely shocked to hear that this is something anyone does. I was under the impression that functionally nobody ever did this, at all.

I’ve discussed how stuff showed up in the notes/prep when there were questions about outcomes or procedures (and occasionally via “what would’ve happened if..” type stuff), but never entire notes for a more traditionally prepped segment. Session notes summarizing what I think happened, sure.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

There is no single set of universal expectations. One of my first tasks as GM before every single new campaign is to make sure everyone is on the same page about the particular style, expectations and the like that will apply.

However, as I just edited into my previous post, there are certainly some associated expectations with the scenario laid out in the Primer:

What is especially noteworthy is that quick and hard-to-avoid death to things like slimes is part and parcel of the type of play being espoused in the Primer, and there is an expectation that the loss of low level characters isn't a big deal, and that players will learn from their experiences. Asking the one-armed man is great; if they fail to do so, they still learn the lesson, it's just learned a harder way.

But, if you want more detail on exactly what expectations it's talking about, the best way is probably to just go read the thing.

I'm aware of the Quick Primer.

I absolutely loathe it.

So, respectfully, (re-)reading it isn't going to help me. At all. It is aggressively antagonistic and condescending in my experience, and does not actually do a good job of communicating whatever it was trying to communicate.

You say you want examples, but you still haven't even acknowledged the 2 years of campaign reports I posted when you said you wanted that kind of stuff, so it doesn't seem that there is any value in me seeking out more information I use for expectation-setting and making it available to you.

I frankly did not see that post. I'm sorry. I had thought I'd checked everything sent my way. I genuinely don't remember seeing that link.

 

[SableWyvern]

I frankly did not see that post. I'm sorry. I had thought I'd checked everything sent my way. I genuinely don't remember seeing that link.

Well, if you want to get a feel for my thoughts and processes while running a game, this is probably the best way.

Return to the Old School: How to kick ACKS (or die trying).

So, I had planned to get ten or a dozen sessions under my belt before I started this thread. But I'm excited. So I'm starting now. If you are a player in this game, you should not be reading this (unless the game has reached it's glorious conclusion, in which case, have at it). Introduction...

www.rpgpub.com

 

[Micah Sweet]

Certainly! I have very little (perhaps even negative) interest in play which does not contain collaboration. I've just been told enough times that 110% of the world is GM-work, the players simply take actions within that world and thus consequences ripple out from those actions (consequences which, naturally, are completely under the GM's control--because again, the world is 110% the GM's creation.)


....so...it's not actually collaborative, it's simply a mutual-respect thing. That's...not the same thing? Like I don't know why you would call it "collaborative" when "The GM builds a world", whether or not "they build it for us."


But what you have described is not a shared creative space. It is a shared participation space, certainly. But the actual creation is entirely on the GM. They build. The players act. Both are contributing. Only one side is creating anything.

The players create their characters, and (if things are going well) they tend to do rather a lot.

 

[Lanefan]

Which version of D&D is this? It is not Gygax's AD&D. And it is not 4e D&D.

It occurs to me that it is in 1e, just not using that exact term.

On rereading the relevant bits of the DMG (you quoted them upthread somewhere) the piece about "tricking or outwitting monsters" leaped out, as that covers sneaking past them and-or other ways of avoiding actually encountering them once you become aware of their presence.

Sneaking past some guards would IMO certainly count as outwitting them. Some DMs who want to encourage less-violent play from the players/PCs might even give extra xp for finding a way past that in the end leaves everyone alive and unharmed.

4e D&D doesn't use a notion of "bypassing encounters" in its XP rules.

That doesn't surprise me: 4e and 5e seem by design to expect the players to stand their PCs straight in to whatever is put in front of them rather than looking for different angles or ways around. In large part this is because resources - hit points, spells, etc. - are so (relatively) easy to refresh in comparison with something like 1e where resources somewhat had to be hoarded for best-use situations only and standing in to fight was rarely the optimal way of dealing with opponents.

 

[Lanefan]

In my experience, conflicting player goals are usually resolved amongst themselves. "Okay, we will help Grok become the barbarian king, and then you guys will help me locate Heward's Mystical Harmonica, then..." Sometimes one or more goals can be accomplished simultaneously.

Depends on the goals.

In the game I play in, one of my characters has a long-term goal that, were the DM to cater play towards it, would likely become the primary or even sole focus of play probably for the rest of the campaign. And so, wisely, the DM doesn't do that; my character has to pursue her goal during non-adventuring time and-or while I run other characters in the played adventures. To her, adventuring has mostly become a sometimes-necessary (for the money) interruption to what she's really doing.

Also, in your example above once Grok becomes the Barbarian king he has no further reason to adventure with you and, if the fiction runs true, he'll likely very soon get bogged down by the duties and responsibilities of kinging in any case.

 

[pemerton]

I am saying that I prefer a game where I don't have any more power as a player than my character does in the fiction. I have always said that. Other people want power beyond that, and that's fine for them.

That's pretty much it.

Well, of course, the other part of it is that you deny that other approaches to RPGing give the player more agency than you approach, which centres the GM as revealer/expositor of the world and its causal forces upon the player's character.

Perhaps you don't see "agency" and "power" as rough synonyms in this context? For my part, I would.

 

[pemerton]

And? If you want to look at it that way, it's your choice.

Well, some posters are telling me that their sandboxing does not centre the GM.

But now I am being told that players are bypassing things that have no existence except as ideas in the mind of the GM.

As @EzekielRaiden posted upthread, the juxtaposition of these two things is surprising.

Tell me: do you really think we don’t know that these are imaginary worlds? Do you not suspend your disbelief and pretend the world exists while you play, or do you say, “my character, who doesn’t actually exist, goes to the store, which also doesn’t exist”? Somehow I doubt the latter is true.

The creator of the tracks can be discovered through play. That’s what the encounter is. If the players choose to bypass the encounter, they won’t discover who or what made them.

Of course it's imaginary. I'm trying to understand what the principle is for saying that some imaginary event that never occurred nevertheless was bypassed. And the answer seems to be - because the GM expected it to occur.

Of course the players may not discover who made the tracks. But what about the GM? How does the GM discover who made the tracks? Or if the GM is just at liberty to decide who made the tracks, why is the GM thinking of the maker of the tracks as something the PCs will, by default, encounter?

I mean, I can think of one reason - that play is by default GM driven. But that reason appears to be widely denied. So what alternative reason is there?

They are in the shared imagined space. They come from notes, or are improvised by the DM, or random encounters, or... There several ways encounters can show up.

How is an encounter that is bypassed nevertheless in the shared imagined space?

How are the players imagining this encounter, if it never occurred because it was bypassed?

I set up an encounter. The players may or may not choose to engage. I can make assumptions based on my past experiences with that group as to how they will react, but I fail to see how that would affect how the players act now.

I mean, look at this. What does "set up an encounter" mean, or "the players may or may not choose to engage", except in the context of GM-driven play? Whatever exactly is going on here, it is clearly not in any shared imagined space. It is the GM's imagination.

Notions like "setting up an encounter" or "the players may or may not choose to engage" have no utility at all, no work to do, in describing the play of Apocalypse World or Burning Wheel if one is following the procedures set out in the rulebooks for those RPGs.

 

[Lanefan]

Wait...you actually DO show your GM notes to your players????

Yes, that would be a dramatic--indeed, outright radical--departure from what literally everyone else in this thread has said.

Is this a common practice? Do other GMs share their unredacted GM notes with players? Hell, do they share redacted notes at any point, ever? I am genuinely shocked to hear that this is something anyone does. I was under the impression that functionally nobody ever did this, at all.

I can't remember the last time anyone asked to see the notes or module after playing through an adventure I'd just DMed. Gotta be 30 years or more.

If asked, I'd show them, with three exceptions:

1. If there's any real likelihood of the PCs returning to the site and there's things there still undiscovered, and-or
2. If they brought away treasure (usually magic items) that they don't yet know all the properties of, and-or
3. There's significant loose ends whose next steps are detailed in the module (e.g. the PCs know the BBEG escaped but the module details what he does/where he goes next on a successful escape, as a "what if") (second e.g., the module is part of a series they're still playing through and has details regarding things not yet occurred in play)

If 1 above was the case I wouldn't show them anything. If 2 or 3 above was the case I'd have to do some redacting somehow.