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

[SableWyvern]

So... the underlying example for problems that I was upbraided for suggesting were not specifically sandbox, was from the OSR Primer?

That was my first exposure to it. I don't know if it existed as an example prior to that. In any case, no, I don't really see it as sandbox specific at all.

 

[AlViking]

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.

The Gm creates the game world, it's inhabitants, all of the encounters. The players control their characters, what their goals are and how they respond to the world around them. Which has been the default in D&D for half a century as I'm sure you well know.

In a sandbox the players still are in control of the direction of the game, everything the GM does is for the players. So in that sense the players are central. Once again, there is no "gotcha" here, there's just an ever more tired attempt to prove ... something.

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?

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 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.

Not all games are AW or BW or similar games. Some are D&D, spinoffs or other types of gaming. In those cases planning out possibilities does have utility. Which you would know if you read the responses people have provided instead of just beating the same drum.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Your complaints to me falls into the category of "judgement over how people get the power they want in RPGs", so I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Is a trap an "encounter".

Anyway, 3E's GMing advice/instructions all assume heavily GM-driven play. Which is one context in which this notion of a "bypassed encounter" makes sense.

I certainly see a trap as an encounter.

 

[Micah Sweet]

For me, the answer was really nicely put by Eero Tuovinen:

I find that the riddle of roleplaying is answered thusly: it is more fun to play a roleplaying game than write a novel because the game by the virtue of its system allows you to take on a variety of roles that are inherently more entertaining than that of pure authorship.​

When I was young and got into RPGing, I enjoyed comics and novels. I don't read many comics these days, and fewer novels than I would like to. But I do watch more movies, more seriously, now than I did back then.

As well as experiencing stories of characters doing things and making choices, I enjoy creating them. But as Tuovinen says, it is more fun to play a RPG than to write, because of the entertainment that RPGing permits. I like inventing situations, or - in the case of Prince Valiant - presenting situations that Greg Stafford or someone else invented, seeing what the players have their PCs do, responding to that. Sometimes I laugh with them. Or compliment them. Often, especially in failure-and-suffering-laden Torchbearer, I make fun of them (in a friendly way). Occasionally I'm amazed by them - here's an example from TB2e play:
It doesn't quite come through in the write-up: but after I described Megloss blasting Gerda with fire, the chatter at the table was light-hearted and bantering. I can't remember what we were talking about, but I noticed that Golin's player was not participating. And as I looked to see why not, I saw he was building a big pile of dice. "What for?", I asked. "Because Megloss killed my friend. Here are my Fighter dice, and my weapon die, and my Avenging Grudges Nature dice on top of those." The calmness yet intensity of the delivery, the determination - there was not a hint of hesitation in his description of what he was doing - were striking.

Golin's anger towards Megloss for his murder of Gerda - the complete opposite of recovery - and his determination to avenge her death, were palpable. The huge pile of dice visually conveyed it. At the table, this moment felt as powerful as anything I can remember from a Claremont X-Man comic. It was blood operatic.

I want these moments. Not because I've authored them, as GM, but because play yields them through its own dynamics. So I choose systems that can reliably produce them.

I actually have more fun reading, writing and designing for RPGs than playing them. Playing is still fun though.

 

[Maxperson]

Is a trap an "encounter".

Yes. 3e lists 7 or 8 different encounter types I think. Encounter hasn't meant "combat" for decades.

Anyway, 3E's GMing advice/instructions all assume heavily GM-driven play. Which is one context in which this notion of a "bypassed encounter" makes sense.

No. You don't get to brush off people giving XP for bypassing an encounter as something "heavily DM driven." People can and I'm positive do do that in D&D play that is not heavily DM driven. XP for things other than combat is fairly common now.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

I actually have more fun reading, writing and designing for RPGs than playing them. Playing is still fun though.

When can I put the "Wonderful Works of Micah Sweet" on my shelf?

 

[Micah Sweet]

When can I put the "Wonderful Works of Micah Sweet" on my shelf?

Thank you! Most of my gaming work is part of my house rule documents, and consists of modifications to existing works, which means I can't really publish most of it. I am working on what I hope will be an article for Level Up (Voidrunner's specifically), and with any luck that will be my first published work.

 

[Maxperson]

When can I put the "Wonderful Works of Micah Sweet" on my shelf?

Hollywood hasn't even begun casting it yet, but when finished it should go next to The Incredible Mr. Limpet, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb, and Borat.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

That's possible, if Grok is a lying, no good scoundrel. They agreed to help each other back in the beginning and the others risked their lives to help him, so to me that's a fairly good reason for him to help them with their adventures.