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

[zakael19]

Everything the GM creates in an attempt to capture the players' interest is a hook. Rumour of treasure in the mountains. Strange tracks leading off the trail. An out-of-place old wizard in a rowdy sailors' tavern. A place on the map called "Bebekki Ruins". All hooks, just on different scales.

Jumping off this to answer your previous direct question as well, this seems to be a misunderstanding of the sort of actions a game like Stonetop wants me to do as the GM. I am required to keep my Agenda in mind for everything I say that's not just bookkeeping. The Agenda is to:

• Portray a rich, mysterious world
• Punctuate the PCs’ lives with adventure
• Play to find out what happens

There are plenty of games out there that do low-stakes back and forth without significant scene framing until you're suddenly at a moment of high stakes. Stonetop is not one of them. I'm not trying to "capture interest," I am punctuating their lives with adventure and being a fan of their characters (by giving them explicit moments that a) let them demonstrate their own agenda and b) interrogate their instincts/relationships/hit the other XP triggers). I am directly imposing the premise of the game and the things they've indicated they want to explore during play (via the choices on their character sheets, Wishes at end of Session, or explicit goals of the session). Hinting at the presence of a danger portrays a rich and mysterious world, and punctuates their lives with adventure.

What they do next, we play to find out.

 

[pemerton]

But that’s not even the point, because the point is the players see something, like footprints, and decide to go around. Whatever caused those footprints—whether decided then or later—is bypassed.

Even suppose this is true - and frankly it's a bit of a strained usage of "bypassed", which is a verb that pertains to locations or to events that are located (like traffic jams) rather than to creatures - whatever it is that caused the footprints is not an encounter.

Encounter is a term used to describe a game event, not a term that those in the fiction are using to describe the things that happen to them. Suppose the PCs discover later on that the footprints were caused by a red dragon, and lead to its cave: I can imagine them saying "Thank heavens we didn't end up at the dragon cave" or "Thank heavens we bypassed the dragon cave" or "Thank heavens we avoided meeting that dragon" or even "Thank heavens we avoided encountering that dragon". But I can't imagine them saying "Thank heavens we bypassed that encounter!"

That's game talk, not in-fiction talk.

 

[pemerton]

If I’m improvising a scene and I say there are footprints, at that same time I’m also thinking about what made those footprints. Thus, an encounter with what made the footprints becomes possible.

Here, you are describing a different technique from the one that I tend to use.

Here is yet another example, this one from the play of Marvel Heroic RP adapted to a Fantasy variant:

the PCs had been teleported deep into the dungeon by a Crypt Thing (mechanically, when the PCs confronted the Crypt Thing the Doom Pool had grown to 2d12 and so I spent it to end the scene), and all were subject to a Lost in the Dungeon complication. As they wandered the dungeon looking for a way out, I described them coming into a large room with weird runes/carvings on the wall. One of the players (as his PC) guessed that these carvings might show a way out of the dungeon, and made a check to reduce/eliminate the complication. The check succeeded, and this established that his guess was correct. (Had it failed, some further complication might have been inflicted, or maybe the carvings were really a Symbol of Hopelessness, and the complicaion could have been stepped up to a level that renders the PC incapacitated.)

I described the weird marks on the wall, but I did not, and did not need to, think about what they might mean. That was resolved by the player declaring an action to read them, to see if his (and his PC's hope) that they might show a way out was correct. The roll succeeded, and thus the complication Lost in the Dungeon was eliminated.

 

[pemerton]

In Stonetop, when I tell the players they see “footprints/tracks” or “evidence of killed game” or whatever else tantalizing thing here, what I’m really doing is telegraphing a threat (“point to a looming danger / hint at more then meets the eye, etc”) which I may bring into play as a hard or soft move depending on what they do.

Once that’s telegraphed, I can use the danger to build tension, force actions, or take a hard move if the players dither and give me a golden opportunity.

Idk if that makes any sense.

Makes perfect sense to me. In my TB2e game, I introduced the pirates first as people that Lareth cared about, then as an encounter on the docks of Nulb, then via a galley, and then by compounding on town events and bringing them to bare on twists for failure. The PCs evaded some pirates, but were captured by others.

This happened over the course of seven sessions. There were ebbs and flows. The pirates are still "there", if I think it would be fun and make sense to bring them back onto the "stage". But there's no sense that the PCs, by going away from Nulb and back to the Forgotten Temple Complex, are bypassing encounters with the pirates.

 

[AnotherGuy]

That's game talk, not in-fiction talk.

Is anyone insisting this is in-fiction talk?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Come on now. You know you can't legitimately claim anything about "most players" any more than @Lanefan can.

Most groups are not friends who have been gaming together for 30+ years.

That, alone, already puts Lanefan's group well outside the bounds of most TTRPG groups.

None of which has anything to do with the explicit claim that it's somehow totally okay to assume that players are dirty rotten swindlers who need to be constantly watched lest they get away with their chicanery, while GMs are pure as the driven snow and must be implicitly trusted until you can build an ironclad case that they've done something wrong.

 

[AnotherGuy]

But that ignores the possibility of other tools filling the gap. For example, 4e's quests, which can be individual, or for the whole group. That actually pulls double duty; it rewards individuals for pursuing the stuff that matters to them, AND rewards the group for caring about one another's interests. Purely individualistic XP may avoid devaluing totally individualistic risk-taking, but it actually does devalue something else: group-centric risk-taking. Under individualistic XP, especially in the old-school paradigm where GP=XP, you are rewarded for abandoning your allies to die so you get a bigger share of the treasure and thus more XP. Having group rewards when individual characters succeed on their personal goals, on the other hand, means everyone is rewarded for looking out for everyone's interests, not just their own, and thus they're encouraged to take risks that help their allies. One path rewards one kind of risk-taking and devalues the other--and vice-versa. It's not a strict gain of rewarding risk; something is paid so something else can be bought.

Surely that, too, moves the needle a bit more toward high-risk high-reward, and away from low-event plodding?

Although our table does have milestone levelling when certain story or party goals are achieved (player-facing) we also have individualistic awards based on focusing on the character's TIBF.

If the TIBF goes against the party decision then yes to earn that XP and satisfy the TIBF the PC would have to "abandon" the party otherwise it would reveal that there are certain things that are more important to the PC, which is fine, and then perhaps the TIBF would need to be re-examined/altered. That's the test PCs are put through.
Now to be clear not all TIBFs run opposite or contrary to party decisions/goals. I'm only speaking of the ones that do.

Do Narrative games not have characters with opposing goals?

 

[clearstream]

I’ve stated many times that Stonetop Book 2 is my new litmus for “game which gives me so many answers while still asking plenty of questions to ‘play to find out’ within the scope of the premise.” You absolutely have to buy into the designer vision to get a good game out of Stonetop, but if you do the cognitive load is so low because of all the work put in that’s usable on the fly without just making stuff up.

That's similar to what is achieved when a GM extensively preps setting. It can leave room for extemporising while the cognitive load is prepaid, so to speak; productive of consistency.

One difference in Stonetop is overtly flagging open questions and in various ways drawing players into answering some of them. I suppose there is a definitional decision as to whether "sandbox" ought to include that. To me it can so long as an experience of exploration is retained.

Whether or not that's right, designer prep of something like Griffin Mountain can certainly support sandbox. Where designer fabricates setting, what is left for sandbox GM to do?

 

[clearstream]

There are plenty of games out there that do low-stakes back and forth without significant scene framing until you're suddenly at a moment of high stakes.

I'm not sure that can be avoided completely. Strandberg's Blinding Light sessions do sometimes roll through a number of low-stakes scenes (or we could call them "demi-scenes"?)

What they do next, we play to find out.

That could readily be the tagline for sandbox! It's about what the player characters do next. In both cases with -- sotto voce -- "in a richly detailed setting". Or something like that. The setting is a non-trivial facet of the experience.

 

[Enrahim]

And I fundamentally reject this perspective. Maybe in your games, the players are inherently disingenuous jerks actively engaging in bad faith. That's not how I play, and I consider it both openly insulting and utterly unacceptable to argue that even most players act like that, let alone ALL players.

If I'm expected to presume that GMs are always participating in good faith, I absolutely demand that we presume--unless evidence has suggested otherwise--that the players are also participating in good faith. If I am expected to presume the players (whether all or merely some) will participate in bad faith and must thus be subject to a bunch of controls to prevent that, then I absolutely demand that we presume--unless evidence has suggested otherwise--that (whether all or merely some of) GMs will participate in bad faith and must thus be subject to a bunch of controls to prevent that.

You cannot have it both ways. You cannot demand a presumption of total innocence (unless rigorously proven otherwise) for GMs and a presumption of guilt from players (unless rigorously proven otherwise). It's both, or it's neither. Your choice; I don't care which you pick, but you have to pick one. Nothing else will ever be acceptable. Period. (Edit: And to be clear, I would find it just as unacceptable to presume that GMs are guilty until proven innocent but players are the reverse. All should be subject to the same standard.)

There is a findamental difference in "acting as if" (which is the way I read @Lanefan 's "assume") and actually believing something to be true. This distinction should come natural in a hobby where immersion in a fantasy world is a common practice. However I do actually not understand what you mean with your "Presume". It just seem to me as a colossal misunderstanding of the post you replied to, that causes you to construct a well meaning moral argument that from the outside seems either irrrelevant or a strawman.