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

[Micah Sweet]

Along the way, you’ll face difficult choices and life-threatening peril. It’s important as adventurers to embrace this danger as part of the game.
Playing it safe, not taking risks, and overthinking a plan can often slow the game to a halt.

Don’t be afraid to leap in headfirst and think like a storyteller, asking what the hero of a novel or a TV show would do here?

If this stopped at the word "headfirst" I'd be all for it. Great advice! I might just nick this and put it in my campaign intro.

Everything after "headfirst", however, is IMO awful. We're not running a novel or TV show or movie, and ideally we're not thinking like storytellers but instead thinking as our characters as inhabitants of the setting they're in.

Exactly! The one thing I definitely don't want from my RPG play is for anyone to think like a "storyteller".

 

[Lanefan]

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.

Hinting at the presence of a danger sounds like "hook" from here, just fancied up a bit.

What they do next, we play to find out.

That's true of a hook-and-bite type of game as well. The DM (or, rarely, one or more players) sets the hook without knowing if it'll be bitten; if it is then that's where things go next and if it isn't then so be it, there's (ideally) lots of other hooks out there.

 

[Enrahim]

No. Not to me, anyway. Every experiment trying to measure light's speed failed for centuries, until we finally did measure it.

And it was measured by professional career astronomers, not happy amateurs. I fail to see how "this is hard for the professionals" to not be a justification for "If you just want a fun hobby game, you probably shouldn't try this"?

If indeed this is not an acceptable justification to you, then I can understand if my reasoning works for you. The assumption that current knowhow is an aproperiate basis for advice is a sentral premise I thought was uncontroversial that I tried to build upon.

I literally quoted it to you already. I've bolded the relevant part for emphasis.

Yes, and then in the post after you paraprased it into something I thought was not matching the original quote. If the meaning of a quote is the main object of dispute, I think attempts at pointing to what was literary said deserves a real quote rather than a paraphrasing

This is saying that the referee needs to assume players are always trying to cheat. "Do their best to get away with stuff" is, quite clearly, talking about getting away with stuff against the rules--aka, cheating. There is no other meaning compatible with these terms. This isn't subtext. It isn't a soft implication. It isn't some off-the-wall weirdo interpretation. It's very literally what Lanefan actually wrote.

Disagreed. In that context read "Do their best at getting away with stuff" as referencing his previous statement in the reply chain

Which means there's no incentive whatsoever to stick your neck out and (try to) be The Hero, and every incentive to sit back and let others take the risks....which really sucks if those risks carry serious potential consequences e.g. PC death.

That is, we are not talking about cheating the rules but rather about freeriding the other party members.

The players have to trust the referee. The referee has to assume the players will cheat unless she does her job.

The these have and has I read as advice markers in this context. That is "These are things you have to do in order to have a good time in this kind of game in my experiece". I do not read it as a moral absolute as in "You have to do this or else you are doing something awfull". How do you read those have/has?

Also would the last sentence feel less inflammatory to you if we replace "assume" with "pretend"? I do not think this is an a fully approperiate substitution, but if you still think it is bad and can explain me why, that might help me understand how we are reading this part differently.

 

[AlViking]

I've seen comments like the bolded ones as well, or at least that's how I've interpreted them, and I think they're obviously inaccurate when looked at under any scrutiny.

As someone who runs games for strangers from the internet on a regular basis, The players I've met are almost always incredible joys to play with. 99% of the players I run into are wonderful people, love the game and are just hoping to have fun. I struggle to even think of a truly problematic player. Maybe one fudged some rolls in a one-shot, maybe one overslept a few times, but that's about it. I've made many more mistakes than that.

I think people let singular negative experiences warp their view of entire segments of the community. You see it in the way people talk about railroading or "bad DMs" like they’re the norm, and again in the way players are sometimes framed as problems waiting to happen. You see both of these happen around here on a daily basis.

So call me naive, but I'd extend your comment about GMs;



to everyone I encounter in this hobby. Because I believe everyone deserves such respect and grace. But I’ve gotten the sense lately that I might be more optimistic than most around here.

While I mostly just play games with home groups nowadays, I used to do a ton of public play and the vast majority of people I played with were fun to play with. I could probably count on one hand the number of problematic people I've encountered and I may even have a finger or two left over. There have been a few people I just wasn't a good fit with, but that doesn't mean they were a problem just that we wanted different things out of the game.

 

[Lanefan]

I wasn't aware @Lanefan had only played with that group in his 30+ years? Has that been confirmed?

We have a somewhat amorphous crew of about 20-25 people scattered across a series of ongoing campaigns, five or six of those people have been around almost since day one. Over time lots of people have come and gone from (and sometimes come back to) our games, there's maybe been about 70 in total.

Other than that, just some con games.

 

[Lanefan]

i mean, how much does modern EXP levelling incentivize those things either? i admit i'm a bit out of touch with how people are actually playing right now and fully admit i might be wildly wrong but i get the impression that for the most part groups are functionally treated as a single conglomerate entity for the purposes of EXP, i mean, the rogue might go down on the first round of combat and never actually get to take a turn before the battle ends but for all their ineffectualness they still earn their equal slice of EXP for 'surviving' the fight just as much as if they had been the lone member of the group to sneak into an enemy stronghold to steal something or other because 'the group' completed their objective and everyone gets their EXP reward.

And to me, that's mostly wrong.

The only bit that's correct is that the Thief who goes down in the first round was exposed to risk and thus should get xp.

The Thief who hides by the door for the whole combat and doesn't contribute anything shouldn't get xp; and that the game wants them to is more a function of trying to keep everyone at the same level than anything else. (there might be a bit of "we can't have people feeling left out" in there as well, but to me that's a bogus argument; if they didn't want to feel left out of the xp they shouldn't have left themselves out of the action)

By the same token, the lone Thief who sneaks in and steals something while the rest of the party waits outside should get the vast majority, if not all, of the xp for that theft.

 

[zakael19]

Everything after "headfirst", however, is IMO awful. We're not running a novel or TV show or movie, and ideally we're not thinking like storytellers but instead thinking as our characters as inhabitants of the setting they're in.

Clearly for Daggerheart, you are. See: OP title .

Regardless, a Player Best Practices with short punchy descriptions of how to play to get the most out of the game and its intended loops is common place now. Both Dolmenwood and His Majesty the Worm have it for the OSR side of the house that I've seen, obviously all PBTAs/FITD games have had it for ages, and Daggerheart has it for heroic narrative/cinematic play. It's basically a codified social contract, right?

 

[Lanefan]

I found that 4e D&D actually played fairly close to this: if the game is played fairly seriously, then every hour of play is about one-twelfth of a level (for a 5-PC party).

Hmmmmm.....if my game advanced at this rate and if they'd been playing the same characters all the way through.....

<<<<<crunch crunch crunch go the numbers....>>>>>

.....then after 1103 sessions of about 4 hours each on average, they'd be - with allowances for a few level drains and other glitches - well over 250th level.

Somehow, I don't think the game design can handle that.

 

[Lanefan]

The last time I remember a DMG mentioning anything about handing out XP to individuals was back in 1e. @Lanefan runs a unique game, there's nothing wrong with that, it's just not anything I see anywhere else.

Pretty sure 2e kept individual xp as well.

3e got caught up in trying to ensure the PCs were all the same level all the time, which the TSR editions didn't care about.

 

[Faolyn]

Here is what makes little sense to me:

*The game is not GM-centred / GM-driven; and yet,​

​

It is supposed to make sense to talk about the players in that game having their PCs *bypass something that has no existence except as an idea in the mind of the GM.​

I don't see how both those propositions can be true of the same episode of RPGing.

Ok, let’s say, in a game you run, there’s a tavern. That means there’s a tavernkeeper, yes?

When do you decide the tavernkeeper exists? When the players find the tavern (which I’m sure requires a die roll in your games), or when they walk inside, sidle up to the bar, and say “Barkeep! Ales for all of us!”?

Also, this whole “it only exists in your mind” nonsense has to stop, because every single thing in an RPG only exists in the mind of the people at the table. Character sheets and minis, if you use them, are just physical representations of the ideas in your mind.

OK, this seems to be a description of GM-centred play. Particularly in choosing to use the word "bypass" rather than simply "do not engage with" or even "avoid".

In past communications with you, you have seemed confused when I use different words. For example, I asked you a question about that whole “mending armor” thing, got the name of the armor-wearer wrong, and all you did was say that the character I named didn’t wear armor rather than actually answer the question. I imagine you simply forgot to answer the question in your confusion. So I’m using the term bypass consistently to, hah, avoid distracting you with different words.

You can use bypass, avoid, and doesn’t engage with interchangeably.

And relatedly: there is a contrast between the "bypass" terminology, and the way you (and some other posters) talk about it, and how Gygax talks about classic dungeon-crawl play. Gygax talks about the players avoiding traps and tricks, choosing which parts of the dungeon to explore, etc. But he does not talk about "bypassing encounters", in part because there is no expectation that any particular bit of the dungeon will be any more salient than any other bit.

Who cares what Gygax said? He also said a paladin could kill babies and still be lawful good. His gaming advice is only useful if you want to play exactly like he did, and I don’t.

Anyway, while I played AD&D2e as a brief con game first, my first real RPG was WEG’s Star Wars, and I’ve never played 1e, so I doubly don’t have Gygax as an influence.

Again, this seems to me to be a description of GM-centred play.

If that’s what you want to believe, go ahead.

That is pretty crucial to GMing some sorts of RPGs.

For instance, Apocalypse World says this (on pp 108, 143):

DO NOT pre-plan a storyline, and I’m not [mucking] around . . . Prep circumstances, pressures, developing NPC actions,​

not (and again, I’m not [mucking] around here) NOT future scenes you intend to lead the PCs to.​

Tracks aren’t a storyline. Tracks are circumstances (something has happened), pressures (something dangerous is happening), or developing NPC actions (NPCSs made those tracks because they walked by.)

A storyline would be “those tracks were made by the cultists of Zar who have kidnapped the son of the merchant prince and are taking him to a holy place to sacrifice him, thus summoning the Foul Many-Eyed Zarmoose, which will trample the nearby towns and devour the townsfolk.” Which is actually a fairly acceptable front in many PbtA games, and may even count as developing NPC actions in AW.

And literally all I’ve been saying is, the PCs see tracks, which is what AW says to do, and the PCs go the other way, which is their choice.

To the way I read it—and have read it in multiple PbtA games—your interpretation is wrong. You’re not supposed to prep plots, but saying that something or someone, even a named NPC, made tracks, is what you’re supposed to do.

This is what @Campbell was getting at, at least as I read him, when he posted this:

Which thoroughly proves you have had absolutely no idea of what I was talking about.

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.

So if you hear about a traffic jam on the radio and take an alternate route, meaning you’re never stuck in it, you didn’t bypass the jam? Seriously?

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

So are test and Ob 4, but you have no problem using those terms.