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

[pemerton]

Except I didn’t mention “story arcs” or “stories planned in advance.”

It seemed to me that you did:

The story is discovered through play, not authored in advance.

And that is what I was responding to.

Further upthread you've repeatedly mentioned character arcs, planned stories etc.

 

[pemerton]

To me it seems similar because in both cases one participant (MC, DM) has the job of saying whether to call for a roll.

I believe that you're familiar with HLA Hart's discussion of "scorer's discretion". The point of which is that, in the context of rule-governed activities, there are vast differences that can be connoted by "the referee has the job of saying . . . " The starting point would be, are their correctness conditions that are independent of what the referee wants to have, or thinks should, happen?

In Apocalypse World, the answer is yes. Because there is a shared fiction that establishes a trigger. In a game where the GM first decides whether or not there will be a consequence, and then calls for a roll, the answer is "no". Because the only constraint is what the GM thinks will, or should, or might, happen next.

 

[Faolyn]

But...games and stories are not the same, and dramatic storytelling is not a universal priority for all RPGs. I love stories, and I really love coming up with mechanics to explain what happened in them. That doesn't mean games and stories are the same, or that I want my game to mechanically incentivize or manipulate events to make those stories more likely to happen. The story is one way it could have happened. That's all.

OK, maybe we should start with this: what do you think it means for a game to tell a story? Is this the same as a story arc or character arc, or is it something different?

 

[dave2008]

OK, maybe we should start with this: what do you think it means for a game to tell a story? Is this the same as a story arc or character arc, or is it something different?

I'm not @Micah Sweet, but from previous conversations with them I am pretty sure that they don't want the game to tell a story at all. In their mind, I story is simply what manifests when you talk about the events of the game after the fact. So the story is a description of the events in the game, but not the game itself. I could be wrong, but that is my recollection.

 

[robertsconley]

Sure ok, we're back to teh same silly argument about why you'd want to curtail GM power but somehow Uno reversed. "Well the players can just get up and walk away from bad GMing" and "the GM can just flip the table and leave if it's boring" are both facile arguments, and you're completely ignoring my discussion of what the game is putting limits on to get there.

I've said many times it's very clear that narrativist games give near-complete power to the GM over many aspects of play, I dont think anybody has contested that. Now, it does expect me to follow the rules of the game as contained within the Agenda/Principles/Gm and Player Moves, etc; but as V. Baker has said many times if people are going to ignore the rules you can't design for that - you design for the people under the bell curve who a) follow the rules to a greater or lesser extent and b) get enjoyment/engagement out of what you're doing.


Ok, sure, semantics. You're using a word in a definition that's not particularly common and somewhat contested where I may use another (facilitation or guidance probably).

I’m pointing out the inconsistency in criticizing the authority of traditional referees while giving a pass to similar practices, just because they're framed differently or not enshrined in system mechanics.

By your own admission, you still put your thumb on the scale to ensure the campaign reflects your creative vision. The customs of traditional play are often mocked as arbitrary or unstructured, yet we see you describing how you’ll “move things along” or montage through scenes you find unengaging, using the system not to avoid authority, but to exercise it differently.

You dismiss my point as “silly” or “facile,” but that doesn’t change what you yourself said:

I thought the GM should also not feel obligated to facilitate play they don't enjoy? If a couple of the players want to do things that I find unenjoyable (stakeless shopping expedition #137), can't I simply montage that and move on to something everybody enjoys together?

Yes, you can, and systems you use allow you to do exactly that. But the presence of rules for it doesn’t change the core intent or effect: you’re deciding what kind of play belongs in the campaign, and what gets brushed aside.

I’m not asking you to like traditional play, nor am I ignoring the unique qualities of Burning Wheel, Blades in the Dark, PbtA, or Monsterhearts. But it would be helpful to drop the pretense that this is fundamentally different from the referee authority you critique elsewhere.

Ok, sure, semantics. You're using a word in a definition that's not particularly common and somewhat contested where I may use another (facilitation or guidance probably).

You're free to use whatever term you like, facilitation, guidance, or anything else. But it’s clear you’re treating leadership as synonymous with authority, when in fact leadership exists and thrives in contexts where no formal authority is present at all.

That’s exactly the kind of leadership I’m referring to: the kind found in volunteer groups, hobby circles, and collaborative efforts, where people come together, help coordinate, and keep things moving without issuing commands. Referees do that all the time, regardless of the system.

This isn’t a fringe or uncommon usage either. A quick search turns up hundreds of examples using “leadership” in this broader sense. It’s standard language in education, community organizing, and creative collaboration.

You're free to disagree, but let’s not pretend the term is being stretched beyond recognition. It's being used precisely as many others do in similar contexts.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm not @Micah Sweet, but from previous conversations with them I am pretty sure that they don't want the game to tell a story at all. In their mind, I story is simply what manifests when you talk about the events of the game after the fact. So the story is a description of the events in the game, but not the game itself. I could be wrong, but that is my recollection.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. Plenty of things in the world that can be elements of an emergent story if and when they are interacted with (directly or indirectly), but no intentional desire to make a story. For me and my group, it's Story After.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So this is a bit of a sidebar, but I'm not entirely sure that our 1KA game was representative. Our Stonetop game also had a relentless pace, and I think we're bringing a significant part of that to bear in our action declarations for our characters. Manbearcat and I talked once about playing with the pedal down and our preference for that style of play in relation to that game, and I saw a lot of that in the 1KA game, too (e.g., Yorath's petitioning of Helior to save his bacon or Suetsuna kidnapping little Yoshimoto to bring him off to be baptized both feel conherent and consistent as aesthetic choices). But I don't think we have to play these games that way. I think we could play 1KA more deliberately without sacrificing tension or turtling up. And I know we could play Stonetop more deliberately: we didn't spend a lot of time with some of the quieter tech in that game.

Yeah, I think the things we did in those two games were often high risk "put all your cards on the table" sorts of play. But I think the weightiness of the play in 1KA is pretty built in. I guess you can focus more on the minutia of Sengoku Era warfare, or tea ceremonies or whatever. The situation is still heavily fraught.

But I agree, Stonetop is a game that can adopt different sorts of pacing, but also scope. I can easily see a game where the action mostly focused on, say building a wall and politics, with the adventure part supporting that.

 

[robertsconley]

I never said that the GM shouldn’t have authority. And you’re also ignoring my comments that it’s about the group and you’re trying to frame it as if it’s solely about my interests.

It is about your interests, your own words make that clear:

I am all for the players doing whatever they want... but if it's aimless wandering or just in-character fluff with no real stakes or pathos, then I'm only gonna tolerate it so long before I move things along.

You didn’t say one player, or an isolated moment. You described the entire table, players plural, doing what they wanted. And you made it clear that if their choices didn’t meet your threshold for stakes or pathos, you’d step in and redirect play.

That’s not a group decision. That’s a referee judgment call.

Maybe it’s a call grounded in experience, and maybe it often improves the session, but it’s still your decision to override what the players are doing in service of what you think the campaign should be. That’s not collaboration. That’s the use of the authority the rules give you.

I want the GM to be able to move things forward. To frame scenes and to call an end to them when needed.

That doesn’t mean play isn’t player focused. Especially when we all know what the focus of play will be.

And I agree: your campaigns, from everything you've described, are player-focused. The systems you favor support that well.

But that’s not the issue.

What I’m pointing out is that your critique of traditional play, and the authority its referees exercise, is hollow when you're doing the same thing under a different procedure. The only difference is how the system frames the referee's intervention, not whether it happens. You still have the authority to say “this isn’t working” and shift the focus based on your judgment.

That’s fine. But calling it player-focused when you override the players’ current choices is a distinction without a difference.

 

[robertsconley]

It seemed to me that you did:

You're shifting the goalposts here.

In the post you quoted, I explicitly said:

"The story is discovered through play, not authored in advance."

That’s a direct rejection of story arcs or pre-planned narratives. You claimed I was referencing “story arcs” or “stories planned in advance,” but that’s not what I said, nor does that quote support it.

And that is what I was responding to.

Further upthread you've repeatedly mentioned character arcs, planned stories etc.

Now you’re appealing to what I "seemed" to say elsewhere in the thread. But if your response was to this post, then this post should be the standard. Quoting something and then retroactively assigning a different meaning based on prior interpretation isn't engaging with what was written, it's reframing.

If you want to critique something I said earlier, that’s fine, quote that. But don’t misrepresent what I said here and then justify it by pointing at a different conversation upstream.

 

[hawkeyefan]

What exactly is a failing on my part? Wanting a verisimilitudinous world? Or not making every moment of a game into a highlight? Either way that is IMO quite unfair.

If you think a game that is always trying to focus on interesting and relevant material rather than simulating the day to day life of the characters cannot be verisimilitudinous, than it would only be because you were somehow incapable of making it so.

Because I play in and run such games and they’re just as verisimilitudinous as anything else.