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

[Micah Sweet]

Its a carrot, not a stick.

So you might as well ask the PC if they would accept the result and simply forgo rolling.

 

[Micah Sweet]

In the case of Pendragon, I suspect Stafford would view it that people who didn't want to engage with what he was doing fundamentally wanted to be playing a different game. Engaging with what the Virtues and Flaws made you do was, best I can tell, what he considered the important part of the game play, so if you didn't want to do that, you were fundamentally playing the wrong game.

This is what every game designer should be thinking IMO. Make the game you want to play.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Its a carrot, not a stick.

for the manipulee, yes, for the manipulator it's a big fat nothing isn't it?

 

[Lanefan]

Another possible insight. I will here look at 3 semi-fictious extreme styles of play I am going to shorthand railroady (RRY), sandboxy(SBY) and nary(NY). In all of these playstyles GM has the ultimate responsibility for framing scenes.

Your analysis falls apart a bit before it even starts, because you've put the GM in the position of having to frame scenes (a very NY approach where action is more expected to jump from one discrete scene to the next with little if any detail given to what happens between the scenes) rather than just narrate the results of resolved player-side actions on an ongoing basis without much regard as to whether or not that narration forms a discrete "scene".

That said and noted, however....

In RRY play, the GM don't care about player input at all, but are free to frame scenes according to their own grand vision.
In SBY play the players are responsible to explicitely indicate what their characters are after here and now trough action and intent descriptions. The GM is obligated to take this into consideration when framing the scene.
In NY play the players are responsible to communicate clearly what is important for and about their characters trough character descriptions and other "flags". The GM is obligated to take this into account when framing the scene.

My take:

In RRY play the GM narrates whatever she likes in whatever format she likes, the players' input is token at best. If the players do nothing, the GM just keeps on truckin'. Setting comes first.
In SBY play the GM narrates in direct reaction to what the players have their characters try to do, ideally at the same level of granularity as the players' actions. If the players do nothing, nothing happens. Setting comes first.
In NY play the GM sets and describes discrete scenes, that often appear as set pieces even if made up in the moment, in response to what the players have their characters try to do. If the players do nothing, nothing happens. Setting comes last.

Let us look at a few of the concepts we have been looking at in this thread. Be a fan of the characters are an essential tenet of NY, as that neatly summarises the last GM obligation. However it serve no scene framing purpose in RRY play. For SBY it seem like innefficient/unneccessary advice, as the players are supposed to be explicit about their desires for the new scene trough their actions. The nature of the characters that the fandom is fixated on is not supposed to be taken into account.

There's a further difference: in NY play the focus is much more on individual characters where in SBY play it's on the party as a whole. (RRY play doesn't care much about the characters either way)

For the players to make the character's life not boring also looks different in terms of scene framing. For NY, this involve making sure that the implicit signals about who the character is are inspiering the GM to frame not-boring scenes for that character. In RRY play this advice hardly make sense, as the players are in no position to affect the scene framing at all. In SBY play however, for players to make their life not boring in terms of scene framing would require them to indicate not boring actions and intent. This can make perfect sense, but will get expressed very differently in SBY play than in NY play.

In SBY play the players are free to, to some extent at least, make their characters' lives boring if they want to simply by declaring actions likely to lead to boring results. Not so much in NY play.

Finally, all styles of play want to prevent a failed roll from stalling the game - that is after a failure there should (still) be an interesting scene. A technique to assure this is that the GM bakes a reframing of the scene into the failure narration, making sure that reframed scene is interesting. This technique works fine for NY and RRY play. However it do not work for SBY play in general, as the GM do not have enough information to frame the scene according to their obligation. The players need to be given a chance to explixitely state an action and intent as input to the new framing for the GM to follow their SBY obligation.

In SBY play it's expressly the players' job to restart a stalled scene or situation. If they don't, the GM in theory just sits there and waits.

 

[Thomas Shey]

So you might as well ask the PC if they would accept the result and simply forgo rolling.

To a point. I still think it tells you something about the result in terms of process, it just doesn't tell you if it worked.

I mean as a parallel, there are games like the incarnations of the D6 System or Mutants and Masterminds that have damage resistance rolls; but even if the target resists the damage, rolling the attack tells you they got hit. Similarly, the die roll here would tell you the person's argument seemed convincing, the character just didn't buy it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is what every game designer should be thinking IMO. Make the game you want to play.

Eh. I've got things in my head that seem like they could make interesting games for a variety of people; not all of those people are me.

 

[Enrahim]

So why is it unwelcome to you? What exactly on those lists would actually prevent you from running the way you like to run? What on those lists are you not already doing as a GM?

Ok, on the first list, I do all 4 things, but it is far from exhaustive. I make rulings, negotiate player disputes, suggests new auxilary game systems, portray unpreped npcs without making any move to mention a few things.

The only agenda I have is typically to find out what happens. I am not putting any particular effort into portraying a fantastic world or filling the character's life with adventure. However I do have a related agenda of setting up situations where I am genuinely curious what the party might do. This is closely related to play to find out, but distinct from the other two.

Next section is the worst.

• I rarely draw maps. If maps it typically is third party adventures, and then I want no blanks, thank you.
• I am adressing the players and characters as needed. Some times players has needs that need adressing. Safety concerns are the big obvious one.
• I am actually more into down to earth play. The 3rd level D&D party fighting over the fate of an evil aligned +1 dagger due to it being the only magical weapon in their posession is one of my fondest memories.
• I am rarely building on top of existing situations beyond playing out combats. Beyond finding information, the situation will generally simplify as it is beingnplayed out.
• Then finally one I almost do, except when the monster attacks or uses a special ability or a spell...
• Nope. Never giving life to generic zombie nr.13.
• Nope. Absolutely hate coming up with names. If I bother to call the barkeep or the hooded stranger or the guide anything but just that, you know they are important (or come from a prewritten adventure, but even then I typically don't want to try to remember their names. I am bad with names, ok)
• Asking questions? Sure. What do you do? Tell me and I'll use that to figure out what happens next.
• Not having fanboy tendencies. Some PCs are great. Some go on my nerves. I try to treat both fairly, ok?
• I hate destruction. Things could be threatened, but good should prevail. The real world have enough suffering. The things the players hold dearest is safe. There is tension, but carefully controled.
• If I hand out a point of inspiration for a player having made the entire group laught for 1 minute straight, that is fully a practice I embrace.
• Well, I guess I some times track monsters that is not currently seen...

The moves section doesn't really cover what I do in situation DW indicates I should do a move. For instance passing turn back to them I guess would be my most common move (nothing happens), and that is not listed. There are also some moves listed I would generaly not do, like seperate them. Puting character on the spot or actively highlighting a downside or provide a tailored oportunity also all go against the group focused mindset I prefer while running the game.

So to present this as simply general wisdom condensed into written form seem to not really grasp the width of the medium.

 

[Thomas Shey]

for the manipulee, yes, for the manipulator it's a big fat nothing isn't it?

When you offer a carrot, it isn't always. I can try to do something and do my best, but that's no assurance it works. If my RuneQuest character lands a good solid hit, but the opponent successfully parries it, that's what happens.

 

[Lanefan]

That certainly makes it sound like the “purpose of a role-playing game” is a bunch of in-character dialogue and thespianism;

Uhhh...yes? Why else do we do this, as opposed to playing a board game or card game?

that might have been the conventional wisdom 25-30 years ago, but I think we’ve moved past that.

"Moved past" it to what, though? Game-izing the in-character dialogue piece is in no way a forward step, so how have we moved past anything?

 

[Enrahim]

Your analysis falls apart a bit before it even starts, because you've put the GM in the position of having to frame scenes (a very NY approach where action is more expected to jump from one discrete scene to the next with little if any detail given to what happens between the scenes) rather than just narrate the results of resolved player-side actions on an ongoing basis without much regard as to whether or not that narration forms a discrete "scene".

That said and noted, however....


My take:

In RRY play the GM narrates whatever she likes in whatever format she likes, the players' input is token at best. If the players do nothing, the GM just keeps on truckin'. Setting comes first.
In SBY play the GM narrates in direct reaction to what the players have their characters try to do, ideally at the same level of granularity as the players' actions. If the players do nothing, nothing happens. Setting comes first.
In NY play the GM sets and describes discrete scenes, that often appear as set pieces even if made up in the moment, in response to what the players have their characters try to do. If the players do nothing, nothing happens. Setting comes last.

There's a further difference: in NY play the focus is much more on individual characters where in SBY play it's on the party as a whole. (RRY play doesn't care much about the characters either way)

In SBY play the players are free to, to some extent at least, make their characters' lives boring if they want to simply by declaring actions likely to lead to boring results. Not so much in NY play.

In SBY play it's expressly the players' job to restart a stalled scene or situation. If they don't, the GM in theory just sits there and waits.

I think you missed the point. SBY play is not what you would call sandbox play. Similar for the other two. They are (semi)fictitious play styles defined by their scene framing technique. Their entire purpose is to serve as an example of how concepts like the ones we have talked about in this thread can behave very differently depending on playstyle.