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

hawkeyefan said:

Because it all depends on many other factors.

If the disposition of the NPC is relevant, but can be learned, than I don't think that's a limit on agency, provided the GM offers opportunity to actually learn the disposition.

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Then, again, I don't get your complaint.

hawkeyefan said:

I think a murder mystery is a horrible example to bring up if you want to avoid playing through the GM's story. It's almost entirely that. The major exercise of agency in play would be to just walk away from the mystery entirely.

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I also don't get this. What the GM wrote is what happened before the players got there. How to investigate, who to interrogate, what clues to look for, how to deal with the different factions--these are all exercises of player agency. None of them are present in a novel.

AlViking said:

I guess I just don't see the need for a restrictions enforced by rules for the style of game I play. If I screw up I'll compensate in some way.

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Let's say you're correct in you assessing your own abilities and style here.

What in the world makes you think this is at all common? All evidence is that most people are really bad at both recognizing they've made a mistake and being willing to do the heavy lifting to fix it.

AlViking said:

If I really, really screw up I'll just do a time-out and let people at the table know that I made a major mistake and ask how we want to deal with it. The only guard rails I've ever needed is the social contract between GM and players. I guess I'm drawing a blank as to when one of those two options wouldn't be adequate.

But there's different approaches even if I don't see when or how it would be necessary.

edit - may I'm just totally missing the point, an example of what you mean might help. Or not.

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By this point, I'm going to go with "or not."

The Firebird said:

In the case of the guard, if every guard inexplicably has an unwillingness to be bribed, it can start to feel unrealistic. Likewise, if every guard is willing to accept the right bribe, or is willing to hear the PCs out in the name of agency, then the world can start to feel unrealistic.

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Fortunately, dice do a pretty good job preventing those sort of situations from occurring.

Although it would be a little weird to bribe enough guards during a campaign to get a statistically significant sampling of guards’ openness to bribery.

Micah Sweet said:

There is a difference between casual discussion and jargon-filled game theory analysis, not the least of which is the implication that the latter is somehow superior to the former.

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Self-analysis--which is what Lanefan talked about--is not automatically "jargon-filled game theory". It still requires introspection, and if you're not willing to do some of that, I'm hard pressed to think you actually know why you're doing some of what you do. People don't in any other field without that, why would here be any different?

hawkeyefan said:

It depends on how it is used in play. I rarely find the discovery of physical geography to be all that compelling in play. Not saying it never can be for me, and certainly I know others may enjoy it... but that's not what I generally enjoy about play.

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Despite it history and association with sandbox campaigns my campaign doesn't do much in the way of exploration of geography. Instead what happens is this. On the left is what most players adventuring in the City-State region know about Dearthwood. A green blob with some major geographical feature that is home to several orc tribes. One the right is my master index to what in Dearthwood. Nothing exists there in isolation so are discoverable as in roleplaying with NPCs gaining information. But except for a handful no NPCs has a map like on the right this in-game.

The last half dozen entries of the gaming ballistic log are an excellent account of how this plays out.

hawkeyefan said:

I mentioned my campaign of Spire earlier in the thread... how 75% of play took place in one district of the city. The geography was not unknown to the players... their characters were all raised there, that's why they were chosen to be involved by their minister. So geographical knowledge was assumed. They knew the established locations on the map, and because the map we used doesn't detail every single building, I granted them a lot of leeway in asking about other locations.

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You should appreciate this then.



Plus, my last Majestic Wilderlands campaign was centered solely on the City State of the Invincible Overlord, except for the last half-dozen sessions.

hawkeyefan said:

The social network of the district, on the other hand, was something they did have to deal with. It had been several years since the characters had lived there, so they were unfamiliar with many things. Having said that, I didn't make them hunt and peck for a lot of it... I just shared it with them as it became relevant. For example, crime is a huge factor in the district... so I let them know the three major factions in the criminal underworld. I didn't hide that from them... why would I? It's common enough knowledge that I assume they learn it.

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Part of deciding what is plausible is considering what is common knowledge or not. Plus


That assumption of competence extends to what characters know about the setting. And its application to my setting has shaped by the feedback from my players about what their character would and wouldn't know.

Take for example, your three major criminal factions. While their existence would plausibly be common knowledge many details of their organization would not in a world where they existed. Why their existence be common knowledge> I am assuming they have large memberships and a history in the city. The ripple effects over time would ensure some amount of awareness would exist. However because they criminal organization there are many things they would keep secret despite that.

In my City-State of the Invincible Overlord there are two thieves guild the Brotherhood of the Lion and the Beggars Guild. Nearly everybody who adventured in CSIO knew about them and I happily expanded certain details when asked. But many details I didn't divulge because the character would not plausibly know them.

However for the campaign where everybody was a member of the Brotherhood of the Lion, the players knew far more than normal about the criminal underworld and I would supply more details when asked.

So what the deal with the asking part? Players are people, some want to soak in all the information while other don't really give a crap, most are inbetween. What the players know is that if feel they need to know some background detail, all they have to do is ask. Also I do this.


I have three categories of information.

• Stuff that is common knowledge that is available at any time.
• Stuff that require some area knowledge in which case the player needs to make a area knowledge check.
• Stuff that is not plausible is known to the players or those with area knowledge. The bulk of these are the personal plans of NPCs and the goals they set out for themselves.

This reflects how information works in life.

hawkeyefan said:

As you described it, it seemed that your idea of realism or setting consistency or plausibility is what mattered most.

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Setting consistency. Realism enters the picture if the elements of the setting are meant to be realistic, like Harn. I would not consider realism in the same way for GURPS Discworld as I would do for GURPS Majestic Wilderlands.

Thomas Shey said:

Let's say you're correct in you assessing your own abilities and style here.

What in the world makes you think this is at all common? All evidence is that most people are really bad at both recognizing they've made a mistake and being willing to do the heavy lifting to fix it.




By this point, I'm going to go with "or not."

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I think I have a decent idea of whether or not the players are enjoying the game by their reactions. If I kill off a character because I did 20d6 damage instead of 10d6 it's a pretty obvious mistake.

What kind of behavior are you trying to protect your players from that a rule in the game can prevent?

hawkeyefan said:

I think a murder mystery is a horrible example to bring up if you want to avoid playing through the GM's story. It's almost entirely that. The major exercise of agency in play would be to just walk away from the mystery entirely.

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Its not impossible to have a murder mystery that involves at least some reasonable player agency--but the more its set up to do that, the sloppier or more full of bad luck the murderer has to be, because otherwise the routes to useful information will be pretty constrained.

Bedrockgames said:

I am not super interested in this either and I don't see it as essential. I think you need a world. But that world could just be a Jianghu penned over a map of historical chine or your chosen setting. This is why I use hexes for distance in travel but wouldn't describe my campaigns as hex crawls.

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I think some geographical space is all that's needed. Like I said, I had a sandbox that almost never left one city district.

Bedrockgames said:

I just mean the GM has this detail pinned down prior to it coming up

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Okay, to me that's not "established". To me, established means that it's been established for all... as in, it's come up in play.

Bedrockgames said:

You don't know for sure.

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Then how is it that your immersion is broken? I don't follow.

You said when you learn that a roll has determined the outcome rather than some amount of predetermination by the GM, you feel like your immersion is broken. So I ask how you can tell the difference andyou say you can't for sure.

So... I don't follow at all.

Bedrockgames said:

That involves trust. The GM can show his work, and I sometimes do so that this is clear to players. But it is part of building trust I think. For me long as the GM is genuinely putting things down before hand, it is fine. And there may be cases where the GM has no choice but to come up with something after the players are already clearly going for the bribe (and as I said I would be much more cautious in those instances). But this is why I talk about pinning it down in that sandbox blog post I linked. It is about making sure if the players are about to make a blind choice of some kind, you have set it up as fairly as possible. I don't mind for example if I am snooping around a house looking for a suspect and there is a shed, and I go in, a murderer stabs me with a knife because I opened the door incautiously and he was genuinely there (even if the GM adlibbed the house and scene, if he noted that detail before I was making my decision, it feels more fair to me than if he made that decision because I opened the door incautiously and he wanted that kind of a moment). As long as I can look back in hindsight and say "well if I had been more cautious things might have turned out differently".

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Does the attacker get to auto-hit you? Or does he still have to roll? Maybe with a bonus of some sort because he's surprised you?

There's something about predetermining these kinds of traits as absolutes that, when compared to combat, would be like saying "this NPC is so skilled at fighting that he never misses".

Bedrockgames said:

I understand, and I am not saying rolls are bad. But try to appreciate for some players there is tension between a roll deciding a social outcome, and their characters words and actions doing so. Some systems are better than others art bringing those together of course. But to me there is no replacement for freeform RP in this area of the game.

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Sure, I get that. My point is that such players are placing a priority on something other than player agency.

Bedrockgames said:

Immersion is pretty connected in sandbox play to agency though. At least the way it tends to get used. I am not even someone who is super picky about it. But if you play with people who value immersion you will find this very quickly so it is something to be mindful of when managing a sandbox campaign

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I play with players who value immersion to varying degrees. I only have one for whom it may be his top priority. I generally don't have trouble considering his slight difference in priorities to the rest of the group, though. I imagine it has something to do with what he finds immersive.

hawkeyefan said:

I was reading that as geographical exploration. As I said in another recent post, it's not something I'm generally interested in, as either player or GM. A bit of it from time to time, in the form of unknown locations or super secret lairs or what have you, fine... but as a major goal of play? Not really my thing. Nor essential to a sandbox or player-driven play.

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It does not, but it is understandable why you would make that assumption, given how sandbox campaigns are generally viewed in the hobby. Exploration, in how I view sandbox campaigns, is the discovery of what is unknown, whatever its form—physical, social, mystical, or philosophical.

TwoSix said:

Fortunately, dice do a pretty good job preventing those sort of situations from occurring.

Although it would be a little weird to bribe enough guards during a campaign to get a statistically significant sampling of guards’ openness to bribery.

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Yeah, definitely. I guess I'm also confused on how a guard possibly being susceptible to bribery is preferable to them definitely being susceptible if player agency is the real goal. After all, if the roll is made and they turn out not to take the bribe, wasn't it the DMs choice to adjudicate in that way? And hasn't that adjudication method resulted in the players not being able to employ a tactic they wanted?

The way I see Hawkeyefan's argument, the DM should take ownership of the fact that a decision they made is restricting player choice. What am I missing?