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

AlViking said:

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.

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I made a pretty big mistake the other night in the opposite direction: I was far too generous to a PC in a situation where I shouldn't have been. One of the other players (who is also a DM) quite rightly called me on it after the fact; I'm not going to undo what happened this time (that'd just be cruel) but I'm certainly going to remember and learn for future reference.

pemerton said:

I guess my question is, do you think it's possible (or not) to set out the principles, heuristics etc that a good GM would conform to?

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Broadly yes, but the specifics will have a lot of variance because good GMs can run many types of games and what good GMing is will differ between them

robertsconley said:

Or Basket weaving, @hawkeyefan may get the reference from our previous discussion.

This is why I use the phrase "trashing the setting" a lot. A major part of how I run sandbox campaigns is letting any expectations that things ought to go in a particular way. I will roleplay out anything (within the limits of good taste) that the players want to interact with as their characters.

That means exploring the social web that binds the Lower Ram Valley basket weavers, and that is what that portion of the campaign will focus on. And any prep I have to do will be about fleshing out the lives and circumstances of those Basket Weavers.

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I'm currently running what I would generally characterize as 3 sandbox games. One thing each of them does is anchor a set of premises down at the start, such that we do in fact start play with some expectations of what play is likely to involve. For instance, Stonetop IMO meets the definition of a game built to be a sandbox (player-goal driven, large space for exploration, deep involved setting, etc); but each playbook comes with a ton of baked in drivers that both spur the players forward based on their connection and choices; and telegraph with clear "flags" to the GM what the players want to see come up.

There's a ton of space for what I would characterize as consequential play, in that what players do has consequences for either their character or the village / world. As an example, we routinely pull threads on romantic entanglements (as a source of conflict, expectation, and also character comfort and meaning); obligation (what do you owe the town, and what does it expect in return?); danger and excitement (my Agenda is threefold: Portray a rich, mysterious world, Punctuate the PCs’ lives with adventure, Play to find out what happens); and improving the village (building stuff, entangling with the other cultures and societies around the World's End, etc).

One thing that I do think sets a game like Stonetop apart to a degree from say OSR style sandbox play like I ran using Dolmenwood & OSE's rules, is the fact that we do in fact elide stuff that would be elided in a dramatic narrative. For instance, I just re-watched the 2024 D&D movie and was struck by the amount of hard scene framing and montages it had. We mostly do something similar (although not to the extent some PBTA GMs do I think), where unless it's consequential to "Portraying a rich, mysterious world" to focus in on an interaction in 1st person - we may gloss over it in pulled-back 3rd person.

Given limited play time, this allows me as the GM to find more joy in play then spending time on something that's not really consequential to relationships/goals/conflicts/etc. If it is consequential we zoom in, for example two sessions back when the Ranger and his boyfriend were in the Big Town for the first time with one of their friends we zoomed in on the marketplace because a) we wanted to explore the interaction between these folks out of the element and b) there was potential conflict (thieves, corrupt guards, etc).

This expectation of first-personness and "being in the world" actually was just absolutely mind-numbing for me in years of 5e (and also when trying to run OSE). I know people like it, and I'm very happy for them, but it was so liberating for me to learn that RPGing had moved forward from that being the sole expectation of play and nobody had bothered to show me until I started exploring what was possible in the newer design ethos.

I have to give D&D 2024 huge props for calling out that you can do 3rd person/glossed over conversations as a scene tool & as an accessibility framework right in the core examples of play in the PHB. That's advancing the art in the biggest game in the western play space.

robertsconley said:

Limited knowledge of the world forms a significant part of the "ideal" when it comes to sandbox campaigns. And is critical in ensuring that the campaign unfolds through what the players choose. Why? Because the players are aware of their lack of knowledge and it motivates them to discover whether it is the exploration of physical geography or exploring a town's social network.

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Here's my question though.

Why are they trying to discover these things? Why are they exploring physical geography or a town's social network? These aren't goals in and of themselves. These are means to an end. The point of exploring physical geography, for example, is to find stuff that's interesting to do. The player's don't care about the town's social network in and of itself. They are discovering these things so they can then go do something they actually want to do.

IOW, limited knowledge is simply a means of stalling the players from doing whatever it is they actually want to do while they spend time uncovering information that leads them to the stuff that's of actual interest. The players don't really care if the Dungeon of Nasty Badness is in Hex 1211 or Hex 1213. They want to go to the Dungeon of Nasty Badness.

This is conflating means and goals AFAIC. If this is the "ideal" of sandbox campaigns, then, well, to me, that means that much of the time in the "ideal" of the campaign is spent doing stuff just to get to the stuff that the players actually want to do. I believe the term for this is a "rowboat campaign" where the party just kind of wanders around aimlessly until they have achieved a sufficient amount of DM prepared information and then they actually get to do the stuff they want to do.

Umbran said:

Harm?
I think you and I may have different ideas of what qualifies as harm that might call for care to be taken - and what comes to my mind would not be covered by rules-algorithms that don't have empathy.

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If you make someone's experience worse, that's harm. It doesn't need to leave them bleeding on the floor.

Hussar said:

This is conflating means and goals AFAIC. If this is the "ideal" of sandbox campaigns, then, well, to me, that means that much of the time in the "ideal" of the campaign is spent doing stuff just to get to the stuff that the players actually want to do.

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I believe you if you say that's how you would respond to that kind of campaign. But for sandbox enthusiasts, the exploration is part of the fun.

pemerton said:

Computational theory isn't relevant to understanding the Burning Wheel resolution system. One reason for that is that the BW resolution system doesn't purport to simulate anything.

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Computational Theory encompasses elements of complexity theory, automata theory, and game theory. All things relevant to a system of game mechanics. So it is applicable to Burning Wheel as it is a game with a system of mechanics.

The moment a resolution mechanic exists, especially one that models human decision-making, conflict, or consequence, it is standing in for something. It is a representational model. And like any model, it is a simplification and doesn't capture the full extent of what it represents.

mamba said:

so the dead end being a cave-in that is not marked on your map is fine, it does not need to be a wall that also appears on your map?

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Depends! It's entirely possible for a cave-in to be utterly ridiculous, for example if the "dungeon" is actually a pocket plane, what IS there to cave in? But in general, presumptively, some cave-ins are fine, and absolutely none would be a little weird but hard to notice (hard to notice an absence). I'd vastly prefer they be actually marked on the map unless "the map" is, for example, in-fiction an ancient map of the original structure and thus not "look at this to know your environment without the DM speaking it aloud" and instead "your characters are using this diegetic item to navigate".

I don't see any of this as even remotely untoward or demanding more than is reasonable. Dungeons sometimes have cave-ins. Caves sometimes have cave-ins. Tombs sometimes have cave-ins. Etc., etc., etc. But there is also a line beyond which reasonableness has been strained. "Wow, really? The seventh cave-in in a row that forces us to take the long way around?" Which, again, is part of the overall point being made here: "I can include cave-ins because cave-ins are reasonable in this context" provides no backstop against the misuse (=accidental) or abuse (=intentional) thereof. "Real-world logic" requires consistent inputs in order to produce consistent outputs. Humans are very bad at consistency, just in general.

mamba said:

How does the DM placing a cave-in not make it a railroad but the DM having a gelatinous cube migration make it one? Is this decided by the probability of the obstacle rather than the outcome of it existing?

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Again, please don't nickel-and-dime me here--if you have a point to make, make it.

To answer the question though, yes, the reasonableness of the obstacle plays a part...which is literally what I said in the original post. If something is so ridiculous, so utterly out-of-left-field, it indicates that even if this DM is 100% fully sincerely committed to what they consider "real-world logic" and "a realistic/verisimilitudinous/<insert your preferred term here> setting", that provides no actual limitations on what they can do and whether they'll limit perfectly reasonable, warranted actions.

mamba said:

I don’t think players should not be trusted. As to why trust the DM, to me it is a prerequisite to play with them. Initially they have not earned that yet, but either they will, or I would stop playing with them because they no longer have it

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Whereas to me, treating that as a prerequisite is not acceptable. Certainly, a minimum level of acceptance is required to get the ball rolling, but the GM actually needs to both (a) earn and (b) maintain player trust. (Amongst various other things the GM needs to earn and maintain; trust is just one of them.) It is precisely that "no no you absolutely have to trust me from the beginning" thing I have such a problem with--because, as this and every other thread as shown, as soon as I do evince even the slightest bit of distrust, I'm the bad guy. I'm the problem. I'm this horrible "destructive" (yes, a word actually used by others, albeit not you IIRC) influence. It's never, ever possible that the GM, whether by accident or by intent, did something that could damage trust--and if they ever do do something that could damage trust, the response is always "well you should just trust them".

Which, simply put, isn't acceptable and never will be. "I(/the GM) did something that would make you question my(/their) trust, so you are the problem for questioning it" is not and will never be a valid argument.

mamba said:

the questioning to me should be outside the session so it does not interfere with it, there also might be some tradition involved. I see the DM more like a referee / umpire

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And my problem with this maxim is that it is far, far too easily used to just...delete all meaningful response forever.

Because in many cases, these events will get lost in the sauce. That happening, say, once or twice every few months? Not really an issue, disputes happen and not getting worked up about rare incidental issues is fine. But this absolute blanket "NEVER EVER dispute me during session or you're outta here" attitude shuts down criticism and review--and because human memories are imperfect and easily overloaded, this can make issue after issue after issue go unaddressed. No, it's not guaranteed. But even in campaigns I've liked, "never dispute during session, only talk to me after" has resulted in multiple problems going unaddressed for far too long, because the opportune moment actually was during session.

Yes, sometimes that means resolving an issue takes up precious session time. I get that. But session time is not infinitely precious. Sometimes--hopefully rarely!--it is a worthy price to pay for getting an issue genuinely resolved, here and now, rather than letting it fester for weeks to months and potentially explode.

And to be clear, this isn't some horrible nefarious conspiracy by the GM to prevent response. It's literally just that "outside of session" time is, in 99.99% of my experience, almost totally devoid of any productive activity between participants, GM or player alike. Individual people may certainly do (quite a bit of!) productive stuff, prepping for session, figuring out what they want to buy, levelling up, etc. But anything that requires two or more people? You're lucky if any communication happens at all. Even with outrightly, explicitly good GMs and players.

robertsconley said:

Computational Theory encompasses elements of complexity theory, automata theory, and game theory. All things relevant to a system of game mechanics. So it is applicable to Burning Wheel as it is a game with a system of mechanics.

The moment a resolution mechanic exists, especially one that models human decision-making, conflict, or consequence, it is standing in for something. It is a representational model. And like any model, it is a simplification and doesn't capture the full extent of what it represents.

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Conflict Resolution Mechanics are mostly not intended to simulate anything at all, they are intended to be a finite mechanic by which a player can actualize their in-game character priorities.

When I take up my dice pool to see if I get a success/partial success/or failure in a Blades in the Dark Action roll, I am following a narratively appropriate Action. It has nothing to do with simulation or modeling.

Bedrockgames said:

So living world is definitely an important part of sandbox. For some people living world might even be interchangeable as a term. But I think many would say the living world part is the effort to keep the sandbox in a dynamic state. And definitely characterization and role-play are considered important parts of sandboxs/snip

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See, this is where I think a lot of people have a problem with this idea that a DM driven sandbox is actually quite as free with player choice as is presented.

For example, if your "living world" is so important that you are constantly advancing various events into the world as time moves forward, and none of those events are initiated by the players, at some point, it starts looking a lot more like a linear campaign. After all, when the ravening hordes of zombies come to town, there aren't a lot of choices. And it's not like the players created that horde. It's not like the players initiated this event. It's 100% DM driven.

Which means, most of the time, the players are simply reacting to whatever events the DM has presented to them. They can't really ignore them (because zombie hordes are rather hard to ignore). Effectively, the DM has wheeled up the plot wagon and is doling out the plot to the players.

Which is perfectly fine. But, it is difficult, IMO, to reconcile the idea of total player freedom and DM generated events.