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

pemerton said:

To set up a comparison: I speak no Greek, and so I would get little pleasure from participating in a RPG session where all the other participants are speaking in Greek. But I never have occasion to stop my friends from playing RPGs using Greek as the principal language of communication, because as it happens they all, like me, default to English as their preferred language.

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But it would give you the opportunity to yell out "Guys, this is all Greek to me!", which is generally not a chance afforded to someone outside of actual trips to Greece.

AlViking said:

I'm glad that worked for you, sounds like you both had fun. But for me? I explicitly tell people when they're thinking of joining the game that I expect them to accept that they're on a team and to work with the other people at the table to find someone who will fit in. There will be opportunities for players to pursue their character's agendas to a certain degree during downtime and we'll exchange messages on it. But entire solo sessions? I just don't see that ever happening.

Still interesting to hear other people's experiences.

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I explicitly frame my campaign starts such that the characters generally already know each other and have been working together for a while. "Random strangers meet in a tavern" doesn't cut it for me, generally.

TwoSix said:

I explicitly frame my campaign starts such that the characters generally already know each other and have been working together for a while. "Random strangers meet in a tavern" doesn't cut it for me, generally.

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If I do a "you're all strangers" it would be some dangerous situation they get thrown into. A shipwreck, invading army, they've been temporarily conscripted, something. Generally only happens with a new group, normally we start thinking about the next campaign a fair amount ahead of time.

Lanefan said:

Which sounds OK in itself, but doesn't seem to square with the idea of characters having medium-to-long-term goals or beliefs or ideals that they're working toward in the fiction (and thus which the player, if playing the character true, is working toward in play).

If for example my goal-belief-ideal-[insert term of choice here] is to find the person or creature who killed my sister and take revenge on her behalf, then as player shouldn't I be keeping that at or near the top of my mind with everything I have the character do? If yes, then only part of my focus can be on the "now" while the rest is on the bigger picture and how I can make the "now" fit into that.

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Well, I think my only response to this is annecdote. Our 1KA game had 3 PCs. Mine had a goal of opposing the dominance of Odu over the Iga Free League. This was 'baked in' as a loyalty rating, and embodied in fiction in her backstory. While her loyalty to Iga was tested to a degree, her aims were always front-and-center. I don't know of any difficulty posed by a Narrativist style of game here. Certainly it would have supported, even created the possibilities for, my character to change. But she didn't, and situation of Iga remained a focus of play, I'd say the main one throughout.

robertsconley said:

Thanks for the reply, but it’s worth pointing out that you didn’t actually refute the argument I made. Instead, you shifted the conversation, reframing my position and softening your own, without addressing the core contradiction I raised.

Let’s break it down:

You Avoid Refuting My Point by Shifting the Frame​

Rather than address my claim that your authority functions the same as a traditional referee’s, you pivot to tone and presentation:

You emphasize phrases like “what you’ve prepared” and “your world,” while minimizing player agency with “yeah, the players will select…” The implication is that my campaigns are rigid, GM-driven experiences where players are just along for the ride.

This framing avoids the actual issue: the presence and use of referee authority. You’re focusing on aesthetics and tone, how things feel, rather than engaging with what’s structurally occurring at the table.

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I'm not shifting anything. The authority that we're talking about... my preference for keeping the game moving and focused... is different than your living world approach.

We're both concerned with some kind of logic and plausibility in how we make decisions or introduce new information, but the reasons are different. You're more focused on the setting. I'm more focused on the characters. For me, the setting is there to serve our play, which will be to find out about the characters.

I think that is significantly different than your description of play being about the players "visiting another world".

robertsconley said:

You Recast Your Authority as Benevolent, But Don’t Deny It​

You then present your intervention as neutral facilitation:


That’s a judgment call, your call, about whether something counts as play worth continuing. That’s fine. I do the same thing. But let’s not pretend that isn’t GM authority in action. It’s the exact kind of discretion that traditional referees exercise, just framed more gently.

And to show I’m not simply defending “my way,” here’s a quote from my own Majestic Fantasy Basic Rules:

Just like you, I work to keep players engaged and supported when they hit decision fatigue or uncertainty. I just use different procedures to do it.

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No, not entirely. Because you continue to ignore my comments about all of this being very known to the players prior to play starting. We discuss this... they know that the game is meant to be more focused than something like your living world. We're not going to follow the characters' every step. In some cases, the game may offer a structure of some sort and we'll use that to guide our play. In others, I'll help control the pace of things, and to keep us moving toward interesting and meaningful (to the players) situations.

robertsconley said:

Player Input Matters in Both Our Games
You write:

And again, no disagreement. I’ve said as much myself. Here’s another passage from my Basic Rules:


The difference lies not in values, we both want players to matter, but in the structure we build around those values.

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If by structure you mean the role we serve as GM and the application of that role's authority, then yes, I would agree... that's where the difference lies.

robertsconley said:

You Concede the Core Point But Call It Something Else​

You write:

And that’s exactly what I said. The when and how may differ, but the existence of that authority is not in dispute. We both intervene, frame, pace, and redirect when we feel it’s needed. You call it “keeping play focused”; I call it adjudication within a living world. Same function, different terminology.

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I never said that games should not have GM authority.

Please remember, I have talked about my Spire and Blades in the Dark games... but I've also talked about my 5e and Mothership games. I have literally offered examples from each of those games. I have talked about how I use authority differently in each of those games, and also how I have done so in the past, when my play was almost entirely traditional.

So, for instance, I'm going to be more bound by my prep when running Mothership than with Spire. This is because trad-based play, in my opinion, works best when the GM is heavily involved in the generation of the material. I can certainly give players more or less autonomy for their characters... I can give them more freedom to choose what they want to engage with... but the vast majority of it will be within what I have prepared.

robertsconley said:

Where We Truly Differ​

If there’s a meaningful difference, it’s this:

You’re willing to override the direction players take when you judge it to be “aimless” or lacking stakes. You use your authority to shape focus and momentum based on your sense of what matters.

In contrast, I let the players trash my setting if that’s what they want to do. I don’t intervene to shift tone or reframe focus unless it breaks the internal consistency of the setting or what character can do in the setting.

My authority is focused on three things:

• Determining plausible consequences.
• Roleplaying NPCs according to their goals and personalities.
• Adjudicating specific actions of the players as their characters in context.

And all of that is open to player questions, negotiation, and discussion. That’s my idea of creative collaboration: players interacting with a consistent world.

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Again, you're ignoring how the players are on board with this. So it is not solely my sense of what matters that's being considered.
I've now pointed this out to you at least three times. You continue to ignore it.

I can assure you, my players trash the setting all the time. If that's what's going on, I'm not going to stop anything. Like I've said, it's when play is aimless or unfocused in some way, usually by one or two players rather than the whole group. And when I do this, I typically ask the player what it is they're trying to accomplish. If they're not sure, we try to work it out and see if there's something there to play out. If there's nothing... then we acknowledge it and move on.

If I had to boil our differences down to as small a unit as possible, I'd say our big difference is in how you describe things. I wouldn't really use the term "my setting", whereas you do. I think that's a nice little encapsulation of a lot of the differences.

robertsconley said:

Two Paths​

You have two options now:

• You can keep trying to reframe the debate, selecting quotes to paint me as a controlling old-school referee, while presenting yourself as the enlightened facilitator of a player-focused 21st-century table, supported by modern systems that guide the group toward creative synergy.
• Or you can recognize that we’re not so far apart.

Yes, our structures and procedures differ. But our goals, engagement, shared fun, and meaningful player choice, techniques, and depth of play, overlap far more than you’ve acknowledged.

And when you strip away terminology, our referee roles are structurally similar. What varies is emphasis, not authority.

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Or you can acknowledge that while I have likely nearly as much experience as you do as a traditional GM, you have next to none as a GM of any other kind of game.

So, as someone who is very familiar with each of the two approaches we're talking about, and who has offered actual examples from each of the types of games... maybe you have to accept that I am actually at least as informed about this as you?

For instance... despite my experience with different kinds of games, I have very minimal experience with Burning Wheel. I've played a relatively short campaign of Mouse Guard, which uses a version of the rules... and I've read the main rule book. But I am by no means very experienced with it. So when people start talking about that game, I don't try to tell them how it is... I listen to them. I'm not going to look at the SRD and then expect to have as much understanding of the game as someone who's been playing and GMing it for years.

You clearly have very little experience with narrativist games. You reveal that often in how you discuss them, and the claims you make about them. It's hard to really accept your conclusions here given your lack of experience with one of the two schools of gaming that are being compared.

I get that you're a long time GM. I respect that. But I am also. I've been GMing since the AD&D days in the early 80s. You likely have a few years on me... but when we reckon things in decades, a few years isn't all that big a difference.

robertsconley said:

Wrapping it Up​

This will probably be my last post on the topic for now. The ball’s in your court. Only you can decide what you want to take away from this conversation.

But I hope, at the very least, that it’s clear the line between “traditional referee” and “modern facilitator” isn’t as sharp as it first appeared.

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I don't know... clearly the line is significant enough that the idea of even playing or running a narrativist game is like anathema to many folks, as they've regularly pointed out in this thread. It seems that people have strong feelings about the differences.

Having said that, I think it's more nuanced than that. I think there are areas where there is some overlap... where what you're trying to do with your living world aligns with what a Narrativist GM is trying to do. But I think there are other areas where there is a meaningful difference.

I mean, take a look at Apocalypse World. Take a look at Blades in the Dark. Or Stonetop. Look at the GM Goals and the GM Principles in those games, and see how they'd fit into your Living World approach or not. Some likely will... some likely will conflict with other things that you'd consider important to the Living World.

So to wrap it up, I'd say that you need to maybe actually play or run some of these games to have a better idea of them. I know you have likely thumbed through the books a couple times. But you clearly haven't played or run them much, if at all. I think that knowledge gap is leading you to make some pretty odd assumptions and leading you to some pretty odd conclusions.

AlViking said:

Yes, I've occasionally had long shopping trips. I don't "allow" it in any sense because I don't intervene in what the players are doing as long as I don't believe they are simply misunderstanding something. As far as shopping for outfits? The players were having a blast, why would I tell my players that the fun they were having was wrong?

We have different approaches and that's fine. But as @robertsconley eloquently pointed out above it does point out quite clearly that you are exercising a great deal of control on what the players do and putting your thumb on the flow of the game when you stop no-stakes colorful-in-character narration. The only time I intervene with what the players are doing is if I think there's a misunderstanding or I suppose if one player is grandstanding and hogging the spotlight while everyone is bored. But it's been a long time since I had a spotlight hog, usually I can deal with it in other ways including having an out-of-play discussion.

I do keep track of pace of play, think of ways to vary the tempo of play with heavy RP session if the last session was heavy combat, light hearted moments when there's been a lot of doom-and-gloom lately. But I don't tell players what their characters should be doing, I give them interesting options, change things up if I think the enthusiasm is dragging. But if they want to spend a half hour on a shopping trip and it's fun for the group? A-shopping we will go.

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None of us are telling the players what their characters should be doing. But, if we're playing BitD and the players have decided their crew are all fashion hounds and their vice is shopping sprees, and they enjoy playing those out, fine. Still, the Blue Coats are going to show up, frame them for shop lifting and bust them, and then coerce them into stealing a shipment of fashion items from The Hive to please their bosses! You ARE playing BitD after all! And yes, I concocted that scenario, but when it turns out the owner of the stuff they just stole is the Spider's idol, well this is the stuff these games are made of!

The players picked the game, the subject matter, and through their connections, relationships, clocks, vices, etc. largely determined what things were on the table for me, the GM, to do. And this is where Narrativist play focuses is on the presentation of these elements. It is, as a GM, like being handed a canvas, paint, and brushes, and being told to paint a certain type of scene. Sure, you do have a lot of input, but the tools and subjects are not yours to choose. This takes skill to accomplish.

AlViking said:

I was responding to


I was attempting to discuss and point out different approaches to play. You state that you don't "need" things you feel are not interesting, etc.. I don't care one way or another about the moving the story forward to what you term highlights or to the point where we get to something I find something interesting. If someone is hogging the spotlight I'll move things along but the game isn't about me, or at least not me alone.

As DM when I am prepping for a session I think about how I can introduce options that I think will be interesting and engaging along with options for variety in pacing, as long as they make sense in context of the fiction. But those are all just options, things I think might happen. Once the game starts, the players are in charge and decide what they want to pursue. I've learned over the years to enjoy things like shopping trips by using them as fun RP acting opportunities, how can I give that shopkeeper interesting mannerisms and patterns? Can I use them to reflect some aspect of the society? I find ways to make it interesting for me. Is it no-stakes? Absolutely! I don't give a hoot about stakes because that has nothing to do with the game I run.

Maybe you don't shut things down like hawkeyfan claims and I may have misread what you said based on the general tone of the conversation. But it still goes back to foundational approach to the game. I think about what fun toys I can put into my sandbox that I think the players will enjoy. You think in terms of stakes, highlight events or focusing on those highlights. I don't play through hours of travel through safe country . But I'm not doing it because I want to shift focus to something more interesting, I don't do it because there are no actions or decisions the characters make that would change anything.

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I would say it's not my place to bring toys, the players do that! I might bring a couple of my own too, but my job is to fill in the blanks, maybe prompt some action, help manage the focus, etc.

Micah Sweet said:

It's certainly a factor in most games IMO, but the first heuristic is the one I focus on and is far more important to me. In particular, I very much do not want rules that specifically encourage or require the second heuristic be followed. Most if my players might often choose to make decisions this way, but they don't have to, and I don't want them to feel that they do.

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Eh, I agree with @pemerton here, 2, socially conformant game-facilitating play is extremely prevalent. Many of the old classic pitfalls of early play illustrate this super well. Every party would have just that one thief who was shady enough to do his job, yet mysteriously totally loyal to the party of complete strangers! The notion that such a person exists in any realistic world is basically totally far-fetched. I mean, I can't claim I spent my life hanging around such people, but I certainly know enough about humanity to know that low lifes are untrustworthy! Yet, every thief player knows to portray this unicorn of humanity because otherwise the game implodes spectacularly.

pemerton said:

Let's suppose that your game goes x,x,x,x,H,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,H,. . . . - where the "x"s represent non-highlight events, and the "H"'s represent highlight events. And let's suppose that this is verisimilitudinous. Now suppose someone else's game elides all those "x"s - they are understood to happen offscreen, or are narrated through quickly via saying "yes" to no-stakes action declarations, and only the "H"s actually get time and attention at the table.

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Thing is, oftentimes some or even all of those 'x' events are what lead up to the following 'H' event; which means eliding or handwaving the 'x' events risks having those 'H' events happen in isolation and without coherent in-fiction explanation - kinda like a movie where the editor was ordered to shoehorn a four-hour story into a 90-minute runtime leading to a disjointed, jumpy show on the screen.

pemerton said:

That second game is all highlights, but its setting and fiction are just as verisimilitudinous, because idential to, the setting and fiction of the first game.

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I agree that an all-'H' game can be just as verisimilitudinous* due to the detail of the setting beneath it, but don't believe it can provide as grounded a game in the long run due to the 'jumpiness' I note above.

* - and I'm going to find a different word for this; if I have to type that one again some of my hair is getting pulled out.

pemerton said:

The short answer is no.

The slightly longer answer is that, if your character has revenge as a goal, then the GM will be framing scenes now that somehow speak to that goal. And that is what you as a player will be engaging with. And it is that engagement - that interesting and emotionally resonant stuff right now - that we are playing for.

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Which then sounds like it's the GM determining the path of my character's revenge story via the scenes she frames me into, rather than me-as-player trying to determine that path via the actions I have the character take in the fiction....which is fair enough, but let's call it what it is.