D&D 5E 2 year campaign down the drain?

[Fenris-77]

I disagree that it doesn't constitute authority. However, I suspect we differ more in the definition there than in any of the particulars of what's actually happening of the table.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I disagree that it doesn't constitute authority. However, I suspect we differ more in the definition there than in any of the particulars of what's actually happening of the table.

How does it constitute authority. I may not understand the word if a thing is totally up to one person, but they chose to be constrained in using it, and that means that this choice to constrain their own authority actually means that someone else now has it. To have authority, you must have the final, binding, say in a thing. How the GM narrates results of player actions is, ultimately, entirely up to the GM. That he may choose to limit outcomes to things that seem to flow naturally from the action declared is still the GM using authority to narrate outcomes. The additional constraint, chosen by the GM, isn't a transfer to the players.

Again, this is obvious if you have a pre-scripted outcome. If the GM prescripts that monster 1 will attacks on sight and will fight to the death, then no amount of player action declaration constrains this. The player's action declaration, in no way, constrains the possible outcomes of the GM, because the GM has already decided the action -- the monster attacks. You're postulating an authority that post hoc changes things decided ex ante. If the GM decides to limit an outcome, that's still the GM's choice, and the GM retains the authority. Claiming that the GM using their authority to limit outcomes to a narrower range than they have the authority to exercise is really an authority owned by the players just doesn't follow at all. The players have no way to bind the GM to any range of outcomes. That's not authority.

It is, however, usually good play, which is why it should be considered as a principle of play rather than authority. Players have no authority to bind the GM to a range of outcomes based on action declaration. However, it's a good principle for GMs to self-limit their authority and choose from a range of outcomes that flows from player declarations. This makes for a game where the players feel they have more control, even though they do not have control or authority. What they do have is a good GM. We're back to how you build enlightened dictators.

 

[The Green Hermit]

I would agree with @pemerton here. In D&D 5E as written, the players have no input over consequences, that's entirely on the GM. There is no room in the D&D rules for a player to declare the widget is in the maguffin, they can only search the maguffin and hope for the best.

I have to keep reminding my son of this. He narrates an entire battle then gets upset when I stop him, because he can "choose his character's actions." I have to continually remind him that he does NOT get to choose the NPCs' reactions to said actions. Lol!

 

[pemerton]

I, again, disagree, but I'll add the other bits that might help understand my disagreement. I think that the GM allowing player action declarations to curtail their resolution is a good thing, but it's not in the realm of authority.

<snip>

if the GM plays in way that includes constraining outcomes to the player's action declarations, then they've established a principle of play, which is not an authority, but an added layer the constrains how an authority is used.

I disagree that it doesn't constitute authority. However, I suspect we differ more in the definition there than in any of the particulars of what's actually happening of the table.

How does it constitute authority. I may not understand the word if a thing is totally up to one person, but they chose to be constrained in using it, and that means that this choice to constrain their own authority actually means that someone else now has it. To have authority, you must have the final, binding, say in a thing. How the GM narrates results of player actions is, ultimately, entirely up to the GM. That he may choose to limit outcomes to things that seem to flow naturally from the action declared is still the GM using authority to narrate outcomes. The additional constraint, chosen by the GM, isn't a transfer to the players.

In Apocalypse World the players have no authority to narrate consequences of checks - with the handful of exceptions that I posted upthread.

However, (i) there are clearly articulated principles that govern GM narration, and (ii) there are very clear rules about when the GM is expected to narrrate. Some of those rules can be player-initiated (eg making a successful check to have their PC read a situation).

In the D&D case, the rules that determine when a GM is expected to narrate are less clearly stated, but are not wildly different in terms of their triggers. They tend not to have the same specificity of content as many of the AW rules (eg the player can't oblige the GM to narrate which enemy in the scene is the biggest threat), although some come close (eg use of a Wand of Enemy Detection).

Even where some rules come close to AW, they are not identical. Eg in D&D the GM is typically free to specify (either expressly or perhaps notionally in his/her notes) that one particular enemy is wearing an Amulet of Proof against Scrying or has just consumed a Mind Blank potion or similar, such that even though the player has done everything right to trigger a given narration (has brought it about that his/her PC is in the right position vis-a-vis the enemy, has declared use of the Wand in circumstances where it's established in the fiction that the PC knows the password, has deducted a charge from any running tally, etc).

This then leads into the question of principles. The principles that govern when it is proper or improper for a GM to make a decision like the one just described (ie that the enemy has some ability that blocks enemy detection) are pretty amorphous. Certainly for the game as a whole (eg its texts and received traditions) and even at any given table they might be pretty amorphous also. This is a special case of the general point that the principles that govern how a D&D GM should narrate consequences are far less clearly articulated than in AW,

I don't feel that authority is all that helpful a framework of analysis here, in part because both AW and D&D are desgined primarily as leisure activities for friendship groups and hence rely very heavily on informal social dynamics for distributions of power. For instance, while one might say that the GM of AW has authority constrained by the stated principles in a way that itsn't the case for D&D, in the sort of informal contexts in which RPGs are typically played I don't know that texts on their own can do the sort of work that they do in (say) legal and bureaucratic contexts.

What I would say is that, when one looks at the texts, the received traditions of play, and the resources that are provided to various participants, it is going to be challenging for D&D to emulate AW in the degree of constraint on the GM. I'll explain this further in relation to the Wand of Enemy Detection. In its resolution, the player-side ability that is gained when (in the fiction) a given PC has such a wand is what Jonathan Tween and Ron Edwards have called a "karma"-based ability - that is, when it is used it just works by fiat.

Likewise, the Ring of Mind Shielding and similar anti-scrying devices in the fiction give rise, at the table, to karma-based resolution: they simply trump the Wand. And all these abilities - both scrying abilities and scrying defences - are a result of character fictional positioning (what items does this person have in his/her possession). So to work out whether or not the player's karma-based ability to detect enemies works, the GM has to make a decision about a NPC's fictional positioning which then determines whether or not s/he has a karma-based blocker. How can that decision be constrained by principle? How can we avoid the risk that the GM's deciion about NPC fictional positioing ends up hosing the players? (Even if the GM is well-intentioned.)

I don't think we can.

Contrast the AW case, where the relevant question - can I spot the most dangerous enemy? - is resolved by an open check. If the check fails, the referee is free to introduce some psychic complexity or mind twisting stuff as a complication if that fits the established fiction (AW has the world's "psychic maelstrom" as part of the setting). If the check succeeds, then one thing we know is that the most dangerous enemy didn't have any sort of illusion or anti-detection ability or the like to stop the PC learning what s/he wanted to know.

This resolution framework makes it much easier to have clear principles that constrain the GM's narration.

So the upshot is that I'm a little closer to Fenris-77 on terminology but I think considerably closer to Ovinomancer on the substantive issue though perhaps for slightly different reasons - namely, a close analysis of how the two systems actually work. (I've only looked at one example, but I know the mechanical structure of D&D well enough to be confident that it will generalise. The exception to that generalisation is D&D 4e, because it's skill challenge system is closer to AW in some of these key respects - to begin with, it's check-based (what Tweet and Edwards call "fortune"-based rather than karma-based.)

 

[pemerton]

Until and unless the PCs interact with them, physical objects in the setting are part of the setting and also sometimes are or contain adventure parameters, and thus because both the setting and the adventure parameters are under the DM's control so are they.

Thus, if a DM (via home prep or published module or whatever means) puts a bedroom in a castle and then puts a hope chest in that bedroom; and then as an adventure parameter puts the widget in the hope chest, then that's where it is.

<snip>

But the idea of Schroedinger's widget, whose location isn't known until someone opens a box and succeeds on a search check (which, given enough tries, is inevitable), just doesn't fly.

The last paragraph is confused.

In the fiction, whoever put the widget whereever it is knows that it is there. Anone who has seen it there in the meantime knows that it is there. This who would include anyone who opens the box.

At the table, no one knows anything about the fiction until it is authored. It may be that no one needs to author anything until a search check is made. It may be - depending on the system and techniques being used - that making a check is the prompt for or determiner of what is authored.

There is no person who both opens the chest and makes a serach chest - unless you are playing a RPG about a person who opens chests and then plays RPGs in them. This seems a fairly straightforward point about RPGing, but it seems that it needs to be stated expressly more often than one might think!

And the whole "Schroedinger's" thing is nonsense. What was the shape of the buckle of Sam Gamgee's belt? Where was his box from Galadriel stored at Bag End when he wasn't using it? No one knows the answers to these questions, not even the late JRRT, as he didn't author those particular things. But Sam Gamgee's belt buckle had a definite shape. And there was some definite place in Bag End where he kept his box of enchanted earth.

Suppose that a PC in a RPG finds him-/herself in an alchemist's laboratory. Is there a jar of thistle seeds? That probably hasn't been authored yet. How to decide? There are so many mechanical possibilities: GM decides (at will, or by spending some GM-side resource); player decides (at will, with GM permission, or by spending some player-side resource); a die is rolled ad hoc; a die is rolled on a random chart; a player makes a check, perhaps influenced by player-side resources (PC abilities; points, whatever); others I haven't thought of at the moment too I'm sure.

The choice of method will profoundly affect the play experience. None will produce Schroedinger's thistle seeds. That's an utter red herring.

If the players/PCs are floundering later and look like they won't find the hope chest unless it hits them in the head then some DMs would be tempted to move the widget such that the PCs will find it. That's their choice, though I very strongly advocate against it as IMO it cheapens the game by a) reducing the challenge and b) taking away the option of outright mission failure.

There is a premise here, particuarly in conjunction with the notion of "adventure parameters", that there are events that "have to" occur as part of the game.

I don't know of any game that operates on such a premise and that uses any method for deciding whether or not the PCs find the widget when they look in a chest other than "GM decides". But maybe there are some?

 

[Ovinomancer]

In Apocalypse World the players have no authority to narrate consequences of checks - with the handful of exceptions that I posted upthread.

However, (i) there are clearly articulated principles that govern GM narration, and (ii) there are very clear rules about when the GM is expected to narrrate. Some of those rules can be player-initiated (eg making a successful check to have their PC read a situation).

In the D&D case, the rules that determine when a GM is expected to narrate are less clearly stated, but are not wildly different in terms of their triggers. They tend not to have the same specificity of content as many of the AW rules (eg the player can't oblige the GM to narrate which enemy in the scene is the biggest threat), although some come close (eg use of a Wand of Enemy Detection).

Even where some rules come close to AW, they are not identical. Eg in D&D the GM is typically free to specify (either expressly or perhaps notionally in his/her notes) that one particular enemy is wearing an Amulet of Proof against Scrying or has just consumed a Mind Blank potion or similar, such that even though the player has done everything right to trigger a given narration (has brought it about that his/her PC is in the right position vis-a-vis the enemy, has declared use of the Wand in circumstances where it's established in the fiction that the PC knows the password, has deducted a charge from any running tally, etc).

This then leads into the question of principles. The principles that govern when it is proper or improper for a GM to make a decision like the one just described (ie that the enemy has some ability that blocks enemy detection) are pretty amorphous. Certainly for the game as a whole (eg its texts and received traditions) and even at any given table they might be pretty amorphous also. This is a special case of the general point that the principles that govern how a D&D GM should narrate consequences are far less clearly articulated than in AW,

I don't feel that authority is all that helpful a framework of analysis here, in part because both AW and D&D are desgined primarily as leisure activities for friendship groups and hence rely very heavily on informal social dynamics for distributions of power. For instance, while one might say that the GM of AW has authority constrained by the stated principles in a way that itsn't the case for D&D, in the sort of informal contexts in which RPGs are typically played I don't know that texts on their own can do the sort of work that they do in (say) legal and bureaucratic contexts.

What I would say is that, when one looks at the texts, the received traditions of play, and the resources that are provided to various participants, it is going to be challenging for D&D to emulate AW in the degree of constraint on the GM. I'll explain this further in relation to the Wand of Enemy Detection. In its resolution, the player-side ability that is gained when (in the fiction) a given PC has such a wand is what Jonathan Tween and Ron Edwards have called a "karma"-based ability - that is, when it is used it just works by fiat.

Likewise, the Ring of Mind Shielding and similar anti-scrying devices in the fiction give rise, at the table, to karma-based resolution: they simply trump the Wand. And all these abilities - both scrying abilities and scrying defences - are a result of character fictional positioning (what items does this person have in his/her possession). So to work out whether or not the player's karma-based ability to detect enemies works, the GM has to make a decision about a NPC's fictional positioning which then determines whether or not s/he has a karma-based blocker. How can that decision be constrained by principle? How can we avoid the risk that the GM's deciion about NPC fictional positioing ends up hosing the players? (Even if the GM is well-intentioned.)

I don't think we can.

Contrast the AW case, where the relevant question - can I spot the most dangerous enemy? - is resolved by an open check. If the check fails, the referee is free to introduce some psychic complexity or mind twisting stuff as a complication if that fits the established fiction (AW has the world's "psychic maelstrom" as part of the setting). If the check succeeds, then one thing we know is that the most dangerous enemy didn't have any sort of illusion or anti-detection ability or the like to stop the PC learning what s/he wanted to know.

This resolution framework makes it much easier to have clear principles that constrain the GM's narration.

So the upshot is that I'm a little closer to Fenris-77 on terminology but I think considerably closer to Ovinomancer on the substantive issue though perhaps for slightly different reasons - namely, a close analysis of how the two systems actually work. (I've only looked at one example, but I know the mechanical structure of D&D well enough to be confident that it will generalise. The exception to that generalisation is D&D 4e, because it's skill challenge system is closer to AW in some of these key respects - to begin with, it's check-based (what Tweet and Edwards call "fortune"-based rather than karma-based.)

Well, said. However, I'll take a small issue with your first sentence. In AW, players do not have the authority to narrate consequences, but they DO have the authority to BIND how the GM narrates consequences. This doesn't exist in D&D.

Thank you, as well, for bringing up spells and magic items -- those parts of D&D that have discrete packets of rules attached. I had, at one point, thought to talk about that but had forgotten. As you note, spells and magic items come closest in D&D to binding GMs in resolving actions using them. And, as you note, although I dislike the term 'karma' to describe it, these actions don't involve checks for success failure (usually) but instead have their own discrete counter rules to defeat them. In good faith play, the deployment of a spell during an action by a character does bind the GM into either narrating through the result according to the packet or narrating a failure through one of the discrete counters. Thus, deploying spells (and magic items) do afford the player some binding authority over the GM's narration.

That being said, I think you treated well the discussion that the GM is free, in the moment, to ad hoc determine that one of those counters is present. There is even some loose guidance, scattered throughout the editions, to do so, in dramatically appropriate moments, if it would prevent an important challenge from being too easily circumvented. Thankfully, this guidance doesn't appear in 5e, but neither is it expressly discouraged -- it exists still under the general aegis of GM decides. So the player declaring an action deploying a spell does gain some authority, but it's immediately eroded in that there are ways to prevent success that are entirely under the GM decides umbrella. Ultimately, while the authority limits the ways in which success or failure can be narrated, GM decides is still the order of the day, in 5e, for success or failure. Further eroding this is that the GM is under no requirement to explicitly explain a failure, so a player may have no good understanding of why an action failed. This is true even in the good faith play assumption due to the nature of how secret fiction works.

AW, as you note, is different, in that once dice are rolled, the outcome is absolutely binding on all participants and further will be transparently so. AW doesn't just accomplish this via the way checks work, though, and an AW scene is usually not analogous to a D&D scene. AW requires the GM to frame a scene into a dramatic moment with consequential outcomes. There is no, for instance, scene in AW where you're at a junction in a dungeon (or ruin, genre adapt as you like), and the choice of great consequence is left or right. This means (and I know you know this @pemerton), that when you play in AW, it's going to be for the marbles all the time. This is why AW doesn't allow "no" responses from the GM except in narrow circumstances (inappropriate to genre or established fiction action declarations, frex), and why AW can allow player sided introductions more easily -- each scene directly builds on the last, but doesn't generate a wealth of small details that are easy to lose.

D&D, on the other hand, with it's strong focus on exploration, has many small decision point that may or may not build into a climax. The nature of this exploration means there needs to be many choice points outside of a dramatic scene, and that those choice points will usually be detail determined -- is this door locked, trapped, has bad guys on the other side, etc.. This means that, in D&D, the GM does need to both deploy some kind of secret fiction to be explored AND be able to say no, usually often, to action declarations.

Fundamentally, you're telling two different kinds of tales using these systems, and in different ways. This is why I keep trying to drive at what D&D does, and how, and who has authority. It's not an attempt to denigrate D&D -- I'm running again in a few day, so I clearly enjoy the system -- but rather to establish that D&D is, indeed, a limited game and note the limitations of it. There's a wealth of fun inside the limitations -- a huge expanse of things you can do and stories to find -- but there are definite limits and they're closer than one might think they are. D&D isn't terribly flexible, though. And, that's fine, because it does D&D so very well that one can have plenty of fun without having to flex. Honestly, PbtA games and, my favorite, BitD are even less flexible games -- Blades especially. They have more narrow focus, but, because of that, can really dig into that focus and do it very, very well. Even if you consider the Dungeon World vs D&D, which are very thematically similar and deal with the same tropes and concepts, the outcomes of these games are very different, entirely because of both where and how the rulesets focus. You cannot generate a DW game in D&D, just as you cannot generate a D&D game in DW, but there will be many similarities in theme in the stories they produce.

 

[pemerton]

You cannot generate a DW game in D&D, just as you cannot generate a D&D game in DW.

This is undoubtedly true!

 

[Lanefan]

The last paragraph is confused.

In the fiction, whoever put the widget whereever it is knows that it is there. Anone who has seen it there in the meantime knows that it is there. This who would include anyone who opens the box.

Agreed.

It's in the box. Not in the sideboard or the flower pot or the dresser drawer even if those are searched first no matter how successful the roll might be.

At the table

, no one knows anything about the fiction until it is authored. It may be that no one needs to author anything until a search check is made. It may be - depending on the system and techniques being used - that making a check is the prompt for or determiner of what is authored.

Which is where we fall apart; any system that allows the result of a check to retroactively affect the fiction (e.g. a great check roll determines the widget is found in the flower pot, thus meaning someone earlier in the fiction had to have put it there) leads directly to Schroedinger's widgets.

There is no person who both opens the chest and makes a serach chest - unless you are playing a RPG about a person who opens chests and then plays RPGs in them. This seems a fairly straightforward point about RPGing, but it seems that it needs to be stated expressly more often than one might think!

By 'serach chest' I assume you mean 'search check'?

The character opens the chest and searches. The player rolls the die as a means of informing what happens next - does the character find anything if it's there to be found - but it's still the character doing the searching, be it done well or not well.

And the whole "Schroedinger's" thing is nonsense. What was the shape of the buckle of Sam Gamgee's belt? Where was his box from Galadriel stored at Bag End when he wasn't using it? No one knows the answers to these questions, not even the late JRRT, as he didn't author those particular things. But Sam Gamgee's belt buckle had a definite shape. And there was some definite place in Bag End where he kept his box of enchanted earth.

In LotR these things never become relevant but if they did, one would have to assume JRRT had the specifics in mind all along.

But in an RPG where it's unknown what might later become relevant, there has to be a baseline assumption that things in the fiction are constant - that should the PCs for some reason search Sam's house for Galadhriel's box there's a specific place (determined ahead of time by the DM, as soon as it becomes obvious the box's location is going to matter) where he's put it, and should they happen to look there they'll find it.

Suppose that a PC in a RPG finds him-/herself in an alchemist's laboratory. Is there a jar of thistle seeds? That probably hasn't been authored yet. How to decide? There are so many mechanical possibilities: GM decides (at will, or by spending some GM-side resource); player decides (at will, with GM permission, or by spending some player-side resource); a die is rolled ad hoc; a die is rolled on a random chart; a player makes a check, perhaps influenced by player-side resources (PC abilities; points, whatever); others I haven't thought of at the moment too I'm sure.

The choice of method will profoundly affect the play experience. None will produce Schroedinger's thistle seeds. That's an utter red herring.

Sometimes this happens, when the players ask the DM about something she simply didn't see coming; and she has to improvise.

There is a premise here, particuarly in conjunction with the notion of "adventure parameters", that there are events that "have to" occur as part of the game.

I don't know of any game that operates on such a premise and that uses any method for deciding whether or not the PCs find the widget when they look in a chest other than "GM decides". But maybe there are some?

In the widget example, it's known by the DM ahead of time the PCs are going to look for it and so she - as is her right when setting adventure parameters - places it in location x.

So of course it's 'GM decides'.

As for 'have to occur'; well if the PCs have been sent to find the widget it's a pretty safe bet they're going to look for it, which means searching of some sort 99% likely has to occur (the other 1% being if the PCs decide not to bother with the mission once on site). Further, the widget's location has to be set somewhere - which may or may not be anywhere related to the area being searched!

 

[Fenris-77]

I like the gumshoe approach. One, for not gating crucial info behind a roll, but more on point here, by not getting too specific about exactly where one has to search for hidden widgets. If the widgets are in the office and you search the office you find the widgets, marvelous. That's about as much granularity as I want there. A very different case is the artfully hidden +4 Vorpal Widget under the floorboards, which the PCs won't find unless they do some much more specific searching, the +4 Vorpal Widget not being an essential clue to the Mystery of the Missing Gnome Cakes. This is pretty much how I run clues for D&D.

 

[pemerton]

In LotR these things never become relevant but if they did, one would have to assume JRRT had the specifics in mind all along.

Why would one assume that? JRRT wrote LotR over years - it's 1000s and 1000s of words. He made up some bits of it earlier and some bits of it later.

But in an RPG where it's unknown what might later become relevant, there has to be a baseline assumption that things in the fiction are constant - that should the PCs for some reason search Sam's house for Galadhriel's box there's a specific place (determined ahead of time by the DM, as soon as it becomes obvious the box's location is going to matter) where he's put it, and should they happen to look there they'll find it.

The bolded bit is is a non-sequitur.

The fiction doesn't have to be authored in advance in order for things in the fiction to be constant. It can be authored ahead of time. It can be authored in the moment. It can be authored prior to rolling any dice - as Gygax advocates for dungeon keys. It can be authored subsequent to rolling dice - as Gygax advocates for wandering monsters, attack rolls and saving throws.

There are different reasons for adopting those different methods. But those reasons pertain to various play experiences and related goals of play.

BitD has been mentioned a bit in this thread. In that system, the question of whether a PC has such-and-such useful gear in his/her backpack is resolved when the matter becomes relevant. By spendig a player-side resource. In Cortex+ Heroic the same sort of question can be answered in advance, or in the moment, and perhaps by making a check (to generate an Asset) or perhaps by spending a player-side reousrce (to generate a Resource). In D&D, Traveller and Burning Wheel - just to name a few systems - the same sort of question is answered by preparing a gear list in advance.

Widgets in boxes can be done in the same variety of ways. There's no particular magic about whether its gear on a PC or stuff in a box.