To what extent do you feel those explanations clarify, organise and overall articulate principles and agendas that DMs have had in mind from the outset? The author of Monster of the Week commented on this question, that - "That sort of play goes back decades, including when D&D was first getting started in the 1970s."
Two significant differences in perspective that I notice are
- 5e encourages toward grasping the world as externally real: somewhere the characters live, but not necessarily built around them
- 5e leaves it to DM to know how they will DM: the RAW is insouciant or coy
I don't think that I am following every nuance in this thread. But when I read these posts, I find it hard to work out what is really being claimed about 5e*.
For instance, is the claim that 5e* will produce the same play experience as Dungeon World? In that case, I find the claim utterly implausible. The reasons for that implausibility are probably too many to list; but here are some of the obvious points of difference: 5e D&D has a rigid action economy for combat, whereas DW doesn't; 5e has player-initiated mechanical subsystems (primarily but not solely spells), whereas DW doesn't - it only has "moves"; 5e has conditions (including but not solely hp loss) whose definition is almost entirely mechanical, whereas DW doesn't, and 5e has no analogue to DW's prescriptive/descriptive approach to (eg) having your hand cut off in a trap; 5e has no systematic process for regulating or correlating the GM's introduction of complications in relation to the players' declarations of actions for their PCs, whereas DW does.
Whether or not FPRGers in the 1970s were trying to achieve the sort of play that DW delivers, they hadn't created systems that would do it in the way that DW does. To assert otherwise is, apart from anything else, an insult to Vincent Baker as a designer.
And flipping it around: what, if anything, is
distinctive about 5e's
encouragement to grasp the world as externally real: somewhere the characters live, but not necessarily built around them. Other than some self-referential RPGs like Toon and Over the Edge, what RPG doesn't have this aspiration? Dungeon World has certain principles intended to support it:
Address the characters, not the players;
Never speak the name of your move;
Give every monster life;
Name every person;
Think offscreen, too. We can't capture anything distinctive about 5e D&D until we talk about concrete principles that govern the GM's narration - eg, perhaps what we might call the
@Lanefan principle which goes something like
When narrating the consequences of a check, successful, or unsuccessful, have no regard to what the player hoped their PC would achieve by way of the check. But then we would have to ask how this principle sits with character build elements like Beliefs, Traits, Flaws and the like - those make me wonder whether this mooted principle really is a component of 5e play that is consistent with RAW.
It's a genuine puzzler for me: the implication that some DMs hit points where what follows isn't clear to them. Other posters described that "the actual cognitive workspace a GM is inhabiting during play and the conversation is pushing toward yields consequences that are profoundly far away from unconstrained or anarchy" and for me that is true in 5e.
<snip example of play, where GM narrated a NPC's action>
Everyone else agreed with what I narrated.
Here is
a bit from Vincent Baker:
So you're sitting at the table and one player says, "[let's imagine that] an orc jumps out of the underbrush!"
What has to happen before the group agrees that, indeed, an orc jumps out of the underbrush?
1. Sometimes, not much at all. The right participant said it, at an appropriate moment, and everybody else just incorporates it smoothly into their imaginary picture of the situation. "An orc! Yikes! Battlestations!" This is how it usually is for participants with high ownership of whatever they're talking about: GMs describing the weather or the noncombat actions of NPCs, players saying what their characters are wearing or thinking.
So the fact that everyone at the table goes along with one participant's narration of something they have high ownership of - in this case, the action declarations for a NPC - shows us that the table is not under stress or dysfunctional - which is good! - but I don't see where it takes us in the analysis of RPGs, either in general or in any particular case. The purpose of Dungeon World's rules and principles that govern GM narration are not (primarily) to ensure agreement at the table. They're to produce a particular sort of play experience.
There are all sorts of things that can cause a GM to doubt what is the appropriate thing to narrate. For instance, an ogre attacks a MU/wizard PC. The attack hits. The attack removes more than half the PC's hit points. The GM narrates it as a hard blow to the head. Is the GM also permitted to narrate that the PC forgets one of their memorised spells (if a MU) or loses one of their prepared spells (if a 5e wizard)? I mean, memorising/preparing spells is clearly - in the fiction - a cognitive activity, reinforced in nearly all versions of D&D by the interplay between the INT stat and the ability of MUs/wizards to learn and/or cast spells. And it's pretty common knowledge that a hard blow to the head can affect cognitive ability in the short, medium and/or long term.
That sort of narration in AD&D would be a seriously bit of aggressive GMing! And would be unlikely to be an example of what Baker describes, as spell memorisation is something over which
the player has a high degree of ownership. I'm pretty confident it would raise eyebrows at many, probably most, 5e tables too.
Through grasping
DMG 237 and
PHB 174 as regulatory rules, they are reconciled as follows:
- DMG 237 contains a restrictive regulatory rule, with the effect of saying when not to call for a roll. Don't call for a roll, unless there is a meaningful consequence for failure.
- PHB 174 contains an imperative regulatory rule, with the effect of saying when to call for a roll. Call for a roll, when there is a chance of failure. (This rule is repeated in restrictive form, in DMG 237.)
- DMG 237 contains another restrictive regulatory rule, with the effect of saying when not to call for a roll. Don't call for a roll, when a task so inappropriate or impossible - such as hitting the moon with an arrow - that it can't work.
The rules are clearly structured in DMG 237. The logic there is straightforward: it's like starting lights for Formula 1 racing. Is the first light out? Great! is the second light out? Are all lights out? Go!
How do we know if there is a chance of failure? That seems to be, or at least to come very close to being, viciously circular:
making a check introduces a chance of failure (unless the DC is no more than 1 greater than the bonus the player will have on their check), and so how can we use the possibility of failure as a criterion for calling for a check?
A meaningful consequence for failure obviously does not have this particular issue, but it still requires us to know
what the consequences for failure might be, and this is something that depends upon other elements of the system. Obviously if a hit on a head can cause you to lose hit points that are hard to recover, or cause you to lose a memorised spell, then nearly any physical activity might have a meaningful consequence for failure. But consider a system like Prince Valiant, in which there is no analogue to spell memorisation and in which recovery of Brawn lost due to physical strain or injury occurs entirely at the GM's discretion: that system difference, that sits in other parts of the PC build and action resolution rules, makes a big difference to what physical actions might have meaningful consequences for failure.
And then consider Burning Wheel, which derives nearly all those meaningful consequences from various elements of the PC build - Beliefs, Instincts, certain traits, Relationships, etc - which the GM draws upon both in framing, and in consequence narration. And these can have a prescriptive/descriptive dimension a bit like Dungeon World - eg Reputations and Relationships can change as consequences of actions, and this has concrete meaning not only for taking red ink to the PC sheet, but for the corresponding aspects of the fiction. The analogue in classic D&D might be losing a henchman due to a failed loyalty check. That can't bit the same way in a system without henchmen.
That what is I find magical about that word "narrates". Taking the text holistically, and interpreting that word as 5e* suggests (both as to saying something meaningful, and as to its regulatory significance), leads me directly to a consistent interpretation. Admittedly, it didn't need to do any heavy lifting, as it was speaking to my natural style of DMing.
According to the opening post, the play group decides that amongst themselves [what is meaningful].
I'll explore some examples that are meaningful/less for me. I can't promise they will be for you, because ultimately meaning lives in your conversation. To get the context right, 5e* interprets "
narrates" in this way
- say something meaningful
- the rule is an imperative regulatory rule: a green light or arrow to go from system to fiction
- it's a guarantee: players can respond to what DM narrates as meaningful
Example 4:
Fighter on higher initiative slashed at her with his longsword, hitting. All see that he rolls 1 on the 1d8.
DM narrates "
Ram's slash barely scratches her. She presses forward unabated. She's huge: you can't hold her back."
I find this meaningful in the following ways
- Barely scratched: players learn that she has a lot of hit points remaining, and this may be a tough fight.
- Presses forward: it's hopefully clear to players what's coming next.
- She's huge: creatures can barge past those two-sizes smaller than themselves, so this reminder telegraphs that the squishier characters might find themselves targeted.
The way in which these elements are meaningful is that they matter to the player-character's fictional positioning: A player's
position is the total set of all of the
valid gameplay options available to her at this moment of play. Valid means legitimate and effective. Ram (the fighter) can see that they will be ineffective trying to hold the giant back, even though it would be legitimate for him to try and do so. It upholds and returns to our fiction (F > S > F) and I think will carry forward the overall flow of events in combat that together will form our story.
Example 5:
Fighter on higher initiative slashed at her with his longsword, hitting. All see that he rolls 1 on the 1d8.
DM narrates "
Ram's slash barely scratches her. She laughs 'I didn't realise you were so weak! Why fight small man?' and couches her club."
I find this
meaningful too, but it goes in another direction. Here DM has decided that she feels her point is made, and is willing to go back to haggling. How does DM know to narrate this instead of example 4? For me, that depends on prior conversation and established fiction. In this DM's world, it seems that stone giants are a more nuanced people.
Example 4 is, for me, the flipside of the ogre-hits-the-wizard-on-the-head example. What is the
actual, in play significance of the the "barely scratched" beyond being a type of D&D players' code for "has a lot of hit points remaining". Will the scratch bleed? (In real life, one sometimes kills and/or catches a creature by causing it to bleed, and then following it until it has bled to a state of enfeeblement, unconsciousness or death. Where does that happen in 5e*, and how does the GM's narration of hit point loss relate to that?)
As for the GM signalling their intentions for the NPC -
she presses forward or
she couches her club - isn't that pretty ubiquitous in all RPGing? What is distinctive about 5e* in this respect? Eg do these constrain the GM's ensuing action declarations? - After all, on the fact of things they look like action declarations. If the giant presses forward, does that give a bonus to save against a Thunderwave cast on the next turn? Does couching the club give the next PC a bonus to hit, or advantage to negotiation attempts? If the answer to my questions is
yes then I can see how the fiction is meaningful, but I think we have now departed from the RAW of the 5e rulebooks (except perhaps the advantage to negotiation, though even there my understanding is that is mostly meant to flow from player cleverness rather than the GM's inclinations about what their NPCs might prefer). If the answer is
no, then those narrations seem to be mere colour. For instance, a player who missed them because out of the room at that moment could come back and still attack the giant, or still try to re-open negotiations.
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This post is not a criticism of 5e*. I personally am unlikely to play 5e D&D in its * or any other form, but nothing about 5e* has changed my disposition in this respect.
This post is a criticism of the notion that the exhortation to
narrate meaningfully or
narrate meaningful consequences tells us anything about a RPG system. To me, it seems that the action is in the process, expectations etc that shape
who owns what,
how things are framed,
what repertoire of consequences the system provides for, etc. This is where we find the differences between different RPGs.
