5E: Last Gasp of Theater of Mind D&D? (aka D&D Killed by Windows 10!)

[Umbran]

Furthermore, there are plenty of RPGing techniques that depend upon filling in the details in response to action declarations by the players,and/or the resolution of those action declarations.

Fixing the details in advance prevents the use of those techniques.

Yep.

Player: "Is there a chandelier overhead I can swing from?"
GM: "There is if you give me a Fate Point."
Player: "Wheeee!"

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION], just the sort of thing I had in mind.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

Some systems also have a skill / resource that can be used to indicate you prepared for this eventuality. Supernatural had something (I strongly remember "why yes, we brought a harpoon gun in the trunk") and in Trail Of Cthulhu, the players used it very effectively recently ("I know we said we brought dynamite, but we never said how much. How big a spend of preparedness would it be to say, I dunno, 60 sticks?")

 

[Janx]

Hi Janx,
I've now read another article on the HoloLens and it doesn't seem to support your claim that it's capable of true VR. Actually, one of the participants of Microsoft's presentation stated that it felt like having 'tunnel-vision' since the HoloLens is only capable of projecting 3d graphics in a relatively small central area at the center of your vision.

Where did you get the information that it's supposed to support VR?

must've been my interpretation of the articles about the Mars demo, where they were walking around the local area around Curioisity.

In any case, it won't matter what Occulus or HoloLens do now. If these 1st gen product are successful, it'll be the 3rd generation or so that has all the same features and market spread to start bleeding off the RPG market

 

[Celebrim]

Yep.

Player: "Is there a chandelier overhead I can swing from?"
GM: "There is if you give me a Fate Point."
Player: "Wheeee!"

I guess it depends on the player. The above situation doesn't sound particularly fun to me. I hate that fourth wall breaking sort of thing.

When I was in high school, some of us nerds would spend a class period adding to a story in a notebook (multi-tasking, the trick to getting away with this was to pay enough attention that it just looked like we were taking copious notes), which would then get passed to the next nerd in the chain and round and round.

I don't think that there would have been much point in having a GM or making a game out of that. What's the use of having a secret keeper if you can tell the secret keeper what the secrets are? What's the use of having a simulation if it is tractable to the desires of the beings in the simulation through methods that exist outside of the simulation?

Ultimately there seems to be a big disconnect here. Are we simulating being characters collaborating in a story, or are we simulating the process of authors collaborating to create a story? The former is tense and exciting. The latter sounds like something you'd do as an exercise at work to learn about collaborative effort. You might naively think it would a useful technique for simulating being a team of Hollywood script writers trying to turn around a movie in the middle of a production crisis, but in fact it wouldn't even be that story, but simply a process for turning out such a script.

For a more detailed discussion of why this sort of design is actually incoherent (and I use that word in its traditional meaning, rather than in its Forge specific meaning), see for example here. IMO, the vast majority of games we would want to play are harmed tremendously by that sort of naïve backstory authority - including most narrativist ones.

 

[MarkB]

Nevermind tabletop games, this could be very effective for LARPers. Project the in-game world as a virtual environment, then interact with it, without losing sight of your fellow players.

 

[Umbran]

Ultimately there seems to be a big disconnect here.

Yes, you do have a bit of a disconnect. You seem to be driving the case to an extreme.

The FATE mechanic I referenced allows a player to spend resources to stipulate *minor* details. He or she does not then get to carry off with full authorship of the story for a chapter. So, the comparison to the writing experience of your youth is simply not appropriate. Apples and oranges.

Are we simulating being characters collaborating in a story, or are we simulating the process of authors collaborating to create a story?

The point being that, unlike in most internet arguments, there's a middle ground. You can be mostly one, with a little of another.

The latter sounds like something you'd do as an exercise at work to learn about collaborative effort.

Stop worrying about what it "sounds like". That's not how it is in practice with any group I've worked with (and there have been several).

You say it "sounds like". Does that mean you have not tried it? Have you at least read the rules of FATE? They are available for free. I ask, because there is a point where, if you don't really know how it is used in practice, you should probably talk less, and listen more. Ask questions, and listen to answers, rather than worry about theoretical discussion.

You don't want to try it? That's fine. Me, I decided I didn't want to try skydiving. Just didn't seem to be my thing. But, on the flip side, I don't try to critique skydiving, either.

For a more detailed discussion of why this sort of design is actually incoherent...

I don't care if it is incoherent, in whatever meaning you give the term. I care that folks have fun when we play the game. Fun at the table is what ultimately matters. Satisfaction of my players (or fellow players) is what matters. Classification of "incoherence" is academic, and I mean that in the sense of, "ivory tower intellectualism, not of practical use."

 

[Celebrim]

Yes, you do have a bit of a disconnect. You seem to be driving the case to an extreme.

I'm responding to the example you gave.

The FATE mechanic I referenced allows a player to spend resources to stipulate *minor* details.

Right. Such as the presence of the chandelier in the example.

I ask, because there is a point where, if you don't really know how it is used in practice, you should probably talk less, and listen more. Ask questions, and listen to answers, rather than worry about theoretical discussion.

Again, your example. I don't see why I need to quote rules or make up hypotheticals when you've offered a perfectly fitting example of just why I feel mechanics like that don't suit an RPG. But, go ahead, tell me how I don't get it some more, so I can quote FATE Core at length about how much of play - as the game designers themselves describe and transcribe it - sounds like a committee of screenwriters trying to create a script.

 

[Rune]

That FATE rule is a great example of something I've been saying for a while (and practicing for much longer). Details don't matter till they matter. The audience for a game is not the audience for some hypothetical future movie (or even story hour). The audience is the players, including the DM. And the show is live.

If your players are okay to sit back and inhabit a world that exists, in its entirety, inside the DM's head, that's fine. But a group who wishes to endow its players with a bit more of a role in detailing the world isn't doing things wrong.

Is the world more surreal? Yes. The tendency for details to appear as they become relevant does feel a little surreal.

Is it incoherent (and I'll use the real definition, here, because I have no idea what the hell the Forge is, nor why I should care)? Only to the degree that the players make it so. For most groups, I'd reckon very little.

Using the example of the chandelier, we can get two seperate outcomes, but, unless the DM described the room in such great detail beforehand that the lack of a chandelier was spelled out, the presence or lack of a chandelier looks the same from the player side. They still have to ask if it's there and the answer will be the answer, whether they had input in it, or not.

And, frankly, describing each room or area in minute detail as soon as the PCs walk in is no less surreal. It's just more of a Hemmingway kind of surreal than Carrol.

 

[Celebrim]

If your players are okay to sit back and inhabit a world that exists, in its entirety, inside the DM's head, that's fine. But a group who wishes to endow its players with a bit more of a role in detailing the world isn't doing things wrong.

I'm not saying they are doing it wrong. Quite obviously some people like it. I'm saying I don't see the attraction, and that it can be wrong for a game depending on what the goals of the game are. I'm saying that naively assuming that shared setting backstory creation creates either a more enjoyable game or a more literary game is likely to lead to disappointment.

Is the world more surreal? Yes. The tendency for details to appear as they become relevant does feel a little surreal.

I think surreal is one portion of the problem.

Is it incoherent...? Only to the degree that the players make it so. For most groups, I'd reckon very little.

It's incoherent in the sense that I don't think most players actually play to produce a theoretically more literary transcription of play (even if you accept that collaborating on setting backstory in the middle of play is likely to do that), but rather they play to experience the tension of dramatic play from moment to moment. When you can introduce elements to the setting than help resolve those challenges, you're often working against the experience you are trying to achieve.

Using the example of the chandelier, we can get two seperate outcomes, but, unless the DM described the room in such great detail beforehand that the lack of a chandelier was spelled out, the presence or lack of a chandelier looks the same from the player side. They still have to ask if it's there and the answer will be the answer, whether they had input in it, or not.

The difference is that in the 'give me a FATE point' case, they know that the chandelier wasn't there until they asked about it, and they know they had input in creating it. There is also a big difference in the experience of play something out, and then referring to the rules to find out what happens and in referring to the rules to find out what happens and then playing to justify it. You look at the FATE rule book, and there is example after example of the later, and - not surprisingly - more than a few examples of where the rules decide what happens and they don't bother to play it out (because really, what is the point?). It would be like watching a baseball game when you already know the final score. There's a reason sports reruns aren't tremendously popular.

Honestly, the single strongest reason for something like 'give me a FATE point, and I'll give you a chandelier' is probably to avoid table arguments over whether or not some feature of the setting is reasonable. If you look at the examples in the FATE rules, they aren't really about establishing setting, so much as avoiding an argument over how to adjudicate something questionable - whether or not you can speak an obscure language just because your character is a scholar, for example. Making it about a question of spending a player resource takes the potential confrontation out of the adjudication, because it no longer relies on any one player's opinion. Of course, for me the crazy thing about that is that a typical 'indy' style RPG probably relies more heavily on the skill of the GM than even a traditional RPG does. If you can't trust the GM to entertain the players in a dungeon crawl sort of game, you sure as heck can't trust the GM to entertain in a game that by and large depends entirely on the GM's skill as an oral story teller and improvisational actor.