D&D General A glimpse at WoTC's current view of Rule 0

[Micah Sweet]

Can you dial it back a hair, Micah? Why do you possibly feel that you need to throw that sentence in at the end? I'm just trying to communicate with you and clarify stuff and you randomly escalate to accusing me of trying to manipulate you or coerce you or whatever.

Like the above. At first glance, I honestly don't understand what is happening here. Upon further inventorying of that sentence, it looks, again, like a category error and then an inference based on that error:

* The characters within the setting aren't controlling aspects of the universe outside of themselves. You're subbing in player for character here, using them interchangeably. There is nothing unrealistic happening from the perspective of the characters within the setting or from the setting itself. They carry on and do the things we imagine them doing <a person treads the sidewalk and laments the coming day's work, another sits on a bench and reads the paper, rain falls, umbrellas pop open audibly, car horns blare at pedestrians that jaywalk irresponsibly, etc).

It's the players, and the players alone, that engage with the system and any attendant meta-conversation around the play of the game. The players do the game engine stuff, not the characters. So there is nothing unrealistic happening here with respect to the characters or the setting that we're all imagining as we play. Realistic (or not) doesn't enter into it.

So this makes me go "unrealistic...huh?..that doesn't seem like the right word. Maybe, unsatisfying? That looks like it does the job."

It's this kind of exchange that makes my brain go ???????? and then I have to suss out what is happening and then post a reply to you to communicate my sense of things and/or clarify details. This isn't coercion or manipulation. That is the machinery of what happened here. Its (well it is supposed to be) just two people talking (but now one of them feels like they're walking on eggshells because they have absolutely no idea why the other just randomly went aggro and accused them of being a manipulative jerk).

As a player, I don't want to make choices my PC couldn't make in-setting. As the GM, I don't want the players making choices their PCs couldn't make in-setting. It is that simple.

 

[TiQuinn]

This. In order to solve a puzzle, a solution must exist. Making up a solution is not solving it. You can fill in a crossword by writing random words in the boxes, but that is not SOLVING it.

I can see an approach where within the fiction of the game, the characters “solved” the mystery. The players didn’t - they helped create the narrative of the mystery in that case.

I think the question comes down to whether or not that approach is satisfying for players. For me, if I’m being told the game is a mystery and I have to solve it, I’d be disappointed if I’m the one crafting the whodunit collaboratively. But if I knew that was the way it’d be played, I can see the appeal of the approach.

 

[Manbearcat]

As a player, I don't want to make choices my PC couldn't make in-setting. As the GM, I don't want the players making choices their PCs couldn't make in-setting. It is that simple.

That

Is

Fine

But you've just pivoted completely. This is a subject change. A subject change that, by the way, doesn't come with you apologizing to me for your rando aggro and accusation of coercion/manipulation...because at this point it's been clearly proven that we needed exactly the kind of clarification I was trying to work toward.

You've now got us talking about the relationship of player choice and game engine stuff to corresponding PC doings in-setting and how Micah feels (dissatisfied) about those dynamics.

This is a different conversation than the dynamics of "realistic vs unrealistic" (for the reasons I mentioned above).

Which is why I tried to clarify with "is he meaning unsatisfying?" For instance:

* "It's not realistic for my characters to do x". Well we don't need to worry about that, because that isn't happening. Realistic or not doesn't enter into it.

* "It's not a satisfying gameplay experience when a system has me engage with choices my PC couldn't make in-setting. Cha-ching!

 

[Pedantic]

I think that the mystery angle of the conversation is very revealing and really not all that different from a lot of the concerns expressed prior to this.

The idea is that there’s this thing that’s already here, and it’s expected for the players to engage with that thing. The DM has prepared this adventure/encounter/mystery, and it will require a specific sequence of actions to solve the problem.

That last bit doesn't follow. That there exists a fixed board state at the beginning of a game, even a game with significantly less available actions than most TTRPGs and even a game with a fixed victory condition, does not require the intervening play be scripted.

We tend to call games that are "solved" and they are usually pretty deprecated. Sometimes less so if the intervening script is simply too difficult for most people to internalize.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That

Is

Fine

But you've just pivoted completely. This is a subject change. A subject change that, by the way, doesn't come with you apologizing to me for your rando aggro and accusation of coercion/manipulation...because at this point it's been clearly proven that we needed exactly the kind of clarification I was trying to work toward.

You've now got us talking about the relationship of player choice and game engine stuff to corresponding PC doings in-setting and how Micah feels (dissatisfied) about those dynamics.

This is a different conversation than the dynamics of "realistic vs unrealistic" (for the reasons I mentioned above).

Which is why I tried to clarify with "is he meaning unsatisfying?" For instance:

* "It's not realistic for my characters to do x". Well we don't need to worry about that, because that isn't happening. Realistic or not doesn't enter into it.

* "It's not a satisfying gameplay experience when a system has me engage with choices my PC couldn't make in-setting. Cha-ching!

I'm sorry I got hot. It sounded to me like you were trying to insert your definition of my words.

A game in which players have more control over the game than their PCs have in-setting is not satisfying to me, because it feels unrealistic to me. I have no interest in playing a D&D-style RPG that way. At all.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Just a couple things here (that could use some clarification from you guys):

1) As CL notes at the bottom, system/mechanics in these cases (and/or GM's required mediation when prompted by system) is what does the work of momentarily hijacking a character's emotional states (like on a failed move where the PC's emotional state is on the line) or correcting their accumulated knowledge (like on a failed move where the PC's recollection or knowledge is on the line). Just to make sure all lurkers and respondents in the conversation understand, these sorts of system-based moments of play aren't unconstrained GM fiat or uses of GM Force to ensure a GM-preferred outcome. They're resolved by system and player collisions within the scope of the play of the game.

Yeah, but so what? I still lost control of my character.

2) On which of the two is more immersive:

* momentary PC emotional state (etc) hijack

vs

* complete and perpetual player autonomy over PC emotional state

I have to say...these one is a bit odd to me. It feels like almost a category error to call the latter more immersive than the former. Again, to harken back to the top of this post, I almost feel like "unsatisfying <given certain other priorities>" is what we're looking for here? I mean, how can it be immersive to have absolute autonomy over your emotional state? That doesn't happen for any human ever? That also doesn't happen to heroes (big damn or otherwise) or even gods in high fantasy or mythology or romantic fiction?

So maybe instead of "immersive," what we're looking for here for clarity and exactness is more like "satisfying given my priorities for a particular genre of power fantasy that requires absolute authorship over the rendering of my PC's mood and feelings?"

It seems to me we're kind of folding in priorities around a particular type of (i) power fantasy expectations + (ii) authorship rights and calling it (iii) immersion? Those aren't the same, right? In some cases (IMO this one exactly), those priorities might actually come into conflict.

Yes, I meant what I said. I meant immersive. And what you say here to me reads like you just don't get this sort of immersion. Becoming the character, experiencing the world as the character, feeling the emotions of the character. It is not that there is perfect control, because the mental model produces genuine emotions and reactions, and I am not really "choosing" them, the interplay between the described situation and the mental model of the character produces them.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I think we have to assume a certain amount of good faith on the part of the player, right?

Do you know what I call people who would try to introduce their buddy TacNuke the Invincible Dragon to the adventure? I call them people I would never play with. I've never experienced this problem IRL.

So it is obviously meant to be an absurd example. But it is that just because it is not expected in D&D, nor is there mechanic for handling it. But if we were playing a game where the players could introduce beneficial setting elements, coincidences and plot twists by paying plot points, and the player paid 12 plot points they had saved over several sessions for "major deus ex machina," then Little Boy, the ancient fission dragon swooping in to help would be fair and a perfectly legit gameplay.

But D&D does not have any sort of system for this, and isn't really built around players using setting element introduction for problem solving. So then when we go beyond what is mostly flavour, it gets somewhat tricky. What might be perfectly fine for one person might be bad faith play for another.

 

[Manbearcat]

Not to ignore the rest of your excellent post, but to address just this: If a player's goal method/process to create immersion is to inhabit a character mind to the best of their ability (or, say, play a character who is similar to yourself, where your personal reactions can hew as close to 1-to-1 to their reactions as possible), forcing the character to experience something that the player is not can be a harsh disconnect for that person. For the sort of immersion that player is seeking, that presents a sudden and large problem.

Let me be clear, I agree that it is not necessarily realistic compared to how human emotion works, but for the purposes of "immersion", which is highly idiosyncratic, I don't know that you can say that's intrinsically a definitional problem. And obviously, what game you are playing and the goals thereof have a huge additional impact on the question. I also don't know that this language will come across as saliently semantically different from the idea of power fantasy in your mind.

Great post.

This is exactly what I was looking for.

You're correct with both your inventorying of (part of) the situation at the top and your appraisal at the bottom.

Net, I definitely think its counterproductive to clarity in conversations around TTRPGing to bin all kinds of (sometimes rather disparate or disconnected) priorities under a priority for immersion.

* We sometimes see challenge-based priorities unhelpfully binned under immersion.

* We sometimes see priorities around a very particular and very novel form of power fantasy where inner workings are perpetually authored (one that doesn't cohere with our own human experiences of our inner workings nor the inner workings of protagonists within the vast repository of fiction and mythology that our games draw upon as touchstones...whether mortals or gods, inner workings are not exclusively authored...they're sometimes bewildering and sometimes alien as we succumb to them rather than dictate them) unhelpfully binned under a priority for immersion.

* We sometimes see priorities around how authority is distributed and "ownership rights" (my character's inner workings are my exclusive purview) unhelpfully binned under a priority for immersion.

* We definitely see a tendency to unhelpfully talk about immersion as being one thing to the collective (rather than idiosyncratic and autobiographical) and certain things being anathema to that one thing/collective (like the infamous Dissociated Mechanics essay of yore).

* And, to circle back, we sometimes see realistic and immersive unhelpfully used interchangeably.

Sometimes there is some varying degree of overlap on a Venn Diagram for these things. But certainly not always, certainly not in every situation/game, certainly not for every participant, and just running them all together into an entangled mass makes it (a) extremely difficult to communicate clearly about this stuff, (b) makes it difficult to design and select games for specific priorities (especially when those priorities conflict with other priorities), and (c) makes it difficult when trying to execute the running or the playing of a game that prioritizes one thing vs a game that prioritizes a different thing.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

BUT, I have learned that such delegation can be fun, particularly at a micro level. So if the players go somewhere I haven't prepped, eg a roadside tavern, I might ask them to tell me some things about it - who the landlord is, whether there's a band, whather there's food, other details.

This is a fine technique, but it also is something a lot of people do not like and some outright hate. I'm not the biggest fan myself, but I certainly can see why some people might find it fun.

 

[pemerton]

What’s the difference between solving a crossword puzzle and looking up the answers and filling in the grid? What is the difference between reading Murder on the Orient Express and Odin telling you “don’t bother, everyone did it and Hercule Poirot lets them off”?

And people wonder why I use the word "railroading"?!

If you've signed up to being railroaded through the kind of adventure which needs mcguffins, presumably it's considered bad form to then try and avoid being railroaded through whatever hoops the GM has scripted before they'll read you that bit of their notes?

I guess so. But then we're back to a "problem player" issue, rather than a techniques issue.

I think these kinds of examples being discussed help in that much of trad side has such concerns of players seeking the win condition at the expense of the narrative, fair play etc

Fair play I get, especially in the context of @hawkeyefan's example.

But "the narrative" takes me right back to the discussion of the McGuffin - I don't see how it differs from railroad.