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

[Lanefan]

I understand. I also like games of that type, and in fact wrote and published one called Other Worlds that has 'players create the gameworld' as a central part of play.

Given this (and if you haven't done so already) you might want to ask the mods here about getting a "Publisher" tag to go with your name and avatar.

Note that I'm not sure if this tag requires being a community supporter first.

 

[Lanefan]

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

Not when designing and writing rules. Quite the opposite, I'd say.

With rules, we should assume bad faith and legislate against it: in other words, write those rules in such a way that bad-faith play cannot gain any appreciable advantage over good-faith play.

 

[pemerton]

Because a mystery has to exist before you start solving it.

This might be true for actual detectives in the real world. For instance, events stand in causal relations to one another, and those unfold through time via various sorts of physical and social processes.

Why is it true for a fiction, though? An author can establish clues, and things that they point to, without everything that is pointed to being known when the first clues are presented.

This is a special case of the general principle that the writing of a fiction - as a causal process - need not be correlative to the causal processes that are imagined within that fiction.

And the same point can actually generalise beyond fictions, to other games. For instance, it would be possible to do a treasure hunt at a children's party, where each clue is placed just in time, so that when the children have solved the previous clue they are able to find the newly-placed clue that the previous clue points them to. But there is no need to have the final piece of the treasure hunt in place until the final clue is written and placed.

Serial fiction is often written similarly.

And of course there a matters of degree. It is possible, for instance, in a RPG to establish the sense of a conspiracy, which the players become aware of and begin to penetrate, without every detail of the conspiracy or its participants being known from the outset.

A fairly well-known example of this is found in B2 Keep on the Borderlands. The write-up includes a chaotic priest in the Keep, who pretends to be trustworthy; and a chaos cult in the Caves. Is the priest related to the cult? The module doesn't say. A GM might make that link during the course of play, perhaps in response to the players, via their play, making it a salient question. This wouldn't preclude the players from (in the fiction, as their PCs) penetrating a chaotic conspiracy to bring down the Keep.

 

[pemerton]

No matter what you detail as the DM, you’re always going to leave 99% of the details out. You just do your best to describe what’s immediately salient.

I would add: what you as GM take to be immediately salient. Which might be different from what the players regard as salient.

 

[Lanefan]

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

And to be fair, I think we have to allow that to happen now and then. The game has always had mind control effects, for example, and the DM telling me the room I just walked into gives me chills up my spine* is IMO great shorthand for what could otherwise turn into a long narration followed by some back-and-forth.

* - with no mechanical effect on what my character can do, or how.

 

[pemerton]

Wel...yeah. if you want more details, you ask.

In any game I've ever played if it wasn't already clarified the player would simply ask for appropriate details. It's never been a big deal.

And yet:

If I'm immersed in my character being drunk and angry in a bar, I don't want to ask the DM who the bar patrons are around me. I just want to narrate my character punching the nearest dude.

The point is, as a player, don't play 20 questions with the DM to determine if what you want to do is feasible. Just go do it. If there's a problem, it's the DM's job to tell you why.

 

[pemerton]

Yes. And the cleric already has class features that represent the god answering such prayers!

Clerics are granted spells, it's not like they aren't granted powers.

Clerics are granted spells, it's not like they aren't granted powers.

The implication of this seems to be that the gods are silent to all those other people in the world praying to them.

 

[Arilyn]

I run and play a variety of rpgs. If I'm in a game where players do not have input into the setting during play, I'll be happy. If the GM encourages player input, I'll be happy. If the game is interesting and engaging I can go either way.

As a GM, I'm realizing I really enjoy encouraging player input, however. When kids are introduced to role playing games, they dive in and add stuff constantly. It's how they play. I think as adults we can do some of this too. I ran a long PF1 game that was amazing because the whole group added to the lore as we went. Epic narratives emerged, and I didn't have to do much prep. Player input sparks joy for us.

This is the main reason I'm not thrilled with 2024's direction. It reads like Magic cards and the backgrounds and bastions give players' little room to breathe because they are tightly prescribed. Of course, we can house rule but the game does little to encourage this beyond a brief few lines on Rule 0. The role playing pieces are gone. Game consequences are discouraged. I'm sad that this will be new players' first introduction to the hobby.

Getting off my rant, I'm sure I'd be happy in a @Micah Sweet or @Oofta game as well as @pemerton or @hawkeyefan. Variety is cool.

 

[hawkeyefan]

As I posted not far upthread, I think my trajectory has been the opposite.

There has been stuff I've been doing, or wanted to do, in my RPGing. And this has led me to various RPGs: to Rolemaster, then to 4e D&D, then to other RPGs. Including back to Classic Traveller - a radical little game published in 1977!

Yes, there's a strong element of this in my history. Over the years, as D&D evolved and I increasingly became my group's primary GM, I grew dissatisfied with certain elements of it. I couldn't always place what or why, but it led to me trying different things. Some of these things worked, some did not. And this was all experimentation on my own... this is before I started posting here and became exposed to a lot more games.

Once that happened, it helped me understand my own dissatisfaction better. I had more specific ideas about what was causing it, and what might help, and how to bring my players on board with this.

There does seem to be some variation in relation to the "specific sequence of actions": some posters have drawn an analogy to a crossword (which does require a specific set of actions) while others have allowed for more open-ended actions (though not as open-ended as asking Odin for help).

But I agree with your broader point.

I'm also struck by the response to my Traveller example. I posted that

At the start of the game, this was a mystery to which neither the players, nor the PCs, nor I the GM, knew the answer.​

And @Crimson Longinus and @Paul Farquhar then respond as if the only alternative to the GM knowing the answer at the start of the game is the players just made up a solution to the mystery, like Agatha Christie writing one of her novels.

Yes, the idea that a mystery for an RPG must be crafted the same way as a mystery novel or movie seems flawed. Most of the time, when people are trying to play through the RPG equivalent of a novel, it's pointed out as problematic for most people.

 

[Lanefan]

None of the games I'm familiar with work like this. The purpose of players adding setting elements isn't to provide mechanisms for 'defeating encounters' or the like. That kind of terminology or approach wouldn't even make any sense. The purpose is to enrich and develop the setting and therefore the story that unfolds.

The issues arise because there's a great many players out there (including me sometimes, to be honest) who if given the opportunity can and will drift from using the ability to add elements for the latter bolded point to instead using it for the former, and maybe not even realize it.

The solution is to not provide the opportunity in the first place.