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

[pemerton]

players will often ask for advice. Sometimes the character is better placed than the player to judge the likelihood of success of a particular course of action. "Does my character think they will be admitted to the castle if I am disguised as an old washerwomen?" is a perfectly reasonable thing to say to the DM before declaring your action.

To me, this is getting very close to the player asking the GM to play their PC for them.

Once the player has the idea of it, how do we then find out if the PC will be admitted to the castle by disguising as a washerwoman? By rolling the dice!

 

[Lanefan]

If the PC wants to use their noble background to confront the king, then it stands to reason the want to USE their background to confront the king. That means Wolf Hall style politics, not auto success, because auto-success is as boring as F. Adventurers encounter obstacles and overcome them, they do not automatically succeed at everything they try to do. You wouldn't say to a character with the the Outlander background "okay, you cross the thousands of miles of trackless desert without incident, what would you like to do next?"! Or if you would, I wouldn't want to play in your game, because it would be boring. If a character chooses the Outlander background they want to experience the wilderness, not be done with it in a single sentence. If a character chooses the Noble background they want to experience life at court.

For some players this is true.

For others, they choose those backgrounds so as to be able to either trivialize or "beat" those elements. A player, for example, might choose Outlander so as to never have to worry about slogging through those long trackless bits of wilderness and instead just get them over with.

That said, I completely agree that auto-success, especially if repeated, quickly becomes boring as hell.

 

[pemerton]

Only by your definition of what constitutes a railroaded game, which from what I can glean over time seems to include pretty much anything where the players aren't also setting authors.

I wish you would stop imputing opinions to me that I never assert and repeatedly deny, often in posts to you.

 

[Belen]

I have yet to see anyone comment on the situation of a player wanting an option that does not exist in the setting provided by the DM yet is not willing to do so the work of adding that option to the setting.

Are there people who say that the DM should be forced to do the work to accommodate that player?

I have had many situations where a player was like “uh, no thanks, I”ll just play X instead.”

These are cases where I’d give a template and just ask them to fill out questions that amount to 1-2 pages of writing.

If the player is not willing to help, then I am not going to spend a few hours on adding something that I had not intended to be in the setting.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Why would I want my RPGing to resemble a MMO?

I mean, MMOs and CRPGs in general owe an enormous debt to D&D, and there can be innovations in that space that could propagate back. We shouldn't expect that absolutely everything MMOs do is useful. But it seems unwise at best to start from a position of "there's nothing of value for RPGs to learn from MMOs."

As for an actual positive answer to the question, rather than a negative answer to the skeptical position: Millions of people play and love MMOs, and many of them could be quite reachable for the TTRPG space. They're already customers who know the core ideas, so they're more likely to hit the ground running and thus stick around rather than being scared off by any early issues they might encounter. Further, a large proportion of MMO players are necessarily also engaged online and can be quite vocal, so it can be very easy to foster a grassroots campaign to get more people interested. (Hell, after a fashion, the MMOs themselves could act as a social media platform!)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Except in this case the players (actors) largely improvise the script, to a greater or lesser degree also improvise the plot, and choose which bits of the scenery they interact with and-or play in front of; which makes it not a railroad.

But the only "plot" that may be allowed is one that uses the pieces that exist in the world. The only "script" that may be allowed is one that uses those pieces. That's the problem here.

If I may, allow me to use a hyperbolic hypothetical to demonstrate how a DM/director/"referee" could claim that the players/actors have the freedom to improvise without really having that much actual freedom. Consider a situation where you, as a player, are only allowed to quote from Bible passages that have been pre-approved for quotation. You technically still have freedom to "largely improvise" the script/plot...but you're not really in the driver's seat, are you? It would take extreme, near-genius level creativity to dynamically turn such Bible passage quotation into something personal and individual, even though you technically have the freedom to quote any part you want.

Now, this is pretty obviously extreme. I sincerely doubt any DM has ever done something actually like that, where players are literally only allowed to quote from things someone else wrote. I certainly don't believe anyone here, even folks whom I think DO go overboard, has ever done this. So, to be absolutely, unequivocally clear, this is not an accusation of any kind, I don't believe real people do this, and I certainly don't think anyone here does it. The point, as stated, is to show that at some point, the DM taking too much control over setting does in fact take away the players' ability to "largely improvize the script...or...the plot", because "choos[ing] which bits of the scenery they interact with and-or play in front of" isn't enough, by itself, to avert a railroad. To use the Disney theme park variation of the railroad concept, just because you can take pictures with Mickey and decide which rides you ride on doesn't mean you aren't on rails or walking pre-determined paths 99% of the time.

Conversely, I think we're all agreed that player improvisation necessarily has to be present when DM's setting material is pretty soft-touch or sparse. Not because anything about that side is better (I love me some great worldbuilding!), but simply because...the players have to be improvising just to participate at that point. Meaning, if we grant that the above (intentionally extreme example simply to show that at some point player improvisation is clearly completely taken away by excessive DM setting control), then there must be some point or range where DM setting control begins to outweigh player improvisation.

Only by your definition of what constitutes a railroaded game, which from what I can glean over time seems to include pretty much anything where the players aren't also setting authors.

That certainly does not seem to be the case to me, even without @pemerton having explicitly rejected this in one of his own replies to you.

 

[Emerikol]

I hope you and @Crimson Longinus can see that "Join us to play a Star Trek game!" or "Join us to play a Middle Earth game!" are requests that carry more cultural and aesthetic weight than "Join us to play a Thraes game!" or "Join us to play an Artra game!"

EDIT:
Yes, agreed.

It only implies a need to communicate more carefully as a DM's creation is not known the world over. It is still, hopefully, a carefully crafted setting that has a look and feel. It is something, again hopefully, the DM has spent time developing and giving a lot of elements to create a feeling of realness. Verisimilitude if you will.

So yes, the DM should be very clear but no, it shouldn't get less respect being new. In fact as a player, it gets more. I want a new world. I don't want to play in Middle Earth or Greyhawk over and over. I want something new and I appreciate the DM that gives me something new and good.

 

[Emerikol]

But the only "plot" that may be allowed is one that uses the pieces that exist in the world. The only "script" that may be allowed is one that uses those pieces. That's the problem here.

Anyone will tell you that it is the limitations that make creativity work. A novelists who decides to write a western for example will limit themselves certain accepted things. The same for detective stories and romances.

All that is being asked by default is that the players operate within an entire world. If the DM has decided there are seven intelligent races that are playable, then that is a limitation but hardly a big limitation. If it were only humans it wouldn't be a decisive limitation. There would still be massive amounts of creativity possible in that setting.

If I may, allow me to use a hyperbolic hypothetical to demonstrate how a DM/director/"referee" could claim that the players/actors have the freedom to improvise without really having that much actual freedom. Consider a situation where you, as a player, are only allowed to quote from Bible passages that have been pre-approved for quotation. You technically still have freedom to "largely improvise" the script/plot...but you're not really in the driver's seat, are you? It would take extreme, near-genius level creativity to dynamically turn such Bible passage quotation into something personal and individual, even though you technically have the freedom to quote any part you want.

This is an awkward example.

What if you can only choose spells from a spell list if you are a wizard. That is a limitation. You can't cast other things. To me that wouldn't be the death knell of a campaign. And I might allow spell creation by the PCs but if I didn't I wouldn't consider it a great limitation.

<snip>
Conversely, I think we're all agreed that player improvisation necessarily has to be present when DM's setting material is pretty soft-touch or sparse. Not because anything about that side is better (I love me some great worldbuilding!), but simply because...the players have to be improvising just to participate at that point. Meaning, if we grant that the above (intentionally extreme example simply to show that at some point player improvisation is clearly completely taken away by excessive DM setting control), then there must be some point or range where DM setting control begins to outweigh player improvisation.

That certainly does not seem to be the case to me, even without @pemerton having explicitly rejected this in one of his own replies to you.

I agree that if the DM does not provide a setting the players will have to help make it up. I wouldn't play in such a game. I want an interesting world to explore. I want interesting well thought out NPCs to engage with as a PC.

I suppose it is theoretically possible a DM could make a world that is too restrictive but it would be an absurd premise.

Here is one example I considered once. Everyone has to be a dwarf and the campaign starts deep underground and no one knows about the surface. The entire known world is tunnels and underground caverns turned into dwarven cities. Now that is not going to appeal to everyone but it might be fun for some people. Just be upfront about it with potential players and let them play or not play.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

To me, this is getting very close to the player asking the GM to play their PC for them.

Once the player has the idea of it, how do we then find out if the PC will be admitted to the castle by disguising as a washerwoman? By rolling the dice!

The are often things that will be apparent to a character, that would be unknown to the player. For a start, the character is often more intelligent than the player, but aside from that they have lived in that world all their life, whereas the player has only lived there a couple of hours. Sure, it will eventually come down to one or more dice rolls, but part of playing the game is trying to come up with the option that has the highest chance of success - i.e. the lowest DC. Otherwise, you might as well play Snakes and Ladders.

 

[Emerikol]

This is not the only way to do FRPGing, is not an approach I've used since about 40 years ago, and is extremely GM-centred.

It's a very popular way of playing and historically it's been the way D&D started. I agree though that there are many ways to play but I really enjoy both playing and DMing those style of games. Everyone is free to play the game the way they like. I think though attacks against my style of play will be argued against by me.

It is human nature to think everything new is better. So part of embracing a new thing is putting the old thing down. You hear it all the time. It is not always true though.