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

[TwoSix]

Well, that’s just my personal preference. I prefer my D&D to be about heroes being heroic.

That's fine. I'm much more in the "PCs as antiheroes or outright bad guys" camp.

 

[Scribe]

That's fine. I'm much more in the "PCs as antiheroes or outright bad guys" camp.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

So, stories that reflect the human condition?

I prefer humans that are better than that. Hence the fantasy.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Most of those stories are about how self-destructive and stupid revenge is.

Inigo Montoya in the Princess Bride.
Axl Foley in Beverly Hills Cop
Edmond Dantes in Count of Monte Cristo (depends on the adaptation)
Col Mortimer in a Few Dollars More.
John Wick in the original John Wick
Oberon Martell in Game of Thrones

Who said anything about greed?

Greed is a common motivation for RPG characters. In 1st and 2nd edition, it was an explicit assumption, as characters gained xp based on the treasure they found.

Sounds pretty childish, doesn’t it?

 

[hawkeyefan]

No, because their role is to design the world I explore and interact with through my PC. During session 0, before I made my PC, the DM sat down with the group and described the campaign they wanted to run and how it worked. I accepted their concept and then created a character that fit into that concept, and from then on my decisions are based on what that PC can do and know.

IMO, that's how games should go. My preference of course.

So the DM's ideas are paramount? The players follow the DM's prompts?

TV dramas aren't real world either but most try to make them seem like real life. Why would a game be held to a different standard and why does it matter?

There's a difference between giving something the semblance of reality and it being constructed in a way that is similar to reality.
Do you think that when the writers of "The Wire" sat down they said "you know, this show can never seem realistic because we're sitting here in a room making things up"?

You're mistaking realism for actual reality.

You may prefer cooperative story based games, you don't have to be dismissive of other approaches because they aren't "real".

I haven't dismissed anyone's play. I've been defending a style I enjoy from folks saying it can't possibly work or that DMs who do it that way are not worthwhile.

Again, if you're not saying that, I'm not really disagreeing with you.

No, the DM makes decisions based on what would logically happen under the rules of the world. The players have fun because they enjoy interacting with a fantasy world as if it where real.

Do you think it's fun simply to interact with a fantasy world? Shouldn't there be more to it than that?

And that is why they don’t deserve to survive.

I prefer games where at least the player characters are not jerks.

They don't kill things and take their stuff at all? Kind of jerkish behavior if you ask me.

I’m an educator in England, where we speak English.

The example was in English. I mean... I'm not an educator and I had no trouble following it.

Well, that’s just my personal preference. I prefer my D&D to be about heroes being heroic.

Sure, but it doesn't have to be that way. Surely, we have plenty of counter examples. Most of the play by Gygax and Kuntz and the like seems to be about accumulating personal power rather than about being heroes.

Robilar, in particular, seems like an enormous douche.

 

[Scribe]

I prefer humans that are better than that. Hence the fantasy.

I mean, yeah. Its clearly a fantasy, which is fine and all if thats what you are after, but well its like the Matrix 1.0.

"It was perfect, but you rejected the programming and kept trying to wake up."

 

[TiQuinn]

If the players aren't interested in taking the game seriously in the way the GM aspires to, does anyone think that rule zero is the solution?

That’s session zero territory, IMO. Asking the players what kinds of campaigns they’d like to play in based on a list of stuff the GM would be interested in running.

This stuff just isn’t that hard.

 

[pemerton]

Who is grief, and which Isle? And why does Marie want to visit them? What is the purpose of this?

Non-capitalised "grief" is a common noun. To visit grief upon someone is to do something to them that will upset them or make them suffer - I used the phrase because Vincent Baker uses it in his example. I don't think it's very obscure, in any dialect of English.

Isle - as my use of pronouns shows - is a person. She has friends, including a boyfriend, and a head which lolls onto the shoulder of the latter when she suffers psychic damage.

This all sounds rather pointless, like a bad soap opera. What is the challenge? Where is the adventure?

Apocalypse World is not an adventure RPG, or a challenge-oriented RPG. It's an RPG about people pushed to their physical, emotional and social limits by the stress of living after the apocalypse (hence, "Apocalypse World").

 

[pemerton]

Sometimes you know the likely consequences of your actions sometimes you don't. I never said you can never make in informed decision

I didn't say that you did. I said that not knowing the likely consequences of your actions appears to be a common thing in a certain GM-centred approach to play, and posted your example as an illustration.

my preference is that the person playing the character is not the one that decides the outcome of their actions.

You're not disagreeing with anyone here. @TwoSix didn't say anything about deciding the consequences of punching the nearest guy in the bar. The question was, rather, whether or not there is a "nearest guy" to punch, and who has the power - as a participant in the game - to make the presence of such a person part of the shared fiction.

 

[pemerton]

In a system where PCs can die, the campaign can end via TPK just due random circumstances.

This being true depends on more than whether or not PCs can die. It also depends upon how circumstances are established, and under what conditions PC death is a possible consequence in the system.