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

[pemerton]

On what basis do they decide what they want their PCs to do?

What do yo mean? They play their PCs, imagining what their PCs want, hope for, are afraid of, etc.

 

[pemerton]

I would prefer my PCs make choice based on what they have reason to know, not on what I want from the story narratively or what I know outside of the PC.

Who is saying anything about "what I want from the story narratively". I'm talking about what is at stake in the situation.

Eg in the example of punching a guy in the face, that is about the character wanting to punch someone in the face. It's a "diegetic" desire.

When I, as my PC Thurgon, look out for members of my family as Aramina and I arrive in my ancestral lands, that is a "diegetic" desire.

There's no connection between whether or not a player is playing their PC from their character's perspective and who gets to establish shared fiction, and how, about whether or not another NPC is nearby.

 

[Thomas Shey]

As the saying goes, extreme claims require extreme evidence. Your statements are not extreme but they are close.

[citation needed]

Seriously, I've not seen signs that outside the OSR community, sandboxes have been a particularly common playstyle in decades. As such, I'm afraid I'm not going to buy I'm making anything close to an extreme claim here.

At one point WotC stated that roughly half of all campaigns were homebrew. They must think it's a pretty high percentage considering how many pages are dedicated to it in the new DMG. Even with published mods, in many cases what I've seen is the DM just mines them for ideas and scenarios but doesn't stick close to the default path. Others are designed to be played as sandboxes.

I don't think I ever said anything about how many campaigns are homebrewed. Nothing about being homebrewed requires it to be a sandbox, however.

I think there's plenty of evidence for more open gameplay. You aren't just stating an opinion. This all started with you stating as a fact that open campaigns are "fringe". Now, some campaigns are going to be more true sandboxes than others but over decades of play DMs running prepared modules account for less than half the games I've played.

Because the best evidence I have is (again outside the OSR), they are. If that's unsatisfactory to you, so be it. Non-sandboxes do not imply prepared modules. They just imply that there's some borders on the expected range and scope of the campaign. I've never run a module in my life, but haven't run a sandbox in more than 30 years at this point. They aren't the same thing.

 

[pemerton]

From the point of view of the player it makes no difference if the world is created by a single person or any anything else.

This sentence is as implausible as saying from the point of view of a musician it makes no difference whether they or someone else plays their instrument, or from the point of view of a chess player it makes no difference whether they or someone else decides which of their pieces to move, and how.

Creating shared fiction is the essence of RPGing. Creating the "world" is one aspect of that. Who gets to create that bit of the shared fiction, according to what principles, and using what methods, is fundamental to the play experience.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

Unless it was established that the bar was empty or almost empty, assuming that there is such a thing as "nearest guy" within reasonable engagement distance seems pretty safe on the player's part to me. That I as GM am in the control of the environment, doesn't to me mean the players need to verify every minute detail. And whilst I try to keep my descriptions concise, I also do my best to provide the players with sufficient information. For example when initially describing the bar I certainly would mention how crowded it was.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Ah. I almost always am, because I don't have the right to speak for anyone else.

I don't think I need to have a right to speak for things I've both observed and seen described. If that was a requirement to discuss things, no social science would exist, and probably mighty little history.

 

[pemerton]

Both the GM and the real world are external to you. You cannot decide how the world is, it is determined independently of you.

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?

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

Whether or not the fiction is realistic, or is verisimilitudinous, is about its content. Just as is the case for a TV drama.

But the notion that some method of creating the fiction - say, having the GM just narrate it - is more realistic is a contentious claim. Like, is a novel more realistic because it was written in order rather than written and revised in a manner that does not reflect the sequence of the novel?

Experiencing things as "external" - ie narrated to me by someone else - is one part of the experience of a RPG. Experiencing things as "alienated from me" because they are narrated to me by someone else - is another part of the experience of a RPG. Spending time adding up numbers and looking up information in books is yet another part of the experience of a RPG.

Which combination of experiences will most lead to an immersive RPG experience seems like it might be idiosyncratic, reflecting particular features of the mental and emotional processes of a particular RPGer. The notion that there is an a priori "logical" truth about this doesn't seem tenable to me.

 

[pemerton]

No, we have plenty of evidence to show that the world is not flat.

We do not, however, have any evidence to show that the universe is not a simulation, and a little that suggests it is. Look it up.

The thing about science is we go by the evidence, not what we want to be true.

So just to be clear, the argument is that GM-centred RPGing is more realistic because the universe is probably, or plausibly, a simulation?

Is this serious?

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

Getting people to communicate that sort of thing properly isn't always that easy, either, any more than it is any number of other places in human endeavor.

 

[pemerton]

I prefer my D&D to be about heroes being heroic.

The particular RPG I was posting about was Apocalypse World, not D&D.

But I have used mainstream FRPG rules - AD&D and Rolemaster - to play FRPGs which are not just about "heroes being heroic". Adventure fiction is not the only sort of experience that RPGing, even FRPGing, can aspire to.