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

[pemerton]

The problem is the same issue you seem to have with our preferred playstyle: we find it un-immersive.

Are you able to say something more about that? I mean, I can conjecture but that might be a bit rude.

 

[pemerton]

Mate. That quote of mine is not even from this tread.

Sorry, I got my searches confused.

@Micah Sweet, the posts are these:

it is the goal for some people create an impression of being a person living in a fantasy world like we live in the real world.

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

Given that it is now agreed that some people find having to frequently go back to the GM for information and permission at odds with immersion, I think we can see that the notion of "living in a fantasy world like we live in the real world" has no general connection to only the GM can ever establish anything about the shared fiction other than the PC's bodily or mental movements.

 

[pemerton]

I'm not sure what's gained by always saying no to this.

It stops exploits and power-gaming!

 

[pemerton]

Yes, the players can focus on stuff that was initially just background and bring it to the forefront and make it the focus of the action and attention. This to me seems rather obvious.

Once we accept that it is obvious that players might want to foreground and make salient stuff that is only implicit background - the most recent example is @soviet's discussion of the band not far upthread - then the question becomes, what process is used to handle this?

Here are two options (they are not the only ones):

(1) if a player declares an action that renders salient some such implicit thing, the GM rolls with it and finds out what happens.

(2) If a payer declares an action that renders salient some such implicit thing, the GM tells them the thing doesn't actually exist/obtain.​

I think the relationship between process (2) and railroading is obvious.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Once we accept that it is obvious that players might want to foreground and make salient stuff that is only implicit background - the most recent example is @soviet's discussion of the band not far upthread - then the question becomes, what process is used to handle this?

Here are two options (they are not the only ones):

(1) if a player declares an action that renders salient some such implicit thing, the GM rolls with it and finds out what happens.​

​

(2) If a payer declares an action that renders salient some such implicit thing, the GM tells them the thing doesn't actually exist/obtain.​

I think the relationship between process (2) and railroading is obvious.

It's not. To be railroading the GM should choose which foregrounding to allow and which to block based on desire to guide the game towards some specific direction, and I don't think these sort of decisions are generally done on such basis.

 

[soviet]

'OK, you walk into the bar. There's no music, no food, and no other customers or points of interest. The man behind the bar looks up at you and nods'.

'Thank you GM. I'll buy a drink and sit down in a quiet corner'.

'Whoa whoa whoa. You've made a lot of world bending assumptions here. AAARGH, my immersion! He doesn't speak your language so you can't communicate with him. You were pickpocketed on the walk over so you have no money to buy a drink with. You are suddenly paralysed so you can't in fact hold a tankard. They don't have any drinks in stock. They don't serve your kind anyway. There are no seats and the floor is lava. All parts of the room are equally noisy or noiseless. The bar features non-Euclidian geometry and has no corners.'

'Oh, and, that man isn't even staff. He resents your apparent assumption that he is. Roll initiative'

 

[soviet]

Yeah, if I had no particular conception regarding some minor detail, and what the player asks* or assumes fits the general vibe I'm going for then I might just as well roll with it.

And I am sure in practice in very game players infer some things that were not directly mentioned. But are sorta arguing about the scale of things that can be inferred. But these probably depend a lot on the each group's, and particularly on the GM's style. For example I think I am more verbose and detailed with my descriptions than a certain GM whose game I play in. So in my game there might be less that needs to be inferred. For example I feel that if there was band or a musician present in a bar, that is the sort of thing I would mention unprompted.

* And indeed similar thing happens with questions. LIke if the GM had not thought about the band or a musician, and the player asks "Is there a band?" then it might indeed make the GM decide that there is, thus the question effectively causing the band to materialise.

I agree. I think this is all pretty reasonable, and yes for sure different groups will have different levels of permissiveness or tolerance for how much of this 'filling in the expected details of the scene' they want.

Which is why I think the wording used by other posters, that it's 'world bending' or 'immersion breaking', is not helpful. It's not something jarring or extreme, it's something that almost every group does to some degree.

 

[pemerton]

To be railroading the GM should choose which foregrounding to allow and which to block based on desire to guide the game towards some specific direction, and I don't think these sort of decisions are generally done on such basis.

Railroading is about control, not about motivation.

 

[pemerton]

Which is why I think the wording used by other posters, that it's 'world bending' or 'immersion breaking', is not helpful. It's not something jarring or extreme, it's something that almost every group does to some degree.

Hence why I posted this upthread, in reply to @Oofta:

So now the boundary between "world-bending power" and "not every single details needs to be out of the mouth of the DM" is to be drawn exactly where you draw it in your play?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Railroading is about control, not about motivation.

I don't agree. It requires intentionality, and also is more of a macro scale phenomenon. Saying that there is no band, because I imagined a small and quiet bar is not railroading by any reasonable or usable definition of the word.