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

[Crimson Longinus]

I can think of a couple, one recent and minor, another from years ago and much more significant.

The recent one was not in D&D, but in a game of Stonetop. It's a PbtA game about the champions of a quasi-iron age village. While there are certainly elements of challenge, the focus of play is more about discovering what happens to the characters and the village.

The issue came when I introduced a complication on a partial success to a player who can at times be very win-oriented. He's a huge video gamer, and that can bleed over into his RPGs at times. He was trying to get help from one group of people against another, and for the complication due to the partial success, I introduced a level of uncertainty about the new allies. That although they will help now, they may cause issues in the future.

What happened next was that he locked up and couldn't make a decision to accept the help or not. The other players were all watching, and kind of indirectly urging him to proceed. But he couldn't accept anything but a perfect resolution... unless he got assistance without any drawbacks, his brain couldn't proceed. The other players got frustrated, and then he got frustrated in response. We resolved it by calling it a night and agreeing to talk about it later on. A couple days later, he and I met for lunch, and we discussed it. We talked about the purpose of play and expectations and so on. And things have been fine since then.

The other time was far worse. It was about 12 years ago. My group was playing Pathfinder at the time. I was the primary GM and I was growing increasingly frustrated with the system and the process of running it. I had a player who was very much focused on character builds. He's spend hours in between sessions working on builds and trying to come up with really combat-effective characters. Then he'd bring them to play, see them in action for a session or two, and then his interest would totally die. And he'd ask to make a new character. After this happening several times, he came to the game with a character that was one of the most absurd things I'd ever seen. It was a version of the Summoner class from Pathfinder... except the Summoner would summon the Eidolon, and it would surround the summoner like power armor. Not bad in and of itself... but he could also somehow duplicate this thing so that he had another? Something like that.

Anyway, it was a really broken combo of things and his character was just like super effective. In a tough fight against some really tough enemies, the Eidolon actually was defeated (or banished? I forget, but it was out of play). The character then proceeded to break out his bow and was as effective an archer as our ranger character. So then after several rounds of like 6 shots per round or something, I eventually asked him how many arrows he had.

He totally flipped out. Got mad at me because "we never track ammo" and so on, and how I was just trying to find a way to "make him lose". He stormed out.

Now, I'm not going to say it was entirely his fault... I definitely bear some of the blame. I was not trying to make him lose so much as trying to find ANY weak spot to his character. Like some kind of drawback. The fact that I got to "how many arrows do you have" shows that I was scrambling for any kind of shortcoming. So, he was right in a way... I probably was focused on that stuff more than I should have been. On his side, I think he was approaching the game from a way that was totally over the top and extreme.

We smoothed things over and remain friends, and he still games with us upon occasion (he's since moved, so it's rare). I also have never run or played Pathfinder again. It was the last straw for that game for me, and probably a sign I should have punched out sooner. I don't like its focus on character build and the way that works and how the system allows for truly absurd combinations.

I have to say that I quite do not see the relevance of either of these instances to the sort of things we've been discussing here.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Crimson may have their own response but in general i feel we’ve been fairly consistent in saying that being able to directly manipulate details about a setting as a player (or having other players do the same) is un-immersive for us, (with a lack of immersion hilighting the artificial nature of the setting) as ‘in the real world’ it’s not possible to influence things in that way.

I will be the first to admit that I am personally unconcerned with the idea of "artificiality" as it's been presented. Probably because I've GMed so much that I'm not really gonna forget that this is all make believe.

However, I think that's different than the idea of "buy in". I want characters and situations that are compelling and that draw me in. I want to buy in to their world.

As it relates to the limits of characters in the game... the way I look at it is that in the real world, I generally have other ways I can influence things that don't really exist for characters in the game. And so some authorial ability in the game helps offset that loss.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I have to say that I quite do not see the relevance of either of these instances to the sort of things we've been discussing here.

That's too bad!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

That's too bad!

It sure is! It would have been nice of someone had elaborated though.

 

[hawkeyefan]

It sure is! It would have been nice of someone had elaborated though.

I mean, it's about a page back. You can literally click on the links at the top of the posts to trace it back to where it started!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I mean, it's about a page back. You can literally click on the links at the top of the posts to trace it back to where it started!

Ah, I see! Maybe... You mean these were examples of the participants not being on the same page, not having same expectations what the game was about and how it was to be played? If so, then I get it. I sorta was seeking connection to the larger topic of GM/player role distribution thing.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I totally understand if you want to maintain their privacy, or just don't remember or feel like sharing, but I have to admit I'm fairly curious about the course of that conversation, both their perspective and how the instigating issue was resolved.

Sure.

His primary concern, and mine although I wasn't really worried about it, was that our friendship was intact. He didn't want a game to become an issue that affected us. We've been friends for like 40 years (insane), so that was his main thing. I assured him that wasn't an issue at all... we just have mismatched expectations about play, and it caused frustration.

He said that what caused the frustration for him was that he felt like it was a no-win situation. I pointed out that he did get what he had set out to get in that scene. I just hinted at possible future trouble. I explained that as soon as I did that, and saw his response, I realized that I would have been better off with some sort of other consequence. But based on the fiction of play, it was the most obvious and sensible consequence (that the people they were allying with could cause issues).

I explained to him that there's no winning the game in Stonetop, and that I feel that sometimes he's trying to win rather than to be curious about what happens. And although there are elements of challenge in the game... enemies to defeat, problems to solve, and so on... it's more about seeing what happens than it is about winning.

None of this was anything he didn't really know, but it was good to talk about it and share thoughts on it. After that talk, we were all good.

 

[Xamnam]

Thank you for writing that up! Very interesting that he took that partial success as a no-win response, but given that, I now absolutely can understand freezing when you feel like you're in that position. Glad that it was a fruitful conversation.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Thank you for writing that up! Very interesting that he took that partial success as a no-win response, but given that, I now absolutely can understand freezing when you feel like you're in that position. Glad that it was a fruitful conversation.

In games with a success with a consequence it is pretty tricky to balance things so that the success still feels worth the consequence, because if not, it just feels like a failure. Not that @hawkeyefan's example seemed to have an issue with this to me, but the player probably saw it differently.

 

[Dire Bare]

Different strokes for different folks. If you want to collaboratively build a world as a DM and player, go for it. Just stop telling people we're doing it wrong if we don't.

Is anyone here really . . . telling you that you are doing it wrong?

I mean, I'm skimming the thread at this point, but there seems to be a lot of folks saying "Stop telling me I'm doing it wrong!" and very few (that I've noticed) actually telling anyone, "Hey, you're doing it wrong!"

Disagreement is not the same thing as telling someone their preferences are wrong.

@Oofta, your playstyle and viewpoint does not align with the way I like to engage with D&D (and other RPGs) today. That doesn't mean I think you're doing it wrong, just wrong for me. You seem to have a good gaming group going based on those preferences, so who's to tell you that all that fun you and your friends are having is wrong? I don't think anyone here is doing that.

If I've missed an egregious post in all of this circular back-and-forth, I apologize.