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

[Crimson Longinus]

Oh there’s some leeway.

Like when you do a jigsaw puzzle. Some people start with the corners and borders and then work their way in. Others start with the an obvious section where they find all the similar pieces and start connecting them.

You can go about it in slightly different ways, but all the pieces are still going to fit together the same way in the end.

Nope. It is more like a Lego set. You have set amount and type of pieces but you can put them together in countless different way and create something on one had anticipated.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

And yet:
So apparently you and Micah Sweet are talking about quite different things!

Yes. So?

 

[hawkeyefan]

Nope. It is more like a Lego set. You have set amount and type of pieces but you can put them together in countless different way and create something on one had anticipated.

If you create a murder mystery and you know who did it, why, and how and you also decide what clues are available to he found… how is it you aren’t going to anticipate the solution?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

If you create a murder mystery and you know who did it, why, and how and you also decide what clues are available to he found… how is it you aren’t going to anticipate the solution?

I of course knew who they would find to be the murderer. But I did not see the path they took to get there. Because even in such a simple and contained scenario there are so many possibilities. Like for example I did not foresee them talking to a spider to get an eyewitness account of certain events.

And when we move outside such a limited scenario, where the goal itself is something the payers can freely choose and alter, the possibilities become effectively limitless. I just don't get the argument that unless you get to constantly invent new setting elements, you cannot influence the things as a player. Mate, you're deciding what one of the main characters of the story does!

Like there has been a big storyline regarding giants in my campaign, and it is still ongoing. And all because one player decided that their character starts to obsess over the ancient giant civilisation and wants to explore it after a chance encounter with one giant. But the player didn't need to invent that giants existed or what their ancient empire was like for this to happen.

 

[pemerton]

You can go about it in slightly different ways, but all the pieces are still going to fit together the same way in the end.

Moldvay Basic is very clear about this:

At the start of the game, the players enter the dungeon and the DM describes what the characters can see. One player should draw a map from the DM's descriptions; that player is called the mapper. As the player characters move further into the dungeon, more and more of the dungeon is mapped. Eventually, the DM's map and the players' map will look more or less alike. (p B4)​

In other words, it's clear that a big part of play, in Moldvay's version of D&D's (which is closely modelled on Gygax's), is the players learning more and more of the GM's hidden information.

The principal pleasure in play, for this sort of RPGing, is beating the dungeon - by mapping it, exploring it, looting it.

How that works when transposed to mystery solving is something that I think is less often talked about. Some mystery-solving RPGing seems to be similar: the goal of play is to "beat" the mystery, by solving it. Of course this has to leave a failure to solve the mystery as a real possibility on the table. And it requires constraining the situation in such a way that "beating" the mystery is feasible (just as dungeon play constrains the situation in all sorts of largely artificial ways).

 

[AnotherGuy]

* We sometimes see priorities around how authority is distributed and "ownership rights" (my character's inner workings are my exclusive purview) unhelpfully binned under a priority for immersion.

Think of it this way, I place on my VR goggles and interact (IMMERSE) with the VR world. If every so often, I have to take off my VR goggles and write code for the VR world, I'm breaking my immersion with the VR world.

Can you now explain to me why you see this (authority is distributed and "ownership rights") as unhelpful?

 

[AnotherGuy]

@Oofta can you see any scenario where a player via character asks your character an origin question which details likely have not been already established and you are not required to turn to the DM for authorship powers?

i.e. Did you have siblings? How many siblings did you have? What does your name mean in elvish? Was your mother a good cook? Were you close to your father? Did you parents ever dabble in magic? Was your family religious/traditional? ...etc

 

[AnotherGuy]

Fair play I get, especially in the context of @hawkeyefan's example.

But "the narrative" takes me right back to the discussion of the McGuffin - I don't see how it differs from railroad.

By narrative I was referring to the unfolding fiction

The whole language of "pushing boundaries", and the notion of the GM as a controlling force who might "let them get away with" stuff reminds me of this:

The key assumption throughout all these games is that if a gaming experience is to be intelligent (and all Fantasy Heartbreakers make this claim), then the most players can be relied upon to provide is kind of the "Id" of play - strategizing, killing, and conniving throughout the session. They are the raw energy, the driving "go," and the GM's role is to say, "You just scrap, strive, and kill, and I'll show ya, with this book, how it's all a brilliant evocative fantasy.".

It's not Illusionism - there's no illusion at all, just movement across the landscape and the willingness to fight as the baseline player things to do. . . . The Explorative, imaginative pleasure experienced by a player - and most importantly, communicated among players - simply doesn't factor into play at all . . .

Specifically your quote

It's that last sentence in particular that I'm reminded of: the notion is of a player who is approaching the game without any apparent care for the shared fiction as a fiction.

And this is in line with @Lanefan's comments about how certain players (including himself) would absolutely push those boundaries, afterall players are always advocating for themselves, their characters, as they should, not everyone prioritises the story (the narrative) over their characters.

These type of players may not be at your table, but they do exist and they would be more prevalent in Trad-styled games.

 

[pemerton]

And this is in line with @Lanefan's comments about how certain players (including himself) would absolutely push those boundaries, afterall players are always advocating for themselves, their characters, as they should, not everyone prioritises the story (the narrative) over their characters.

Where I would quibble with this is that - as I see it, and tried to convey in my post - it's not about prioritising story over character, but rather fiction over expedience.

In particular, having a conception of my character as someone in the fiction, located in a fictional position, is something that I can do without prioritising a story. And if I have that sort of conception, then naturally I will start to have a sense of what I can and can't do, what requests (or demands) I can and cannot make of my patron Odin, etc.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Where I would quibble with this is that - as I see it, and tried to convey in my post - it's not about prioritising story over character, but rather fiction over expedience.

Maybe, although the personal examples I'm drawing on was not an action declaration but actual authorship of NPCs that had the table rebel against those.

In particular, having a conception of my character as someone in the fiction, located in a fictional position, is something that I can do without prioritising a story. And if I have that sort of conception, then naturally I will start to have a sense of what I can and can't do, what requests (or demands) I can and cannot make of my patron Odin, etc.

As an side, having participated in this thread, I'm of the opinion that the Odin example is out of the depth of most trad players in that it requires some thinking work from the DM - possibly mechanics, limitations, setting changes, costs and some house rules. It is quite a big buy in to ask when one's trying to convince them to

• narrate simple character declarations without the assistance of a DM, such as I punch the nearest patron in the tavern; or
• have their character answer a simple origin question, such as was your father an elf?

nevermind things like letting a player

• create 3 characters they've met and have a good, poor or indifferent relationship with;
• determine if the upcoming village has a blacksmith and if their character knows him; or
• describe the magical sword they found...etc