A GMing telling the players about the gameworld is not like real life

[Bedrockgames]

It wasn't, since both the Medusa and Gorgon are D&D creatures that turn people to stone, so you could have been putting them together with the slash as creatures that turn things to stone.



There's a big difference between common creatures, and rare or very rare creatures. The latter simply aren't going to be common knowledge, and even uncommon creatures won't be known by all. You're arguing that some peasant who has lived his whole life in the middle of a forest is going to have working knowledge of what Solars can do, because folklore.



Even Gygax talked about developing personality traits and other aspects of the personae for the characters. He also gave out roleplaying traits for different races, like dwarves being dour and such. It's clear that even as far back as 1e, players were expected to "act" out their character and not just treat the game as a game.

It's also pretty telling that you ignored my comment about how inconsistent and frequently wrong folklore is.

Read the Van Richten books. It really doesn’t.each monster can be unique

 

[Maxperson]

That's only how you choose to run it, Max.

Yes, I choose to run with the intent of Gygax. Rarity is a thing. You just aren't going to encounter as many hydras as you do goblins.

It's also clear that players were supposed to use their knowledge and wits to overcome challenges to achieve the victory conditions of the game.

Yes, but within the restriction of not having the characters use knowledge that the player has, but the PCs don't. Gygax was clear about that in the quotes I used from the 1e DMG.

You should know better to equate silence with agreement or victory. Please, stop treating conversations as something to be won.

Cool, as I didn't do either.

The reality is that I don't necessarily want to pursue every single adventure path or plot hook you put forth.

You cut out the most important point in that post to burble about the unimportant ones. That smells very much like an evasion. That doesn't mean win or loss for me, it's just telling that you evaded like that.

 

[Maxperson]

Read the Van Richten books. It really doesn’t.each monster can be unique

In an environment that is like that, sure. I have a Van Richten book and it's more about building undead types, than on specific monsters. The customization makes a ghoul more of an undead of consuming, than a "ghoul," as the end result will likely not be very much like a ghoul at all. It gives so many options and varieties to mix and match, that you are basically building new monsters from scratch, using specific type of undead as the base.

 

[Aldarc]

Yes, I choose to run with the intent of Gygax.

LOL.

Yes, but within the restriction of not having the characters use knowledge that the player has, but the PCs don't. Gygax was clear about that in the quotes I used from the 1e DMG.

So clear that you still had plenty enough disagreement about the issue. Hardly as clear cut as you like to pretend it is. You have an incredibly Manichaean approach to reading text. You remind me of Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch who made the argument (albeit before joining SCOTUS) that law should be read and interpreted as "plain text," which his future Supreme Court Justices (including those with similar political leanings) found a laughably indefensible position. It's as if you have no room for ambiguity when you read anything or present any text. There is Max's reading or nothing.

Cool, as I didn't do either.

Even now, you can't help but avoid treating every conversation as something to be won with a quip. When will you leave your arrested development?

 

[Maxperson]

Even now, you can't help but avoid treating every conversation as something to be won with a quip.

You don't get to tell me what I am doing or why I am doing it. Only I can do that. And I'm telling you in no uncertain terms, I am not doing these things to "win." If you are seeing that, then it's caused by your misperception. Now that you understand that you are perceiving things incorrectly, any further such accusations by you will be deliberate misstatements on your part.

 

[Manbearcat]

I also don't view the competition as bastardized, as I and my players view roleplaying your character properly, even to the detriment of character and party, as good roleplaying. The competition doesn't override good roleplay. Roleplaying is a part of that competition and helps define it.

That means that if my PC doesn't know about troll weaknesses, it's good roleplaying to portray that in character. You may disagree and that's fine. People have different views and desires when playing the game. My way doesn't become bastardized or lose the discovery aspect I mentioned just because you view things differently, though.

On Competition

So what you're saying here is that in your table's hierarchy of play priorities, (your perception of) "good roleplay" is a higher priority than "competition". To wit, when play at the table puts these two priorities at tension, "competition" becomes subordinate (possibly to the extent of rendering it null) to (your perception of) "good roleplay".

Is that correct? (if its not, I don't know what you're saying here, so I'd appreciate clarification in terms of play priorities and tension).

If that is correct, I don't see how it disagrees with what I wrote at all. I said the following:

a) Competition becoming subordinate (to anything really) challenges the authentic agency of the participants in dictating outcomes as an expression of their competitive interests, which in turn causes this particular moment of play to lose its "competitive integrity" (because competition in this case is a binary thing...just like with an egregiously bad call in sports completely changing the trajectory of play/dictating outcomes and undermining the participant's agency).

b) Do something else so you don't have Competition and (your perception of) "good roleplay" at tension (eg if "Trolls vulnerable to fire" isn't an adventuring zeitgeist that social creatures pass on from town to town to town to town until it becomes a foundational premise for travelers or defenders of the wall or spook stories alike...then change your Trolls to be vulnerable to Cold Iron, Silver, Radiance, et al for this game).

I didn't misunderstand. I was offering a different viewpoint, and a failure to understand different viewpoints is where these discussions tend to go wrong. When I already know something as a player, but my character doesn't, I am indeed discovering what he knows via those activities I described. For me discovery is happening. For you, not so much.

On Discovery

So I'm going to frame this in terms of Dungeon World because it does the best work in communicating my meaning.

End of Session
When you reach the end of a session, choose one of your bonds that you feel is resolved (completely explored, no longer relevant, or otherwise). Ask the player of the character you have the bond with if they agree. If they do, mark XP and write a new bond with whomever you wish.

Once bonds have been updated look at your alignment. If you fulfilled that alignment at least once this session, mark XP. Then answer these three questions as a group:

Did we learn something new and important about the world?
Did we overcome a notable monster or enemy?
Did we loot a memorable treasure?

For each “yes” answer everyone marks XP.

See the bolded question above. This is the one I'm referring to. Pretend you're a player in Dungeon World and you have to answer that question. Any good Dungeon World End of Session move is going to have each player answering this question as "yes" and then depicting their answer.

Could you depict how you would answer this question if you were a player of an orthodox Troll encounter and you (the player) already knew that Trolls were vulnerable to fire but you've decided that your character did not.

In case you need reference, here is an example of an answer for the PCs in one of my past Dungeon World games to that question and the brief game context for how this Discovery emerged in play:

* Did we learn something new and important about the world?

There is a Fey Crossing smack in the middle of the Coldlands that cuts dead into the heart of the Vale of the Long Night, the territory of the Winter Fey.

The Arcane Duelist in my game used the Cast a Spell move as the following:

Contact Spirits Summoning
Name the spirit you wish to contact (or leave it to the GM). You pull that creature through the planes, just close enough to speak to you. It is bound to answer any one question you ask to the best of its ability.

Cast a Spell (Int)
2, 3 + 3 = 8

I'll take the complication:

You draw unwelcome attention or put yourself in a spot. The GM will tell you how.

This complication triggered a soft move from me. The PCs were looking to alert the Feywild about a Far Realm incursion into their home realm from the material world. They got their alert, but their alert manifested as the malign presence of the Winter Court and specifically an Eladrin Fey Knight and a noble Bralani. Summer Court vs Winter Court wasn't a thing in this game. After a parley turned nasty because of snowballing move complications (and ultimate failure) between the two Summer Court Elf PCs and the Winter Court, it became a thing (a new Front in DW parlance).

So this move complication created a Discovery...which snowballed into a Front (new source of antagonism) that wasn't a part of the game prior.

 

[pemerton]

Unlike the Tarrasque, flesh golem with different abilities would most probably not be recognizable as anything other than a normal flesh golem. There would be nothing to trigger any other lore. While there may be only one of them, it does not get the "unique" tag as it is used in D&D. It's still a flesh golem and not something else.

This is all arbitrary, though. The notion that there is some contrast between "unique" and "variant" is barely a rules construct, as opposed to a table convention. It's easy to decide that a creature's vulnerability will be reflected in its appearance or constitution in some form which is evident to those trained in arcane or occult ways.

I've never checked for traps for real in my life, but I can still check for them. You are just searching for things that are out of the ordinary and indicate that a trap is present

What does this mean, though? What is an "unusual" bump on a stone wall or statue? What is an unusual component of a door handle? People aren't born knowing these things.

Gorgons and Medusae are not basic monsters. The average person is not very likely to know about them.

Again, this is just stipulation.

If you want to treat D&D as a board game to "win" and not an RPG, then doing this is the way to go. I avoid playing with gamist people, though, so it's not an issue I or my players have.

And this is uncalled for.

For many players (me, I suspect [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION]), the essence of roleplaying is "inhabiting" one's character, and declaring actions from that position of inhabitation. And the objection to your treatment of troll vulnerability, in the context of a player who already knows what it is, is that it inhibits inhabitation because instead of playing my PC from within, I have to step outside and speculate about what a person who, unlike me, is ignorant of trolls, might do. It is a move from first to third person; a move from sincere inhabititon to alienated authorship.

 

[pemerton]

So this move complication created a Discovery...which snowballed into a Front (new source of antagonism) that wasn't a part of the game prior.

But Manbearcat, surely you realise that only "gamists" who wan to play D&D to WIN accept the sort of Schroedinger's Feywild you are describing here!

Real roleplayers learn about the Feywild by reading about it in a book published by TSR/WotC.

 

[chaochou]

Real roleplayers learn about the Feywild by reading about it in a book published by TSR/WotC.

And then fake-pretend not to know about it until the DM decides they're 'allowed' to.

Feigning ignorance until given permission to stop must be what makes such games so super realistic. And isn't Mother May I at all.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I agree. There was a cool scene recently in my Primeval Thule game where the party encountered a sewer ooze, the Dhari barbarian leapt to the fray, cleft it in twain... and found himself fighting two sewer oozes. But for that to happen it required the veteran player in the group to keep silent, for her to not warn her fellow player, and allow the scene to play out. That is very un-Gygaxian 'Skilled Play'.

5e D&D uses the old trick monsters, but is sufficiently forgiving that you can get away with stuff like that, where old-school D&D would be much more punitive - two ochre jellies might TPK a beginner party.

There's not too much tension between the approaches with one-attack-to-figure-out creatures, but trolls that keep on regenerating create a major disjunction. I think a typical solution (apart from ruling 'everyone knows') is to switch to fire after the first attacks don't work. It's not particularly satisfactory, and I normally go with 'everyone knows'. If I want a Gamist challenge I can use a non-troll regenerator. PCs then start with fire and if that fails, they try other options/damage types. (Funnily enough, 5e made the humble zombie a trick monster, since they now need radiant damage to reliably put down - this catches out a lot of players!)

'Everyone knows' is OK, or it can be a reasonably easy monster knowledge check. If the whole party manages to fail that check, well they be having a bum day...

OTOH it is probably just as well to not make it a mystery but then reveal some other unwelcome truth, like that supply of oil you counted on to light your way out of the dungeon is now going up in flames. Sure, you beat the trolls, but how are you getting out? Or maybe 'you burned up your oil supply, and now you meet MORE trolls...' There's always a way for a challenge to arise without the need for something being secret, which is generally what creates most meta-gaming.