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

[Numidius]

Not having a long thermal bath after a deadly encounter, that would be unrealistic.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I really, really don't want to get bogged down in this "but you said thing x that I take offense to so now the conversation needs to change from analysis of the mechanics and veracity of thing x (to prove or falsify the claim) to the legitimacy of my grievances" because I feel like this this approach happens far too often and all it does is serve to undermine any actual interesting conversation about TTRPGs (which is sort of the point of coming here to converse?).

However...

allowing for this for a moment, why isn't it helpful to examine controversial claims about aspects of all kinds of play? In my experience, there is HUGE utility in reflecting on your own play and/or games you advocate for.

I can trivially name two off the top of my head.

1) 4e's "skip the (implied 'boring') gate guards and get to the fun." My personal reflection of this (in a game I advocate for) has me of the position that (a) they meant something else (eg the indie axioms of "cut to the action" and "at every moment, drive play toward conflict") and (b) this clumsy iteration of (a) (much like Mearls statement in the 5e playtest of "shouting arms back on") served only to undermine the edition in both (i) needlessly turning a segment of gamers off to no good end and (ii) not actually being REMOTELY as clear as just recapitulate the indie axioms themselves (which are abundantly clear!).

So this is bad. Don't do this again.

2) 4e detractors' position that 4e's roles and mechanics are just artificial video games in disguise. They're obviously not. But what do they actually resemble? Magic Decks. MtG is WotC's primary bread-winner so of course that group consulted on 4e's design.

So these two things above (along with other things such as noncombat conflict resolution, keyword architecture being fundamental, and focused themes/premise) combined lead me to (correctly) frame the game design as an action adventure game primarily inspired by indie games and Magic the Gathering. From that, I'm better able to explain all manner of things to people who don't grok the game or who are trying to learn the game.


Sum total, there is enormous utility in provocative positions (even...or perhaps especially...wrong ones) that beg analysis if you're just willing to engage with the ideas (and try to falsify them or be willing to be convinced by them) rather than trying to instead reframe the entirety of the conversation around your offense.

Except, and I say this as a person who really disliked 4E and used plenty of insulting language in the debates over it, if you are framing the discussion this way, with heavily loaded language, that is going to bias your analysis. My analysis of 4E wasn't objective. It was based on a real reaction I had, and I think stating that initial reaction is fine. But after years of these kinds of discussions, to cling to terms like that to, to insist on language like mother may i, my whole point is you can't really analyze this stuff objectively if your mired in gaming ideology the way the OP is. I feel like it is very hard for me and Pemerton to have a real conversation about what drives my style of play, because he is always looking for the angle of attack. And mother may I is just one aspect of that. Whereas, I think I could have an honest conversation with Pemerton about his style of play, because I am genuinely curious about other play styles, and I am not looking to disprove them. But in conversation with Pemerton and a lot of his followers, we have to struggle just to even prove our preference exists in the first place. Not saying everyone on my side of the debate has behaved perfectly. but this isn't simply about people having grievances. We are pointing out this isn't a real conversation or a real analysis. It is a flamewar disguised as analysis.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You keep leveling this charge against @pemerton, but if memory serves you jumped in during the initial thread at the earliest opportunity by taking offense with his posts despite the fact he used the term "Mother-May-I" in quotations, following the original poster's usage, and proffered his own, less pejorative term half the time instead; and then you went on to say you had no issue with the OP's use of the term. Perhaps you are looking for offense where none is intended, particularly where pemerton is concerned? As you say in one of your posts, you believe you and he rarely see eye-to-eye, so perhaps this colors how you infer tone from his posts?

I would 100% agree my objectivity is probably not the best when it comes to Pemerton. I think though, I am more objective than he is when we have our exchanges. I at least understand I am dealing with an intelligent poster who has given a great deal of thought to these things. And I try not to be insulting of anyone's intellect in these exchanges. I don't feel that is reciprocated. And my memory of this earlier phase of the debate is different from your's (though admittedly, on a hundreds page thread, I could be mistaken). My main gripe is with the OP of this thread, which I had asked him not to start and I felt was overly aggressive (maybe I am being a baby, but I just don't like a poster taking one quote like that from me and starting a whole thread against it, when I said I wasn't interested in the conversation).

And to me the disingenuousness of the argument being made in the OP, is so obvious It is purely a rhetorical tactic (the idea that someone invokes realism, so they would need to defend a setting being as realistic as the processes that underly reality? That makes any invocation of realism useless). It feels to me like the argument of someone who is intelligent and educated in the process of debate, but using that knowledge in a way that isn't sincerely trying to arrive at anything true (it is just being used to win).

 

[Bedrockgames]

And you guys can say "well shouldn't we be able to get past this and examine the substance". I think that is hard to do when half the posters feel the topic was poisoned from the very first post. And I think most of us can't help shaking the feeling we are being laughed at by the other side.

 

[Imaculata]

I'm willing to bet my campaign is less realistic than most of the campaigns on this board.
But it has a few unique semi-realistic rules. The rest follows rule-of-cool though.

 

[pemerton]

I say this as a person who really disliked 4E and used plenty of insulting language in the debates over it

<snip>

I think I could have an honest conversation with Pemerton about his style of play, because I am genuinely curious about other play styles, and I am not looking to disprove them.

These two propositions aren't immediately reconcilable, at least by me.

As far as having an "honest conversation" about how I like to play RPGs, whenever you want to talk about non-GM decides techniques then do so! But in this thread, the few times I've invited you to do that - particularly to engage with the idea of "say 'yes' or roll the dice" as opposed to player decides - you've declined.

But in conversation with Pemerton and a lot of his followers

I have friends, and colleagues, and students, and family members, and on these boards I have fellow posters - but I don't think I have any followers.

we have to struggle just to even prove our preference exists in the first place.

I don't think anyone is in any doubt that your preferences exist. The whole history of RPGing from c1984 to today is largely a testament to them. Any random thread about GMing techniques on this board will almost certainly present your prefences as if they are synonymous with playing D&D or even with RPGing as such. (See eg the current New DM thread in this General RPG sub-forum.) So I'm not sure what you think the struggle consists in.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I'm willing to bet my campaign is less realistic than most of the campaigns on this board.
But it has a few unique semi-realistic rules. The rest follows rule-of-cool though.

I am not particularly caught up in realism as I am in causality in my games. My style is to emulate the stuff of wuxia movies and books, but I like to do so in a way that, for me at least, makes the place feel like a real thing the players are exploring. So I am not worried about rigid adherence to weighing all the items characters are carrying, but I don't want to teleport my NPCs around for pure convenience of plot. But any effort at plausibility is surely more eyeballed than measured. I also want what is going on to logically follow from prior events and NPC motivations (i.e. well, Iron Toothed Bat King is still sore about the players getting away with the Obsidian Bat, and he was in Kaifeng eight days ago, so getting to Handan and ambushing the PCs here is plausible. I would then call for a Survival roll on the part of the PCs to see if they spot the ambush or wander into it). I still want it to be interesting and a bit dramatic, but I also want to keep plausibility in play. And I am fine making the call myself about where Iron Tooth Bat King is in this situation, because I am playing the guy and know what he is trying to do.

 

[Aldarc]

Max isn't, either, or, at least, he hasn't been able to articulate it clearly.

Thankfully he can just say that it's on a spectrum, which allows him to obfuscate terms and move goal posts as needed. Then he can throw in a few of his usual logical fallacy buzzwords, such as accusing you of making a false dichotomy about realism, allowing him to further evade the actual argument in the discussion.

Edit: This is all to say, that while I do think that you, [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] likely do have your heart in the right place and are a good DM for your table, you can be an aggrevatingly frustrating person to talk to sometimes.

Someone mentioned it earlier, it might have been Bedrockgames, where D&D needs to be able to appeal to a wider market, so for those:

I'll just be "that guy" and say it, but I don't care about what D&D does. I don't need D&D to be all and end all of RPG experiences. I don't use a D&D as a metric for what I am looking for in a game.

[MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION], I think that you are looking for far more offense than is intended with pemerton, and you should probably learn to chill out, because your "counteroffenses" are often unnecessarily disproportionate to what was said, conveyed, or intended. It tends to escalate things. I would at least suggest taking a different tact, because it's clearly not working much for anyone. If you need a good example to follow, I personally think that [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] is an exemplary poster who know knows how to respectfully engage a variety of different posters even when he disagrees with them.

But in conversation with Pemerton and a lot of his followers, we have to struggle just to even prove our preference exists in the first place.

I am, however, incredulous about this statement given how "pemerton and a lot of his followers" hold a position that is undboutedly in the minority within gaming circles; if anything, it's in the reverse - that "pemerton and a lot of his followers" have to justify their own approaches - such that you are expressing a false victimization complex. And also I would warn against using language such as "and his followers," as that sort of unnecessarily loaded language marginalizes and maligns a lot of the agency that individuals have deciding their own game preferences. Let's spell this out: "mother-may-I" may be derogatory to a playstyle, but lumping people together as "pemerton and a lot his followers" displays a derogatory attitude towards actual people.

 

[Bedrockgames]

These two propositions aren't immediately reconcilable, at least by me.
.

One of those statements is past tense. You are probably right though. I wouldn't be as objective as I could be. But I am also not trying to win 4E flamewars anymore, and I really do understand, I think, why people who like it, find it enjoyable (and I don't hold it against people or the system, it just wasn't for me). I've also realized a lot of the ideas I picked up about why I didn't like 4E, while they may have got at something that made sense to me at the time, pushed me into much too extreme of a stance and caused me to reject similar mechanics in smaller quantity that I would have otherwise enjoyed in a game. I think in these arguments it is possible to build up your own position against the opposition so much, you start harming your own playstyle. And that happened to me with the 4E discussions. So if we had a talk about it today, I would definitely concede a lot more ground. But sure, I didn't particularly like the edition and that is going to color my discussion with you if it is a part of your playstyle.

 

[pemerton]

And to me the disingenuousness of the argument being made in the OP, is so obvious It is purely a rhetorical tactic (the idea that someone invokes realism, so they would need to defend a setting being as realistic as the processes that underly reality? That makes any invocation of realism useless).

And given that this is not the argument of the OP of this thread - as I have stated numerous times - I feel you are either misrepresenting it, or misunderstanding it.

The argument of the OP is as follows: that a player having to accept something as true in the shared fiction because the GM decided it is more "Mother may I" than an actual person encountering something as true in the real world. Because the former, but not the latter, is an expression of someone's authorial judgement.

The former is, in fact, precisely a manifestation of the sort of thing the other thread was intending to capture by use of the phrase "Mother may I".