D&D General Can we talk about best practices?

[Micah Sweet]

Again, not sure how you're using narrative, because what you propose here is just incentive to playing to your agreed character traits, which isn't the same thing at all. FATE changes the narrative when a compel happens -- something in the fiction occurs that would not have otherwise occurred and now binds future resolution. That's not the same thing as offering an Inspiration point when a player does acts according to their BIFTs -- this is entirely toothless and just rewards putting something on your sheet that's easy to act. A Barbarian with a "I get mad" trait earns the benny every time they're just doing something they would do anyway. A clever player can write BIFTs that require zero risk. There's no teeth here -- which is why you see changes to this system in any game that actually tries to leverage them, and that's not 5e as your presenting it.

Clever players try to get around negative consequences in narrative systems all the time, often because the GM wants to run a narrative game and the player wants to be a good friend.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Clever players try to get around negative consequences in narrative systems all the time, often because the GM wants to run a narrative game and the player wants to be a good friend.

I'm not sure what ypu mean, here. How do ypu mean they try to get around consequences? What occurs to me is using system tools to do this, but that's part of the game. Otherwise, it would appear to be some kind of manipulation? That appears to be bad faith play, though. What am I missing?

 

[jgsugden]

You should be able to say:

• I believe people that have not tried X will like it if they try it.
• The RAW state X.
• The RAI seem to be X.
• What you're saying could be offensive to some groups of people.

However, there is no consensus on what is acceptable.

For example, the RAW describe D&D as a role playing game in which players run characters that have a role in a story. If you essentially just run combats with no story tying them together, that is not a role playing game because there is no story. I tell people they're more than welcome to run their games that way, but they're not playing D&D as described by the books, or as intended by the authors of any edition. Some people consider that heinous gatekeeping, while others think there is nothing wrong with it. I can see both arguments.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I don't think "narrative game" is a term of art.

Fine, lets stick with "Story Now" because I find Forge confusing, in that they user terms in way I do not find intuitive and i have to keep referring back the the essays to remind myself of what that word means.

Player-side stipulations (which sounds like what D&D 5e plot points are, judging from your post) are not particularly relevant to "story now" play either. OGL Conan has them (called Fate Points) but is a system that aims pretty much at traditional GM-storytelling play as far as I can tell. Burning Wheel doesn't have them, but is one of the better-known "story now" systems.

The DMG Plot points. Players have 1 per session, can only spend one per session and can when spent: (depending on they way the group choose to implement them), declare a secret door present, or the monster is a polymorphed long lost ally; or as outlined but another player must introduce a complication and finally a plot point expenditure rotates the DM role.

One thing that is fairly distinctive about Burning Wheel is that it deals with many of the same tropes as classic FRPGing, but it uses different techniques. In D&D, as traditionally played, the action declaration I attack the Orc is resolved as a check - and if successful, the upshot may well be that the shared fiction includes a dead Orc; but the action declaration I search for a secret door is first filtered through a GM decision as to whether or not a secret door is present in the location being searched. Only after the GM answers "yes" at that filtering stage might a check then be called for. BW treats both action declarations the same: if the check to find the secret door succeeds, the PC finds a secret door as desired; if it fails, then some adverse consequence (that follows from the established fiction) ensues.

Let us focus on this, I am interested in the mechanics here for BW, in the case of "attack the orc" is the resolved state: success - dead orc or fail - dead orc but complication like you are wounded/incapacitated?

(as an aside can the orc kill you?)

In the secret door case is it appearance definite in the declaration. That is, there is no ambiguity as to whether there is one or not, just the possibility of a complication like a puzzle lock or a trap or something.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

Well, there are best practices for playing a specific game or a branch of games. In pretty much all new-school games, taking risks, not making complex plans and screwing your character for the sake of drama are good ideas, and trying to protect your character from harm is a stupid endeavour.

Now, there's no "correct way" to run and play D&D, but, honestly, that's a lie and a direct result of WotC not having damn balls. Every tool has the best way to apply it.

That's the main reason I'm such an advocate for division. That big tent BS doesn't really do anyone any good.

Can you talk a bit more about what you mean by "division" in this context? I think I agree, but want to know more.

 

[Xetheral]

This is exactly what I said - the player asking the GM. If that's what you mean by player-driven, well fair enough. But to me that's still GM-driven: the GM is deciding and curating the content of the shared fiction.

What terminology would you use to distinguish between GM-driven games where the content is (to use your phrasing from an earlier post) "a story that [the GM] wants to tell" versus GM-driven games where the GM does not have a story in mind and instead "decides and curates content" in response to the players' action declarations for their characters?

Although I agree that both of these styles have more in common with each other than they do with styles where the players have explicit narrative control, I don't think they're similar enough to lump together into the same bucket except at the most general levels of comparison.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is exactly what I said - the player asking the GM. If that's what you mean by player-driven, well fair enough. But to me that's still GM-driven: the GM is deciding and curating the content of the shared fiction.

You also refer to a lengthy investigation. You don't actually say how that would be resolved in play, but I get the strong impression that it is to be resolved by a whole lot of further askings of the GM by the player.

I chose this particular example because it is something that I've actually done in play, using Burning Wheel as the system and Circles as the mechanic for resolving the action declaration I hope to meet my brother.

This sort of contrast between D&D and some other systems is why I think, when it comes to D&D (or at least 5e D&D), a discussion of best practices would begin by advising the GM that they need to have a good chunk of fiction ready to go. Because the game has no processes for introducing new elements into the fiction other than the GM doing it.

If it's the player's idea, it's player-driven. It might still be GM-approved.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm not sure what ypu mean, here. How do ypu mean they try to get around consequences? What occurs to me is using system tools to do this, but that's part of the game. Otherwise, it would appear to be some kind of manipulation? That appears to be bad faith play, though. What am I missing?

No I'm talking about actively trying to avoid having bad things happen to your character via manipulation of the game rules, like avoiding traits that are likely to cause negative consequences in the fiction. That can be bad faith, but a lot of traditional gamers do that sort of thing as a matter of course, because they want as many positive consequences for their characters as possible. It's also common when the GM (it's almost always the GM) wants to try a narrative game and not all the players are on board. A consequence of the social contract.

 

[Fanaelialae]

This is exactly what I said - the player asking the GM. If that's what you mean by player-driven, well fair enough. But to me that's still GM-driven: the GM is deciding and curating the content of the shared fiction.

You also refer to a lengthy investigation. You don't actually say how that would be resolved in play, but I get the strong impression that it is to be resolved by a whole lot of further askings of the GM by the player.

I chose this particular example because it is something that I've actually done in play, using Burning Wheel as the system and Circles as the mechanic for resolving the action declaration I hope to meet my brother.

This sort of contrast between D&D and some other systems is why I think, when it comes to D&D (or at least 5e D&D), a discussion of best practices would begin by advising the GM that they need to have a good chunk of fiction ready to go. Because the game has no processes for introducing new elements into the fiction other than the GM doing it.

The player is the one establishing facts within the world.

They have a brother.
He ran a shipping business in this city by the docks.
He was associating with shady characters.
They parted on bad terms.
The brother got a tavern girl pregnant and refused to take responsibility.

I mean, sure, if it's been established that this city has been abandoned for a millennia, the DM might say that your brother must have been in a different city, but that's true of narrative games as well. Plenty of games don't allow you to contradict established facts (at least not without reasonable justification). That's less having to ask the DM and more the DM having the capacity to adjudicate the game. Which is admittedly stronger in 5e than in narrative games, but 5e isn't a narrative game. It does however have narrative tools, and if you focus on leveraging those you can have a narrative focused game.

I said that if it is a lengthy investigation, then you want to get buy in from the group. You're not the only one at the table, and it's not exactly fair to expect everyone else to ignore their own goals and do what you want to do for an indefinite amount of time without so much as a "do you mind if we...". This comes back to best practices as spotlight sharing (specifically, not trying to hog all the spotlight time for yourself and your character). Of course, if finding your brother is a little side scene, no such buy in is required, as in this case spotlight sharing works in your favor (everyone can have reasonable side scenes as needed).

It seems like your point is that Burning Wheel has more defined mechanisms for resolving this? Sure, I agree (though it's been ages since I last looked at Burning Wheel, so I only vaguely recall what you're referring to).

 

[loverdrive]

Can you talk a bit more about what you mean by "division" in this context? I think I agree, but want to know more.

I think the TTRPG community should form Schools and really embrace what's special about the games they like, debate about the best practices within these Schools, distil and refine them, instead of that "oh whatever works for your table, man" BS that pretty much renders any attempt to optimize processes meaningless.

Old School Renaissance kinda has that, so discussing OSR is easy and there's never a moron who pops out and screams "but mah plot!", pretty much everyone understands what's important.

I've written an Apocalypse Manifesto some time ago, though it desperately needs a new, better name.