D&D General Can we talk about best practices?

[pemerton]

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

As I said, I'm not that interested in quibbling over terminology.

But when I play a RPG, I prefer to be the one driving what is possible for my PC.

And as a GM, I prefer the players to be the ones driving what is possible for their PCs.

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.

I'm not really the right person to ask, as it's not a distinction I'm very invested in. I think a lot of people call the first thing "linear" and the second "sandbox". I don't find that terminology very illuminating - I think nearly all RPGing is linear in the sense that it consists of a time-sequence of events (both in the fiction and at the table). But some others clearly do.

What I would find helpful is for advocates and practitioners of sandboxing/"living worlds" to sometimes write a bit more plainly about their techniques. For instance, talking about I look for my brother or A lengthy investigation are both describing in-fiction events. But what does these look like as action declarations at the table? The more the answer is just questions posed to the GM, which the GM answers by consulting his/her notes and/or extrapolating from those as seems logical and fun, then - in my mind, at least - the less the difference between the two approaches that you are wanting to distinguish.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

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.

The same process applies to the declaration Having returned to my ancestral estate, I hope to meet my brother.

This is remarkably well articulated. I've poked around at "story now" systems for a while and didn't fully get the main distinction/mechanic until reading this. Well done.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

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.

This makes a ton of sense to me. And IMO the points in your manifesto seem broad enough to apply to any school or play-style--including OSR--that isn't fully centered on running published adventures as-is. But I can definitely imagine best practices that are more school-centric, and I also really like the idea of recognizing more of these schools and styles as distinct.

 

[pemerton]

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 don't see how this is any different from traditional RPGing. In What is Dungeons & Dragons, published in the early 80s by Puffin Books, it was assumed that the players would author this sort of backstory for their PCs.

Do many people approach PC backstory with the premise that a player must rely on the GM to establish this sort of information about immediate relatives?

What I was referring to is the bit where the player declares that his/her PC hopes to meet his/her brother, having returned to their old stomping grounds. In some RPGs, there are ways of resolving this that do not depend upon largely unconstrained GM decision-making.

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).

My point is that BW has a system for resolving the action declaration Having returned to our homeland, I hope to meet my brother - the PC has a rating in Circles, there are rules for setting the obstacle, the check is made, and if it succeeds the meeting takes place while if it fails the GM establishes an adverse consequence which (i) follows from the established fiction and (ii) maintains pressure on the PC's (player-authored) Beliefs, Instincts and Traits.

5e D&D has no system for resolving that action declaration, other than the GM deciding whether or not a meeting takes place. Or deciding whether or not to tell the player clues about the brother's location. Or deciding to roll a d% and have the brother show up on a 66+. Or . . . (Some Backgrounds might be relevant here; but nothing I read online about 5e play makes me think that Backgrounds are a very prominent feature in typical 5e games.)

Upthread, you said "Not having explicit control of the fiction does not equate to having to wait for the DM to tell you things." I responded that "5e D&D has no canonical procedure for resolving [the declaration of hope to meet the PC's brother, upon having returned to the homeland], other than the player asking the GM."

And I stand by what I said. The player does have to wait for the GM to tell him/her things. And of course this generalises beyond hoping to meet one's brother. I seem to recall that the Captain of the Guards in this town has a fondness for black lotus. Or Isn't this where Evard's Tower is located? Or We'll enter the palace via a secret way. Or . . . There's no other process beyond Be told by the GM - and you haven't pointed to one - for this or for any other statement of hope or intent or belief about the PC's encounters with other elements of the gameworld.

EDIT: To bring this back on-topic, given the fact that, in 5e D&D, the process for this sort of thing is that the GM decides, then advice on best practice would be upfront about this and discuss how to do it. Eg what's a good structure, in 5e D&D, for the GM to determine whether or not a desired encounter takes place? (In 4e D&D this could have been done via a skill challenge, and the example of a skill challenge in the Compendium gets close to showing how it might be adjudicated. What does the 5e analogue look like?)

 

[Thomas Shey]

So to take your example of the secret door, there are a few ways this may be handled differently from how D&D does it. In D&D, the existence of a secret door is determined ahead of time, and is only revealed if the players have their characters perform some action (typically a search) and that action succeeds.

Just a note that there's an additional possibility here: that the GM has not previously decided. He may decide on the fly, or he may make a secret check for the search roll first (because it may well not matter whether one is there or not if no one finds it). It can be a slightly odd approach, but its not beyond what I've done in on-the-fly GMing on occasion.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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?

I suspect what he's talking about is bad faith player; where the player has gone along with the idea of a narrative game in theory (because its what his friend the GM wants to run), but doesn't really want to be in one so he actively or passively subverts intended process. Its a more extreme case of players who get into particular campaign types because the GM and/or majority of other players want to play that type, but then play in a counter-genre or counter-theme way because they don't really like that campaign style.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

If you consider this literally true, how do you explain the random-dungeon generation procedures that have received at least some official support in a couple of the early editions?

 

[dragoner]

I read "best practices" and automatically think from business:
What You Should Know About Best Practices
However here we are talking about Dungeons and Dragons, and then people are not talking about DnD, except some other game ...
Not that it would be difficult to put together a list of optimal practices for the best results. Then again it would also be highly dependent on personal preference.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Do many people approach PC backstory with the premise that a player must rely on the GM to establish this sort of information about immediate relatives?

I've seen cases of it. I have no idea how common they are.

 

[pemerton]

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.

This summary makes me agree with @Ovinomancer, that this is a bit incoherent with the general premise of 5e D&D that the GM will have pre-authored a significant amount of material.

I'm also not a big fan of these sorts of "fiat" solutions to problems. The only game I play which has something like them is Prince Valiant (with its Storyteller Certificates) but in Prince Valiant overcoming challenges is more of a means to the end of play rather than a prime focus of play in and of itself; but I don't think that's a true description of typical D&D play.

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.

In BW the Orc can kill you. Though if you've saved a Persona point (a type of "fate"/"hero" point) you can spend it to have the Will to Live which means that you survive your Mortal Wound, though - depending on further mechanical processes - you may be subject to some fairly serious lingering debuffs. Spending one's last Persona is therefore analogous to "running up the death flag" in those systems that have such a thing.

There are three ways to resolve trying to kill an orc by fighting (depending on how much detail one wants to invest into the resolution). But generally the outcome will be one of the two contenders hors-de-combat either due to wounds/death or due to a failure of morale (called Steel in the system). It is possible (depending on resolution method chosen) for the victor to also be wounded.

In the secret door case, if the declaration is I search for a secret door then success means I find a secret door that I was searching for. Failure may mean a door is found but there are guards behind it waiting to take you into custody; or that you find a trapdoor in the floor instead (oops!) or that there's nothing to be found (a bit boring, but perhaps apt in some circumstances). I should say that I've never had the secret door declaration itself come up in play - but the last session I played I used Scavenging to find a burning brand in an inn at night without disturbing anyone/anything (a pretty easy check); and in sessions I've GMed a player has used Catacombs-wise for his PC to make his way through the undercity of Hardby (and has failed a few times; once this meant stumbling into a cultist's lair and unleashing a mummy; another time it meant that the two PCs got lost, and so by the time they found where their way the rival whom they'd drugged had recovered and then - by winning an opposed check on Speed - was able to beat them to the destination).

Just for the sake of clarity: map and key resolution is not a big part of BW play.