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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8339965" data-attributes="member: 42582">No probs!I think we're still at cross-purposes. I'm not talking about bad, or bad-faith, GMing of the 5e D&D game. Suppose that the GM doesn't ignore it. What happens next, in play? What sort of action(s) do I, the player, declare to engage with this bit of backstory?I think the notion of narrative control - or "adding things to the fiction" - can benefit from elaboration.Do you (or others) regard the following as narrative control: (i) given that the existence of a hostile Orc is an established part of the fiction, then (ii) a player can declare I attack the Orc and can thereby, and following an appropriate die roll, (iii) bring it about, in the fiction, that the Orc is attacked and killed by the character and hence dead?Do you (or others) regard the following as narrative control: (i) given that it established in the fiction (a) that a PC has a brother and (b) the PC has returned to where s/he and his/her brother grew up, then (ii) the player can declare Now that I'm back in my homeland, I hope to meet my brother and can thereby, and following an appropriate die roll, (iii) bring it about that his/her PC meets his/her brother?Do you (or others) regard the following as narrative control: (i) given that it established in the fiction (a) that a PC is in the vicinity of a wall (b) the wall is the sort that might have a secret door (eg it is the wall of a castle or manor house or cathedral rather than the wall of an outhouse or peasant hovel already established to be of no interest from either an architectural or dramatic point of view), then (ii) the player can declare I search the wall for a secret door and can thereby, and following an appropriate die roll, (iii) bring it about that his/her PC finds a secret door in the wall?I'll explain why I've chosen these three examples, all of which seem to me to be potential instances of narrative control:The first seems to me to be pretty standard in D&D play (there are exceptions, like the DL modules "obscure death" rule, but a lot of people seem to be critical of those exceptions). Other sorts of action declaration that have the same basic character are (in classic D&D) forcing open a stuck door, disarming a trap that has been discovered, pushing over a statute - in general, making changes to the fiction that correspond to the character, in the fiction, exerting causal power to bring about the change.The second allows the player to exercise control over the framing of encounters. The closest example I can easily think of in D&D play is in classic D&D, where various PCs have the ability to attract followers, which at the table means that the player has the ability to trigger a certain sort of encounter - but only in the case of the paladin's warhorse, as per Gygax's DMG, does this normally have any dramatic weight; for other classes it seems to be more of a down-time exercise. (EDIT: I just remembered the Yakuza's contact ability in the original OA, which is in the neighbourhood of an ability of the player to initiate a dramatically-significant encounter.)The third allows the player to exercise control over the architectural details of the setting, and if we generalise it to similar cases (like I seem to recall that the Captain of the Guards in this town has a fondness for black lotus or Isn't Evard's Tower around here?) then it will allow the player to exercise control over other elements of setting and backstory.I'll now explain how I'm thinking about these through the lens of "narrative control": in a game about fighting enemies and exploring lost temples, then the first sort of action declaration gives the players a lot of control over the narrative. But stuff like whether or not an enemy is in the neighbourhood or whether or not the temple has a statue in it is part of the framing, and is under GM control. In this sort of game, if a player asks Can my PC see anything interesting in the room? or Are there any secret doors? the GM has to make a decision about how to handle framing. In classic dungeon-crawling D&D it's legitimate to call for a check (eg Perception, or a roll to find secret doors, depending on the system details) or the use of a resource (eg a wand of secret door detection) as a "hurdle" in the way of some framing. This is because, in those games, part of the skill (or luck) of play is to get the good scenes framed!On the other hand, sometimes everyone wants to get to the good scenes rather than put a hurdle in their way, and then the GM might just say 'yes' to the player's question. In fact, even if the player doesn't ask the GM might say something to prompt the question or otherwise push towards the new framing: eg When you enter the room, you notice that there is dust in most of the corners except one, which looks like it gets regularly swept clean - this is a prompt to the players to have their PCs inspect that corner for a secret door. Once the GM is dispensing with hurdles for framing, then it helps to be clear about the point of Perception and similar checks - they're to provide some degree of verisimilitude, or to help manage pacing via tension and release, but they're not playing the same role that was envisaged for them back in 1974. A best-practice guide for 5e D&D would talk about this. (Gygax comes close in his DMG, p 110, but doesn't quite come out and discuss the matter clearly.)Now suppose that the game is not mostly or primarily about fighting enemies in lost temples, but is about social dynamics, or the PCs' place in the (social) world, or a full-on Godfather or X-Men-style soap opera. Then the second sort of action resolution I mentioned becomes significant. Perhaps not essential - but if it's not part of the system (which, by default, it is not in 5e D&D) then the GM is carrying a huge amount of the burden of play. Because the answer to many significant questions - whom can we meet? what deals can we do with them? who betrays whom? - will rest on his/her shoulders. Stuff that, in the temple-raiding game, was mostly just about framing now matters to outcomes, and the GM just has to make up all the outcomes. Of course one way to handle this is just to say 'yes' every time a player says Can my PC encounter so-and-so but then what has happened to the sort of tension-and-release pacing that we get in (say) D&D combat or in (say) a BW Circles check? A best-practice guide for 5e D&D would talk about this sort of thing, with advice on how the GM should handle it: pre-scripting is the traditional way (and the way that every D&D module in this vein that I can think of handles it), but maybe there are other ways? Maybe we can invent a subsystem that uses CHA checks or something like that.Now consider a game where the function of architecture, or other backstory, isn't just as a component of framing as in the temple-raiding game. Suppose we want a game where the players really leverage the architecture - like Conan often does in REH Conan stories - or really leverage the backstory - like Gandalf and Aragorn and even Frodo do in LotR. How can we approach this in play? One way is to permit action declarations of my third type above. Another is to leave all the backstory in the hands of the GM, and allow the players to leverage it only after they have had it told to them by the GM. Again, this second way is the default way in 5e D&D. What are the risks? The risks are that the players end up dancing very much to the GM's tune, or end up following the GM's breadcrumbs, or end up just parroting the GM's pre-conceived solution back to him/her. Many CoC modules are good illustrations of what I have in mind, in terms of this risk. A best-practice guide to 5e would talk about this, and how a GM might deftly handle the revelation of backstory so as to try and drive play rather than block or stonewall: nice discussions of these techniques can be found in (eg) Vincent Baker's Dogs in the Vineyard or John Harper's Agon 2nd ed, both of which (i) depend upon GM-pre-authored backstory and (ii) expect the players to leverage that extensively in nplay, and so (iii) give the GM clear advice on how to get all that backstory out onto the table, and also - at least in the case of Agon - when and how to defer to player interpretations of the significance of the backstory. I reckon similar sort of advice, but tailored to the particularities of 5e D&D, could be pretty useful.</blockquote>

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