D&D 5E Character play vs Player play

[pemerton]

If you're claiming storygames axiomatically aren't RPG's, you're using the term RPG in a way I cannot fathom. There are SOME which are not

I'm personally expressing doubt about the utility of the "storygame" label. I mostly see it used (not by you in this thread) to label games they don't play and don't like, typically as part of a "purity of RPGing" agenda.

In D&D, a charm spell never has given PC1 control over what PC2 attempts. It has given the DM authority to override PC2's choices, but not carte blanche for PC1 to dictate and narrate what PC2 does.

I don't agree. The distinction between "charm" and "dominate" is a somewhat recent one. If you look back at materials associated with early D&D play, it was generally taken for granted that a charmed character would follow the instructions of the mage who charmed him/her/it. This is why charming a troll (regeneration!) or charming an ochre jelly (immune to most attacks) was considered a clever move.

But if you didn't, or don't, play charm this way, the point can be made using domination, or rulership, or some comparable ability, as an example.

Many of the edge cases, like Burning Wheel, Fate, and Cortex Plus, in their various derivatives, have elements of both traditional play {strong investment in, and strong control over, the character, only one player plays each character (but can be required to do certain things by others), strong GM authority over the narrative}... but also strong elements of player empowerment {Burning Wheel use of Wises to make things appear in the fiction, Fate and Cortex use of fate/plot points to declare things exist, Fate use of the compel mechanic to force a character to act in a particular accord with their definition, Fate and BW player input into the campaign establishment stages, CortexPlus Firefly collaborative building of the ship, BW allowing resolving entire conflicts with a single roll...}.

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Trad is strong GM, players control their characters attempts at actions, and no sharing characters as a matter of rules. It also tends to imply dice-based action resolution, and resolving actions, not scenes. once you get to systematic violations of those as regular parts of play, you're really out of the Traditional RPG playspace and into something closer to a Ron Edwards style storygame.

Storygames, as a generality, focus on Vincent's Admonition (Say Yes or Roll the Dice), player narration being as valid as GM narration, and story control being what's covered in the mechanics more than action resolutions.

<snip>

the different styles of games support different styles of play, and that's a good thing. I don't want New Player X dictating to me as a D&D DM where and when their character shows up, nor that Orc #3 is carrying a seax rather than a scimitar. If I were in the mood for that, I'd be running B&H

I've got nothing against distinguishing different approaches and techniques, but I think some care is needed in using them to characterise systems, as opposed to episodes of play and particular players'/group's approaches. To give a low-grade but nevertheless genuine example, I played a lot of "collaborative" Traveller and D&D back in the early-to-mid-80s - rolling random dungeons and encounters, rolling up random patrons and encounters for Traveller characters, etc. Not the most high-brow play of all time, but it's one of the things we were doing with those systems.

And in my AD&D games, players exerted primary control over their henchmen. They also got to decide their own PC backstory, including friends, family etc.

As I've mentioned upthread, I don't think that Circles in BW, or Resource generation in BW, are radically different from certain fairly standard approaches to Streetwise checks. I remember, 20 years ago, players rolling Streetwise checks for their Rolemaster PCs to meet up with drug dealers in the seedier parts of town; or rolling Administration checks to meet up with imperial officials. Circles isn't identical to that, but it's not some wild deviation either. It's a fairly natural extension/development.

In Rolemaster, too, we used social skills as one way of resolving conficts between PCs. It wasn't as systematic as BW's Duel of Wits, and in part because of that relied heavily on a sense of "fairness" between players, but again it was something we were doing with the system. I don't think it means that we weren't RPGing, though.

Some folks like to say that all RPGs are and always have been storytelling games and vice versa, but it is simply not true. Some folks use the expression "trad" as a way to define certain games as World-GM-controlled or lacking in player authorial control, so I picked it up here as a way to keep us all moving the discussion along.

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Just deciding the way something is is certainly one way to handle it as GM but in RPGs back in the day and in some ways of running RPGs that are newer but, ahem, "trad" one would leave that stuff up to the gods of randomness.

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On the one hand, there is me saying that people play many ways and that the folks I know from the earliest days, including myself played without players having narrative control over the world but rather having to affect the world through their characters. On the other hand, despite my own experiences, some folks who clearly were not personally there are claiming that the things I have experienced simply aren't true.

I don't think anyone is denying that you played, and play, as you did/do.

I think the point is that your approach isn't, and has not really been, of the essence of RPGing in contrast to something else. When [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] or someone else says "RPGers have always been doing this" he doesn't mean that all RPGers have always been doing it, but that some RPGers have always been doing it, and aren't any less RPGers for all that.

In other words, if people who describe themselves as RPGers, using rules systems labelled as RPGs, for over 30 years of the 40 years that the hobby has existed, have been doing things like allowing players to specify PC backtory/family/friends etc, allowing Streetwise checks to meet up with desired NPCs, having GM accept player suggestions for backstory input, fetc, then I think that the door has shut on trying to say that those things are antithetical to RPGing.

I think that [MENTION=6779310]aramis erak[/MENTION] is correct that a strong degree of player/PC identification, if not over the long term of the game (eg Ars Magica troupe play) then at least within the confines of a particular episode of play, is pretty central to RPGing. But the sorts of approaches to play being discussed in this thread don't confict with that.

 

[Hussar]

Not originally there by design during gameplay, and what early GMs might have done in allowing players to help create setting through character generation wasn't really there by RPG design either.


Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...cter-play-vs-Player-play/page23#ixzz3HrePwgB9

There were a heck of a lot of things not there in early D&D design. Skills being probably the biggest one. Does that mean that skills are not part of traditional RPG's? In 1983, we got Dragonlance, which had things like Kender Pockets, where the Kender player could look into his pockets, and the DM would randomly roll what he found - with the table being modified by the kender's level (the higher numbers were more useful). IOW, back in the early 80's you had on the spot world changes. The contents of a kender's pockets were pretty much undetermined at all times.

So that's official rules adding story game elements way back in 1983. That's not that long after AD&D came out. And I'm pretty sure if you went back into The Dragon or White Dwarf, you would find other, similar things. I'm fairly sure that tables were adding story game elements about fifteen minutes after they started playing D&D in any form. It may not have been there by explicit design, but, it was certainly presumed in a lot of cases.
[MENTION=6668292]JamesonCourage[/MENTION] - and that works for you. Great. So what? I still have zero interest in playing that way. I've seen far, far too many Man With No Name characters come from players to not think that this is exactly the reason why. You probably have a very light touch and the player's have no problems with it. I've seen many DM's with a much more ham fisted approach who drive players to do this.
[MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] - Of course I'm showing my bias. At what point did I claim otherwise? Yes, I believe that DM's should not start adding details to PC's without asking. I think it causes all sorts of problems and leads to the DM overbearing the players. There are a million ways to achieve the exact same scenarios that you outline above, without ramming your interpretations of that character down the player's throats. Adding in a suitor to a character? Really? Good grief, that's a pretty major character element. Your players would be okay with that? Out of the blue, you have decided that my character was romantically involved in some NPC? And you're going to use that romantic involvement to forward the game? Yeah, no thanks. That's about as rail roady as it gets. We failed to do something, but, the DM's plot revolves on our success, so, the DM sparkles over his blindingly obvious plot by adding in major character elements to my character? No thanks. I'll pass.

 

[pemerton]

I still don't think it's part of action resolution, at least in my game.

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I'm interested in these various techniques and why you'd use one over another. I use the random roll to define these undefined elements of the game world because I want to remain impartial as DM

I'm not sure about the full suite of reasons.

But let's think about what's going on in the situation where the player declares "I flee!", no one is sure whether the door is open or shut, and the GM says "Roll your Athletics".

(1) The player rolls and succeeds - the GM narrates "You spring up, pull the door open, and run clear"; or, the GM narates "You spring up and leap through the open door, running clear." The choice between narrations is simply flavour - either way, the upshot is that the player is running away and the cultists, presumably, can give chase through the door.

(2) The player rolls and suffers a minor failure - the GM narrates "You spring up, but the door is shut! As you pull it open, the cultists surround you." Here, the GM uses the narration of a shut door to explain the failure. It fits with a "no whiffing" style of play.

(3) The player rolls and suffers a major failure - the GM narrates "You spring up, but the door is shut! As you struggle with it, the cultists surround you." The GM uses the narration of a shut door to explain the severity of the failure.

The state of the door, as open or shut, has been determined by means of a random roll. But the random roll was bound up in resolving the player's declared action "I flee!" I think the idea behind it is that the payer's investment in Athletics skill is an investment in having episodes of play in which his/her PC succeeds in virtue of athletic prowess. Being lucky with the door is one way of evincing that prowess.

If the GM resolves the state of the door by a separate random roll, and then factors that into the DC of the Athletics check, there will still be a need to narrate some other reason why the PC succeeds/fails (it's unlikely that such a factor is going to be internal to the PC - most people's athletic performance is relatively constant over repeated trials). Perhaps a low roll by the player reflect that the cultists were faster than the PC thought, or were better positioned to catch him/her. May as well make it Schroedinger's door, as Schroedinger's cultists' atheltic prowess!(? - I'm interested in your thoughts on this.)

 

[pemerton]

You seem to be conflating before-the-game character backstory and world-building with on-the-spot un-defined circumstances.

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After the game starts, backgrounds and other world elements are more-or-less set in stone.

Of course I'm conflating them, because it is not in general true that once the game starts world elements are set in stone. It's a staple of D&D GMing advice, for instance, to start with a village and a single dungeon, and gradually expand the scope of the game as play unfolds. Not to mention that new NPCs, organisations, etc - all of which are elements of the GM-authored backstory - are being created all the time.

Until a player decides to set up a thieves' guild of his/her own, there's a good chance the GM has never thought through the details of any rival guilds. Now s/he is invited to (by the situation, and by Gygax in the form of GMing advice). As I said upthread, I don't recall ever seeing a suggestion that the GM, in developing these new elements of the backstory, should not have regard to what the players are interested in.

 

[Mark CMG]

I think the point is that your approach isn't, and has not really been, of the essence of RPGing in contrast to something else.

There is a broad spectrum of GMs and players who have and still do only play RPGs as they were originally crafted, and some games produced in recent times that still reflect that original RPGing sensibility. A few of them have been discussed in this thread, like DCC.

(. . .) I think that the door has shut on trying to say that those things are antithetical to RPGing.

That's not a word I used or would but rather I'd say they are parts of storytelling games which also utilize many of the elements of (so called "trad") RPGs.

I think that [MENTION=6779310]aramis erak[/MENTION] is correct that a strong degree of player/PC identification, if not over the long term of the game (eg Ars Magica troupe play) then at least within the confines of a particular episode of play, is pretty central to RPGing. But the sorts of approaches to play being discussed in this thread don't confict with that.

I would have to agree, as I have all along, that some approaches to using storytelling game elements in RPGs have been around for quite some time and even predate actual storytelling games. The OP subject of the thread "Character play vs Player play" had been devolving for a while before I popped in to pinpoint the divide between ("trad") RPGs and storytelling game elements being used in RPGs as a fundamental difference that gives further rise to confusion on the OP topic. I'd have to contend that without confusion over this divide there might have been less confusion over the OP topic.

You have to remember, there are still a great many GMs who view RPGs mainly as a game and not as a means of crafting a story. The story that comes from any (again, "trad") RPG play is incidental to the actual game. Furthermore, and to bring it back around to the OP, discussion of "Character play vs Player play" is muddied without being aware of and understanding the fundamental difference of playing RPGs with and without storytelling elements.

 

[Mark CMG]

There were a heck of a lot of things not there in early D&D design.

Yes. Then we are in agreement in regard to original RPG design and there not being storytelling elements. And, as I have already contended, I completely agree that many GMs added these elements along the way and it eventually gave rise to storytelling games. As I think I mentioned in my own first or second post in this thread, I'd have faked the roll behind the screen regarding the beard and just let the players, through their characters, run with their plan if only to see where it might lead. But I have a stage background with some Improv training, so I am more than happy to cleave closer to the axiom, "Let's go somewhere, anywhere, together."

 

[Hussar]

I guess my issue with your point [MENTION=5]Mark[/MENTION]CMG is that IMO, it's virtually impossible to play an RPG without invoking some story telling elements. From creating character background, to deciding spell level, all of these are based around creating an interesting story that the players want to play in. The reason you don't find Level IX monsters on Level I of a dungeon is because it would be very bad for the story. The concept of Monty Haul campaigns is based around the idea that characters have to "earn" their rewards and shouldn't be granted before they've earned them. How do they "earn" them? They adventure, thus creating stories. It's the same reason you don't generally give the protagonist powerful items before they've completed the quest for said item. Not much point in a Grail Quest if the Grail is sitting on a shelf in Camelot, after all.

 

[Mark CMG]

I guess my issue with your point [MENTION=5]Mark[/MENTION]CMG is that IMO, it's virtually impossible to play an RPG without invoking some story telling elements.

I know some people who cannot imagine playing *any* RPG without them. My own imagination is not as limited.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I disagree here as well... your example makes me laugh because I think it is the perfect way to run a game...

You don't find it at all contrived or damaging to suspension of disbelief that the PC just happens to have the perfect background contacts and skills that are exactly what is needed to save the day? Really?

Because that's what this sort of free-form narrative control encourages. If you don't have the skills or abilities to solve the situation yourself, just make up something to get you through any obstacle in front of you. Go out of your way to leave yourself with as much undefined history as possible, since that's the currency that you can spend to buy yourself out of dangerous situations in the future. The real loser is anyone who actually wrote out their character backstory in advance, since they have no wiggle room to make up stuff later on!

That's so far beyond what I look for in a game that it hurts my head to even think about it.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=10479]Mark CMG[/MENTION] and others may be interested in this extract from the skill rules in Traveller, Book 1 Characters and Combat (1977, p15):

Streetwise - The individual is acquainted with the ways of local subcultures . . . The referee should set the throw required [on 2d6] to obtain any item specified by the players (for example, the name of an official wiling to issue licenses without hassle = 5+, the location of high quality guns at a low price = 9+). D[ice]M[odifier]s based on streetwise shoud be allowed at +1 per [skill] level. No experise DM = -5.​

So here we have, in 1977, in a game that Mark CMG has called out upthread as the paradigm of "trad", a mechanic which allows a player to specify some item to be obtained or contact to be made, and then make a skill roll to locate/identify it. How does this differ from BW Circles mechanic? As best I can tell, the only difference is that Circles generalises the idea beyond acquaintance with local subcultures to social connections more generally.