Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6447403" data-attributes="member: 6696971">FIrst, so everyone is assured to be on the same page (which I believe is already the case, but let us just cross our t's and dot our lowercase j's), the definition:"Plot Dump":  Expository dialogue (or monologue) which occurs when background information is either (a) intentionally not interwoven within the narrative or (b) the narrative is so clumsily rendered so as to leave the participants bewildered regarding the dramatic arc.(a) above would apply to what  @<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=336" target="_blank">D'karr</a> is referring to.  The player buy-in for conventions or tournament games is already demonstrated simply by "showing up".  Due to time constraints (and other), its (presumably - I've never been involved, but it seems intuitive) understood that some manner of information or outright plot dump is going to take place.  Relevant NPC001 gives quest via exposition of relevant plot/conflict elements.  In the following hour, the players fetch/kill/rescue etc by way of their PCs.  Good times had by all (because by "showing up" you've indicated this is what you're looking for - again, presumably).However, two things:1)  Access to the plot dump is the key here.  One of the most important facets of good GMing is knowing precisely what kind of information/clues 100 % cannot be missed by the players through the, sometimes more opaque than others, fog of TTRPG interchange.  Making sure players attain it in a non-clumsy way is deft GMing.  Assuming a non-one-off game, doing it via information/plot dump is either lazy or a last resort Hail Mary/band-aid/whitewash after initial efforts have failed.  Regardless, it should be automatically accessible by the players.  2)  Illusionist GMing is, as we know, giving the false pretense that player action declaration and corresponding mechanical resolution are the actual drivers to the trajectory of a singular conflict or of a story (in the macro).This is where the problem comes in.  One of two things occurred in that introductory 5e tutorial (by the lead designer as GM no less).  Either (i) he didn't understand/failed to execute upon (1) above (one of the most fundamental precepts of GMing) or (ii), much more likely (almost guaranteed), he completely BSed things and gave them "access to the plot dump" (when the players didn't understand what the hell was going on - again relevant insiders/designers themselves who are supposed to know the system they are engineering...) by way of some check (I think it may have been Diplomacy with some NPC though it may have been a random Knowledge check) vs some arbitrary, irrelevant DC (because they were going to pass no matter what - pretty sure they rolled poorly to average).  Expository dia/monologue ensues.  Hence, Illusionism GMing and "access to the plot dump."XP was for your sblocked stuff!I agree, it was brutally painful.  That singular video did as much damage as anything to my interest in 5e.  If the trend of my interest was peaks and troughs (pending new releases/columns) before it, it was probably a hard, downward slope after that.To your point, I fully understand it and I sympathize generally - for cons/tournaments/living play (as above).  However, I just can't look at that tutorial in that same light.  This was the lead designer and insiders/other designers.  This should have clearly (and proudly) shown off the GMing principles, table agenda, and proficient techniques/interchanges indicative of an extremely matured understanding of the system.  Instead, we got "access the plot dump" illusionist GMing (which told me as much as anything that they were aiming for a 2e AD&D ethos as anything else) and a bunch of players and a GM who seemed like they had little clue how this all fits together and were just ad-libbing the whole thing.  The whole video was clown shoes and spinning bowties that should have been set to the Benny Hill theme.And several people were all YEAH WOOHOO THIS IS GREAT!  I think I pretty much knew I was the odd man out at that point.</blockquote>

Verification