Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6449710" data-attributes="member: 42582">There have been a lot of good posts in this thread over the past day - and the XP recharge rate has slowed down to once per 5 minutes!People aren't "discounting the rest of their actions". They're focusing on particularly salient examples that illustrate the extent to which players are able to, and expected to, shape the content of the gameworld.I don't really see why not.If a player wants his/her PC to purchase a mount, the question of whether or not a mount exists in the gameworld, able to be purchased by the PC, is up to the GM.If the player of a 4th leel paladin wants his/her PC to call for a warhorse, the question of whether or not a 5+5 HD magical heavy warhorse exists in the gameworld is not up to the GM. The GM is obliged, by the rules of the game, to author that horse (complete with backstory) and to author its guardian(s) (if any, complete with backstory) into the campaign, in a relatively nearby geographic location.The two different scenarios exhibit quite different distributions of authority between player and GM.I feel that you are not fully engaging with the details of the AD&D ability of a paladin to call for a warhorse. It is not like a summon spell in 3E. The paladin does not cause a warhorse to be magically called forth. Rather, the paladin recieves a vision (dream, etc) of a warhorse that already exists somewhere nearby in the setting, that was born and raised, that is perhaps guarded by an evil fighter, etc.So when the player has his/her paladin call for a warhorse, it is not simply enlivening some content that was pre-supposed by including the class in the game in the first place. It is obliging the GM to introduce some very definite stuff - a horse nearby, a guardian nearby, and all the backstory that that entails - into the gameworld.I therefore think it is richer authorship then the fighter's follower - all that that mandates ia a 5th level (or whatever) fighter with a magical battleaxe - which is in turn richer than the 1st level thieves and monks that turn up for those PCs when they build their strongholds.(I discuss your "journey via a different route from A to B" example below.)I agree with  [MENTION=6785802]guachi[/MENTION] and  [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]. As I have explained above, the player is the one who decides - by having his PC call for a warhorse - that the gameworld contains a magical 5+5 HD warhorse not too far away and moderately hard to take possession of.I don't see how the fact that the scope of that decision - essentially, flipping a switch for the inclusion of that stuff - is dependent on the rules is relevant. That will be true in any RPG. For instance, in Burning Wheel the scope and nature of the NPCs that a player can introduce into the game by making a Circles check is limited by the rules (eg a PC's circles only extend as far as his/her lifepaths walked in character generation - so a character whose background is a city-dwelling vagrant probably won't have any Elven princesses in his/her circles).This is another example where I think that focusing on things from the ingame perspective leads to needless obscurity.From the point of view of the gameworld, of course those elements existed - the paladin didn't conjure the horse and its evil fighter guardian from thin air, and nor did the fighter cause the lieutenant to exist. But the gameworld isn't real. It doesn't have independent existence. It has to be created by people in the real world. And the person in the real world who decides that the gameworld contains a warhorse relatively nearby but moderately difficult to rescue/tame is the player. Likewise, the person who decides that there is a 5th level fighter with a magical battle axe turning up to serve as the fighter's lieutenant is the player.From the point of view of the real world, it is the player who is introducing those particular elements into the game, who is making them an expliit part of the shared fiction.The difference is that, at least in a conventional D&D game, the GM is free to declare that the city contains no horse-merchants. Whereas when a 9th level AD&D fighter builds a stronghold, the GM is not free to declare that no lieutenant turns up to serve the PC. (In 2nd ed AD&D the chart for rolling for a fighter's troops and lieutenant even appears in the class entry for the PHB.)In Rolemaster or Runequest, if the player of a fighter wants his/her PC to obtain a lieutenant, this is analogous to buying a horse in a city - it is all about engaging with whatever world-content the GM has authored. But in AD&D, for a 9th level fighter the situation is different. The rules require the GM to bend the campaign world to meet the dictates of the player.It's not mere coincidence or oversight the RQ and RM have diffrent rules in this respect. Those games are deliberately written to reduce payer control over the gameworld that is not simply a direct ingame causal consequence of the PC's actions.I think the importance of definitions is groslly overrated, both in serious argument and in message board discussions. It's more helpful to work out what the idea is that someone is trying to convey, rather than fussing over the terminology they have adopted to convey it.I agree with  [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] that the prestidigitation spell is an interesting if rather minor example. I hadn't flagged it as player authorial control in the same fashion as the warhorse or follower examples, because it is not a case of a player getting to dictate gameworld content beyond the scope of the direct causal powers of his/her PC. But it is clearly a case of the player getting to dictate the content of the gameworld, much like using Minor Creation to conjure some boxes.I agree with Hussar and  [MENTION=69074]Cyberen[/MENTION] that what drives some modern RPGs is recognising that if its fun to have players able to do wacky stuff with Creation, Prestidigitation and Wish spells, and with Nolzur's Marvellous Pigments and Robes of Useful Items, then it makes sense to allow that into a game without having to have the overlay of magic. The motivating idea here is that the reason the wacky stuff is fun is not, primarily, because it is an exploration of what magic permits in the setting, but rather because it is fun for the players to be able to impress their own creative ideas onto the shared fiction.If you accept this motivating idea - that player creativity, not imagining magic-use, is what really makes these spells and items fun - then it makes sense to extend the ability to do this sort of stuff to other players and to other genres. Of course, because we are talking about a game you want these capabilities to be rationed in some fashion. So you come up with techniques like skill checks, or spending fate points, or whatever, as devices to ration player content creation. These techniques then count as "player authorial control" in the same sense as the warhorse or the follower, because the player is getting to introduce fictional content although (because the ingame trope of "it's magic" has been dropped) there is no ingame causal connection between the existence of that content and the actions of the PC.I think the travel example is a good one, because it illustrates in one example a lot of the different factors and approaches that can come into play when thinking about these issues of authority over gameworld content.First, as you note there is the possibility of the railroad: the GM (either out-of-game "Please don't do that, the adventure needs you to take the main road" or in game "a rockslide/dragon/whatever blocks your way") doesn't let the player take the different route. Both the 3E and the 4e DMGs (p 106 in the latter case) note that a feature of dungeon adventures is that they constrain player choices. Gygax also implicitly acknowledges this when, in his PHB, he notes that city adventures are more open-ended than dungeon ones (p 109). And I remember Roger Musson in an early White Dwarf artice discussing techniques for keeping the PCs out of those parts of a dungeon that haven't yet been written up (eg "purple moud" which welds dungeon doors shut and is impregnable to magic). In other words, the dungeon is (among other things) a device for achieving the goal of catering for every possibility as far as content creation is concerned. (And  [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] upthread has generalised this idea, saying that ideally the GM has always created the content in advance. I think this is also one function of a published campaign setting, to minimise the GM's need to create content in response to unexpected player choices.)One reason for discussing these dungeon examples is to show that the GM can railroad, in this context, without having to do anything but use his/her authority to create new ingame content. This is a difference from the paladin case, where the GM has to change the rules of the paladin class if s/he wants to avoid having to write the warhorse quest.My other reason for discussing these dungeon examples is to make the point that this sort of railroading has a long history in D&D play and isn't per se objectionable. And I think  [MENTION=5143]Majoru Oakheart[/MENTION] has advocated a version of this sort of railroading upthread, with an emphasis on the priority of the GM's conception of what the ingame problem is and what the range of solutions might be. But obviously in some contexts and for some groups this sort of railroading does become a problem. Second, if the GM does allow the players to travel from point A to point B, this is more like a wish spell than calling for a warhorse, in that the players are only acting on the gameworld via their own PC's causal capabiities. So for those who care about the distinction between player influence over content that is mediated via the PC's ingame causal powers, and player infuence over content that is not so mediated, the journey example falls on a different side of the line from the warhorse example. I think  [MENTION=5]Mark[/MENTION]CMG, for instance, would regard this as simply an instance of the players exploring the gameworld through their characters.Third, the GM is always free to say, "You arrive at point B. Knock of 3 days rations." There is no obligation to actually create meaningful, play-worthy content. This is a contrast with the paladin case, where the rules oblige the GM to create some content that will support a (short, but real) episode of play.Fourth, even if the GM does create some meaningful content that lies along the players' chosen route between points A and B, the GM has a free hand in choosing what that content is. The players haven't dictated anything about that content except the barest bones of its existence. The paladin case is more detailed than that.   [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] has also made this point upthread.)Fifth, if the GM does choose to create some meaningful content, this is an example of the GM authoring material in response to player desires. It shows that the idea that player desires influence the GM's content authorship is nothing very radical. The GM authoring some particular content because the players want it (eg they take the river route rather than the overland route because they are hoping to find a pool of water to cast a scrying spell in) is the next step along this path, but not a very radical one (and on p 93 of his DMG Gygax gives an example of "saying yes" in relation to terrain in the context of players having their PCs build strongholds). Extending "saying yes" from this terrain context to the slightly different geographic context of the alley ("Yes, there are [as yet unmentioned and unimagined] boxe") is another step that is not very large.The next step is to recognise that as well as "saying yes", you can give players of fighters that same sort of direct control over content as the players of wizards by dropping the need to frame content-introduction abilities as ingame magic, and make the metagame abilities instead. That is another step that is not very radical, once the above steps have been taken. Hence my view that the relationship between so-called "storygames" and "trad RPGs" is one of continuity and similarity, not radical contrast.I agree that it is largely moot (upthread I've described these as "technical differences" in play techniques). But I also think that, if you regard it as not moot, there are interesting distinctions and early D&D falls on both sides.A wish spell, for instance, lets a player create content. In the fiction, the causal origin of that content is the spell-casting actions of that player's PC. This clearly counts as roleplaying on even a narrow conception of what that is.A paladin calling for his/her warhorse lets a player create content. In the fiction, the causal origin of that content is not the actions of the PC. The paladin didn't cause the horse to exist, or the evil fighter to be guarding it. These have their own histories within the gameworld. This is not roleplaying in the most narrow conception. Purist simuationist games, like RQ and RM, do not have this sort of ability in their systems precisely because they offend that purism.Agreed. But for me it was Oriental Adventures that really brought out this feature of class choice (and related aspects of PC build). I was then able to read it back into "mainstream" AD&D - especially thieves, in a very fun all-thieves campaign - but I don't think I would have got there without being led to the realisation by OA.An interesting thing about Rolemaster is that, athough it is technicallly a class-based game, the classes are mostly just containers for a points-buy system, and do not have any of this background/baggage that is part of the AD&D classes. At different times in my RPGing career, in different moods and with different preferences, I've seen this as both a strength and a weakness of RM (and vice versa for D&D). It's definitely a difference.The stuff in OA isn't so much authorial powers - in this respect it's pretty vanilla AD&D, with rules for followers but not much else. What is in there, though, is rules for building rich PC backgrouns, that embed the PCs into the gameworld (eg via families, rivalries, martial arts mentors, monasteries, etc) and which the GM is therefore expected to take up and leverage in actually running the game.So it's pretty much the opposite of  [MENTION=5143]Majoru Oakheart[/MENTION]'s "man with no name" approach to PC and adventure design.Just as you've said for the paladin's warhorse, so for OA: it's not at the level of Fate or even Burning Wheel as far as player contributions to world-building are concerned, and the use of "player flags" and the GM techniques based around them are not as systematic. I think of it as a precursor example. But it is the example which led me to finally abandon attempts at dungeon-exploration-style D&D, and to take up player-driven,"story"-focused D&D. Hence when I discovered the Forge around 10 years ago (which is to say, nearly 20 years after I started developing my current GMing approach) I didn't find it outrageous or insulting. I found that a lot of people had thought a lot harder than I had about what sorts of GMing techniques were suited to what sort of RPGing. Some of the advice was not relevant to me (because aimed at different sorts of RPGing). But plenty of it was - it showed me how to do the sort of stuff I was trying to do better than I was currently doing it.I agree (obviously!) about Gygax's recognition of the need to cater to the players real-life desires for the game. Am I correct in assuming that you have the paladin's warhorse in mind as a prime example of "providential" control.Completely agreed. What I would add is that it is interesting to see, in Gygax's DMG, the quite significant extent to which he is reflecting on tensions between ultra-random, ultra-GM-pre-authored content introduction, and the real-life demands of the game as actually played.A common complaint about sandbox design, for instance, is that the GM might come up with all this interesting content but the players never engage with it. Gygax's suggestion (DMG p 110): fudge secret door rolls to make sure the PCs discover the secret door that leads to the exciting dungeon area that you wrote up! In other words, don't let that exciting content go unused!A common complaint about random or "filler" encounters - they lead to anti-climactic battles and meaningless PC death. Gygax's suggestion (DMG p 9): if the players are playing the game seriously (which, for Gygax, means proper prep and sensible execution of a plan for a dungeon raid) then ignore wandering monster dice that might lead to encounters that will stop the PCs getting to the part of the dungeon that they actualy wanted to explore. This is a precursor to the 4e approach of dropping filler and focusing only on "set-pieces" - for 4e the set-piece is the big encounter, while for Gygax the set-piece is a particular area of the dungeon targetted for raiding. Once you allow for the different conceptions of what counts as a set-piece, the actual advice on ignoring filler encounters is really quite similar.And the reason I'm making these points is to demonstrate that the approaches to GMing and to RPGing found in more recent games didn't come from nowhere. They have obvious and deep roots in the history of RPGing.</blockquote>

Verification