D&D General Creativity?

[Oofta]

I don't agree with this. Good RPG rules can handle that stuff. An RPG that struggles with it is, in my view, at real risk of not being a good one!

That doesn't mean "a rule for everything" - it means a resolution framework which makes it straightforward to input unexpected fiction and generate meaningful consequence both in mechanical and fictional terms.

I would say that D&D does handle this well. Or at least well enough. It's called rulings over rules, the details are covered in the DMG under Role of the Dice and different DMs will handle things differently. I think that flexibility is one of the things that makes D&D work.

 

[Oofta]

You know we have been around this bush an infinite number of times, so you know my reply, which is that the notion that players are just mindless self-aggrandizing actors who's only concern is amassing giant loot/xp piles is an EXTREMELY limited position. In fact I would say it is just plain an extreme position! There's certainly a need for a Process of Play in order to lend the activity the character of a game. It need not be anything like the one D&D chooses! Thus I don't find this point convincing at all. In fact I play in games all the time which, according to this rubric are not possible!

Further upthread I gave real world examples. Actual statements and declarations by people I've observed in games. Things where people wanted an "I win" card for their character. Maybe you've never had some (just to pick on one example) that thought their monk could run as fast as The Flash and recreate a superhero "tornado" to defeat an enemy. I have.

First of all, every RPG (I guess someone could invent an exception to this) has a genre, and thus genre conventions, and has fictional position, which the participants acknowledge dictates what sorts of statements about what characters do are legal and which are not. The decisions as to what falls in and out of bounds can successfully be decided by MANY different possible mechanisms. Games, in my direct and extensive experience, do not fall apart merely because players may be making some of those declarations. Nor should we neglect the Czege Principle, which we have discussed many times before (whomever is challenged by a situation should not be the one adjudicating when and how it is resolved). Thus I find all these 'bugbears' you quote above to be little more than fairy tales certain GMs seem to tell their players to justify a certain type of game play.

Nonsense. I mean, yes, if you set up a classic dungeon crawl and then have the players take over the GM's role as arbiter of the environment and actions, then that game process will go wonky. Not really because the players CANNOT be trusted to handle adjudications, but simply because Czege won't be satisfied and the games built-in incentives will act in a perverse way. However its perfectly possible to run a dungeon crawl in Dungeon World, in fact it is basically meant for EXACTLY THAT, yet the GM has very constrained options and authority in Dungeon World, and players can most certainly assert what it is that their characters CAN do, for example, as well as making declarations which impose constraints on the fiction the GM is able to put on the table (IE by searching for a secret door in some location and finding it, for example). Now, the GM might be perfectly within her rights to then constrain the utility of said door, making it locked, leading into a very narrow passage, etc. but only in concert with the rules on making GM moves.

As we have many times discussed, all this works perfectly well, and the notion that there has to be some sort of GM who 'rides herd on the players' is merely a reflection of the specific way you trad/neo trad people play! It certainly isn't a design constraint on RPGs, at all!

So you agree that TTRPGs have rules and limitations? I've never disagreed with that. There has to be some balance or certain people will take advantage of the game to the point where their character is all powerful. If you don't do that it becomes story hour contest of who can come up with the craziest powers.

D&D just does it using a different structure from some other games so I fail to see what the issue is. We have different preferences. I happen to like D&D's approach no matter which side of the DM's screen I am.

 

[Celebrim]

In general, if a player wants to pull a creative stunt, then my overall rule is, "You can do that but the risk you are taking is going to be at least proportional to the desired reward." In other words, "There is no such thing as a free lunch."

Usually this gets resolved as, "Roll a dice to try something hard, and if it succeeds you get a small bonus. If it fails you get a penalty proportional to just how crazy and dumb the thing you were trying actually was." So sure, you want to try to deflect a lightning bolt with a handheld mirror? Ok, that's something that might happen in a cartoon and there is precedent for lightning bolts in D&D bouncing off of solid objects, but I'd be like, "Ok, so instead of trying to jump out of the way of the lightning bolt, you are going to try to get in front of it AND catch it with your metal mirror and then hope it bounces? Ok, then." The idea would be yes it will be dramatic and cool if it works, but you better have a really good reason for doing that because if it fails - and it will likely fail - you are going to get fried.

I don't think you can cover every situation that can come up with a single rule and for me there are always going to be exceptions where appeals to drama and narrative trump realism to some extent. But the main thing to me is to not give anything away for free because if you do then it stops being a creative and dramatic stunt and becomes a routine tactic that will be engaged in over and over again. If you give things away for free, you are just letting the player invent new class powers for themselves and that will ultimately ruin everyone's enjoyment, including the player doing it. At the same time, you want to minimize the times you just say, "No" because if a player is exercising their creativity that's a good thing and probably a big part of that player's aesthetic of play.

 

[Clint_L]

I don't agree with this. Good RPG rules can handle that stuff. An RPG that struggles with it is, in my view, at real risk of not being a good one!

That doesn't mean "a rule for everything" - it means a resolution framework which makes it straightforward to input unexpected fiction and generate meaningful consequence both in mechanical and fictional terms.

I think a lot of us are arguing the same point in general terms, and mostly quibbling about the degree of adherence to rules.

Sure, you can have a "rule for everything" if your input mechanism is broad enough. Dread has players pull a jenga block for any kind of significant test. With basically one rule, it can cover most any situation. Though even there, it is up the DM to decide if the situation mandates a pull.

What I am talking about is sweating the details too much. Some folks on this forum argue for more and more granular detail so that there is, as much as possible, a rule for everything. I think the game should go the other way, making rules broad enough so that we are able to keep the story moving and can handle most anything that happens. I don't think there is a perfect solution - at the extreme of Dread at one end and a rulebook the size of an old-school encyclopedia at the other, each player is going to find their sweet spot.

For me, going back to the premise of this thread, I think rules are there to facilitate the story, and when they feel like they are getting in the way of the logical, natural flow of the action, then they've gotta give. If the players or DM come up with a a creative idea that makes sense in the narrative yet isn't perfectly accommodated by the rules, then that's a problem with the rules. Example: I needed a situation where the players were all unconscious in order to set-up a major story beat at the start of a campaign. I didn't sweat how to make that happen with the RAW, I just made it happen.

 

[bloodtide]

Okay. How do you prevent it then? When the DM has the latitude to change the fundamental agreement between player and herself at any time, for any reason, without notice or justification, what else is it?.

I'm not sure what your question is here?

How do I prevent players from changing the rules and altering game reality? Well, I don't let them do it? Should a player say "my character does 1000 damage to the dragon becasue I say so", I would just ignore it...and likely boot the player from the game forever.

So they're flimsy nothings which one should not only not be relied upon, bit which one should expect to be violated? Because literally the only reason to say a rule is only a suggestion is to make explicitly, abundantly clear just how ready one is to violate it at any time and for any reason or no reason at all.

Well, the first part is accurate, but not the second. The reason is in and around to make the game/gameplay better.

Weird. I've found the exact opposite. It's the older gamers, especially those with a few years of "system mastery" under their belts, who tend to avoid creative shenanigans. It's the younger players and/or the less experienced players who get more creative.

Weird back at you.

For me, going back to the premise of this thread, I think rules are there to facilitate the story, and when they feel like they are getting in the way of the logical, natural flow of the action, then they've gotta give. If the players or DM come up with a a creative idea that makes sense in the narrative yet isn't perfectly accommodated by the rules, then that's a problem with the rules. Example: I needed a situation where the players were all unconscious in order to set-up a major story beat at the start of a campaign. I didn't sweat how to make that happen with the RAW, I just made it happen.

My wonder was how much it happens and the limit.

I've watched hundreds of games where younger gamers (under 21) that just flt out refuse to do anything creative. And lots of other gamers are always going for Epic effects with like rocks and sticks. They want to throw a rock and have the guards run off for a whole hour to 'try and find the noise'.

So I wondered what others did...

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm not sure what your question is here?

How do I prevent players from changing the rules and altering game reality? Well, I don't let them do it? Should a player say "my character does 1000 damage to the dragon becasue I say so", I would just ignore it...and likely boot the player from the game forever.

No, that's not what I said. I wasn't talking, even the tiniest bit, about player behavior. I was talking about the absolute and unrelenting latitude you demand as DM. The power to upend anything and everything whenever you feel like it. How do you prevent the fact that nothing exists except "DM says" from becoming mere Calvinball?

Well, the first part is accurate, but not the second. The reason is in and around to make the game/gameplay better.

How do you KNOW that? When all is smoke and mirrors and the "rules" literally aren't even anything at all and the whole experience is "guess what the DM is thinking," it isn't a game anymore. It's barely even audience contribution--more like audience led-around-by-the-nose.

It's all well and good to say, "Well I'm doing it to make things better!" Certain roads being paved with good intentions and the like.

 

[pemerton]

I think rules are there to facilitate the story, and when they feel like they are getting in the way of the logical, natural flow of the action, then they've gotta give. If the players or DM come up with a a creative idea that makes sense in the narrative yet isn't perfectly accommodated by the rules, then that's a problem with the rules. Example: I needed a situation where the players were all unconscious in order to set-up a major story beat at the start of a campaign. I didn't sweat how to make that happen with the RAW, I just made it happen.

On your particular example: D&D rulebooks have always been oddly coy about the authority of the GM to frame scenes, in various circumstances. This creates (in my view needless) arguments, like whether or not the start of A4 or Out of the Abyss (ie all the PCs prisoners etc) is permissible and/or fair. It's not hard for a RPG to actually spell out the rules for this (the three I'm thinking of straight away are Burning Wheel, Agon and The Green Knight).

A more general example:

In Torchbearer, the GM has the authority to declare a player's declared action a "good idea", meaning that it works without a roll. This is a benefit to the player: they get a success without having to make a roll, thus avoiding (i) the risk of failure and (ii) the standard cost of performing an action (in time, or resources, depending on whether the game is in Adventure, Camp or Town Phase). It is also a detriment to the player: the only way to advance your skills and abilities is by making rolls (a little bit like RuneQuest), and so a "good idea" means the player loses that opportunity to mark a test for advacement.

The upshot of this is that the GM, in deciding whether or not something is a good idea, can have regard to pacing, and what makes sense in the fiction, without having to worry about whether they are softballing things. The game has its own built-in mechanism for making the players not want everything to be a "good idea", and hence not feeling like the GM is punishing them in calling for a check.

Burning Wheel is similar to Torchbearer in this respect, except the principles for deciding whether or not to call for a check are not based on what makes sense in the fiction as a good idea, but rather what is at stake in the fiction relative to a PCs' Beliefs, traits, relationships etc.

Apocalypse World is different from TB and BW: there is a discrete list of actions which trigger a roll ("if you do it, you do it") and any other action simply triggers a narration from the GM. There are rules that say how that narration is to be chosen (eg mostly it must be "soft" - ie stepping up the complications - rather than "hard" - ie narrating some irrevocable consequence); there are also clear rules about who gets to say what as the outcome of the dice being rolled.

Thus AW, like BW and TB, doesn't create a problem of "softballing" or "playing the GM" when it comes to adjudication of declared actions. And it's always clear who is entitled to say what, and what the principles are that govern that.

The idea we see in discussions of D&D, about "the rules having to give way to the story", as well as the issues we see that idea give rise to (eg in this thread various posters talking about the players trying to "get away" with things, or get "auto-wins"), arise out of particular design features of D&D, probably the core one being the lack of any general principles about how establishing consequences relates to whether or not a roll was made.

 

[Oofta]

On your particular example: D&D rulebooks have always been oddly coy about the authority of the GM to frame scenes, in various circumstances. This creates (in my view needless) arguments, like whether or not the start of A4 or Out of the Abyss (ie all the PCs prisoners etc) is permissible and/or fair. It's not hard for a RPG to actually spell out the rules for this (the three I'm thinking of straight away are Burning Wheel, Agon and The Green Knight).
...

This has me scratching my head. The DM doesn't have authority to establish scenes? What now? Am I just misunderstanding what you're saying? Where is that even coming from? It may not be a good idea, it may be bad DMing to force a specific narrative but I have never heard anyone say that they could not. The intro to the DMG is quite clear, the DM is the creator of their campaign world, they are in control of the environment. Obviously it can be a collaborative affair, but when it comes to the world and events external to the actions of the PC, there is no ambiguity. The DM makes the final call.

If I want to capture PCs I'll weave a story about being surrounded, perhaps a sleeping gas or just that the forces the PCs were facing were overwhelming and beat them into unconsciousness. Or I'll just set up an encounter so lopsided that I know they'll lose. It's something I have done maybe twice in my DMing career that I can think of (and I had contingency plans if someone did escape) in order to move the plot forward. Heck, even in the killer DM game that I played once where the DM had a hand come out of the wall and randomly kill someone I didn't question the DM's authority to do it. It was a bad idea and bad DMing that meant he didn't DM a second time, but he definitely had the authority to do it.

 

[pemerton]

This has me scratching my head. The DM doesn't have authority to establish scenes? What now? Am I just misunderstanding what you're saying?

Apparently. To repeat: D&D rulebooks have always been oddly coy about the authority of the GM to frame scenes, in various circumstances.

The contrast with rulebooks which are not coy about this is pretty marked.

For instance, this is from Marvel Heroic RP (p OM34):

A pitched battle across the frozen wastes of Jotunheim and a tense diplomatic meeting between agents of the Shi’ar and Kree empires are both examples of Action Scenes. An Action Scene might begin in medias res, in the middle of the action - Thor and his Warriors Three are already in the midst of a titanic battle with Frost Giants, or Cyclops and the X-Men are already three hours into the middle of the diplomatic encounter. What’s important is that this is where the real action starts. . . .

If you’re the Watcher [= GM], you get things started by establishing who is present in a Scene and where. This is called framing the
Scene, and it’s your chief responsibility in the game - other than playing the bad guys, keeping the doom pool, and rolling opposition dice. You should ask directed questions of the players, encouraging them to describe what their hero is doing or how they plan to respond to something. Rather than asking, “Where are you?” try something like, “Are you in the middle of the rank-and-file, or are you with the officers near the rear?” You might even establish a particular fact at the same time: “You’re with the officers of the Imperial Force. How did you agree to this position?”

If you’re a player, you should allow for some relaxation of control over your hero for this purpose, because after this point everything you do and say is up to you and the roll of the dice. If the Watcher asks you, “How did you agree to this position?” use that as an opportunity to build on the story. You might say, “Cyclops wants to see the big picture, so he’s staying back to be sure his tactical genius is put to good use.” Or, “Cyclops doesn’t trust the Shi’ar officers, so he’s staying near them in case they decide to pull a fast one on his team.”​

That's a really clear statement of who has what authority in relation to framing scenes.

The intro to the DMG is quite clear, the DM is the creator of their campaign world, they are in control of the environment. Obviously it can be a collaborative affair, but when it comes to the world and events external to the actions of the PC, there is no ambiguity. The DM makes the final call.

Is Cyclops's decision about whether to be at the front with the troops or in the rear with the officers external to the actions of the PC, or not?

The MHRP text is clear about this. (And other bits of the text make it clear when and how the GM can starts a scene with the PCs unconscious.) Is the D&D text comparably clear?

 

[bloodtide]

No, that's not what I said. I wasn't talking, even the tiniest bit, about player behavior. I was talking about the absolute and unrelenting latitude you demand as DM. The power to upend anything and everything whenever you feel like it. How do you prevent the fact that nothing exists except "DM says" from becoming mere Calvinball?

What is a Calvinball? If your asking how the game works, well, the players don't complain and then we all play and have fun.

How do you KNOW that? When all is smoke and mirrors and the "rules" literally aren't even anything at all and the whole experience is "guess what the DM is thinking," it isn't a game anymore. It's barely even audience contribution--more like audience led-around-by-the-nose.

It's all well and good to say, "Well I'm doing it to make things better!" Certain roads being paved with good intentions and the like.

How do I know what I do is making things better? Intelligence, Experience, Self-Awareness, Understanding.

I'd never tell the players to guess what I'm thinking. That would be a waste of time.
Sure, I there is a bad road....but any style has a bad road.

The idea we see in discussions of D&D, about "the rules having to give way to the story", as well as the issues we see that idea give rise to (eg in this thread various posters talking about the players trying to "get away" with things, or get "auto-wins"), arise out of particular design features of D&D, probably the core one being the lack of any general principles about how establishing consequences relates to whether or not a roll was made.

I think the big point is D&D is made to play with a group of friends or a group of strangers. All those other games are made for not only a group of friends, but a group that all thinks the same and is agreeable.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, you do. But I think that indicates a serious failure of comprehension or even active unwillingness to comprehend on your part, rather than proof that your very lightly sketched claims hold much water. For example, you see the "DM-prescribed limits" as some sort of pre-existing thing made of adamantium, rather than something that barely exists, and when it does exist, is highly malleable.

I'd say 5E and 2E have a pretty sizeable difference myself.

All I can say is I picked up the LBBs almost hot off the press and bought each of the 1e books the day it was released. Same with 2e. I think I can comprehend what they are about, after like 50 thousand hours of playing them with 100's of different people.

I mean, I'm not criticizing anyone's preferred game/style here, I am just saying that 2e and 5e share a 'process of play' to a very high degree. It allocates all 'fiction creation' to the GM, and IMHO that is a very limiting design.

 

[Oofta]

Apparently. To repeat: D&D rulebooks have always been oddly coy about the authority of the GM to frame scenes, in various circumstances.

The contrast with rulebooks which are not coy about this is pretty marked.

For instance, this is from Marvel Heroic RP (p OM34):

A pitched battle across the frozen wastes of Jotunheim and a tense diplomatic meeting between agents of the Shi’ar and Kree empires are both examples of Action Scenes. An Action Scene might begin in medias res, in the middle of the action - Thor and his Warriors Three are already in the midst of a titanic battle with Frost Giants, or Cyclops and the X-Men are already three hours into the middle of the diplomatic encounter. What’s important is that this is where the real action starts. . . .

If you’re the Watcher [= GM], you get things started by establishing who is present in a Scene and where. This is called framing the
Scene, and it’s your chief responsibility in the game - other than playing the bad guys, keeping the doom pool, and rolling opposition dice. You should ask directed questions of the players, encouraging them to describe what their hero is doing or how they plan to respond to something. Rather than asking, “Where are you?” try something like, “Are you in the middle of the rank-and-file, or are you with the officers near the rear?” You might even establish a particular fact at the same time: “You’re with the officers of the Imperial Force. How did you agree to this position?”

If you’re a player, you should allow for some relaxation of control over your hero for this purpose, because after this point everything you do and say is up to you and the roll of the dice. If the Watcher asks you, “How did you agree to this position?” use that as an opportunity to build on the story. You might say, “Cyclops wants to see the big picture, so he’s staying back to be sure his tactical genius is put to good use.” Or, “Cyclops doesn’t trust the Shi’ar officers, so he’s staying near them in case they decide to pull a fast one on his team.”​

That's a really clear statement of who has what authority in relation to framing scenes.

Is Cyclops's decision about whether to be at the front with the troops or in the rear with the officers external to the actions of the PC, or not?

The MHRP text is clear about this. (And other bits of the text make it clear when and how the GM can starts a scene with the PCs unconscious.) Is the D&D text comparably clear?

So ... different games have different assumptions. And? In D&D, the DM creates the world, sets up the scenarios, sets the stage and runs all of the NPCs. The players control their PCs. It's clearly spelled out.

I guess I just don't see an issue or ambiguity and it's never been an issue in any game I remember.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Geee, If I had a player say something like this to me, I would just kick them out. If it's "your game" you don't need me to be DM, do you?

Why the excluded middle? I mean, it is a game with participants, it doesn't 'belong' to any one of them. Dungeon World for instance needs a GM to make moves that put stress on the PCs and define certain particulars of scenes. Its like any dialog, it exists in the collective space of the participants.

I guess here you are talking about Storytelling games where each person can do things like "create plot point" or "alter plot reality".

Well, some games do have something like 'plot points', though PbtA-based games don't do that. They simply describe the agenda of the GM, the techniques they will use, and generally supply some genre-appropriate 'moves' (though basically they all come down to 'introduce some sort of stress/adversity into the situation'). Still, in Dungeon World the GM and players FIRST decide, at the start of the game, what sort of basic parameters it has, like the sort of major conflict, how the characters relate to each other and the world around them, and generally create a 'steading' (base of operations) as well as some ongoing immediate plot. After that the GM can go back and invent some more structured threats (fronts) and partially flesh out some things (make maps with holes in them). The GM is supposed to ask a lot of questions and use the answers the players give in order to do this.

From there, the GM sets scenes based on the player's avowed goals, PC relationships, genre conventions, and some of his own ideas. If the dwarf fighter states that he has sworn to recover his family's heirloom magical axe from the depths of the Lost Mines of Mugdush, then you can bet those mines are around someplace, and filled with nasty stuff that will make him want to think twice about it! And in DW there are certain moves that put some constraints on what the GM can say next, like Discern Realities requires the DM to answer questions in a certain way, assuming the player rolls above a 6.

Well, I will always see the rules as suggestions.

Sure, I don't think rules ever really trump fun, but I also will stick with a principled use of a game's process of play, because that IS the defining nature of that game. We can alter or set aside certain outcomes if everyone really wants, perhaps, etc. but when the player rolling for the initial position at the start of a score in BitD gets a 1, we're going to start them out in a real tight spot! They can figure out how to deal with 'Desperate', the game has plenty of ways, and its those situations which give it part of its character.

And, to be clear, I think the same is true of classic trad D&D. If I decide to run a 1e game, I'm going to run it how it runs. I might not pedantically stick to the exact text of a certain spell if it would make sense for it to work differently in a given situation, and I'd be happy if players try to exploit that, its how the game is supposed to work. I just played enough of it and moved on, myself.

 

[Lanefan]

What is a Calvinball?

From the sadly-no-longer-produced comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, Calvinball is a game they play where everything - rules and all - is made up as they go along.

 

[pemerton]

So ... different games have different assumptions. And? In D&D, the DM creates the world, sets up the scenarios, sets the stage and runs all of the NPCs. The players control their PCs. It's clearly spelled out.

I guess I just don't see an issue or ambiguity and it's never been an issue in any game I remember.

I don't really get what fight you're trying to pick.

@Clint_L made what I thought was an interesting remark about starting a campaign with the PCs unconscious. It reminded me of A4 and Out of the Abyss, both of which start with the PCs as prisoners, without their gear, etc. And I've seen quite a bit of discussion over the years as to whether or not those are fair framing situations for scenarios.

This prompted me to observe that D&D is somewhat coy about what authority the GM enjoys in scene-framing; and I posted an example of a game that is less coy.

If you think that there is a clear statement in the 5e rules about what the GM's authority is in scene-framing, and how it relates to (say) the PCs being in one place rather than another, or talking to one person rather than another, or imprisoned, or unconscious, by all means quote it! I don't recall anything like that in the 3E DMG or even the 4e one. Gygax's DMG and PHB, read together, are clearer: at least as a general rule the GM should not start things in media res, but rather the starting scene is the PCs heading out on their expedition. Moldvay Basic has the first scene being the entrance to the dungeon, but as nearly everyone knows the module many of us took from that box - B2 - doesn't follow that rule!

The implication of what you're saying ("the players control their PCs") is that the GM can't frame a starting scene which depends on the PCs having taken (and even morseo failed at) some prior action which has resulted in them being in the middle of tense negotiations, or locked up as prisoners. The fact that I have to draw the inference already reinforces my point that it is not explicit. But I can't even tell if you agree with my inference or not.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Further upthread I gave real world examples. Actual statements and declarations by people I've observed in games. Things where people wanted an "I win" card for their character. Maybe you've never had some (just to pick on one example) that thought their monk could run as fast as The Flash and recreate a superhero "tornado" to defeat an enemy. I have.




So you agree that TTRPGs have rules and limitations? I've never disagreed with that. There has to be some balance or certain people will take advantage of the game to the point where their character is all powerful. If you don't do that it becomes story hour contest of who can come up with the craziest powers.

D&D just does it using a different structure from some other games so I fail to see what the issue is. We have different preferences. I happen to like D&D's approach no matter which side of the DM's screen I am.

No, we have a FUNDAMENTALLY different understanding of what this is about. Who cares if 'Monk' decides to do a 'Flash Move'? As long as it has genre appropriateness, and the player is following the process of play, then its fine! (I mean, it may not be possible for it to happen in the fiction of a given game, obviously). What does the player accomplish, they 'beat' some situation? There's just going to be another situation, and presumably it also will be challenging to them, even with this new move. It just doesn't matter. As long as the fiction addresses what is interesting to the participants (agenda) then its all FINE! Yes, it is fine for the players to want to play low level D&D PCs and follow a set of rules that makes goblins dangerous in challenging, but to think that is NECESSARY is simply too limited a view of RPGs.

I mean, in comics Superman is an interesting character, despite being virtually invincible, because it isn't simplistically about what he can defeat (yeah, sometimes the writers cheaped out and invented 'kryptonite' or whatever, but that's not a requirement to make a Superman story). RPGs are the same, no matter how much stuff my Dungeon World character accomplishes (because I said he would and then rolled a 10+) there's always the next GM hard move, and it DEFINITIONALLY puts him right back in the frying pan!

This is also essentially my answer to @Lanefan, there simply is no such thing as a hard RPG game design/play principle that there must be any specific constraints on player action declarations or outcomes. The only constraint is that the player is somehow sharing the decisions on those outcomes with some other participants and/or processes which allow the conflict inherent in drama to emerge, happen, and come to resolution. And given all that, there's no reason to think, and my experience bears this out in general, that players are any less capable of deciding how the tone/genre of the game goes.

Try this, run a D&D campaign and put the players completely in charge of how much XP everyone gets, and all agree beforehand that the players are entirely free to use this to play in whatever they all feel is the level sweet spot for the style of play they feel like having. If they all want to play 15th and up level PCs, so what? They can just grant themselves a lot of XP and get to 15th level and have fun, they're adults (probably) and can decide for themselves, they don't need daddy GM telling them they have to flog it hard through 14 levels to 'deserve' to play how they want! lol.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

What is a Calvinball? If your asking how the game works, well, the players don't complain and then we all play and have fun.

"Calvinball" is a fictional game from the comic Calvin and Hobbes, though the term is usually used in a looser sense than what was used in the comic itself. Formally, Calvinball is a "sport" where the rules are made up by the players as they play; it's explicitly intentional that no two games of Calvinball will be the same. However, TVTropes uses the term in a broader sense: games where any "rules" are fluid, ever-changing, and (usually) never explicitly spelled out anywhere. This is the sense I intend: a game where the only rule is "DM says" is a game where the rules (other than "DM says") are fluid, ever-changing, and never explicitly spelled out anywhere. There is nothing to rely on, no decisions to make (other than "will this be what the DM says?"), and no strategy to learn (other than learning to read the DM's mind.)

How do I know what I do is making things better? Intelligence, Experience, Self-Awareness, Understanding.

So, you are more intelligent, self-aware, and understanding than your players? I assume this isn't what you meant, but it is what your reply means in the context of the question I asked.

I'd never tell the players to guess what I'm thinking. That would be a waste of time.

Yet that is what follows from "the rules are only suggestions." The game becomes "DM says," and thus the only element of play which matters is predicting what the DM will say before she says it. Hence, gameplay is reduced to "read the DM's mind" (whether literally or merely figuratively, e.g. "I know Dave very well, he adores Big Damn Heroes moments, so if I spin this action as a Big Damn Heroes moment, he's sure to agree.")

Sure, I there is a bad road....but any style has a bad road.

There can surely be degrees of badness, however, and reducing the entirety of gameplay to "DM says" must surely be pretty bad!

I think the big point is D&D is made to play with a group of friends or a group of strangers. All those other games are made for not only a group of friends, but a group that all thinks the same and is agreeable.

And yet the style you are explicitly advancing is one that requires a group that all thinks the same and is agreeable. That's literally the argument I'm making here: unless the whole group is of one mind, and thus no mind-reading is required (because everyone consistently agrees on what should happen), things necessarily devolve toward nothing more than "DM says." How do you prevent that slide? What do your players have that they can make use of, rely upon, or reason from which isn't just another way of saying "DM says"?

 

[Lanefan]

Apparently. To repeat: D&D rulebooks have always been oddly coy about the authority of the GM to frame scenes, in various circumstances.

The contrast with rulebooks which are not coy about this is pretty marked.

For instance, this is from Marvel Heroic RP (p OM34):

A pitched battle across the frozen wastes of Jotunheim and a tense diplomatic meeting between agents of the Shi’ar and Kree empires are both examples of Action Scenes. An Action Scene might begin in medias res, in the middle of the action - Thor and his Warriors Three are already in the midst of a titanic battle with Frost Giants, or Cyclops and the X-Men are already three hours into the middle of the diplomatic encounter. What’s important is that this is where the real action starts. . . .​

​

If you’re the Watcher [= GM], you get things started by establishing who is present in a Scene and where. This is called framing the​

Scene, and it’s your chief responsibility in the game - other than playing the bad guys, keeping the doom pool, and rolling opposition dice. You should ask directed questions of the players, encouraging them to describe what their hero is doing or how they plan to respond to something. Rather than asking, “Where are you?” try something like, “Are you in the middle of the rank-and-file, or are you with the officers near the rear?” You might even establish a particular fact at the same time: “You’re with the officers of the Imperial Force. How did you agree to this position?”​

​

If you’re a player, you should allow for some relaxation of control over your hero for this purpose, because after this point everything you do and say is up to you and the roll of the dice. If the Watcher asks you, “How did you agree to this position?” use that as an opportunity to build on the story. You might say, “Cyclops wants to see the big picture, so he’s staying back to be sure his tactical genius is put to good use.” Or, “Cyclops doesn’t trust the Shi’ar officers, so he’s staying near them in case they decide to pull a fast one on his team.”​

That's a really clear statement of who has what authority in relation to framing scenes.

Is Cyclops's decision about whether to be at the front with the troops or in the rear with the officers external to the actions of the PC, or not?

The MHRP text is clear about this. (And other bits of the text make it clear when and how the GM can starts a scene with the PCs unconscious.) Is the D&D text comparably clear?

The sort of scene-framing model presented by the MHRP quote above literally asks the players (in the bolded bit) to cede some agency in order to allow scenes to be framed.

As in the past you've been a fairly consistent and strident advocate for player agency, it seems a bit off-script that you'd be promoting a system that has denial of agency as a suggestion. What am I missing?

Further, you've also been an even more strident opponent of anything even resembling a railroad, yet forcing the PCs to start a scene unconscious (or captured, a la the start of module A4) is about as railroady as it gets*; as would be any scene that begins in medias res without any player input as to how things got to that point or any chance for the players to plan ahead. For example, in the X-men scene above, Cyclops and the rest would doubtless have known ahead of time they were entering into negotiations and thus would (one thinks) have wanted to come up with a negotiation strategy in advance and talk it over (which means the players coming up with the strategy and talking it over in character), along with some fallback plans if the negotiations go sideways. And yet the system asks the GM to dump them into the already-ongoing scene.

So again, what am I missing here?

* - this has always been my biggest complaint about the A-series, that it insists the whole party get captured at the end of A3 rather than allowing for the very real possibility that one or more characters might have a valid "getaway car" e.g. a device of teleportation or etherealness or whatever that allows a guaranteed avoidance of capture.

 

[delericho]

So the basic question is: What are your house rules for Player Creativity?

I'm cautious, bordering on paranoid, where it comes to player creativity as it relates specifically to spellcasters - those are already the most powerful and most flexible classes, so giving them yet more flexibility is of some concern. (I'm much more inclined to be generous with non-spellcasting characters.)

That said, I generally take the view that you can burn a resource of a given level to gain an effect you could get with a lower level resource, provide you can plausibly justify it. So using a 4th level cold spell to effectively cast dispel magic on a fire spell would seem to be reasonably.

All that said, I don't have house rules as such. At best, they're rules of thumb... but even that is probably rather too grand a title.

So this came in related to the new D&D movie trailer. In a scene the Red Wizard casts a Floating Hand spell at the heroes. One of the heroes casts Earthen Grasp and that hand rushed over to block the Floating Hand.

Ah, but did they? Or did they cast a counterspell that looked like earthen grasp?

 

[Neonchameleon]

The sort of scene-framing model presented by the MHRP quote above literally asks the players (in the bolded bit) to cede some agency in order to allow scenes to be framed.

As in the past you've been a fairly consistent and strident advocate for player agency, it seems a bit off-script that you'd be promoting a system that has denial of agency as a suggestion. What am I missing?

One of the fundamental observations of trying to design GMless games is (and I can't remember who I'm quoting) that it's generally a bad idea to have the same player responsible for both getting a character into trouble and of getting them out of it. As for player agency there's a stunning amount of difference between slapping a player's control of their character out of their hands during play so the DM is puppeting their character and doing it out of scene where it might jar slightly but at the point it can most be taken.

Second there's a bright line in D&D. The DM completely controls literally the entire world other than the PCs. The only thing the players control is their characters. For a DM, not content with controlling the entire world other than the PCs to reach across the line and snatch the only thing
the player actually has control of, therefore leaving the player with literally nothing is ridiculously unfair.

By contrast the line in MHRP is much blurrier. The players don't have as much control over the gameworld as Watchtower but they've a non-trivial amount; because MHRP doesn't have entitled DMs who are precious about their stuff and their exclusive control the players are also much more likely to share. And with certain characters it's entirely reasonable for them to be in a scene even if they aren't actually in a scene. (I've done this with Tony Stark. I mean yeah, sure, he was captured and wasn't actually there in person when the other characters were attacked. But he'd made preparations against other plans that were revealed as the scene unfolded). But even if the line is blurrier scene framing is part of the Watcher's control so it's both expected they use it as part of what people signed up for in a way it isn't part of D&D

Third there's the way death is on the line in D&D - and there's really no other long term failure state. And the XP track ticks upwards. Which locks the players into almost having to succeed. None of this is true for MHRP (I can't even remember if you can kill a character RAW).

Fourth there's how equipment-dependent most D&D PCs, especially the "classic" classes (i.e. not sorcerer, warlock, or monk) are. It's not so bad in 5e - but take an AD&D or 3.5 fighter's equipment away and force them to fight wearing just a loincloth and they are stuffed. And take a wizard's spellbook away and they don't even have the hit point buffer. Meanwhile the Hulk fights in just a ripped pair of purple shorts, Thor isn't the God of Hammers, and even Tony Stark is more than just his armour. And a captured Black Widow is probably exactly where she wants to be.

Fifth there are genre expectations. A comic book starting in media res? It's not quite as common as a heist appearing to go wrong but there's hidden information, but close. Meanwhile I think one Conan adventure starts in a dungeon. It exists - but is much less of a thing. And player skill and detailed preparation are much more of a thing.