Daggerheart "Description on Demand" a GM DON'T

[Agamon]

To let the players control the narrative is potentially game breaking.

GM: "you open the door. What do you see"
Player: I see 10 chest filled to the brim with gold pieces and all 7 pieces of the rod of seven parts".

To start, you don't usually do this to this level. "You walk outside. What is this planet called and what is this biome like?" is a little too top level. It's more like, "The stall owner is someone you recognize, who are they?" or "Your druid spots an interesting pink-leafed plant growing under the tree. What is it called?"

That said, if I did do this as a GM, my first thought would be "So, a mimic with illusion powers, cool"

 

[darjr]

A good DM is not making it up on the spot. A good DM details the adventure and the world ahead of time.

A hard line on this seems to contradict “rulings not rules”.

To start, you don't usually do this to this level. "You walk outside. What is this planet called and what is this biome like?" is a little too top level. It's more like, "The stall owner is someone you recognize, who are they?" or "Your druid spots an interesting pink-leafed plant growing under the tree. What is it called?"

That said, if I did do this as a GM, my first thought would be "So, a mimic with illusion powers, cool"

can’t like and laugh emoji at the same time!

 

[Agamon]

One way I help make this less of a problem is to not make it a "Demand". When I ask a player to contribute, if they pause as though they aren't sure, I let them know that I have an idea if they don't have anything. That takes the pressure off and can help ease those in that are less comfortable with it.

 

[darjr]

To let the players control the narrative is potentially game breaking.

GM: "you open the door. What do you see"
Player: I see 10 chest filled to the brim with gold pieces and all 7 pieces of the rod of seven parts".

Now I want to run an extreme Monty Haul campaign just to see what I’d have to do to run it without scheming to remove the haul.

I imagine I’d have to get very over the top fast.

 

[Micah Sweet]

One way I help make this less of a problem is to not make it a "Demand". When I ask a player to contribute, if they pause as though they aren't sure, I let them know that I have an idea if they don't have anything. That takes the pressure off and can help ease those in that are less comfortable with it.

Yeah, the name of the technique is very aggressive.

 

[Agamon]

Yeah, the name of the technique is very aggressive.

Intentionally so, I'm sure.

 

[zakael19]

The actual name this group of techniques usually goes by in my experience is “paint the scene” or “ask questions and build on the answers.”

 

[Reynard]

The actual name this group of techniques usually goes by in my experience is “paint the scene” or “ask questions and build on the answers.”

It wouldn't be JA if he weren't trying to give a name to a thing that already exists.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I love Daggerheart and its ethos of "Ask they players questions and incorporate the answers." I immediately gravitated toward it and have found is useful and fun.
But when discussing Daggerheart on a forum, one person was all "Oh, it has Description on Demand? That's a hard no, I'm out."

I hadn't heard the (slightly loaded) term "Description on Demand, but I looked it up and found Justin Alexander's blog post declaring this technique one of his "GM DON'Ts."

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Description-on-demand tends to be a fad that periodically cycles through the RPG meme-sphere. When it does so, the general perception seems to be that every player thinks this is the greatest thing since chocolate-dipped donuts.

So let’s start there: This is not true. Many players do love it. But many players DO NOT. In fact, a lot of players hate it. There are a significant number of players for whom this is antithetical to the entire reason they want to play an RPG and it will literally ruin the game for them.

I’m one of those players. I’ve quit games because of it and have zero regrets for having done so.
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He talks about this being immersion breaking because it requires a shift in the POV. I disagree, it doesn't necessarily. Asking a player "what do you see that's different about the bark on these trees?" is just that player imagining seeing something, and describing it.

As I said, I was discussing the game online, and I described a scene where an NPC asks a PC where they got their sword. This felt like a normal interaction that wouldn't be out of place in any D&D game I've played. But the person, another GM, said "SEE??! That's Description on Demand. If I did that at my table there'd be 5 minutes of awkward silence and stammering. You're putting them on the spot. You can't expect players to be able to do that!" I'm like "your player can't come up with something like 'from my father' or 'I found it'?"

Now I recognize that different tables have different styles. But reading the Alexandrian blog and with the interaction with this GM, it sounds like to some people this is WRONG WRONG WRONG and if you ask about someone's sword you better be ready for some quitting-the-game level blowback.

What have your experiences been? Do you think it's immersion-breaking?

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Man I will eventually lose interest in a game that doesn’t do this. And I mean that both as a player and a (much more often) GM.

I have exactly one “problem” player in my extended group, and this is one of the issues I have with him, he is resistant to co-authoring the fiction. (He also doesn’t tie himself strongly into the world unless you push him to do so, which drives me batty)

Now, he’s a great player otherwise and a fun guy, so I work with him and try not to push him too much, but if he was any further in that “Alexandrian” direction, I would probably stop inviting him to my games.

My favorite other GM will let us practically build whole nations in his homebrew world, and it’s awesome. My wife and I play two characters from the same mountain range in his main campaign, and we basically formulated the relationship between the Goliath and Gnome and Dwarf populations in the high mountain, how they collectively see the newcomer humans in the lowlands, made the Gnomes of this region basically a mix of Irish and Welsh cultures, while the region is a mix of Celtic and Scandinavian influences, down to having Pictish and Brythonic influenced human clans and Scandinavian Things and an annual Althing where everyone in the North comes together to settle disputes and work out trade and cooperation agreements and all sorts of other things. The back and forth process of developing this place has made all of us care deeply about the land and its people, and dug our roots deep into the soil of this fictional world.

 

[TiQuinn]

I'm still puzzled how we can go from an OP that is talking about a playstyle in Daggerheart, and yet somehow it's still segueing back to Dungeons and Dragons.