Daggerheart "Description on Demand" a GM DON'T

[Micah Sweet]

Imagine telling your DM "No thanks. I'm here to react to the world, not to help create it."

That doesn't sound like my kind of game.

I have specifically told a GM that, and would have no issue if I received this response from a player. At all. Even if the details in question pertained to their PC.

 

[CleverNickName]

I have specifically told a GM that, and would have no issue if I received this response from a player. At all. Even if the details in question pertained to their PC.

I guess I wouldn't have a problem with it either. About the only thing I could say to that player would be "then you're going to be very frustrated at my table" and let it sort itself out.

With a fundamental disconnect like that, it's probably best if the player left the group to find a more compatible table. It's not really something the DM can change. (Of course this is all hypothetical; I've never been in a position where a player flatly refused to contribute to the narrative when prompted. I suppose it could happen someday, but it sounds unpleasant.)

 

[Kichwas]

*example, Justin Alexander:
To sum up, the reason description-on-demand makes the GM Don’t List is because:

• If that’s not what a player wants, it’s absolutely terrible.
• If it is what a player wants, it’s a terrible way of achieving it.

Put another way (and maybe he didn't mean it this harshly, but my read of that quote gets this impression):

Alexander: Hey kid, you like Ice cream?

Kid 1: Oh ick, Ice cream is worse than bugs.
Alexander: Ice cream is unhealthy. It shall be my personal mission in life to ensure you never have Ice Cream

Kid 2: I love Ice cream, it's the best.
Alexander: Ice cream is unhealthy. It shall be my personal mission in life to ensure you never have Ice Cream

He could have just led with "Death to all the Ice Cream heretics!" and been done.

Maybe just let the second kid have their Ice Cream...

 

[TheAlkaizer]

Imagine telling your DM "No thanks. I'm here to react to the world, not to help create it."

This is honestly what most of my players communicated to me. Many years ago I really started with a very authorial approach. I was the creator of the world, of the plot, etc. Very quickly I realized that the best part of the game was in the emergence, the surprises and the unpredictable. I really go by the motto of creating interesting situations without any solutions and let the players surprise you.

However, I did have a period where I tried to push some more narrative control on my players. I always ask feedback at the end of every few sessions. And in most cases I've been told that they didn't enjoy coming up with stuff that much. It took them in a different mindset, it pulled them out of the perspective of their character, into their perspective as a player having to come up with something.

 

[Kichwas]

Maybe that GM bit off more than they could chew, and maybe have been better served to ask "You know NPC. Describe your disposition toward them in a word." Stuff like that is easier to manage and can be expanded upon should it come up.

One of the things that surprises me in the perceptions of a lot of this is the idea that handing this control over and then using what the players come up with is more work.

For me it's less. It takes a large burden away while also making the story more fitting to what the table wants.

Granted, despite my note above about that one NPC I made up that I never could figure out - most of my good moments as a GM have come from things that happened completely on the fly, no script, all improv. Sometimes from an off-hand remark by a player, sometimes just me asking myself 'so what IS behind that door' right as they were opening it.

I chafe under planned content, and need improv to be engaged.

 

[Kichwas]

This thread makes me really wonder what 2025-'Justin Alexander' thinks of Daggerheart, given that 2020-'Justin Alexander' raged against what would become one of Daggerheart's core ideas.

Does he hold the same opinion today as he did then. Has it changed in one direction or the other and if so why and how? Has he tried games like Daggerheart and Mist that make this concept central to their identity as 'storytelling games'?

It would be interesting to see if ha has a different view of the idea now given that we're debating his stance from 5 years ago.

 

[Kichwas]

plenty of folks posting over in the Conservative D&D players thread have said that to be anything but permanently IC at all times shatters their illusion of immersion, etc.

Whereas I've used the 'Deadpool move' of turning to the camera and saying something to the audience both as a GM with NPCs and as a player with my own PCs.

I'd probably cause those guys to fall right out of their chairs with 'hurumphing' complaints.

 

[Reynard]

This is honestly what most of my players communicated to me. Many years ago I really started with a very authorial approach. I was the creator of the world, of the plot, etc. Very quickly I realized that the best part of the game was in the emergence, the surprises and the unpredictable. I really go by the motto of creating interesting situations without any solutions and let the players surprise you.

However, I did have a period where I tried to push some more narrative control on my players. I always ask feedback at the end of every few sessions. And in most cases I've been told that they didn't enjoy coming up with stuff that much. It took them in a different mindset, it pulled them out of the perspective of their character, into their perspective as a player having to come up with something.

I don't think these things are at odds. At least, for me they aren't. I am a proponent of "situations not plots" and I don't think player authored elements impinge on.that in any way.

 

[Kichwas]

I would be very interested to know what games you generally run.

I've been in the hobby since 1980 with a many year break from about 2005 until late 2022... Back in the day systems just weren't written for this kind of gameplay so I system shopped a lot, hit burnout often, and anything past the rules was often done on the fly. But it's also why I never thought to just ask my players to fill in things directly, and yet always tried to hint at it. The idea just didn't finish crossing the gap for me.

I spent the last few years struggling with Pathfinder 2E which frankly was a poor match to this part of my personality.

I do very much like a structured set of rules I can run 'rules as written', and a lot of lore. And PF2E provides those two things. It also has a lot of published adventures with some very interesting stories. And that's where the break kept happening. Because my improv instinct and my desire to have players fill things in went against that to such a degree that I was near burnout by the time Daggerheart came about because I'd completely missed that 'PbtA' even existed. I've still never seen an 'Actual' PBtA game unless 'Legend in the Mist' counts (but I was in another topic today, I think on reddit, where people were noting that 'Mist' is an evolution away from PBtA and more towards narrative, so I don't know...).

Back in the day, 20 years ago. I was running mostly Hero System, GURPS, and then Mutants and Masterminds and I kept 'chafing' against various things. I liked the system in Hero a lot, but as each edition came out it just got too bulky, and that bulk made me more and more aware of fundamentals that existed even in older editions that I no longer cared for. But I more or less ran my games 'full improv'.

I always felt GURPS wasn't generic enough because it had a strongly typed magic system and later a strongly typed super power system.

M&M worked for a while, until it didn't.

I've got two interests that are likely seen as conflicting by other people:

• I want tightly constructed rules where I know exactly what the RAW answer is to a question and don't want to have to let in any 'house rules'.
• I want plots, lore, story, characters, and such to be 'in the moment fluid' with a lot of group involvement over the crafting of them. I don't just want "player agency", I want them doing a lot of running the show. To me it's a group thing. Not my story, but out story.

I met the first interest very well with Pathfinder 2E, but over time it came at the cost of the second as I kept making what for me was the mistake of using published material.

Right now I'm on break from GMing, and putting my GMing style back together. I know I'm moving on from Pathfinder. I'm landing on either or both of Daggerheart and Mist Engine (Legend in the Mist and Otherscape).

 

[plecostomus]

Well now I know the name of the thing that causes my DM to ask annoying questions like, "You got a critical hit, what fancy extra thing does your attack do?"

One time he asked me to describe how my attack killed a monster and the results caused another player to leave the game. Luckily I don't think he's ever asked anybody to describe a room or a NPC for him.

I am trying to get better at improv though.