Daggerheart "Description on Demand" a GM DON'T

[Agamon]

Apart from Liam most of the Critical Role cast are still rather reaction-based in their play. I think Ashley was leaning into it more as Umbra went along, but most of the others are "tell us Matt!" I agree that Matt's retelling of deathblows doesn't help at all and they all have the potential to add a lot more but they need to play more games in this mode for those limits to fall off.

They've played for 10 years a certain way, that makes for a hard habit to break. Matt has admitted as much.

 

[BruceWright]

(About asking a player to describe the bark of a tree their character is looking at.)
I said:
He talks about this being immersion breaking because it requires a shift in the POV. I disagree, it doesn't necessarily.

You said:

It doesn't matter that you disagree, it matters what the DM/players of a particular game think.

The issues can be many, as you describe, one of those issues could be putting a player on the spot that isn't that creative ad-hoc. My personal pet peeve would be that I, as a player would be creating parts of the world I should not have influence on, like the structure of the bark on a tree, that is the domain of the DM.

I was not disagreeing about being put on the spot or creating parts of the world that should be the GM's domain.

I was disagreeing on the finer point that it requires a shift in POV.
It isn't a shift out of the character's POV. It's LITERALLY their POV-- it IS what they're viewing.

It's only a "shift" from the normative D&D playstyle.

 

[SteveC]

Oh good, we've gotten to the, "My groups likes playing this way" "Well, my group likes playing this other way" part of the thread. That's great, play the way you like to play. There's hundreds of RPGs, play the ones you and your group enjoy.

The problem from the OP's perspective is that advice has been given that one way is objectively wrong. That's not great.

This is so important. I'm 100% in the play how you and your group want to. And but as soon as you start saying "this other way? The way the game you're playing is designed for? That's wrong," I will say you're objectively wrong.

I don't say that very often, and in fact I've had a couple of discussions saying that unless I write something like this, everything I say is, like The Dude says, "just my opinion, man."

Playing DaggerHeart with player creative input is optional, but it's also the way the game suggests you play.

 

[Composer99]

I did this in the D&D game I'm running mostly for kids, and at a pretty high level of world-building, too:

• Thanks to my son's background for his character, the world was subject to a devastating plague in the recent past.
• Another player portrayed her character as an escapee from a tiefling-dominated empire, where she was low-caste. So there's a tiefling-dominated empire in the game world, and the implications of its existence and activities have echoed across the setting.
• Another player decided his home island had been riven by civil war.

All of those details made it into the game world.

I guess I'll be earning Alexander's opprobrium, then.

 

[Kichwas]

This is your and your groups choice, Do you kick him out or not? I probably would not but work around him but I accept that other groups look at matters differently.

Do you favor one person's preference over the many even at the expense of their enjoyment?

To me it's not at all about which side has which stance. If my group all wants one thing and I want another - it's my time to leave.

 

[Reynard]

I did this in the D&D game I'm running mostly for kids, and at a pretty high level of world-building, too:

• Thanks to my son's background for his character, the world was subject to a devastating plague in the recent past.
• Another player portrayed her character as an escapee from a tiefling-dominated empire, where she was low-caste. So there's a tiefling-dominated empire in the game world, and the implications of its existence and activities have echoed across the setting.
• Another player decided his home island had been riven by civil war.

All of those details made it into the game world.

I guess I'll be earning Alexander's opprobrium, then.

I don't feel like having PC backstories help build the world is the same thing, from the "paint the scene" standpoint, as "You enter the tavern; what does it looks, feel and smell like?"

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Do you favor one person's preference over the many even at the expense of their enjoyment?

To me it's not at all about which side has which stance. If my group all wants one thing and I want another - it's my time to leave.

That is totally fine, you are odd one out and are the one making the decision to leave. It is largely up to the group but if a group is largely playing to the narrative and creating world details, but one is not engaging that way are they damaging the experience and if so, how?
If they are vocally objecting to the group style or being interruptive that is one thing but if they are just passively reacting to the shenanigans about them, are they being disruptive?

 

[Composer99]

I don't feel like having PC backstories help build the world is the same thing, from the "paint the scene" standpoint, as "You enter the tavern; what does it looks, feel and smell like?"

I dunno, letting your players define the setting to that level of scale feels like painting a scene to me. More of a difference in degree than in kind.

But I suppose you're correct to suggest a difference between how it feels in gameplay proper during a session versus as backstory elements.

For what it's worth, as a follow-up, I do either prompt the players for those kinds of details or go ahead and incorporate their unprompted contributions to the setting during gameplay.

 

[Kichwas]

All we can hope for here is groups self identify well. I with this new generation of game styles could choose a name and stick to it so we all know what a game is like.

Well it looks like folks call this "paint the scene" and Alexander hated it so renamed it "description on demand" because that sounds less friendly and the OP just had the misfortune of finding Alexander's blog before the older Gauntlet article.

Paint the Scene

by Jason Cordova I like to create a high level of player engagement when I run a game, and I employ a number of tools to achieve it. The most important of those is the technique most closely...

www.gauntlet-rpg.com

- somebody else already linked this about 3000 pages ago, so here it is again. This was about 2 years before Alexander "renamed it".

The idea's probably older than that. But it's new to me even though it's what I've been looking for for years. I feel like I've been looking for my keys all this time only to find they were in my hand.

 

[Vael]

I don't feel like having PC backstories help build the world is the same thing, from the "paint the scene" standpoint, as "You enter the tavern; what does it looks, feel and smell like?"

The thing the GM should add to the question is " to your character?", so maybe the Dwarven PC can say, they recognize that earthy beer smell that reminds them of home, or the Drow can complain that the lighting is too bright, etc.