Did I discover the Left Wing and Right Wing of D&D gaming styles?

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Actually heard a multi-part radio article on the history of the burrito. Last I had heard it had been tracked to a place in California.

All of my friends from college with Mexican families thought burritos were sort of weird and said their parents found them suspect. So I guess that's as good an explanation as any for why paladins and monks won't get along.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

People like me who enjoy Cultural RPGs tend to assume that if people exist in a different, place or time; if they exist in a different culture or have different material conditions than we do, they will think differently. Not only will their values, goals and beliefs be different; their very thought processes will be different than ours. Even such universal things as love, marriage and politics will be exhibit sharp culturally-defined differences.

See, I think I would be totally comfortable with this idea, except that very often it takes no account of variation within the setting.

Were I doing a medieval European game, for instance, democracy wouldn't exactly be the politics de jour, but it does not therefore follow that there wouldn't be democrats. In fact I know there were intellectuals around who were familiar with the idea and approved of it not to mention a huge range of democratic institutions from various guilds, councils, and religious orders on up to the foundations of Europe's parliaments.

So where for most of the world loving one's wife might be a distasteful practice or slavery perfectly acceptable, I would assume there would also be a fair population of dissidents who wanted to marry for love and hated the idea of buying and selling people.

I mean, as much as we work for versimilitude in our games the world itself hasn't had all that great a track record at making sense for all of its players.

 

[barsoomcore]

everyone loses if there's no DM-to-player communication about the nature of the setting

Agreed, but keep in mind that "communication" does not equal "agreement". It MAY be that the best, most fun, most enriching course of action is for DM and player to go their separate ways.

If somebody wants to play a paladin on Barsoom, sorry, pal, but it's not happening. If the player is unwilling to move on that, they're clearly not going to have much fun in my campaign anyway, so we're both better off not playing together.

I think this whole conversation has confused two issues:

The degree of "cosmopolitaniness" in a campaign setting

and

The degree of "consistency" in a campaign setting

The first issue is how much variety in culture there is in the setting. Is the campaign set exclusively in the forests of pre-medieval Northern Europe, or is it set in full-flower Byzantium? You'll have a very different-sized range in cultural types in those two settings, but both can be perfectly historical.

The second issue is how much internal logic the setting worries about. If players can pick any cultural background for their characters, without any need to worry about whether or not the culture even exists in the setting, that's a low level of consistency.

These issues are unconnected, but it seems like people are posting here and saying they prefer more cosmopolitan (poor choice of word because I'm talking about something quite different than fusangite) campaigns because they have more variety. And yet I don't think Turanil's initial post was about variety vs. lack thereof -- I think he was talking about CONSISTENCY.

On Barsoom you can play a desert raider, a sophisticated urbanite, a veteran infantry soldier from a massive empire, a mystic witch-hunter, a sorcerer, a jaunty pilot of steam-powered airships, and many, many other types. Barsoom is a very diverse setting. It is not, however, very inconsistent. I work with my players to develop characters that grow naturally out of the setting, that come out of logical (if improbable at times) backgrounds.

I don't think the discussion of Variety vs Limited Options is all that interesting. I do think the discussion of Consistency vs Incoherence (there's a loaded term for ya) is kind of interesting.

 

[Remathilis]

You got one thing right about calling this "left" vs "right", we got the pundits arguing like an episode of Crossfire.

I think you can have it both ways; Eberron has an internal consistancy, but also allows for a variety of PCs and monsters. Some stuff works better than others (try to fit a wu jen in Eberron, its a stretch). but it makes sense of what's already in the core rules.

 

[fusangite]

See, I think I would be totally comfortable with this idea, except that very often it takes no account of variation within the setting.

I don't find that to be a problem too often. But I can certainly see what you mean here.

Were I doing a medieval European game, for instance, democracy wouldn't exactly be the politics de jour, but it does not therefore follow that there wouldn't be democrats.

Notice that I used the term "modern liberal democrat" when I invoked democracy in the thread. While I agree that at any period in history, there will be a range of how democratic political systems are, there are often shared underlying social assumptions amongst various political approaches.

Belief in more democratic (ie. more republican) forms of government certainly existed in medieval Europe. However, belief in shared and limited state authority was not really paired with the things that modern liberal democrats associate it with today. Republican governance structures often relied on more specifically codified and entrenched ideas of rank and hierarchy in society and were not especially associated with those who advocated social leveling. People who tended to believe in greater social equality often preferred more monarchical systems because social equality was typically premised on an equality under God concept considered best realized through equality under a monarch.

In fact I know there were intellectuals around who were familiar with the idea and approved of it

Yes. But what is the "it" here? My point is that the cluster of ideas that we understand to be "democracy" today is quite different than the cluster of ideas with which Thomas Aquinas associated "democracy" when he wrote on the subject of governance structures. For instance, to Aquinas, "representative democracy" would have been an oxymoron. Aquinas felt that monarchy was the best form of governance and even considered the idea that monarchy could be improved if the king were elected by the general populace. But to the medieval mind, democracy was what we today call "participatory democracy."

So where for most of the world loving one's wife might be a distasteful practice or slavery perfectly acceptable, I would assume there would also be a fair population of dissidents who wanted to marry for love and hated the idea of buying and selling people.

I'm really not sure about that because what "love" and "freedom" even mean from place to place and time to time are so peculiarly socially conditioned, that's actually a very hard guess to make.

I mean, as much as we work for versimilitude in our games the world itself hasn't had all that great a track record at making sense for all of its players.

Societies make sense to the people in them. What I try to do in my games is get my players far enough into the game world's cultures so that they can perceive these cultures' own peculiar unique brand of rationality.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I personally hate terms like "fluff" and "flavour" because they demean factors like culture by suggesting that they are peripheral to the actual play of the game. The use of this terminology allows people to depict GMs like me as people obsessed with "controlling" what are perceived as minor or peripheral details. I therefore hope that if we get anything out of this thread, it is an understanding that terms like this are not neutral but carry an implicit preference for Cosmopolitan over Cultural play.

The whole fluff versus crunch thing is not about saying one is better than the other. IMO you need both for a decent game experience. But crunch makes a much better roleplaying product than fluff.

The genius of WotC was to realise that gamers are great at doing fluff, not so hot on crunch. You yourself are a good example of this. You love fluff. Your posts indicate you're very much focused on it. You're really good at making your own fluff. The last thing you need from a gaming product is more of it. What you need is crunch and that's what WotC supplies.

The vast majority of gamers are just like you. Not only can they do fluff but they vastly prefer their own to other people's. So there's not much point in games companies supplying it.

In my view, fluff versus crunch is really an issue about what elements of the whole gaming experience are best supplied by an external source and what are best supplied by the GM and players.

 

[fusangite]

I think this whole conversation has confused two issues:

The degree of "cosmopolitaniness" in a campaign setting

and

The degree of "consistency" in a campaign setting

I'm inclined to agree here Barsoomcore; and to agree with all the stuff in your post I'm not quoting as well. But part of that confusion is fair; in my view, Cosmopolitan settings are more likely to have consistency problems than Cultural campaign settings. This is simply because it is harder to construct a consistent Cosmopolitan world unless it is a kind of parody of modernity.

Those of us who construct Cultural games tend to stick to modeling variants of literary, mythological or historical things that have been extensively documented, tested and theorized, simply because creating a coherent yet fundamentally different culture is so damned hard.

Cosmopolitan worlds that are parodies of present day industrialized consumer society have a model but worlds like yours require a lot more risk and work than most people who prize consistency have the resources to put in.

So, simply due to the amount of thought necessary to make non-parody Cosmopolitan games function, many people who prize consistency tend to retreat to the kinds of worlds I run.

Thus, there is, unfortunately, a correlation between Cultural play and consistency but this correlation if far from being 1:1.

 

[fusangite]

The whole fluff versus crunch thing is not about saying one is better than the other. IMO you need both for a decent game experience. But crunch makes a much better roleplaying product than fluff.

This is only true if you accept that a world's physics has nothing to do with its culture or metaphysics. If you see all these things as interrelated, the "fluff" vs. "crunch" debate is falsely premised. In the kinds of games I run, of course a game's reward system and physics affect these things. Look at the CR mechanic or how spells work -- they define things that affect culture. For instance, if the universe (ie. game system) itself rewards violence, it is going to be very difficult to run a game in a universe where violence is inherently evil.

The term "fluff" implies something insubstantial and irrelevant. The term "crunch" implies something substantial. If you don't see how implying that the most important variable for one school of gaming is insubstantial might be insulting, just take my word for it -- it is.

 

[barsoomcore]

Cosmopolitan settings are more likely to have consistency problems than Cultural campaign settings.

Good point, one I hadn't considered.

And one could make a pretty strong argument that Barsoom's internal consistency is not, after all, tremendously rigorous.



But maybe what we've unearthed is yet another distinction: the difference between the consistency inherent in the setting, and the consistency of the PCs with that setting. That is, one could define a perfectly consistent setting and yet allow a PC who is inconsistent with it. I tend to worry more about PC-consistency-with-setting than setting-consistency-with-itself.

Now of course those two things are co-related as well, inasmuch as a setting of less internal consistency will be more forgiving of PC types and therefore will probably be more likely to allow PC inconsistency. But I would say that myself, I'm more concerned that the PCs fit into the world than that the world itself makes sound logical sense. I tend to create a world full of stuff I think is cool, and worry about the justifications (if any are required) later -- but I work very hard to make sure the PCs fit into the list of cool stuff I've selected. I suspect that you tend to work in the opposite direction, getting interested in a system or worldview or culture and building up a setting from that.

Maybe I'm just worrying about the characterization of me as a DM with a tremendously varied, perfectly consistent campaign setting.

I mean, it says nothing at all about my spectacular good looks and cavalier disregard for authority.

 

[TerraDave]

I'm inclined to agree here Barsoomcore; and to agree with all the stuff in your post I'm not quoting as well. But part of that confusion is fair; in my view, Cosmopolitan settings are more likely to have consistency problems than Cultural campaign settings. This is simply because it is harder to construct a consistent Cosmopolitan world unless it is a kind of parody of modernity.

uhh, ditto!

and, in more redundant posting, I will join the gang saying that "World Cuisine" is the D&D tradition, very much by design: if it could be added, it was. 1st edition AD&D essentially codified what was already a sprawling game.

But there has always been pressure for coherence, culture, and focus, either in D&D or (especially) through other RPGs. I think that myself and a lot of others are in fact moderates, trying to allow for player choice and variety while also trying to make things make at least a little sense.