Failing Forward

[Sadras]

As a player I see the richer interconenctedness as not even slightly in tension with nowness. When you've a table full of people making connections, even on the fly, connections end up richer than they do with one person however much prep time they put in.

What is the point of a DM at that table? You could use flash cards for story direction and a level-based setting specific random encounter table for combat and draw your own on the fly rich interconnectedness.

 

[Zak S]

I'm going to add two caveats here. Games that are deep with no way of backing down need carefully considered design of the challenges. Old school megadungeons aren't as alert to the challenges - they are more based on a "test your skill/luck" basis. How far into the dungeon can/dare you go on the trip? There is no expectation that the PCs complete the thing in one run, so there just has to be an ascending difficulty curve and it's up to the PCS to decide when to pull out with enough resources left to make it back. The second is that if you're not leaving ways of backing down then balance is vital - balance is information, nothing more and nothing less. And in a decently balanced game like 4e I can drop complex challenges on the fly which will challenge the party probably without killing them.



As a player I see the richer interconenctedness as not even slightly in tension with nowness. When you've a table full of people making connections, even on the fly, connections end up richer than they do with one person however much prep time they put in.

I don't find mono-vision "consistent" worlds to be immersive. People themselves aren't consistent and neither is the world we live in to the degree a "consistent" world normally tries to be.

Again: you can't do puzzley things very well with fully shared authorship. YOu can do some kinds, but here are a ton of kinds you can't.

 

[Manbearcat]

Number 3 makes a few assumptions about the DM that you are playing with. You are assuming a closed prep style DM with a linear story.

<snip>

This is completely true for your game. But you are putting your desires and preferences onto other peoples games. In your game "every single element of setting and situation is "Schrodingers" until it is declared/confirmed via that conversation or play procedures."

Don't have considerable time to post much at the moment, but just a couple of things:

1) My post was merely using Balesir's post as a springboard to speak to the advantages of not prepping high resolution information regarding to setting and situation. I wasn't

2) Of course there is utility to prepping high resolution information regarding setting and situation. This isn't in dispute.

However, coinciding with that heavy prep and creative effort is the very natural human inclination to share it. Social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) are predicated upon this impulse and its tight feedback loop. It is not some anomalous behavior that strikes a few. It is pervasive within humanity. That some (many?) GMs are able to restrain themselves from this impulse (of forcing content upon players despite actions they may declare or despite the dictates of the system's resolution mechanics) is interesting biographical information about them. But that biographical information does not undo the reality that hardwired into humanity is the impulse to be emotionally invested in their creative efforts. This subsequently leads to the indulgence of that impulse (with a massive industry predicated upon its existence and potency). In RPGs, this means brunt-forcing content (despite what authentic play has to say about that matter).

3) My preferences are all over the map. I very much enjoy prepping and running dungeon crawls in RC and 1e (depending on the players familiarity). In this sort of play, it is utterly essential that setting and situation are intensely fleshed out (so the sought play experience is achieved).

 

[grendel111111]

Here are some examples of a pre-authored world - forgotten realms, spinward marches, ravenloft.
There is no magic story that the players must follow, but if you go to x city then there are truths about that place.. this is the level of preauthorship I am talking about, not railroading as you present as the other option to your games.

Yes sometimes things happen "off stage" and may or may not effect the game, it doesn't mean the DM forces those events into center stage. They may never learn about it, or may discover months later that their mentor was killed by a group of orcs that attacked his village. (If they never returned home they may never learn his fate).

If directions are just eye candy to you that's fine, especially when there is no meaning to the map anyway. It not a way that I enjoy playing as much. And sometime players have to make sub-optimal choices with a lack of information. this could be because they didn't plan, research, get organised, or it might be that there is too much time pressure and they just need to take a choice. If there is no difference between the paths (like in your game) then it doesn't matter. If the choice will have an effect (East they will go through the swamps, but if they go north they will pass close to a necromancers domain), then yes the choice can matter.

 

[pemerton]

In only one (potentially minor) way: you're basically inserting (perhaps merely a second of) thinking that doesn't matter into the middle of play.

I can't think of a reason it'd be fun (even in the long term) to roll success/fail for a thing where failure and time-consumption has no consequence and success is assured if you just keep rolling.

If a game tells you to do that either:
-it sucks
or
-it has some secret fun reason to do that I don't know about

Good point about time-wasting. But personally I find a lot of the techniques associated with the "living, breathing world" school to involve time-wasting, eg encounters which don't contribute to pacing or to risk/reward choices but simply serve to remind the players that the gameworld exists outside their protagonistic concerns for their PCs.

As a player I see the richer interconenctedness as not even slightly in tension with nowness. When you've a table full of people making connections, even on the fly, connections end up richer than they do with one person however much prep time they put in.

I don't find mono-vision "consistent" worlds to be immersive. People themselves aren't consistent and neither is the world we live in to the degree a "consistent" world normally tries to be.

This is what I gave XP for.

What is the point of a DM at that table? You could use flash cards for story direction and a level-based setting specific random encounter table for combat and draw your own on the fly rich interconnectedness.

Obviously [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] can answer for himself, but in my case I can say: the GM does at least two important things. First, as GM I adjudicate the situation and decide eg can the PC have a bonus die for being on higher ground? Someone has to make these calls, to manage the nitty-gritty of the fictional positioning, and that is what the GM does. (Related to this can be a role for the GM in maintaining consistency of the fiction, but at least in my experience other players help a lot with that also.)

The second important thing the GM does is to narrate consequences of failure. (Consequences of success are the result of player action declarations for their PCs.) I'm not sure what sort of flash-cards you have in mind, but I don't know of any other technique of content generation that is going to deliver outcomes such as occurred in some of the episodes of play discussed in this thread.

None of this has any inherent connection to pre-authorship.

 

[pemerton]

If directions are just eye candy to you that's fine, especially when there is no meaning to the map anyway. It not a way that I enjoy playing as much. And sometime players have to make sub-optimal choices with a lack of information. this could be because they didn't plan, research, get organised, or it might be that there is too much time pressure and they just need to take a choice. If there is no difference between the paths (like in your game) then it doesn't matter. If the choice will have an effect (East they will go through the swamps, but if they go north they will pass close to a necromancers domain), then yes the choice can matter.

The choice mattering is not synonymous with player agency, though, which was the notion I was engaging with.

Simple example: suppose the GM has decided that, in land X of the campaign world, holding out one's hand out to another upon meeting them is a grave insult. And suppose that the players (i) do not know, and (ii) inadvertently teleport the PCs to land X (say via teleport mishap, or a Well of Many Worlds, or whatever). The GM tells the players that the PCs appear not far from some NPCs. One of the players then says of his PC, "I walk up to the NPCs, arm extended as if to shake their hands in greeting".

Now the player's choice here matters to the outcome - the GM describes the NPCs as grossly offended and commencing to attack the ill-mannered outlanders - but it was not any sort of exercise of agency by the player (was it?). The relationship between the action declaration and the outcome is mere dumb luck. Like the players choosing to have the PCs go east (and therefore encounter trolls and hydras in the swamp) rather than north (where they will meet the necromancer). If the players don't know these geographical facts, then it's just dumb luck.

In a Gygaxian dungeon, there are a range of resources available to the players to eliminate dumb luck in this sense - divination magic in particular. But once you get to campaign worlds on the scale of some of those you mention (eg FR), then divination magic ceases to be very relevant. It's just luck.

Also: why do you say that in my game direction doesn't matter? If the players (in character) want to find the pyramid the orcs were heading towards, they have to head further east into the Bright Desert. If they want to recuperate in the ruined tower (which they did) then they have to head north to the foothills of the Abor-Alz.

But these choices were not made blind. The players chose to prioritise recupration over exploration, and therefore headed north.

In contrast: when the PCs were drifting through the ocean, hoping to be rescued, we didn't worry about which direction they were drifting in, as there was nothing that turned on them trying to drift one way rather than another.

 

[Maxperson]

The choice mattering is not synonymous with player agency, though, which was the notion I was engaging with.

Simple example: suppose the GM has decided that, in land X of the campaign world, holding out one's hand out to another upon meeting them is a grave insult. And suppose that the players (i) do not know, and (ii) inadvertently teleport the PCs to land X (say via teleport mishap, or a Well of Many Worlds, or whatever). The GM tells the players that the PCs appear not far from some NPCs. One of the players then says of his PC, "I walk up to the NPCs, arm extended as if to shake their hands in greeting".

Now the player's choice here matters to the outcome - the GM describes the NPCs as grossly offended and commencing to attack the ill-mannered outlanders - but it was not any sort of exercise of agency by the player (was it?). The relationship between the action declaration and the outcome is mere dumb luck. Like the players choosing to have the PCs go east (and therefore encounter trolls and hydras in the swamp) rather than north (where they will meet the necromancer). If the players don't know these geographical facts, then it's just dumb luck.

As a player playing a PC that goes to a strange land, I (and my PC) am aware that they may have strange customs that I don't know and I can use that knowledge to try and avoid insult by learning the local customs. The PC could have chosen not to go with his customs and learn the new ones before sticking out his hand. He or one of the other PCs might also have some sort of knowledge or background that could deal with foreign customs. Sailor for example. Player agency is still present in a game where the PCs confront the unknown.

In a Gygaxian dungeon, there are a range of resources available to the players to eliminate dumb luck in this sense - divination magic in particular. But once you get to campaign worlds on the scale of some of those you mention (eg FR), then divination magic ceases to be very relevant. It's just luck.

Divination magic deals in revealing the unknown. How does it cease to be relevant in a world that contains the unknown? It has more relevance in a pre-authored world that is rich in things to divine.

In contrast: when the PCs were drifting through the ocean, hoping to be rescued, we didn't worry about which direction they were drifting in, as there was nothing that turned on them trying to drift one way rather than another.

Many people enjoy a world where their choices matter. While it may be dumb luck if nobody is a sailor or the like, picking a direction in the Realms gives choice meaning. You will end up in a different place depending on the direction chosen. Choice has no real meaning when no matter which direction you choose, it's all going to end up the same.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Obviously @Neonchameleon can answer for himself, but in my case I can say: the GM does at least two important things. First, as GM I adjudicate the situation and decide eg can the PC have a bonus die for being on higher ground? Someone has to make these calls, to manage the nitty-gritty of the fictional positioning, and that is what the GM does. (Related to this can be a role for the GM in maintaining consistency of the fiction, but at least in my experience other players help a lot with that also.)

The second important thing the GM does is to narrate consequences of failure. (Consequences of success are the result of player action declarations for their PCs.) I'm not sure what sort of flash-cards you have in mind, but I don't know of any other technique of content generation that is going to deliver outcomes such as occurred in some of the episodes of play discussed in this thread.

None of this has any inherent connection to pre-authorship.

I'd gladly accept those two and add two more.

1: To speak for the NPCs, thus allowing all the players to focus on their PC and not have to step outside the bounds of what the PC could reasonably know.

2: To provide the active opposition. This is a practical matter - but the only types of games that normally work GMless are intentional tragedies and farces where the PCs are not actually expected to overcome their obstacles. It always makes for a poor game where the same people responsible for providing the obstacles are responsible for overcoming them.

 

[grendel111111]

Good point about time-wasting. But personally I find a lot of the techniques associated with the "living, breathing world" school to involve time-wasting, eg encounters which don't contribute to pacing or to risk/reward choices but simply serve to remind the players that the gameworld exists outside their protagonistic concerns for their PCs.

In a "living breathing world" exploring and experiencing the world is not time wasting (it only seem like it because from your point of view you want to get on with "story"). The "story" might be as simple as take a message to Medrack the wizard who lives on a different continent. The message isn't the story, what happens on the way (or the "time wasting") is the story. Who they meet, the alliances they make if they choose to go through the desert, risk the swamps with ROUS, head north and travel through the mountains or navigate by sea with all the risks that come from that.

Obviously [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] can answer for himself, but in my case I can say: the GM does at least two important things. First, as GM I adjudicate the situation and decide eg can the PC have a bonus die for being on higher ground? Someone has to make these calls, to manage the nitty-gritty of the fictional positioning, and that is what the GM does. (Related to this can be a role for the GM in maintaining consistency of the fiction, but at least in my experience other players help a lot with that also.)

The second important thing the GM does is to narrate consequences of failure. (Consequences of success are the result of player action declarations for their PCs.) I'm not sure what sort of flash-cards you have in mind, but I don't know of any other technique of content generation that is going to deliver outcomes such as occurred in some of the episodes of play discussed in this thread.

None of this has any inherent connection to pre-authorship.

I'm not sure if this is what was being talked about with flash cards but it reminded me of a improve D and D game we had last year.

There is a game called the forbidden island. It is a board game where an island is sinking (not important) but it has a set of about 45 cards/tiles with locations, each with a name and picture. The DM used the cards to decide possible paths. each time we finished a location he would turn over 3 cards to allow use to choose where to go next. So to get to the watch tower which was our goal we had to go through several "choices". So the first 3 cards were "Cliffs of Abandon", "the Mist Marches" or "the Black Gate". The one you chose determined the what you had to face (marshes had a hydra, cliffs might have been a climbing challenge, each of the different gates had a guardian)

 

[Imaro]

However, coinciding with that heavy prep and creative effort is the very natural human inclination to share it. Social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) are predicated upon this impulse and its tight feedback loop. It is not some anomalous behavior that strikes a few. It is pervasive within humanity. That some (many?) GMs are able to restrain themselves from this impulse (of forcing content upon players despite actions they may declare or despite the dictates of the system's resolution mechanics) is interesting biographical information about them. But that biographical information does not undo the reality that hardwired into humanity is the impulse to be emotionally invested in their creative efforts. This subsequently leads to the indulgence of that impulse (with a massive industry predicated upon its existence and potency). In RPGs, this means brunt-forcing content (despite what authentic play has to say about that matter)..

Just a quick question/comment around this... How is this any different when you are making things up on the fly. Unless you can guarantee you don't in any way think about the game, it's characters, consequences, what may happen, etc. outside of in the moment play... I'm not sure how you guarantee that your particular "vision" of the game (What you would prefer to improvise around/explore) isn't what you are pushing for, even if it's subconsciously?

As an example, in the previous mountain climbing example, there are an almost unlimited number of outcomes that could take place on a failure (especially since the relationship of skill/task resolution has no bearing on what the failed roll could lead to as an outcome, only what could "logically" arise in the fiction... and yet you as DM have a preference since you are making a specific choice out of all those possibilities... and by the fact that dying and not reaching the mountain top was taken off the table (at least for this particular failure) it seems that you are pushing towards exploration of the content that has already been established... the mountain top and the MacGuffin as opposed to say improvising around another part of the mountain the character could have discovered in his fall... So I'm not seeing how improv protects against this particular problem.