D&D 5E Fairy tale logic vs naturalism in fantasy RPGing

[I'm A Banana]

Well, D&D has always had pretty rich rules for swinging swords. It doesn't just rely on everyone's shared sense of how sword fighting works. I'm not sure why burning field would be different.

I mean, have you ever burned a field?

To examine why these two things are different, one first needs a good appreciation of the reason why any rules exist. Pretty detailed rules for sword fighting in a game of fantasy adventure is something with a lot of utility to the players. Detailed procedural steps for setting fire to a field aren't as necessary for the audience and intended use of the game. One could be very abstract about combat and very concrete about setting fires. Or very concrete about social interaction. Or very concrete about managing a fantasy business. Or very concrete about wound simulation. By and large, these are less common needs for the audience and intended use of the game. Some application of in-world "logic" that's acceptable to the table is often the most playable solution and it keeps everyone content and engaged. Some application of in-world logic is sometimes enough for combat, spellcasting, monsters, etc., too, but there is more utility and demand for more detail there.

If that logic is fairy-tale logic, you as a player can reasonably say "Well, Jack is an impetuous youth and there's a castle on this cloud, so I bet I can walk on this cloud...". If the DM then dropped Jack to his untimely death and said, "It should be obvious! You can't walk on clouds!", that DM just broke with the logic of the game you were using.

If that logic is naturalistic logic, you might not have any reason to think you can walk on the cloud until something shows that you can (maybe you see a castle on it, so you drop a coin onto it to test that, and it stays!). A cloud you can walk on is an exception to what you might logically imagine to be true about clouds!

Walking across a solid cloud in the sky is a very different experience in these different modes of logic! (Largely just "Wow, so magical!" in the fairy-tale logic, but fraught with trepidation, fear, and cautious testing in the other)

Because D&D games usually use a combo, the dialogue between the players and DM and the mutual trust of both (as well as clear declaration of intent) is pretty key.

 

[MichaelSomething]

You could solve the issue by spending 30 minutes each session on world exposition. Does that solve your problem?

 

[77IM]

A game is a series of interesting decisions. In general, for a decision to be interesting, you need SOME idea of the consequences, but not a perfect idea. Puzzling over this information gap is what makes the decision interesting.

So for both types of logic, the issue isn't how much DM fiat there is; it's how predictable the world is to the players. I'm not sure I agree that fairy-tale logic is more predictable. I do agree that with fairy-tale logic the DM has less incentive to change things off-screen -- the trolls won't move to a different room, for example. That increases predictability, and improves the player's knowledge of the consequences of their decisions. But I feel this is compensated by the fact that players have more trouble predicting ahead of time things that they have not seen -- the room with trolls guarding a magic sword comes as a complete surprise, a non-sequitur. The "burning the elven fields" is a good example of this. Although rules for burning fields may rely on DM-fiat, when you're taking a naturalistic approach, the players might deduce that fields exist and are burnable even if they haven't seen them, and might discuss this option with the DM. With fairy-tale logic, if you haven't seen any fields, you can't assume they exist at all; their very existence is DM fiat, and no less fiat than the rules for burning fields would be when using naturalistic logic.

In an RPG, there's a second type of interesting decision: the emotional decision, where you role-play as your character would. This kind of decision can be interesting whether you have perfect information about the consequences, or zero information; the fun comes from getting inside your character's head rather than puzzling out the actual consequences of the decision. I would argue that fairy-tale logic makes it easier to present players with this sort of decision, because a) options are not constrained by the needs of verisimilitude, and b) the very lack of predictable outcomes means players are less likely to puzzle over the outcome and more likely to decide based on role-playing. I think this is why the fairy tales themselves spend zero time on practical issues; we are there to learn about the characters, their emotions, and their flaws, and worrying about where the food comes from would distract from that. Note that since this type of decision-making is totally orthogonal to any particular outcome, the idea of player or DM "control" is meaningless.

 

[pemerton]

I do agree that with fairy-tale logic the DM has less incentive to change things off-screen -- the trolls won't move to a different room, for example. That increases predictability, and improves the player's knowledge of the consequences of their decisions. But I feel this is compensated by the fact that players have more trouble predicting ahead of time things that they have not seen -- the room with trolls guarding a magic sword comes as a complete surprise, a non-sequitur.

I think this can be mitigated in a couple of ways.

In Gygaxian dungeon crawling, you use divination, the gathering of rumours, the hiring of sages, etc to learn what's there. And you know, from the general tropes of the game, that the answer will be along the lines of nasty monsters guarding treasure.

In a more "modern" game, the information-gathering stuff is probably going to loom less large, but there is still the stuff about general tropes. And if the GM is systematic in the way they establish in game situations (eg they take player cues in a systematic way, whether that is formal or informal), that can also serve the relevant communicative purpose.

In an RPG, there's a second type of interesting decision: the emotional decision, where you role-play as your character would. This kind of decision can be interesting whether you have perfect information about the consequences, or zero information; the fun comes from getting inside your character's head rather than puzzling out the actual consequences of the decision. I would argue that fairy-tale logic makes it easier to present players with this sort of decision, because a) options are not constrained by the needs of verisimilitude, and b) the very lack of predictable outcomes means players are less likely to puzzle over the outcome and more likely to decide based on role-playing.

I don't think this is very applicable to Gygaxian dungeoneering, at least as he presents it (the whole thing is presented as very emotionless) but personally it's a very important part of my RPGing. And I agree with your analysis.

Note that since this type of decision-making is totally orthogonal to any particular outcome, the idea of player or DM "control" is meaningless.

In my view not entirely. It's possible for the GM to make decisions that negate the players' emotional investment/commitment, and I think that naturalism can put more pressure in this direction than "fairy tale". For instance, a player deciding to have his/her PC spare a defeated enemy, to instead release them on a promise of changing their ways, can be emotionally powerful in the context of a FRPG. A naturalistic focus tends to tell us that even well-meaning people who promise to change their behaviour - let alone those who make promises in coercive circumstances, as in this sort of case - are apt to lapse back once free to do so.

To me, at least, the idea that a paladin releasing a hobgoblin out of mercy will produce redemption in the hobgoblin seems to belong more to a fairy tale (of a roughly Arthurian flavour) than a naturalistic world.

 

[I'm A Banana]

In an RPG, there's a second type of interesting decision: the emotional decision, where you role-play as your character would. This kind of decision can be interesting whether you have perfect information about the consequences, or zero information; the fun comes from getting inside your character's head rather than puzzling out the actual consequences of the decision. I would argue that fairy-tale logic makes it easier to present players with this sort of decision, because a) options are not constrained by the needs of verisimilitude, and b) the very lack of predictable outcomes means players are less likely to puzzle over the outcome and more likely to decide based on role-playing. I think this is why the fairy tales themselves spend zero time on practical issues; we are there to learn about the characters, their emotions, and their flaws, and worrying about where the food comes from would distract from that. Note that since this type of decision-making is totally orthogonal to any particular outcome, the idea of player or DM "control" is meaningless.

I agree with like 96% of what you're saying here, but I thought I'd tease out this to add a little nuance. In as much as a character is driven by their motivations, a reasonable expectation of outcomes is necessary to act according to those. That's getting inside your character's head - your character wants certain things, and they will take action in pursuit of those things. What actions are possible and reasonable to take in pursuit of those things is partially determined by what kind of logic you're operating under - a Jack motivated by financial security will make different choices in "naturalistic" logic vs. "fairy-tale" logic, because in each of those modes, there's a different thing that will cause the outcome he's looking for. In Fairy-Tale logic it's necessary to some degree to go out of Jack's head and think about what the meta-narrative wants to reward (what's the moral of the story, and how do I illustrate that?). In naturalistic logic, you can think pretty much as Jack would naturally think.

This does illustrate the tension between them in D&D, of course. Dungeon crawling is inherently kind of a fairy-tale logic (risk your life for wealth and glory!) that someone thinking naturalistically would never really do. But for some reason your character does! So you require a little bit of fairy-tale logic to even get out of bed! But then searching for traps, for example, is a place where D&D has always been very naturalistic (however exotic and fantastic its traps might be). There are triggers. There are areas of effect. There is a mechanism. Most of the time, you can't just say, "Due to my cautious and careful character traits, I find all of the traps." Though I bet in certain campaigns that use more fairy-tale logic, that's truer than in traditional Gygaxian dungeon-crawl campaigns!

 

[77IM]

Now you've got me thinking about what kind of traps one would find in a fairy-tale world. The first thing that comes to mind is the Cave of Wonders: "Infidels! You have touched the forbidden treasure!" And then the floor turns to lava! Maybe in fairy-tale logic every trap is triggered by some character flaw or failing?

 

[Manbearcat]

And think about the bigger picture: the more the gameworld becomes "living and breathing", the more its internal logic is not a fairy tale logic in which "anything is possible" and is, instead, a "realistic" or verisimilitudinous logic, the more everything depends on GM decision-making (about what the trolls do in the day while the PCs are out rememorising their spells and buying their oil; about whether or not their are oil supplies at all in the PCs' base town; about whether or not the Enchantress's mercenaries are sufficiently poorly payed that they might respond to bribes from the PCs; etc, etc). The dynamic can easily shift from one where the players control the pacing and direction of play, to one where everything is filtered through the GM's ideas about what makes sense for the gameworld and its (naturalistic, not fairy tale) inhabitants.

We've talked about this quite a bit over the years.

Since you brought up the quick little one-off that we ran, consider the Court Mage (as Grima Wormtongue seducing/castrating Theoden, usurping Rohan's power for an evil overlord's machinations). The two thematically fleshed out characters were yours and [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION]. So of course his lost love (Dryad whose tree was ruined by human industry) was now a Warlock bent on destroying the human civilizations (that your order is sworn to protect) just across the Feywild portal. Of course she (and her patron the Queen of Air and Darkness) were the cause of your tower's/order's fall into dark corruption. Of course her role here undermined Campbell's PC's efforts to renew elven and human bonds.

Will love conquer and cast out the darkness inside her?

Is she forgivable? Even if forgivable, is she redeemable?

Play and faerie tale (genre) logic sorts those question out in ways that the dramatically disinterested application of "naturalistic" causal logic would shunt to the realm of near (if not total) impossibility (either by fiat or mechanical expression).

The same thing applies to my recent Dungeon World game with the Prince of Frost and the young human girl who is the charge of one of the PCs.

 

[TwoSix]

Play and faerie tale (genre) logic sorts those question out in ways that the dramatically disinterested application of "naturalistic" causal logic would shunt to the realm of near (if not total) impossibility (either by fiat or mechanical expression).

Hmm...does this mean that Narr games are naturally predisposed towards faerie-tale logic, and Sim games towards causal logic? Faerie tales seem to be primarily about the imposition of consequence upon moral actions, usually through coincidence or some sort of deus ex machina. And narrative systems almost all have mechanical systems to provide that exact coincidence when called upon.

 

[innerdude]

Hmm...does this mean that Narr games are naturally predisposed towards faerie-tale logic, and Sim games towards causal logic? Faerie tales seem to be primarily about the imposition of consequence upon moral actions, usually through coincidence or some sort of deus ex machina. And narrative systems almost all have mechanical systems to provide that exact coincidence when called upon.

I was just about to say, [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s posited hypothetical is about what I'd consider the ultimate expression of how Fate is supposed to be played.

But overall, isn't this entire thread basically reiterating something we already knew, i.e., simulation and narrative are often at odds at each other in RPG gameplay?

 

[TwoSix]

I was just about to say, [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s posited hypothetical is about what I'd consider the ultimate expression of how Fate is supposed to be played.

But overall, isn't this entire thread basically reiterating something we already knew, i.e., simulation and narrative are often at odds at each other in RPG gameplay?

Sure, but I think teasing apart that faerie-tale logic and Sim heavy systems don't play as well together is worth something. It lets you know not to run Red and Pleasant Land, for example, in a 3e/PF adaptation.