Gaming Style Assumptions That Don't Make Sense

[S'mon]

For the vast majority of the community, this isn't an assumption. Skilled rules smiths and skilled designers are the exceptions in the community and not the norms. The vast majority of players, even pretty good players, aren't also skilled rules smiths or skilled designers. And ideally, they are capable of recognizing this and recognizing that content provided by the skilled designers is superior to what they could make themselves. I guess it would be a false assumption that all the best content comes from professionals and that there aren't amateur designers of equal worth, but one thing about professionalism that isn't a false assumption is that the marketplace tends to weed out the inferior work over time. Thus, the average community member is making a reasonable assumption that the professional stuff will be more reliable than picking something from the community. Remember, low skill designers can't reliably recognize bad designs. This is the reason that the amateur community often tends to be dominated by the lowest skilled designers who, suffering from a specific case of Dunning-Krueger effect, assume that they are actually very good designers. It's not that there wouldn't necessarily be a lot of good amateur content out there, but if you had a Wikipedia or something where content could be added, very quickly it would fill up with tons of ill thought out suggestions alongside the better quality stuff.

One reason you're wrong, why eg free BFRPG stuff is often more useful at-table than polished Pathfinder stuff from Paizo, is that professionals and amateurs work to different incentives. The Paizo stuff is made to fill a word count, look pretty, and maximise sales. The free Basic Fantasy stuff is written
much more focused on at-table use.

 

[Celebrim]

One reason you're wrong, why eg free BFRPG stuff is often more useful at-table than polished Pathfinder stuff from Paizo, is that professionals and amateurs work to different incentives. The Paizo stuff is made to fill a word count, look pretty, and maximise sales. The free Basic Fantasy stuff is written much more focused on at-table use.

Well, without a specific example to review I can only speak in generalities.

Chris Gonnerman is at the professional end of the spectrum.

BFRPG and other niche indy material is naturally self-selecting toward the harder core more experienced end of the hobby base. The more widely known, the more diluted the material would be.

Frankly, anyone over the age of 15 is capable of designing 'Caves of Chaos' or something to a similar standard that is relatively decent 'old school' content. That doesn't make it good or inspired design, and indeed a lot of the old school stuff even from the golden age isn't. (I don't even think B2 is particularly good Gygax. Nostalgic? Yes. Iconic? Definitely. Dumb and uninspired as written? That too.) It more speaks to the strengths of simple exploration and combat as entertainment and the relatively low amounts of prep you require to pull that sort of thing off. There are a few voices of genius in the OSR community, and several of those are justly famous as professionals.

 

[S'mon]

Frankly, anyone over the age of 15 is capable of designing 'Caves of Chaos' or something to a similar standard that is relatively decent 'old school' content..

Indeed - however you seem to have just contradicted yourself.

 

[Celebrim]

Indeed - however you seem to have just contradicted yourself.

Depends on how you look at it. Alternatively, I've just insulted much of the old school community, their tastes, and their abilities.

 

[GMMichael]

I don't understand this at all. First level has historically been objectively more lethal than other levels. That's not an assumption.

Sure, you could make the assumption that first level is lethal if you're basing your future experience on average historical trend. But do you really want to go into a game assuming it's going to be average? The assumption doesn't make sense to me because there's no reason (aside from what professional adventure designers write) that your first level characters should face an unnatural amount of mortal danger. Is there a rule that says "the PCs must fight 15 monsters to get to level 2?" Not even in D&D, which strongly implies that character development must be tied to killing, since each monster is tied to an XP value. But there are other ways to get XP/advance your character.

Combat just tends to trump all other strategies because of that, unless you have some sort of mechanically enforced fiction in your game that killing your enemies doesn't solve problems (because it massively debuffs your character or because it massively makes the problem worse). Note even then that these problems probably wouldn't effect NPCs, who could still generally trump any PC strategy through simply making them dead.

While touching on why war is such a historically popular thing, you've still managed to miss the point. You don't change the mayor's policy by killing him. You don't earn the dragon as a pet by killing it. You don't discover that your nemesis is your long lost brother by killing him. Yes, violence is exciting and can show up even in the sappiest movies by that virtue. But it should be the frosting on the cake, not the cake itself.

For the vast majority of the community, this isn't an assumption. Skilled rules smiths and skilled designers are the exceptions in the community and not the norms.

True, but it no longer NEEDS to be the assumption. Ever used Yelp? Get this: it's a website, powered by user reviews, about local offerings (businesses) of the public, that helps you to pick and choose what you want to try. Sounds pretty applicable to RPG content to me.

In fact, I'm pretty sure ENworld has the infrastructure needed for this.

 

[GMMichael]

Here's a nice case study of the (nonsensical?) combat assumption.

 

[Starfox]

Going back to religion, I feel it is almost impossible for players who have grown up in a secular/monotheistic environment to play characters from a polytheistic society correctly. Rather than see them make attempts that are wrong is so many ways, I prefer to fudge religion to fit their expectations. If I had a player who really acted out a polytheistic faith, I'd gladly accommodate that playstyle, but I won't require it.

Actually, that may be one gaming assumption I dislike, the expectation that players will be able to act like natives of what really is a very alien environment. I love when it happens, but expecting it is usually pretty rude as it creates embarrassment and failure.

 

[Celebrim]

Going back to religion, I feel it is almost impossible for players who have grown up in a secular/monotheistic environment to play characters from a polytheistic society correctly. Rather than see them make attempts that are wrong is so many ways, I prefer to fudge religion to fit their expectations. If I had a player who really acted out a polytheistic faith, I'd gladly accommodate that playstyle, but I won't require it.

Rather than fudge my setting desires to match modern sensibilities, what I tend to do is simply allow PC's to be unusual members of their community. After all, almost by definition the PC's are unusual members of their community. What's a little more weirdness?

Actually, that may be one gaming assumption I dislike, the expectation that players will be able to act like natives of what really is a very alien environment. I love when it happens, but expecting it is usually pretty rude as it creates embarrassment and failure.

I call cases of this, "Kraag Wurlds", with the homebrew campaign of Nitro Ferguson from Knights of the Dinner Table being the Trope Namer. Kraag Wurlds are defined by two things. First, a deliberately alien environment, often being alien and strange even for a fantasy world where tropes common to consensus fantasy are deliberately overturned. And secondly, a reluctance of the DM to communicate any information to the players about the setting except through discovery during play. You learn that orcs are always good and honorable beings, when your paladin tries to smites one and losing paladin-hood because he misunderstood the orcs ritual salute of respect (drawing a sword, beating it on their shield and shouting a ritual battle cry means, "Hello and well met.) and murdered a good creature. You learn that elves are always cannibals when you approach them peacefully and they start shooting you with poisoned arrows. And so forth. None of this information which would be readily available to the people living in the setting is available to the PC's until the stumble upon it.

The quasi-legitimate justification for a Kraag Wurld is the DM has created a bunch of really cool, creative, imaginative content and he wants to surprise the player with this content in the same way a novelist surprises a reader with new content presented in the story. Of course the difference in the media means that unlike in the novel, the DM is also surprising the character with the new content. The intent of the DM to have twists in the story and to inspire awe or interest in the player is correct, but he's improperly applying technique. The less legitimate desire that is usually behind a Kraag Wurld is precisely the desire to have the player's actions be marked with embarrassment and failure, so as to keep the player's beaten down and the DM firmly in control of the game. Certainly this is not a small part of the motivation of Nitro Ferguson.

 

[MarkB]

I call cases of this, "Kraag Wurlds", with the homebrew campaign of Nitro Ferguson from Knights of the Dinner Table being the Trope Namer. Kraag Wurlds are defined by two things. First, a deliberately alien environment, often being alien and strange even for a fantasy world where tropes common to consensus fantasy are deliberately overturned. And secondly, a reluctance of the DM to communicate any information to the players about the setting except through discovery during play.

Well summarised. The other variant of this is the "No, an xxxxx would never do that" syndrome. The players create their characters based upon whatever minimal descriptions the DM provides, only to find that their race, culture and/or class is bound up in a variety of imaginative taboos, traditions and cultural attitudes that only the DM fully understands, and he will overrule actions that he considers to be out-of-character.

 

[The Yellow Pill]

Going back to religion, I feel it is almost impossible for players who have grown up in a secular/monotheistic environment to play characters from a polytheistic society correctly. Rather than see them make attempts that are wrong is so many ways, I prefer to fudge religion to fit their expectations. If I had a player who really acted out a polytheistic faith, I'd gladly accommodate that playstyle, but I won't require it.

Actually, that may be one gaming assumption I dislike, the expectation that players will be able to act like natives of what really is a very alien environment. I love when it happens, but expecting it is usually pretty rude as it creates embarrassment and failure.

That's an interesting thought, but as someone who sometimes runs a Greek mythology conversion of D&D, what are some ways you might try to gently educate your players?

Is it as simple as, say, this ship is going to sink if we don't figure out what Poseidon is so pissed off about and appease him?