D&D General How has D&D changed over the decades?

[Micah Sweet]

I find most players have capacity to have fun in the styles being described. However, they won't just spontaneously happen on their own. Like any other consistent game style, it takes some intention and choices to match.

And there's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy that can happen. If, you, say, are the GM, and you think your players cannot enjoy engaging in this sort of game, you will not present that sort of game. If never presented the opportunity, they never get to try it, much less learn where the fun is to be found in it.

Well, I have no real interest in running a narrative rules game. I have played in a couple, but they felt weird and off-putting to me. I'd be willing to try again, but the entire basis of the game doesn't feel right to me.

 

[tetrasodium]

An odd thing happened here. I was talking about the game, and you split it up into characters for the players, and setting for the DM. But I'm talking about the collective activity of the game.



But your assertions here have clearly been proven not to be true for other players and GMs or other games.

Those two statements broke up what was very clearly one situation of Lanefan as player at some other GM's table based on the things he was quoting immediately before it where you asked about many GM's also playing.

When I join a game as a player I have a very different mindset than as a gm, that goes double when it's a group where the GM and/or a chunk of the players are people who are likely to view me as one of their GMs or worse their usual GM. Think of it like the often seen "I am a lawuer/doctor, I am not your lawyer/doctor". It can get pretty bad if players or the gm views a gm in player hat at someone else's table as something more than a player though so there are a lot of good reasons to engage in that sort of thing when you don't want to undermine the gm or have your every utterance taken as the word of god by other players.

 

[Cadence]

Well, I don't think anyone is arguing for removing the GM as having final say. Also, no one's talking about some kind of situation where the players can't or won't accept the GM's authority, but are talking about a situation where the GM knowingly shares some amount of authority with the players.

Maybe it wasn't, but this post (and a few before and after iirc) felt to me like it was saying it specifically wasn't good enough that the GM went with the player idea - because the GM going with it were showed the GM still had final say. So the GM should let the player tell them what it was with no final say.

D&D General - How has D&D changed over the decades?

Lots of good points from both sides here. And à lot to think about. It also goes back to the perception of what kind of backstories a DM is ready to allow or not to allow. Whenever a player was making a level 1 character on his own with a mile long backstory, I was getting serious hitches as...

www.enworld.org

I very well could have been over-reading it. That seems to be a thing all over the place in this thread

 

[Campbell]

Traditional game or not gaining or losing a player and their character is a game defining event for me. Without that character the entire dynamic of play changes. We lose not only our investment in the character, but also the impact they have had on a whole host of NPCs. Our current Vampire game is a continuation of a previous game, but it feels like a completely different game because only one member of the original coterie remains. The impact of the new player characters and their agendas loom large over the game. I deeply miss some of the original members of the coterie even though they are still featured in the game as NPCs.

Adding a new player to our Apocalypse Keys game was a pretty significant challenge. We had to do a lot of work to integrate the new character into the mix and establish relationships with the other player characters. It was well worth it. They really shook things up and added a new energy to the game, but it took some pretty substantial changes to scenario design to make it all work (I was the GM).

 

[pemerton]

I have never played a non-trad game with non-trad players, so it is conjecture based on the players i do have experience with. And they would have a very hard time not using player authority for their own advantage, and especially to their PCs individual detriment.

In Burning Wheel, most of the time when I declare an action for my PC the chance of success is not better than 50%. And if I fail, it is the GM's job to narrate a new state of affairs that will set my PC back, relative to what I (as my PC) was hoping to achieve.

So every action declaration is potentially to the detriment of the PC. Eg if I declare a Circles check, hoping (for instance) to meet a family member, or a fellow member of my order, and fail, then it is likely that the GM will have me encounter someone I would rather not meet. Being prepared to suffer that sort of detriment is the price of entry.

Obviously this is nothing like (eg) @Lanefan's AD&D game, but I don't think it relies on any particular alien disposition. Just a different mechanical framework, and different instructions to the GM on how to frame scenes and narrate consequences.

 

[Umbran]

Snipped the trash...

After I just gave a warning about being respectful, this was a really poor choice of wording.

Yes to all of them. What I want to know is how different are they from FATE?
Do players still take turns at being the allmighty?

Yeah, I'm a big fan of FATE. And, I find your "take turns being the almighty" is so inaccurate a conception that there's not much that can be done before that's dealt with.

In FATE games, the players have a little more control than in many traditional games. They never get to "be the almighty".

How is actually sharing responsibility so much better than having one person to coordinate everything?

Oh, that's easy - Each of us, as a player or GM, has a personal style and habits. We don't tend to step far outside our habits. That places a limit on the creativity that will be seen in the game. Opening up a little responsibility to others allows their creativity to also play a part, and with a little practice, that means the game becomes overall more rich and creative.

How do you avoid the "I Win!" button, because other posters with much more experience, and much recent experience have seen it too. And not just one/once.

Not having read their detailed accounts in detail, I cannot be sure. Even if I had read them, I could not be sure - if they were a player, they probably don't know in full detail what was happening behind the screen.

We can say that, just like any other game, you need to build a bit of system mastery to run Fate well. And, just like a GM for D&D can build a softball encounter, or flub on a mechanic, a GM in Fate can do the same, and forget the mechanics that are at their disposal to adjust or recover when they see it happening.

One of the mods from some years back, username of "Rel", and I attend a house-con most years, in which folks are usually not running D&D. They are running games most folks haven't played before. You sit down for four hours, with a ruleset you don't know, haven't reviewed, and is explained to you in 10 minutes or less. That's not a lot of setup. So, Rel took to adding to his introductions a quick statement of "How to find the fun in this game."

Here's a hint for Fate - "achieve tactical domination" is not the way to find the fun in Fate. The game is a little less about the destination, and more about the journey.

 

[pemerton]

That feels like that's what @Lanefan was getting at in #2826 and #2827. It feels like almost everyone in this thread, for all of their other differences, agrees on that being the thing to do.

Well, @Lanefan also posted the following, so I can't be sure:

In general, the player's first focus is on the success of their PC (and sometimes, of the party) and on the immediate here-and-now elements that go into as best as possible ensuring that success.

I'm there to play my character(s) to the best of my/their abilities* in the setting given them by the DM. I actively try to turn off my DM-brain as a player, with varying degrees of success.

* - by this I don't necessarily mean playing them to their mechanical optimum; I mean playing them as themselves first and in the process trying to be at least somewhat entertaining.

There can be a degree of tension between focusing on the success of the PC, playing the character but not their mechanical optimum, and playing to be entertaining. Normally you can't aim at all of these at once - perhaps you can while RPing a shopping trip, but probably not when (eg) confronting a Type VI demon.

I don't know how Lanefan resolves those tensions, or expects other players to do so. Presumably players who are prepared to sacrifice their optimum in order to be entertaining would be capable of the sort of respect for other participants and mutual reciprocity that @hawkeyefan and @Campbell posted about upthread, but Lanefan disagreed with those posts. So as I said, I'm not sure.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Maybe it wasn't, but this post (and a few before and after iirc) felt to me like it was saying it specifically wasn't good enough that the GM went with the player idea - because the GM going with it were showed the GM still had final say. So the GM should let the player tell them what it was with no final say.

D&D General - How has D&D changed over the decades?

Lots of good points from both sides here. And à lot to think about. It also goes back to the perception of what kind of backstories a DM is ready to allow or not to allow. Whenever a player was making a level 1 character on his own with a mile long backstory, I was getting serious hitches as...

www.enworld.org

I very well could have been over-reading it. That seems to be a thing all over the place in this thread

That is definitely how I read the poster I believe you are referring to.

 

[pemerton]

Would the three other players at the table continue playing with a bad GM if they were good players and had any other choices? (If we're imagining an established table).

It's easier for the DM to save things whent he players have a bad night than it is for the players to save things when the DM has a bad night.

I've been part of a group that continued playing under a bad GM, and where it was the players and not the GM who "saved" things. And I doubt I'm unique in that respect.

Ultimately RPGing is the social activity of creating a shared fiction together - to whatever further end - and I don't think it's particularly odd that it should be a player rather than GM who makes the strongest social contribution, or the strongest contribution to the fiction. If the game is heavily focused on the players overcoming GM-authored challenges (eg like Tomb of Horrors) then the role of the GM starts to loom larger, but that hasn't been the paradigm for D&D play for decades now. It wasn't the paradigm of the game I mentioned in the previous paragraph, which was happening over 25 years ago.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Those two statements broke up what was very clearly one situation of Lanefan as player at some other GM's table based on the things he was quoting immediately before it where you asked about many GM's also playing.

My comment was that everyone is responsible for the quality of the game. I understand why we may call something "Mike's Ravenloft campaign" and so on, but everyone should be an active participant. Everyone contributes to how good or bad a game may be.

In my opinion, that doesn't change if I as a player am only in charge of my character and nothing else.

When I join a game as a player I have a very different mindset than as a gm, that goes double when it's a group where the GM and/or a chunk of the players are people who are likely to view me as one of their GMs or worse their usual GM. Think of it like the often seen "I am a lawuer/doctor, I am not your lawyer/doctor". It can get pretty bad if players or the gm views a gm in player hat at someone else's table as something more than a player though so there are a lot of good reasons to engage in that sort of thing when you don't want to undermine the gm or have your every utterance taken as the word of god by other players.

There's nothing wrong with approaching the role of player with a different mindset than one would that of GM. But, there's no reason that there can only be one way to divvy up the game's authority. There are many ways we can divide the authority between GM and players.

D&D traditionally favors the GM in most instances, but not all. There's no reason that people can't shift that authority a bit. There are certainly things you can do to grant the players a bit more authority in the fiction beyond what their declared actions allow. I don't think you can move that too much without throwing things off, but you can do it.

This isn't about being seen as a GM by other players. Or at least, that's not what I've been talking about.