Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="tetrasodium" data-source="post: 8584694" data-attributes="member: 93670">pulp novels rarely told every minute of every day, it's not uncommon for days weeks or longer to pass between pages & chapters.  the DM doesn't really have that sort of influence over time in modern d&d because by no longer being a slow process  the players don't need to travel  some period of time to get somewhere safe then rest for a long period to safely recover.  [spoiler="take the indiana jones red line travel sequences"][MEDIA=youtube]-CijNl7SjEM[/MEDIA][/spoiler]Ignore the time that passes between movies & look just at the time passing while red lines are moving with those cut scenes.  We could calculate how long it takes for those travel methods to take those routes, but that in no way shape or form will tell us how long indy was traveling because there were interactions & even adventures mixed into those stops.  Some of those were hinted at with casual teaserclips, but one of the hallmarks of pulp stories  is that those tend to be backported into the now & in some cases even reference future adventures that might happen later.<a href="https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/soft-power" target="_blank">Soft Power</a>: "The use of a country's cultural and economic influence to persuade other countries to do something, rather than the use of military power"  Control over needed magic items & the economic inputs that can generate desired magic items  is the very definition.  You could include control over the timeskip & if any interactions beyond "we lock the door & sleep" is inserted into that timeskip is another missing exampleThat's a extremely negative way of painting all of those things as some sort of dark triad set of traits, Micah Sweet  said it better & more neutrally in <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/how-has-d-d-changed-over-the-decades.686433/post-8584559" target="_blank">#1907</a>.  Those things are not negatives, they just are.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The GM is expected to run the world & setting in a believable manner & blamed if they don't</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The GM is expected to populate the world with interesting NPCs groups & events for the players to interact with & blamed if they don't.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The GM is expected to provide some level of plot for the players for a few editions now & blamed if they don't. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The GM is expected to provide adequate rewards to player characters & blamed by their players if they don't.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If the GM does not show up, there is no game that day.  Period... it just doesn't happen unless the gm made some other plans for the players</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">so on & so forth</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The GM is expected to adjudicate the rules in a hopefully impartial manner & generally have a good grasp on enough of them to run things, the players are barely even expected to read the rules that pertain to their character.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The GM is expected to develop the world to reflect how players interact with it, dsaving a village results in a saved village & such.  IThe GM is blamed if they don't.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The players are not really obligated to show up, great if they do but the game can go on if bob is late or noshow</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The players can interact with the world or not</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The players can treat the setting as a living breathing thing their character exists in, or they can treat it as a meaningless classified ads board that points to the next place to go kill things</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The players are allowed to make an impact on & maybe even (re)shape the world through their (in)action.  They can choose to dive into that power & really get into it with goals, or they can shrug & look for something else to kill next</li> </ul>You aren't wrong, but that increased agency & increased narrative expectation provides more work for the GM who can't even say "well bob, you tried to persuade the npc  failed your check& your character knows that it's not going to work like you the player hoped" with rules to support it overtly like fate's compels or the sort of soft powers GMs once had in past editions over things no longer needed by players.The GM does not have shared narrative control like players do, that was actually stripped from one of the early5e rulesets as mearls noted about compelling a player's "greedy rogue" to buy a map in the 5 generations of d&d recording.  At best the GM can present things & run the world, but unlike when a player says "I persuade/intimidate/etc him" the GM has no such ability to do the same to players.[/spoiler]</blockquote>

Verification