D&D General How much control do DMs need?

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think murder hoboes tend to not have connections to the world at all. At least, not any that will matter in play. As for the advantages or disadvantages of background... I don't think you need to be so alarmed about abuse. You've never had a character of noble rank? Or from a wealthy family? As I said, any advantages that brings can be paired with a disadvantage so that it's a mixed blessing.

Why even be concerned? In my first 4e campaign the rogue's player made up a whole backstory about how she was part of a noble family of 'secret agents'. I think basically it didn't do anything substantial FOR her. Now and then she would declare that her character learned some piece of information (from a knowledge check usually) via 'family intel'. I think once the party visited her family estate during an adventure and interacted with them, I forget the details. It certainly didn't make her PC somehow 'more powerful' or 'better' than the other ones.

I remember back when I ran a 2e campaign the player of the paladin character named his character 'Sir Dudley Whitehelm'. OK, he's a 'Sir', whatever. I mean anybody who has the money needed to acquire a warhorse, plate armor, etc. pretty much has to be nobility in any pseudo-medieval milieu anyway, so its not like a big revelation. The very concept of the paladin class is pretty much based on romantic notions of late medieval knights, peasants really need not apply! IIRC he had some degree of backstory for his character too, he was from a noble family of an adjoining realm or something like that. Big deal, the campaign lasted up to name level, it never mattered in the least!

Frankly I find the obsessive concern for these sorts of issues smacks of an overwhelming desire for total end-to-end control of every last tit and tottle of fiction in the game.

 

[Enrahim2]

I see what you're saying.

I would feel much happier about 5e's supposed flexibility if it was set up better in the text. 'D&D doesn't get in the way' is not really the same as actively supporting a different genre or playstyle, and it's not something that is in any way unique to D&D. If you ignore a bunch of rules and then resolve a bunch of situations without any rules at all (or through bare bones rules like simple stat checks) then every RPG can achieve every playstyle and genre.

Yes, I am in no way advocating D&D being exceptional. I think almost all traditional RPGs share this flexibility property. It is only in the context of comparing with games where the rules limit GM control, that I think D&D 5ed compares favorably in terms of flexibility. And I believe it was D&D you asked about in context of a thread about DM control

I think the part where D&D might be considered exceptional is it's intense focus on the two aspects of flexible play where I believe all groups playing a fully "flexible" game likely need help: Getting the game started (character creation) and resolving life or death conflicts. Other games tend to require ignoring a bit more rules and advice if you want to run other scenarios in your own way.

 

[soviet]

Yes, I am in no way advocating D&D being exceptional. I think almost all traditional RPGs share this flexibility property. It is only in the context of comparing with games where the rules limit GM control, that I think D&D 5ed compares favorably in terms of flexibility.

I'm sure it's no surprise that I disagree with this. Which games that 'limit GM control' would be harder to drift into a completely different genre than D&D?

 

[Oofta]

Why even be concerned? In my first 4e campaign the rogue's player made up a whole backstory about how she was part of a noble family of 'secret agents'. I think basically it didn't do anything substantial FOR her. Now and then she would declare that her character learned some piece of information (from a knowledge check usually) via 'family intel'. I think once the party visited her family estate during an adventure and interacted with them, I forget the details. It certainly didn't make her PC somehow 'more powerful' or 'better' than the other ones.

I remember back when I ran a 2e campaign the player of the paladin character named his character 'Sir Dudley Whitehelm'. OK, he's a 'Sir', whatever. I mean anybody who has the money needed to acquire a warhorse, plate armor, etc. pretty much has to be nobility in any pseudo-medieval milieu anyway, so its not like a big revelation. The very concept of the paladin class is pretty much based on romantic notions of late medieval knights, peasants really need not apply! IIRC he had some degree of backstory for his character too, he was from a noble family of an adjoining realm or something like that. Big deal, the campaign lasted up to name level, it never mattered in the least!

Frankly I find the obsessive concern for these sorts of issues smacks of an overwhelming desire for total end-to-end control of every last tit and tottle of fiction in the game.

It's a question of scale. Adding a new kingdom is far, far different from calling your PC "Sir".

Some of these comments smack of people not really listening to what others are saying are the limits they put on people's PC backgrounds and why. Want to be from a noble family? Cool. I may have a family already lined up that has a history or we can can just create another. Although I'll probably want to chat about the fact that you can't just run to the parental units every time you get into a jam or want some extra spending cash. But those are things that just add interest to the story.

 

[pemerton]

Maybe call it a mild form of method acting, then? Sometimes, when considering other characters I (to a point) think as my character thinks. At other times I'll go into "analyst mode", usually when comparing characters or telling war stories. These are both completely unrlated to how/what I-as-player think of other players.

OK?

Upthread I posted that Aedhros (my PC) regards Alicia (my friend's PC) with near-contempt. This is an imaginary attitude. I also posted that I, the player of Aedhros, am invested in Alicia.

You said this was strange. Are you now saying it's not?

I mean, I once played a PC who was in love with another PC. But I, the player of my PC, was not in love with that other PC. Would that be strange to?

I don't really understand what you're saying, or what "method acting" has to do with it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

More a PbtA thing than DW. I predict that rating on any sort of scale will vary across assessors, in part due to their preferences. That's not even taking account that such a scale could be multi-dimensional (so that rating would be a coordinate. )

I mean, sure, I'm just using the PbtA game I have the most experience with. Though I would say some of them are more hard-coded than others. Dungeon World is pretty flexible, but Monsterhearts and Masks are a lot more focused. You can break them out more, e.g., it's pretty clear the aforementioned SCUP draws on Monsterhearts, what with the sex moves, but the emphasis on factions and intrigue is new. But I wouldn't call them quite as open-ended because their premises ("Teen Wolf: the RPG" and "Teen Titans: The RPG") are narrower from the start.

If the flexibility is intended to look only at overall concept/premise, then D&D is as open-ended as any fantasy-and/or-sci-fi game, because "fantasy" is about as specific as "imagination" and "sci-fi" is only more specific because it needs to have specifically technology of some kind (but it can be totally background, so even that's weak.)

I had assumed the emphasis was on mechanical flexibility, since...well, concept flexibility doesn't really have any game design in it. And I've found D&D is very mechanically inflexible. I mentioned Skill Challenges earlier because they're a rare breath of fresh air in this sense. D&D magic: hard-coded to work in specific ways, and you're on your own for figuring out how to make more, because there are few to no truly consistent rules (e.g., damage numbers? Broken by several traditional spells. Utility effects? Completely all over the map. Etc.)

Whereas, in my DW game, when I wanted to develop a new magic system for the Battlemaster in our party, it was as simple as creating a new Compendium Class with an appropriate already-met trigger move (in this case, "When you have been touched by the dark essence of a fallen spirit") and then filling it with interesting moves.

Looking at more recent comments, I definitely don't understand the claim that DW is less flexible within a single session. Defy Danger is literally flexible enough to cover anything where the character is acting despite some major difficulty: one move, flexible enough to cover "saving face in front of the Duchess after a social faux pas," "wrasslin' with a kraken trying to pull you under," "dancing out of the way of a ray if burning acid," "holding your breath long enough to run through the cloud of hallucinogenic smoke so you can escape the burning alchemist's shop," and many, many more. Physically attacking in any way that requires slinging a weapon? Hack & Slash. Using any kind of ranged attack? Volley. Protecting something? Defend. Etc.

The only place it isn't instantly flexible is if you want to do something that feels like it should have a more specific or detailed move, but none are ready to hand. Spell research, for example, feels like it could (even should) be much more in-depth than a mere Spout Lore, but no such move by default exists. So, let me draft one. I will time myself for doing so.

Hit the Spellbooks
When you dedicate yourself to the study of a magical conundrum in order to produce a marvelous magical solution, roll+INT. If you have access to an excellent library or top-notch arcane laboratory, take an additional +1.
✴ On a 10+, choose three.
✴ On a 7-9, choose two.
✴ 6-, choose one, and ask the GM what complication you've gotten yourself embroiled in as a result of pushing the boundaries of knowledge a bit too far.

• The spell does not take a long time to cast.
• There are no expensive material components.
• The effect is precise and easily controlled.
• There are no unwanted secondary effects.

It's always possible to improve a spell you've designed through Hit the Spellbooks, but you'll need a special advantage you didn't have before. This could be hidden grimoires of the great masters, traveling to distant cities with state-of-the-art facilities, or (if you can stomach it) collaborating with someone else who knows the field like you do (because surely no one knows it better, right?)

14 minutes, 51.13 seconds. And that was all on my phone, while adding in the niceties like the eight-pointed star glyph and wrangling the absolutely infuriating mobile interface for formatting stuff.

If, in the slowest entry method I have, I can draft a new move in only 15 minutes, that should work pretty much perfectly fine, how exactly is this game poor at within-session flexibility? Or is this yet another "well it actually means three things, let's subdivide even further" thing?

I think that's key here, these games generally have pretty coherent visions of what they're trying to do, its just hard to get right, and there's so little money in the whole industry (especially in earlier decades) that game designers simply got their ideas out there in SOME form and hoped for the best. I don't think its fair to call those efforts 'terrible' or even 'badly designed'. Heck, in many cases I think the term 'designed' may be a bit heavy weight compared to what actually happened!! I mean, my friends and I hacked together a couple of rule sets for our RPG play for specific things, its more just doing whatever works. Some of that kind of stuff (not ours) got published. Good/bad, I find it hard to apply those terms.

I have no problem calling early efforts at something terrible, if it be warranted, even if they were the only option feasible at the time. The Model-T was pretty much hot garbage by modern standards, and I don't mean for creature comforts. Its brakes were awful, the windshield was either one or two panes of flat glass (which caused a lot of injuries and deaths in crashes), the manual engine crank was awful to work with, and in the initial decade of its run, most of them had oil lamps instead of electric ones. It was still one of the best cars money could buy, and despite prioritizing cheap construction, was quite durable, and much less picky about fuel than other cars of the day.

You can say similar things about all sorts of stuff. Early cell phones were terrible, but if you needed to receive calls while moving, those ugly, boxy, limited things were irreplaceable. Early genetic engineering (indeed, so early we hadn't discovered DNA yet in some cases) involved literally irradiating things to see if any interesting mutations developed. Early glow-in-the-dark watches used radium paint for their glow, which I think we can all agree is a terrible way to get glowing numbers on a watch dial!

Point being: early efforts may be extremely important, may change the world, may be utterly irreplaceable in their day, may even be worthy of praise to this very day for what they accomplished...but may still be terrible products and/or the result of terrible methods.

Modern takes on classic games (e.g. Dungeon Crawl Classics) almost always introduce significant innovation to improve upon the old formula, and some of these innovations are quite clever. I mention DCC specifically because of its brilliant "funnel" concept; I don't know if they invented it or just popularized it, but either way, it's an excellent solution to an otherwise major impediment to playing early editions, namely the amount of time it takes to get to characters that actually have a chance of surviving for a while. Such concerns were less relevant in fhe 70s, but it's been nearly 50 years, things have changed and a snappier entry path is hugely important for keeping this style of play active with younger generations.

And, on that note, I want to be clear about separating the rules by which you achieve something from the style of play one pursues. Old school is more than just D&D, it must be, since it covers so many systems and many of them share nothing beyond an ethos (well, and being TTRPGs.) There is nothing wrong with the style of classic D&D. But man, its rules can so easily get in its own way! I consider that the most straightforward definition of bad design. Having a clear ethos is necessary for doing design in the first place, whether it be good, bad, or indifferent. Making rules which get in the way of achieving the ethos for which they were designed is pretty clearly bad design. The purpose of a car is to drive; a design element of that car which often seriously impairs its ability to drive without giving more value than it takes away (be it safety, aesthetics, efficiency, utility, whatever) is an example of bad car design. A car which contains a lot of such elements is badly designed. Likewise, if a game has a clear design ethos, a purpose for which it was built, then rules which frequently hinder that purpose and do not give back enough alternative value are bad rules, and a system which contains a lot of such rules is badly designed. Doesn't matter what the ethos was or whether it was meant to be tinkered with; saying "it's meant to be altered" is no excuse for selling a sloppy jalopy as a brand-new car.

 

[pemerton]

If you are accepting as a premise of your game that there will be significant amount of time where there are situations where a player cannot actively affect happens in the now, then falling back on the tried and true one turn each with equal parts action on each turn game concept seem like something most would be willing to accept (after all combat in D&D 5ed doesn't allow for much interaction on a different player's turn even if your character is present).

As long as characters are known to certanly not be interacting in any of the relevant timescales, dissolving synchronise of time over distance is quite safe, as there will likely be oportunities to resynchronize (traveler appear to be a great example of this due to the wastness of space.

The big challenge with this I can see arises if we are in a situation where there are some established observationability between the characters, allong with a likelihood that they will interact.

For instance A and B is close to a safe camp when they observes an enemy raiding party. A decides to investigate further while B go to camp. Turn go back and forth with A doing various fast paced prodding and distractions of the raiding party, while B do some obviously more time consuming shopping activity. Then suddenly A decides to lead the enemy straight to the safe camp. This would clearly cause trouble with consistency with Bs action, in particular if the outcome would be that the raiders destroy the camp.

Do the games that allow for flexible turn timescale across distance have a good solution to the above kind of scenarios?

The general sort of solution is this: there is no resolution by way of various fast paced prodding and distractions.

In the same way that a comic may cut between panels, or a film cut between scenes, or a book cut between chapters, with no clocks ticking in each moment of narration to follow the precise passage of time, so the same thing can happen in a RPG?

For instance, here's an example from Prince Valiant play:

That ended the battle scene, and we cut to the castle. With the reserve garrison and the returned troops there were 22 archers, 36 men-at-arms, 18 sergeants and 3 knights, plus Sir Andreas and his castellan Sir Satyrion, and the PCs and their 12 men-at-arms: a total of 96 defenders. The penalty for being outnumbers two-to-one is -2 dice; the penalty for assaulting the castle is -4 dice; and so the players were reasonably confident they could hold the castle against assault.

And so everyone dined.

The scenario I was drawing on here is in the Prince Valiant Episode Book - The Littlest Prince - but our framing was rather different, as the castle's army had returned rather than having been routed. So I asked Sir Morgath's player to roll his Fellowship + Presence (7D) against an obstacle of 3 (I think it was), and he succeeded. I told him that he noticed that Sir Satyrion seemed rather sour. Morgath first spoke to Sir Andreas, and (with successful Courtesie) confirmed his suspicion that it was Satyrion who had suggested that they sally forth. (The conjecture was the players, and it certainly fitted with the scenario backstory.)

He then consulted with the other PCs, and decided to speak to Sir Satyrion, to try and learn his motives (eg power-hunger; loyalty to the Arab rather than the Greek cause; etc). This was Glamourie, and the player was rolling 8 dice (Presence 4, Glamourie 2, +2D for greater fame and his prestigious accoutrements). So he was quite successful. First, he learned that Satyrion was jealous of Andreas, and mocked him. When I asked Morgath's player if he likewise mocked Justin and Gerren, he replied "Not Sir Gerren". I asked Sir Justin's player to make a Presence check to see if he overheard the mockery; he did. Justin's player had Justin declare that he was finished dining, with the intention that he would go to the infirmary and tend to the injured; I called for another Presence check to see if he could really hold his pride in check despite Sir Morgath's word. This succeeded too, and he then rolled very well on his healing, further cementing his order's reputation in Cyprus.

A second Glamourie check succeeded, and Satyrion asked Morgath whether he was married. Sir Morgath started to speak of his love for his wife Elizabeth of York - I asked for a Presence check to avoid also speaking of Lorette of Lothian, who he left in Toulouse but still longs for. The check succeeded, and so Lorette didn't come up. Satyrion explained that he wished to marry Flora, Andrea's teenage daughter; although this would not make him the heir, as there was also an infant son, Theo. Satyrion also asked Morgath if his ambitions lay in the East, but Morgath responded that he hoped the crusading urges of Justin and Gerren would soon be satisfied so that they could all return to the West, and Morgath could return to his duties in York. (Morgath's player explained that Morgath isn't really a liar, and that his Glamourie is mostly just for helping resist seduction.)

I explained that this seemed to quieten Satyrion, and asked whether Morgath wanted to pump him for any more information. A third successful Glamourie check was made, and Morgath suggested that he might be able to help Satyrion with his plans with Flora. Satyrion, his guard quite lowered, asked whether Morgath was intimating that he might help with a plot against Andreas and Theo; Morgath replied that he was just referring to wooing! And so Satyrion excused himself.

I asked Sir Gerren's player what Gerren was doing. The reply was, checking the castle's defences. I said that a roll of Battle + Presence (9 dice) could strengthen the defences on 5 or more successes (ie give another die penalty to attacking forces), while two or fewer successes would mean something had gone wrong. Naturally the roll was two successes! As Sir Gerren was at a tower battlement, backlit by torches, an arrow struck him for 1 point of Brawn lost. I then said that he could see someone - a spy - who had infiltrated via the postern and was trying to open the main gate. I asked Gerren's player whether he was prepared to leap from the tower to stop the spy, as Tintin would. He was. I can't recall the difficulty I set - 4 or 5, I think - with every success short of that on Brawn + Agility being a point of Brawn lost in the landing. With Brawn 4 and no Agility skill, 2 points were lost, leaving Sir Gerren with only 1 Brawn to brawl with the spy. Their first round of brawling did not let the spy get to the gate, but nor did Sir Gerren disable him. Sir Gerren called for help, and with a success on his Presence + Oratory check guards came running and the gate remained closed. But about this same time, Flora announced in distress that Theo was missing from the nursery! Sir Morgath spoke to the servants in the castle, including the basement (Fellowship + Presence, with good successes) and they had seen nothing; Sir Gerren looked out from the battlement, and might have seen the riders leaving where Satyrion had spirited Theo out the postern, but failed his Presence check.

Down in the courtyard, Sir Gerren could see that Sir Andreas was getting ready to ride forth searching for his son. He tried to persuade him to hold off, that this was too big a risk to the defence of the castle; but failed: Sir Andreas reminded him that when his son (Sir Justin) had been in trouble, he had risked everything to rescue him (ie in the battle earlier that day). But Sir Andreas agreed that Sir Gerren, Sir Justin and their troops could ride with him. An oratory check mustered the men, although it was one success short of the difficulty I'd set and so they were at -1 for fighting due to the rapidity of the mustering (loose saddles, poorly donned armour, etc). And so Andreas rode out with 2 of his house-knights, 3 sergeants and 6 men-at-arms, as well as Sir Justin, Sir Gerren, their scout Rhan, and their 12 men-at-arms. Sir Morgath's player insisted quite forcefully that his scout retain, Algol the Bloodthirsty, was remaining with him in the castle. It was only once the posse had ridden out, to the echoes of me the GM saying "no backsies!", that the players fully computed that their two commanders with Battle 6 each had left the castle under the command of the teenager Flora and Sir Morgath with his Battle 1.

Rhan's tracking was unsuccessful (failed Hunting + Presence), and so it took them several hours of falling false trails through the hills before they saw their quarry on the plain, over a mile away and riding with a lit torch. I made riding checks for the three important NPCs - Sir Satyrion and Wassel (a NPC from the previous session, who had carried news of the PCs' pending arrival to Cyprus) fleeing and Sir Andreas in pursuit; Sir Gerren and Sir Justin's players rolled theirs. Sir Justin was easily able to catch Wassel (4 successes vs 1) and I allowed him to wheel about and tackle Wassel, with Wassel's first round of defence not being able to inflict harm on Sir Justin. As it turned out, I rolled 2 successes on Wassel's 9 dice (Brawn 3, Arms 3, +3 for armour and weapon) and Justin's 14 dice yielded 10 successes, and so Wassel was reduced to 1 die in the first exchange. I described him being knocked from his horse and unable to meaningfully fight on; Justin trussed him up.

Satyrion, on the other hand, had rolled 6 successes against Sir Gerren's 5, and so Sir Gerren wasn't able to catch him, although was keeping pace. I called for another set of opposed checks and Satyrion won again. This was enough to settle that Sir Gerren couldn't catch him before he reached the castle he was riding to, with the boy Theo. Sir Gerren therefore turned around and rejoined the others.

In the meantime, the feared night-time assault on Andreas's castle took place. The assaulting force had 1D (Battle 2 + Presence 3 - 4D for the castle) vs Morgath's 2D (Battle 1 + Presence 4 -3D for being outnumbered 3 to 1: the 155 reinforcements, less the 5 riders with Satyrion and Wassel, meant the attackers numbered 235, while Morgath had himself, Agol, 22 archers, 30 men-at-arms, 15 sergeants and a house-knight - 70 in total). I rolled a success on the NPCs die, which counts as two (because full successes rolled grants +1 success), while Morgath's player rolled only 1. So it was 1D each. And we rolled again, and 1 succeeded and Morgath's player did not. He did roll fine on his courage and survival checks, and so we agreed that Morgath had fallen back into the donjon with Agol, Elizabeth and Flora, defending them to the last. He asked Flora if there was any way out, and I consulted the scenario: Flora "shows them a secret tunnel (that she is fairly sure Sir [Satyrion] knows nothing of)" and so Morgath and friends were able to escape the fallen castle. Agol was successful (Hunting + Presence) in leading them to join up with the others on the plain between the two castles.

You can see, here, that there is attention paid to Sir Morgath's pumping of Satyrion for information, then to Sir Gerren checking the castle's defences, then to Sir Morgath hearing Flora's alarm at the missing Theo, the Sir Justin joining the muster, then to the pursuit on horseback, which resuts in two PCs splitting up - Sir Justin defeating Wassel while Sir Gerren fails to catch Satyrion - before they rejoin, then to the assault on the castle, then to the escape from the castle, with the upshot being that all the PCs rejoin on the plain.

The way that your issues of "observability" and "interaction" are handled is by techniques such as Sir Gerren's Oratory check to call for help and then again for the muster.

Here's another example:

I was using the Rattling Forest scenario from the Episode Book, and described the "deep and clawing shadows [that[ stretch across the path, and the wind [that] rattles through the trees." The PCs soon found themselves confronted by a knight all in black and wearing a greatsword, with a tattered cape hanging from his shoulders, and six men wielding swords and shields, their clothes equally tattered. The scenario description also mentions that they have "broken trinkets and personal effects" and I described rings and collars that were worn, notched and (in some cases) broken. The description of the collars was taken by the players as a sign that these were Celts (wearing torcs), and I ran with that.

The scenario gives the following account of the Bone Laird and his Bone Knights:

The Rattling Forest is haunted and cursed, as the soldiers who died in the service of a forgotten lord restlessly roam its boughs. All who would travel through the Forest must deal with the Bone Laird and his Bone Knights.

There are two ways to remove the curse from The Bone Laird: by defeating him in a combat to the death; or if the Adventurers can convince him to leave his sword in the forest and travel away with them. In either case, the curse will be broken, laying the Bone Laird and all his Bone Knights to rest, as they forsake their eternal battle. . . .

The Bone Laird demands all who would traverse his forest first free him of the curse. If questioned, he does not know how such can be accomplished. . . .

If the Adventurers can bring the Bone Laird low . . . they will have done a great and good deed. Instead of defeating the Bone Laird in combat, they may convince him to leave his sword and the forest and break the curse. This is not an easy matter as the Bone Laird does not want to be tricked away from the forest. Still, here are the kinds of arguments the Adventurers can make to convince him:

*Convince him the answer to his curse is with Merlin and he should visit the wizard.

* Tell him he just needs to visit the Healing Waters found at the mouth of the river Glein.

* He must visit the seat of his former lord and receive forgiveness from its current occupant.​

Sir Justin was the first to speak, in (Old) English, and asked the black knight to let him pass. But the Bone Laird (being an ancient Celt) could not understand. I then had the Bone Laird address the PCs, telling him that they may not pass him and his men: his geas was to kill all who tried to go thorugh the forest. Because he was speaking an ancient form of Celtish - not the British the PCs are fluent in - a roll was called for on Presence + Lore. Sir Morgath and Twillany succeeded. The ensuing back-and-forth established that the Bone Laird could not recall the origin of his geas; but Twillany tried to persuade him that he should lay down his burdens and let these good Celtic folk pass. I set the difficulty at (I think) 4, with 3 successes getting some of the way there (partial successs is not an official thing in Prince Valiant, but is a device I've been using a bit). Three successes were rolled, and so the Bone Laird agreed to let the women - whom it would be dishnourable to fight and kill - pass. So Twillany (whose gender is indeterminate and whose sex is not known to anyone either in the fiction or at the table except her(?)self and perhaps the player) and Rhan were able to pass.

The players, and at least some of the PCs, had decided that there must be something in the forest that would be the anchor or locus of the curse, and Twillany's player spend the earlier-awarded Storyteller Certificate to Find Something Hidden ("An item which is lost, hidden, or otherwise concealed is discovered almost by accident by a character. The thing must be relatively close at hand, and the character must be searching for it at the moment.").

The publsihed scenario doesn't say anything about this, so I had to make something up: as Twilland and Rhan were riding along the path deeper into the forest, Twillany's horse almost stumbled on something unexpected underfoot. Inspection revealed it to be a great tree stump that had been cut close to the ground, levelled and smoothed, and engraved with a sigil very like one that Twillany had noticed on the Bone Laird's cloak as the two women had ridden past him. It seemed to be a mysteriously preserved wooden dais of an ancient house or stronghold - and looking about it there were still visible signs of posts and postholes of a steading wall.

There is no player-side magic in Prince Valiant - as per the rulebook, "there is no magical skill available in the Adventurer creation process. This ensures that only you, the Storyteller, have access to effective magic in the game, should you want it." When Twillany's player declared that Twillany was trying to make sense of the dais and its sigil, I called for a Lore + Presence check, which succeeded. I narrated the images Twillany experienced, of a happy place in the forest welcoming and full of life, that had then been overrun by and suffered the depredations of Goth and Roman and Hun, with the upshot being sorrow and desolation.

The resolution here was unfolding fairly quickly, and I can't remember all the details. At one point there was a Poetry/Song check as Twillany recited a piece of appropriate verse (which Twillany's player was making up for the purpose). But the upshot was that Twillany's player decided that the curse couldn't be lifted simply by working on the dais - the Bone Laird would have to be brought back there to confront it (this was therefore our version of "He must visit the seat of his former lord and receive forgiveness from its current occupant").

Twillany and Rhan therefore returned to where they had left the Bone Laird, his warriors and the other PCs. But (as I stipulated) before they could get back matters there had to be resolved.

Sir Justin had the idea of converting these ancient Celtic ghosts to Christianity and the reverence of St Sigobert - "a Celtic saint" as he emphasised several times - and he also thought that their bones could be put in the reliquary that had been made for martyrs of the order a few sessions ago. Sir Morgath dispatched Algol to bring the reliquary back from the main body of the PC's band, while Sir Justin drew his blessed silver dagger of St Sigobert to begin the attempt. Unforunately his roll was a bust, and the Bone Laird interpreted this as a threat and so attacked him. The resulting combat was brutal for Sir Justin, who was started with 13 dice (4 Brawn, 4 Arms, 3 armour, 2 for the magic weapon) vs the Bone Laird's 16 (7 Brawn for his supernatural strength, 4 Arms, 3 armour, 2 for his mystical greatsword). Sir Justin lost every roll until he was reduced to zero dice - and using the GM's fiat allowed by the system, I narrated this as a serious wound (the greatsword having thrust through a gap between breastplate and pauldron to inflict serious bleeding) and not mere stunning and exhaustion.

During this fight Sir Morgath's player made a roll to see if Algol had come back with the reliquary but this also failed (5 Brawn, -1 for no riding skill when trying to ride in haste, so 4 dice vs a difficulty of 3).

Sir Gerren made two Healing checks, one to stabilise Sir Justin and a second to restore 3 of his lost Brawn. I made it clear that I reserved the right to call for further checks if he was to try and fight again, to see if the wound reopened.

Twillany and Rhan then returned. This led to the final stage of the encounter with the Bone Laird, which went surprisingly long due to a long series of poor rolls by the players vs good rolls by me. Twillany persuaded the Bone Laird to come back to the wooden dais, but the Bone Laid's final two dice to resist social persuasion lasted through many many checks - I rolled many double successes, counting as three successes becuse the rules of the system are that if every die succeeds then the roll scores a bonus success, while the PCs repeatedly rolled none or one success getting ties at best. Which meant that Twillany's repeated explanations that the Celtic people had not been fully overrun by Romans and others, and continued to flourish in the west, were not calming him. And he interpreted references to his past in the forest and the old fortress as jibes and taunts. And so during the course of all this the angered Bone Laird beat Sir Gerran down to one die remaining, Sir Morgath down to one die, and sent Twillany - who at one point interposed herself between the Bone Laird and Sir Gerran - flying across the clearing reduced to zero dice. Sir Justin, who had got himself back into the action, also failed his social checks and ended up unconscious and bleeding again sprawled across the wooden dais.

It was only after a second roll for Algol, against a lower target number due to the passage of time, was successful - so that he returned carrying the reliquary - that the PCs triumphed: Sir Gerran persuaded the Bone Laird that he and his men would find rest and release from their geas if they acknowledged God and St Sigobert and their bones placed in the reliquary. The Bone Laird - physically unharmed to the last but with his social resistance pool finally reduced to zero - cut the heads off his companions and went to fall on his sword. Sir Morgath intervened at that point, persuading him that it would be more honourable for another to take his life - and so the Bone Laird handed him his greatsword and Sir Morgath made a successful roll to decapitate him.

The choicest bones were then placed in the reliquary. And Sir Morgath had a new magical but dangerous sword to replace the jewelled one that he had lost in the previous session.

I don't think my account of the Bone Laird episode quite does the actual play justice - in part because I can't remember all the intricacies and twists and turns - but it was really driven by two things: (i) the ability of the system to seamlessly integrate social and physical action; and (ii) the requirement that the players actually declare their moves, so that we had impassioned speeches, declarations of faith to St Sigobert, Twillany's player reciting verse and setting out her (?) vision of what Celtic honour required, etc. I guess also (iii) at least in my experience, dice pool systems increase the tension (compared to D&D-style roll and add) because even a large pool has a chance to come up with zero successes, and (again as I have experienced them) ties are more likely, which keep the action going while raising the sense of anticipation.

Twillany and Rhan leave the three knights and find the dais in the forest. Then we cut back to the knights and resolve some of their conflict. Then Algol (a retainer) is dispatched. Then Twillany and Rhan are narrated as returning. Rolls are made to see if the retainer returns with the crucial item, and finally he does.

None of this is especially difficult in a system whose resolution is based around scenes and consequences, rather than around granular "prodding".

If one compares this to D&D - time would have to be tracked for Twillany and Rhan's trip through the forest. Then time would have to be tracked for the investigation of the dais. In D&D using a Legend Lore-type effect on the dais would probably take 1 minute or 10 minutes ("1 turn" in the old nomenclature). All of this would be many rounds of combat, and there is no canonical device I'm aware of in D&D combat to "pause" or "stretch" things such that those many rounds don't just take place end-to-end. Which in this case would probably leave not only the PC knight Sir Justin defeated by the Bone Laird, but the other PC knights defeated also.

In a MHRP session once, I remember that the three PCs - War Machine in his civvies, Nightcrawler and Ice Man - had been picked up while out on the town by the B.A.D girls - Black Mamba, Asp and Diamondback. Nightcrawler had teleported on of them to the roof of the Capitol, apparently wooing her but actually, in the end, teleporting away and leaving her stuck up there so that he could thwart their plot; in the same action sequence Ice Man had frozen the moat at the base of the Washington Monument and (from memory) was skating there with his partner (mechanically, imposing romantic-type complications on her); while I can't remember fully what War Machine was doing except that at a certain point he summoned his armour and then flew his date to the top of the Washington Monument and left her dangling from it, before going off to join Nightcrawler to thwart the plot.

It's easy to imagine what I've described in terms of "cuts" between frames of a comic or scenes of a film. The game handled it with no problems at all.

I suspect the following diversity of experience is hard to get in a non rule zero game:
Starts out with a classic dungeon crawl - fully predetermined location with random monsters. Then the party find the Crown of reality command, an artifact with the following property: The wearer take complete control over any aspects of their universe for 5 minutes before the crown teleports to a random location i the multiverse. For 5 minutes the player with a an narate whatever they want to happen during that time, and it will be true. However before using it, the players get to learn that for the next 5 minutes after that, reality will flex back, causing the DM to take full controll over what happens, including the actions of all player characters.

The players decide to use it after leaving the dungeon, chaos ensues, and then the game enters a collaborative roleplaying pattern where any player can come with suggestions what happens next, needing a majority vote with DM having veto.

I can easily see the above scenario play out as described in D&D in a single session. I think it breaks absolutely every principle of "player protection" in burning wheel at least. I also assume you agree it is an extreme range of gaming experiences involved, from static player explore DM content, to full dictation by a player to a purest thinkable DM railroad to a clearly asymmetric collaborative experience.

Are you focusing on the fiction, or the play process?

What you describe as a play process - majority vote with DM veto - is not canonically part of D&D in any version I am familiar with. The same social agreement that might nevertheless permit that play process to unfold in a game of D&D could equally take place at a table playing Burning Wheel.

Focusing on the fiction, the way that your posited artefact would work in a game with more canonical BW play processes would be via the grant of appropriate Wises (say, "Nature of Reality-wise") by the Crown, with checks being resolved to see what sort of chaos ensues (the chaos being the consequence of failed checks); and then reality "flexing back" would permit the GM to stipulate the PCs' Beliefs and Instincts for that period of play. That would be a diversity of experience that I don't think D&D can deliver, as it has no mechanism like Wises checks or like Beliefs and Instincts.

So I don't really feel the force of the example.

Can D&D handle a fair amount to variety? Yes. Can other games as well? Some yes. Some, unless you're really ignoring the design expectations, probably not.

The implication of this is that a game becomes more flexible simply by having few or no design expectations.

That doesn't seem right to me.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

None of this addresses the actual issue, which is that GM is describing what is happening in several different locations at once, leading to a lot of real time waiting. Also, if like you say in the characters spend majority of time apart, it raises the question how this even is group activity, why not just run several solo campaigns and ease the scheduling issues? IMHO RPGs are best when the characters can react to situations together as group, and interact with each other. This doesn't mean that you can never split the party, but it is quite understandable why the common advice is to minimise it.

Well, one thing that can REALLY help with this is systems that are fairly lightweight in terms of processing actions, and which allow for variable granularity. So, for instance, you can easily split the party in Dungeon World (this is actually listed as a GM move 'split the party'). You can definitely resolve a lot of movement and exploration, for example, either without any dice or simply by tossing a pair of dice once (maybe the move would be Defy Danger, or Discern Realities, possibly something else depending on what is interesting in that terrain). So, often, the GM or players can control the pace so as to make this sort of split action more interesting and get rid of long waits and such. Combat, for example, is quite simple and doesn't require switching to a more intensive set of resolution mechanisms, etc. Obviously its possible for one part of the story to get more bogged down than another, but given that often there is no established fiction that must be honored in these branches, it can get pretty easy to move things along, bring the focus to aspects of play that concern both groups, etc.

Certainly all of the above is a leg up on most D&D games where its quite likely you end up with 2 groups each needing to wade through exploration and combat sequences. Not that it would be impossible to have some good split adventuring, but it seems like it would be a lot harder in D&D to do it in a fairly unplanned way.

 

[Oofta]

...


The implication of this is that a game becomes more flexible simply by having few or no design expectations.

That doesn't seem right to me.

If a game is designed with a very specific goal like the Toons game, which is to replicate old school cartoon characters, then of course it will be less flexible. That's neither a good thing or a bad thing. I think flexibility is on a spectrum, D&D is towards the flexible end, doesn't mean there aren't others that are just as flexible nor does flexibility necessarily equate to good. It all comes down to preference, expectations, and what you want out of the game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Overall I'm going to disengage from this thread. I have a proof of concept game that exploded into a giant art project to work on.

But yeah, I tend to resolve to hyperbole. I find it easier to think in extremes, it gives me ways to talk about things with burning passion rather than detached clinicality.

Well, sometimes it is also fun to see what reaction you will get! I mean, not necessarily to be annoying to anyone, but some of them can be more interesting and useful than people's standard 'party line'. Good luck with your project!