Is D&D an illusion?

[Umbran]

In my peferred approach to play, if the GM and the players disagree on what the outcome should be then the action resolution mechanics should be invoked, with reasonably clear stakes put up by both parties.

The action resolution mechanics tell you whether the PCs fail.

The action resolution mechanics don't typically tell you what happens as a result of failure. That's usually set by the situation, not the mechanic.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Yeah, I'm still missing Janx's point. It seems like it has something to do with being a bad GM, GM bias, and not accepting GM bias? I'm not sure how it's all supposed to connect still. Even if I disagree, I usually at least get the point someone is trying to make. Can someone help me out? I hate feeling nonproductive, and don't want to post more until I at least know the basic premise. Thanks again.

As always, play what you like

 

[pemerton]

The action resolution mechanics tell you whether the PCs fail.

The action resolution mechanics don't typically tell you what happens as a result of failure. That's usually set by the situation, not the mechanic.

I mostly agree, but I think the details can matter.

In the Burning Wheel, for example, the rules state that the GM is to indicate the consequences of failure before the dice are rolled, so that the player knows what s/he is getting his/her PC into. Of course, those consequences will be specified in light of the situation.

In a complex action resolution mechanics (D&D combat, D&D skill challenges, BW duel of wits etc) than the situational constraints on consequences may themselves be products of the action resolution mechanics. For example, if - as part of a skill challenge - a player makes a skilll check that brings it about that some particular NPC is sympathetic to his/her PC, then even if the players overall fail at the skill challenge, the outcome should still respect those successses that the players achieved en route.

As I read [MENTION=8835]Janx[/MENTION]'s posts, the suggesttion is that these sorts of situational constraints upon, and shapings of, consequences are always (or at least overwhelmingly) a matter of GM fiat. My response is that this may be true for some "free narration" approaches to action resolution (although [MENTION=66434]ExploderWizard[/MENTION] is doing a reasonable job of rebutting any attempt to generalise that thought), but is not true for mechanically structured, "goal/stake"-style action resolution.

[MENTION=8835]Janx[/MENTION] appears to concede this in the case of combat, but in my view for the wrong reasons. Janx seems to be saying that combat is "non-illusory" because it is algorithm-governed. But for D&D combat this isn't so. The GM makes all sorts of choices about the disposition and deployment of enemy forces (in my own case, I do this keeping in mind Paul Czege's ideas upthread about putting pressure on the players via their PCs).

What does make combat non-illusory is that, assuming the GM follows the action resolution mechanics, then the players' decisions and die rolls matter: if an NPC is reduced to 0 hp, s/he is dead or unconscious. The hit point and damage rules, as written, work to constrain a GM's narration of the outcome of the combat in a completely unhindered fashion. They do so despite falling short of an algorithm.

There is no reason in principle why non-combat resolution cannot be mediated via simillarly non-algorithmic-but-constraining mechanics. BW has them. So does HeroWars/Quest. So does 4e. Arguably, so do "free narration" approaches to RPGing, but I'll let ExploderWizard deal with that issue.

 

[The Shaman]

Please forgive me for re-ordering things a bit, Janx.

. . . [W]hat happens if the PCs fail a given encounter?
Do you kill them?
Do you reveal an escape route?
Do you make another path available?
Do you choose the worst possible outcome?
Do you choose an outcome that mimizes the impact of that failure?

Here's one way to handle it.

The ultimate point I'm making is that once you truly consider the impact of the vast level of decisions big and small that you make as a GM, you are exerting your will in the game space.

Of course I'm exerting influence over the game - I run the world and everything in it, so how could I not?

What I think is important isn't that referees make decisions - it's that referees may use very different criteria for how they "wing it."

Some referees rely on 'teh rule of kewl.' Others take ideas from the adventurers' backgrounds and poke them with them (eg, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]). Some decide based on what's 'best' for the unfolding adventure plot. Most rely on some combination of these and other criteria.

My approach is to take what I know of the situation and the game-world and apply them to my decision-making, usually with some random element thrown in so that even I'm kept guessing at the outcome. A good deal of my preparation for a campaign is establishing how I will "wing it" - I outlined this in a reply to you awhile back. My preparation often provides (self-imposed) limits to my decision-making, such as the laws and customs of the game-world or the personality of a non-player character - my preparation often constrains the range of options available to me when I "wing it."

Now here's what I think is key: many of these setting-imposed constraints are transparent to the players and the adventurers alike. Frex, a player can ask me, in- or out-of-character, what the penalties are for dueling, and I can give them an appropriate answer - what are the relevant edicts? how are those edicts enforced? what are potential consequences for violating the edicts? This isn't "my opinion" - it's an objective fact of the setting, known to everyone at the table, knowable within the context of the game-world, and should the adventurers engage in a duel and be found out by the authorities, then the potential consequences can be weighed in their decisions.

And no, this doesn't mean that everything is known just by asking; the process of discovery is part of playing the games I run.

Thus, while a good GM is certainly trying to make fair decisions, the total unbiased nature of the game is still an illusion.

I think this framing is all wrong: it's not about biased versus unbiased.

In my experience, what we're talking about is a spectrum of transparency in the referee's decision-making. How much agency do the players and their characters have? To what degree does the setting constrain the range of likely consequences and outcomes? Is stochasticity a factor?

Framing this as bias seems calculated to set an impossible bar to cross.

 

[Argyle King]

The action resolution mechanics tell you whether the PCs fail.

The action resolution mechanics don't typically tell you what happens as a result of failure. That's usually set by the situation, not the mechanic.

I disagree.

There are many games which use concepts such as margin of success and margin of failure.

While D&D does not explicitly state that it does, I see no reason why the same idea cannot be applied. As a matter of fact, that's very much how I prefer to run skill challenges. Instead of "you need X before Y" to pass/fail, I usually have results based upon how well the PCs performed. If the PCs just universally failed without any success at all, the results are going to be more negative than they will be if the PCs miss the target number of successes by one or two rolls.

 

[pemerton]

My approach is to take what I know of the situation and the game-world and apply them to my decision-making, usually with some random element thrown in so that even I'm kept guessing at the outcome.

<snip>

Now here's what I think is key: many of these setting-imposed constraints are transparent to the players and the adventurers alike.

<snip>

what we're talking about is a spectrum of transparency in the referee's decision-making. How much agency do the players and their characters have? To what degree does the setting constrain the range of likely consequences and outcomes?

I like the notion of "transparency" here.

Negotiating stakes is transparent - if a player says "I want to do X" and the GM responds, "No, that's impossible for reasons ABC - but you might get away with X* if you're prepared to take risk PQR", then there is no "gotcha". The player can make a decision knowing what the constraints are and consequences are likely to be.

A shared grasp of genre, and of the reason why we're all sitting around the table playing this game together, can also help - apart from anything else, they reduce the amount of times the GM has to say "No", and also make it easier to agree to what is at stake easily and with mutual understanding.

Shared knowledge of the parameters for permissible action in the gameworld - like the duelling rules - is obviously another way to foster this.

Conversely, in a game in which (i) the players don't know what fictional constraints are operating on their PCs, and (ii) don't know what is at stake in their various options for action resolution, and (iii) can't find out by asking the GM, and (iv) can't find out by having their PCs make reasonable ingame inquiries, is one where I would start to worry about an excess of GM force. Even if (iv) is in place, if (iv) is compromised by a failure of (ii) - that is, the players can't be confidant in what is at stake in making inquiries (eg the GM might decide that the person to whom they talk to try to learn about what is going on tips off the inquistion) - then I would worry about an excess of GM force.

I also find transparency - in this broad sense - is a better approach to the game then invocations to "trust the GM". A transparent GM doesn't need to ask the players for trust. Either his/her game will be worth playing - as I quoted Edwards upthread, the GM will frame situations that are " are worth anyone's time" - in which case trust will be earned without being asked for, or the game will not be worth playing, in which case calls for trust will be redundant.

Conversely, calls for "trust", and reassurances that from the big pictures perspective of the GM the game is great, don't do much for me.

Of course, their might be micro-moments of trust required in a given session - the PCs are captured, and for play to proceed smoothly they need to rely on the GM to frame the escape (or ransom, or whatever) scene cleverly. And of course a GM can frame a crappy scene from time-to-time and be forgiven. Or to translate these cases into a more sandboxy-idiom - the players might find themselves struggling for a bit to get a full sense of the significance or ramifications of the choices they are making for their PCs, or a GM might accidentally "gotcha" the players because something was not revealed that ought to have been.

Still, I think there are genuinely different ways of approaching the game here, and that there are definite tehcniques that can be used to make player choices count, and to make it clear to the players that their choices count. And transparency is a key part of this.

 

[The Shaman]

*snipped*

"You must spread some Experience Points around . . . "



Can someone help a brother out? EDIT: Thanks, [MENTION=10324]jonesy[/MENTION].

 

[Jhaelen]

Yes! And D&D isn't the only thing that is an illusion:

"Today a young man playing D&D realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves."

(...my apologies to BH for the slight misquote... )

 

[steeldragons]

Is D&D an Illusion?

No.

Is D&D a Conjuration?

Yes.

That is all.
--SD

 

[Umbran]

There are many games which use concepts such as margin of success and margin of failure.

Margins typically give you relative (and subjective) degree of success or failure, but usually don't give you the details, and the details matter.

A rules-agnostic example, which I hope to be demonstrative. You're character is a double agent, in dangerous negotiations with a Person In Power. If you fail miserably in your attempt, does the PiP have his guards rush you immediately to take you prisoner for eventual execution, or does he send assassins to kill you some time next month?

The difference is not in the mechanic, but in the GM's head, and is crucial to determining how the game unfolds.