New Legends & Lore: Player vs. Character

[ExploderWizard]

But what if skill training in exploration skills signified the player getting a say in the narrative such that the DM responds with "Here's the basic setup, now what do you notice?" The reward for roleplaying with a high skill is that you get to determine some of what your PCs discover.

Perhaps if I was playing an author who had the power to edit the known universe. Otherwise no.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Perhaps if I was playing an author who had the power to edit the known universe. Otherwise no.

I'll never understand why "metagaming" is intrinsically a bad word to some people.

[And yet, they often have no problems adding that wizard they found in a bar to their party because "he seems a trustworthy fellow." ]

 

[TwoSix]

But what if skill training in exploration skills signified the player getting a say in the narrative such that the DM responds with "Here's the basic setup, now what do you notice?" The reward for roleplaying with a high skill is that you get to determine some of what your PCs discover.

While I personally like this, many D&D players have a substantive dislike for any sort of narrative play.

I think we can safely assume at this point that any future D&D will have a strong return to its simulationist roots. I'm certainly getting that vibe from the L&L articles.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

While I personally like this, many D&D players have a substantive dislike for any sort of narrative play.

I think we can safely assume at this point that any future D&D will have a strong return to its simulationist roots. I'm certainly getting that vibe from the L&L articles.

I would not describe D&D roots as simulationist, under any definition of the term. It was, after all, lack of simulation in D&D that spawned so many of the early competitors.

More pseudo simulationist gloss? We might see more of that. Fortunately, that can co-exist with some forms of narrative play.

 

[TwoSix]

I would not describe D&D roots as simulationist, under any definition of the term. It was, after all, lack of simulation in D&D that spawned so many of the early competitors.

More pseudo simulationist gloss? We might see more of that. Fortunately, that can co-exist with some forms of narrative play.

"Actor stance" play, then?

Whatever describes the player as having no capability that is outside of his character's purview.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I'll never understand why "metagaming" is intrinsically a bad word to some people.

[And yet, they often have no problems adding that wizard they found in a bar to their party because "he seems a trustworthy fellow." ]

Bit of a difference going on here. Saying "he seems trustworthy fellow" because he is being played by someone at the table, while still metagaming, is not a certainty. The other player could play him as a knave.

Walking into a bar and creating a wizard who is in fact a trustworthy fellow by spending some metagame resource goes beyond metagaming. It changes the role of the player from adventurer to storyteller/assistant set director.

While I personally like this, many D&D players have a substantive dislike for any sort of narrative play.

I think we can safely assume at this point that any future D&D will have a strong return to its simulationist roots. I'm certainly getting that vibe from the L&L articles.

Originally, D&D was very abstract and not very simulationist at all. The simulationism was added later. The one feature it had regardless of the use of added simulationism was clearly defined roles. Player character and DM.

There are plenty of games aimed at narrative style play on the market. D&D does not need to become another one for the sake of jumping on a popular trend any more than the Rolling Stones needed to release a disco album.

I do not need D&D to come to my narrative rescue.

 

[Balesir]

A "good DM," someone who needs no rules, can successfully navigate around this pitfall, without needing a way to resolve it. Essentially, they're good enough at giving out the right information, taking input from the players, and keeping the game moving, that a conflict between these two copies never really occurs (or if it does, it doesn't do so for long enough or bad enough to ruin anyone's fun).

In other words, they ignore most of the rules written in the book and develop a set of their own rules to suit the style of play they (and, hopefully, their players) like.

I should probably make it clear that, by "rules", I don't just mean formulaic description of the game world phenomenae and "physics". A set of stipulations about who gets to decide what, based on what criteria, under what circumstances is just as much a set of rules as "traditional" roleplaying rules are, as far as I'm concerned.

Everyone else is going to probably need a way to get everyone on the same page, imagination-wise, and rules can certainly help that along.

In my experience - and as far as I can imagine even beyond that - everyone needs rules. Exactly what those rules are and what they define may vary widely, however.

I'm not entirely sure I follow you. You'd still want rules, even if you didn't need them?

I think every group needs - and has - rules, whether they are written down or not. It's always useful to have the rules clear and easily communicated, and writing them down is a good way to do that. We are fortunate in that, increasingly, our hobby has matured sufficiently to generate rule sets that can handle many different styles of play, so I don't (generally) need to write my own.

For me, the interesting division is why someone is totally OK with this in NPC and PC verbal interaction, but is not OK with this for NPC and PC combat.

I can sort-of understand this. "Immersive" play is often focussed on "inhabiting" the mental "space" of a character. Physical activity seems, to many, quite distanced from the "mental" sphere whereas talking and conversation - particularly to those with a sound/hearing focussed perceptive consciousness - seems much closer to the "mental" world of the character.

It's a preference that should be recognised and respected - demanding that D&D should be designed for this particular focus seems somewhat self-centred, though.

I think the key thing about mini-games for resolution ties back into Kamikaze's point. My answer is that if you have that level of detail in the game, sometimes you want to use it and sometimes you don't. Most games answer this by having a somewhat involved system for the standard, but then DM advice to skip over a portion if it isn't important. (Though many systems aren't really very clear about this, or when it should be done.)

Burning Wheel kind of pushes this idea to the limit, thanks to its central focus on the characters' beliefs. If this thing you are trying to do is really important, you pull out the "artha" (various kinds of fate points), and most likely a relevant mini-game. If it is sort of important, you roll with it, and most likely have at least a partial failure, but gain some artha due to trying. If it isn't important at all, the DM will "Say Yes"--giving you want you wanted in the narration, but no advancement or artha gathering opportunity.

Sure, D&D 4E and Burning Wheel are designed to invoke the more detailed rules for different purposes. BW takes the excellent step of explicitly stating what qualifies a situation for the detailed focus. D&D kind-of does the same, saying "real challenges only" - but it doesn't get very particular about what makes a situation a "real challenge" - we are left, somewhat, to guess/make up our own criteria. This seems flexible, and gives freedom, but it can lead to confusion and some conflicts between parts of the system.

All that said, there is a huge difference between what people at a given table often want versus what will work for a wider range, nearly all the time. I think about a 1/4 of the replies here thus far have basically been, "Why don't you just do simple thing X"--implicitly suggesting that, "this works well enough for me, and probably will for you too." Problem is, "just mix in a blender at high speed some roleplaying, a skill roll or two, and adhoc DMing to smooth out the rough edges," is often a satisfactory system for a substantial number of people. But it isn't satisfactory for everyone, and certainly reveals its unsatisfactory rough edges on occasion even to people who like it. And if that is the best a game designer can do, then frankly they might as well admit that they are focused on setting and drop the game designer moniker. Because people can find that design easily enough for themselves (and have, many times).

I agree - and would go further. Many people can quite happily enjoy several styles and foci of roleplaying games. This only really becomes evident, however, when multiple sets of rules exist that really work. When people were making these rules up - for lack of any real guidance in the published material - I think there was a tendency to search out "the best". A "one true way" culture grew up, I think, partly because of the focus required by groups that were seeking "the way" to play at their own table.

Now maybe from a marketing or mass appeal perspective, D&D being a gateway game, should settle for that kind of solution. Focus on setting and production values--and keeping the costs down otherwise, to move products at a low margin. If one makes that business case, then they don't need much in the way of designers. They just need someone to tweak skill lists and feats and powers, clean things up, and play around the edges, the way the 2E team did.

I don't buy the "mass marketing" or "gateway" arguments. Since roleplaying systems that are "fully functional" now exist, I don't think a compromised system will be long for this world, any more.

 

[TwoSix]

There are plenty of games aimed at narrative style play on the market. D&D does not need to become another one for the sake of jumping on a popular trend any more than the Rolling Stones needed to release a disco album.

Since I don't personally play with anyone who's even aware of the existence of these games, I'm not sure if it's a popular trend.

But your reaction (which I think parallels the belief of many other D&D players) is precisely why I don't think any new D&D system will have more than a cursory narrative influence.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

"Actor stance" play, then?

Whatever describes the player as having no capability that is outside of his character's purview.

Oh, I get you now. Yeah, we might see more push for actor over author--and certainly a toning down of player director stance possibilities. That wouldn't be my first choice, either, but we might very well see it.

Of course, the gamist main chassis is always going to be determinative here, versus any stance fiddling to bring in simulationist or narrativist sensibilities. It's really a fight between sim and nar for the room left after the gamist sensibilities are met.

If they want to rein narrativist in compared to 4E, I wouldn't mind seeing the actor stance be the default, but with clear options for tweaking into author or director stance. This isn't hard in a lot of cases. Burning Wheel does it with its "wises" (knowledge skills). You can play them as more or less straight information gathering in character. Or you can play them as an option to author game content, or even (to a lesser extent) direct the course of play. Likewise, there would be nothing wrong with flagging certain powers as being explicitly authorial or directorial in focus, and thus subject to easy banning by keyword if people wanted to stick to actor stance.

What I very much do not want to see is the attempt to get simulation via tons of details that are not inline with the rest of the abstractions in the core game. You can't do this and also preserve the game for people who want to avoid heavy sim. (You might be able to make this kind of heavy sim itself a modular option, off of a core piece that didn't require it. I'm not at all sure about that one way or the other, since it hasn't interested me enough to explore it.)

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I don't buy the "mass marketing" or "gateway" arguments. Since roleplaying systems that are "fully functional" now exist, I don't think a compromised system will be long for this world, any more.

I lean against them myself. However, if people are going to make that argument, I want them to realize that they are making marketing or gateway arguments, not game design arguments.

A marketing argument pretending to be a design argument has been the bane of many products and services, in many disciplines.