"Oddities" in fantasy settings - the case against "consistency"

[Lanefan]

Ok, but what character, say from a fairly typical list of D&D type fantasy tropes is going to undermine that? I can think of none!

Seeing as how Middle Earth is almost directly responsible for most of those typical D&D fantasy tropes, this comes as little surprise.

I think the biggest underminer of the Middle Earth experience that D&D would provide would be the sheer number of casters able to cast lots of spells all the time. Middle Earth has a fair number of magic items, sure, but it isn't exactly crawling with casters.

 

[niklinna]

IME it very likely wouldn't be the case, however, as at least one player - be it the one who just lost the first "last mage" or another seeking to switch characters to fill the gap - would try to bring in another mage.

And in a world where it's been established that magic isn't completely gone, just very rare, again, this isn't such a problem. Maybe the last mage, on dying, transfers their spark to another PC (if they want it). Whatever works for the group.

If they want to be the supporting cast, all is good; and some players are cool with this. Others, though, aren't.

There is room for more than one main character in tabletop RPG play, particularly of the Burning Wheel variety. Just as there's room for people to play supporting characters if they want to.

If a GM comes to me and says "Here's the idea I've got, it'll be a no-magic game, you in?", to me that's a binary yes-no question: I'm either in under that premise or I'm out.

Of course it's a binary question. The GM laid out a condition and explicitly framed the question as in or out—no negotation or discussion. Not all RPGs have to be done that way, and Burning Wheel is very much among those other RPGs. The question a Burning Wheel GM would ask is much more likely to be, "I've got this idea for a no-magic game, what do you think?"

Why? Because clearly that premise is what the GM wants to run with this time, otherwise she wouldn't have suggested it; and with a strong implication of that's what the GM thinks (at the moment) she's most likely to enjoy. And the GM's enjoyment is rather vital, as the game don't run without its GM and if the GM isn't enjoying running the game it tends to drag the whole thing down.

As phrased, it clearly isn't a suggestion. And the implication is that it's the only thing she'll enjoy, her mind is already well made up.

The GM may, however, have already put a fair amount of thought into the setting and how a lack of magic would affect said setting (and system as well).

Again, not in games like Burning Wheel. Or if the GM has mulled over possibilities, that is what they remain, until the group as a whole agrees on what and how to play.

If the GM doesn't want to run the game then there's no game. Here, she's proposing a no-magic game and the first thing she gets in response is "I want to play a mage". How is that not throwing her concept back in her face? How is that not asking her to run something she's just said she doesn't want to run?

If the players don't want to play in the game then there's no game. Again, she isn't proposing, she's dictating. "No magic. In or out?"

So BW leans into PvP? That's refreshing, at least.

It can, and it has robust tools for handling it. It doesn't have to, though.

Any other time I bring up PvP as being a sometimes-fun way to play people brandish holy symbols at me like I'm some sort of undead.

I’m Just Playing My Character: Alibis In Play - The Indie Game Reading Club

I recently wrapped up our Band of Blades campaign and thought it’d be nice to take a little break on the other side of the table. So my best buddy is running Magpie’s Masks for us for a while. Masks is a game about teen superheroes. I don’t know much about the teen supers subgenre,… Continue...

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The GM, who's the one designing said setting as far as needs be done.

This is a huge assumption, especially for games like Burning Wheel. In the Torchbearer 2e game @Manbearcat ran (same core engine and approach as Burning Wheel), he gave us all a sketched-out map and asked us to fill in towns, notable sites, and the like, and we discussed the suggestions like reasonable adults. After that, it remained open for anybody, GM or player, to suggest new additions where there was open space.

To the point where they're likely to be seeking a new GM soon, I'd think; unless the GM is really flexible in what she's ready-willing-able to run.

The table includes the GM.

I get that you don't prefer this approach to roleplaying where the group as a whole hashes things out collaboratively before play begins (and often after, too). But it's a legit approach, with its own distinct premises from the approach where the GM is authoritative and solely burdened with developing all aspects of setting and story. Denying the viability of the Burning Wheel approach by rejecting its premises isn't going to get you very far. Just say "Yeah, that approach isn't for me" instead of applying authoritative-GM presumptions exhaustively to every single aspect of the collaborative-group approach.

 

[MGibster]

This is about Toxic Players. There is a huge group of players just waiting to be triggered and try to ruin a game. As soon as the DM says "no something" the player gets enraged and triggered as that "one thing" is "suddenly" the one and only thing that player must do.

In my experience, the vast majority of people are actually pretty decent and this goes for gamers as well. If I reach into the metaphorical dice bag full of players it's possible I might pull a toxic player. But it's more likely I'm going to pull out a bunch of decent people and if there's any conflict it's simply because we have different styles of play that don't work together. And just because our styles are incompatible doesn't mean either one of us is toxic.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is such a weird thread. I am not even sure what is the point, besides deriding people who care about world building. Consistent doesn't mean homogenous. It means that things make certain amount of sense both logically and thematically. And of course it is all made up, it is fiction. Doesn't mean you can make up anything and remain consistent.

It isn't, AFAICT, 'against worldbuilding', it is just a commentary on certain assumptions about world building and thus play. Clearly there are at least a couple of camps here. I love building 'worlds', but I'm interested in doing so by the processes of play and through the fiction that arises in that process. The 'world' is a stage, and it can become a character in its own right. I just don't think that it becomes an interesting one unless assumptions are challenged, ideas are subject to revision, etc. Certainly collaboration can only make these things better, given that we already bring a group together why not take advantage of that? I mean, Tolkien was a very diligent worker in terms of building his imaginary world, and put a huge effort into it, backed by a broad and intimate familiarity with folklore. Most of us could never rise to anything like that level, so we need all the help we can get!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I see it as exactly the opposite: PC exceptionalism run amok.

Leaving aside the issue of how rare it is to run into a player who does this (other than to say that I wouldn't categorize it as being "exceedingly" so), I agree that players thinking beyond what's laid out is a good thing, but when it's done in the context of the course of play. Characters who are established before the game even begins to be "special" in a way that no one else is seem to overlook the idea of exceptionalism as being – not an initial state that they begin playing with – but as a status that they earn over the course of the game. If a character wants to bring back magic to a world that's lost it, that should be a campaign goal that they're working toward (ideally with the input and contributions from the rest of the group), not something that they've already accomplished in their backstory.

It's the same reason why I agree with the idea that a character's backstory should be their first three levels. If you can't come up with a way of making your character interesting besides saying that they start out being able to do the impossible, then to my mind, that's not much different from wanting to start the game at level 20 when everyone else is at level 1. You're already doing things no one else can do, and are likely expecting to have a major impact on the setting and its people, simply by being who you are, before session number one has even started. "I'm the one who changed the world" should be how you finish the campaign, not how you start it.

Well, you're welcome to that, I think it is highly restrictive and got boring FAST. I mean, I played 1000's of hours of Gygaxian style D&D back in the '70s where this sort of reasoning seems to be rooted. I simply have ZERO interest in going back and revisiting all that! Nor do I think that sort of 'skilled play' where you 'earn your character' is really all that it is cracked up to be. It turned out most of it was figuring out the DM, etc. The stories that resulted were random and crappy for the most part too. We DID have fun, but we were also 15 and doing it for the first time.

And in all honesty, characters who are defined by being special right from the get-go seem to work against the group's fun anyway, at least in my experience. My friends still talk about the time one of them (hitting a series of exceptional rolls) killed a lizardman priest who was levitating inside the top of a hollow tower where they were fighting (on the staircase that hugged the inner walls of the structure), and then jumped onto his floating corpse and used his own weight to ride it down to ground level, delivering a healing spell to the barbarian who had fallen a few rounds previously, saving his life when said barbarian was one round away from dying. No one talks about the character who's backstory was that he was the son of Mystra, goddess of magic.

Again, I can give you a whole raft of similarly interesting stories just from our last BitD campaign! I really do not mean to imply that I think one way of playing is 'better' or 'worse' than another. OTOH I remain unconvinced that this sort of example really explains the kind of play you are describing, because if it did you'd be playing how I play now, where this stuff is delivered often. I think the actual experience being aimed at is more low key play? I'm not sure. I mean, I understand the idea of 'organic character growth', but its hugely hampered by the total detachment from setting and fiction that the technique you're outlining implies.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Certainly that depends on what sort of world we are trying to portray?

In this case it was explicitly Middle Earth. I cannot think of any D&D character concept (lets say, from 5th Edition just so we have a reasonable set to discuss, but this would work for any E) that is going to be unprecedented in ME as written by Tolkien. Fighters, Barbarians, Rangers, Wizards, Clerics, Rogues, Warlocks, they all work fine. I mean, sure, Dragonborn and Tieflings would be a bit of a departure from the known literature, but I'm not convinced they would break anything. They certainly aren't races that are known in the West of Middle Earth in the 1-3rd ages, but I don't see how they are impossible to fit in. I mean, we already have a variant 'human' race, hobbits, we could certainly have another in the form of tieflings. Dragonborn seem a bit 'monstrous', but off in some far land to the East they exist, a race once created perhaps by Morgoth, but long ago forgotten and left to themselves, whatever. None of the classes is problematic, nor any of the subclasses to my mind.

And I'd advance the same sort of argument for most settings. I think you can certainly have settings, Doskvol for example, that don't need weird races and aren't particularly enhanced by them, whatever. I think various common fantasy races would still 'work' in Doskvol.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

In this case it was explicitly Middle Earth.

Oh sorry, missed that.

I cannot think of any D&D character concept (lets say, from 5th Edition just so we have a reasonable set to discuss, but this would work for any E) that is going to be unprecedented in ME as written by Tolkien. Fighters, Barbarians, Rangers, Wizards, Clerics, Rogues, Warlocks, they all work fine. I mean, sure, Dragonborn and Tieflings would be a bit of a departure from the known literature, but I'm not convinced they would break anything. They certainly aren't races that are known in the West of Middle Earth in the 1-3rd ages, but I don't see how they are impossible to fit in. I mean, we already have a variant 'human' race, hobbits, we could certainly have another in the form of tieflings. Dragonborn seem a bit 'monstrous', but off in some far land to the East they exist, a race once created perhaps by Morgoth, but long ago forgotten and left to themselves, whatever. None of the classes is problematic, nor any of the subclasses to my mind.

And I'd advance the same sort of argument for most settings. I think you can certainly have settings, Doskvol for example, that don't need weird races and aren't particularly enhanced by them, whatever. I think various common fantasy races would still 'work' in Doskvol.

I mean you can make it "work" if you radically change it. Adding dragonborn to Middle-Earth would be a significant change, adding D&D like magic would warp it beyond recognition. You could have a setting like that, but it would no longer be Middle-Earth as we know it.

 

[niklinna]

And I'd advance the same sort of argument for most settings. I think you can certainly have settings, Doskvol for example, that don't need weird races and aren't particularly enhanced by them, whatever. I think various common fantasy races would still 'work' in Doskvol.

Well they already have Warforged, of a sort! And vampires and ghosts. If a game can handle those, it can handle people with pointy ears or the incredible night vision or an uncanny ability to tell if a tunnel has a 1° slope.

 

[Lanefan]

Of course it's a binary question. The GM laid out a condition and explicitly framed the question as in or out—no negotation or discussion. Not all RPGs have to be done that way, and Burning Wheel is very much among those other RPGs. The question a Burning Wheel GM would ask is much more likely to be, "I've got this idea for a no-magic game, what do you think?"

There's a step missing there, that being the invitation to play in that game. If this is being asked of me before the invitation is extended my answer might very well be different than if asked after I've been invited in; as my perspective has changed from neutral observer or analyst to (in theory) active player with a vested interest.

As phrased, it clearly isn't a suggestion. And the implication is that it's the only thing she'll enjoy, her mind is already well made up.

That's my assumption, yes; she's proposing it because that's what she thinks she'll enjoy running. As GM, why would I propose anything to the players before I'm 100% committed to it myself? And once I'm 100% committed, why would I present it in any other way than, more or less, "Here's my idea, wanna play?".

And sure, if everyone turns me down then maybe my idea ain't as good as I thought it was. So be it.

It can, and it has robust tools for handling it. It doesn't have to, though.

That it both can and has tools for it is IMO a mark in its favour.

And sure, it doesn't have to go that route. It's just good to know that such a route is accepted in the game if taken.

This is a huge assumption, especially for games like Burning Wheel. In the Torchbearer 2e game @Manbearcat ran (same core engine and approach as Burning Wheel), he gave us all a sketched-out map and asked us to fill in towns, notable sites, and the like, and we discussed the suggestions like reasonable adults. After that, it remained open for anybody, GM or player, to suggest new additions where there was open space.

I take it, then, that Torchbearer* isn't big on setting exploration/discovery? It's an important aspect of a campaign for me-as-player, which is why I ask.

* - I've been seriously meaning to check TB out but haven't got to it yet.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Seeing as how Middle Earth is almost directly responsible for most of those typical D&D fantasy tropes, this comes as little surprise.

I think the biggest underminer of the Middle Earth experience that D&D would provide would be the sheer number of casters able to cast lots of spells all the time. Middle Earth has a fair number of magic items, sure, but it isn't exactly crawling with casters.

I agree that there's a tone in Tolkien's work in which explicit magic doesn't figure a lot. However it is actually pretty hard to say, given that we really only see what a very small set of atypical characters can do. There ARE mentions of various sorts of what could be casters though, it's just not spelled out what sort of stuff they do. I mean, the Nazgul are all depicted as ancient mages/warlocks. There is mention of various 'witches' etc. I'm not sure D&D itself has any specific position on how many casters there are, outside of fairly setting-centered kind of stuff like henchmen rules or something. Anyway, I don't think D&D as a whole matches up exactly with ME.