D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[Manbearcat]

This is quite a reductive view of fiction! Take any story--A Tale of Two Cities, Star Wars, Parable of the Sower--keep the setting and the minor characters, but change the protagonists. Give them different personalities, motivations, and skill sets. Would the story change in a pretty fundamental way? Probably!

In an RPG, and adventure path provides some of the elements of a story, but it is incomplete. To make it complete, it requires characters. Who those characters are, the choices they make, and who they become can significantly alter the end story. How and the degree to which the adventure changes will depend on the style and temperament of the group.

It would be like describing Lord of the Rings by saying "Well there was this evil ring and yada yada yada some people (doesn't matter who, could've been anybody) threw it in a fire and the world was saved." The journey is the whole story!

@Campbell and @Ovinomancer answered this differently than I will.

I'd like to propose a thought exercise to you and to anyone else interested.

My Life With Master has extremely constrained scenario design. However, while the scenario is always the same, each game of MLwM is radically different from the last. A group of Minions (the PCs) serve a Master or Mistress which cruelly lords their power over a Town and its Folk. The object of the game is to (a) make connections with the Townsfolk (or not), (b) increase your Love and decrease your Self-Loathing, and (c) throw off the yoke of the Master/Mistress if you can (and therefore qualify for the endgame scene), and (d) either defeat the Master/Mistress, overthrow them/cast them out, or wilt and fail in the effort.

There are a few key similarities to Ravenloft here with profound differences riddled through the structure, the architecture, the resolution, and the disposition of play.

One thing I want to focus on that is an extremely distinct difference between D&D Ravenloft APs and a MLwM game:

Imagine if the players designed Strahd (mechanically and the attendant thematic conflict and tropes).

Imagine that.

That reorientation of Ravenloft would put D&D players in the drivers seat when it comes to so much of play (and I'm not talking about the skill here...a MLwM player has the deck stacked against them in a way that a Ravenloft D&D AP player has no concept of) that Ravenloft AP players have no orientation with.

That is a big deal here. When you decide the nature of the antagonist (and in both Ravenloft and MLwM, Strahd and the Master/Mistress start off as the actual protagonist...it is their dramatic need that drives play...it is the players' job to wrest the trajectory of play from the dramatic need of the villain...in MLwM by establishing connections/love, rising above your self-loathing, and rallying the Townfolk0.

In a Story Now game of Dungeon World's strain, it is the same thing; the players decide the nature of both the antagonists and the thematic conflicts that will undergird play. Not by writ of the process of actually making the antagonist, but via their playbooks, their PC build moves selected, their Bonds with other PCs/NPCs/locations/ideas, and their Alignment statements (ethos/beliefs/vows).

So in a Dungeon World game, why is Strahd (not Strahd...but the equivalent) an unnatural menace? Because the Druid's Alignment statement says he is supposed to be. Why does the nature of a prophecy around a Cohort become central (inputs into framing and consequences of moves) to a series of Paladin moves? Because the Paladin's Bond with the Cohort says it is supposed to be. Why are refugees who cannot defend themselves central to conflicts regarding the nature of family and tribe? Because the Fighter has a relationship with refugees (he was one) and has sworn to defend those weaker than him. Why is a Discovery result on a Perilous Journey a magical mystery? Because the Wizard's goal is to unravel a magical mystery.

Etc etc.

When the orientation of thematic conflict and the nature of adversary pivots on player ownership, it is very different than when that ownership is not a foundational component of play.

 

[pemerton]

As I said, one shows an immediate relationship to a matter at hand and already in evidence. The other is using the fiction of "remembering" it to do scene editing.

I don't know what you mean by "scene editing". How is the scene being edited?

I mean, if I think about a film or a play, having an event where one character strikes another with a sword is no different - from the perspective of authorship or editing or whatever - from having an event where a character recalls something about a Dwarven forge. We decide to "edit" the fighting scene - the make-up people bring more tomato sauce. We decide to "edit" the recollection scene - the props department go out and dig up an anvil.

So you are using "scene editing" in some non-standard way.

 

[Manbearcat]

I don't know what you mean by "scene editing". How is the scene being edited?

I mean, if I think about a film or a play, having an event where one character strikes another with a sword is no different - from the perspective of authorship or editing or whatever - from having an event where a character recalls something about a Dwarven forge. We decide to "edit" the fighting scene - the make-up people bring more tomato sauce. We decide to "edit" the recollection scene - the props department go out and dig up an anvil.

So you are using "scene editing" in some non-standard way.

I think some perspective from the horses' mouths might help here.

@darkbard and @Nephis , I summon you Pikachoo!

When this scene happened in our Dungeon World game as a result of Maraqli's Spout Lore, would you describe it as "a scene edit?"

If you would/could, answer that question from two different perspectives:

1) Would you describe it as a "scene edit" mechanically? I'm referring to the nature of the generation of content itself. Did it feel like you were taking the shared imagined space and editing it. Did it feel more organic than that? Less organic than that?

2) What was your actual cognitive orientation toward that moment of play? Were you inhabiting Maraqli and Alastor up in that inhospitable mountain range at camp 2, dealing with the desperation and serious fallout from the events that had just transpired to put you in the spot you were in? A thought about your past and an exchange about a possible answer to one of your many worries? Or did that move reorient you cognitively to (I won't say your names but your actual names) a framework of "I am x and y persons in real life and we need a forge to repair armor so lets press this 'maybe get a forge?' button"?

3) When you trekked out to try to find it and discover its nature...how did that feel? Downstream product of a scene edit? Did it feel like cheating? Did it feel jarring? None of those things? Why or why not? What were you focusing on when all of this was happening?

 

[pemerton]

I've never played in a LARP, but it feels like having an npc orc be differentially dodgy based on the pcs choice of attack would be easier to implement than having new rooms or obstacles appear because the in-character player remembered them being there.

Yes. A LARP is not all about fiction and authorship. Nor is a football game. Or actually climbing a wall. Or me typing this message.

But I'm talking about (table top, D&D-style) RPGs in which all the content is imagined.

 

[pemerton]

They were in response to "There is nothing inherently distinctive about terrain, and geography, and architecture, in comparison to the dodginess of Orcs vis-a-vis particular sorts of attacks,"

As fictions.

As real things, here's a difference: forges exist and Orcs don't. Will that now change the way you use your imagination?

 

[pemerton]

So a question about the idea of Spout Lore and the establishment of the dwarven forge.

If in a game of D&D, if the player suggested that to the DM, and the DM decided that yes, there is a dwarven forge in the area, would anyone have a problem with this?

It would appear not. Yet this is the player suggesting the existence of something and then that thing winds up in the fictional world. In that sense, it’s no different than a player using Spout Lore in DW and getting a 10+ and the GM then establishing it as interesting/useful information.

So if the same thing can happen in D&D….the spontaneous creation of this dwarven forge…then what’s the actual difference? What is the issue with the way DW works when D&D may do the same thing?

Is it the approval from the DM? Is that what makes it somehow “real” or acceptable? That the DM has the option to just say no?

What is it?

Right. This is what I've been saying for many pages now. The objections are not about the sequencing or the content of the authorship. They'reaabout the distribution of authority.

 

[pemerton]

Immanuel Kant's theory of geometry entails that the concept hexagon is twice as complex as the concept triangle, and that the concept chiliagon is more than 300 times as complex.

Obviously he's wrong: the concept of a 1,000 sided thing is not wildly different from the concept of a 6-sided thing.

Everyone posting in this thread understands that the causal processes of punching are different from those of climbing are different form those of building are different from those ofremembering.

But the only actual causal process that matters to RPGing is authoring so as to arrive at consensus on a shared fiction. And that process doesn't need to differ just because the topic of authorship is a punch or a climb or a building or a memory. Supposing otherwise is making the same error that Kant did.

 

[Manbearcat]

chiliagon

 

[pemerton]

chiliagon

I don't know that I can dignify this with a response . . .

 

[Lanefan]

Well, your first point doesn't seem too substantive to me, that is the player certainly doesn't know all the things that the character knows, so it should be no surprise to the elf's player that she is not cognizant of this fact.

My point is that for something as big as this - an Elvish realm - the player(s) could and should have known of it via the existence of a setting map long before things got to this point.

Point 2 is harder to judge, as it is highly situational and also admits of a lot of interpretation. I mean, OK, Its POSSIBLE that if the player knew about this fact earlier in play they might have made different action declarations. However we don't KNOW that for a fact. Characters have many reasons for things, and in fact we can always invent some, particularly in a Story Now type scenario where most things are up for grabs. For example Lothwithien could be a secret kingdom which the elf is sworn not to disclose.

Which merely raises the question that if it's not to be disclosed then why would Throndor a) know of it and-or b) disclose it? You're replacing one disconnect with another.

Many's the time I've encountered situations both as player and DM where had something been known of sooner it would have changed prior actions. A very small-scale example might be forgetting to narrate the existence of a table in the middle of a room where a combat takes place, then on mentioning it afterwards being told how that knowledge would have changed actions x, y and z during the combat. In my view there's no such thing as retcons; instead a mistake like this invalidates that entire scenario and thus should simply never happen.

Surely in a DW game this kind of explanation can be easily deployed, and surely various others also spring to mind.

Now, I won't try to argue that NOTHING could ever be declared that would come across as inconsistent with the established fiction. No doubt there is a range there as well. If the PCs took the road from Bogwood to Warden and then some later revelation of lore tried to put a giant impassable swamp there, then the GM should be calling that out, like maybe "Oh, you guys took a road through that swamp, right?" or maybe the fact is it was described as primeval forest, so the swamp is just out, the GM will need to invoke consistency with established facts (I don't recall there being any significant discussion of this in the DW rules, but I believe ultimate veto authority on fiction is at least implied to be vested in the table as a whole). Obviously it could be even stronger than that, too.

Contradicting established fiction isn't good no matter what the situation, I think we agree there.

What I'm talking about is a bit fuzzier, where the "new" fiction doesn't directly contradict anything established but is still something that really should have been established much sooner in the campaign, or before it even started, so that players both in and out of character could plan around it.

However, I think most cases of players authoring fiction in this way work pretty well. Remember, it isn't in ANYONE's interests for the fiction to be a muck. Its not like the players are little fiction destroying beavers.

You sure about that? I mean, really truly sure?

Nor does the GM know more about the setting than the players. He has IDEAS perhaps, but IMHO his only recourse if, say, a player spouts an answer that negates a danger of a front (basically an encounter grouping) that the GM already worked up would be to say "I'd like to contradict that answer, could Feldwen be mistaken and the Great River turns north before that point?" or even just call for a convo with the players out of character and hash out his issue with it. When it comes right down to it though, the players could simply come back with "nope, you haven't established whatever it is yet, so if we negated its existence that's on you."

The argument here is whether something's been established or not, which is again tangential at best to what I'm after; that being whether something new (and not secret in the fiction) being established would have caused different things to happen in play had it been known about sooner.