D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Lanefan]

For me, I think the abundance of information of information makes me feel as informed as my character would be. It’s not necessarily about a one for one tradeoff of information. Like I realize I may be privy to something as a player that my character would not be. But I also realize that no matter how good a GM may be, they can never provide enough information to actually simulate being there.

More information makes me feel more there.

Which is why you ask questions to get the GM to clarify the situatiuon, as and when needed.

Also… I personally feel that a player acting on a bit of player knowledge is not really the horror it’s portrayed as. I get people don’t like it… but it’s also happening no matter what. It’s part of the game. So for me… I’d rather game design accept that fact instead of working so hard to avoid it, which then often highlights the matter.

Where I'd rather game design - and, more importantly, GM advice - do what it can to fight against this.

You're there to roleplay and-or inhabit a character, right? So isn't it in the better interests of said roleplaying that you-as-player don't have knowledge or information that your character doesn't and can't know, so you can think as your character without the mental overhead of also having to worry about whether or not you're potentially (ab)using said knowledge?

 

[clearstream]

Let's suppose a game, let's call it a PbtA, where the interest is centered outside the characters. That is, while the action is still character focused, how they deal with the premise, that premise is something beyond the personal. It could be a fantasy game in which the overwhelming consideration was, say, Moorcockian order vs chaos. Everything the PCs do will relate to that, every goal they set, and every significant part of the fiction will bear on it. Even the traits and backstory of the characters will be in relation to this single question. Is this not classic Narrativist play? I think so. I think many Narrativist games have this kind of element to them.

The Stormbringer RPG in other words. The work of identifying rules that support narrativist play here seems to be done by introducing them as "PbtA".

Let's suppose a game, let's call it a Stormbringer, where the interest is centered outside the characters. That is, while the action is still character focused, how they deal with the premise, that premise is something beyond the personal. It could be a fantasy game in which the overwhelming consideration was, say, Moorcockian order vs chaos. Everything the PCs do will relate to that, every goal they set, and every significant part of the fiction will bear on it. Even the traits and backstory of the characters will be in relation to this single question.​

​

Those rules were based on Chaosium's BRP. It seems that more must be said to disambiguate them (note, that my position isn't that more cannot be said.)

 

[Lanefan]

But people in this thread are doing that CONSTANTLY. That's my point. Some things which are metagaming, like the fact that Bob IV appears INSTANTLY when the player needs a new character to play, are glossed over by some folks (such as you) with the excuse that it's merely a "Complicated Coincidence".

I may have mentioned this before, but getting a new character into the game is the one situation when I don't mind some GM-side contrivance (or GM-side metagaming, if you like) in order to make it happen. Even then, though, there's limits: e.g. if the party are off-world where there's already known to be nothing but monsters, Bob IV's player is just going to have to wait till the party gets back to somewhere a new character can be found.

 

[pemerton]

I feels this ties back to something @AlViking said upthread, where he believed that Trad-gamers try immerse themself into the character whereas the other side treat the character as some sort of avatar.

I suspect there is some truth to that but it is not the whole story

My initial intuition is that there is little truth to it.

As I've posted upthread, in "trad" RPGing I think there is a lot of "author" stance, especially (i) oriented towards party play, and (ii) oriented towards the stuff the GM has prepared for play.

The fact that "that's what my character would do" is frequently seen as the hallmark of a bad play, in mainstream RPGing, is a sign to me of the relative preponderance of "author" stance.

That's not to deny that "author" stance can also occur in non-trad play (upthread I've posted about "author" stance in Burning Wheel play). Just that I don't think "author"/"actor" - or "immersion"/"avatar" - is a very plausible line of demarcation between "trad" and other approaches to RPGing.

there is also:
- Trad-gamers believe immersion comes from knowledge limitation in an attempt to mimic RL in order to play a character true; whereas
- the Narrative side freely gives the meta knowledge in an attempt get it out the way, and allow the player to rather focus on the truth of the character.

A Trad-gamer is concerned with the numbers, the game prioritises the numbers, and thus meta knowledge is hurtful to immersion.
To a Narrative gamer the stakes, character bonds, win/loss conditions etc are in a sense more important than the numbers, therefore the meta knowledge doesn't lessen their character's truth.

There is also this from Campbell:

The sense of being there, in character, is deeply important to me (like maybe most important thing at times). However, that also includes, access to my character's intuition about the world around them, which to me should be different from my own intuitions.

<snip>

Because we are dealing with familiar situations (familiar to our characters but not to us) the telegraphing actually helps us to get in the right headspace.

I think @Campbell's point can extend beyond the sort of "social crawl" that he describes, to include RPGing where the players are playing characters who are at home in their environment. For instance, my TB2e game doesn't have the same degree of richly defined social fabric as the games Campbell describes, but the PCs are rarely in entirely foreign places: they spend a lot of time in the wilderness, or in towns, or dealing with NPCs whose normative expectations should be similar to the PCs'. These are environments where the PCs would naturally have reliable intuitions - and so providing the players with information to inform their decision-making hardly distorts things in an "unrealistic" way.

The uncertainty lies primarily (not exclusively) in the outcome of the dice rolls.

 

[pemerton]

The Stormbringer RPG in other words. The work of identifying rules that support narrativist play here seems to be done by introducing them as "PbtA".

Let's suppose a game, let's call it a Stormbringer, where the interest is centered outside the characters. That is, while the action is still character focused, how they deal with the premise, that premise is something beyond the personal. It could be a fantasy game in which the overwhelming consideration was, say, Moorcockian order vs chaos. Everything the PCs do will relate to that, every goal they set, and every significant part of the fiction will bear on it. Even the traits and backstory of the characters will be in relation to this single question.​

​

Those rules were based on Chaosium's BRP. It seems that more must be said to disambiguate them (note, that my position isn't that more cannot be said.)

But the Chaosium Stormbringer doesn't really pose order vs chaos as a premise. It's more like background colour.

 

[Enrahim]

I don't really follow this. Are you able to give an illustrative example?

In Touvelen's essay he associates the techniques of streamlining hour, Princess play, dollhouse play, substantial exploration, mechanical simulation and subjective experience with the very broad category of interest of play "simulationism".

Yes. And that it - as per Tuovinen's essay, which follows Ron Edwards pretty straightforwardly - a mode of simulationism. Which is what I posted.

From the essay:
When talking about the core reward cycle: "You are joined together by the curiosity towards the subject matter."
"Moving on, let’s grant for now that I’m correct about the underlying human motivations and Simulationist play is indeed engaged in for the purpose of, well, study: a Simulationist creative agenda is one that seeks inspiration and understanding in the process of Exploration."

And when contrasting with narrativism: "The fundamental issue is that a true Sim play will never, ever care about you the person, and your self-expression"

It appear to me like you cannot have coherent simulationistic play if one of the key participants enters with no curiosity, but rather just a wish to express.

Huh? I haven't done that. If you want to do what you've just described, you need a system with strong GM powers.

Completely relevant for my point, but as you insist I will try again:
[Start of deja vu]

I think one principal issue here is that much of the hobby is allergic to talking about the role that the GM will take in directing/facilitating play.

Thank you for proving my point.

Could you imagine it might be possible for me to state "I really like to make up good stories as a form of self expression. It is so nice to have the other players as an audience!" without you reflexively pointing out that "If you want to do what you've just described, you need a system with strong GM powers."? It should be possible to have a civil and deep discussion about personal preferences without dragging in system concerns.
[End of deja vu]

I don't follow this at all. An "allmighty GM" approach is pretty handy for the GM to engage in self-expression.

Absolutely! I would have hoped the context would have made it clear that this quote was reflecting back on my previous observation it might not be good for play

Setting-based narrativist play is not as widely discussed as character and situation-based play, but Edwards gives examples here: The Forge :: Narrativism: Story Now. At the time he was writing, the standout example was HeroWars. I think 4e D&D is another example. The point of the setting is to establish the theme/premise/moral line that play is concerned with. As well as some fun colour.

Edwards had a fuller essay on setting-based narrativism 10 to 15 years ago, but it doesn't seem to be online anymore.

Yes, the homemade part of this context essential to the meaning of my statement. I cannot remember Edwards in that essay "formulate a motivation that would describe why someone would prepare an elaborate setting like this for a narrative game" where "prepare" and "like this" reflects back on @EzekielRaiden 's great description of his process outside the session.


I want to finish up with saying that I am really grateful for you answering these posts! I fear the tone of my reply might betray my frustration that we seem to be talking a bit past each other. I want to emphasize this is fully outweighed by the joy of feeling seen and adressed by someone as clearly knowledgeable as you!

 

[Enrahim]

I did not. But I have now!


Frustrated? Probably not, unless they were really insistent about something I had heard, given it a genuine effort, and said, "No, I don't think that can work, but we could try for something similar" or the like. I'm of the opinion that in very nearly 100% of cases (like it's a one-in-a-million thing to find an exception), when a player makes a suggestion that doesn't make full sense to me as GM, it's because either there's been a communication failure on my part (e.g. I meant to say XYZ but stopped at XY without continuing to Z), a reception error on their part (e.g. they just didn't hear me when I said XYZ and thought we were still on UVW), or they went for what they thought was the "correct" way to get a thing they actually wanted, and if we drill down a bit, we can find out what thing they actually want and make that happen instead.

As noted, the only thing I would find frustrating is if I had already given a fair shake to an idea, explained why I wasn't comfortable with it, and provided alternate approaches or the like, and the player more or less said "NO, it has to be EXACTLY what I thought OR ELSE". That would be frustrating.


If it does not seem reasonable, but is permitted by a rule--especially if it's something I personally created--I will permit it that one time, because I failed to catch the problem before it hit the table. I see that as a reasonable compromise between "I want a game that won't fall into uninteresting, degenerate strategies" and "I want players to pursue creative paths that help them achieve victory"; they get their creativity and their achieving-victory one time, as an exceptional deviation.

I've never actually had this happen with any existing rules of Dungeon World, and unintended severely bad consequences have only very rarely happened with stuff that came from me. As in, I can only think of one case off the top of my head in ~7 years of running the game.

The only power I very slightly regret giving out is that when our party Bard became a full cambion (for sincerely good reasons!), I said that one benefit thereof was that he could not be surprised. That was, on reflection, not a choice I would make again. I have agreed to abide by that, even if the limitations it places on me as GM can be a little frustrating, because (as said) consistency and honesty matter to me. If I say something is so, unless there's a very good reason, it is so.


That can be mildly frustrating, but if it genuinely is a scene where one or more characters simply have nothing whatsoever to add, then that's a failure on my part. I'm not frustrated at the player; I'm frustrated at me for doing poorly at framing scenes. Much as, for example, an old-school GM might be frustrated if they crafted a challenging, dangerous combatant with strong defenses etc. etc., but the party managed to find a cheesy (but completely rules-justified and at least fig-leaf "realistic") way to defeat that opponent in a single round, without the enemy ever getting to act at all. That is, sure, there'll be some frustration, but a good old-school GM would be frustrated at their own failure to make a truly threatening encounter, not at the players for being clever enough to outsmart their GM.

Thank you for your extensive and really well reflected answer! The purpose of this question was that this is reflective of what is important in my understanding of Forge GNS. And from these anwer I would have put your play squarely in the narrativist camp. I would perhaps be a bit puzzled about your frustration being mainly self directed in the sim revealing question, but would have reasoned that if you were really into sim you would have happily accepted that this time the simulation didn't indicate an engaging moment for that player character. Similarly your urge for looking for consistent ways to make the narrative suggestion work might seem a bit pedantic, but the goodwill toward making it part of the story is clear.

However with Eero Tuovinen's proposal, this suddently make perfect sense. You are curious about what your player characters are going to do, so of course you are not interested in blocking any suggestions, but leave that open. But the context of the setting is an important part of the it you are curious to see them interact with, and hence the urge to maintain that consistency.

This contrast to my GNS understanding become even more stark when looking at the sim question. Your job as a GM is to bring the it to explore. This is your motivation, your agenda for participating in play. And the it to explore is what will the characters do, and what consequences will that have? So if you fail to provide a situation where there is anything interesting for a character to do, you have failed to provide an aproperiate it. So a frustration on yourself, and not on the player that appropriately play their character given the shared creative agenda make perfect sense in this view!

Again, thank you so much for providing a better example than what I could have dreamed of for how that blog post changed my perspective on these matters!

 

[pemerton]

I want to finish up with saying that I am really grateful for you answering these posts! I fear the tone of my reply might betray my frustration that we seem to be talking a bit past each other. I want to emphasize this is fully outweighed by the joy of feeling seen and adressed by someone as clearly knowledgeable as you!

It's clear that you're frustrated, but I'm struggling a bit to work out what I'm missing.

You seem to be taking the Tuovinen essay seriously. If I'm wrong about that, and you disagree with it, you're going to have to tell me expressly, because if you're trying to imply that I've missed the intended implication.

Anyway, I take the Tuovinen essay seriously, and - as he seems to intend it - regard it as a continuation of earlier work done primarily by Edwards. (Tuovinen cites Edwards approvingly near the start of the essay.)

Here is Tuovinen on "GM story hour":

your core strength is being able to prepare carefully, and the freedoms you give to the player are carefully constrained to ensure that you actually get to show off your stuff. It is still interactive, as the player has the primary control over the pace (how quickly you go over your material) and focus (what parts of your material are particularly observed) of play, even as the GM by definition holds primary content authority. The GM decides what play will be about, but the other players decide how they investigate that aboutness.​

​

The GM story hour is an appropriate game structure for games where a single player introduces specific subject matter to the other players. It is extremely important that the introduced matter is good stuff, creatively relevant to the participants. Tracy Hickman understood this in his magnum opus Dragonlance, pushing the AD&D content delivery chassis to its extreme ends and beyond in an effort to deliver a true high fantasy epic via a game structurally very poorly suited for the purpose; Hickman understood that if there was to be a measure of grace to the project, it would be in the fact that the GM would in his interminable story hour be delivering actually legit fantasy literature. (Not discussing the Dragonlance novels here, note, but the adventure modules.)​

If one sets aside some of the jabs at DL, this gives a sense of how this sort of "simulationism" works: the GM has a creative vision ("legit fantasy literature") and shares it.

As Tuovinen also says

You never, ever want to be in a position to deliver a story hour with [badly crafted], trivial material. Respect yourself, respect your friends, and if you choose to play a game structured for the story hour, bring something you actually want to tell the other players about. Something that you can describe to them, and then let them ask questions, and then answer those questions gladly, confident that you’re engaging in an intelligent, meaningful activity. If you can’t convince yourself about your material being interesting, don’t expect others to care, either.​

This is a type of play that is well-suited to GM authority - the GM has something worthwhile that they want to share, and they share it. The players' role is - as Tuovinen notes - constrained but not absent: the players influence pace and which elements receive particular focus.

From the essay:
When talking about the core reward cycle: "You are joined together by the curiosity towards the subject matter."
"Moving on, let’s grant for now that I’m correct about the underlying human motivations and Simulationist play is indeed engaged in for the purpose of, well, study: a Simulationist creative agenda is one that seeks inspiration and understanding in the process of Exploration."

And when contrasting with narrativism: "The fundamental issue is that a true Sim play will never, ever care about you the person, and your self-expression"

It appear to me like you cannot have coherent simulationistic play if one of the key participants enters with no curiosity, but rather just a wish to express.

Tuovinen is a clever thinker about RPGs, and so is unlikely to have contradicted himself. Thus what he says about the "simulationism"/"narrativism" contrast should be able to be reconciled with what he says about "GM story hour" as a mode of simulationism.

Here is how, in the essay, he draws the contrast between the two approaches to (or, if you prefer, agendas for) play:

Nar is inherently about you, while Sim is inherently about it. I’d like to say that this is often a less emotionally charged conflict than others, but the truth of the matter is that some Simmy games are just more easily drifted towards Narrativism, while others are easier for Gamism. Sure, Fate can do Narrativism, but if you think that proves that Sim and Nar are similar, you should try playing Battletech and see how Narrativist you’ll feel yourself. The fundamental issue is that a true Sim play will never, ever care about you the person, and your self-expression; they don’t want your self-expression, they want your subjugation to this material.​

And he says a bit more in the comments:

the psychological basis for Narrativism is artistic self-realization, right? I think that the best argument for the CA modes not being distinct modes all around is probably in this territory: the distinction between Narrativist self-realization and Simulationistic elevated understanding is sort of subtle . . .

a Simulationist query will be unsatisfied by a Narrativist answer because the Narrativist answer pertains to the worldview, the creative self-expression, of the narrator, while paying only notional respect to the background material as a context. This could come as a surprise for even a practiced Narrativist, but we do fudge the SIS a bit in the interest of making the thematic statement, and it’s because the statement is so much more important than respect for the material. I believe that the Simulationist query into the material is ultimately disappointed by the Narrativist self-expression because the causes for the Narrativist choice arise from the artist and not the material.​

The contrast here between artistic self-realisation/self-expression and fidelity to the material is one that obtains during play. I pointed to this upthread, in posts that responded to @Campbell, @clearstream and maybe also to you (? sorry, I've lost track a bit) about the difference between "simulationist" and "narrativist" approaches to RPGing that foregrounds the psychological and emotional life of the PCs. If the principal concern is fidelity measured against some existing standard, then we're playing sim. If the player becomes pro-active then - as per Edwards - "poof, we're out of Sim".

Tying this back to the story hour: in the moment of play, the expectation is that the GM is faithful to the prepared material, and is presenting it to the players who "explore" it - the interactivity is what differentiates "story hour" RPGing from reading a book or watching a film.

But when the GM creates the material, they are of course engaged in self-expression. They are trying to create "legit fantasy literature" or something similarly worthwhile, that it's reasonable to expect others (ie the players) will then enjoy exploring and experiencing.

(I mean, it's obvious that the DL modules have a lot of Hickman in them.)

Completely relevant for my point, but as you insist I will try again:
[Start of deja vu]

Thank you for proving my point.

Could you imagine it might be possible for me to state "I really like to make up good stories as a form of self expression. It is so nice to have the other players as an audience!" without you reflexively pointing out that "If you want to do what you've just described, you need a system with strong GM powers."? It should be possible to have a civil and deep discussion about personal preferences without dragging in system concerns.
[End of deja vu]

Absolutely! I would have hoped the context would have made it clear that this quote was reflecting back on my previous observation it might not be good for play

This loses me, I'm sorry. I don't see why GM authority is bad for play, at least in GM story hour RPGing and also in "substantial exploration" where the GM is the master of the material and is "channelling it to the players". In fact, I think looking at something like DL shows that the boundary between "story hour" and "substantial exploration" is not impermeable. The DL modules do, deliberately, take the PCs on something of a tour of the setting.

Yes, the homemade part of this context essential to the meaning of my statement. I cannot remember Edwards in that essay "formulate a motivation that would describe why someone would prepare an elaborate setting like this for a narrative game" where "prepare" and "like this" reflects back on @EzekielRaiden 's great description of his process outside the session.

A homemade setting could work for narrativist play as much as can a purchased one. I mean, Glorantha began as Greg Stafford's homemade setting.

I think a homemade setting can also work for "substantial exploration", but it has to be interesting. That is, Tuovinen's injunctions to the author of a story hour would apply likewise to the homemaker of a setting who then wants the play to involve substantial exploration of their setting: respect your friends, respect yourself, and bring something worthwhile. It's always invidious to suggest examples, but compare Greyhawk to Eberron. The latter seems potentially amenable to worthwhile "substantial exploration" in a way that I think the former is not (and I say this as someone who currently has multiple active games in GH, and has used it on-and-off now for 40 years of FRPGing). GH has virtues, but suitability for "substantial exploration" is not one of them.

 

[clearstream]

But the Chaosium Stormbringer doesn't really pose order vs chaos as a premise. It's more like background colour.

In terms of designers' intent I agree with that. Even if what @AbdulAlhazred laid out, i.e. that

the overwhelming consideration was, say, Moorcockian order vs chaos. Everything the PCs do will relate to that, every goal they set, and every significant part of the fiction will bear on it. Even the traits and backstory of the characters will be in relation to this single question.​

​

Could be said of Stormbringer. Illustratively, from the 4th edition

Everything has a reason for existing. It is either part of the natural history of the world, or a consequence of the great struggle between Law and Chaos. The ideal atmosphere for the GM to create is that great powers (Law and Chaos) are subtly manipulating their characters to set up the final great confrontation. The best means of doing this is to invest your adventures and campaigns with significance.​

​

The designer seems to downplay the possibility that what would be significant would include addressing premises about Law and Chaos, when they write that their "original idea of how the game should be played" was that

The GM will only use Elric and other Moorcockian characters as background material. For example, the players may be adventuring in Dharijor and hear rumors of the sack of Imrryr from a passing sorcerer. A bunch of wildly different characters might get together to explore Eshmir and other unknown lands of the far east. Characters could find a dimensional gate and find themselves at the End of Time.​

​

The text of the Stormbringer RPG overall -- seems open to choice: does a group want to make it all about addressing premises connected with Law vs. Chaos, or do they want to make it about appreciating The Young Kingdoms? What happens if they want to make it about appreciating the conflict of Law and Chaos? What to my reading is not concretely said by @AbdulAlhazred is how rules might recognisably demand (or encourage) addressing premises over appreciating a situation that contains them?

In relation to which, I wondered if you would identify any specific rules in Burning Wheel that demanded or encouraged that "poof, you're out of sim" that you described having upthread (where Aedhros's attitude to Alicia started to change)?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I may have mentioned this before, but getting a new character into the game is the one situation when I don't mind some GM-side contrivance (or GM-side metagaming, if you like) in order to make it happen. Even then, though, there's limits: e.g. if the party are off-world where there's already known to be nothing but monsters, Bob IV's player is just going to have to wait till the party gets back to somewhere a new character can be found.

Sure, but that's exactly what I'm arguing.

Almost all of us have one or two metagame things we excuse because they're useful, or helpful, or "aren't that disruptive", etc. Which is why the word "metagaming"--and the enormous stigma associated with it--really isn't very useful. We forgive metagaming that does something we find worthwhile. We tear into metagaming that doesn't do anything we find worthwhile. For some people, there isn't anything worthwhile to be found there. For some, it's thing A, not B/C/D/etc. For others, it's only B, or B&C, or A&C but pointedly not B, or...etc.

When a thing gets pilloried, but only in the forms one dislikes, the label one uses for it is functionally no different from "I dislike this".