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

[Micah Sweet]

There's also a difference between not worrying as much about the divide between player and character knowledge (which is what I was talking about) and telling them everything (something you've now introduced to the discussion).

What I'm trying to describe is to not make everything a puzzle. I mean, if you have a mystery or a puzzle-box type scenario, that's one thing... being careful with what information is shared makes more sense. But not every scenario is meant to be a mystery.

Like, "who killed the duke"... sure, that's a mystery. What does my character perceive? That's not a mystery. I find that there's not always a distinction between these two types of situations, and I think there should be.

For instance, in a recent game, I told a player that an NPC was lying to him. I didn't call for a roll or anything else... I just said "you know this guy is lying". I did this because that's what seemed to make sense, and because it was much more interesting to put the character in that position and see what the player would do.

For me, the second reason is only valid as a reason to skip a check in that instance if the first one is. Fiction or setting logic takes precedence over what would make for a better story (which is my interpretation of, "it would be much more interesting").

 

[hawkeyefan]

That's where the player's imagination has to step up, taking what the DM describes and fleshing it out into a more complete scene. Most of the time, any conflicts between the DM's imagination and the player's are going to be utterly trivial, e.g. the DM might imagine the bartender as being clean-shaven while the player imagines a mustache and goatee, or the DM imagines the wagon covers as being off-white while the player sees them as a draker shade of gray. Who cares, as long as the generalities agree.

The only time this conflict of imagination matters is if-when it's about something significant enough to maybe affect play, at which point the player should ask for clarification.

My experiences as both player and GM have been very different than that. I find that there can often be such discrepancies in understanding the shared fiction of the game. And yes, asking questions is part of the process of clarifying. But I would say so is sharing as much information as possible, and simply not worrying so much about the player-character division of information.

I mean, if having a shred of information that your character may not have is enough to shatter your sense of immersion or inhabitation, then I can't see how things like discussing hit points or rolling dice won't similarly take you right out of play. Hence my suggestion to accept that this happens, and then proceed with that idea in mind... and focusing less on situations that rely on that information.

As a very basic example... I stopped worrying about monster vulnerabilities for the vast majority of monsters in about 1988. Trolls and fire, vampires and garlic, lycanthropes and silver, and on and on.... I just am not interested in keeping those details from the players. Especially when most of them know it all already. So I don't let my games focus on "finding" the vulnerability.

Removing that kind of dreck actually lets me focus on things I expect my players will find far more interesting.

You don't need to say the word to present your opinions as objective. That's my point.

Don't you mean that in your opinion you don't need to say the word objective to present your opinions as objective?

Or were you being super meta here?

 

[hawkeyefan]

For me, the second reason is only valid as a reason to skip a check in that instance if the first one is. Fiction or setting logic takes precedence over what would make for a better story (which is my interpretation of, "it would be much more interesting").

Well it's not about "the story"... we're playing a game, after all... one which many people often cite things like "as long as you're having fun, you're not doing it wrong" and so on.

I therefore will actually try to present things to my players that I expect will be fun or interesting or engaging or whatever word you want to substitute in there that means they're enjoying themselves.

 

[Enrahim]

One of my major issues with The Forge is that games are not Simulationist or Gamist or Narrativist. I have yet to see an RPG that isn't all three to varying degrees.

How claims games are any? My impression is that forge indicate play can be Sim, Gam or Nar, and different games can to worrying degree support this kind of play.

What you will see when you play a game is that his game over here is 60%(N), 30%(S) and 10%(G), while that one over there is 45%(G), 30%(N) and 25%(S).

This doesn't make any sense ref my comment above. Or are you by game meaning play? If indeed this is the case I would say that we either are looking at a lot of poorly functioning games, or that the model is truly completely a failure. I guess your interpretation is the latter. I however wonder how you can get these numbers given I wasn't aware of any way we could (easily) determine agenda by observation except in extreme cases.

What that means is that you can in my experience have coherent simulationist play where one player has narrativist priorities and the others do not.

I thought the definition of coherent play was aligned creative agenda? You can have well functioning incoherent games (as long as the participants are not pushing their agenda to hard). But I wonder what definition of "coherent simulationistic play" you might have?

Or is your point simply that a player can make some narrative actions without fully breaking the coherence, as long as they mostly play according to the shared agenda? This I would find completely uncontroversial. GNS is a model, and all models represents a simplification of the real system. It is generally understood that as long as the big picture matches, the model categories should be relevant (assuming it is a good model)

 

[zakael19]

That's where the player's imagination has to step up, taking what the DM describes and fleshing it out into a more complete scene. Most of the time, any conflicts between the DM's imagination and the player's are going to be utterly trivial, e.g. the DM might imagine the bartender as being clean-shaven while the player imagines a mustache and goatee, or the DM imagines the wagon covers as being off-white while the player sees them as a draker shade of gray. Who cares, as long as the generalities agree.

What we narrate in the open is stuff that is important to play that an actual person in the context would likely notice. This is made more manifest via mechanics that open a clear metachannel in some of these games, such as the "Read A..." moves from AW.

This isn't "the bartender has a mustache," it's stuff like "his eyes dart in all directions as he answers, clearly trying to conceal things" or "she keeps glancing over her shoulder, body tense" or "you can just tell from the tone of his voice, that annoying whine he gets so often, that he's going to go back on this as soon as you're out of sight" or ...

It's deliberately giving the player knowledge by speaking for their POV intuition, as @Campbell said so succinctly. I'll often phrase things as a leading question as well, "Zel, why can you tell that..." so that the player gets to share those imaginary things you point out instead of it just sitting inside their head, never making it into the shared fiction.

 

[zakael19]

My experiences as both player and GM have been very different than that. I find that there can often be such discrepancies in understanding the shared fiction of the game. And yes, asking questions is part of the process of clarifying. But I would say so is sharing as much information as possible, and simply not worrying so much about the player-character division of information.

Oh, all the time. You think some description is so clear but somebody missed a word or you got a little too long winded or your phrasing made them go "wait, no, that's gotta be X!" and next thing you know they're declaring actions that are like impossible / clearly in your head dangerous when they don't think that / contrary to how you framed the scene.

 

[Faolyn]

It's more like saying that if you miss in combat, in order to slay your foe you're going to have to attack at least once more.

Which, again, is something that often isn't allowed in skill checks. How many times do you let your players attempt to pick the same lock?

 

[Faolyn]

You don't need to say the word to present your opinions as objective. That's my point.

So... you don't have a problem with what @AbdulAlhazred said?

 

[Faolyn]

Perhaps some reframing of what part of the game loop is actually being engaged is relevant here. Players basically do two things: ask the GM for more information about the situation and declare actions that take them to a new situation. Should some of these failures be viewed more as part of the first activity rather than the latter? Or heck, is the roll sometimes determining which of those two activities the PC gets?

You could imagine a modified fail forward type rule that doesn't require the situation change, but does require the GM to detail more about it.

Very true.

Which is why "it doesn't work" doesn't work--it doesn't involve the GM giving hints, changing the puzzle in some way, or anything else like that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well it's not about "the story"... we're playing a game, after all... one which many people often cite things like "as long as you're having fun, you're not doing it wrong" and so on.

I therefore will actually try to present things to my players that I expect will be fun or interesting or engaging or whatever word you want to substitute in there that means they're enjoying themselves.

So long as the GM is also having fun with whatever's happening, I agree.