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

[clearstream]

Is it really the case that the world--again, as @clearstream expressed it, where it includes all of the setting information, geography, history, culture, religion, ecology, etc.--is so totally inseparable from a game's design that not having that instantly tanks the design experience? I can't see how anyone who followed the 5e playtests, and feels that 5e is (or at least that 5.0 was) a good game, could make that argument. The 5e rules do not have anything more than the lightest hint of a "world"--they are rules, with a limited baseline of fantasy flavor, specifically engineered to be able to embrace a breadth of worlds as different as Theros, Eberron, and Toril.

Where it includes is not the same as must always include. That noted, I hadn't reflected on it before but where a group extend the artifact with additions such as world supplement, then that becomes part of "the game" for that group. Thus Dragonlance became part of the game for groups using the core books + dragonlance.

 

[clearstream]

I would say my fellow GM and players are much more impactful on the kind of play experience I have than both the system and the setting. Do that mean they also are central to what makes a game, and that all published "games" (in the TTRPG sphere) is incomplete due to them not coming bundled with friends to play the game with?

Other posters have offered similar testimony, and it is on account of same that I say that play is fabricated by players using the game tools.

It means that the kind of play experience is indeed impacted -- and very possibly more impacted -- by others forming the group. (Which likely arises out of any model putting weight on player interests!)

 

[TwoSix]

I would say my fellow GM and players are much more impactful on the kind of play experience I have than both the system and the setting. Do that mean they also are central to what makes a game, and that all published "games" (in the TTRPG sphere) is incomplete due to them not coming bundled with friends to play the game with?

I think any game design (that is, a set of rules and procedures created to push for a certain play experience) can push more or less strongly towards a certain play agenda. But any creative agenda can't be realized without a bulk of the participants having some kind of willful drive to achieve it.

A lot of times that "willful drive" can be easy to manufacture; choosing to do module X, like a Curse of Strahd, or a one-shot one-pager like Honey Heist is a great way to focus the group around a specific creative agenda.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So D&D is a bad game then?

Because the rules of D&D inherently are not specific to a single world, and never have been. That's why we talk about "implied" settings rather than inherent ones. All the way back to Gygax, we have had a D&D specifically engineered to NOT be specific to a single world, but to be a semi-generic structure within the limits of a class-based, fantasy roleplaying game.

Or, if you prefer, 13A would then be an objectively better game than any edition of D&D, because it does actually have a setting woven into its rules that cannot be simply extracted. It takes extensive effort, not quite a total overhaul but a pretty significant one, to totally strip out the Dragon Empire from 13A.

Is it really the case that the world--again, as @clearstream expressed it, where it includes all of the setting information, geography, history, culture, religion, ecology, etc.--is so totally inseparable from a game's design that not having that instantly tanks the design experience? I can't see how anyone who followed the 5e playtests, and feels that 5e is (or at least that 5.0 was) a good game, could make that argument. The 5e rules do not have anything more than the lightest hint of a "world"--they are rules, with a limited baseline of fantasy flavor, specifically engineered to be able to embrace a breadth of worlds as different as Theros, Eberron, and Toril.

Every game you are playing (not every game system) has a setting in which the activities of the PCs take place. that's what is inseparable from the game to my mind.

 

[Yaarel]

I do as well. It’s back to pros and cons though. Consistency in each instance of play vs greater flexibility in experiences we can achieve. I can see how that consistency might be more important to some and from a game design perspective would be much easier to design for.

If I was selling content, I would focus on a specific local setting, then have in mind where it might fit in the world settings of Greyhawk, Eberron, and Forgotten Realms.

At the same time, I find the Magic The Gathering worlds to be appealing.

I normally homebrew for modern and mythologically accurate worlds, while importing inspirations from other worlds.

 

[Enrahim]

I think any game design (that is, a set of rules and procedures created to push for a certain play experience) can push more or less strongly towards a certain play agenda. But any creative agenda can't be realized without a bulk of the participants having some kind of willful drive to achieve it.

A lot of times that "willful drive" can be easy to manufacture; choosing to do module X, like a Curse of Strahd, or a one-shot one-pager like Honey Heist is a great way to focus the group around a specific creative agenda.

This last I feel strongly about. Aligning by advertising Curse of Strahd?? "Hey, curse of Strahd - yeah I've heard he's really tough, can't wait to take him down!" "Oh, I love the gothic aestetics! Can I play one of those gypsy seers? I can already hear what accent I should use when predicting mysterious doom!" "Horror!? oh, bring your worst, I can't wait to see what sort of spooky stuff will happen!"

I once thought I had advertised very clearly a one shot that was supposed to be a competition style dungeon rush. I got a paladin without armor, and a wimsy air gensai on the team.

I reiterate what I said above. The RPG hobby is lacking an effective non-inflammatory language to talk about games in order to properly advertise and align player expectations. Setting, system and even specific well known modules are not fulfilling that task.

 

[FrogReaver]

This last I feel strongly about. Aligning by advertising Curse of Strahd?? "Hey, curse of Strahd - yeah I've heard he's really tough, can't wait to take him down!" "Oh, I love the gothic aestetics! Can I play one of those gypsy seers? I can already hear what accent I should use when predicting mysterious doom!" "Horror!? oh, bring your worst, I can't wait to see what sort of spooky stuff will happen!"

I once thought I had advertised very clearly a one shot that was supposed to be a competition style dungeon rush. I got a paladin without armor, and a wimsy air gensai on the team.

I reiterate what I said above. The RPG hobby is lacking an effective non-inflammatory language to talk about games in order to properly advertise and align player expectations. Setting, system and even specific well known modules are not fulfilling that task.

Humans have been dealing with the communication problem ever since we began communicating

Better language won’t solve the problem. Education might, but most of the time avoidance is easier than confrontation and so the person never realizes what actually caused the issue if they even realize there was an issue in the first place.

The problem in the RPG case is that our advertising, requiring a clear concise message is at odds with the level of complexity and nuance in play. We resort to using short hand that our in-groups will understand but the out-groups will misunderstand.

 

[Pedantic]

But we cannot design games all at once, from the ground up, to contain everything the player will experience. We must, necessarily, design them piecemeal, furtively, sectionally. It is essential that we finish the most utterly critical tasks first, and then the next-most-critical tasks, etc. until the whole is complete. And, unfortunately, many of the things the player will experience first are things that genuinely need to be done last if the game is going to end up actually good and worthwhile as an experience. Trying to start your game design by paying artists to make really awesome art, and then hoping that your design happens to pay off on whatever the artist felt like drawing? Not a good idea.

I don't think this specific point quite holds. There's quite a few art-first success stories in board games, including some pretty heavy hitters. Scythe and Beast were both very successful and designed specifically to use existing artwork, and the company Off The Page Games takes as their entire business model working with independent comic books to create games reusing their worlds/art assets. Mind MGMT in particularly was a huge hit from them, and Harrow County also had a reasonable presence.

In TTRPGs, Tales from the Loop was also famously an art-first design.

 

[Enrahim]

Humans have been dealing with the communication problem ever since we began communicating

Better language won’t solve the problem. Education might, but most of the time avoidance is easier than confrontation and so the person never realizes what actually caused the issue if they even realize there was an issue in the first place.

Even educating require something to educate about, no matter how "confrontationally" inclined one might be.

The problem in the RPG case is that our advertising, requiring a clear concise message is at odds with the level of complexity and nuance in play. We resort to using short hand that our in-groups will understand but the out-groups will misunderstand.

Humanity have managed to make clear terminology around highly complex phenomena in a big range of fields. Of course it is not possible to capture the full level of neuance in the kind of human interactions we are having in an RPG, but I certainly believe there are common patterns that should be accessible.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Which is also fine, as different people are going to have different "tells" if-when they are lying and each listener is likely going to be differently attuned to those tells.

I don't really agree, because it moves the tells from the character to the GM, and the ability to read it from the character to the player.

For example, the bartender keeps glancing over his shoulder while talking to you.

One person might correctly interpret this to mean he's lying (or at least taking cues from someone else).
Another person might incorrectly interpret this to mean he's checking to make sure no-one else needs his bartending services.

Or the player could just assume the GM had a crick in his neck. That's why trying to do it with GM tone and body language has massive failure states, because it conflates two things together.