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

[Micah Sweet]

But that's not the same thing as the book including a map and saying that this is where the game takes place.

Of course not. Was someone saying it was?

 

[Enrahim]

For me, if stalling out would sometimes happen were these characters real people then stalling out happening sometimes in the fiction is perfectly OK.

Problem is that fiction spills into the real world. I guess you wouldn't be keen on your players actually drawing knives on each other over an in game PvP conflict? Having the characters stall might be fine. Having the players stall might be a different matter. We are talking about real life minutes that go ticking by. Maybe even worse might be the partial stall where some players insist on keep trying while other players want to give up. I have seen such conflicts almost causing real world issues. Managing such situations is in my understanding GM responsibility. Designing the puzzles with some built in fiction mechanism to invalidate further work on it is something I would strongly recommend. Puzzles should only go to optional places (not a problem in your setup), and the emergency measure should involve destroying the puzzle with failure. I have found making an easy success via unrealistic hints or otherwise just give them the reward on the other side of the puzzle is extremely invalidating for those that tried hard to solve it.

I'm not that bothered by fail sideways or fail backward, i.e. the task is still failed and something tangential happens as well be it due to the failure or due to random chance or whatever.

It's the all-too-many examples we get where fail-forward turns the root task-fail into a task-success that stick in my craw. And to me that's what "fail forward" very strongly implies; they fail, but still move forward toward their goal. Failure IMO should never get you closer to your goal; that's what success is for.

The term fail forward come from narrative games, where the forward is understood to be the story. The story has only one direction. It is not intended to indicate any direction compared to any goals as that is a fully secondary concern in a narrative game. Feel free to read every instance of "fail forward" as "fail any other direction than forwards" for your purposes - that doesn't change the meaning of it in any meaningful way at all for those advocating it

The problem I often find with set-ups like this (and thus the reason I try to avoid them) is that the PCs have no reasonable in-fiction way of knowing a) that there's a clock at all and-or b) how long is left before it hits zero.

Would the clock work better for you if each tick was associated with some omen happening in the fiction lining up with some prophesies? Or if the GM keep the time hidden until the players has some ability to assess the situation (talking with some sage or other expert on the situation for instance)? I think quite a few clocks could be implemented this way without it affecting the purpose - it just is uncommon to be this level of concerned about PC knowledge so such techniques doesn't see widespread use. This wouldn't work for the density of timers in certain other games, but it could allow the benefits for certain key situations that really benefits from it.

 

[pemerton]

Thank you so incredibly much! I think identifying my assumption number 1, that creative agenda is (or can be) defined on singular actions is the key difference in assumptions we had going in. I think all the other differences, including our difference in understanding the scope of change stems from this.

Given my impression you have been more directly engaged with the underlying source material than me, I defer to you in regard to what is the intended meaning by Tuovinen. I find everything you have said so far to make perfect sense, and I 100% agree with it when removing that assumption.

That is all generous, and appreciated.

If you care to indulge me a little bit more I then would really like to pick your head on one more thing to try to prevent future miscommunication. The way I now try to conceptualise the situation I had in mind is that the emergent creative agenda of play is tied to what sort of reward cycle that play can provide. For the GM bringing the material to the table seeking the reward of (positive) feedback on their self expression, story time play provide an unsatisfactory experience as the players engage in just investigating it rather than "evaluating" it. However as they are not actually disrupting play despite their dissatisfaction we still look at simulationist play.

This is paralell to the situation where the GM brings poor content only they themselves are interested in exploring. In this case play could still express SIM, but the players would be dissatisfied with the experience, but might still play along hence not disrupting it.

My question is: What would be the aproperiate terminology to use for this phenomenom when talking with someone assuming forge parlance like yourself? I thought incoherence was the word, but it wasn't? This seem like an important enough concept, and easy enough to confuse with incoherence the way I did that I would guess there is some established terminology around this phenomenom?

The GM's reward, when presenting their material for "story hour" or "substantial exploration", should be the players' enthusiastic engagement/exploration. If the players "do their duty" of exploring the stuff, but in the manner of "eating their vegetables" rather than being obviously excited by it, then the GM will probably feel disappointed. The GM has misjudged their audience, or perhaps the quality of their stuff. Alternatively, perhaps - though I think this is probably less typical - the players are just mean or ungrateful people.

Your question about how to characterise RPGing that is dissatisfying in one of these sorts of ways reminded me of this old Forge post, where Edwards is sharing some thoughts/advice with another poster who is having some issues with players not following his lead (as GM):

Well, let's look at this again. Actually, I think it has nothing at all to do with distributed authority, but rather with the group members' shared trust that situational authority is going to get exerted for maximal enjoyment among everyone. If, for example, we are playing a game in which I, alone, have full situational authority, and if everyone is confident that I will use that authority to get to stuff they want (for example, taking suggestions), then all is well. Or if we are playing a game in which we do "next person to the left frames each scene," and if that confidence is just as shared, around the table, that each of us will get to the stuff that others want (again, suggestions are accepted), then all is well.

It's not the distributed or not-distributed aspect of situational authority you're concerned with, it's your trust at the table, as a group, that your situations in the SIS are worth anyone's time. Bluntly, you guys ought to work on that.​

As far as I know, there is no jargon for the situation in the SIS being worth anyone's time. Edwards does go on, though, to link it to creative agenda in this way:

When the CA is shared and powerfully-held by the group, it forms the foundation for the trust I'm talking about. Picture the Big Model. Now link Social Contract directly to Situation with a skewer, and then punch "deeper" down into Techniques for handling Situation (i.e. distributed or not distributed). Does that skewer exist? If so, its standards (what is or is not good, for us, here and now) are the CA.​

I don't find the metaphor of "the skewer" especially helpful, particularly when I then am asked to hold that skewer to standards. I think what is being said is that the sorts of situations that are established, and the methods used to do that, should conform to the shared creative agenda. So, for instance, in BW-esque narrativist play, the GM should be using their authority over situation ("scene framing") to present the players with situations that prompt choices based on the priorities the player has established for their PC; whereas in (say) "story hour" play, the GM should be using their authority over situation to present some pertinent aspect of the story to the players, perhaps beginning with lower stakes in order to give the players the chance to choose what to focus on (as Tuovinen talks about). Some "dollhouse" play might use shared or distributed authority over situation: the key would be, as Tuovinen says, that "The project can be demonstrated in action via simple scenes that feature the various features of the thing". So whoever is framing whatever scenes, they should be ones that exhibit the features of the thing that is being built together. Tuovinen observes that "Some very powerful Sim games, often point-buy based, basically revolve around continuous building like this"; I can also imagine some Ars Magic play being focused on the covenant in a similar sort of fashion.

All that I've said in the previous paragraph identifies necessary conditions for a presented situation being worth anyone's time, given the creative agenda of the group. But it doesn't try and identify sufficient conditions. One feature of that will be colour - that is, "details or illustrations or nuances that provide atmosphere" (as well as "nuances", you could extend this notion out to encompass the content of the fiction more broadly - what it is that we are imagining together). In "story hour" and in many cases of "substantial exploration" play, I think the pressure on the GM to create worthwhile colour (and content) is especially high, because it is flowing almost uni-directionally from GM to players. Whereas in other sorts of play, responsibility is more distributed: eg in my Torchbearer game, the choices the players make in PC building introduces quite a bit of colour and content from the get-go, which, presumably, they are happy to play with (or else they wouldn't have introduced it).

I'm not 100% sure if the above is speaking to your question, but hopefully some of it is at least a bit!

 

[Faolyn]

For me, if stalling out would sometimes happen were these characters real people then stalling out happening sometimes in the fiction is perfectly OK.

We're not playing real people in the real world. We don't want our real lives to be filled with the kind of excitement found in a typical RPG, because most of us don't want to live in hellscapes where you're being regularly attacked by monsters or threatened with apocalypses. We want the interesting and exciting parts of our actual lives to be safe, which is why we have horror movies and roller coasters and RPGs. So saying "this would happen if they were real people" doesn't cut it. If they were real people, they'd all have PTSD and have terrible scars and permanent injuries from all the monsters and have to pay massive amounts of taxes on the gold they recovered.

In game, we can have all sorts of interesting and exciting things happen to our characters, because it is a game. And stalling out is neither interesting nor exciting.

I'm not that bothered by fail sideways or fail backward, i.e. the task is still failed and something tangential happens as well be it due to the failure or due to random chance or whatever.

It's the all-too-many examples we get where fail-forward turns the root task-fail into a task-success that stick in my craw. And to me that's what "fail forward" very strongly implies; they fail, but still move forward toward their goal. Failure IMO should never get you closer to your goal; that's what success is for.

Well, maybe you should read more about it beyond what's being talked about in this thread.

The problem I often find with set-ups like this (and thus the reason I try to avoid them) is that the PCs have no reasonable in-fiction way of knowing a) that there's a clock at all and-or b) how long is left before it hits zero.

So? The PCs should have no reasonable in-fiction way of knowing what hit points or saving throws are either, and I'm guessing you use those.

Clocks are a tool used to measure how much longer until the thing the clock was tracking occurs. Just like how a player's emotions will change if they're very low on hit points and the battle is clearly not done and they don't know if they'll survive it, the player's emotions will change if they realize that the clock is close to zero.

 

[Micah Sweet]

We're not playing real people in the real world. We don't want our real lives to be filled with the kind of excitement found in a typical RPG, because most of us don't want to live in hellscapes where you're being regularly attacked by monsters or threatened with apocalypses. We want the interesting and exciting parts of our actual lives to be safe, which is why we have horror movies and roller coasters and RPGs. So saying "this would happen if they were real people" doesn't cut it. If they were real people, they'd all have PTSD and have terrible scars and permanent injuries from all the monsters and have to pay massive amounts of taxes on the gold they recovered.

In game, we can have all sorts of interesting and exciting things happen to our characters, because it is a game. And stalling out is neither interesting nor exciting.


Well, maybe you should read more about it beyond what's being talked about in this thread.


So? The PCs should have no reasonable in-fiction way of knowing what hit points or saving throws are either, and I'm guessing you use those.

Clocks are a tool used to measure how much longer until the thing the clock was tracking occurs. Just like how a player's emotions will change if they're very low on hit points and the battle is clearly not done and they don't know if they'll survive it, the player's emotions will change if they realize that the clock is close to zero.

Who's "we" in this post? Who besides yourself are you speaking for here?

 

[Faolyn]

Literally hours? Half an hour? Several minutes? If it's the first one, unless it's something the group is really into it's bad GMing IMO

Well, Lanefan said 2.5 sessions, with each session being 4+ hours long.

And yes, I've had a case or two like that, although fortunately not recently. Is it bad GMing? Or is it the GM actually following the RAW of the game?

I don't see how that relates to what I said. I never said anything about whether it's used in other games. Whether it works "well" is a value judgement because it doesn't take into consideration what you want out of the game or potential costs.

What potential costs are there with using a mechanic that ensures the game doesn't stop dead because the players rolled badly?

Seriously, list them.

In D&D, it takes just as long to open a lock as it takes to fail to open a lock. Meanwhile I say that not opening the lock is something. Just not what you want. But again, this is me wanting the players to drive the game forward and the world reacts. The world (and in effect) the GM is neutral on things happening outside of responding to what the players do.

Fail forward is just the GM helping the players drive the game forward. It's perfectly neutral.

I can't just dislike metagame techniques? I want the players to interact with the world through their characters and the GM's only role is to have the world respond to what those characters do. Always going to be a bit more complicated than that but that's my assumption and starting point.

Right. When using fail forward, you're having the world respond to what the character's do.

You're already basically there; you just are balking at the name.

Sure. If there is word of invaders spreading then the cultists are likely to change their behavior. It's the job of the GM to decide what that means.

About the only time failure would matter in most cases is if the clock ticks more quickly or slowly depending on the player's success or failure which again goes back to metagaming.

Not really. If the cultists are after the Macguffin, and the PCs fail to stop them from getting it, the cultists have it--they've succeeded. If the PCs did a really bad job in their attempt, then "it's the job of the GM to decide what that means," which in this example means ticking the clock more than once.

I don't think that way, the clock ticks at the same speed and failure may mean the characters take longer to get where they are going or they may think of a way to bypass some obstacle they may spend less time getting there. But the time the character spend getting to the goal has no influence on how quickly the ritual will be enacted.

OK, first off--and I say this because it confused me the first time I read about it, so this might be confusing you as well--the clock doesn't measure real time.

Not automatically. You can say that the clock will tick once each day, because it's been a day of the cultists doing culty stuff. You can also not have that happen and instead the clock only ticks (or doesn't tick) after each time one of the reagents has been obtained (or made safe by the PCs).

If the PCs are faffing around, then the cultists get more reagents, and the ritual goes off faster. If the PCs fail miserably, then the cultists get more reagents, and the ritual goes off faster.

Now, if the ritual has to be held on the first night of the third full moon of the year, then no, the PC's speed and abilities won't affect anything. But in that case, there wouldn't necessarily be a clock at all. Or if there was, it would measure something other than when the ritual starts.

Even if there are times when by ... ahem ... pure coincidence they get there just in the nick of time. Unless they really took their sweet time and added hours to their arrival. Then they may just see the metaphorical mushroom cloud rising over the city and now they have to deal with the fallout.

By "ahem" I'm assuming that you mean you fudge the timing a little but so they get there at the nick of time. That's a metagaming technique, and a very non-neutral one at that--you're timing things for cinematic reasons, not for realistic reasons. You're OK with that, but not with a clock?

 

[Faolyn]

Who's "we" in this post? Who besides yourself are you speaking for here?

Am I to assume that you want your home to be in a battle zone, and you want to spend your days fighting for your life?

 

[AlViking]

Well, Lanefan said 2.5 sessions, with each session being 4+ hours long.

And yes, I've had a case or two like that, although fortunately not recently. Is it bad GMing? Or is it the GM actually following the RAW of the game?


What potential costs are there with using a mechanic that ensures the game doesn't stop dead because the players rolled badly?

Seriously, list them.

For me? I've listed them. Multiple times. It boils down to approach to the game - I don't want metagame techniques. Those include "X happens because you fail" in a way that is not a direct in-world consequence of failure. The only in-world consequence of failing to open a lock is that it doesn't get opened.

Fail forward is just the GM helping the players drive the game forward. It's perfectly neutral.

I don't view it that way.

Right. When using fail forward, you're having the world respond to what the character's do.

You're already basically there; you just are balking at the name.

No.

Not really. If the cultists are after the Macguffin, and the PCs fail to stop them from getting it, the cultists have it--they've succeeded. If the PCs did a really bad job in their attempt, then "it's the job of the GM to decide what that means," which in this example means ticking the clock more than once.


OK, first off--and I say this because it confused me the first time I read about it, so this might be confusing you as well--the clock doesn't measure real time.

Not automatically. You can say that the clock will tick once each day, because it's been a day of the cultists doing culty stuff. You can also not have that happen and instead the clock only ticks (or doesn't tick) after each time one of the reagents has been obtained (or made safe by the PCs).

If the PCs are faffing around, then the cultists get more reagents, and the ritual goes off faster. If the PCs fail miserably, then the cultists get more reagents, and the ritual goes off faster.

Now, if the ritual has to be held on the first night of the third full moon of the year, then no, the PC's speed and abilities won't affect anything. But in that case, there wouldn't necessarily be a clock at all. Or if there was, it would measure something other than when the ritual starts.


By "ahem" I'm assuming that you mean you fudge the timing a little but so they get there at the nick of time. That's a metagaming technique, and a very non-neutral one at that--you're timing things for cinematic reasons, not for realistic reasons. You're OK with that, but not with a clock?

As far as getting to the ritual exactly on time, it's a pretty common trope in fiction and in games. I don't use it very often but I and my players are okay with it now and then even though we know exactly what's happening.

Listen, this is going nowhere. At this point I accept and understand where you're coming from, it's just a technique I don't care for. You want something to happen in response to whatever the players do to "keep the game moving forward". On the other hand either you can't seem to understand or accept my perspective and preference. The players drive the game forward when I DM because it's their game and emerging story.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Who's "we" in this post? Who besides yourself are you speaking for here?

It seems fairly safe to assume that "we" means literally everyone RPGing since no one playing an RPG is in fact playing a real person in a real world.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The only in-world consequence of failing to open a lock is that it doesn't get opened.

This is probably the silliest bit about this whole branch of the discussion. What it says to me is that people try to pick locks simply to pick them, and for no other purpose.