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

[pemerton]

The player said "I want this to be X", made a successful roll so it was X. They had to succeed on a check but they did they got the result they wanted.

Even this is not quite correct.

The player said, as their PC, "I will try and decipher these runes, hoping that they will reveal a way out of the dungeon."

If they had failed the check they would have been incapacitated

And this is not correct at all. I don't know where you're getting this from. I don't know what would have happened on a failure - it's too long ago, and even back then I probably wouldn't have made that decision until I had to, and I didn't have to.

If I as GM don't know, you can't possibly know.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm pretty sure I could say a lot of things about d20 games as a class. Are PbtA games so different from each other that that's not possible? And if so, what does the label signify?

Derivation. And honestly, You have to be really selective to say much about D20 games that covers all of them; consider that M&M 3e is a D20 derived game, but other than 1. It uses a D20 and 2. Resolves rolls by a D20 + modifier against a target number, not much else applies. Similarly, from what I understand PbtA games have evolved far afield in some cases.

Honestly, this is not atypical for successful game systems that spawn offshoots; they become farther and farther related over time. But you'll still people use, say "BRP derived" as a shorthand for this evolutionary process.

 

[pemerton]

the fact that I can decide what that asset looks like as I'm staring at some runes on the wall ruins my feeling of immersion.

As I've posted not far upthread, the player doesn't decide what the runes say.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Derivation. And honestly, You have to be really selective to say much about D20 games that covers all of them; consider that M&M 3e is a D20 derived game, but other than 1. It uses a D20 and 2. Resolves rolls by a D20 + modifier against a target number, not much else applies. Similarly, from what I understand PbtA games have evolved far afield in some cases.

Honestly, this is not atypical for successful game systems that spawn offshoots; they become farther and farther related over time. But you'll still people use, say "BRP derived" as a shorthand for this evolutionary process.

Do any of them not use Playbooks? In my limited experience with PbtA games they all use Playbooks to represent the special unique PCs you're playing.

 

[hawkeyefan]

1. The runes were undefined.

2. The player decided what they wanted the runes to be.

3. The player rolled and received a positive result.

4. In light of the successful roll, the GM decided to honor the player's request.

I think it’s a little different than that.

1. The runes were undefined.
2. The player had his character express a hope for what the runes might be.
3. The player rolled and received a positive result.
4. In light of the roll, and that the suggested purpose of the runes seemed feasible and didn’t contradict anything that was established, the GM decided that the hope was realized.

I'm sorry you don't agree, but that's close enough to the player deciding for my purposes, and that's beside the issue of the player's roll nailing down the nature of the runes in any case.

But it doesn’t actually require author stance by the player, and ultimately it’s the GM who makes the decision.

I've seen excerpts and summaries of the 5.5 DMG (and I'm not paying for one, so that's as far as it goes), and I am confident that I don't agree with their advice. By the time 5.0 came out I knew the style of play I preferred, and 5.5 goes in the wrong direction for me.

In any case, I'm not paying $50 for advice I disagree with and regurgitated content I pretty much already own. I am considering buying the TotV GM book, because it has interesting content that might be worth the money Kobold Press wants for it.

Yeah, I’m not suggesting you pick up any of the 5.5 books. I haven’t yet, and am unsure if I will. No intention at this point.

But the Warden’s Manual? That book was a lot more useful to a GM at like 64 pages than most GM guides that go on for hundreds of pages.

This is functionally identical to the player having author stance, imo. I raised the same point in my post.

No, you insisted that this is author stance. But at no point must the player leave actor stance for things to go this way.

So, you can try whatever you want, but sometimes events beyond your control complicated things?

That's life (even fantasy life in my play). You get to make your own choices, but there are no guarantees. Still seems plenty player-driven to me.

Haha yes, clearly when a player doesn’t even get to set their own goals, or if they do, those goals may never come up or may be impossible because of two sentences the GM wrote in a notebook two months ago?

Sounds totally player driven.

 

[pemerton]

I'm not sure citing persons who self-identified simulationists reject as having mischaracterised their playstyle is a particularly good method for engagement.

Tuovineni is a self-identified lover of simulationism. He doesn't reject himself!

I am a self-identified simulationist, in that I have played more Rolemaster than any single other RPG - by quite a large margin. And I find Edwards' discussion of purist-for-system play extremely insightful. I read it in 2004, and continued to GM RM until the end of 2008, and could not have achieved the play that I did had I not read Edwards. Whereas my previous long-running RM campaign had come to an inglorious end after 8 years of play, the insight that Edwards provided enabled me to successfully conclude my second, 9-year campaign.

Also: the post that you quote was replying to @clearstream, who introduced the Tuovinen blog into this thread, in a positive way. (And Tuovinen's blog of course refers very positively to Edwards.) So if you want to pick a fight, take it up with clearstream.

 

[AlViking]

Even this is not quite correct.

The player said, as their PC, "I will try and decipher these runes, hoping that they will reveal a way out of the dungeon."

Did the GM decide beforehand what the runes would show?

And this is not correct at all. I don't know where you're getting this from. I don't know what would have happened on a failure - it's too long ago, and even back then I probably wouldn't have made that decision until I had to, and I didn't have to.

If I as GM don't know, you can't possibly know.

You stated it in your example the first time you posted it.

 

[pemerton]

A simple question then: BitD is best when players are choosing their own objectives (as opposed to a GM-provided goal), but the GM is typically still the one providing the obstacles and complications, would you consider this GM-created but player-driven, or GM-driven? If the former, what if the system was D&D or Vampire or Traveller, but still utilising that same general approach?

I don't know BitD or Vampire well-enough to answer.

I've GMed a fair bit of Classic Traveller over the past several years. I think it works best played in a manner similar to Apocalypse World: "if you do it, you do it" and making soft or hard moves based on success or failure on the dice. I would regard this as reasonably player-driven. There was a thread about this some years ago now, in which at least one other poster was arguing for a far more GM-driven approach to Traveller play: Should the PCs try and capture the NPC starship?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Do any of them not use Playbooks? In my limited experience with PbtA games they all use Playbooks to represent the special unique PCs you're playing.

You'll have to ask the people more knowledgeable than me on the subject; I own exactly two, and have read descriptions of a few more. I seem to recall seeing a description of one that didn't, but it could have been an PbtA inspired game that doesn't call itself that (which is the problem; when you start with a given core game system, once you start changing things, at what point isn't it the original game system any more? I don't really have an answer).

 

[AlViking]

I think it’s a little different than that.

1. The runes were undefined.
2. The player had his character express a hope for what the runes might be.
3. The player rolled and received a positive result.
4. In light of the roll, and that the suggested purpose of the runes seemed feasible and didn’t contradict anything that was established, the GM decided that the hope was realized.

After a success the GM decided to give the player exactly what they wanted. Therefore because of a good roll the player decided what the runes said. I understand the GM could have overridden the request - but under what circumstances would they have done so unless the player asked for something outlandish?