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

[pemerton]

Did the GM decide beforehand what the runes would show?

No.

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

Here is the post:

the PCs had been teleported deep into the dungeon by a Crypt Thing (mechanically, when the PCs confronted the Crypt Thing the Doom Pool had grown to 2d12 and so I spent it to end the scene), and all were subject to a Lost in the Dungeon complication. As they wandered the dungeon looking for a way out, I described them coming into a large room with weird runes/carvings on the wall. One of the players (as his PC) guessed that these carvings might show a way out of the dungeon, and made a check to reduce/eliminate the complication. The check succeeded, and this established that his guess was correct. (Had it failed, some further complication might have been inflicted, or maybe the carvings were really a Symbol of Hopelessness, and the complication could have been stepped up to a level that renders the PC incapacitated.)

That doesn't say that on a failure they would have been incapacitated. It just described some possibilities, by general reference to how MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic works. One possibility would be stepping up the complication.

As I said, I don't (and didn't) know; so you can't know.

 

[pemerton]

I understand the GM could have overridden the request

I don't agree with this.

But they still stated what it would say.

No. They stated what they hoped it would say. Then that hope was put to the test of a dice roll. And the player succeeded in that.

Therefore because of a good roll the player decided what the runes said

This is not true. Because of a success on the roll, the player's hope for what the runes said became true. That's not the player deciding. It's like saying that, because I won the lottery, I decided that I won the lottery.

 

[zakael19]

Edit: early post dupe

 

[hawkeyefan]

I agree it had to be reasonable in context, but the player is obviously aware of that so they made a reasonable request. But they still stated what it would say. The GM had not decided what the runes said ahead of time and if the check had failed they would not have been what the player hoped for.

Because of a reasonable request and a successful roll the player decided what the runes were.

No, the GM decided based on the idea the player expressed as the hope of their character… which was reasonable and didn’t contradict anything already established… and the successful roll.

You have no control over the direction of your life?

Is that what I said?

I said life is not player driven because it is not a game.

I haven't played any myself, but I've seen narrative folks here describe player authoring in ways like the party coming to a new city and one of the players announcing that there is a blacksmith there that he knows because the blacksmith is good friends with his uncle. That example would be the player authoring in a friendly blacksmith directly, not using the character to influence the game world.

And I know I've seen other examples over the years of players authoring fiction directly.

I’ve seen many examples of that kind of stuff from people who don’t always understand those kinds of games… or people who simply allow players to author elements of the fiction directly regardless of the type of game they’re playing (for instance your blacksmith example would be something I’d be fine with in many instances in my 5e games).

And I know some games explicitly allow certain things… the Knight class in Spire, for instance, grants the “Pubcrawler” ability, which allows the player to declare once per session that there is a pub nearby whose owner he knows. But that’s to represent the character’s knowledge of pubs and the importance of pubs amongst knights.

But I can’t think of any other examples of the sort you’re talking about.

 

[AlViking]

I don't agree with this.

No. They stated what they hoped it would say. Then that hope was put to the test of a dice roll. And the player succeeded in that.

This is not true. Because of a success on the roll, the player's hope for what the runes said became true. That's not the player deciding. It's like saying that, because I won the lottery, I decided that I won the lottery.

That's truly amazing syntactical jujitsu. They didn't decide because they had to succeed is totally different from me saying they decided because they made a successful check.

 

[zakael19]

He's also said that it's not a "narrativist" game, because it's not a game in which there is rising action across a moral line driven by player choices for their PCs.

Also the non-ghost player is decidedly not “fit!” The expected outcome is generally “eaten by ghost.”

As Vincent Baker has said[,

PbtA stands for “Powered by the Apocalypse.” It means games inspired by our original game Apocalypse World, and now games inspired by other PbtA games more generally. It’s a self-applied label: because it depends on a game’s inspirations, only the game’s creator can really tell you whether their game’s PbtA or not.​

For some additional context to @Micah Sweet ‘s question: PBTA games tagged as such by the original designers of the engine include things as diverse as Apocalypse World (GM, playbooks, 2d6 move based conflict resoluton, inherent scarcity, etc), Mobile Frame Zero: Firebrands (turns, conversational mini-games making up the larger game, no dice or GM), and Under Hollow Hills (GM, relating resolution vs conflicts, playbooks, no-stats, directly selected plays vs fiction first moves, etc).

Most of the “main line” community follows the AW model to some degree, but you have all the forks (FITD, Belonging outside belonging, carved from brindlewood) showing where you can go.

Annoyingly, there’s a lot of community assumptions about what PBTA is and what makes a “good” one based on some conception of universal rules that’s utter crap.

 

[pemerton]

That's truly amazing syntactical jujitsu. They didn't decide because they had to succeed is totally different from me saying they decided because they made a successful check.

Have you ever described a player, in D&D, who rolls a successful attack as having decided that they hit their oppoinent?

Have you ever described a lottery winner as having decided that they won the lottery?

You are the one who is engaged in ridiculous word-play.

 

[pemerton]

Annoyingly, there’s a lot of community assumptions about what PBTA is and what makes a “good” one based on some conception of universal rules that’s utter crap.

Right. I post about Apocalypse World and (less frequently) Dungeon World based on my knowledge of them. I've thought a lot about AW, discussed it with @chaochou and @Campbell (among others), and drawn on it to help me work out how to GM Classic Traveller.

I don't make general claims about "PbtA".

 

[zakael19]

I haven't played any myself, but I've seen narrative folks here describe player authoring in ways like the party coming to a new city and one of the players announcing that there is a blacksmith there that he knows because the blacksmith is good friends with his uncle. That example would be the player authoring in a friendly blacksmith directly, not using the character to influence the game world.

And I know I've seen other examples over the years of players authoring fiction directly.

I see this in games that explicitly have metacurreny that allow it (Fabula Points in Fabula Ultima come to mind, FATE as well maybe?), so long as the player isn’t contradicting established fiction. Those are not narrativist games however.

Generally how I’d handle above is there’s either a custom move “when you ask around town for…” or some similar mechanic that allows the player to hope to find somebody (or their playbook establishes a permission via a Move), and on a good result the GM still establishes the answer and may ask for details (“oh yeah, there’s a merchant here you’re familiar with - how did you meet him?”). So very much not announcing but either triggering a move with a chance of failure, or leveraging established fiction (eg: the Judge’s playbook starts with defined people in many of the nearby towns to Stonetop, that’s fictional fact as play begins).

 

[zakael19]

Right. I post about Apocalypse World and (less frequently) Dungeon World based on my knowledge of them. I've thought a lot about AW, discussed it with @chaochou and @Campbell (among others), and drawn on it to help me work out how to GM Classic Traveller.

I don't make general claims about "PbtA".

Yeah wasn’t including you there, just grousing about how often I see people who should know better making assumptions not that different from Micah .