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

[AlViking]

When I read this, I see a description of GM-driven play.

I create the world and it's inhabitants, the players have free reign on what their characters do. If the current campaign isn't working we'll discuss it and I'll open up new options and directions. For example, we had a minor arc involving a touch of gothic horror. One of the players said they didn't like gothic horror (although the bit we did was fun for them) so I didn't bother providing options for that potential campaign arc.

I don't consider a game where the players have free reign to go where they want, pursue options or suggest ones I had though of to be GM-driven. I don't really care if you do or if you think my game is somehow bad-wrong-fun because of it.

 

[AlViking]

Are any of the trad-leaning posters here trying to play these games that feature FF and similar techniques? My understanding (which could be wrong) is that there is talk about using such ideas in a more trad game like D&D and its relatives. If so, such techniques would need to be viewed through the lens of the games they are to be used in, not the games they come from (at least not primarily) IMO, so that tweaks and adjustments can be made to allow play to run more smoothly. That may mean adjustments from either direction.

That was a question I had long, long, long ago. I don't really see the relevance of BW for example to anything I play or plan on playing.

 

[pemerton]

A lot of stuff just doesn't seem to 'come off' in trad play.

<snip>

A lot of what I felt, as a GM, was that it was impossible to really prepare for play in a way that fulfilled the advertised concept of what this kind of play is about. That the idea of any kind of impartiality or objectivity of world facts and resolution was really kind of smoke and mirrors to me.

Right. I posted an example from my own play way upthread: post 3218.

So, for instance, the highly technical Ocean's Eleven style of heist, where the players have to do all the planning and detailing of things based on a GM's presentation of a scenario.

Problem number one is the sheer amount of detail that is required. Very soon the players will ask some question that the GM can't answer because they simply have not come up with that information. This yields a number of classic problems which amount to the GM needs to effectively adjudicate whether to allow a certain line of planning/action to go forward or not. The GM is going to face pressure to 'say yes' effectively, but their other option, to say no, something-or-other prevents going that route is not actually better.

Problem two is related to problem one, which is nobody on Earth is knowledgeable enough to make intelligent adjudications of most fairly technical stuff in the first place. I can imagine bank vault security and how mob guys work and even tell you something about security systems (I've built one myself, still insufficient to say much about commercial grade systems). So, there's going to be a diversity of opinions on what matters, how to adjudicate things, etc. and that's going to impact the concept of character competency. You can just try to go with tropes and a general consensus, but the more nitty gritty stuff is, the more that tends to break down.

Problem three is simply that when you try to go about adjudicating tasks in detail, the very large pile of checks that arise out of that becomes a mountain that is extremely hard to climb. In effect this is realistic, it is clearly super hard to break into a high security vault and steal a bazillion dollars! But realism is a crappy game. The original 1e PHB has that cartoon in it where the PCs are playing "Papers and Paychecks." The joke is multi-level, but one level of it is that it would be a terrible game! So, typical task-oriented 'roll for every detail' play breaks down when tasks are stacked too deep, which a technical heist is exactly going to do. Now, you could make all the DCs super easy and just roll with it, eventually one or two checks will fail and that's the drama, but I've not seen many RPGs that are tuned that way.

I'm sure there are other issues you might run into

This reminded me of the old White Dwarf Traveller scenario The Sable Rose Affair. The PCs play mercenaries. They are retained to infiltrate a conspiratorial pirate network based out of a night club (The Sable Rose). The briefing that the patrons give to the PCs includes the following:

The act at the Club, the Markku Beowight Synthesiser Trio, is playing its first ever night's performance on [the world in question], and a party of foreign junior diplomats - all members of the Club's gambling section - are taking four guests not known at the Club for an evening on the tables. Both the group and the guests could be impersonated, although the Club personnel may well be particularly suspicious of these two parties.​

The Classic Traveller rules really don't say anything about how to resolve this sort of thing. They don't even tell us whether or not PCs are (amateur) musicians! Let alone how to adjudicate impersonation, suspicion etc. There is Forgery skill and Bribery skill but no Deception skill.

I think I could probably do it these days, using approaches and techniques I've picked up in the 45 years since that scenario was published. Obviously there are more contemporary systems - including Marvel Heroic RP (a current topic of discussion!) - that would make it a breeze.

In fact I arrived at, basically, Narrativist play by simple NOT DOING THINGS. I found that a lot of the backend work of traditional play was simply holding me back as a creative GM.

Yeah. I used to feel guilty - as a GM - that I was not drawing on all these notes, prepped event timelines, etc that (as per what all the rulebooks and advice columns told me) I had written up, to make my game realistic/verisimilitudinou/etc. But my game was working better without them. Then I read Ron Edwards and the penny dropped!

 

[pemerton]

I'm just going by what you've quoted since I don't own the book. The specific questions quoted about living space and knowing each other don't seem particularly non-traditional, nor incorporating the answers.

What about the barter?

The main difference I see is when the questions are being asked. In trad, they'd probably be done before play begins with few follow up in play, whereas in AW, it seems they'd be a continual process.

This s not just a throw-away difference. It's fundamental!

 

[pemerton]

The GM decided to make the player's hope true in light of the player's successful roll. Sorry I missed that part in this post; I got it the last time I posted about this.

This is like saying that, if you succeed on your to hit and damage roll in D&D, and thus reduce the Orc's hp to zero, the GM decides that the Orc is dead. Unless you're playing a very high-fudge game, that description would be inaccurate: the GM, like everyone else, comes to know that the Orc is dead, because that's what the rules say.

In the episode of play I describe, I - the GM - come to know at the same time as everyone else that the runes reveal a way out, because (like everyone else) I see the player succeed on his declared action.

 

[pemerton]

Enabling a given stance doesn't mean requiring that stance or precluding others.

I was responding to your "requires".

And as I posted way upthread when you said a similar thing, I disagree about "allows". It's pretty clear to me that a lot of action declaration in "trad" play happens in author stance: the players declare actions not because that is what their character would do, but because they want to not disrupt the party, or want to follow the GM's plot hook, and other social-contract type reasons. The 5 new D&D rules even have a bit that encourages this sort of author-stance play:

The Social Contract of Adventures
You must provide reasonably appealing reasons for characters to undertake the adventures you prepare. In exchange, the players should go along with those hooks. It’s OK for your players to give you some pushback on why their characters should want to do what you’re asking them to do, but it’s not OK for them to invalidate the hard work you’ve done preparing the adventure by willfully going in a different direction.

If you feel like you’re keeping up your end of the bargain but your players aren’t, have a conversation with them away from the gaming table. Try to understand what hooks would motivate their characters, and make sure the players understand the work you put into preparing adventures for them.​

 

[AlViking]

Is @hawkeyefan one of the posters irritating you with their wrong ideas about Narrativist play? If not, I'm not talking about them.

And no, personally I don't see 4e as all that close to other versions of D&D, particularly the way you have presented yourself as playing it.

It's significantly different in my opinion. It also didn't have any narrative leaning ideas that I recall.

 

[pemerton]

It's significantly different in my opinion. It also didn't have any narrative leaning ideas that I recall.

4e D&D is replete with "narrative" leaning ideas. Here's an old thread about some of them: D&D 4E - Pemertonian Scene-Framing; A Good Approach to D&D 4e

 

[AlViking]

4e D&D is replete with "narrative" leaning ideas. Here's an old thread about some of them: D&D 4E - Pemertonian Scene-Framing; A Good Approach to D&D 4e

If you say so.

 

[Maxperson]

Don't sell yourself short, I'm sure we could have at least a few more posts that repeat the exact same thing over and over.

Don't sell yourself short, I'm sure we could have at least a few more posts that repeat the exact same thing over and over.