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

[AbdulAlhazred]

I’m just saying… if you think everyone needs to adjust their chosen language based on the feelings of others, then you have a strange way of showing it.

Well, lets put it this way. If one claims to be offended and demands that others change their behavior, one must be willing to do the same. If instead one dismisses such complaints then one is committing the same behavior which one accuses others. One might then fairly be considered inconsistent, and perhaps other things. However, I don't really think it is worth dragging such things out here when the averred slights seem so trivial.

 

[Faolyn]

The point being made had nothing to do with "GM" and "MC" being (or not being) synonymous.

The point was that you can't create a general category of "GM's role in PbtA games" because the different games under the umbrella of "PbtA" have very different expectations of what the GM's role is.

The pivot from sentence 1 to sentence 2 in your quoted post (post #15522) was from "PbtA" generally to "Apocalypse World" specifically, not a pivot from the term "MC" to "GM".

I was speaking very specifically about what a specific person said about a specific game, and how pemerton seems to have misunderstood what he means, and pemerton responded by talking about that game.

Also, I've yet to see a PbtA game that says that the GM shouldn't prep situations/circumstances/clocks/fronts/countdowns/etc.--meaning, stuff involving NPCs and world events. Except, perhaps, for those games that veer more to the Belonging Outside Belonging part of the spectrum. Maybe there are some games like that. I haven't seen them.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I don't require anyone to change. I'm just pointing out that if they use disparaging comment, their "support" of the style is suspect, and that if people here on the forum use those terms, they are self-sabotaging their own posts/threads. They are using terminology that is pretty much guaranteed to derail things and focus the thread on the terminology instead of the meat of the post/thread.

Use disparaging terms or not. That's up to you. Just don't expect things to go well when you attack other playstyles like that.

Or, when someone explains why they don't mean something in a disparaging way, we can maybe try to view it that way?

I mean, I'm fine with everyone using whatever language they feel makes sense to talk about what they're talking about. If I think someone has something wrong, I'll say so and explain why. When you used the term quantum to describe something, I didn't complain about how that was disparaging. I explained why I thought it was a flawed way of viewing things. Others, however, did point out that they did not like the term.

I don't feel the need to try and restrict what people can say because I can't separate myself from the types of games I like.

Well, lets put it this way. If one claims to be offended and demands that others change their behavior, one must be willing to do the same. If instead one dismisses such complaints then one is committing the same behavior which one accuses others. One might then fairly be considered inconsistent, and perhaps other things. However, I don't really think it is worth dragging such things out here when the averred slights seem so trivial.

Oh, I agree. I find this trend to be offended all the time to be a big obstacle to actual discussion.

 

[Maxperson]

Or, when someone explains why they don't mean something in a disparaging way, we can maybe try to view it that way?

No, because if they really meant that, they would take the incredibly easy step of you know, not using the disparaging term in the first place.

I don't remember anyone saying quantum was disparaging. I do recall @AbdulAlhazred trying to say we meant something we didn't, but I don't remember him saying disparaging.

Edit: I think he was accusing of us of One True Wayism, which isn't even remotely true based on any argument we put forth.

 

[zakael19]

Making stuff up, sure. The players/PCs making stuff up, sure. "Hoping" a rune means something when there is no actual in-game reason for it to mean something (was the exit right there?), rolling some dice, and viola! it means exactly that--that, as I said, rather beggars belief.

So question on this: would you think a Seek Insight/Discern Realities (I forget, are you familiar with Dungeon world?) roll where the player says "wait, there's runes on the wall? I'd like to see if they contain any clues about the way out of here" and then roll a 7-9 and pick "what's useful or valuable to me" and the GM goes "ok yeah, so you puzzle over the runes for a bit and realize that they're a set of pictographic landmark directions that will like, kinda get you back on track?" as bad? Because generally when my players roll either Seek Insight or Know Things they're starting from a "I Hope..." position (are there tracks? what's the weakness here? what happens if I let this creature out?...etc).

I uh, honestly forget how direct the "runes to exit" stuff was since that was like 2 weeks ago or something.

It can. Not physical conflict, but mental/verbal. Tea time is a great time for making sniping comments at one another, bless your heart. And anyone who has ever gone shopping with anyone else knows how much conflict there can be during that.

I was musing elsewhere the other day that this is one thing that the FITD series of designs have done so well, especially the ones that came after Blades. The creation of explicit Downtime procedures with focused activities (many of them have excellent fictional framing around deepening connections between PCs or PCs and NPCs in pursuit of mechanical outcomes like recovery) allow for the framing of really awesome scenes. Ones of tension, or denouement. Caring for another PC, motivating them in the sort of "bringing tea and cookies to somebody reliving traumatic events" you'd see in a good piece of media. Hitting the bar for a girl's night out, two characters who don't know what they're doing in this place trying to figure it out together.

Little vignettes that may not have conflict, but definitely have discovery and delight. Plus a lot of people who play TTRPGs really want character to character role-play away from constant conflict, and having this explicit system-level promise that "its coming" has IME led to really good focus in the "score/missions" space so that they can generate more stuff to explore/resolve in upcoming downtime.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No, because if they really meant that, they would take the incredibly easy step of you know, not using the disparaging term in the first place.

I don't remember anyone saying quantum was disparaging. I do recall @AbdulAlhazred trying to say we meant something we didn't, but I don't remember him saying disparaging.

Edit: I think he was accusing of us of One True Wayism, which isn't even remotely true based on any argument we put forth.

I think 'quantum' is a usage that has commonly been used to refer to practices most people here don't approve of. In that sense it could be seen as, to me very mildly, disparaging. However, I don't think it serves any purpose to police something that trivial. I'm sure whichever poster introduced it was trying to convey an idea, not an insult. I think the reference to 'princess play' was probably equally not deprecatory in it's intent.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So question on this: would you think a Seek Insight/Discern Realities (I forget, are you familiar with Dungeon world?) roll where the player says "wait, there's runes on the wall? I'd like to see if they contain any clues about the way out of here" and then roll a 7-9 and pick "what's useful or valuable to me" and the GM goes "ok yeah, so you puzzle over the runes for a bit and realize that they're a set of pictographic landmark directions that will like, kinda get you back on track?" as bad? Because generally when my players roll either Seek Insight or Know Things they're starting from a "I Hope..." position (are there tracks? what's the weakness here? what happens if I let this creature out?...etc).

It certainly seems inevitable that this is nearly always the case. I mean, why else would you DR? The alternative would be to imagine players spamming it around at random. It's additionally key to understand that PCs in a game like DW always have some definite intent! I'm sure we can imagine a situation where characters are just exploring, but if DW is being GMed as-written that will be pretty unusual. 99% of the time, the PC is trying to learn something fairly specific and the player is triggering DR with a declaration intended to evoke specific information.

 

[chaochou]

I think 'quantum' is a usage that has commonly been used to refer to practices most people here don't approve of. In that sense it could be seen as, to me very mildly, disparaging. However, I don't think it serves any purpose to police something that trivial. I'm sure whichever poster introduced it was trying to convey an idea, not an insult. I think the reference to 'princess play' was probably equally not deprecatory in it's intent.

I think you're missing the broader context. The reason the terms get litigated endlessly is because illusionism and railroading are all about not examining play and not having conversations about them. Those playstyles require a lack of examination. Endless dissembling has become the favoured technique for achieving that.

You don't want to police something as trivial - because you're not invested in stalling discussion.

 

[zakael19]

I think the reference to 'princess play' was probably equally not deprecatory in it's intent.

I went around on this some many pages ago when pemerton first linked it. When you have to stop and caveat your ensuing paragraph (from Tuovinen's blog post) with "this isn't an insult or gendered and shame on you for thinking so" you've probably worded something either badly or intentionally provocatively. Plus we like, have a perfectly excellent term for this style of play as he describes it (writing not that long ago in 2020): "OC" / "Original Character" style of play, which has been with us for quite a while.

Not to mention @Faolyn 's note about using a heavily gendered term is going to cause immediate implicit reactions. Like, why not just bypass that by doing better.

One thing I really admire about Baker is how he's like, updated his thinking & writing with the ensuing decades of a) being a parent, b) not being the openly confrontational/angry at the scene person he was in the early 2000s, and c) thinking and onboarding changes in how we can think and communicate for inclusion and better idea sharing (see also his dropping of Dogs).

This is why I said a lot of people in this thread are like, conservative/idiosyncratic D&D DMs arguing with conservative & idiosyncratic narrativist GMs.

 

[Maxperson]

I think 'quantum' is a usage that has commonly been used to refer to practices most people here don't approve of. In that sense it could be seen as, to me very mildly, disparaging. However, I don't think it serves any purpose to police something that trivial. I'm sure whichever poster introduced it was trying to convey an idea, not an insult. I think the reference to 'princess play' was probably equally not deprecatory in it's intent.

Depends on what you mean by "don't approve of." We have been using it ONLY to mean that it doesn't work in our games. Unless that's what you mean, then "don't approve of" doesn't apply. We have expressed no such disapproval for it being used in other peoples' games.