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

[Thomas Shey]

I'm actually happy with players creating backstory and whatnot dynamically during play in order to relate to stuff that is happening. That's awesome. Maybe it even helps them out sometimes in a fairly simple way. But given we're playing to make the game interesting and the PCs lives exciting it's not going to create problems, quite the opposite.

Again, I see all these worries people have about players 'abusing' things like this is just hold over from some basically obsolete Gygaxian skill-test play perspective.

Eh, I've seen a few too many people (not a huge number, but more than I'd like) to try and use history or connections to make themselves more important and spotlight grabbing to be entirely blase about it. You can make it work if a game has it baked in so everyone is expected to do it (13th Age's One Unique Thing), or if there's a cost associated with it, but it can absolutely be used as a different but still real version of the malign end of power gaming.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Since I'm more familiar with my world than my players are, we typically have a discussion about their background. It's not that I don't want them to fill in the blanks, it's that I don't want them contradicting established lore that they may not be aware of and I can frequently give them information to build on. If we were using a new world every campaign I wouldn't care as much. For the most part I only veto ideas if they throw in something really bizarre that didn't fit with the rest of the group, gave themselves something like a million GP inheritance or their parents are the most powerful rulers in the land.

The problem is that I've seen this with people who I flat out refuse to believe have things nailed down in their world to the degree the kind of things I'm talking about are contradicting things. Maybe there's people who know everything about ever village within 50 miles and who's who in each one, but I'm willing to put money its vanishingly small. We're not talking about off-the-wall things here, but stuff like "My family has been known as capable artisans in the village for the last three generations."

 

[pemerton]

But they differ in the method of authorship, which matters.

Sure. Who is disagreeing with that?

I am saying that neither is more or less "quantum". They both involve authoring here and now, because of a real-world prompt. Although the thing that is authored did not come into being in the here-and-now of the fiction, but rather already existed.

This is true of farriers, wandering owlbears and the like as much as it is of cooks, strange runes and the like.

There are posters who are equating differences of method with difference of metaphysics: that making it up via the method of extrapolation makes the fiction more "real" or "true" than making it up (say) because it seems like a good idea. Which would imply, for instance, that the slave traders using human ears for barter is less "real" or "true" because the player made it up, as something that their PC knows, rather than the GM having already written it down in their notes.

I am disagreeing with those posters.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's worth noting, this is why I always say that I support specifically genuine player enthusiasm, which I have always defined (or at least have done so consistently for years) as non-exploitative, non-abusive, and non-coercive. Exploitative means something that runs counter to the spirit of the game, the tone and style we're collectively aiming for, often (though not exclusively) by way of ridiculous rule "interpretation" or treating a courtesy as something to be ruthlessly...well, exploited for all it's worth rather than treating the GM and game with a modicum of respect.

Sadly, some players have scar tissue from dealing with GMs that if you wanted to get anywhere you pretty much had to take this tact, and it doesn't go away just because you're now playing with a GM where you don't. Though not all, this is the cause of a lot of player bad habits; being trained into it by GMs who either didn't realize the implications of how they handled things, or didn't care.

Long as a person is not doing any of those three things, I am already 95% confident that whatever it is they're looking to do, it's either acceptable on its face, or just needs mild tweaking to get where it needs to go. And even that 5% is mostly "this just needs more work". I very, very rarely need to stay "no" because...the things my players pursue are reasonable and fun and appropriate.

I'd suggest you've had a fortunate ratio of, at worst "work in progress" players to ones with damage they'll exhibit at that table. I've seen otherwise excellent, and non-malign-intentioned players who will take advantage when opportunity presents. Some as a consequence of personal flaws, some because they've been taught its a necessity.

If they want a thing but it doesn't fit, we spend a couple minutes talking about it, and very nearly always there's a path forward, usually without any real effort at all on my part. I can count the times where I just had to say "no" outright on one hand, in years of running the game, and most of those were with a player that chose to depart the group for personal reasons (which was, honestly, for the best.) I believe it's exactly two cases other than that, one was a new player asking to play something I didn't think I could reasonably run this specific game for (a sapient familiar), the other a plan that made sense to the player but their explanation simply didn't make sense to me (nor anyone else at the table) so they scrapped it and did something else instead.

It really isn't that hard to have people on more or less the same page, and willing to talk things out and address the gap if you aren't there yet.

No offense, man, but if you think that on a consistent basis, I have to say you've been fortunate.

 

[The Firebird]

Sure. Who is disagreeing with that?

I am saying that neither is more or less "quantum". They both involve authoring here and now, because of a real-world prompt. Although the thing that is authored did not come into being in the here-and-now of the fiction, but rather already existed.

This is true of farriers, wandering owlbears and the like as much as it is of cooks, strange runes and the like.

There are posters who are equating differences of method with difference of metaphysics: that making it up via the method of extrapolation makes the fiction more "real" or "true" than making it up (say) because it seems like a good idea. Which would imply, for instance, that the slave traders using human ears for barter is less "real" or "true" because the player made it up, as something that their PC knows, rather than the GM having already written it down in their notes.

I am disagreeing with those posters.

I think you are misunderstanding the argument. The use of quantum in this thread encompasses method--'things are quantum for the players but not for the GM' is a meaningful statement. People are not just using quantum to mean 'authoring here and now because of a real world prompt'.

Also, the claim is not that the slave traders using human ears is less 'real' or 'true'. They both have the same status in the fiction. It is that giving that narrative control to the players makes it more difficult for the players to immerse themselves as their characters. For example, because it heightens the PC/player distinction.

 

[pemerton]

My actual preference is for the player to stick to their PC specifically once the campaign begins, but in practice people throw out little details about their backstories all the time and it's not something I'm losing sleep over. My daughter's PC in a recent game brought the party to stay at her family's home for a couple of days, and we basically made them up together.

I've got no issue with how you did this in your game. But you also post stuff like this:

I want the setting to feel like it exists as a construct independent of the players, so it can be interacted with through their PCs in a way that doesn't require the players to make stuff up that is outside the power of their PCs. Because I like it better. It feels more real to me.

And you use this sort of thing to criticise other posters' RPGing, suggest their settings lack "reality" or "verisimilitude", etc.

And when posters like me and @AbdulAlhazred say that, in reality, almost no one plays with the GM never making stuff up in response to player prompts, or without including player ideas, you accuse us of "dismissing" simulationist priorities.

But it turns out that, "in practice", your game illustrates out point.

 

[Faolyn]

If I was joining a RPG group, and the GM (or other group leader) explained that "the GM controls the world while the players control their PCs", as if that was self-evident and required no elaboration, I would be hesitant to join the group unless it was a pretty casual game, that I could play in pawn stance while maybe giving my PC a cool or funny name.

So you won't play unless you have massive amounts of control. Gotcha.

 

[Faolyn]

Where does the rulebook say that the player has to follow the GM's direction here?

And where does the rulebook say that the GM gets to decide how common it is for people to be able to tap into it? Are you saying that a GM, in Apocalypse World, can veto a player's decision that their PC opens their brain to the world’s psychic maelstrom (which is the trigger for the move: AW rulebook, p 204)?

The GM controls the NPCs and thus controls how often and how well they can tap into the psychic maelstrom.

The PCs control their character and thus are limited in how often and well they can tap into it by their choice of moves and the whims of the dice.

 

[pemerton]

Randomly generating the dungeon as the PCs reach it doesn't work for much the same reason: if nobody knows what's in the next room it can't be foreshadowed, telegraphed, or in any other way made to usefully interact with what the PCs can already observe ahead of time.

Yet is has been done! And it worked.

 

[pemerton]

I really wish you would stop with straw-manning what it means for the GM to control the world. In some games I know I'm joining a linear campaign, many people run sandboxes and in either your character is far more than a pawn.

I think you misread my post. Here it is again:

If I was joining a RPG group, and the GM (or other group leader) explained that "the GM controls the world while the players control their PCs", as if that was self-evident and required no elaboration, I would be hesitant to join the group unless it was a pretty casual game, that I could play in pawn stance while maybe giving my PC a cool or funny name.

I am talking about what I would or wouldn't do. Not what you are doing.