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

[FrogReaver]

That's a matter of opinion. I think I know as much about pre-modern households as anyone else posting in this thread, and I don't find the idea that a cook (i) sleeps in the kitchen and/or (ii) might be working in the kitchen in the middle of the night, problematic at all.

Good! It’s a matter of opinion is a good starting point.

I also note that "2 am" is one the random accretions to the situation not found in the blog.

So? Does that justify ignoring the 2am version vs the 5pm version vs the undetermined entry time version and that those you are responding to have different opinions about those different versions and yet you know this and still insist on using what for them is an ambiguous example that has been explained as such 100x now? I really don’t get why you choose this method of rhetoric.

I don't regard the cook in the kitchen at 2 am as a flawed example. Nor as a strong example. What is the context? What threats had been telegraphed?

If it matters to you let’s work through those different scenarios.

Here's an actual play example that is in the same general neighbourhood:

​

Suppose that the Stealthy check for Aedhros to enter the kitchen unnoticed had failed; or the Scavenging check to grab a burning brand for light. What sort of consequence might have followed? I have no memory now, some years later, of what we at the table were thinking at the time. But one obvious possibility, implicit in the situation, is that the innkeeper comes downstairs to his kitchen, for some-or-other reason (he is hungry, he can't sleep, he has a big feast to prepare for, he want to check that his new hire Alicia is not doing anything untoward, etc, etc).

The fact that the cook example, in the blog, is being presented through the lens of D&D play rather than Burning Wheel play doesn't change any of these considerations, as far as I can see. If a D&D GM wants to use "fail forward" resolution, then they are going to need to adopt some of the other practices that support it, and help make it work: situations with an implicit trajectory of threat and promise; action declarations with express or implicit intents, so that there is some desired outcome of the action which can then be used as a touchstone or measure to aid in determining what will count as a failure; etc.

Why are those things required for fail forward? The only requirement I can see is that failure drives play forward via complications.

Well, in "fail forward" resolution the roll of the dice doesn't represent anything at all. The character attributes represent things; the obstacle/difficulty rating might represent something (depending on the details of the RPG in question; in D&D 5e I think the DC is generally understood to represent something). But the roll doesn't. It's a decision-making device: everyone at the table has agreed to abide by the outcome that the roll determines.

So can we differentiate mechanics that are just decision making devices and those that represent something?

That seems to get close to the heart of where the differences lie for us.

I think it’s also the essence of the common ‘writers room’ criticism. Though I agree that ‘writers room’ isn’t a great way of expressing this idea.

I don't see a random encounter roll representing anything either. The chance of a random encounter often represents something (like how dangerous, or heavily populated, etc) an area is. The distribution of the entries on the table often represents something (eg frequency/rarity of particular sorts of creatures). But the roll itself is just a decision-making device, I think.

All rolls are decision making devices. Some rolls also represent fictional activities. Wandering monster rolls do that. The roll represents the chance the party encounters wandering monsters while in this particular area.

 

[pemerton]

Starting with our working definition



I don't know what a cozy RPG is, but I'm not sold on the suggestion that a tea party cannot have rising conflict simply by virtue of it being a tea party. It obviously won't be the same kind of content rising conflict i'm accustomed to, but there's nothing inherent about tea parties that seem to preclude it?


So the requirement isn't rules to create rising conflict, as you readily agree that white plume mountain has moments of rising conflict, but instead the requirement is that the rules to create sustained rising conflict. (leaving aside for the moment the question on whether the DM as opposed to the rules can generate this sustained rising conflict).

I'm not sure the extent of sustained in this context. Does it mean conflict must at all moments keep rising? Because if that's the requirement I struggle to see how even narrativist games maintain that. But if it's not, then that line between what counts as sustained for narrativist play and non-narrativist play starts to seem very arbitrary.


I'm still not sure whether it's the rising conflict or something else that's supposed to be authored by the players? Maybe the conclusion is that the players author the themes of the rising conflict, while the GM authors specific details around it? I'm not sure. I'm confident saying the players aren't authoring all the bits of the rising conflict. But maybe the authoring you have in mind is over something else? I'm not sure.


I'm not sure how to square the notion of no-pre agreed theme with what I plainly see in the settings and character traits like Beliefs (etc) driving if not outright creating the theme. It's almost like theme again means something super technical and jargony here. Which again, I'm willing to learn what you mean by it, but it will need explained.


This helps I think. Though it does leave open the question, what if explicit player principles tell them things they should or should not have their PC's do? Why doesn't that have the same effect?

Also, most of these games have character advancement XP tracks, so it's not clear how that isn't just another way of telling players what they should do. I mean yea, they are free to ignore those things, but that's also the case in say D&D.


Then setting up a world with internal logic that is going to provide an intrusive agenda would seem to arrive at narrativist play, unless the whole point is to lean into the no-internal logic part.


I feel like players inject their judgement into my normal D&D play all the time, so I think that needs elaborated on as well. Now maybe I wouldn't say the point in D&D is for that. But I want to first understand what you mean via 'inject their judgement'.


Why not? If that's treated as part of either the resolution of the conflict or the initial stage it's set on, why would doing this implicitly mean the definition isn't being met?


Considering I'm trying to figure out what precisely you mean by those terms, I'm not sure jumping straight to a conclusion based on the definition is helpful.


Them defeating the room wasn't resolving the conflict of the frictionless room? Now maybe there wasn't a moral line here. But I need a bit more detail around what counts and what doesn't to work that out solely based on the definition myself.


That depends entirely on what you count as the conflict though? If it's just that room then sure. If that room is just one obstacle in a larger conflict then facing it certainly is a step upward in that conflict. It's not clear to me that your definition nails down the scope of 'conflict' we should be looking at. It feels at this stage like it's not nailed down such that for any example you can just identify one of the many descriptions of conflict as something that fits your definition or doesn't depending on external to the definition factors. Now maybe my initial feels are off. Maybe it's really rigidly intended and that's just not been conveyed yet. Language is hard! I'm not faulting you for struggling to communicate complex concepts, just trying to point out where I think we need more clear definitions or to more clearly define intermediate terms in the definition.


Will try to go back and edit a response for the rest later. This is a very long post!

@FrogReaver, I am not sure where you are hoping to go with this.

If you are trying to work out whether or not your D&D play is narrativist, I don't know if that is something that anyone else can help you with, in the absence of significant accounts of actual play.

If you're unclear why spending an hour of table time doing the maths and inventory management of resting and re-equipping is not rising conflict across a moral line, I'm not sure what more I can add, other than to ask: Where is the conflict? How is it rising? What is the moral line? I'm not saying that it's a prior impossible to have a narrativist game of rest and restock: I just don't know of one, and at the moment am at a bit of a loss as to what it would look like.

The same is true for things like the frictionless room in WPM. There's no rising conflict there: the pressure on the PCs does not step up, the room has no active opposition, it's a puzzle that is primarily logistical in its solution; and there is no moral line. If you see some rising conflict and moral line there, you're going to have to tell me more clearly what it is that you're seeing.

As for the difference between player-authored conflict across a moral line and following along with the workings of the system to reach system-dictated conclusions, I can't do better than (again) adduce the difference between Pendragon and something like The Riddle of Steel or Burning Wheel. In Pendragon, the system generates changes in the traits, and the traits then (help) shape how the player is to play their PC. The traits are a type of "model" of the PC.

Whereas in TRoS or BW, the player establishes their Spiritual Attributes or Beliefs based on their own priorities, and is able to control how they change and how they impact play. For instance, BW expects Beliefs to be broken as much as adhered to, and has a "reward system" for both possibilities. The system doesn't ask the player to faithfully portray their PC, but rather to make a statement by portraying their PC a certain way.

The same contrast applies in the context of setting-based or situation-based rising conflict across a moral line. For setting, contrast a setting that more-or-less prescribes a path or orientation for how the players play their PCs (eg Dragonlance, at least as conventionally played) to one which invites the players to pick a side, and picking a side means escalating a conflict across a moral line (this was what I found in the 4e D&D setting). For situation, contrast a situation that comes with an expectation as to player response (eg many of the "hooks" into D&D modules, which involve rescuing someone or otherwise intervening in some in media res situation), to one that invites the players to act, but leaves that action open - but whatever it is, the players' choice will escalate conflict across a moral line. (Good Prince Valiant scenarios are like this.)

Anyway, as I said, I'm not sure where you are wanting to go with this.

 

[FrogReaver]

@FrogReaver, I am not sure where you are hoping to go with this.

There's a few different directions but probably not mutually exclusive directions.

If you are trying to work out whether or not your D&D play is narrativist, I don't know if that is something that anyone else can help you with, in the absence of significant accounts of actual play.

Kind of, but I think you have that backwards. If I accurately understand what narrativist is then I can explain why my play either is or isn't narrativist and where specifically it diverges. I don't want you to classify my play for me.

If you're unclear why spending an hour of table time doing the maths and inventory management of resting and re-equipping is not rising conflict across a moral line, I'm not sure what more I can add, other than to ask: Where is the conflict? How is it rising? What is the moral line? I'm not saying that it's a prior impossible to have a narrativist game of rest and restock: I just don't know of one, and at the moment am at a bit of a loss as to what it would look like.

If you are going to answer then at least address the meat of my question which was, why can't doing the inventory management be contained either at the start (low conflict) such that conflict rises from there or as part of the conflict is resolved phase. If either of these framings are possible then the amount of table time spent on inventory management doesn't matter (in this specific way). It's still part of the rising conflict.

The same is true for things like the frictionless room in WPM. There's no rising conflict there: the pressure on the PCs does not step up, the room has no active opposition, it's a puzzle that is primarily logistical in its solution; and there is no moral line. If you see some rising conflict and moral line there, you're going to have to tell me more clearly what it is that you're seeing.

Again, my question there was why can't that room be treated holistically as one step in the rising conflict? I'm laying aside the moral line question for a moment, because I'm examining whether this meets the rising conflict criteria first. And if not, then why not.

As for the difference between player-authored conflict across a moral line and following along with the workings of the system to reach system-dictated conclusions, I can't do better than (again) adduce the difference between Pendragon and something like The Riddle of Steel or Burning Wheel. In Pendragon, the system generates changes in the traits, and the traits then (help) shape how the player is to play their PC. The traits are a type of "model" of the PC.

Whereas in TRoS or BW, the player establishes their Spiritual Attributes or Beliefs based on their own priorities, and is able to control how they change and how they impact play. For instance, BW expects Beliefs to be broken as much as adhered to, and has a "reward system" for both possibilities. The system doesn't ask the player to faithfully portray their PC, but rather to make a statement by portraying their PC a certain way.

I don't mind adding an additional criteria in, but I'm struggling to see why either of those instances are regarded as player-authored conflict across a moral line. Your talking about traits and whether the system or player gets to ultimately make a statement about the character.

To clarify, I don't see the conflict in this description at all. As to player authored I presume the difference is in player authored statement vs system authored statement (Side question - do systems author? and if not then who is the author here?) It's not clear where the moral line is either.

The same contrast applies in the context of setting-based or situation-based rising conflict across a moral line. For setting, contrast a setting that more-or-less prescribes a path or orientation for how the players play their PCs (eg Dragonlance, at least as conventionally played) to one which invites the players to pick a side, and picking a side means escalating a conflict across a moral line (this was what I found in the 4e D&D setting). For situation, contrast a situation that comes with an expectation as to player response (eg many of the "hooks" into D&D modules, which involve rescuing someone or otherwise intervening in some in media res situation), to one that invites the players to act, but leaves that action open - but whatever it is, the players' choice will escalate conflict across a moral line. (Good Prince Valiant scenarios are like this.)

This helps clarify what you mean by setting and situation (seem to be subsets of each other to me, but that's not super relevant at this stage).

I'd note that living world sandbox play often predominately features exactly these kind of open ended situations and 'factions' that you can choose to help or not. Often at the expense of others. Do you keep the Axe of Good Fortune for yourself, give it to the Dwarves, or give it to the halflings who have fallen on hard times. That is a moral question, right? The game itself provides benefits for any of those 3 courses of action. And while I would classify this kind of thing as a conflict, I'm not sure rising conflict can be applied to anything like this. Or maybe you can explain how it can? Note: This is essentially where I get the notion that your definition of narrativist uses a few different definitions of conflict within it - which is fine as long as if that's what's happening it's understood.

Anyway, as I said, I'm not sure where you are wanting to go with this.

The best summation is probably a greater understanding of the nuances around the definition of narrativist you gave so that I can classify things for myself.

 

[thefutilist]

This is interesting. The set-up reminds me of the sort of thing I would get from the In A Wicked Age oracles.

A couple of questions, if I may:

* How much of the various character's secrets (eg that Leotrix is really a fraud, that Renald longs to be a poet, that Thomas and his famil/party are really worshippers of a dark god, etc) was known to everyone at the start of play? When I've played In A Wicked Age, generally these backstory elements, everyone's "best interests", etc are shared knowledge at the table.

* How did you resolve interpersonal conflict (eg arguing about things)? One limitation/challenge I've experienced GMing In A Wicked Age is that it leaves talking to be resolved by free roleplay.

Everyone knew every all the different characters goals, so similar to IAWA in that respect.

I do actually think IAWA uses dice to resolve conflicts, it uses a system called the Anthology Engine. In the AE there are three conditions, shamed, injured, exhausted. Any given game uses two of them, so you could have a pure social game using exhausted and shamed.

I've gone over how I resolve conflicts elsewhere. I think the framing is as important as the system. At some point I'll try and record it because there's lots of use of the meta-channel to clarify things and my notes on the scenes doesn't really do them justice.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Oh, I am. The roll represents your best attempt over however long you're willing to give it, as an abstraction of whether you're up to this particular challenge on this particular day/time/opportunity. The only way to get another roll is if-when something materially changes in the fiction: a different character tries it, or a different approach is taken, etc.

Dude attempts to pick lock and fails.
How much time did that attempt take? Do you inform the player beforehand how much time it is going to take for their best attempt?

Otherwise, people would be perfect. A hockey player would score on every shot he took, rather than the on-average 12-ish percent of their shots that score in reality.

I do not think I'm understanding you here.
A hockey player has as many attempts to take a shot as he is given in a game.
Each shot is likely affected by different factors (angles, speed, obstacles, readiness of the keeper etc). These are all different approaches as per your comment in the first paragraph.
Each attempt requires a separate roll.

A swimmer, having established a personal-best time over a given length, would then swim that same time in every race thereafter.

I do not see the correlation.
I'm suggesting a swimmer rolled a 20 that one time and each other time they roll again, how am I suggesting that they roll the perfect score all the time? And every success should not be equated to personal-best time.

In the lock pick example, the person takes x minutes and fails, are you really saying that it makes sense in the fiction for that dude to not be able to pick that lock the whole day because in that 5 minutes his best roll was y?

Take-20 and similar rules, now those are pure gamist.

Take-10 and Take-20 are great rules as they short-cut the issue with the cost (consequence) advertised.
I'm not against ALL gamist rules obviously as I have advertised plenty that I use in this thread to limit my own GM bias.
I am though against rules that make no sense to me for the fiction at the table.

For me the fiction needs to reflect permanent failure for there to be no more attempts allowed - i.e. the person you are trying to persuade becomes annoyed or the lock becomes damaged and you surmise it is now beyond lock picking or the orc is dead, any further attacks have no affect other than to butcher the body.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Everyone knew every all the different characters goals, so similar to IAWA in that respect.

I do actually think IAWA uses dice to resolve conflicts, it uses a system called the Anthology Engine. In the AE there are three conditions, shamed, injured, exhausted. Any given game uses two of them, so you could have a pure social game using exhausted and shamed.

I've gone over how I resolve conflicts elsewhere. I think the framing is as important as the system. At some point I'll try and record it because there's lots of use of the meta-channel to clarify things and my notes on the scenes doesn't really do them justice.

Fascinating. I know little about IAWA other than the name. Makes me wonder if the author(s?) of Ironsworn weren't inspired by this as well as by PbtA, because the three tracks which control your survival (Health, Spirit, and Supply) have a loose similarity, and there are various Conditions you can suffer--if you do, that's sort of the "you're a breath/bad headspace/missed meal away from death" sort of thing.

 

[FrogReaver]

Yes. I also think that many of those RPGers have not really grappled with the tension that arises - which I noted in my post - because X's veridical belief that Y entails that Y, even if Y is not an element, aspect, cause etc of X. Eg if Nero has a veridical belief that the slave traders user human ears for barter, then it follows that the slave traders use human ears for barter. Even though Nero is not an element, aspect or cause of this fact.

And this is not a trivial observation, nor a pedantic one. It underlies a number of recurring issues that arise in the play of RPGs. For instance,

I think it's both trivial and pedantic. More importantly I think all of these things can be better explained by different phenomena.

*It explains why players have to ask the GM so many questions, in order to form veridical beliefs about their PC's surroundings which their PCs would form simply by looking around and listening;​

IMO. Players ask so many questions because there is an objective world that exists and the GM's words are the only true source of information on that. There's no CGI where they can see what precisely is and isn't there themselves. And while a verbal description does a good job of saying things that are there, verbal does a terrible job of telling what isn't there.

That is translating 'looking and listening' into verbal descriptions is always going to be flawed. I mean we could represent the scene with 1,000,000 words per scene and that might get close to capturing the level of a detail of a single image.

*It explains why so much RPGing involves the players being strangers in a strange place, because that sort of set-up establishes at least a degree of congruence between the players' ignorance and the PCs' ignorance;​

I think it's mostly so that the GM doesn't have to do a 10 hour long lore dump at the start. Practical concerns. And also, even if he did, it's not like the players are going to retain that vast amount of detail.

*It explains why Knowledge-type checks are a routine departure from the general principle adopted by simulationist-oriented RPGers that the causal direction at the table and the causal direction in the fiction must coincide;​

I would say the degree of departure there is small and there is not a more simulationist-oriented method, so in lack of an alternative the most simulationist-oriented option was chosen.

It creates the possibility of "power struggles" between the players and the GM: for instance, the GM narrates the PC as failing to dodge and thus being hit in combat, but the player insists that *they are the one who controls their PC, and thus the GM can't narrate that they fail to dodge;​

I've never seen this occur in my life. I doubt anyone has. There may be some example that gets to your point, but dodging in combat is not one of them.

*Or another sort of power struggle: the player insists that their PC believes X, because PC beliefs are the province of the player; the GM insists that, nevertheless, X is false in the fiction, and thus the PC is wrong or deluded; the player refuses to play their PC as deluded, asserting that the PC's state of mind is their prerogative; etc. You might recognise this as one version of the "Smelly Chamberlain".​

Since the world in this playstyle is objective outside the PC's then there is an objective standard to measure delusion against. There's no power struggle here, just deluded players if they think this will actually make the Chamberlain smelly.

 

[FrogReaver]

But it's hardly a criticism of Burning Wheel, or Apocalypse World, or Marvel Heroic RP, that these are not particularly well-suited for gamist play. It's not as if anyone ever asserted the contrary.

Well, I think you view them that way. I think some other proponents of them may view them as more gamist since their resolution mechanics are at least somewhat less DM dependent (at least from the descriptions of AW I've seen). At least that's the vibes I've gotten. Could very well be mistaken.

 

[AlViking]

No, there’s plenty of legacy elements of D&D I like just fine. But there are parts of the game that have changed, and parts that have stayed the same.

Some of those parts that stayed the same probably should have changed when other parts changed, but didn’t. And those unchanged parts can cause some
Issues.

I find the same to be true of some folks’ processes of play. They continue using some processes out of habit rather than because it’s the best process available.

It's not that what I do works for me, continues to work for my players (mix of young, old, experienced with multiple games, only ever play D&D), it's that I cling to outdated processes. Because there are better ways of doing things - after all you do those better things so you know what works better for everyone!

It’s more that the GM’s agenda is meant to interact with the players’. “Make the characters’ lives not boring” for instance is a principle in several narrativist games. It’s pretty broad in scope, but specific in application.

My player's characters lives are hardly boring. Unless of course they really wanted to settle down and run a bakery but then they'd become a retired NPC that can rejoin the game at some point if they want.

The GM need not be purely reactionary. But when they take direct action… let’s say in framing a scene… they should be doing so in a way that is important for the characters, based on what the players have indicated they want to see.

The GM can take narrative direction, I don't and I don't want to run or play a game where they do.

But this is in no way universal. That kind of ability to add something as my character makes me feel more immersed.

This is a matter of preference, and is entirely subjective.

Nobody has said otherwise, quite the opposite in fact. Collaborative world building works for some people and the DMG mentions it. I prefer games where we don't do it.

No, it’s not about simulationism so much as the quantum label. Until the Knowledge check happens, the character both knows and doesn’t know the bit of lore. Then the dice tell us which it is.

This kind of determination in the moment of play is very present in RPGs, and it seems strange to make the distinctions that are being made about them.

There's a difference between resolving uncertainty with the roll of a dice than causing something unrelated to happen because of a failure. Walking through tiger infested lands? You may or may not come into conflict with a tiger, it's uncertain. So we roll the dice. The cook (or the guard or the nosy neighbor) was never going to be there at the time of the lockpicking unless the sleight of hand fails is not resolving uncertainty. It's adding a complication.

 

[AlViking]

Most of the time IME the main considerations against taking prisoners in any numbers are one or more of:

--- we're standing into further danger and if they stay with us, they'll die; but we can't spare anyone to stay behind and guard them if we leave them here where it's safe(r)
--- even if we bail and leave right now we don't have and can't make nearly enough food to keep them all alive long enough to get them back to town
--- we're trying to be stealthy and even if these guys can be trusted they're still likely to give us away unintentionally

It's also worth noting that even in the real world attempting to escape is often seen as the number one duty of a PoW (and, of course, the number one duty of their guards is to prevent that escape).

Large-ish numbers of rescuees or freed friendlies often pose exactly the same problem of "what do we do with them while we're still in the field", if the rescuees don't already have survival skills of their own. Depending on their condition they might also represent a real drain on the PCs' curative powers.

Individually or in very small numbers, though, prisoners and surrendered foes can - depending on their personalities and-or level of loyalty - sometimes become useful henches or even full party members. Other times, though - and again dependent on their personalities - they might look for the first opportunity to murder the PCs in their sleep.

The other, more meta, issue with prisoners is that taking prisoners now means the PCs have to do something with them; and not all players have the patience.

You'd think nobody had ever seen Saving Private Ryan. Reality can sometimes be far harsher than we would like.