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

[Lanefan]

I don't run narrative games so I have only seen be a fan of the players/characters here, but my impression as I've said upthread is that it is similar with many parts of the DMG 2014, where it offers good-natured advice on GM etiquette, handling different players and their creations.

I do not think it is an expression to buck the system.
At the end of the day we should all be charitable and logical in that narrative RPGs are still games with rules and principles, and what would be the point of those rules if "be a fan of the characters" was meant to ignore those rules.

EDIT: And to be fair to @Lanefan and @Maxperson's comments there is indeed a conflict of interest, how can there not be, I have spent months and years with these characters... frankly I do not know how a GM isn't a fan of the PCs at their table after some time.

When I see "be a fan of the characters" my first thought is that it's quietly advising the GM to, when the chips are down and a character's under serious threat, pull your punches or fudge things such that the character scrapes through; as opposed to just letting the dice fall where they may even if it means the character drops dead.

That's not neutral.

Also, "be a fan of the characters" means, in effect, cheer for them; and when you're the one providing the opposition this puts you in the rather bizarre position of cheering against yourself. And sure, this means you get to cheer if you win and cheer if you lose, but it does seem somewhat counterintuitive.

 

[Pedantic]

This is just confusion about fandom vs. sports teams, right? We're mixing up "be interested in" and "root for?"

Mostly this feels like more confirmation that we're trying to shove two disparate things into the same container and getting annoyed when they're incompatibly different.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Well, it's their character, so they should know if its in character or not. (And "it's what my character would do" is only a problem if the player is using it as an excuse to be an antisocial jerk.)

Assuming a game that's anything other than mostly normal people doing mostly normal people things, the PCs are people who experience terrifying experiences hundreds or thousands of times. They get used to it. If they're going to run away in terror, then they probably wouldn't have made it past their first few adventures. You can even assume that many of them are predisposed to not feeling the fear as strongly. Think of people who are terrified of spiders versus people who keep them as pets, or people who faint at the sight of blood or get sick if they see vomit versus people who aren't bothered by the ick at all.

Plus, a typical D&D-style PC been subjected to lots of head injuries, poisons, magical effects, etc. The "react like normal people" part of their brain is probably burned out simply from that.

what about when 'it's not in character for my character to do that' is actually saying something closer to 'it's not what i want my character to do'?

i may not want my character to miss attacks against their opponent but that doesn't mean i don't have to make attack rolls, hey! they've been adventuring all this time they've made attacks against hundreds or thousands of guys, they get used to it, if they didn't know how to swing a sword they probably wouldn't of made it past the first few adventures, you can even assume that many of them are predisposed to being able to hit a guy, think of people who are professional fighters versus people who don't know how to throw a punch, or people who can snipe a moving target from miles away versus people who couldn't hit the broad side of a barn.

you might not want your character to be frightened by their opponent but that doesn't mean they shouldn't have to make a morale roll.

 

[AlViking]

Because you continue to misrepresent it as being nonsensical "quantum screaming cook." Maybe if you actually acknowledged what it really was instead of continually using strawmen, we would accept it was a preference rather than, well, the conservatism of a D&D fan.

I don't remember the last time I used the word "quantum" to describe the cook. On the other hand the cook only exists because of the failed check, if the cook was always there they'd always be an obstacle to overcome whether the check to open the lock was successful or not.

It's not "conservative" to acknowledge that I have a different preference and approach to the game.

 

[Lanefan]

I think the idea of "fan" as it applies to "be a fan of the characters" is more the way we can be a fan of a fictional character rather than a sports team.

Like with a fictional character, we're pulling for them... we want them to make it... we want to see them pull through in the end. But we also want them to be in peril, right? We want to see them go through the wringer a bit.

We want conflict. We want the characters' lives to be interesting because then we get to see them face adversity and be tested. We're hoping they pass the test, but either way, we're watching and pulling for them.

And we also want their peril to be reduced. As it's not our production to control, we can't do that with a movie or novel; as GMs running games, however, we can. It's a temptation we have to resist; and the easiest means for doing so is to be a detached neutral arbiter rather than a fan of anyone.

I think this is an important difference in the type of fan that we should be thinking of in this context. Being a Yankee fan and wanting to watch them pummel the Red Sox 26 to nothing after 5 innings is a different thing than being a fan of Frodo or Luke Skywalker or Hawkeye or whoever.

Have you met some of the hard-core fanbases of franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek, or Tolkein?

They also want to see 26-0 victory-equivalents for their franchise over other franchises (Star Wars vs Star Trek in particular), far more so than Yankees fans want to see the Red Sox get crushed!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't think anyone's really suggesting successes shouldn't be honoured. Sure there sometimes might be a complication attached but underneath, a success is and remains a success.

The flip side, though, is that failures should also be honoured; and not everyone seems on board with that.

Oh yes we are! (Granting I'm not sure who you are referring to). Soft pedalling failure and coddling players is just crappy play! You knew the stakes, you declared your intention to take that risk. A GM, at that point, must follow through.

 

[clearstream]

If you look through the first couple of pages of this thread, you'll see plenty of examples of this usage.

Thanks. To my reading, those posters had in mind something like an adventure path or preordained story. They worried about failing a roll when only a success could continue the story. A good example of a basic tension between ludo and narrative.

Coming back to our conversation, you wrote that "the idea that situations have a trajectory - implicit threats and promises - is fairly key to play in which "fail forward" is used." That seems reinforced by those posters' comments, like fail forward "creates [a world] where a specific group of heroes played by some players continue forward in the narrative rather than stopping dead. Like in a movie."

It seems that in disparate modes of play, fail forward can be used to address the tension between game and narrative, by conforming results to narrative (e.g. dramatic) trajectories each mode cares about. Some narrower, some broader or more structural, some GM driven, some more player driven.

 

[Thomas Shey]

you might not want your character to be frightened by their opponent but that doesn't mean they shouldn't have to make a morale roll.

Or at the least, don't think they should be, when your view on that may not be founded in anything but expectations (as in, thinking its easier to avoid that than it is).

But of course, to be fair, there are all kinds of games that have various tools for saying "No, actually, I didn't fail that roll". Sometimes its even automatic ("Take 10").

It just that people are generally more tolerant of, and feel its less crucial to characterization when that happens with physical than mental situations, and even moreso with emotional tasks. Its just a thing, and my thinking its a slightly incoherent design decision to leave emotional success entirely up to the player isn't going to change the fact that's something a great number of them expect. Its not helped by the fact attempts to implement this sort of thing are often mind-numbingly simplistic which doesn't encourage people.

 

[TwoSix]

The problem is that rules like morale or Persuasion checks is that they make people play not in character. They have to run away because the dice say they do, not because it's in character for them to run away. They have to believe an NPC or accept someone's arguments because the dice say they do, not because the NPC is actually believable or made a good point.

In other words, you stop playing your character and let the dice play them instead.

I simply don't see that as a problem. I see that as good design.

I find the game more interesting when my role is to depict the character as they develop, rather than have 100% agency over exactly what the definition of the character is at all times.

Edit: If "good design" is too normative, substitute in "design that I prefer and seek out".

 

[Lanefan]

Well, that would be completely contradictory to some of the things I know @pemerton said in this very thread, where he spoke of the importance of character-development moments that are not high-octane pulse-pounding mile-a-minute action.

It seems to me that you are thus committing more or less the same error Lanefan did, all those thousands of posts ago; namely, mistakenly believing that an emphasis on avoiding the "boring" or on advancing the state of the fiction necessarily means never having anything contemplative, deliberative, or tactical, and instead always-and-exclusively doing...well. What I just referred to: high-octane pulse-pounding mile-a-minute action.

How do you square that with Manbearcat's "firehose of adversity" that he often mentions as an aspect of play?

'Cause yes, the way the words read it comes across as the PCs are never supposed to get a moment's respite, which is why those games come across as being stressful to play.

As from the many play examples we've been given there clearly do seem to be periods of reflection, downtime, etc. mixed in with the action, this points to a misalignment between what the words say on the page and what actually gets played at the table(s); with the latter being by far the more reasonable.

"Conflict" can be high-octane or slow-burn. It can be pulse-pounding or cerebral. It can be almost anything. The thing we are avoiding is not moments of reflection, composure, and contemplation. It is moments where, as stated, nothing actually happens. Ruminating on your deeds, realizing that what you thought you wanted isn't what you actually wanted? That stuff is, as you say, solid gold, and I have found the rules of Dungeon World to be very, very good at drawing out those moments--specifically because of their push toward moments of conflict, even if those moments of conflict are not necessarily moments of violence or action.

Agreed that conflict doesn't have to involve violence or action. That said, while ruminating on your deeds etc. might indeed be solid gold, to me that's also a "nothing's happening" sequence similar to the players in-character chatting around the campfire. It's great stuff, but it's also "nothing's happening".

Personally I have never been particularly good at any form of chess, but would very much dislike blitz.

I did OK at blitz, as opposed to regular chess, mostly because my main problem in regular chess was that I always moved before thinking everything through. With blitz, this forced the ruminators to work closer to my usual speed, which gave me the advantage.

I can promise you, while that scene was manufactured for funnies, even if it were real? My Dungeon World game could not be further from this. If this were levied as an accusation, rather than being the "oh, here's an example of the problem I think is present here", I would honestly have felt pretty seriously offended, since...yeah, again, that couldn't possibly be further from the experience in Jewel of the Desert.

Pushing the story along doesn't mean nothing but pulse-pounding thrills. It means we don't dwell on moments where everyone is just standing around doing not-much-of-anything. "Ruminating on my values" is very, VERY much doing something--doing one of the absolute most important things, in fact. "Building or changing my connection(s) to my friends" is literally something Dungeon World specifically expects the players to do (and rewards them for doing it). Etc.

I give you my word, "LEEEEEROY JENKINS!!!" simply, flatly, does not describe the experience of any PbtA game I've played or run.

Not sure if you're saying PbtA isn't suited for gonzo play at all, or just that you've never used it for such.