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

[FrogReaver]

Well if a hypothetical you were interested in that type of stuff happening then you could create characters and setting that made it far more likely to happen. Then you could also use a system that operated on a granularity where those decisions weren't undercut by tactical choices, or put another way, renders player tactical skill irrelevant.

Then that's a kind of base line Narrativism, or one variant anyway.

Why shouldn’t the moral and tactical collide though? Like fade to black torture of an enemy is a tactical choice, but it’s also a moral choice.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes… that’s my point. If I say that modern conventional wisdom should be X, where X is something fr games you consider narrativist, you would argue against it. You’d remind me that it’s all preference and there shouldn’t be one way to do things.

But if the conventional wisdom from 25-30 years ago should be exempt from your crusade against one-true-wayism?

If it’s bad in your eyes now, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be bad in your eyes then.

Many things I prefer in gaming aren't currently (or ever) conventional wisdom. Some things are. My interest isn't in whether any given nugget of play is practiced by a lot of people or for a long time. My interest is instead about whether or not I think that nugget appeals to me and to my game. Conventional wisdom as a metric doesn't enter into it.

All playstyles are equally valid and valuable in general, and I will defend anyone's right to play how they want, but they are not equally valid and valuable to my preferences.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Why shouldn’t the moral and tactical collide though? Like fade to black torture of an enemy is a tactical choice, but it’s also a moral choice.

It's a moral choice outside the setting. Inside, that torture still happened, and your PCs were involved.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I often find in d&d the expedient choice conflicts with the moral choice. In that sense d&d often features a ton of choices across moral lines.

I'd find it interesting to examine some examples.

 

[Campbell]

Why shouldn’t the moral and tactical collide though? Like fade to black torture of an enemy is a tactical choice, but it’s also a moral choice.

Because I don't want to focus on the tactical and want our focus attention on these moral flashpoints. I also just do not want to spend 2 hours and 45 minutes in a 3-hour session to get to part I care about or to have players try to plan a way around those moral decisions. I really do not want players distracted in those moments thinking about other things. I want them present.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Because I don't want to focus on the tactical and want our focus attention on these moral flashpoints. I also just do not want to spend 2 hours and 45 minutes in a 3-hour session to get to part I care about or to have players try to plan a way around those moral decisions.

Splendid. This is why there are different games for different people.

 

[Faolyn]

Maybe, just maybe, that codified role is something people don't care for. It may be "accumulated wisdom" to you and certainly some of it likely applies to a D&D game, at least from time to time. But it's also very focused on the narrative, pushing the game forward, setting up tough choices. Take the last point - tough choices. Sometimes I throw those in now and then and in other campaigns depending on the group it never comes up. Yet as a GM for many PbtA games that's what you're instructed to do. Along with, of course, resource moves in cases where the characters fail or partially fail.

There's nothing wrong with any of that if it's what you want. But it's not that I don't want it because it's new, that's a derogatory assumption that gets repeated ad-nauseum. I don't want it because I prefer a more simulationist approach whether running a game or playing. I'm glad you have games you enjoy. The assumption we would also enjoy it if only we knew better is insulting.

So:

As a GM, you're (generic you're) going to act certain ways.

But also, you don't want to see those ways written down.

This makes no sense.

OK, look at the GM role, principles, agenda, etc., from Dungeon World.

How to GM
When you sit down at the table as a GM you do these things:

• Describe the situation
• Follow the rules
• Make moves
• Exploit your prep

Agenda
Your agenda makes up the things you aim to do at all times while GMing a game of Dungeon World:

• Portray a fantastic world
• Fill the characters’ lives with adventure
• Play to find out what happens

Principles

• Draw maps, leave blanks
• Address the characters, not the players
• Embrace the fantastic
• Make a move that follows
• Never speak the name of your move
• Give every monster life
• Name every person
• Ask questions and use the answers
• Be a fan of the characters
• Think dangerous
• Begin and end with the fiction
• Think offscreen, too

Moves
Whenever everyone looks to you to see what happens choose one of these. Each move is something that occurs in the fiction of the game—they aren’t code words or special terms. “Use up their resources” literally means to expend the resources of the characters, for example.

• Use a monster, danger, or location move
• Reveal an unwelcome truth
• Show signs of an approaching threat
• Deal damage
• Use up their resources
• Turn their move back on them
• Separate them
• Give an opportunity that fits a class’ abilities
• Show a downside to their class, race, or equipment
• Offer an opportunity, with or without cost
• Put someone in a spot
• Tell them the requirements or consequences and ask

Just about every single thing here is something that's done in standard D&D, with the possible exceptions of "Ask questions and use the answers" and "Be a fan of the characters." And only a couple of these "push the narrative," and none of them do so in a way that's not used in typical D&D.

So why is it that actually listing these things in a way that is useful, not just to new players but to veterans, is unwelcome?

 

[Faolyn]

Nor are you forced to play a RPG that has rules like those found in Classic Traveller or Pendragon.

I wasn't talking about Traveller or Pendragon. Although considering how old both those games are, it's no wonder they didn't think about player consent.

 

[Enrahim]

It's an interesting analysis, but it feels like there really isn't much difference between NY and SBY (except for one I'll address below). That is, the only difference I can see is that, in SBY, the players have a more overt responsibility to be as proactive as possible, while NY they should still be proactive, but not being all-proactive all the time is fine. In pretty much every other sense, though, your analysis seems to put the two very close to one another. Basically, their only difference is the degree to which the players need to be "taking the lead" in terms of what matters and where the action "goes".

Conversely, RRY seems to be distinctly different from both of the other two at almost every turn, except that very last one...which I'm not entirely sold on?

That is, there is no need to "reframe" anything at all in the RRY approach. The GM just declares what they wish to declare; the players are simply along for the ride regardless of what the rolls say. In NY, it's necessary, and in SBY, it's simply a greater challenge because, as before, the players are required to furnish more than a minimum amount of information. They need to be pretty proactive, as before; it is possible for the GM to struggle if the players simply aren't giving them enough to work with, but far from guaranteed. Hence, it's not that the technique doesn't work, it's that the technique doesn't work for a GM acting autonomously.

And I think that's a pretty big kicker here. In both NY and SBY, the GM cannot act entirely autonomously. The only meaningful difference between NY and SBY is that sometimes the GM can act autonomously in NY, but she is nearly incapable of acting autonomously in the most extreme versions of SBY. In RRY, the GM not only can act entirely autonomously, they always act autonomously.

That's a pretty big difference, and shows how NY is much closer to SBY than to RRY. In NY, it might be the case that the GM can act autonomously, but it's not guaranteed to be possible--some of the time, they won't be able to. In SBY, it's rare to nonexistent that the GM can act autonomously--so both have a presumption, unless proven otherwise, that autonomous GM action is not guaranteed. RRY has autonomous GM action not only guaranteed, but outright enforced, all the time.

Can we come up with two additional methods that would fit into the missing spots? That is, it seems to me this reveals a pretty major gap: there should be a #Y where autonomous GM action is always possible but never required (the exact midpoint between SBY and RRY), and a separate $Y where the natural state is the GM acting autonomously but it isn't guaranteed that they will.

Or, in more tabular form:

RRY : GM functionally always acts autonomously, barring extremely rare exceptions
$Y : GM is presumed to act autonomously, but might decline to at times
#Y : GM always can act autonomously, but never has to; no presumed bias either way
NY: GM might be able to act autonomously, but is never guaranteed to be able to
SBY: GM functionally can't act autonomously, barring extremely rare exceptions

For me, I find that the vast majority of D&D games that bill themselves as "sandbox" games are closer to NY, or (occasionally) #Y, whever we choose to call it. Games like pure no-myth PbtA or Ironsworn are full-throated SBY, especially the latter, since it doesn't actually need to have a GM at all. Further, most games that are railroad-y are $Y, not RRY; it's actually pretty rare to get something as utterly extreme as RRY (hence my use of "Dragonlance-style" etc. as my term for this sort of thing, as that's one of the rare places where D&D goes so far as to assign individual characters and even spoken lines to specific players.)

Yes, the examples were picked due to the interesting relationships with the 3 concepts (player principle, GM principle and FF technique). Even if SBY and NY is seemingly quite similar, the difference makes all 3 concept "behave" very differently in the context of the play. Introducing RRY into the analysis was mainly to introduce a "baseline" highlighting the key contrast between SBY and NY. But I found it a bit facinating how both NY and RRY contrasted with SBY in terms of fail forward.

I find it really interesting how you identify SBY as no autonomy, no-myth PbtA/ironsworn though. My modelling idea for it was to take an aspect of living world D&D and amp up to 1000. None of these was meant to be realistic playstyles, but rather to be used as tools illustrating how even moderate differences in play can have major influence on how a concept would be interpreted into the playstyle.

I introduced the short form to allow some mild association with real world play styles for comprehension, while using the abrevations to try to ephasize distancing it from real play styles. Not sure how well that attempted linguistic trick worked.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So:

As a GM, you're (generic you're) going to act certain ways.

But also, you don't want to see those ways written down.

This makes no sense.

OK, look at the GM role, principles, agenda, etc., from Dungeon World.



Just about every single thing here is something that's done in standard D&D, with the possible exceptions of "Ask questions and use the answers" and "Be a fan of the characters." And only a couple of these "push the narrative," and none of them do so in a way that's not used in typical D&D.

So why is it that actually listing these things in a way that is useful, not just to new players but to veterans, is unwelcome?

I'm sure it's quite welcome...to players of the game in which they appear.