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

[EzekielRaiden]

When people tell me that the only reason I like what I like is because of it's what I'm used to, when they insist that the only reason I don't like some other game because I don't understand it, when I am told repeatedly that what I do is bad (e.g. "Nothing happens on failure is terrible") then yes, I am going to push back against that. People tell me that some feature of some other game would tell me that it is superior and then when I try to discuss any actual details of how to use fail forward and give the example of someone trying to break into a house, I'm creating a strawman, yes it's a bit frustrating. If I attempt to explain why another game doesn't work for me criticism focuses solely on my not using the exactly correct precise wording while ignoring the rest of my post which covers many other issues, it gets old.

But apparently I'm just a snob because I like D&D since I'm told time and again that the only reason I like it is because of tradition. I happen to like the current version, even if there were several things I wish they had done different. I have never, will never, tell anyone else that they're playing the wrong game or the wrong way. I don't care for PbtA games but I will never tell anyone that just because their game is different that it should play more like D&D. For that matter I wouldn't see the point of going onto a forum dedicated to PbtA games and constantly extol the virtues of D&D. I wouldn't see the point.

Perhaps, when a person speaks in the generic, they aren't making a personal attack against you.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The Dragonlance DL1-12 module series might just be the railroadiest adventure path ever printed so I'm not sure I'd want to hang my hat on it as a good example of how to do...well, anything, really.

I never said otherwise. I have, in fact, repeatedly used DL modules as my example of the most maximally railroaded style of D&D one could possibly play, bordering on "having scripted lines for every player".

I am solely using them as disproof of the claim that the everpresent threat of death--even if it is not "constantly imminent danger of death"--is a "structural necessity" for D&D.

Even if you don't want actual character death on the table, it's still worth having a real threat of character death on the table.

Perhaps; perhaps not. Something more substantial than mere assertion is required. As with a great many things in game design, there are always costs to any choice. Some of those costs can be quite steep. Some of them can be steeper still in specific contexts: skittish players, for instance, which is a problem I already have in abundance.

And the best way to do this IMO is to in fact kill off a few characters in the early going before their players get too attached to them;

Not possible. I would need to kill their characters off before they are created.

More importantly, this is precisely the "shock therapy" I already addressed upthread. For some players (IMO and IME a sizable minority, but a minority nonetheless), doing this is great, because then they know death is a real threat and thus don't need to be reminded but will still keep it in mind.

But for other players--IMO and IME a slim majority--it does exactly the opposite of what you want. Instead of enhancing their motivation, this deadens it. They see that any investment they might put in not only can but will be ripped away from them suddenly, without warning, without anything they could've done to stop it. So why bother? Or, alternatively, if they are going to bother, they're going to take immense pains to ensure, as much as humanly possible, that those risks cannot happen. Hence, they will avoid all creative or risky endeavors, because creativity is often dangerous and risk is always dangerous. They'll veto any group plans that would risk death, because they don't want their participation in play to be ripped away because they tried to get a tiny, temporary advantage; it's a simple cost-risk-benefit analysis, the benefit is small, temporary, and not guaranteed to be useful, the risk is (as they see it) both extremely high in likelihood and extremely high in potential loss, and the costs are often high for attempting, but the opportunity cost of not attempting is low. So they take the safest route each and every time.

If they're outnumbered by the risk-neutral or even risk-seeking players, these risk-averse players will turtle up more and more and more, often building lingering resentment because they feel their preferences, their participation, are valued less by their supposed companions than See Big Number Happen and Experience Crazy Stuff even if that crazy stuff ends up being upsetting (to the risk-averse players) rather than enthralling. And the reverse happens if the risk-tolerant and risk-seeking players are outnumbered by risk-averse ones; the risk-tolerant will become more and more annoyed at the group avoiding stuff that probably could succeed but which has a risk of serious problems, while the risk-seeking will build up that same resentment as before, finding the majority stuffy and boring and unwilling to have fun.

Trying to force someone who is risk-averse to become risk-tolerant or even risk-seeking is, frankly, rude as hell and that exact attitude is one of the reasons why I don't have a lot of sympathy for OSR fans who complain about people ignoring their preferences and desires. Their approaches frequently come with baked in hostility toward any view other than their own: you MUST be risk-tolerant (or, preferably, risk-seeking), or else the game Just Isn't For You, Go Play Something Else. (Often with quite a bit more judgmental-ness than that!)

 

[Faolyn]

For the principles, I used the heading for the first 3, then I went to the site and read the full description before commenting on the rest.

Are you sure it is not you that is misunderstanding something here?

No, I read them quite thoroughly.

 

[AlViking]

Not for the many 1000s of RPGers who adopted RPGs that were deliberately designed to eschew the non-simulationist elements of classic D&D (thing like hp, saving throws, class + level, etc).

So? Every TTRPG abstracts things. They just choose different things and different degrees. No TTRPG can accurately model reality, you'd need an AI and a super computer far more powerful than anything we have.

Simulation as far as I'm concerned is not about accuracy. It's about the approach, how the game is run and how we interact with that fictional world. Closest explanation I've seen is New Simulationism - Sam Sorensen.

 

[Faolyn]

Well, if that is what you think, I guess that might explain a thing or two. Let me just say then that I have encountered people with a somewhat different stance in the past..

Yes, different people run games differently.

 

[AlViking]

Perhaps, when a person speaks in the generic, they aren't making a personal attack against you.

Who said I take it personally? That doesn't mean I won't push back or like it.

 

[pemerton]

Over what scale of in-game time is the conflict expected to keep rising, in order to "count" as such?

The issue is not in-game time. In-game time can pass at the rate of seconds per hour of play, or years per hour of play, depending on how the participants and the system they are using choose to handle it.

I'm talking about what play, at the table, is focused on. What it is about.

This is why the notion of "what counts" is also misleading, in my view. I'm not talking about "tick a box" criteria. I'm talking about what sort of experience a group of RPGers is looking to get out of their play. If the play at your table is focused on rising conflict across a moral line as authored by the players, I think you will know: because what you will be focused on, as a player and as a group, is what the conflict is and how the characters, as played by their players, respond to it and what follows from those responses.

There are lots of configurations of moral crisis. I'm not a huge fan of Vincent's definition for that reason but it serves it's purpose.

I don't see Vincent as offering a definition, either in the sense of necessary and sufficient conditions or in the sense of offering an account of what narrativism "means". He's pointing to a type of paradigm or typical case.

The first time I read Edwards's "story now" essay, I could see that there were cases of narrativist play that didn't quite fit his "official" description: for instance, he correctly identifies Pelgrane's Dying Earth RPG as supporting narrativist play, because " its Situations are loaded with the requirement for satirical, judgmental input on the part of the players." However, that satirical, judgemental input will not necessarily mean that "at least one engaging issue or problematic feature of human existence [is] addressed in the process of role-playing." It's likely to be a bit more wry and "meta" than, say, Burning Wheel or HeroWars/Quest play.

Upthread I also pointed to my own BW play involving Aedhros, where the line over which the conflict arises is as much an ethical (ie self-regarded evaluative) as a moral (duties to others) line.

Still, the idea that a question of value is put into play, and that play somehow "speaks" to it via player-decision-making, is what everyone is getting at. The contrast is being drawn with tactical play, "game board" play, etc of the sort that a lot of RPGing shares in common with wargaming; and also with play where the players are expected to subordinate their evaluative, aesthetic etc judgement to the system and the fiction.

I think that last point is, in terms of the nature and history of RPGing as a hobby, pretty key. For two related reasons:

(1) Because of the way that RPGing sets out to emulate, draw inspiration, etc from fiction, it often presents value-laden situations: but does so with an aspiration to present an interpretation or a re-enactment of that fiction (upthread I used the word "fidelity");

(2) It's fairly notorious that RPGing can give rise to "power struggles" between the GM and the players over the fiction, and these issues of fidelity can be an aspect of that ("that's not what a paladin would do"; "that's not what your character would do/know"; "that's not what the oath of your clan requires"; etc, etc).​

Conventional D&D play even has a slang term that only makes sense because of these issues: "murder hobo". The whole concept arises because the way the game is structured tends to create no particular game play incentive to portray anyone but an expedient, self-serving sociopath; but most RPGers can see that they want a fiction with more admirable protagonists; and so a standard of fidelity to in-fiction demands or expectations (alignment, or being a law-abiding citizen, or whatever) is adopted to solve the problem.

Anyway, I know that you - @thefutiist - don't need me to rehearse all the above to explain what "narrativist" RPGing aspires to. You're well aware of it.

You're correct that all that exists is the potential for rising action. Another reason I'm iffy on Vincent's definition. There is a conflict that means there are no good choices but it's entirely possible for the characters to just choose something and live with the consequences.

I think Vincent points to rising action/rising conflict because he is especially thinking about game design, and how a game's approach to framing and consequences can reward and foster narrativist play, as opposed to tending to squelch it or shut it down when it does rear its head.

But that same orientation in thinking can, in my view, be helpful in thinking about play.

For instance, there are features of one conventional approach to D&D play that mean that the "kill the prisoners" thing tends to get squelched: the PCs are a party, and need to keep working together; they are on a mission or trying to complete an adventure together, and so need to avoid intra-party conflict; at the meta-level, the focus of the group is on playing the adventure, and so the moral argument or moral conflict is treated as a one-off, maybe providing some colour, but doesn't ramify into future events (future framings, future action declarations etc) or if it does ramify that is in operational/expedience terms (eg now someone wants revenge against us) rather than in terms that focus attention of the moral meaning of the choice.

I think a RPGer who want to foster or develop their own narrativist play, and isn't sure how to do so or is wondering about why it tends to fizzle out or fall a bit flat when it happens, can be helped by thinking about how to sustain that rising conflict across a moral line. I know, in my own experience, that I had to abandon some more conventional approaches to framing and consequence to get there in my own play.

This example (2nd example) sounds very much like something that could occur in one of my d&d games. It’s a great illustration of what conflict across a moral line is, which is what the example was an answer to.

Though I’m not really seeing any rising conflict here. There’s certainly conflict, but rising? There’s some potential for rising conflict but it could also be uneventful. You cross without being noticed. You face the prophecy head on and discover the prophecy/prophet is false. Both success options that end this particular conflict before it ever rises.

To follow on from what I just posted, this is where approaches to framing, consequence etc matter. Which is why ideas like "fail forward" and principles like "make the players' characters' lives not boring [while also] be[ing] a fan of the players' characters" come in.

For instance, if the players decide that their PCs travel overland, in violation of the ancient treaty, then the next time a check is failed the GM can have regard to that in establishing a consequence. If the GM establishes as a consequence, "You've run out of rations", then (everything else being equal) that shifts the focus of play towards logistics. Compared to, say, "You see a group of riders cresting the rise ahead of you", which shifts the focus of play towards the treaty. Or let's suppose that, for whatever reason, its been established that the PCs are running low on rations. The GM saying "You can see smoke on the horizon, most likely from a village" pushes play towards a focus on the social tensions of the situation, compared to "You come across a bush covered in berries - do you eat them?"

I'm not saying that there are unique paths here: even typing the previous paragraph, I've thought of other ways that the GM could frame a scene in response to the PCs running low on rations that still rise the conflict across the moral line: eg "You see a deer through the trees" - do the PCs compound their treaty violation by hunting? or "You come across an overturned cart: there is a bag of grain half-spilled on the trail, and the driver is nowhere to be seen" - do the PCs eat the grain, or try and find its owner and/or the cart driver as a way of balancing out their treaty violation?

But although there are no unique paths, there are ways of fostering the focus of play on the conflict across a moral line, or of tending to sideline or suppress that. And those ways are not just about particular decisions made, but also about the processes, heuristics, principles etc that guide those decisions. My experience, for instance, is that using typical random encounter rules from (say) Gygax's DMG or the Rolemaster books will not foster rising conflict across a moral line as well as other approaches that attend more deliberately to that aspect of the fiction.

I was going to get to 'authored by the player' eventually but now is fine too. I think it really depends on what parts need to be authored by the player.

Obviously the players in your narrativist games don't author the specific situations. They do author their PC's actions, (often but not always their thoughts), and also typically author and share traits with the GM that the GM is encouraged or mandated to put these into conflict (possibly depends on the game whether it's encouraged or mandated). They also typically (though maybe not always) author what occurs on success (within significant constraints). Treat this as a non-exhaustive list, although I've tried to be as exhaustive as I can.

Which of the things being authored by the player enables the player to author rising conflict across a moral line? It seems to me that the player only plays a role, albeit a significant role in that and that the GM co-authors that rising conflict across a moral line with the player.

This is closely connected to what I said above, in this post, in reply to @thefutilist. Authored by the players is establishing a contrast with authored by the GM or dictated by the setting or the inspirational material.

It's about the players choosing how to interpret the moral line, how to respond to it, what to treat as a conflict.

Whenever I read a GM posting about the BBEG that they have authored or made salient in the fiction, I form the view that - even if their play features rising conflict across a moral line, which I tend to suspect it doesn't have much of - it is not authored by the players. Because the GM has decided who the villain is.

There's also a difference, here, from simple player freedom of action declaration. What I have in mind, in saying this, is that even if the player is free to have their PC ally with the BBEG (that is, the GM or the rest of the table is not requiring that the player play their PC as opposing the BBEG), that doesn't tell us whether or not play is narrativist. If it's taken as given that the PC who does this is also a villain, has chosen evil, etc, then it is not the player who is authoring the moral conflict.

This is a difference between (say) Pendragon, or D&D played with GM-adjudicated alignment, and (to draw a strong contrast) Dogs in the Vineyard or In A Wicked Age or Apocalypse World. D&D can be played in the manner those latter RPGs assume: I personally discovered this in the second half of the 1980s.

 

[pemerton]

Even the simmiest of sim types have to accept that the abstractions required to make the game playable end up producing some necessary evils. Hit points are the poster child for this.

The main thing is that where there's a choice, take the sim path.

But obviously there is a choice to avoid the sort of non-simulationist play that hit points produce. Dozens upon dozens of RPGs show how this can be done.

 

[pemerton]

So? Every TTRPG abstracts things. They just choose different things and different degrees. No TTRPG can accurately model reality, you'd need an AI and a super computer far more powerful than anything we have.

Simulation as far as I'm concerned is not about accuracy. It's about the approach, how the game is run and how we interact with that fictional world. Closest explanation I've seen is New Simulationism - Sam Sorensen.

And as I've posted, D&D's combat resolution rules contradict that manifesto at multiple points: they are not "diegetic" and they don't preserve the correlation between in-fiction causation and at-the-table causation.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So? Every TTRPG abstracts things. They just choose different things and different degrees. No TTRPG can accurately model reality, you'd need an AI and a super computer far more powerful than anything we have.

Simulation as far as I'm concerned is not about accuracy. It's about the approach, how the game is run and how we interact with that fictional world. Closest explanation I've seen is New Simulationism - Sam Sorensen.

But notice what that requires: "6. If your abstractions do not match your fictional world, de-abstract until they do."

That's...pretty much the entire argument pemerton is making. The abstractions do not match the fictional world. In some cases, the mismatch is so significant, it outright violates logic, but we keep it because....?