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

[EzekielRaiden]

I think if two people are using two different definitions of a word, then I'm not sure can say they have to deal with consequences of their choice, if in their mind they are defining absolute power differently to you.

Louis XIV had a number of key advisers, as I believe most absolute monarchs and dictators did. While I agree someone with absolute power doesn't need to discuss, that doesn't mean that someone with absolute power never discusses, they can still choose to do so, and often did.

Do you see players in a TTRPG group as advisors to the king-GM?

Because it seems quite obvious to me that they are subjects of the king-GM, nothing like "advisors".

 

[gban007]

Except most of the time I didn't know and-or couldn't explain how I did it, I just did it. Trying to explain it or write it down would be a hopeless endeavour as doing so would throw off my train of thought.

Maybe that's why I always found essay writing to be a complete and utter waste of time.

Meh - if I understand it, that's good enough for me.

Being factually correct is enough. If someone doesn't accept it, I'm under no obligation to explain. The same evidence is available to everyone.

I think problem arises if two people have access to same evidence, but come up with two different answers as such- how do people know which is right? You may have had an 84% accuracy rate, but means could still be wrong in this instance. Without being able to show / explain how got to answer, someone us ultimately going to have to do that work to be able to demonstrate which is the right answer (if either).
Ultimately though I think comes down to what you are doing as a profession as such. I would say vast majority of stuff I learnt in school and uni i haven't needed since, and if got mostly right maths answers and in a job where don't need that level of maths then it doesn't seem like it should matter. If in a job where high levels of maths involved where accuracy is important, then it does matter.

 

[gban007]

Do you see players in a TTRPG group as advisors to the king-GM?

Because it seems quite obvious to me that they are subjects of the king-GM, nothing like "advisors".

I think depends on the group and rules set i think. Some rule sets would push more to advisers, others to subjects as default.
In our group we tendvto rotate Who is GM or equivalent from campaign to campaign ( and one shots and everything in between) so often we are advising each other, especially when all trying a new ruleset out.
I do feel that dnd as a default would tend to be on the subject side of things based on rules as written, but doesnt mean all tables are like that.
Other rulesets may remove role of DM altogether, e.g. Ironsworn, or may change balance to push towards more adviser relationship as default.

 

[The Firebird]

I most certainly have, though I appreciate your olive branch, it would be nice to have that come up, say, when we have things like a poster portraying all PbtA games as inherently wacko loco ridiculousness without even the tiniest semblance of reason or rationality.

I did mention it several times in the thread. For example

Cool example. I agree that the narrative mechanics are very useful in running a no prep game, and I've ported them over before in order to get something off the ground on short notice.

Numerous other posters have done so as well. It seems to me folks are going out of their way to read preferences other than narrative games, when the reasons for those preferences are stated, as an attack on those systems.

 

[pemerton]

Don't all vehicles accelerate from stationary to their current speeds? I know when I press the gas pedal and my car is stationary, it goes to its current speed of 1mph, then 2, then 3, all the way up to 70ish on the freeways(when there's not traffic).

Well, it would be weird for characters to demonstrate, via the special relativity thought experiments, that it is impossible for your vessel to accelerate to light speed, while at the same time being on a vessel that (everyone authoring the fiction agrees) has accelerated to, and beyond, light speed.

 

[The Firebird]

Well, it would be weird for characters to demonstrate, via the special relativity thought experiments, that it is impossible for your vessel to accelerate to light speed, while at the same time being on a vessel that (everyone authoring the fiction agrees) has accelerated to, and beyond, light speed.

Why would it be weird for them to discuss a disproven thought experiment?

 

[pemerton]

Why would it be weird for them to discuss a disproven thought experiment?

Because we don't know how would the disproof has been rendered?

To put it another way, what - in the universe of Star Trek - is the false premise, or error of method, in the special relativity thought experiments? Eg is the speed of light in a vacuum not constant? But then what does it mean to accelerate to a speed that is faster than light? And if the starship is travelling faster than light, how is illumination within the vessel even occurring?

 

[The Firebird]

Because we don't know how would the disproof has been rendered?

Is that any weirder than not knowing why the runes were created?

 

[Enrahim]

Do you see players in a TTRPG group as advisors to the king-GM?

Because it seems quite obvious to me that they are subjects of the king-GM, nothing like "advisors".

I thought the advisors still where subjects? Where is the dichotomy?

 

[clearstream]

Generally, at least where knowledge is concerned, expertise can be judged against an external standard (even expertise in a skill - eg an expert pianist - can probably be judged against an external standard, but I put that case to one side in this post).

The fact that an author has authority over what they write doesn't make it appropriate, without more, to also describe them as an expert, except perhaps in some loose or somewhat metaphorical sense - they can't be wrong, but that's not because what they say is likely to be correct but rather because they enjoy a power of stipulation.

Agreed to an extent. When C S Lewis stipulates a new fact about Narnia, that must surely be taken as correct via authorial fiat. That aside, there seems wide agreement that simulative play orients to subjects; implying access to external standards of correctness when the play entered into's subjects are external.

An example I am thinking of is my friend's Hittite campaign using BRP. An external standard in this case would be what is known by archaeologists and historians about the Hittites. I will flag here the question "how much is enough?" I suppose that "enough" for simulationist experiences is a lower bar than accredited expertise and varies across the probable contents of play. To preserve this supposition I will use the term "sufficient" rather than expert.

Free kriegsspiel works as a training tool - to the extent that it does - because the referee has expert knowledge and intuition about how events will unfold in a battle situation. That's what makes it different from mere storytelling.

I'm uncertain of your intent here. Do you mean that free kriegspiel is differentiated from mere storytelling because it is a training tool, or because its referee has sufficient knowledge and intuition? FKR acknowledged and took an opinionated position on (rather than invented) freeform play.

Upthread I agreed that it is desirable for FKR GM to have sufficient knowledge and intutition regarding their subjects, e.g. if my friend lacked sufficient knowledge and intuitions about the Hittites it is less likely that they will achieve playfully simulationist experiences in relation to that subject. I take into consideration too, that a games text does not implement itself even if that text embodies sufficient information and processes.

There can be external standards other than reality, too. And if a RPG establishes or presupposes some external standard (real or fictional) that it is supposed to answer to, then - unlike the process that you, @clearstream, described - the people playing it will not simply construct their conceptions of what is possible or appropriate in the fiction by reference to the game rules. They might think, for instance, that it is silly that a warrior can easily survive a 100' fall from a dragon. Given that many RPGs have presented themselves as answerable to an external standard in this sense - typically, a list of inspirational media - I don't think RPGers who depart from your process in the way I've described are doing anything wrong.

That doesn't represent what I presuppose. I agree with your framing that participants will have conceptions of what is possible or appropriate in the fiction. It's part of what I am saying that it is those conceptions that will count most in satisfying them, and not some ideal standard for correctness.

Further, I came to think the fall is judged differently for another reason. It's what upthread is labelled a type-III fact, i.e. para-fictional or of a kind that witnesses don't automatically categorise into type-II. I referred to uncanny valley or doppelganger-effects to roughly get at this.

A dragon is fairly firmly type-II, unrealistic in our world, realistic in the imagined world. Perhaps best taken as epiphenomenal in the sense that it may be excluded from physical investigation. A person falling is type-I or type-III. Suppose an elf falls. There aren't elves in our world so we can hardly say it is type-I. However, creatures anatomically very much like elves -- humans -- do fall in our world, and creatures falling is certainly a thing, making it type-III. Then, as I wrote upthread, there is "a kind of block on migrating type-III facts to type-II... it's harder to accept what looks like it belongs in our real world as having qualities that don't belong."

My #17,583 among others lays out the types, which I first propose in #17,568. To save you some effort

Type-I facts - things true in our real world and in the imagined world​

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Type-II facts - things not true in our real world but true in the imagined world​

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Type-III facts - facets of things true in the imagined world, that are of kinds that match things true in our real world​

And I point out that assigning and migrating facts between the types is a task in play that could be hard to formulate in written game text. You once described the standard for correctness as a sort of folksy common sense, and I think that is right. In fact, you explained something apposite

Fiction, like counterfactuals, involves disciplined/non-arbitrary reasoning despite denying truths and asserting falsehoods.​

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The reasoning involves inferring from an asserted (but not doxastically asserted) starting point, to the conclusion, by drawing upon permissible background assumptions that are not themselves excluded by the entertaining of the initial falsehood.​

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The key question, in RPGing (and perhaps fiction more generally) is, what background assumptions are permissible. When people say it's real world physics except where it's not, they are getting at the permissible background assumptions. Now as it turns out, real world physics will not provide good background assumptions, because real world physics (eg thermodynamics, universal gravitation, etc) will - when combined with the sorts of things we assert in FRPG fictions - quickly produce contradictions and nonsense. (Eg that dragons crash, that giant insects suffocate, etc.)​

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Rather than real world physics, it is some sort of folksy common sense that supplies most of the background assumptions. And a few truths are expressly or very strongly implicitly excluded - namely, those that obviously contradict the existence of magic, or would trivially produce contradiction when combined with premises about magical things happening.​

I think it's not only the background assumptions, but the meta-principles for assigning and migrating facts, and in general what kinds of reasoning ought to be accepted that can accomodate imagined creatures like owlbears. What happens when a dragon (or owlbear) falls 100'?

Another issue that can come up arises from the fact that, as Tuovinen puts it, that some - perhaps much - RPGing involves "intensely detailed perspectives that sometimes surpass the means of traditional, non-interactive mediums." What will be experienced, in those perspectives, needs to be decided - if the game play is to work - but often can't be inferred from the reference material to which the game is supposed to be answerable. Particularly when that reference material departs from reality, so that the sorts of inferences that would work in real life don't work in the fiction.

I strongly agree, and that has been very much on my mind in thinking about a human GM acting in a simulative capacity versus what can be achieved by written rules and descriptions in a game text that go on to be implemented by a human. The latter must surely add an iota here and there that is not prescribed in the text... hence I suggest that disagreements here can come down to "how much is enough?" and "what matters more?" When playing in Earthsea does it matter more when whoever is narrating mislays Havnor Great Port, or that they know the rate of fall per 6-second round of a halfling fighter in aerodynamic plate?

The importance of participant conceptions can be seen for example in the way an NPC is acted in play. Say a pretend-Napoleon comes up. No one now living can say they know exactly how cross Napoleon would have been were his breakfast delayed, and precisely what he would have done in consequence. But I suppose that someone could portray irate-Napoleon sufficiently well.

The same thing will happen with the snake: in a RPG set in the world of Sherlock Holmes, what happens if the players have their PCs look up an encyclopaedia entry on the snake in question, or have their PCs go to the place where the snake comes from and try and find specimens of it?

The way new facts are established in play is of course different from how we receive them in a text. We have a nominated or candidate fact (climbing snakes) and PCs can intervene in how that fact is settled in our imagined world. They can for instance consult an encyclopedia.

But let's say they happily have Arthur Conan Doyle GMing for them. Surely Doyle is the foremost expert on affairs in the imaginary world of Holmes, and Doyle thinks snakes can climb, so that is what the characters confirm in the hushed aisles of the pretend-British Library.

A further issue is that most RPGing has a fairly definite structure, which establishes asymmetrical responsibility for introducing fiction but requires the participants to converge on the same fiction. So, whereas a group of friends sitting around making up new Earthsea stories can freely discuss among themselves what does or doesn't seem to fit with the reference fiction, the structure of RPGing does not foster this sort of discussion (as is illustrated by some posts in this thread), and too much of this sort of discussion can spoil the RPG experience (eg because the player loses the pleasures that come from occupying the player participant role).

Again I strongly agree. Perhaps now, with the ease of searching out facts, Doyle would have thumbed his mobile phone and seen that a climbing snake ought to be ruled out. Cue prescripted-narrative-crash into ludic-wall.

Here's an example from my own actual play (of Classic Traveller - the scenario was my adaptation of Shadows):
Here's another example:
I think this sort of back-and-forth between participants, including compromises by experts (like my engineer friend) to permit the game to proceed, is in practice about the best that is possible.

To the extent we're discussing the latest version of D&D, constructive conversation is expressly encouraged in the text. It's emphasized that everyone has a role in that.

But part of what makes it feasible, at my table, is that we are not playing in a "solve the mystery" or "beat the scenario" sort of way. If we were, that would put much more pressure on things. And I have had play experiences, in the past, where it was that sort of play, and where disagreements between players and GMs about what makes sense in the fiction did sour the play experience.

Principles or policies for managing subject in ludonarrative as such matter. And as I think you are saying, aiming for one sort of play might well be in tension with aiming for other sorts.