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

[Campbell]

@Micah Sweet

The issue with "reality warping powers" is two-fold from my personal perspective:

1. You are applying the standards and play methodology of an unrelated style of play to one where those standards and methods are not in effect. No reality is being warped because there is no game world or objective reality to be explored (or even an illusion of one). There is just shared fiction that has been established and undefined setting. We're just defining things that have not previously been defined.

2. It's usually used in a way that presumes a desire for content authority (or more likely an expectation to have the GM use their content authority in certain ways) is something that will be used to the player's character's advantage to achieve aims rather than to setup compelling situations. It's assumed that players cannot be trusted within AW style prompts where the GM temporarily cedes their content authority in a targeted way.

There's a whole lot of venom in "I don't need reality altering powers" that seems to be laying a lot of judgement on people who desire some amount of creative collaboration from their GM.

 

[Maxperson]

It's one out of about...25? campaigns I've played in.

I'd say that's nowhere near "really, really, really rare".

Especially when I actively avoid ever joining any campaign which has even the tiniest whiff of possibly being such.

I've played in at least 75 over the years. With dozens of DMs. Others here with similar numbers have also never encountered it. So that's once in hundreds of campaigns among the few of us, which while admittedly anecdotal, is unlikely to be so far off that it's really some common occurrence.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well, "need" is doing some heavy lifting there.

In fiction, no outside force MAKES the author(s) have to jump into anything. The authors are the only ones who make choices or impose restrictions. The authors choose to make the plot dependent on details.

It follows then, that there is no "need" to jump into the deep end, except for the author(s) personal needs. You can always write around the technical details without specifying them, instead.

You're either missing my point or making what seems like a pretty pointless semantic argument. "Need" in this sense is meaning you don't know if you can do it until you try.

 

[The Firebird]

I specified that there really is a value--flexibility, discoverability, authenticity to the IRL cultural experience of pre-modern civilizations--to having a world where, within a certain boundary things are well-defined, probably quite a large boundary, but beyond that boundary, it becomes "HIC SVNT DRACONES", terra incognita. Not only does this add more similarity to what was in fact true (of medieval culture, naturally) in our real world, it ensures that the GM has an important tool for addressing problems that might come up: the freedom to build (not just randomly conjure up, but actually invest effort to create) new elements of the world.

I agree that there is a benefit to this. Especially for the players. But for those benefits to be fully realized, the GM has to have details defined. This allows them to introduce clues and hints of what is out there. This mirrors what actually occurred--there were areas off the edge of the map, but they were only unknown to the explorers. They were well defined objectively.

That is what we are trying to recreate by having the GM fix those details but hide that information from the players.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Here we have another case of someone completely writing off what was said, dismissing the opposite side without even a moment's thought, by using the most extreme, ridiculous presentation possible. Yeah, it's totally fair and reasonable and respectful to write off "I think GMs should leave some room for their setting to grow over time, with things beyond the edge of the known world" into being "a Clueless DM".

This isn't productive, and it sure as hell isn't positive. @The Firebird, this is precisely the sort of thing you said wasn't being said in this thread. Is this, and my foregoing post, evidence for you?

I wouldn't consider Bloodtide representative of anyone else, in this thread or any other.

 

[TwoSix]

What I dislike is the player creating fiction which is not closely related to the PCs history. Going back to the rune case:

-if the runes were made by the PC, I think the player defining is ok.
-if the runes were made by the PCs father in a language the two can understand, the player defining them is ok
-if the runes were made by the PCs ancestors four generations ago, it's a bit sketchy but I'd be ok with it.
-if the runes were made by other distant members of the PCs culture, I prefer DM control
-if the runes were made by a culture unrelated to the PC in a region the PC and her ancestors never encountered, then I find player control to break immersion. This holds even if the PC has a memory--"I remember a contact told me this culture created runes as maps".

That's just a selection of possibilities on the spectrum.

I thought the "rune" case was pretty orthogonal to PC history.

I though the issue with the runes was the the GM defined them simply as "runes", and the PC used their successful roll to identify them as "demon-summoning runes". And that for trad play, either A) the GM shouldn't be introducing runes without also defining their intent and execution, OR B) the player executing a move to define the fiction space outside of their character wasn't a valid move.

 

[Maxperson]

Well, let's see.

I explained a thing which is lost by having the GM sew up every single detail of the world before the players ever arrive, an aspect of player agency.

You've explained that something is lost by something that is impossible for any DM to do. That means that nothing is lost, because that thing that would cause it to be lost is never accomplished.

I specified that there really is a value--flexibility, discoverability, authenticity to the IRL cultural experience of pre-modern civilizations--to having a world where, within a certain boundary things are well-defined, probably quite a large boundary, but beyond that boundary, it becomes "HIC SVNT DRACONES", terra incognita. Not only does this add more similarity to what was in fact true (of medieval culture, naturally) in our real world, it ensures that the GM has an important tool for addressing problems that might come up: the freedom to build (not just randomly conjure up, but actually invest effort to create) new elements of the world.

That's true, but even in the "known" portion of the world, 99% if it is still undefined. I have had freedom to build new elements of the world in the Forgotten Realms(without leaving the main map) for decades and I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of all the space available to me.

The unknown areas only make available the ability to create huge countries or even continents. The smaller stuff can happen anywhere.

 

[Faolyn]

What is the isekai vibe?

You know the old AD&D cartoon?

That.

(It's typically a person getting transported to a fantasy world of some sort, often by dying, while keeping all their own memories but also often being some sort of chosen one). Alice in Wonderland and the Wizard of Oz would count as isekai.)

 

[The Firebird]

I thought the "rune" case was pretty orthogonal to PC history.

I though the issue with the runes was the the GM defined them simply as "runes", and the PC used their successful roll to identify them as "demon-summoning runes". And that for trad play, either A) the GM shouldn't be introducing runes without also defining their intent and execution, OR B) the player executing a move to define the fiction space outside of their character wasn't a valid move.

Yeah, this is true as @pemerton presented them. In that case the PC 'expressed a hope that they were a map', and the player then rolled to see if that hope was realized or not.

I think both (A) and (B) are generally true. I was riffing off that example to show how I would feel if the example differed in some ways.

 

[AlViking]

And yet it does. I know it does. People talk about it!

Do they? I don't recall anyone saying they don't care what their players think but I suppose I could have missed it. People make all sorts of statements I disagree with. Making a final call on rules, setting baselines for he campaigns they're willing to run is far different from ignoring the social contract. It could be that you set such a low bar that a DM having a list of species they allow in their campaigns means you believe they are ignoring some aspect of the social contract that you desire that everyone else accepts.

Meanwhile if you want to play a collaborative game, look around for games where that's a core assumption or if you want to play D&D (or any other game that has a GM as final arbiter) clarify how the DM runs the game before you join.