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

[Thomas Shey]

I was missing the point.

I still don't really agree with what I now understand to be your point. It isn't all that hard to figure out if you're gonna gaff it.

And I don't agree with that. A lot of writing attempts you find out by doing them if you have the skill for it. And it may not be obvious just reading it yourself.

 

[FrogReaver]

I'm talking more about sensory information for this use case. Like, when I walk into a bar, on my left I see a middle-aged man, early 30s in appearance, half-elven ears, wearing a red and black checkered tunic, with a thick brown beard and thinning hair on top, holding a mostly empty glass mug of ale.

Typing that up took me a minute, but I'm literally just describing the picture in my head when I thought "I walk into a bar".

Why is that not authoring? You consciously chose to think of a bar.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Fair enough. I have explained more than once in this eternal thread that I don't desire player collaboration in worldbuilding in games in which I participate, either as a player or a GM, once the campaign begins. Having such makes playing the game less fun for me, because it feels to me that the player has reality warping powers I don't want players to have, even if the system allows for it in some way. That is all I'm saying.

What I'm not saying is that anyone else's game is objectively worse because it may have those things (among other things I don't care for). It is worse for me, but that's it.

I forget: do you feel that way about "filling in the holes" cases? Because at that point the player isn't more of a reality warper than the GM and its not a given that the hole being filled in is inappropriate.

 

[Enrahim]

For me this approaches the line, but I don't think it crosses it. I'd prefer for the GM to have many of these details fixed. For example, if they had written "the firefly festival occurs at this time and involves this sort of activity". Then the player could say "maybe our characters fought sometime we were in town?" and the GM would say "how about the firefly festival...this involves...".

That seems better to me than the player declaring the festival's existence and the GM modifying the world to accommodate it.

But it wouldn't be a red flag and I'd be ok playing in a game with that level of player control.

I think there are two elements here that I think make the situation interesting and maybe unusual in the context of this thread. One thing is that as this was 13age, I assume the general GM editor role was in effect, that is the GM could at any point have stepped in and declared anything mentioned in the conversation as false and invalid. The other is that as far as I understand @Gimby at their own initiative began narrating stuff as it just felt natural in the situation. That is the were not required to narrate anything, nor was there any formal power behind the narration.

As such there might not be anything here contradicting in any way even the most extreme trad ideals discussed in this thread. The situation could even be construed as the player declares what the character say without really knowing if it is true or false themselves - this is fully within their domain to declare according to trad thinking. It is then up to the GM to assess the actual world situation given what was said. If it i no way contradicts anything the GM has planned in advance, what wrong is there for them to take inspiration from the tale when actually deciding those details? Indeed, if the character is generally known to be honest, this would actually be more fictionally plausible than the character lying.

In case the character actually were generally honest, and the player declared them something the GM would know to be a lie, standard procedure would be to inform the player of the potentially unintended contradiction, to let them reconsider.

From an intention point of view I do feel like there are something shaky with this example, but I really cannot put my finger on what concretely that would be.

Might we have found an exploit for trad?

 

[Maxperson]

I'd probably say it's one word, "immersiveness", attempting to encapsulate 2 related but distinct phenomena.

But I do disagree in that I think you can absolutely both have an inhabitation of the character and subconsciously author at the same time. Like, I can imagine myself in character walking into a bar, and start describing what my character is seeing without any sense of "trying to author". The sensory impression is simply there in my head, just like the sensory impression from my current surroundings (this laptop screen, right now).

Although it's quite possible this is like aphantasia, and everyone has different capacities for what can they subconsciously create as imagery.

For me it's a matter of degree. I would have no problem with a character walking into the bar and then describing basics while staying immersed. I have a LOT of different experiences with taverns and it would be easy to describe the brown walls, lanterns spaced out ever 10 feet around the edge, but not yet lit because it's day. The preserved shark head(because the name was The Shark's Head) on the back wall between the lanterns and the ceiling, the barkeep behind the bar preparing drinks for the two tavern maids, etc. It doesn't take much thought to come up with that level of detail.

Where I would be yanked out of immersion is when going for deeper levels of detail. How many tables are full. What the table make-up is. How many(if any) are adventuring types. Are there guards here or not. Is there an illegal gambling back-room. And so on. Once I hit that level I would cease being a player with a PC walking into the tavern and start being a DM describing stuff, which would break my immersion.

Not that I want to describe even the basics as a player, but I could do that much and still remain immersed.

 

[Gimby]

I think we have to be careful here. Immersive how? If immersive is ‘thinking as my character’ then authoring stuff is clearly something other than thinking as your character. In that sense it prevents it, but it doesn’t necessarily lessen the experience for the moment after when you are thinking as your character. Though for some it may not be easy to change modes.

For this case, I'd think I'd agree with @TwoSix in that the authoring here was largely subconscious - a process of fabulation. By being immersed in the character I subconsciously generated and spoke "memories" from them, the process didn't feel like active authoring. In this case, for me, at that time, there was only one mode - imagining that I am the character and that the character had memories. I know sometimes written authors suggest that characters think for themselves and this is the closest I got to experiencing this. It's not something that happens all the time, but it's something that can happen.

Sure in some cases pre approval of everything may be worse than some player authoring for thinking as your character immeresiveness. But ideally it’s pre approved and then I spend the whole time thinking as my character. I think it can interfere with immeresivenss when not pitted against constantly checking with the dm, at least for many people.

In this case, the pre-approval was to allow the player latitude to author some things, so I could fabulate as above and act as a character with my background would act, without continual checking in with the GM. I agree it's certainly not something everyone feels the same way about though.

I think were some of the argument comes from with this is statements like (paraphrasing here) "I'm interested in immersion as a priority so therefore I preclude player authoring" whereas for some players, player authoring aids immersion, so they push back on that statement.

I'm interested on this point - if you find authoring things as a player is counter-immersive, would you mind a game where you as a player don't have authorial power, but another player at the table (who finds authoring immersive, as above) does?

 

[TwoSix]

Why is that not authoring? You consciously chose to think of a bar.

I'm only saying you seem to be describing a modal shift between "perceiving" and "authoring", enough that the mental shift can disrupt immersion. And all I'm saying is that when I picture environments in character, whatever authoring I'm doing is "subconscious", because I just see an image being generated.

As I presented, I'm simply demonstrating my own case wherein dictating the contents of the immediate fictional surroundings helps me stay in character, rather than draw me out of it.

 

[Umbran]

I think we have to be careful here. Immersive how? If immersive is ‘thinking as my character’ then authoring stuff is clearly something other than thinking as your character. In that sense it prevents it...

With respect, I'm not so sure it is that clear at all. I think authoring can be presented such that it is an activity one can become accustomed to without breaking immersion.

The primary element in not breaking immersion to author would likely be that the authoring should in response to something happening at that moment in-game. Like, the sphynx asks your character the title and author of their favorite poem. The GM hasn't handed out a list of poems by author in the game world, so you're just going to have to make something up. It should be possible to do that from the frame of mind of the character, with who they are driving what kind of poetry they'd like, and a title for such a poem.

Another major speedbump to doing authoring in character would be the mental hiccup when faced with the mental habit of, "but I'm a player I don't get to make stuff up". Getting over this one is a matter of breaking an old habit of thought. One would have to do it a few times to stop being disturbed by it, but it should be doable for most folks.

 

[Gimby]

I think there are two elements here that I think make the situation interesting and maybe unusual in the context of this thread. One thing is that as this was 13age, I assume the general GM editor role was in effect, that is the GM could at any point have stepped in and declared anything mentioned in the conversation as false and invalid. The other is that as far as I understand @Gimby at their own initiative began narrating stuff as it just felt natural in the situation. That is the were not required to narrate anything, nor was there any formal power behind the narration.

Correct - the GM could have stepped in (or rather, dropped out of character from the role they were playing as the ghost lord NPC) at any point. They simply didn't. Equally, yes, there was no formal power here. To draw the analogy with @pemerton 's runes, the player only had the power to suggest things, the formal power to declare their suggestion true-in-the-fiction lay elsewhere (with the GM in my case, with the invoked mechanics in theirs)

 

[TwoSix]

I think were some of the argument comes from with this is statements like (paraphrasing here) "I'm interested in immersion as a priority so therefore I preclude player authoring" whereas for some players, player authoring aids immersion, so they push back on that statement.

Yea, that's where I've made pushback on these concepts over the years. In-scene authoring of predominantly color details (like @Maxperson said, narrating the levels and classes of everyone in the bar wouldn't make much sense in character) helps my immersion; having to make queries to the DM as to framing details will generally push me out of immersion.

I'm interested on this point - if you find authoring things as a player is counter-immersive, would you mind a game where you as a player don't have authorial power, but another player at the table (who finds authoring immersive, as above) does?

That would be interesting. I definitely have had players who love to make up stuff in character, and others who prefer to ask for details. Not a big deal to me, but I've never had a player who cared that another players was doing some authorship even if they didn't want to.