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

[Crimson Longinus]

I'm roughly in agreement with @Emerikol... it's down to dislike; which is a fact about a given player's relationship with the game, rather than a fact about the game. I think it's worth resisting assumptions that it's about the game, in order to also resist pernicious norms.

What? What is? Whether player and chracter decision space is correraled? No. Whether one likes it? Of course!

Responding to something @FrogReaver asked earlier, I am not dismissive of differences. Upthread I attributed them to unwritten rules ported into play with players. Where that says more than @Emerikol's take is that unwritten rules are often strongly and at the same time unconsciously normed.

How games are played is often informed by unwritten rules, yes. But this doesn't make it subjective.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Quite a way upthread, I asked you why you seem unable or unwilling to talk about RPGing done in accordance with different principles to the ones you actually use yourself. This post of yours prompts the same question on my part.

I mean, I prefer Australian rules football to rugby (any version) as a spectator sport. But when I occasionally find myself watching or talking about rugby, I don't ask why the players aren't handballing, or kicking the ball down the ground. My preference doesn't make me incapable of understanding that rugby is played by different rules from Australian rules.

MHRP is not a map-and-key, puzzle-solving RPG. Is that really impossible to grasp?

Of course not. But some of us prefer the map and key, puzzle-solving style, and don't care for your MHRP play because it doesn't work according to those principles. That doesn't mean your preference is any less (or more) legitimate than mine, but it does affect how we feel about it, and we should be allowed to explain why we don't care for it.

 

[clearstream]

How games are played is often informed by unwritten rules, yes. But this doesn't make it subjective.

Unless one supposes that all players are in possession of the same set of unwritten rules, they're a significant part of what makes it subjective.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Really?

I don't think @Lanefan gets that the episode of play, involving the runes, was not from map-and-key based, puzzle-solving play.

I think he gets it, but he doesn't like it and he doesn't feel your way works for him (and he's not shy explaining why his way works better for him).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Unless one supposes that all players are in possession of the same set of unwritten rules, they're a significant part of what makes it subjective.

Nope. The fact that a lot of players are clueless about the written rules as well doesn't mean those are subjective either.

 

[FrogReaver]

I'm surprised to hear you'd rule out the possibility of a cleric in say Tilverton (while it was extant), if one were not expressly pre-authored there. I've observed DMs agreeing to the presence of NPCs that were not pre-authored. Players regularly migrate fictional possibilities into actualities through their play.

Prompting the dm to consider whether there is a cleric there that wasn’t pre authored by him still has nothing to do with the persuasion check in dnd or player authoring. That’s a separate resolution process. Dm usually either decides based on existing fiction and the likelihood of such a thing or rolls on a random table. This will be done before persuasion ever comes into it.

Which again is totally different than the runes.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm surprised to hear you'd rule out the possibility of a cleric in say Tilverton (while it was extant), if one were not expressly pre-authored there. I've observed DMs agreeing to the presence of NPCs that were not pre-authored. Players regularly migrate fictional possibilities into actualities through their play.

It's the GM's choice to agree with the player and then author that fiction. It's not the player's choice to author it, and it's not baked into a dice roll mechanic the players use.

 

[Pedantic]

Negotiation is component of a great many multiplayer boardgames and videogames like Age of Wonders and Dune. It overwhelms the gameplay loop only if the material effects of negotiation are not well considered against other effects. For example, the rules for Dune limit Alliances to two players (it's a six player game) and increase their win conditions by one stronghold. Allies gain a range of ways they can cooperate, regulated by rules.

I should clarify that I'm saying if negotiation is a normative process of resolution (what is the possible impact of any given check? How bad is a failure? What are the board state costs of complications/mitigiated successes?) and especially if those states aren't knowable before resolution happens (ideally they should be knowable via the rules before play begins), then negotiation is inevitable. 5e is actually a great example, because it's inconsistent about whether a strong resolution mechanism exists. The general structure of skill checks encourages players to negotiate what they can achieve with their GM per action, instead of declaring the actions they believe would best get them to their goals.

You're speaking of diplomacy, as in, the mechanically-expressed process of establishing mechanically-defined relations between participants in play.

Pedantic, if I understand him correctly, is speaking about freewheeling revision, as in, the GM and the players ad hoc rewriting the content of the situation purely on the basis of discussion between them, with the one and only standard being "the people at the table agree to do X".

While I do not go quite as far as Pedantic does on this, unfortunately, he is more right than wrong here. This is the problem with "the rules are suggestions". When the rules are nothing more than suggestions, when literally everything within the actual gameplay space boils down to "what you can persuade another person to agree to", then it is always, bar none, without exception, the most effective strategy to avoid any mechanic that isn't instantaneously favorable to you, and instead to negotiate an external bespoke solution. Especially if you've got some rhetoric training. Then it just becomes easy mode (unless the GM also has rhetoric training, but I find this is pretty uncommon).

Rules serve several important functions, and one of them is defining the limits of what you can or can't do. Sometimes, that is unfortunate--we know there's something that would make sense, that is fitting and appropriate, which the rules cannot express. But sometimes, that is not only good, but necessary--because it prevents us from trivializing the game out of existence.

This is a good summary, though I don't think you escape this problem just by putting writing negotiation formally into the act of resolution. You just end up decreasing the gameable space your mechanics offer.

Have you played Diplomacy, Dune, Catan, or Age of Wonders? I'm not aiming to denigrate your knowledge, but the way those games are played is that even though the subjects, outcomes and even sometimes the forms of negotiaton are tied to game mechanics, the negotiation itself is freewheeling.

The distinction, which I think you get at, is that the game-space of TTRPG is not limited to the board and pieces, as say Dune is, but extends into imagination. That means that the effects of negotiation extend into what the group will agree to imagine, itself governed by norms, principles and rules. TTRPG is sustained by healthy rather than degenerate lusory-attitudes in relation to those things, and that is true from the outset. It's not tied exclusively to negotiation (or another way it has sometimes been put is that it's all negotiation.)

To be fair, I am not keen on that game structure precisely because they involve unconstrained negotiation. In a competitive space that tends to lead to politics in the game sense, and those tend to be pretty degenerate. I'd point to the classic multiplayer free for-all problem of something like Commander in magic, or even a take-that game like Munchkin. The game decisions become significantly less important than the relationship management around the table, which I find deeply unpleasant. There is some value in gameplay there, but it's both not for me, and if I was going to engage with it, I'd pick a dedicated system like Chinatown or Sidereal Confluence that clearly puts that front and center.

I might have played Diplomacy, but if I did it was a long time ago. I have heard much of Catan, have not played it. I have played the video games of the AoW series (all but the first one, IIRC; good series!), but no board games.

Of the games I have played, I have never seen freewheeling negotiation in them. There are pretty hard limits on what you may negotiate over, how you may negotiate, and when you may negotiate. You cannot, for example, negotiate that you will stop using a hex-grid and instead use an octagonal grid drawn as squares (meaning, every square is adjacent to all of its cardinal neighbors and all of its ordinal neighbors, aka, the squares that it only touches at a single vertex, not an edge.)

Hence why I used the terms I did. Negotiation takes place in a defined manner, under strict rules (you can only exchange resources for other resources in Catan, as I understood it; please correct me if I'm wrong there.) You cannot negotiate the fundamental structure of the game.


It's not just imagination. You can negotiate the rules of the game themselves. You have ceased to play Dune, and you are now playing "whatever rules we have decided to replace Dune with, unless and until we decide to replace them with other rules", it just might be the case that that set of rules includes all members of the set "the rules of Dune" except those involving combat, or whatever.

This is perhaps too strident. Obviously I object to the structure of the game being up for negotiation, but more specifically I object to negotiation of outcomes being embodied in that structure to begin with.

I seem to have played and GMed more Burning Wheel, Torchbearer and Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic than any other poster in this thread. I have never encountered this ostensbile "negotiation" issue.

Of course sometimes action declarations can take a bit of back-and-forth so that everyone is clear on what is going on, both in the fiction and in terms of how it is to be resolved. That is typical in RPGs. I see lots of discussion of that sort of thing in the context of completely conventional 5e D&D play.

Yeah, I'm not a huge 5e guy for this reason, and it's why I don't like rulings and don't see a lot of value in giving the GM broad rules redefinition authority. The goal should be to remove negotiation in resolution, though clarification before action declaration makes more sense and is probably inevitable in TTRPG. The point I'm making is that there is no value in putting together the best set of actions to achieve a desired goal if the most effective play is to negotiate for that goal directly. Once negotiation is an option, it cuts out a bunch of other gameplay.

 

[Enrahim]

I can agree here. I want my players taking the game seriously. That means trying to act as though they really are their characters and it's not a "game piece".

Interesting! I actually have somewhat opposite preference regarding characters (though weak). I tend to like "avatar" type characters that do not have much personality on their own, but expresses their player's desires. I find these tend to be more complex and multifaceted than completely made up characters that too often is just a variation on some trope.

I can have a problem if the information barrier to the real world gets compromised though. (Certain kinds of metagaming)

So I think these might be somewhat seperate concerns?

I never experienced individualism as you describe it "in game". Obviously I have in the world. My groups knew early on that only effective team cohesion would lead to survival.

Those prone to pushing for individualism is a known type of problem player in D&D, and as such might not be seen so often I these types of games (anymore). I get the impression some other game systems lean more heavily into more individualistic play. Ars Magica for instance have as a strongly supported pattern a main character mage traveling on missions alongside secondary companion characters. Some of the examples in the fate core rulebook also seem to indicate a stronger acceptance for split the group kind of play there.

My game is probably more cerebral than emotional. Not sure about the second one. I prefer what I would call ascending sandboxes. At some level the idea of a sandbox is too limiting perhaps but I conceptually still operate from that framework.

Yeah, ascending sandbox tend to come with a good dose of variation inbuilt. Similar with railroady adventure paths. Dungeon/murder/villain of the week play exemplifies what I tend to find repetitive.

 

[FrogReaver]

I should clarify that I'm saying if negotiation is a normative process of resolution (what is the possible impact of any given check? How bad is a failure? What are the board state costs of complications/mitigiated successes?) and especially if those states aren't knowable before resolution happens (ideally they should be knowable via the rules before play begins), then negotiation is inevitable. 5e is actually a great example, because it's inconsistent about whether a strong resolution mechanism exists. The general structure of skill checks encourages players to negotiate what they can achieve with their GM per action, instead of declaring the actions they believe would best get them to their goals.


This is a good summary, though I don't think you escape this problem just by putting writing negotiation formally into the act of resolution. You just end up decreasing the gameable space your mechanics offer.

To be fair, I am not keen on that game structure precisely because they involve unconstrained negotiation. In a competitive space that tends to lead to politics in the game sense, and those tend to be pretty degenerate. I'd point to the classic multiplayer free for-all problem of something like Commander in magic, or even a take-that game like Munchkin. The game decisions become significantly less important than the relationship management around the table, which I find deeply unpleasant. There is some value in gameplay there, but it's both not for me, and if I was going to engage with it, I'd pick a dedicated system like Chinatown or Sidereal Confluence that clearly puts that front and center.

This is perhaps too strident. Obviously I object to the structure of the game being up for negotiation, but more specifically I object to negotiation of outcomes being embodied in that structure to begin with.

Yeah, I'm not a huge 5e guy for this reason, and it's why I don't like rulings and don't see a lot of value in giving the GM broad rules redefinition authority. The goal should be to remove negotiation in resolution, though clarification before action declaration makes more sense and is probably inevitable in TTRPG. The point I'm making is that there is no value in putting together the best set of actions to achieve a desired goal if the most effective play is to negotiate for that goal directly. Once negotiation is an option, it cuts out a bunch of other gameplay.

So I agree with the basic premise, negotiation can lead to degenerate gameplay and yet in practice I observe most 5e play doesn’t degenerate to being decided by negotiation with little meaning on actions outside that, unless you mean something far more all encompassing by negotiation than I do.