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

[Maxperson]

You've completely made up this "one true path" nonsense. I don't know what you're on about.

If there is a correct fiction that they have to do, that that means there is a one true way to author fiction.

Plus you(and @pemerton) have still not given any indication how what I said didn't fit his one true fiction. His "limitations" weren't limitations and what I said fit what he has told us.

 

[pemerton]

Here's an example of author stance play in MHRP/Cortex+ Fantasy Hack:

Cresting a ridge and looking down into the valley below, they can see - at the base of the rise on the opposite side - a large steading. Very large indeed, as they approach it, with 15' walls, doors 10' high and 8' wide, etc. And with a terrible smell. (Scene distinctions: Large Steading, Reeks of Smoke and Worse.) After some discussion of whether or not giants are friends or foes, the swordthane decides to knock at the gates and seek permission to enter. Some dice rolls later and he has a d6 Invitation to Enter asset, and a giant (I used the Guide's Ogre datafile) opens the gate and invites him in.

Meanwhile (I can't quite remember the action order) the scout has climbed up onto the top of the pallisade, gaining an Overview of the Steading asset, and the troll has remembered tales of Loge the giant chieftain, gaining a Knowledge of Loge asset. And the berserker - who has the Deeds, Not Words milestone which grants 1 XP when he acts on impulse - charged through the open gate at the giant, inflicting d12 physical stress.

But the swordthane - who was hoping to learn more about his quest - used his Defender SFX to take the physical stress onto himself (in the fiction, stepping between giant and berserker and grabbing hold of the latter's axe mid-chop). And the berserker - whose player was happily taking 3 XP for being rebuked by an ally for his violence - calmed down.

The player of the berserker wants to earn XP, and so declares the impulsive action (thus earning 1 XP) and thus prompts an ally to rebuke him for his violence (thus earning 3 XP). The player was not inhabiting his character when he acted impulsively.

The reading of the runes was not like this. The player was in actor stance. I mean, I was there, I observed both these episodes.

 

[Enrahim]

@TwoSix knows these things because I posted them on these threads, and I am able to provide accurate and reliable accounts of my own play experiences.

I don't know what you mean by "tricky". It's clear that a player in MHRP, in declaring an action, has to state what effect they are attempting to achieve.

This stuff about "incentive structures" is a new red herring: people conjecturing about the incentive structures for a RPG they've never played or read!

"Look, there's some weird runes over there. We've been stuck down in the dungeon for a while, maybe those runes can give us a clue to the way out!"

Just seem to me like a more aproperiate and incentivised play than

"Look, there's some weird runes there! I am really curious what they say, so I am going to check them out. Sure hope that wont trigger an ancient curse or anything, though"

I can easily imagine playing a type of character where it would come much more natural to say the latter than the former if I am just playing my character.

Is my intuition about aproperiateness/incentives way off?

 

[Maxperson]

I don’t think you answered @maxperson’s question here at all. Posting the skill doesn’t define what if any limitations it has from your perspective. Kind of like arguing RAW in d&d.

Less helpful than that, really. At least RAW has some built in limitations. D&D tropes and cunning INCLUDING the 1e thief doesn't limit cunning or expert at all.

 

[pemerton]

If there is a correct fiction that they have to do, that that means there is a one true way to author fiction.

Plus you(and @pemerton) have still not given any indication how what I said didn't fit his one true fiction. His "limitations" weren't limitations and what I said fit what he has told us.

This is getting increasingly bizarre. I told you what the Cunning specialty covers:

In a game that is deliberately playing on classic D&D tropes, Cunning includes the thief's traditional ability to deal with traps and read strange writings.

the Cunning specialty is intended to capture a good chunk of classic thief abilities.

I don't remember anyone at my trouble finding this hard to grasp.

 

[TwoSix]

If there is a correct fiction that they have to do, that that means there is a one true way to author fiction.

Good thing there isn't, then. Glad I could help you out, since you seemed extremely confused.

Plus you(and @pemerton) have still not given any indication how what I said didn't fit his one true fiction. His "limitations" weren't limitations and what I said fit what he has told us.

Again, I have no idea what you're talking about. The limitations of "Cunning" in the context of "like a D&D thief" was immediately obvious. The fact you found some textual interpretation of the phrasing that says otherwise doesn't change the relationship between the GM and the player, which is all that matters.

 

[pemerton]

"Look, there's some weird runes over there. We've been stuck down in the dungeon for a while, maybe those runes can give us a clue to the way out!"

Just seem to me like a more aproperiate and incentivised play than

"Look, there's some weird runes there! I am really curious what they say, so I am going to check them out. Sure hope that wont trigger an ancient curse or anything, though"

I can easily imagine playing a type of character where it would come much more natural to say the latter than the former if I am just playing my character.

OK?

Depending on further details, I'm not sure what is stopping you playing that character. Or maybe with those further details, it will turn out that the character is too passive to be a good fit for a MHRP or variant game.

 

[TwoSix]

"Look, there's some weird runes over there. We've been stuck down in the dungeon for a while, maybe those runes can give us a clue to the way out!"

Just seem to me like a more aproperiate and incentivised play than

"Look, there's some weird runes there! I am really curious what they say, so I am going to check them out. Sure hope that wont trigger an ancient curse or anything, though"

I can easily imagine playing a type of character where it would come much more natural to say the latter than the former if I am just playing my character.

Is my intuition about aproperiateness/incentives way off?

Your second statement seems perfectly fine to me. You're laying out a possible fail state instead of a success state.

The fact that the character seems to be motivated by mostly "idle curiosity" or "let's just see what happens" is probably more appropriate to trad play, though.

 

[Maxperson]

As far as "decision space" is concerned, maybe you're using that in some jargonistic sense that I'm not familiar with? The decision I am talking about is the player's decision to have their PC read the runes. They believe, for good reasons, that it is possible that reading the runes will reveal the way out. Likewise the character believes, for good reasons, that it is possible that reading the runes will reveal the way out.

Nothing jargonistic. Just how it works. Even though the character is imaginary, there are still two decision spaces being considered here.

The first decision space is the metadecision by the player to have his PC read the runes with the player's intent of making the runes always have been saying the way out. The character has nothing whatsoever to do with that decision.

The second decision space concerns what would the fictional character be thinking when making his decision, and he would be thinking perhaps that he hoped the runes helped him find the way out.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

In any RPG, the fiction is likely to contain interesting and salient things. Otherwise play would be very boring!

This is a non sequitur.

As I've already posted, the accuracy of knowledge, conjectures etc is not independent of a person's expertise. Any player with half a brain can see that dice model correlations which need not be directly causal (but eg can have a common cause: I posted an example from a 1977 RPG upthread, but you ignored that).

Yes, but the causality of the correlation is reversed between the fiction and the rules and this is not a trivial difference.

Like how on Earth you cannot see this?

Character A is not an expert, they want treasure, and their hope is that the runes reveal location of such. They have 40% chance of success, 60 chance of failure, failure producing something bad (that is possibly not causally connected to the rune examination.)

Character B is a rune expert, they want a way out, and their hope is that the runes show such. They have 80% chance of success, 20% chance of failure, failure producing something bad (that is possibly not causally connected to the rune examination.)

Meanwhile the character just see some runes, They know that one character is better at reading runes, but they do not know that it matters for what the runes are who reads them first. It is blindingly obviously to me that the players are not operating epistemologically even remotely in the same space than the characters. What I do not know what is the etiquette around this in your game. Are the players supposed to ignore the rules and play the characters like such things wouldn't matter, like a player trying to pretend that their character doesn't know that fire hurts trolls even though the player does, or is it fine that they make decision based on the rules and then invent reasons for the characters to make the same decision?

And of course same applies to how the players chose what their characters hope the runes to be in the first place.

In my experience, the main difference it makes when players realise that they can impact the shared fiction is to make them more interested in the fiction, and invested in it.

Perfectly possible. Also not the point under contention.

I still don't know what you mean by "author stance" or "actor stance" as you are not using them in the only sense I'm familiar with.

Yes I am.

"Trad" RPGing is replete with author stance play - the players know the GM has placed obstacles and opportunities into the fiction, and so motivate their PCs to look for them; know that there are certain expectations around attrition etc, and so make decisions about resource expenditure keeping those things in mind; etc.

But you don't need to be ashamed of that!

Yes, this is certainly true, especially in formulaic gamist approach you seem to be envisioning here. I think my D&D campaign has less of this, but I'm sure it exists to some extent.