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

[AlViking]

Hey, the verb form is used pretty darn often!

I don't think I've ever encountered someone who was on the verge of having a bear encounter but it could have happened. If I encounter such an encounter in the future I'll let you know.

PbtA games do tend to have a “one true way”-ism feel to them, which can be very off-putting, especially if they’re writer combines it with an overly… snotty, perhaps, style of writing. And I agree that it’s not an intuitive “rule” at all. I will say that the PtbA games I’ve run and played have been very immersive, though, likely because of “to do it, do it” manta.

I do as much as I can with descriptions and in-person interaction myself. But sometimes when I don't trust an NPC a simple "Insight check?" is just an easy way to describe something that doesn't really require an overt action other than I am paying close attention. But if I always say "I play close attention to see if I can determine his emotional state", "Insight check?" is just a more convenient shortcut. That and I really don't care how people play, they can figure it out for themselves.

 

[robertsconley]

Well, the thing went far beyond the module, but I guess? I can't read the GM's mind. But how is what you describe NOT the GM engineering the flow of events? This all is what I label GM-directed play!

@CreamCloud0 can correct me but he is basically saying is not a problem of the play style it is your referee (GM) making an arbitrary call because they didn't like how you were trashing their setting. To put it plainly, you were a victim of a bad referee, regardless of what play style was being used. That point got lost in @CreamCloud0 explanation of how the referee's was thinking "@AbdulAlhazred is wasting time and needs to get on with the adventure."

 

[Campbell]

What do you mean "doesn't contemplate other ways of playing"? You can play D&D and similar games in many different ways, and for the most part those different ways are generally honored. Narrativist games, on the other hand, seem to have a single path to proper play and tend to be very clear about the dangers of departing from it.

I mean that D&D (the 5e texts) does not contemplate non-exploratory play or play that is not structured around discrete adventures. This is a good thing by the way. It's part of what makes the design so polished.

As for Apocalypse World it's not a single path to proper play. It's a different structure of play than what you are used to but there are tons of stylistic differences when it comes to stuff like which principles are prioritized in what order, do we walk or run towards conflict, sorts of conflicts, our approach to periphery moves, etc. My approach to running the game is very different from my best friend's. Both fit within the conventions of play.

You are free to feel that play that is built off of premise is highly specific, but the inside baseball of this stuff goes pretty damn deep.

 

[AlViking]

If you don’t understand that there’s a conflict between the need for prep and player agency, I’m not going to try and convince you. The way you’re engaging with the idea… “not now and never has been”… certainly doesn’t indicate an open mind.

What is there to understand? There is no conflict. As a GM I have to do some prep unless I do 100% improvise. That doesn't mean that I have preplanned goals, outcomes, I don't care what the characters say or do. All it means that if the characters walk into a town I know what's there for them to interact with.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Not sure what you mean. "Encounter" has had a meaning quite close to the dictionary definition in this hobby for quite some time. If you mean something else please illuminate me.

Nope, encounter is what I meant! It has a pretty specific use when it comes to RPGs. Certainly no more or less confusing than “moves”.

Would it make more sense to you if we took away the threat?
During my RPG upbringing, an encounter was anytime the PCs interacted with the world. Talking to the innkeeper is an encounter. Fighting the bandits is an encounter. Opening the door is an encounter. The PCs did something and progressed their story.

No, I get that. I spent plenty of time as a DM creating encounters of all kinds. I absolutely understand the usage… but interestingly, it’s not one I tend to use in how I think of some games. I tend to think of encounters when I’m running D&D or similar games.

But when I run certain other games, the idea of Encounters as like discrete situations in play, with certain specific elements (locations, NPCs, environmental factors, etc.) just doesn’t occur to me. It seems significantly different in how situations are crafted in play that it makes more sense to think of them differently.

Like, the players are so much more involved in the process that it feels different from how I create encounters for D&D or Mothership… it just isn’t how I think of them.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

On this specific point, this is precisely why, when I referee, when I roleplay the NPCs, I will do so in the first person, so that the players have a better sense of what is going on with an NPC character. It's not a perfect emulation, but it's often good enough that it becomes a non-issue.

When dealing with a mass of NPCs, I rely on my experience with leadership positions and management to convey to the player a good enough impression of what it's like with a particular group.

Finally, because of how fast in-game progress compared to real-life time, I tend to err on the side of more information, not less. I recognize that in real life, one's social sense of a situation is built up over repeated interactions with the folks involved. So if a couple of in-game days passed with a bunch of NPCs that are under your command, your character would get a good sense socially of what's going on with them.

And this is a significant reason why, when you described what happened up thread, I felt it was a bad referee call on the behavior of the NPCs you left behind in charge.

Yeah, I think that is a perfectly cromulent answer. I'm personally more happy with just playing games that run on high transparency. And interestingly the same GM in my example also introduced me to Dungeon World. Honestly I find it odd that this forum seems so divisive.

 

[Faolyn]

If you don’t understand that there’s a conflict between the need for prep and player agency, I’m not going to try and convince you. The way you’re engaging with the idea… “not now and never has been”… certainly doesn’t indicate an open mind.

Because there isn’t. Or rather, there isn’t always.

I prep NPCs with their own interests and goals. The players may choose to interact with those NPCs, or they may not. The fact that there’s an NPC that exists doesn’t force the players to do anything. My Level Up party has no healers. I knew the players were going to a location so I created an NPC cleric and her obvious shrine. The party took damage en route to this location, heard me describe the shrine when I described the location, and didn’t go inside.

Yes, a GM can prep a game and railroad the group. But the GM can also completely improvise and still railroad the group simply by only producing possibilities they want. Heck, I’ve read posts on r/rpghorrorstories that, if true, have players railroading their group by bullying the other players or taking actions that keep the other players from doing what they want. Many people are too conflict-avoidant to say no to this behavior.

 

[AlViking]

Right, you can hack D&D in various ways, and you end up with 'Other D&D'. I'm not sure why that's taken to be flexibility. As soon as you go much out into the vast universe of the RPG world, my perception is that D&D is just one tiny niche and its system is not good for much else!

But to clarify, I don't think any system is very general.

I think D&D is quite a bit more flexible in type of campaign than a lot of games. I'm not on a team doing a heist in a specific world, I'm not attempting to hold off the inevitable insanity that I know will eventually consume me, I'm not fighting against my bestial nature and so on. For the most part it's a D&D fantasy world but when you can go from Ravenloft to Darksun to Eberron to several other options the tone of the game can be quite different. There are some groups that go from one fight to the next with barely a breather, others that do RP for sessions on end, some that never require a roll for non-combat interactions some that require it for just about everything. That's what I mean by flexibility. It's flexibility of play experience using the same base core rules.

It's more general than some games, less than others.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Well, the thing went far beyond the module, but I guess? I can't read the GM's mind. But how is what you describe NOT the GM engineering the flow of events? This all is what I label GM-directed play!

@CreamCloud0 can correct me but he is basically saying is not a problem of the play style it is your referee (GM) making an arbitrary call because they didn't like how you were trashing their setting. To put it plainly, you were a victim of a bad referee, regardless of what play style was being used. That point got lost in @CreamCloud0 explanation of how the referee's was thinking "@AbdulAlhazred is wasting time and needs to get on with the adventure."

yep, @robertsconley is correct, i was pointing out you were subject to the flaws of a referee rather than the playstyle itself.

 

[Enrahim]

If you don’t understand that there’s a conflict between the need for prep and player agency, I’m not going to try and convince you. The way you’re engaging with the idea… “not now and never has been”… certainly doesn’t indicate an open mind.

You are in a dessert. There are nothing but sand in all directions. What do you do?

This is an allorgy for a fully unprepared situation. If there are no direction that is different from any other direction, is there really player agency even if they could go in any direction?

As has been mentioned before, player agency require to have an understanding of the situation, and how their actions might affect the outcome of a situation. A DM meeting well prepared are in a better position to give the player such context as needed. In other word in this view prep is helpfull for player agency.

Of course there are preparations that would conflict with player agency, I think noone disputes that. But I think the push against your formulation here is that it hit too wide without context that could somehow clarify what sort of preperation or alternative we are talking about. For instance if we were playing a game of asymmetric microscope where one player can overrule the others, then that player preparing any material at all in advance would very likely conflict with the agency of the other players. But I believe we are talking about the scope of D&D and that it is established we are working under a paradigm where the players only being concerned with what their characters can do is considered a good thing?