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

[Faolyn]

Yeah, the only one really is spell slots for enchantment spells or buffs like guidance and enhance ability.

Vampire allows for social conflict to damage Willpower, and The Witcher has a social combat subsystem so the non-combat characters can a similar crunch experience. In BitD, I'd have social conflict apply (temporary) harm, like "ostracised" (which the Deep Cuts supplement essentially confirms I was right to do, though I disagree with limiting it level 1). So clearly, I'm not opposed to social combat/damage in general, but I'm not sure it quite fits in D&D.

A bunch of other games have similar. Fate has mental stress, which you can take from social encounters, and in Fate Accelerated and Fate Condensed you just take regular stress. I believe you take stress from social encounters in Daggerheart as well, but I’ve only read through the book once. Lots of PbtA games do conditions instead of damage tracks, and many times those conditions are social in nature.

 

[Faolyn]

I didn't say an encounter had to include a threat. I said the example you provided... tracks of a potentially hostile group... consisted only of a potential threat and nothing more. It's not really what I think people would consider an encounter. It might lead to one... perhaps the GM has an ambush mapped out with the hostile creatures ready for the PCs only a mile away


But since you mentioned this example in connection with how it would work in a PbtA type game... that this was a soft move to announce future badness... I don't think of it as an encounter. What's the encounter? It's a hint of a possible threat.

That was the point, though. The GM describes tracks. Following the tracks would lead to an encounter with a potentially hostile group. The PCs go around them or go in a different direction. They get to their destination having bypassed that encounter—the encounter with a potentially hostile group. The tracks weren’t the encounter. The tracks are there because the GM improvised their existence as part of a GM move or as a reply to a player who was looking for things like them. The fact that, at that point, the GM hadn’t statted up the potentially hostile group (if the game even does stats for such a thing) is irrelevant; by saying there were tracks, the GM had decided there was a group of NPCs at the other end, and that by following the tracks, the PCs had a chance to meet them.

We don't need to go to the extremes of railroading to find conflict. There's a whole middle ground where these things can conflict in less severe ways, which may or may not matter to any given group.

If the conflict is “GM prep means less player agency,” then it’s important to show that it doesn’t have to. To increase player agency, you simply need a GM who can go with whatever the players want to do. That may mean not prepping at all and improvising everything. That may also mean being so prepped you can easily get whatever the players want to do. Even if you don’t write them yourself, there are, and always have been, entire books dedicated to locations, NPCs, monster encounters, weird events, and so on just for that purpose.

 

[hawkeyefan]

View attachment 406992
Literally the entire definition in the dictionary is the same as the typical RPG usages.

In many RPGs, “move” means movement, as in “my character moves 30 feet.” It doesn’t mean “move the story along” like it does in PbtA games. And it doesn’t help that some moves are like other games’ skills, some are like special abilities, and some are completely unlike things you’d see in trad games.

I normally punch out when people start quoting the dictionary. But in this case, I'd instead like to quote the 2014 DMG.

Page 75
Location-Based Adventures
6. Plan Encounters
After you've created the location and the overall story of the adventure, it's time to plan out the encounters that make up the adventure. In a location-based adventure, most encounters are keyed to specific locations on a map. For each room or wilderness area on the adventure map, your key describes what's in the area: its physical features, as well as any encounter that plays out there. The adventure key turns a simple sketch of numbered areas on graph paper into encounters designed to entertain and intrigue your players.

Page 77
Event-Based Adventures
8. After you've created the overall story of the adventure, it's time to plan out the encounters on which the events of that adventure will hang. In an event-based adventure, encounters occur when the villain's agenda intersects with the path of the characters. You can't always anticipate exactly when or where that will happen, but you can create a list of possible encounters that the adventurers might experience. This can take the form of general descriptions of the villain's forces, details of its lieutenants and minions, as well as encounters tied to the key locations of the adventure.

Both of these sections then direct you to read about "Creating Encounters" later in the chapter. This section also provides an actual definition of what an Encounter is in D&D. You'll note that this definition does not appear in the dictionary entry you quoted. I've bolded it below.

Page 81
Creating Encounters
Encounters are individual scenes in the larger story of your adventure.
First and foremost, an encounter should be fun for the players. Second, it shouldn't be burden (sic) for you to run. Beyond that, a well-crafted encounter usually has a straightforward objective as well as some connection to the overarching story of your campaign, building on the encounters that precede it while foreshadowing encounters yet to come.
An encounter has one of three possible outcomes: the characters succeed, the characters partly succeed, or the characters fail. The encounter needs to account for all three possibilities, and the outcome needs to have consequences so that the players feel like their successes and failures matter.

The chapter then goes on to discuss Combat Encounters specifically, and here is where we see the idea of the Encounter as a specific unit of play really takes shape. It talks about the Encounter Difficulty, XP Thresholds by Encounter Difficulty, Encounter Multipliers, Encounter Budgets, and Adventuring Day XP Budgets. This is all obviously very specific to the text's definition of an Encounter as a unit of play... as an individual scene in the larger story of your adventure... and how that influences what the DM is meant to do with them, and how to actually craft them per specific guidelines. The chapter then goes on about Random Encounters, which further reinforces many of these ideas, so I don't feel the need to cite any further.

There's a really strong focus on planning these ahead of time, and many references to that in the text. Very, very little time is spent on anything that could be considered advice on how to maintain player agency throughout this... except perhaps if we want to view the bits about "building on encounters that precede it" and similar very liberally.

So yeah... I hope you can see why someone might view the idea of Encounters as being something pretty strongly in the realm of GM as Storyteller based on this, and how, even if you disagree, there's compelling evidence to show the potential conflict between prep and player agency.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I normally punch out when people start quoting the dictionary. But in this case, I'd instead like to quote the 2014 DMG.

Page 75
Location-Based Adventures
6. Plan Encounters
After you've created the location and the overall story of the adventure, it's time to plan out the encounters that make up the adventure. In a location-based adventure, most encounters are keyed to specific locations on a map. For each room or wilderness area on the adventure map, your key describes what's in the area: its physical features, as well as any encounter that plays out there. The adventure key turns a simple sketch of numbered areas on graph paper into encounters designed to entertain and intrigue your players.

Page 77
Event-Based Adventures
8. After you've created the overall story of the adventure, it's time to plan out the encounters on which the events of that adventure will hang. In an event-based adventure, encounters occur when the villain's agenda intersects with the path of the characters. You can't always anticipate exactly when or where that will happen, but you can create a list of possible encounters that the adventurers might experience. This can take the form of general descriptions of the villain's forces, details of its lieutenants and minions, as well as encounters tied to the key locations of the adventure.

Both of these sections then direct you to read about "Creating Encounters" later in the chapter. This section also provides an actual definition of what an Encounter is in D&D. You'll note that this definition does not appear in the dictionary entry you quoted. I've bolded it below.

Page 81
Creating Encounters
Encounters are individual scenes in the larger story of your adventure.
First and foremost, an encounter should be fun for the players. Second, it shouldn't be burden (sic) for you to run. Beyond that, a well-crafted encounter usually has a straightforward objective as well as some connection to the overarching story of your campaign, building on the encounters that precede it while foreshadowing encounters yet to come.
An encounter has one of three possible outcomes: the characters succeed, the characters partly succeed, or the characters fail. The encounter needs to account for all three possibilities, and the outcome needs to have consequences so that the players feel like their successes and failures matter.

The chapter then goes on to discuss Combat Encounters specifically, and here is where we see the idea of the Encounter as a specific unit of play really takes shape. It talks about the Encounter Difficulty, XP Thresholds by Encounter Difficulty, Encounter Multipliers, Encounter Budgets, and Adventuring Day XP Budgets. This is all obviously very specific to the text's definition of an Encounter as a unit of play... as an individual scene in the larger story of your adventure... and how that influences what the DM is meant to do with them, and how to actually craft them per specific guidelines. The chapter then goes on about Random Encounters, which further reinforces many of these ideas, so I don't feel the need to cite any further.

There's a really strong focus on planning these ahead of time, and many references to that in the text. Very, very little time is spent on anything that could be considered advice on how to maintain player agency throughout this... except perhaps if we want to view the bits about "building on encounters that precede it" and similar very liberally.

So yeah... I hope you can see why someone might view the idea of Encounters as being something pretty strongly in the realm of GM as Storyteller based on this, and how, even if you disagree, there's compelling evidence to show the potential conflict between prep and player agency.

Wait are you saying encounters on their own are GM as storyteller, or that planned encounters are GM as storyteller?

 

[hawkeyefan]

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?

I'm not saying that the conflict cannot be addressed in some way. There are several ways it can be done, and it very much depends on what kind of game you're playing. Many such suggestions... information rich environments, sharing more information with players, removal of gating info behind perception, accepting that the GM may fail to tell the players everything their characters may perceive... has all been rejected by some participants of this thread.

Those are general practices, though. More specifically, a classic dungeon crawl can be "Jacquaysed" to help maintain the importance of player decision-making, for instance.

That the conflict may be addressed in different ways does not mean there is no conflict.

There is no inherent conflict there. A "need" for prep is simply a matter of a GM's skill and comfortability with improvising. The conflict comes in execution and strict adherence to prep. As long as a GM is willing to deviate from it, including ignoring it outright, then there is no conflict.

No, that's far from the only factor. Grid-based combat, for instance, requires more prep than theater of the mind. Complex NPCs with many stats require more prep. And so on.

Unless you want to throw all of that under the GM's ability to improv... but I think these things are distinct enough to point out the difference, even if they're related.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Sounds like you agree with me.


Definitely sounds like you agree with me.

You might be an outlier, because from what I've witnessed, there's a prevailing attitude in the PbtA community that it's not a generic system but a "game design philosophy". I'm also not so sure about them being any more successful than generic systems. Seems like there's a few break out games that gain and maintain popularity, while others wither on the vine, like you allude to with generic systems, and even then it's more of a cult following. For example, BitD has remained quite the indie darling for it's current lifespan, but other FitD games haven't even come close, not even Scum & Villainy which seem like it should have a broader appeal based on a more recognisable premise.

Maybe our opinions are not far off, though what I started out hearing was about this great deal of d20 games.

Anyway, I think there are quite a few PbtAs that are VERY close to AW, mostly tweaking the tone, genre, and 'feel' of the core moves a bit. Obviously they include playbooks and things like equipment or some custom harm rules and such. DW is the exemplar of this.

Then, yes there are plenty of games which go some steps beyond that. It's a grey area if you want to start trying to define things as inspired vs being variants. But many d20 games likewise are pretty different from the core.

As for what is popular or influential, tons has been written all over the 'net about FitD games, as well as others. Stonetop has a very active community, as does DW. Maybe if you stay buried within the world of D&D it all might seem pretty nothing. But really the rest of the RPG world has moved on while 5e doubles down on trad. Hey it's a profitable niche!

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Is this depth clear to novice players and MCs in the text, or are we talking blogs and game design threads? Because the different things you can do with D&D are pretty clear in most versions of the DMG or equivalent. From a cursory reading every PbtA game I've ever looked over seemed pretty "one true way".

 

[Lanefan]

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.

How is there a conflict between need for prep and player agency? They seem largely unrelated to me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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”.

Disagree. Types of encounters aren't divided into lists of cutely-named moves, for instance.

 

[hawkeyefan]

That was the point, though. The GM describes tracks. Following the tracks would lead to an encounter with a potentially hostile group. The PCs go around them or go in a different direction. They get to their destination having bypassed that encounter—the encounter with a potentially hostile group. The tracks weren’t the encounter. The tracks are there because the GM improvised their existence as part of a GM move or as a reply to a player who was looking for things like them. The fact that, at that point, the GM hadn’t statted up the potentially hostile group (if the game even does stats for such a thing) is irrelevant; by saying there were tracks, the GM had decided there was a group of NPCs at the other end, and that by following the tracks, the PCs had a chance to meet them.

It's not irrelevant to me, though. That there are things out in the world, hinted at in some way, does not turn those things into an encounter.

If the conflict is “GM prep means less player agency,” then it’s important to show that it doesn’t have to. To increase player agency, you simply need a GM who can go with whatever the players want to do. That may mean not prepping at all and improvising everything. That may also mean being so prepped you can easily get whatever the players want to do. Even if you don’t write them yourself, there are, and always have been, entire books dedicated to locations, NPCs, monster encounters, weird events, and so on just for that purpose.

I never said that GM prep MUST ALWAYS mean less player agency". I said there's a conflict there between the idea of needing prep and players being able to do whatever they like. There are ways it can be addressed, certainly. I don't know how open many folks are to those ideas... but they exist.

Wait are you saying encounters on their own are GM as storyteller, or that planned encounters are GM as storyteller?

Read the bits I quoted from the 5e DMG from 2014. Those to me define Encounter in the way I think is relevant to the discussion, and they also very much support the idea of GM as storyteller.

Would you disagree with that assessment of the bits from the DMG I quoted?