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

[EzekielRaiden]

To give a simple example of the potential conflict between prep and agency I'd like to offer an encounter from a recent 5e game.

The PCs were hunting for an item that they believed was in the lair of a giant dinosaur type beast. They had been beaten to it by a rival NPC group who had slain the beast. They therefore came upon the carcass of the beast being scavenged by some other powerful bird monsters.

The terrain was generally some fairly broken scrubland with good potential lines of sight.

I prepared a gridded battlemap about 50 or so yards across and seeded it with a bunch of things to interact with, cover, terrain features, other minor critters to avoid/deliberately spook, that sort of thing.

Everything outside this 250 square yard area is by necessity far less detailed- the same sorts of features but with much less understanding of the spatial relationships between features.

While clearly as the GM I've defined all of the world, by presenting the map the players now have a small area of the fictional space they can interact with without requiring constant negotiation- they can act against the known geography using their own understanding of their character capabilities.

So here is the tension - within this detailed area the players can act with confidence and have lots of ways to interact with the environment. But I as GM have decided its location and properties. Outside of it they have more freedom to move, but every movement is a negotiation where my imagining of the scene is paramount. There's also some social pressure to make use of the maps and so on that the GM has clearly put a lot of effort into.

So by this form of prep and committing to a geography I offer the players the information they need to make informed choices and the opportunity to make use of terrain features but cost them the ability to choose their ground and have those advantages.

Essentially as we cannot detail all parts of a game world at the highest level of fidelity, by preparing parts at a higher level we risk biasing the game to those parts we have prepared heavily. Its just worth being clear eyed about the costs and benefits of different kinds of prep.

Note that isn't a battlemap/totm (jargon!) division- it could equally have been a much larger grid map with one more detailed section on it or two totm regions, one thinly described, one richly described.

Yes, exactly this, this is what I mean when I say the world is inside the GM's black box unless-and-until the GM chooses to inform the players about it, under this approach, as I have understood it.

Informed decisions depend on already having a ton of GM work done. Anything that doesn't already have a ton of GM work done will necessarily be less detailed, and almost always on-the-fly improvised to a pretty heavy degree. That degree of improvisation is extremely difficult (I would argue nearly impossible in most cases) to separate from the GM defining what is possible as they go--at which point, they've made a menu of options, they just did so extemporaneously rather than in advance. That still places such an enormous amount of control over both what can be interacted with, and what players can ever be informed about.

It's extraordinarily difficult to attempt to do things you literally don't know are possible. I don't mean that in the sense of "you can try ANYTHING!", I mean it in the sense of it is outright hard to think of things where you just flat-out don't have information about them. Even very creative people easily miss that sort of stuff--which means both the things the GM does speak about and the things they DON'T speak about have enormous influence over what the players can or will do.

I've seen many, many, many times over people--both here and elsewhere--talk about how it is, for example, the PCs' fault for not asking the one-eyed man at the tavern about what monsters might lie ahead. Yet, for me, that would completely go over my head. I would understand that one-eyed man as simply demonstrative of the flavor of the world (e.g. "injuries are common here, take care!" or "you'll need to be a real badass to not end up like this guy!") Had I not had people explicitly tell me that the sight of a one-eyed man (or whatever else) at the tavern is very specifically a player-knowledge check, I simply would never consider it, and would then feel pretty cheated by suffering the consequences of not doing a thing I literally would not have known to do.

Which, again, is why I talk so much about the GM having enormous control over both the inputs into decisions (what exists at all; of what exists, what the PCs can observe; of what the PCs observe, what they truly get informed about; of what they get informed about, what among those things is actually possible to do/use/interact with/benefit from/etc.) and the results that come from those decisions (consequences, ripple effects, opportunity costs, reputation, etc.) I'm just...not really sure how I can make informed choices (not perfectly informed, but sufficiently informed) in such an environment, and in the absence of informed choice, I don't really think it's possible to have meaningful agency. Insufficiently informed choices don't support meaningful agency--but in order to inform choice, the GM must do much more work to build the world, thereby nailing down options. I'm not saying it's an insoluble dilemma, the tension between "enough prep that players choices are sufficiently informed to be meaningful" and "enough openness that players truly have freedom to choose regardless of GM desire/effort/interest/bias/etc." But it is a tension; to inform, the GM must know; to know, the GM must define; to define, the GM must necessarily fix parts of the world, lock them in place. But to pursue player freedom, the GM must avoid fixing as many things as they can; to fix as few things as possible, the GM must leave things undefined; by leaving things undefined, the GM cannot know what they are in advance; but the GM cannot inform the players of something they themselves don't know, because GM knowledge IS the world, there is nothing of the world BUT what the GM knows of it.

I am, however, generally trying to hold my peace right now, to give robertsconley time to reply, so I'll leave that there--I suspect there will be a response to these thoughts, directly or indirectly.

 

[Enrahim]

As long as you are not prepping outcomes or paths, prepping locations and people, doesn't really impact agency (I would say it enhances agency to have an objective world prepared). If we are dealing with prep as planned scenarios that have a flow of events, scenes, or a path the players need to follow (especially if there is an understanding they can't get off of it) then agency is impacted by prep. But improv can also interfere with agency if the GM is trying to force the players in a certain direction.

I agree, but I still think it is good to have a sense of how it could impact agency. Introducing example: I have prepared a cool ranger character. I have also prepared a tavern, and know the ranger sits in a dark corner of the common room. How do I describe the scene when the PCs enter the tavern in an optimal way from a player agency perspective?

If I mention the ranger in my first brief overview he sticks out as a sore thumb, hence likely providing a strong incentive for the players to engage with that. This is limiting player agency as it strongly points toward one spesific path of interest, and is particularly problematic as "realistically" the ranger might be where he is thinking it lowers his chances of being noticed.

On the other hand if you do not mention the ranger, you deprive the players of valuable information to make a decission. It might be that they would like to interact with the ranger, but not being aware of its existence they do not know that would be an option. Hence this approach also limits player agency in a way.

Delegating the decission to the dice by for instance doing a perception check also do not help with regard to player agency, it just provides more "agency" to the dice.

Describing everyone in the crowded tavern in a neutral maner like a "spot the hidden object" game is also a possibility, but it is impractical (and to most players boring) if you to describe everything in excruciating detail all the time - so the players would understand this is a hidden object game where something interesting is to be found, and again be lead to spend more time trying to find the interesting thing than they would otherwise have done.

I think an awareness of such interactions can be important. To call it an inherent "conflict" between player agency and prep might be a bit problematicly inflammatory language, but I do not think it is a completely unreasonable term to describe this phenomenom.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Do you (or does anyone) see a problem with a pre-written adventure including the following:

==============
Castle defenses

If an alert is sounded, or if any untoward disturbance occurs, the following will happen unless prior or ongoing events interfere:

Within 15 seconds
--- the alert will be repeated throughout the castle, all on-duty guards will have weapons drawn (or loaded) and ready
--- the sergeant of the watch will order off-duty guards to be awakened if asleep and to begin donning their arms and armour
--- the guards on the postern gate will ensure it is closed, barred, and locked then one will report such to the sergeant-at-arms while the rest remain in place

Within 45 seconds
--- if it is not already up, the guards on the drawbridge will withdraw inside and begin hoisting the drawbridge; this will take them 2 minutes unless interrupted
--- about one-third of the on-duty guards not already in these locations will begin moving to the battlements, one-third to the location(s) of the royal family, and one-third to the source of the initial alarm
--- civilians and staff will begin moving to the nearest place of safety (their quarters, the kitchens, the root cellar)
--- the status of the postern gate will be reported to the sergeant at arms

Within 2 minutes
--- the sergeant of the watch will receive a brief report as to the nature of the alert and issue orders accordingly
--- civilians and staff will have reached their safe areas
--- all on-duty guards will by now be either on the battlements, or guarding the royal family, or at the source of the initial alarm

Within 3 minutes
--- with the drawbridge now hoisted, its previous guards move to the battlements above the drawbridge and take up station there
--- off-duty guards report for duty and are assigned as needed
--- if the alert is deemed to pose imminent danger to the royal family they will be escorted by their guards to the castle vaults
=================

So. That's a planned sequence of events* that will happen if an alert is sounded, unless amended by something specific to that particular alert (for example, if the alert is due to someone trying to gain access through the postern gate the guards there will simply try to hold it until reinforcements arrive). And for me, this is perfectly acceptable.

And note this is all completely independent of the PCs. They might be the cause of an alert, or they might be bystanders or guests in the castle when an alert is sounded, or whatever.

* - actually just part of the sequence; it doesn't touch on magical defenses or any classed-levelled entities living in the castle, it only details what the mundane guards do.

I don't see any specific problem, no.

But I do think this makes previous hard-line stances kind of frustrating?

By which I mean, okay, so this is an example of prepared sequences-of-events that are acceptable to you. Cool. That's a useful boundary condition here. "Something like this is definitely acceptable to Lanefan, and presumptively acceptable to most sandbox GMs". I know folks are different, but I expect at least some general agreement even if there might be quibbles here and there, or occasional caveats/alterations, between different sandbox GMs.

But as I said, I was given to understand that like...ANYTHING AT ALL, even the slightest tiniest teensiest-weensiest bit of preparation of sequences-of-events was overwhelmingly unacceptable. Again, my understanding was that this would be especially bad in response to PC action, but the principle would still apply in general. This demonstrates one example of what I mean by vague or unclear or confusing constraints, boundaries, limitations, etc.; what seems like the hardest possible rejection at one moment becomes a complicated, exception-filled "well definitely yes but also a little bit no but mostly yes but sometimes only maybe"--hence why I feel I need to ask for clarification on all sorts of things that folks seem to be taking for granted.

I now know (maybe? ish?) a lower bound for what kind of fixing-of-things-in-the-world is acceptable. And I know there definitely is an upper bound, though it's almost totally undefined. I've seen folks say that the GM throwing out hooks is to be avoided at all costs, that it's perfectly acceptable whenever the GM feels like it, that it's a sometimes-food, that it's an emergency tool to fix a campaign gone out of whack, that it's a thing that should be done in moderation but over-use should be actively avoided, etc. I've seen things indicating that it's perfectly acceptable to craft a sandbox focusing on interestingness, so long as plausibility is generally maintained at a high level; I've seen things indicating that interestingness should never be a priority ever; that it should be a definitive fourth- or fifth-place (or perhaps even lower!) priority and only considered once several other factors are addressed; that maximum plausibility always outweighs all other concerns; that it doesn't; that it sometimes does and sometimes doesn't; etc.

That level of bewildering...well I would call it "disagreement" but folks seem to think that it's perfect agreement (which is another thing I deeply do not understand), so let's call it "variability". That amount of bewildering variability on what seem like bedrock foundational elements, things that are utterly essential for players to have any hope of making reasonably-informed decisions and thus having meaningful agency, makes it difficult for me to understand how any player gets by in this space. As an outsider, it looks like everything is in flux all the time.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I agree, but I still think it is good to have a sense of how it could impact agency. Introducing example: I have prepared a cool ranger character. I have also prepared a tavern, and know the ranger sits in a dark corner of the common room. How do I describe the scene when the PCs enter the tavern in an optimal way from a player agency perspective?

If I mention the ranger in my first brief overview he sticks out as a sore thumb, hence likely providing a strong incentive for the players to engage with that. This is limiting player agency as it strongly points toward one spesific path of interest, and is particularly problematic as "realistically" the ranger might be where he is thinking it lowers his chances of being noticed.

On the other hand if you do not mention the ranger, you deprive the players of valuable information to make a decission. It might be that they would like to interact with the ranger, but not being aware of its existence they do not know that would be an option. Hence this approach also limits player agency in a way.

Delegating the decission to the dice by for instance doing a perception check also do not help with regard to player agency, it just provides more "agency" to the dice.

Describing everyone in the crowded tavern in a neutral maner like a "spot the hidden object" game is also a possibility, but it is impractical (and to most players boring) if you to describe everything in excruciating detail all the time - so the players would understand this is a hidden object game where something interesting is to be found, and again be lead to spend more time trying to find the interesting thing than they would otherwise have done.

I think an awareness of such interactions can be important. To call it an inherent "conflict" between player agency and prep might be a bit problematicly inflammatory language, but I do not think it is a completely unreasonable term to describe this phenomenom.

Thank you! This nicely captures my concerns here.

That is, there seems to be a trilemma here:

• GM doesn't give detailed info unless prompted by players, which risks "guessing-game" territory
• GM only gives detailed info about the things she's prepped, which risks "pick your option from the menu" territory
• GM always gives detailed info about everything, well-prepped or not, which risks over-saturation and player interest fatigue

Finding the right balance between the three, not just once, but every single time the GM prepares stuff seems like a tall order. Doing so in a 100% purely intuitionist way, where it's not even possible to talk further about it than "I just work to present a realistic world" (or similar), seems like a Herculean task, and worse, one that's essentially impossible to teach!

 

[clearstream]

To give a simple example of the potential conflict between prep and agency I'd like to offer an encounter from a recent 5e game.

The PCs were hunting for an item that they believed was in the lair of a giant dinosaur type beast. They had been beaten to it by a rival NPC group who had slain the beast. They therefore came upon the carcass of the beast being scavenged by some other powerful bird monsters.

The terrain was generally some fairly broken scrubland with good potential lines of sight.

I prepared a gridded battlemap about 50 or so yards across and seeded it with a bunch of things to interact with, cover, terrain features, other minor critters to avoid/deliberately spook, that sort of thing.

Everything outside this 250 square yard area is by necessity far less detailed- the same sorts of features but with much less understanding of the spatial relationships between features.

While clearly as the GM I've defined all of the world, by presenting the map the players now have a small area of the fictional space they can interact with without requiring constant negotiation- they can act against the known geography using their own understanding of their character capabilities.

So here is the tension - within this detailed area the players can act with confidence and have lots of ways to interact with the environment. But I as GM have decided its location and properties. Outside of it they have more freedom to move, but every movement is a negotiation where my imagining of the scene is paramount. There's also some social pressure to make use of the maps and so on that the GM has clearly put a lot of effort into.

So by this form of prep and committing to a geography I offer the players the information they need to make informed choices and the opportunity to make use of terrain features but cost them the ability to choose their ground and have those advantages.

Essentially as we cannot detail all parts of a game world at the highest level of fidelity, by preparing parts at a higher level we risk biasing the game to those parts we have prepared heavily. Its just worth being clear eyed about the costs and benefits of different kinds of prep.

Note that isn't a battlemap/totm (jargon!) division- it could equally have been a much larger grid map with one more detailed section on it or two totm regions, one thinly described, one richly described.

In the past I've argued that games in being constitutive of play necessitate voluntary surrenders of agencies. For example, I can play a game of Chess only because I voluntarily surrender my agency to move the pieces any way I like and instead accept constraints.

I think your example shows something similar, where in order that the players can play a detailed combat mini-game they voluntarily surrender some agencies. The prep here is constitutive of the game play, which might otherwise not be possible.

That's not to say that prep couldn't conflict with agencies that players would prefer to retain, and some such prep might conflict without constituting anything worth having in exchange. Which I suppose is the question I have for the above: were the player surrenders of agencies voluntarily made in view of game play they wished to have?

 

[pemerton]

Do you (or does anyone) see a problem with a pre-written adventure including the following:

==============
Castle defenses

If an alert is sounded, or if any untoward disturbance occurs, the following will happen unless prior or ongoing events interfere:

Within 15 seconds
--- the alert will be repeated throughout the castle, all on-duty guards will have weapons drawn (or loaded) and ready
--- the sergeant of the watch will order off-duty guards to be awakened if asleep and to begin donning their arms and armour
--- the guards on the postern gate will ensure it is closed, barred, and locked then one will report such to the sergeant-at-arms while the rest remain in place

Within 45 seconds
--- if it is not already up, the guards on the drawbridge will withdraw inside and begin hoisting the drawbridge; this will take them 2 minutes unless interrupted
--- about one-third of the on-duty guards not already in these locations will begin moving to the battlements, one-third to the location(s) of the royal family, and one-third to the source of the initial alarm
--- civilians and staff will begin moving to the nearest place of safety (their quarters, the kitchens, the root cellar)
--- the status of the postern gate will be reported to the sergeant at arms

Within 2 minutes
--- the sergeant of the watch will receive a brief report as to the nature of the alert and issue orders accordingly
--- civilians and staff will have reached their safe areas
--- all on-duty guards will by now be either on the battlements, or guarding the royal family, or at the source of the initial alarm

Within 3 minutes
--- with the drawbridge now hoisted, its previous guards move to the battlements above the drawbridge and take up station there
--- off-duty guards report for duty and are assigned as needed
--- if the alert is deemed to pose imminent danger to the royal family they will be escorted by their guards to the castle vaults
=================

So. That's a planned sequence of events* that will happen if an alert is sounded, unless amended by something specific to that particular alert (for example, if the alert is due to someone trying to gain access through the postern gate the guards there will simply try to hold it until reinforcements arrive). And for me, this is perfectly acceptable.

And note this is all completely independent of the PCs. They might be the cause of an alert, or they might be bystanders or guests in the castle when an alert is sounded, or whatever.

* - actually just part of the sequence; it doesn't touch on magical defenses or any classed-levelled entities living in the castle, it only details what the mundane guards do.

This seems to be a statement of the dispositions/default actions of certain people. To me, it seems rather efficient/rational for a pseudo-mediaeval castle, but that's a different matter.

It's not a planned series of events for play, which I'm pretty sure is what @EzekielRaiden was talking about.

You don't understand how stealth, bribery, invisibility, teleport, pass without trace and a myriad other skills, abilities and spells can bypass encounters or at the very least combat encounters?

Anyone of us can plan the defenses of a location - with a planned sequence of events a, b, c. Can we at least agree there?

If the PC avoid such events through creative play are they encounters or not encounters?

If the players avoid the defence of a castle, then the GM's planned disposition of forces won't be triggered. But that does not seem to me to be bypassing or avoiding an encounter. It's choosing to sneak in rather than to assault head on.

Wouldn’t that be resolving the encounter? I don’t expect that the AD&D books describe it as bypassing an encounter.

This is from pp 84-5 of Gygax's DMG:

The judgment factor is inescapable with respect to weighting experience for the points gained from slaying monsters and/or gaining treasure. You must weigh the level of challenge - be it thinking or fighting - versus the level of experience of the player character(s) who gained it. . . .

Tricking or outwitting monsters or overcoming tricks and/or traps placed to guard treasure must be determined subjectively, with level of experience balanced against the degree of difficulty you assign to the gaining of the treasure. . . .

Convert all metal and gems and jewelry to a total value in gold pieces. If the relative value of the monster(s) or guardian device fought equals or exceeds that of the party which took the treasure, experience is awarded on a 1 for 1 basis. If the guardian(s) was relatively weaker, award experience on a 5 g.p. to 4 x.P., 3 to 2,2 to 1,3 to 1, or even 4 or more to 1 basis according to the relative strengths. . . .Such strength comparisons are subjective and must be based upon the degree of challenge the Dungeon Master had the monster(s) pose the treasure taker.​

Page 106 of the PHB is similar but not identical:

Experience points awarded for treasure gained - monetary or magical - are modified downward if the guardian of the treasure (whether a monster, device, or obstacle, such as a secret door or maze) was generally weaker than the character who overcame it. . . .

Monsters captured or slain always bring a full experience point award. Captured monsters ransomed or sold bring a gold piece: experience point ratio award​

So there is no reference to "bypassing" encounters. Rather, XP is awarded for slaying monsters, and for capturing them; and is awarded for treasure looted (and ransoms paid). If the PCs acquire treasure by outwitting its guardians, they get the treasure XP but not the slay/capture XP.

Yes. But everyone here has played D&D we are not speaking Latin when we talk about bypassing an encounter.

As it is being used in this thread it's not a term I'm familiar with.

I know what it means for the PCs to go down path A rather than path B on a map, and thus to have encounter X rather than encounter Y. I know what it means for the PCs to sneak in rather than attack head-on, and thus to not get into a fight because they chose not to.

But I'm not familiar with reifying some of these possible events at the table, calling them "encounters", and then saying that the players, via their play of their PCs, bypassed them. To me the language of bypassing seems to connect to a concept of prep and planning and GM expectation that I'm not used to.

In the discussion about "bypassed encounters", I've seen several mentions of GMs planning out encounters in advance, only for the PCs to "bypass" them.

I don't really understand how that squares with the statements folks have made regarding non-planning from the GM, and I think this is at least adjacent to pemerton's questions. Specifically, this implies that there is, in fact, a planned sequence of events that will happen, and the PCs have found a shortcut which skips some of that planned sequence.

Yes, this is one of the things I was puzzled by.

 

[pemerton]

I don't know of anyone who describes anything as an "encounter" during play.

Who gives a flippety-flop about the specifics of the conversation at the table?

You?

Did you ever position a gang of toughs in front of the PCs as a challenge or obstacle and if yes, did the PCs successfully take steps to avoid them?

If yes again, then boom: they bypassed that encounter

It sounds to me like they had the encounter.

Looking through Gygax's PHB, p 101 describes the basic structure of play like this:

Your Dungeon Master will have carefully prepared a map of the place you and your party are to enter, a map showing all outstanding features of the place, with numbers and/or letters to key
encounter/special interest areas.​

The next page, in the context of movement outdoors, says that "When an encounter occurs, the movement rate is handled in the same manner as combat movement in the dungeon." (The point of htis remark is to draw a contrast with the use of miles per day as the basic movement rate outdoors.) The same page then notes that

Characters can be surprised just as creatures they encounter can. Noise and light can negate chances for surprise with respect to characters or creatures they encounter.​

And then p 103 has a heading "Traps, Tricks and Encounters" with a sub-heading "Encounters":

During the course of an adventure, you will undoubtedly come across various forms of traps and tricks, as well as encounter monsters of one sort or another. While your DM will spend considerable time and effort to make all such occurrences effective, you and your fellow players must do everything within your collective power to make them harmless, unsuccessful or profitable. On the other hand, you must never allow preparedness and caution to slow your party and make it ineffective in adventuring. By dealing with each category here, the best approach to negating the threat of a trap, trick, or encounter can be developed. . . .

Encounters: A "monster" can be a kindly wizard or a crazed dwarf, a friendly brass dragon or a malicious manticore. Such are the possibilities of encounters in dungeon, wilderness, or town. Chance meetings are known as encounters with wandering monsters. Finding a creature where it has been placed by the referee is usually referred to as a set encounter.​

Over the next few pages, the term occurs again being used in a more-or-less natural sense to describe meetings between the PCs and other beings.

There is no reference to "bypassing" an encounter, but in the context of this game, that language would suggest that (i) the GM had prepared/placed a "set encounter", and (ii) that the players, as their PCs, were able to avoid or go around that area.

If there is no map-and-key resolution, then what does it even mean for the GM to position a gang of toughs in front of the PCs? I mean, you could tell the players that their PCs see a gang of toughs in front of them: but that is a situation/threat/encounter that the players (via their PCs) now have to respond to.

An encounter is also a thing that will occur unless steps are taken to prevent it from occurring.

I see you coming toward me along the street, but you haven't seen me yet. I could keep walking and talk to you (encounter) or I could slip into a store until you've gone by (avoided encounter).

This a description of the fiction. But at the table, what is happening? In Gygax's D&D, you seem to be describing a wandering monster encounter, where the player/PC achieves surprise, and hence is able to avoid without needing to roll.

For this to occur as a "set encounter", the GM would have to have made a decision to narrate this particular event. And then to have implemented that decision. It's not at all clear that it can even fit into Gygax's framework for encounters, given that it seems not to be tied to a particular place on the map.

An anticipated planned encounter that was avoided. As many people have told you repeatedly.

I'd define it as a foreseeable or foreseen encounter that was intentionally avoided by the PCs.

Anticipated or foreseeable/foreseen by whom? The general impression I'm getting is the GM but perhaps also the players because of what the GM has told them. But how is the GM working out that this encounter is anticipated/foreseeable? To me it seems to be linked to some sort of prep.

"encounter" has been used in D&D since the beginning and is just plain old normal English even if it is an uncommon usage of the word.

See above for how "encounter" was used in Gygax's PHB. An encounter is either (i) an event that occurs (ie the PCs encounter someone) or (ii) a GM prep of an incipient event, typically something in a room/location that the PCs might (but need not) explore.

This is why I have suggested that the idea of "bypassing" an encounter seems closely connected to map-and-key style prep and adjudication.

 

[pemerton]

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.

But used in this sense - which is more like how I would think about encounters - it makes no sense to talk about a bypassed encounter. Because the players didn't bypass their PCs doing something and thus changing/progressing the fiction.

 

[clearstream]

That is, there seems to be a trilemma here:

I wanted to assay a take on each lemma in relation to the mode of play

• GM doesn't give detailed info unless prompted by players, which risks "guessing-game" territory

Inviting the GM to disclose setting is important to the experience of exploration. Players make these guesses in the direction of their interests, to unearth what is there. Often involving satisfying chains of inferences.

Relatedly, one way I have thought about knowledge skills is that their purpose can be to enable players to invite GM to contribute narrative along specific lines.

• GM only gives detailed info about the things she's prepped, which risks "pick your option from the menu" territory

GM curation serves the same purpose here as curation may elsewhere: elevating the experience through intelligent, witty, fascinating, etcetera inclusions (and exclusions) that cohere. That is true of many modes of play beyond sandbox, of course.

• GM always gives detailed info about everything, well-prepped or not, which risks over-saturation and player interest fatigue

Skill in GMing includes knowing how much to add to the group's shared ongoing narrative at any given moment. In this way no different from any other TTRPG. It requires no more than modest sensitivity to player interests to avoid this risk.

Finding the right balance between the three, not just once, but every single time the GM prepares stuff seems like a tall order. Doing so in a 100% purely intuitionist way, where it's not even possible to talk further about it than "I just work to present a realistic world" (or similar), seems like a Herculean task, and worse, one that's essentially impossible to teach!

That strikes me as a philosophically skeptical view of GMing. More or less pointing out that it is impossible. It may be that the explaining is harder than the doing. In any case, similar skepticism can be levelled at GMing -- or even playing -- any TTRPG: on this account the whole art form may be an impossibility.

 

[SableWyvern]

So, in the documentary Behind the Curve, there is a scene where a prominent flat earther is talking about how some of her fellow flat earthers have conspiracy theories about how she's really a CIA plant. She talks about how ridiculous (and hurtful) this is and how she can't even begin to comprehend how anyone could possibly take the idea even a little seriously. And there's this brief moment where she seems to understand that the way she is thinking about these people, and her understanding that their theories have no basis whatsoever in reality, is exactly how she appears, to other people.

Watching this ongoing debate on the definitions of "encounter" and "bypass" and the related debate on whether or not it's acceptable to be confused about their definitions in the first place, is making we question just how I have looked to uninvolved spectators at earlier points in this thread.