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

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think Doskvol can feel real. I don’t think one has to be more real than the other. But Rob is saying this is one his main focuses in running a game. And I would go further saying the point is to treat the setting as if it was real. If people are using blades in the dark to achieve a sense of realness, I am fine with that. But it is a bit confusing because many on that side have made arguments that realism is impossible when we raise it as a value

So, then, Doskvol is not inherently less real than, say, Majestic Wilderlands. I think that's my point, they're both primarily settings for RPG play.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The problem is all his definitions point towards his preferred style of play and either make other ones, particularly trad, lesser value, or incapable of doing what they promise. That has been a very consistent feature of these conversations

I entirely agree, except as to the referent of that first 'his'!

 

[Bedrockgames]

So, then, Doskvol is not inherently less real than, say, Majestic Wilderlands. I think that's my point, they're both primarily settings for RPG play.

Yeah, I have never disagreed with that. Again the only time I drew any kind of line on this was when we were talking about the idea of solving an objective mystery versus say one where the facts emerge somehow during play (because that is a distinction that matters when it comes to whether the players are solving the mystery in the sense of an investigator finding clues, putting them together, and there being a factual center to solve). But this whole time I have been promoting a big tent approach to things, including sandbox play.

I entirely agree, except as to the referent of that first 'his'!

Again, if you see my above statement I think you will see that is not what I am trying to do. But I do think the way terms have been used in these discussions in the past, pretty clearly point towards things like Burning Wheel or PbtA (neither of which I object to, but I feel like the language often gets loaded to make those the only worthy types of approaches to RPGs: and note when I talk about realism, I am not saying that it takes realism away from other approaches, when I talk about agency, I am not saying someone using Burning Wheel has less agency----but not the arguments this post referred to were certainly saying things like a trad sandbox had less agency than those types of games)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@robertsconley Baker recently posted about revisiting Narrativism (which is distinct from whatever a "narrative RPG" is and good god it's all very easy to get backwards and confused isn't it), which I think somebody else shared in this thread but, in his words this is narrativism as a play style/dynamic:



It sounds like the way you construct your sandboxes and do the up front work, if your players do 1 & 2 you're quite possibly playing a game in the narrativist dynamic per 4. It sounds like your factions in the world have goals that they're pursuing the PCs may run up against, the PCs have drives and interests in the world, and you're not planning ways things turn out. This may not be your intention or goal, and maybe your players are a little less doing 1&2, but while games like BITD or AW or whatever may be designed from the get go to essentially force narrativist play dynamics that's just some creative intention.

Agreed, living world as envisaged by @robertsconley certainly does not preclude play that is Narrativist in fashion. There tend to be confounding elements however. The milieu is generally conceived in a more impersonal way. Adjudication is often at odds with Narrativist goals. Resolution procedures are generally less suitable, and players are often incapable of being good character advocates because they lack clarity in terms of what the situation is. Said situations are likely to evolve in suboptimal ways, etc.

Vanilla Narrativism is a thing though, for sure.

 

[Bedrockgames]

So, then, Doskvol is not inherently less real than, say, Majestic Wilderlands. I think that's my point, they're both primarily settings for RPG play.

I think you can approach both as if they are real, or as if they are settings in service to play. But I do think when you prioritize a setting being like a real place, that matters (but I don't see why you couldn't do that in Blades in the Dark). I also don't think that blades in the dark could take another approach, where it still is very much like a real setting. Realness in a game setting I think can exist in many forms and over many styles (something being genre heavy for example, and using techniques to facilitate that, doesn't mean it has to feel less real).

 

[Bedrockgames]

Agreed, living world as envisaged by @robertsconley certainly does not preclude play that is Narrativist in fashion. There tend to be confounding elements however. The milieu is generally conceived in a more impersonal way. Adjudication is often at odds with Narrativist goals. Resolution procedures are generally less suitable, and players are often incapable of being good character advocates because they lack clarity in terms of what the situation is. Said situations are likely to evolve in suboptimal ways, etc.

Vanilla Narrativism is a thing though, for sure.

And this is something that came up often in the discussions Rob and I have been part of on sandboxes. I don't think either of us would use narrativism, nor was narrativism as a term used in these conversations (narrative tended to be used more to mean story or story based mechanics). But a real concern is how much does the setting or the adventure revolve around the part? How naturalistic do you go? If this is a real place, does it become artificial if the GM introduces an obvious hook, or has a development occur simply because it is exciting? These were all answered in different ways and different people had different governing philosophies. I would say at the extreme end of sandbox you had people who were very strictly naturalistic, strictly first person, etc. But I don't think that is the only way sandboxes have to be engaged. And it is one of the reasons I always say my campaigns are drama+sandbox (I don't consider what I do less of one, but I like setting expectations as well as I can, and I don't want to feel constrained by things i would regard as emanating from the more extreme sandbox approaches----which for me kind of cause play to drag). I would add another element to this which is: you have to play to the table you have. A sandbox is great, but I feel like I have a responsibility to keep my table functional and make sure folks are having a good time, so I avoid things that would feel like me going "No, this is a sandbox, that can't happen in a sandbox".

 

[AlViking]

Well, consider that example, the characters wander into a village of basket weavers. This is a fictional construct of the GM's. While you can no doubt articulate reasons for said village to exist here, it is far from the only possibility. But adding to this is the sort of things that the process of play you are using does. In, say, Dungeon World the basket weaving would either be color, or maybe address some thematically relevant thing like a PC backstory or a bond. But in trad play where these things are peripheral, things focus naturally on material and operational concerns.

So what we see is that the GM's conception of the world is far more influential in trad forms of play, like living world, than it is in Narrativist play. I'd also say that, generally, Narrativist play has a much simpler and naturally more gamist relationship to system and process. PbtA is great because of the beautiful universal simplicity of process. Players can always get from situation to stakes to mechanics easily and directly. This can be a much more obtuse process in other sorts of systems (FitD etc generally share this, though system complexity varies).

Nobody, certainly not me, is doubting that your approach does what it says it does in a core sense. I am a bit leary of some of the broader claims, based on long experience, but I am certainly not trying to tear anything down. Frankly I think a very clear view of these things allows us to more effectively get what we want.

How would it make any difference if you had gone to a town and asked one of the players to describe the town and they stated that it was a village of basket weavers? It would be different, I just don't see why it matters. The reason why the people went to a town in this region is because of what they've indicated interest in. Maybe they're seeking out the mystical basket of weaving or may it's just a stop on the path and it's just descriptive fluff but not their destination. If you're playing a game where villages don't really exist then it's such a different approach that the concept doesn't apply.

 

[Campbell]

That is something Narrativist design does better. I can accommodate PvP conflict in my Living World Campaigns, but that runs into the same bandwidth issue I talked about earlier. So while it has happened, it is infrequent.

The basic issue is that with my focus on players feeling like they are visiting the setting as their character, the unstated subtext is that the group is visiting the setting together. So, like going on a family trip to a vacation spot, accommodations have to be made. While I am very good at managing split parties at sessions, some situations can only be resolved by having separate sessions, so players are unaware of what each group is doing. The exceptions are either direct conflict, where both groups are brought together to handle, or indirect conflict, where the actions of one group impact the immediate social circle of the other group.

I think it says something about our perspectives that my own interest and engagement with the hobby comes in the reverse direction. Going to a different place and time (with my character mostly being a vehicle for that) especially with exploration in mind has never been the primary appeal for me. Being another person, living another life, feeling the things they feel has always been what drew me in (with setting primarily being a vehicle for achieving that ends).

I started with message board freeform roleplay when I was like 12, played AD&D for a couple years, but really fell in love with tabletop roleplaying the first time I created a Vampire character because it was the first time I felt like I was creating a person who existed in a world, had a context, had a personality (nature and demeanor), had connections (a mentor, contacts, a clan, a herd). That I wasn't just playing an extension of myself.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Right, this is quite incisive. It's the key element of the GM-centered and directed nature of living world play. The problem I have, why I go further and describe ALL plausibility as simply GM-directed, is that the assertions made as to the robustness of the much vaunted GM adjudication of what is plausible, what the narrative constraints are on the GM, is tissue paper. GMs do what they feel like doing. These appeals to 'logic' or whatever are just lampshades.

And that doesn't come across to you as dismissive, maybe even insulting, of a playstyle you don't prefer?

 

[Micah Sweet]

It can be really hard to get some adjacent ones to work that way, either; if you start digging into most pulp adventure games, the conventions there are almost as pronounced (which isn't a surprise given there relationship between the two). And any horror genre other than action-horror has some baked in pretty soundly, too.

That makes sense, but superhero games are the only ones where it makes a practical difference to me.