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

[hawkeyefan]

And you insist that I would learn something even though I said I would not.

Why not?

If you don’t know how a character will behave faced with a certain decision, and then we roll to find out… once the roll takes place, how is it you haven’t learned anything?

 

[AnotherGuy]

I think the question then becomes... were you and your players desires aligned? I wonder this whenever I see a DM who is dissapointed that the game does not force incentivize a player into roleplaying

Wonder all you like, these were my friends in high school and thereafter. We liked the same movies, the same books had similar hobbies. I wasn't picking randos.
Fact is the game did not incentivise and therefore a particular style of play emerged because of that.

But was that the type of game your players wanted? You keep speaking from your wants or your desires but it is a collaborative game of multiple people.

So I'm describing what frustrated me about the game which educated generations of players, but more importantly my friends, to play 1 way only and your response is suck-it-up buttercup because it is a collaborative game...

Ok. I can speak about my player friends, most of them knew no other way to play. The one that did, had mad skills and ran his own games and migrated to Vampire and of recent to other systems fairly quickly.

I only met others players who were concerned about the TIBF 1/2 way through my RPG career. The one player I carried from my earlier years has remained a meta-gamer (and thats not my assessment of him, that's the tables'). But in all fairness he's starting to show some promise of late.

In what way? Also what edition of D&D are you speaking to?

This is not an alignment discussion or at least I'm not going to enter into one. What I do know is that you've been here long enough and participated in enough of them (alignment threads) to know what the other side's concerns are about alignment (and which editions were most problematic with it) EVEN if you don't agree with them.

How did PbtA do this? I've run MotW and am curious in what you are referencing here.

It's what they prioritize in play.
D&D doesn't even value (via it's system) the testing the TIBFs of a character, nevermind prioritize.

Again there is a thin line between coaxing and forcing.

You're concerned I'm forcing my preferences on my players? Do you perhaps think they don't know what my preferences are? Out of curiosity do you feel the same way if a GM says no monks or dragonborn in their game?

I think the most important thing is having players who desire the same roleplaying goals as you do.

That's 100% true, but just like a child, the early years do play a major role in shaping a roleplayer.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Not at all. It’s about the player and their choices in the game. In BW, the idea is for these things to be tested. That the dice may constrain what we can do. It’s a decision made knowingly, and it uses a set procedure that is known by the player.

There are consequences in play beyond hit point loss.

Again, I can see how in BW this would be the case. I am not saying we can't have a discussion that accommodates different ways agency is handled. That is essentially what I am arguing we do. But you are so focused on gameplay, that you are using a definition of agency that completely ignored the players control of their character. That is the part where it gets odd I think. Like there is nothing wrong with mechanics that do that, and I can accept that in some cases, it may ultimately be enhancing to agency. But I think this whole maximal agency argument you are making is operating from a flawed definition (and leaves many high agency styles of play by the wayside)

 

[Faolyn]

I was replying to a post that said that players of 5e D&D get to decide their PCs' mental capabiltiies.

Yes, I know that. The DM can call for a roll for the PC to notice something or to know something. They can't, by RAW or RAI, call for a roll for the PC to believe another PC or an NPC's story, or to have their emotions changed without magic (or psionics, drugs, etc.) being involved.

 

[Micah Sweet]

What's the "it"?

I mean, what the player is doing is building and playing their PC. I assume that doesn't count as "meta", given that it (presumably) happens in your RPGing as well.

And then what the GM is doing is - as per the rules of the game - having regard to certain aspects of the PC build in making their decisions. Is that the GM being meta? Isn't the GM allowed to do that? If you are GMing 3E D&D, and a player builds a ranger with Orcs as a favoured enemy, and so that means you as GM decide to use some Orcs as NPCs, does that count as the player exercising "meta agency"?

Is it "meta agency" every time the GM makes a decision because they think it will lead to something the players will find interesting and enjoyable?

If the system forces them to manipulate the setting such that player concerns are always paramount, then yes. It is meta player agency.

 

[AlViking]

Hang on - you keep posting assertions about Burning Wheel that are false!

Recently you also made assertions about 4e skill challenges that @zakael19 and I both know, from experience, to be false. (Perhaps they are true of how you played 4e. But you asserted them as universal.)

I mean, you might prefer it that BW rulebooks say X rather than Y. But that doesn't affect what they actually say.

We ask simple questions which have simple answers that we don't get. Instead we repeatedly get a sample scenario that isn't representative or blocks of rules when we just want a simple answer.. Some of this is just how different BW is and it's hard to grasp sometimes because it's such a polar opposite approach in many ways. But then people keep on insisting that failing to make a spot check or being killed by a dragon is exactly the same as another character winning a contest and my character has to agree to what they say.

When I talked about 4e I clarified that I was talking about when the game was first released. Whether or not you followed the rules the same as people I know is not relevant. I do not care what BW says. I know enough about it to know it wouldn't work for me. But you seem to treat every question, every attempt at clarification as if we're attacking you personally.

 

[AlViking]

Why not?

If you don’t know how a character will behave faced with a certain decision, and then we roll to find out… once the roll takes place, how is it you haven’t learned anything?

Doubling down on what I've confirmed would not be true. Coolio. The only thing I would learn was whether or not I would roll high enough to succeed.

 

[zakael19]

We end up discussing mechanics so often because discrete mechanics are sort of easy red meat, but the discrete mechanisms are really only important within the context of the holistic design of a game. What brings the emotional depth to a Narrativist game is the intentions we bring, the work we put into establishing the initial context and structure and practice of how we approach the conversation.

So, it starts by working together to create an initial context. This can be done up front or as part of the initial first 3 or so sessions, depending on level of myth. Based on the game premise we create characters and an initial situation, and we build a world around them we can all be invested in. We take the time to intentionally invest in all these characters and their struggles. Then we either setup or frame situations that speak to the characters and their struggles. The situations are all ones that will provoke change in the characters. That's where the depth comes. Mechanics are the cherry on top of the processes, serving to build reward cycles and help keep the momentum of play.

This all requires practice, vulnerability and intention. It does not happen overnight. The mechanisms are important, but the practice and procedures matter just as much. Bringing task and intent into a conventionally ran game without the actual play procedures and scene framing know how won't get you very far because mechanics serve the process - not the other way around.

I mean, not to slide in here and undercut it a bit but for the groups I'm running it pretty much happened "overnight." I think that the character-drama focused play culture that permeates younger generation 5e right now actually makes for a lot of folks really ready to do this level of engagement with a game design that more direct links stuff they were already doing (I'm assuming for previous decades gamers this was like people coming from WoD type deep role-play?) with mechanical weight. My Stonetop groups were ready from the get-go to be invested in teh town and NPCs and conflicts/working, my Songs for the Dusk group saw "write down your beliefs and form Memories based off stuff that happens & downtime activates" and squealed with joy.

(to be fair: I did not spring Burning Wheel on them)

 

[Micah Sweet]

Speaking for myself, I don't dismiss plausibility as a heuristic: I use it all the time when GMing.

What I deny is that imaginary things participate in actual causal processes. The causal process is GM decision-making, not some imagined event exerting real power.

If you don't allow the circumstances in the setting to influence, or in some cases outright dictate, GM adjudication, then IMO you're not playing Living World. You're playing backdrop to PC protagonism. Imaginary things absolutely can (and IMO should) participate in causal process, because they are a major factor in determining what decisions are made.

 

[Micah Sweet]

We end up discussing mechanics so often because discrete mechanics are sort of easy red meat, but the discrete mechanisms are really only important within the context of the holistic design of a game. What brings the emotional depth to a Narrativist game is the intentions we bring, the work we put into establishing the initial context and structure and practice of how we approach the conversation.

So, it starts by working together to create an initial context. This can be done up front or as part of the initial first 3 or so sessions, depending on level of myth. Based on the game premise we create characters and an initial situation, and we build a world around them we can all be invested in. We take the time to intentionally invest in all these characters and their struggles. Then we either setup or frame situations that speak to the characters and their struggles. The situations are all ones that will provoke change in the characters. That's where the depth comes. Mechanics are the cherry on top of the processes, serving to build reward cycles and help keep the momentum of play.

This all requires practice, vulnerability and intention. It does not happen overnight. The mechanisms are important, but the practice and procedures matter just as much. Bringing task and intent into a conventionally ran game without the actual play procedures and scene framing know how won't get you very far because mechanics serve the process - not the other way around.

Just curious: how many trad games spend page count talking about, "level of myth", "scene-framing" or "reward cycles"?