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

[hawkeyefan]

Have you followed the discussion? I posted this:
I took it to be obvious. Self-evident, even. Because of this, which I also posted:

And @robertsconley, @Lanefan and @Faolyn have all subsequently made posts disagreeing with me.

Some of the disagreements are illusory: @Faolyn and @Lanefan asserted that beliefs about authored works can have causal effects. Which is true - obviously true - and not something I ever denied.

Bur @Lanefan also seems to be arguing that the GM should be pretending the fictional world is real - just like children who believe in Santa Claus - when making decisions about it.

I'm less clear what @robertsconley is arguing, because he has posted things that are similar to what I have posted - for instance, talking about heuristics a GM might adopt in order to help make decisions - but to present them as if they somehow contradict what I have posted.

EDIT:
I have tracked things back to these two posts:

So I think my claim is very clear:

Imaginary things - fantasy worlds among them - do not have real causal power. This means that any talk by a RPGer about *what the world did (eg "the world responds to what the players had their PCs do") is really talk about what an author authored the world as doing.​

​

*In a "living world" sandbox, typically that author will be the GM.​

​

*That GM may use various heuristics (eg plausibility, bringing existing trends to fruition, etc) and also techniques (eg rolling on table) in order to decide what to author.​

Not only is this clear, but to me it seems accurate. It describes what I have done for years as a GM. It conforms to what other RPG books that I've read suggest.

I find @robertsconley's claim less clear. He appears to disagree with my assertion that "there is no world that exercises causal potency". The most natural interpretation of that assertion is that the imaginary world does exercise causal potency; but that seems an unlikely belief for someone to hold, and so I presume that something else is intended.

He then refers to the central difference between "living world" and "Burning Wheel" - but in a way that I find obscure. Because both approaches treat the world as a consistent space. In both, outcomes are shaped by how players have their PCs interact with the world (I've given ample BW examples upthread). And in both, what happens next in the world is downstream of the GM and the procedures etc that they use.

It's just that the procedures etc are different. The BW procedures, for instance, include having extensive and nuanced regard to the priorities that a player has established for their PC.

It’s a cop out . It’s disclaiming decision making after play by blaming it on “the world” rather than disclaiming it during play by relying on dice or some similar procedure.

It’s BS.

 

[Micah Sweet]

These aren't cases of imaginary things having real effects. These are actual things - mental and/or bodily states - having real effects.

As I said, Galadriel, the Millennium Falcon, Conan, dragons, unicorns, superheroes, etc - these things do not have real effects. They can't - because they don't exist!

I'm not sure why you feel the need to repeat my point back to me.

But multiple posters in this thread, when it is suggested to them that the world did it really means the GM made a decision about what happened in the fiction, reject that suggestion.

Presumably, as you say, they don't think that the imaginary thing has real causal power. But there is an extreme reluctance to actually speak about the GM making a decision.

If I decide to use a table to determine a world effect, in accordance with guidelines as to when said table should be used, I decided to use the table. But the table made the decision that affects play and the setting.

 

[pemerton]

Yes, I saw that. I take that to mean "witness a murder/stumble upon a murder victim", not "commit a murder."

Well, given that the rules refer to committing cold-blooded murder, you've misunderstood.

Because murdering someone isn't frightening

Is that based on personal experience? Empirical research? Or mere conjecture?

I wouldn't be so sure. I mean, I haven't actually tried it. Still it would seem pretty frightening. If I put myself in the place of a hypothetical version of me that is actually about to kill someone, yeah that feels fairly scary, at a kind of somewhat removed level. Hard to say what I'd be thinking in the real situation.

My limited experience (read: I've read Crime & Punishment) suggests that the act of murder is more enjoyable in the contemplation than the committing.

Right. There is an extensive tradition - I'm not especially educated in literature, and so I think of Shakespeare through Crime and Punishment to Camus's Outsider but also a certain sort of genre crime fiction - of understanding murder as a horrific thing.

Even LotR participates in it, with the discussion between Gandalf and Frodo of the pity that stayed Bilbo's hand, when the latter considered murdering Gollum.

 

[Lanefan]

Because murdering someone isn't frightening .....

PLEASE tell me you're not speaking from personal experience here!

 

[zakael19]

I wouldn't be so sure. I mean, I haven't actually tried it. Still it would seem pretty frightening. If I put myself in the place of a hypothetical version of me that is actually about to kill someone, yeah that feels fairly scary, at a kind of somewhat removed level. Hard to say what I'd be thinking in the real situation.

As somebody who has been in and around a segment of society who deals in violence on a professional level for a long period of time, the assertion you’re responding to is even more incredible. The military has developed entire long scale training regimens to try and get past the need to, dare I say, Steel oneself to kill (and often fail). Tons of ink has been spilled on how most people do not have it in them to kill in even hot blood!

 

[pemerton]

If I decide to use a table to determine a world effect, in accordance with guidelines as to when said table should be used, I decided to use the table. But the table made the decision that affects play and the setting.

The table is inert. It is humans who read the dice, refer to the table, and then make decisions about what they are authoring.

As I already posted, Gygax is quite sensitive to this issue in the introduction to his DMG. The following is from p 9, and also from p 110 (the stuff about alternative possibilities for zero hp) which is not in the introduction, but has some things to say that I think help make sense of what the introductory text is getting at:

For example, the rules call for wandering monsters, but these can be not only irritating - if not deadly - but the appearance of such can actually spoil a game by interfering with an orderly expedition You have set up an area full of clever tricks and traps, populated it with well-thought-out creature complexes, given clues about it to pique players' interest, and the group has worked hard to supply themselves with everything by way of information and equipment they will need to face and overcome the imagined perils. They are gathered together and eager to spend an enjoyable evening playing their favorite game, with the expectation of going to a new, strange area and doing their best to triumph. They are willing to accept the hazards of the dice, be it loss of items, wounding, insanity, disease, death, as long as the process is exciting. But lo!, everytime you throw the ”monster die” a wandering nasty is indicated, and the party’s strength is spent trying to fight their way into the area. Spells expended, battered and wounded, the characters trek back to their base. Expectations have been dashed, and probably interest too, by random chance. Rather than spoil such an otherwise enjoyable time, omit the wandering monsters indicated by the die. No, don’t allow the party to kill them easily or escape unnaturally, for that goes contrary to the major precepts of the game. Wandering monsters, however, are included for two reasons, as is explained in the section about them. If a party deserves to have these beasties inflicted upon them, that is another matter, but in the example above it is assumed that they are doing everything possible to travel quickly and quietly to their planned destination. If your work as a DM has been sufficient, the players will have all they can handle upon arrival, so let them get there, give them a chance. The game is the thing, and certain rules can be distorted or disregarded altogether in favor of play.

Know the game systems, and you will know how and when to take upon yourself the ultimate power. . . .

Now and then a player will die through no fault of his own. He or she will have done everything correctly, taken every reasonable precaution, but still the freakish roll of the dice will kill the character. In the long run you should let such things pass as the players will kill more than one opponent with their own freakish rolls at some later time. Yet you do have the right to arbitrate the situation. You can rule that the player, instead of dying, is knocked unconscious, loses a limb, is blinded in one eye or invoke any reasonably severe penalty that still takes into account what the monster has done. It is very demoralizing to the players to lose a cared-for-player character when they have played well. When they have done something stupid or have not taken precautions, then let the dice fall where they may!​

The wandering monster system serves - and integrates - two functions: it is a cost to the players, which they incur by spending time adventuring in the dungeon; and it is a system of content introduction - it makes the dungeon "come alive". (That is my own thinking. To the best of my knowledge, Gygax never actually provides the information and explanation about their function that he promises in this passage.)

What Gygax is picking up on, in the introductory text, is that sometimes the system doesn't work properly: players may have their PCs spend time in the dungeon simply getting to the place they want to raid/investigate; they thus trigger the content introduction mechanism (because time is passing in the fiction, and so the dice must be rolled to see what is happening in the dungeon) even though they don't deserve to pay any cost, because they are not yet actually adventuring.

Gygax's solution - fudging the wandering monster die roll (not any resulting combat - he is very clear about that, for what I think are very clear reasons) - is not especially elegant. Torchbearer 2e uses a different solution: there is no wandering monster die, but rather wandering monsters are handled as "twist encounters", imposed by the GM when a player fails a roll. And when the party is travelling through a known part of the dungeon using their map, the TB2e rules say that no roll is required, and hence there is no chance of a wandering monster. This is more elegant, but does involve a deprecation of the role of wandering monsters in making the dungeon "come alive". Dungeon World takes a different approach again, although overall it is closer to TB2e than to Gygax. And there are probably yet other approaches in use, I'm sure.

But anyway - the point I'm making here is that we can see Gygax being very conscious of the GM's responsibility for making decisions about the introduction of content into the shared fiction. For well-known reasons - uncertainty, neutrality, etc - he incorporates a random table element into the decision-making. But he never tries to pretend that it is the fault of the dice. He keeps the responsibility of the GM front and centre.

Given the conceptual and historical debt that the more contemporary sandbox tradition owes to Gygax (as well as Arneson, of course), I am surprised that this bit of his legacy, for understanding what GMing involves, seems to be neglected or even repudiated.

 

[pemerton]

If I imagine it as if it's real, wouldn;'t that tend to push me toward taking more care over what I'm doing rather than less?

I mean care for the game experience.

 

[zakael19]

It’s a cop out . It’s disclaiming decision making after play by blaming it on “the world” rather than disclaiming it during play by relying on dice or some similar procedure.

It’s BS.

I think there’s just some resistance or whatever on their behalf to buying into your core assertion that “it’s all turtles GM decisions all the way down.” I’ll freely admit that when I run Stonetop I’m making a conscious decision about the next steps of play, right? Like, I’m prompting for table rolls; I’m picking a threat; I’m looking at the Dangers for an area and selecting a GM move to make. I’m trying to stay in accordance with my agenda and principles at all times, but I’m the one curating play such that the players have a “life filled with adventure in a rich and mysterious world” to paraphrase said agenda.

I think rigorous Blorb like refereeing with an emphasis on world-state tables, random rolls, etc is similarly principled play. The agenda is different, clearly (what would it be if we were PBTAing it - maybe “portray a consistent world / allow the player’s directions to have an impact / … something replacing play to find out”).

 

[pemerton]

As somebody who has been in and around a segment of society who deals in violence on a professional level for a long period of time, the assertion you’re responding to is even more incredible. The military has developed entire long scale training regimens to try and get past the need to, dare I say, Steel oneself to kill (and often fail). Tons of ink has been spilled on how most people do not have it in them to kill in even hot blood!

In BW, starting Steel depends in part on backstory elements. These include things like whether or not the character has ever been a soldier, or been a murderer (both are experiences that increase initial Steel).

 

[zakael19]

In BW, starting Steel depends in part on backstory elements. These include things like whether or not the character has ever been a soldier, or been a murderer (both are experiences that increase initial Steel).

I assume being a murderer in cold blood means you’re starting from a .. let’s say interesting mental state to begin with anyway!