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

[Maxperson]

Here's a little story I just wrote:

The child walked through the park, and came to an embankment. She thought it would be fun to roll down it, and so she lay on her back at the top of the slope, and gave herself a push. Off she went, rolling down the hill!​

​

As she tumbled down, it was the sounds that excited her the most - the swish of the grass, the wind, the noise of other children and her own delighted screaming, all rendered with a curious rhythm by the rotation of her head, her ears being covered on the left, then exposed, then covered on the right, then both exposed again, all the way to the bottom.​

​

When she stood up, swaying dizzily, all the could think of was racing back up to the top, so that she could have another go! But her father insisted it was time to go home. Rotation, rhythm and joy were soon forgotten, replaced by a sense of tiredness in her legs, and the boredom of the humdrum evening routine.​

​

The sun rose the next morning nevertheless.​

So did my story model: gravity, body shape, hearing, wind, walking, balance and dizziness, muscle fatigue, parent-child relationships, bathtime, and the rotation of the earth about the sun?

If yes, then your threshold for modelling is lower than mine.

If not, then that's why I don't see any modelling in the typical RPG.

Then you have a lower threshold. I'm not saying the models are good, but they exist.

 

[Bedrockgames]

No it's a bit of a Rorschach test.


My answer is that the Emperor falls into despair, doesn't get vengeance and neglects running his Empire. What's the point of all this stuff if what you most love can just get taken away like that? It's true that he responds to slights with violence but that's because they're an attack on his ego. His relationship with his daughter was the one thing not ego driven. Yeah his ego got him his Empire but so what.

Why do I think that? It's just what feels right, other people are going to come to very different answers. I think even with a lot more background and description of his personality people will come up with different answers.

I don't care at all about player agency or whether things are GM or player driven though. What's important to me is that the other participants know I made the decision simply because it felt right given what had just occurred.

Fair enough. See my answer about things clicking in place. But the issue is no matter what the answer Hawkeye would have called it GM driven if the GM was deciding how the NPC

No it's a bit of a Rorschach test.


My answer is that the Emperor falls into despair, doesn't get vengeance and neglects running his Empire. What's the point of all this stuff if what you most love can just get taken away like that? It's true that he responds to slights with violence but that's because they're an attack on his ego. His relationship with his daughter was the one thing not ego driven. Yeah his ego got him his Empire but so what.

Why do I think that? It's just what feels right, other people are going to come to very different answers. I think even with a lot more background and description of his personality people will come up with different answers.

I don't care at all about player agency or whether things are GM or player driven though. What's important to me is that the other participants know I made the decision simply because it felt right given what had just occurred.

i certainly don’t think it is a foregone conclusion he would get revenge. It isn’t my character but if it were mine, I would be considering the kings perspective on the facts on the ground. I think once you start playing an NPC you get a sense of them and though it might say they are vengeful in their description you have a clearer idea of what that means when The rubber hits the road. Usually when players do something and it provokes a reaction in my campaigns, it isn’t a reaction so set down beforehand as @hawkeyefan was suggesting in his argument. It is usually something I could not have anticipated until the players act and the NPC reacts based on what I know about their motives. But I also suspect no matter how we answer this question @hawkeyefan will still regard it as GM drive so J think the gulf here is is just too great to overcome

 

[Bedrockgames]

We’re talking about extrapolation. There’s a starting point, which includes many relevant factors. A king, his disposition, his goals, his bond with his daughter, his enemies. All determined by the GM.

The PCs then do something.

The GM then decides what happens afterward, based on the PCs’ action, along with all the other things that the GM determined.

It’s a significant amount of influence over things, even accounting for the uncertainty of the players’ decisions.

This is not a bad thing, by the way.

There is still a game system being used. It isn’t going to be the GM always deciding things without liking to a system. And I would say in both me and rob’s games, we don’t decide what happens next, we decide what actions relevant NPCs and factions attempt

 

[robertsconley]

.
This is not a bad thing, by the way.

Sure but the GM has a good idea was the part I was responding too. My experience I that I have an idea what may happen but never a good idea.

Keep in mind at this time I ran my Scourge of the Demon Wolf sandbox adventure nearly 20 times with random people across the the country and while there are patterns that allowed me to write the book I sold. The reality no one group did the adventure in the same way. Not little differences but completely different choices led to very different adventures.

So like I said I have an idea just not an good idea of what may happen.

 

[pemerton]

The meaningful thing was I believe in relation to the result being determined by a die roll rather than free roleplay. Also not me, for the record.

No, you didn't say it's meaningless, just nonsensical.

You still haven't explained why that is just expressing feelings, whereas me saying I would find your game railroad-y is an insult.

 

[pemerton]

Because if you want a world to be as realistic as possible, you want to know where the trade winds are, because that will determine which cities will be the most prominent or at least conduct the most trade. If you know where the plates are, you know where you will find volcanoes, mountain and island chains, earthquake zones, and more. That will then shape the location of the forests, deserts, and plains around them, along with the flow of rivers and where other bodies of water are (which, in turn, will reveal the location of other biomes).

You seem to like Tolkien, seeing as how you just said you used characters from the Silmarillion as inspiration for one of your PCs. He was quite famous for the enormous amount of time and effort he spent on conlangs. Is that more important or useful than figuring out your world's centers of trade or basic geography, less important, or equally important?

Why would a fantasy world not be created by deities? Why would plate tectonics, and atmospheric currents, even be a thing?

Like, where are the earthquake zones? Where Poseidon is when he gets angry!

 

[pemerton]

Was Hobbiton a city?

Yes, I know he was some sort of landed gentry or whatnot. The point still stands.

My point is not about the nature of the village. It's that Bilbo is not "standard issue".

 

[pemerton]

If it's a hard definition, why did you suggest that those with a different opinion "have a lower bar" than you? That suggests different standards for something you just said only had one.

Huh? Some things can be a matter of degree. Some things count as X rather than Y depending on a contestable threshold. If you think your world map is a model of something - I'm not quite clear what - that's your low bar. I think of it like I think of JRRT's maps in LotR - maps of an imaginary place. A way of presenting a fiction.

 

[Maxperson]

But that's the point that you keep trying to ignore. It is YOU who are choosing between the plausible outcomes. It is YOU who defines "plausible". The world doesn't define that. There is absolutely nothing in your setting that defines what is plausible or not. Every single decision point is grounded in your personal views of what is plausible or even possible.

That is what people are pushing back against. This notion that there is some sort of objectivity in your setting. There absolutely cannot be any objectivity here. Not when every single element of your setting is defined and detailed by you. Every single outcome, decision, event, whatever, is 100% sourced from you. There is not way that can be objective.

Note, "not objective" in no way means that it's bad. It just means that it's not objective. Since the only judge of what "fits the logic of the setting" is the person who created the setting, I'm going to call shenanigans on any claim of objectivity. It can't be objective. It's simply not possible.

Which is where the notion of "own your decisions" comes in. Why be coy and try to claim something that is obviously untrue on its face? Why not simply state that in a trad-sandbox game, the DM is going to be deciding 99% of what's going on in the game? While the players will have input through the actions of their characters, everything else is 100% down to whatever the DM decides.

Plausible does not require objective truth. If I decide what is plausible, it's because the thing is plausible. The same is true if the players suggest something plausible.

As for why we don't state that the DM is going to decide 99% of what goes on in the game, speaking for myself, it's because I prefer not to lie about such things.

 

[Hussar]

I don’t think this is true for every GM. First of most outcomes like this are more likely to be decided by dice rolls than fiat. But say he has an NPC reacting to the players taking an action and this situation if two outcomes, both plausible, one boring one exciting comes up. He will pick what he thinks is the most plausible of the two. In the rare case that they are so close he simply finds them equally plausible, well that is an edge case. No one would begrudge him leaning into fun all things being equal, but I suspect many would resort to a die roll if they were uncertain. I have to say though I can’t even recall a time this hypothetical has come up in play for me

I suspect that the overlap of “plausible” and “fun” are pretty close to perfect circles.