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

[robertsconley]

I mean, the focus of play in your game is still the character’s actions, right? The goals they set, how they influence the world, and how other elements of the world reveal themselves in turn?

Not quite. The players are free, as their characters, to do anything within the setting, constrained only by their character’s capabilities. That includes not just what the mechanics allow, but also what makes sense for a sentient being to attempt in that world.

But that freedom isn’t my sole focus. It carries equal weight with the life of the setting itself, specifically, the lives of the NPCs and creatures within it, and all the things they do.

To stress again: equal weight.

When combined with other elements of my approach, this creates a feeling among the players that they’ve truly visited the setting as their characters.

Like, Blades emphasizes its setting and making it feel real extremely deeply, as I’ve pointed out many times, including in one of the 3 core GM Goals of play. Factions have desires and goals they’re pursuing with or without player involvement. The framing of how play evolves from a mechanics and scene-building perspective is different, but in play the moment-to-moment action doesn’t feel in a different world from 5e.

Sure, but whereas Blades in the Dark focuses on creating an experience of a drama about life in Duskvol, my living world approach is about visiting that world as a character within it. Blades creates a rich, character-driven drama with lots of depth, and its mechanics, like flashbacks, do an excellent job supporting that.

More importantly, it does so in a way that’s approachable for folks with limited hobby time, which is no small feat.

Earlier, I mentioned the difference between running a campaign where it feels like you’ve visited Middle-earth versus one where it feels like you’re inside a Tolkien novel about Middle-earth, or, more precisely, creating a Tolkien novel about Middle-earth as you play.

Having read Blades in the Dark and played it once with a friend, it struck me that the game is designed to create a drama (in the sense of a serialized TV show) about characters living out their lives in Duskvol. And that’s not just my impression, it’s explicitly stated in the rulebook.

Another way to put it: I could watch a compelling drama about life in modern Greece and get a lot out of it. Or I could travel to Greece and experience life there myself. Neither is inherently “better” than the other, but they are fundamentally different experiences.

And in a similar way, a Blades in the Dark campaign is a different experience than my living world sandbox campaign, despite the significant overlaps you mentioned.

I hope that makes sense.

Finally if you are interested I can answer questions about some of my experience that led me to this point.

 

[Faolyn]

I am not talking about the condition.

I am talking about the mental state called "frightened", which is explicitly the result of having the Frightened condition.

Are you asserting that fright has absolutely nothing whatever to do with thoughts?

Because the original comment LITERALLY DID ASSERT THAT. That is LITERALLY the standard that was used--that it was an unacceptable instance of telling the player what their character thinks or does as the result of a failed roll.

Likewise, the fact that things without minds cannot be frightened, even though they can still have all of the above game mechanical effects apply to them. E.g. most constructs--being mere automata--are immune to the frightened condition, even though all it does is the listed mechanical effects. That quite clearly means "frightened" includes mental state elements, aka, THOUGHTS.

Again:

In Burning Wheel, if you fail a duel of wits, you must agree to do whatever it was the duel was about. PC 1 wants to go to The Place right now. PC 2 wanted PC 1 to mend his (PC 2's) armor before that. If PC 1 fails the duel, she must abandon her plans to go to The Place right now and instead must mend the armor. If PC 3 was watching this duel of wits as a neutral third party, they must think that PC 2 was right and PC 1 was wrong. All of this is binding and lasts indefinitely; PC 1 can't agree to mend the armor with fingers crossed behind her back and then run off while PC 2 gets his armor to be repaired. PC 2 can't change his mind and decide to get an NPC blacksmith to mend his armor. PC 3 can't think to themself, "Wow, PC 2 is really wrong."

In D&D, PC 1 is frightened. She must roll with disadvantage as long as the object of fear is within her line of sight--meaning she is free to move to a location where it isn't. This condition nearly always lasts for one minute, tops (the lion's roar only lasts for one round), and there is nearly always a new save allowed at the end of each turn. There's also at least one spell (calm emotions) that will remove the condition immediately, and probably several more I just can't remember. Once the minute is over or the character successfully saves against it, the character never has to think about it again. There's no lasting effect from the condition unless the DM is using optional or homebrew rules for madness/mental stress conditions as a result of failed fear saves.

If you still can't tell the difference between those two, that's not my problem.

 

[robertsconley]

I've got a low bar. The thing is, if someone does have Narrativist priorities then I can talk with them about living world stuff as it relates to a more impactful gameable space and how you don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. If they don't then I won't. In the case of bedrock and sable, I no longer think they have those priorities because of the whole player skill thing.

The actual similarity of technique between between some Narrativist play and living world exponents is in the disregard for the players. You're not (always) making choices that will make the game state more interesting or fun or challenging for them, then why are you making those choices?

As @pemerton pointed out, plausibility as the living word advocates frame it, is an exclusion criteria. They're not thinking about fun or interesting. In Roberts case there's a lot of disclaiming responsibility via dice rolls. We get a kind of emergence for emergences sake, what is @Campbell who made the Grand Strategy games comparison?

You're misreading what I’m doing, and it’s leading you to conclusions that don’t match how my tables actually work.

First, plausibility isn’t an “exclusion criterion” in the sense you’re implying. It’s a way to frame outcomes so they follow from what’s already established in the setting. That doesn’t mean I’m ignoring fun or player engagement. It means I’m trusting that when players interact with a world that reacts plausibly and independently, fun and meaning emerge from their choices, not because I manufactured drama, but because the game state respects what they do.

As for dice rolls “disclaiming responsibility,” I don’t use them to pass the buck, I use them to reduce bias. When multiple outcomes are equally plausible, I often roll to keep the decision from being about what I think is most interesting. That keeps the focus on the setting and the players' actions, not on my judgment as an author. It’s not me stepping away from responsibility, it’s me staying committed to the integrity of the process.

You say it’s emergence for emergence’s sake. But to me, that’s like saying exploration is just walking for walking’s sake. The whole point of the Living World approach is that meaning comes from what happens, not from what I script. You might not value that kind of discovery-based play, but that doesn’t mean it’s aimless.

We’re working from different assumptions. That’s fine. But if you want to understand what I’m doing, you need to engage with the method on its own terms, not reframe it through a lens where “interesting for the players” always means “crafted by the referee.”

Take tabletop roleplaying itself. The universe didn’t design it for your entertainment. It existed. You found it. You played. And in doing so, you discovered it was meaningful to you. That’s how I run my campaigns. I don’t shape the world to entertain, I shape it to exist. The enjoyment comes from the players discovering what that means to them.

 

[Faolyn]

I did read what you wrote. Here it is:

Contrary to your assertion, in the table of modifiers it is crystal clear that it is talking about committing murder. I provided the exact quote from p 124.

Wait. You're disagreeing with page numbers here. Seriously?

 

[robertsconley]

As I said in a post elsewhere, it's ridiculous to assume the GM will think of every possible result of an Impiricide or similarly large action. It's completely impossible. So in this case, a return to warring states--a five-way civil war--was the first plausible, naturally-flowing idea that came to my mind. A bunch of minor skirmishes that result in a stalemate may simply never occurred to me.

Agreed. More specifically, the goal should be sufficiency, or what I call "good enough." If a referee can think of a handful of plausible outcomes, that’s already more than enough. In most situations, even two possibilities will do the job.

The only real drawback in this process is that the referee’s personal experience and knowledge play an outsized role. The more you’ve lived and read, the more raw material you have to draw from, and the easier it becomes to generate plausible outcomes on the fly. That’s why, when people write or publish advice about sandbox campaigns, not just my Living World approach, they need to think about how to translate the judgment they use themselves into something teachable or coachable for others.

One of the strengths of Burning Wheel, Powered by the Apocalypse, and Blades in the Dark is that their authors have baked in some of that expertise directly into the mechanics. That’s a design strength, and something I try to keep in mind when writing about sandbox play: how do you help a new referee make good calls without needing decades of experience?

Think of it as establishing the “initial context” that lets a referee hit the ground running, and have fun, when launching a sandbox campaign.

 

[Faolyn]

I’m “hostile” if that’s the right word because it’s contradictory. We have lots of examples of putting interesting and fun first. But apparently we’re also supposed to buy into this notion of plausibility as well?

Its the notion that this is somehow special to sandboxing that I’m rejecting.

No. This discussion is about how some people (People 1) seem to think that other people (People 2) believe that the fantasy world actually, physically exists and advances on its own without GM input, because of shorthand terminology used by People 2.

I tried to explain that when People 2 say that the world progresses naturally, what they mean is that there is a logical chain of events that flows from actions taken in the game.

 

[dave2008]

While I generally agree with your approach (and do the same myself), I do want to point out few things:

Not quite. The players are free, as their characters, to do anything within the setting, constrained only by their character’s capabilities. That includes not just what the mechanics allow, but also what makes sense for a sentient being to attempt in that world.

But that freedom isn’t my sole focus. It carries equal weight with the life of the setting itself, specifically, the lives of the NPCs and creatures within it, and all the things they do.

To stress again: equal weight.

If you give them equal weight, then it is biased to the PCs (which I have 0 issue with). If it was truly a living world, the PCs would have very little to almost now weight (at least initially).

When combined with other elements of my approach, this creates a feeling among the players that they’ve truly visited the setting as their characters.

I think that has less to do with your approach and more to do with the players. You can create the same feeling in players with a variety of different approaches. IME, it depends more on the players and their buy-in then the actually approach - though that (campaign approach) does have an impact and extreme examples can have a bigger impact.

 

[Campbell]

Let's say there are no mechanics in play and what would have happened in the event of a Duel of Wits was instead handled with regard to fictional positioning and freeform roleplay. For any table that I personally care to play at the result of that would have established some fictional positioning I would consider binding.

If later on either party would act in way that seem contrary to events as they unfolded, I would ask questions.

It might be because I come from a theater background, but I have never viewed the characters I play as belonging to me. I view them as something I have to do right by, for me and for the rest of the table. That means I have to honor the interactions that have come before, the fictional positioning of any NPCs or PCs, and what I have previously established for the character, as part of character generation or through play. If I'm breaking from any of that I better be able to justify it according to fictional circumstances.

Regardless of rules I have that expectation of the people I play with as well. That they owe something to their characters and to the play we have had.

I don't think this should be a general norm. It is the norm for both Apocalypse World and Vampire though.

 

[Maxperson]

Two off-the-cuff thoughts unrelated to much:

1. Is it just me, or does anyone else think of characters dying during Traveller char-gen on seeing BW calls its char-gen process "character burning"?

2. What's the longest thread ever on ENWorld and how close is this one to the record?

The Pineapple Express thread is almost double this, and replaced one that was even longer. No idea what the record is, but this one isn't even beginning to come close.

 

[Maxperson]

Everyone here is bringing a framework. All of us. Literally 100% of people participating in this thread. One side is quite willing to explain its terms when asked. One side is quite willing to go into any detail--and has done so over and over and over again. The other side refuses to give anything more than the most uselessly abstract gloss.

It's not a refusal, and you've told that repeatedly. You are asking for something that doesn't exist. We don't run games in that manner.