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

[hawkeyefan]

I don't see how whether or not anything is "outdated" in the opinion of any particular person matters to this discussion. What you're describing are the results of an eternal popularity contest. What does that matter?

Sure, why does anyone's opinion matter, Micah?

I think it matters because I think "be a neutral arbiter" has remained common advice in the hobby, but is more relevant to specific games rather than the hobby in general.

Do you have any thoughts on that topic other than that you wish I didn't post it?

Whoever you want. You are not bound to this every single time. There may be moments where you think something implausible should happen and that is okay. The sky isn't going to fall. But I think for purposes of play, in this style, the GM generally selecting what is most plausible to them, creates a sense of a real and consistent world that has value

Right, I get that. And it's fine. I do think this has an impact on the player's agency, that's all. Having specific processes helps address that.

Again you can do what you want Hawkeye. But I am honestly getting tired of constant interrogating questions of the style. Especially since I am defending something I don't even engage with most of the time (but I know it exists because I have seen it and done it). Again, we could turn these questions on you, but we aren't. I don't see what is being gained here by approaching what people like Rob and I are saying with such intense skepticism

I was literally invited by @robertsconley to ask questions about his transcript. Those were his exact words.

As I've said a few times now, no one is obligated to answer me or to continue posting. If you are tired of replying, then don't reply.

And feel free to ask away about my processes. They will vary from game to game, but will largely be something I can share clearly by game.

Just as an observation, AW and DW state as fundamental techniques the use of first person, addressing the characters, etc. along with naming every NPC. GMs also never announce their moves. Obviously they have to announce when and what move a PC has made, but it would be something like "Smirk, trying to slip past the guard in the shadows is Defy Danger (dex)!"

DW in particular puts great emphasis on bringing the scene and world to life. Actual play may or may not get there. I'd note though that since fiction is so central to resolution of actions, you CANNOT play DW in a mechanistic way like D&D combat often is!

Yeah, AW says to address the characters... and I generally do that. I don't require players to speak in first person, though. If someone is more comfortable saying "Okay, Cash really wants this guy dead, so he'll blast him" I'm not going to demand or even request that they do it in first person instead.

 

[Lanefan]

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."

To your bolded: can't speak for you but I'm still quite unclear on the "duration". If there's a clear end point to what was agreed then that would seem to nicely define the duration (e.g. in the fix-armour example, she has to fix his armour now but isn't bound to keep on fixing it for the rest of her life, once it's fixed this time she can go about her life as she otherwise would). No problem.

When there's not a defined end point to what was agreed is where I get confused. If the agreement reached is that I will defend you, there's no end point to that agreement; unless something otherwise changes (e.g. you attack me, or we get separated for any length of time, or if you outright release me from that agreement) it seems I'm stuck defending you for life.

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.

Not so much madness or mental stress rules; but when someone is frightened by something, flees, and later returns I have sometimes put a penalty on their save against immediately being frightened again by the same thing.

 

[dave2008]

If you and I are applying the same process, the only real disagreement is whether to call it “internal world logic” or “the referee’s logic.” For me, that distinction matters. I’m not choosing what I would personally prefer, I’m choosing what follows from what’s already been established. Moreover, I choose to commit to this process, and the players know this.

I agree with what you are doing, but I disagree that what you are doing is any different than "the referee's logic." In fact, I think it is impossible to be anything but. Perhaps you could say it is: "the internal world logic as the referee* imagines it."

The whole point, IMO, is that you can't have an internal world logic derived from a single person's, or even several people's, viewpoint(s). It is always the referee's* logic.

*when I ay referee I many the one to a handfull of people you develop the game world and adjudicate how it reacts and acts at any given period of game time.

 

[TwoSix]

This generally seems to take the old-school idea of "play what the dice give you" and simply move the "what the dice give you" piece out of the roll-up process and into the processes involved in play.

I would agree. I think narrative games and more old-school are in agreement in being opposed to the power fantasy of modern neotrad. Both types of games are more interested in character failure.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Just to be clear because it came up, none of are saying sandbox or living world sandbox is a new innovation. The conversations we point to occurred in largely OSR circles where people were looking back to earlier days of the hobby to find solutions to problems they were encountering in more current forms of play. Is it is very much about going back and seeing if there are approaches that were used that might have become less popular or fallen by the wayside but prove useful today. This is why for example when I talk about NPCs as living, I refer back to the description of Strahd in the original Ravenloft module and then to the elaboration of the concept in the Feast of Goblyns adventure (these books are like over 30 and 40 years old)

I personally didn't find Ravenloft all that great. It mostly demonstrates a lot of the weaknesses of trad play. I bought it, probably the last module I ever bought, and ran it. Mostly what I remember is a lot of jiggering and putting the party back on track to get it to produce any sort of interesting play. Strahd as a character, and his story are OK, pretty stock stuff but fine for an RPG.

Honestly the most fundamental issue is simply the shallow nature of trad PCs. The module, necessarily, resorts to ham-fisted devices like trapping the PCs to force them to go do the parts of the module.

I'd say our last Stonetop game, or 1000 Arrows game are easily overmatching any drama I've seen in several plays of Ravenloft. It's clearly attempting drama and looking to produce a good narrative, but ill equipped to pull it off.

 

[pemerton]

How many digits of pi do you need? We can calculate millions, but only 15 or 16 get used for interplanetary navigation and I think for the most precise earthly engineering tasks 5 or 6 is more than sufficient. More precision is simply not necessary for most tasks. Similarly, GMs don't need to provide perfect predictability, they just need to provide results within acceptable margins of error.

I alluded to this in one of the posts you replied to, where I compared variation within a relatively narrow range of outcomes, to other sorts of variation.

Alt history produces other sorts of variation - see, eg Churchill vs Ferguson on the outbreak of the First World War - and the sort of extrapolation being discussed in RPGing is far less constrained than alt history.

 

[Lanefan]

I mean, I've seen plenty of bonkers stuff happen just from following a chain of plausibility because you have this ongoing interaction between the players, the NPCs, the setting, etc. That can build to truly outlandish stuff when you aren't even trying to be outlandish.

Ayup.

When looking back and asking "how did things ever come to this?"* it's often the case that no one single thing caused it, but rather a chain of little one-thing-leads-to-the-next events that eventually pushed the whole thing further and further into absurdity.

* - once we've all finished laughing like drunk hyenas, that is.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I personally didn't find Ravenloft all that great. It mostly demonstrates a lot of the weaknesses of trad play. I bought it, probably the last module I ever bought, and ran it. Mostly what I remember is a lot of jiggering and putting the party back on track to get it to produce any sort of interesting play. Strahd as a character, and his story are OK, pretty stock stuff but fine for an RPG.

Hey if you didn't like it, you didn't like it. But I loved it and I think the idea that you could treat an NPC this way, was for me a real revelation (and not saying it is the first to do this, I haven't read every single RPG book prior to it or anything, but this is where I first encountered the idea is those two sources).

I'd say our last Stonetop game, or 1000 Arrows game are easily overmatching any drama I've seen in several plays of Ravenloft. It's clearly attempting drama and looking to produce a good narrative, but ill equipped to pull it off.

Which is fine, if that is what you want. I wasn't looking for that. I was looking for a gothic horror setting with mood and atmosphere, and I was a big fan of monster movies. So the idea that you could treat the villain as a living character was super cool to me, and something I found worked great when I expanded it to the rest of my play

Look I get having different opinions. But I honestly feel like pretty much all you guys do is naughty word on what we like and act like your naughty word is better than sex or something

 

[Lanefan]

I would agree. I think narrative games and more old-school are in agreement in being opposed to the power fantasy of modern neotrad. Both types of games are more interested in character failure.

Or at the very least, far more willing to let character failure happen.

 

[Enrahim]

I haven't read the full 7000+ posts, so sorry if this is repeating something already discussed to death. But on the topic of "Realism", "In game logic" and "Plausability" I think I have a valuable perspective that I haven't seen here: These are all about player expectations.

In order to competently play the RPG, players need to have some basis to judge likely outcomes of their actions. If their actions consistently has completely different outcomes than the players envisioned, there are no sense of agency.

In this perspective the relevant terms are just about the source of their expectations. "Realism" is about expectations that come from their understanding of the real world. "Internal logic" is expectations that things already established in the fiction is not contradicted. "Plausability" is about how the players understand causality patterns.

With an understanding that the key value in these lies in expectation management and why that is important, there also lies the key in recognising when these can be down prioritised. In a game that is leaning heavily into strategy and players trying to make good moves to "win", pulling the rug under their expectations can quickly feel like "cheating", and preventing them from playing competently. However in other groups that is more into experiencing cool situations, subverting expectations might rather be a welcome touch to spice things up.