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

[Thomas Shey]

So is it that you can't or simply won't give me a simple example of a specific rule for a specific game that a new GM could learn from and then apply to D&D?

Given the rules I'm talking about should be written for D&D, not ported over from a system dissimilar to it? Do I appear like an idiot to supply ammunition by doing an apples and oranges thing here?

If you want to post a subsection dealing with a particular skill usage (perhaps a jumping or climbing one), I can tell you in what fashion I consider it inadequate and what kind of thing I think it needs, but like I said I don't own or play 5e. The last version of D&D I GMed enough to have an adequate handle about specifics was 3.5, and even then I'd have to look it up (my memory is I thought it was much closer to what I'm talking about, but its been two decades now).

If you're talking about traditional games then it should be fairly easy "This is what would happen in D&D, this is what happens in game X and why I think it's better for new GMs."

Again, I'm not talking about new GMs and the specifics won't make sense outside of their presence in the game involved. I don't think its exactly asking much to say "Go into greater detail to exclude the need to make ad hoc decisions in most common cases."

It's not a big deal, I was just trying to understand your statement that you think most GMs would benefit from playing other games.

I don't recall saying that, either. I said most GMs would benefit from games that didn't throw as much into on-the-fly GMing as many of them have to deal with, but that's not a thing about specific games as it is about general design philosophies. There are games that do that and games that don't, but since its mechanics and guidance, they aren't particularly interportable in most cases.

It's been a while since I spent much effort playing other games but when I did I didn't really learn much I thought applied to D&D or would have made me a better DM. But you've been pretty adamant about it so I was curious. I didn't say you were talking about games with completely different approach, I just acknowledge that there are games that take approaches that don't really apply to a traditional games.

Again, I'm talking about traditional games.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Obviously, the mechanical expressions differ, and there's divergence like BitD's score-downtime loop being far more procedural than your approach, but I see so much overlap. BitD encourages GMs to provide opportunities (i.e. hooks), but also follow the players' lead, no different from your approach; it allows initiating action with NPCs (i.e. what some seem to consider GM-driven); RBRB sects have write-ups pretty similar to BitD's factions, complete with assets and situation; BitD's entanglements table is literally an encounter table, like you use; and so on.

Thanks for the comparison. My copy of BitD is at my old apartment so I haven't been able to look at it for these kinds of similarities. Are the grudge tables what you were thinking of being like the entanglements?

 

[Thomas Shey]

In a game that has infinite possibilities, trying to have a written rule for everything results in one of two undesirable outcomes:

I guess that's why I mentioned at some point running into diminishing returns at least twice, isn't it?

The fatal flaw with consulting players about rulings is that with extremely rare exceptions they'll exclusively support the ruling that is most in their favour right now, without regard for precedent nor any effects on the long-term viability of the game or campaign.

No. There are players like that, but if they're far from everyone, and it becomes less and less common when you have players who either GM or have in the past. This sort of "players are always self-centered" is one of the things I think is a big problem; not because its not sometimes true, but when it is the thing to do is train them out of it, not just ignore them.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If you're going to talk about me, I'd be grateful if you could @ me.

The RPGs that I've GMed in the past 5 or so years are Burning Wheel, Torchbearer 2e, Prince Valiant, Classic Traveller, Marvel Heroic RP (and a fantasy hack of this) and then some one-shot-y type play of Agon 2e, The Green Knight, AD&D, Moldvay Basic, In A Wicked Age, Cthulhu Dark and Wuthering Heights. I've also GMed a few sessions of 4e D&D, that follow on from a long campaign that mostly finished in 2018.

As a player (cf GM), I've played Burning Wheel.

I didn't say you were only doing PbtA; in fact, I didn't know if you've done it at all. But there are elements in Burning Wheel, Torcherbearer, to some extent Cortex, and a couple of the others there that are not any more attractive to me than others in this thread. This still, in practice, means that I'm not fundamentally coming from the same place as you and some others here.

The only RPG that I've played extensively (as opposed to one-shot-y) in the past 5 years, that is mechanically "light", is Prince Valiant. BW and TB2e are as intricate as any of the classic "sim" systems from the late 70s and 80s. MHRP and 4e D&D are mechanically different, but not "light" - particularly not the latter. Views probably differ on Classic Traveller, but I don't think I've ever seen it called a "light" game.

Mechanically intricate and mechanically engaging are not the same thing.

You can like what you like, and do what you do. But I'd be grateful if you could be more accurate in your descriptions of my RPGing.

I'm referring to a very broad strokes thing here, and nothing you've said makes me think in that context it was inaccurate.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The only player I ever really had seriously argue about decisions and mechanics was the guy who knew the rules really well. Everybody else might’ve had a question and we walked through it together and got to a common ground, or the outcome simply didn’t match their expectation of plausibility from a “what should be happening here in the fiction” perspective.

Occasionally you'll get people who just fundamentally dislike some elements of the rules in use, and that will leak out when they hit the sharp edge of that. That's a case where its perfectly legitimate to say "You knew about this when we got into this campaign; if you want to talk about houseruling it, to the degree it can be we can do that, but given you got in knowing it, I'm not going to do it right now."

(There's a discussion that can be had about players who get into game systems they dislike and then can't let it go, but I don't think it belongs in this thread.)

 

[Thomas Shey]

Something very funny: people talking about how they’ve played with the same group of players for decades and you should get to know people before playing with them to establish GM relationships and trust also constantly assuming players are somehow terrible and cannot be trusted.

There can be players who have some incredible tunnel vision and/or have been trained by bad experiences to take any advantage they can, but I don't have any evidence they're the majority.

 

[pemerton]

What you're forgetting in your equation is that the players know there’s a 50% chance they’re getting a bag of poo if they attempt something on Valentine's Day. You're describing an event table, and the magic hat in my example works exactly the same way. Both involve a pre-defined set of outcomes and a die roll to determine which one occurs.

But where we’re talking past each other is in how that table, or hat, is introduced. Your table is presented as a direct action by the referee toward the player (i.e., "here’s your Valentine’s gift"). Mine is part of the setting, something the players discover and choose to engage with. So rather than just being handed a result, the players trigger it through their own decisions. That’s a meaningful distinction.

Suppose the magic hat gives a random item based on a 1d4 table with a 50% chance of producing a bag of poo. Now imagine three scenarios:

The player hasn’t investigated what the magic hat does, so they’re unaware of the risk.

The player has been misinformed by another character and chooses to believe them.

The player has learned the hat’s function and chooses to use it anyway.

In all three cases, the consequence flows from the player’s choices. That’s not "whim", that’s interaction with a consistent setting. “Whim” would be me deciding on the spot that it would be funny if the hat had a 50% poo chance, without prior prep or justification. Or, in scenario #2, deciding an NPC lies without any precedent or reason for them to do so.

But if I prepped that hat, placed it in the setting, and the players acquired it through play, then what happens after that is on them. If they’re unhappy because they didn’t investigate or misjudged someone’s advice, that’s a reflection of choices made in play, not arbitrary GM fiat.

When I read this, I see a description of GM-driven play:

* The GM decides to introduce this thing because they think it is interesting/amusing/challenging/whatever.

* The players (as their PCs) learn about this thing by investigating - which means, in terms of actual processes of play, spending time at the table declaring actions that are intended to elicit, from the GM, more information about this thing that the GM has introduced into play and that has become a focus of play.​

The play may be satisfying or unsatisfying for those who participate - I say nothing about that. Nor do I say anything about 'whim" or "arbitrariness". I'm simply saying that it looks GM-driven to me.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Full disclosure: probably about 90% of my time at the table has been as a player, but I've always read the books to the point that I was often as knowledgeable of the rules, if not more so, than the GM. I have never argued, but have questioned adjudication. But that isn't really what I was talking about. Any piece of adjudication has implications going forward, and knowing the rules is not the same as being in the GM chair, but a complete lack of reading the book means a player is going to be severely disadvantaged in understanding the ramifications of a decision, which makes consulting them... less constructive than it could be, shall we say.

I will say that a lot of interaction with the players about rules decisions I reference assumes players who are at least moderately familiar with the rules, since I can't be bothered to handhold people who won't work to get at that stage.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

This is done by playing a game, in the sense of a relatively structured group activity that assigns roles and tells the various participants what to do in their roles. So what you call "constraints on the GM" I just call playing a game by its rules. And why do that? For the same reason as I play any other game by its rules - because playing the game is a pleasurable, intellectually and emotionally satisfying activity.

When I read the GM in a RPG should not be subject any rules or constraints, what I take that to mean, literally, is that the GM should be able to introduce whatever fiction they like at any point, based on what they think best responds to whatever moves other participants have made. I don't know if that is what is actually intended, but as I said that seems to me to be the literal meaning. That might be fun for some RPGers, but is not what I am looking for in RPGing.

I think this "rules first" idea is at odds wiht what the DM has to accomplish. We’re prioritizing formal structure over pacing, momentum, and attention. And no matter how much we want to pretend otherwise, that's a tradeoff. One with very real consequences.

Try running a session where you stop everytime a rule comes up. Pause just briefly, look it up, and then resume. That's absurd. DM's should know the rules. But it gets at a greater point. You have to manage the attention of your players. In the above hypothetical, how many of your players are on their phones ten minutes in? How long before you lose the room entirely? Even if you only stop on 5% of rules, how many stops is that? 10? 20? All in just a four hour session. And thats assuming accurate recall by a human DM in 95% of cases - a tall order.

The DM has a concern that is easy to argue as equally important to the rules, pacing. Without pacing the players lose interest. Without pacing, people play on their phones, they chat amongst each other. The DM is entertaining three to six other people who are constantly being bombarded with texts, notifications, and mental distractions. The number of competing stimuli skyrocket in busy settings or online. Competing with these isn't doable with the pacing of a slideshow.

I know in high school, I never found the PowerPoint presentations and slideshows as entertaining as the movies. I don't think the underlying reason I felt that way is any different in TTRPGS. So I wonder if, even under your ideal constraints on DMs, you don't just see wide adaption of the current status quo, because bad pacing isn't fun.

 

[zakael19]

I think this "rules first" idea is at odds wiht what the DM has to accomplish. We’re prioritizing formal structure over pacing, momentum, and attention. And no matter how much we want to pretend otherwise, that's a tradeoff. One with very real consequences.

Try running a session where you stop everytime a rule comes up. Pause just briefly, look it up, and then resume. That's absurd. DM's should know the rules. But it gets at a greater point. You have to manage the attention of your players. In the above hypothetical, how many of your players are on their phones ten minutes in? How long before you lose the room entirely? Even if you only stop on 5% of rules, how many stops is that? 10? 20? All in just a four hour session. And thats assuming accurate recall by a human DM in 95% of cases - a tall order.

The DM has a concern that is easy to argue as equally important to the rules, pacing. Without pacing the players lose interest. Without pacing, people play on their phones, they chat amongst each other. The DM is entertaining three to six other people who are constantly being bombarded with texts, notifications, and mental distractions. The number of competing stimuli skyrocket in busy settings or online. Competing with these isn't doable with the pacing of a slideshow.

I know in high school, I never found the PowerPoint presentations and slideshows as entertaining as the movies. I don't think the underlying reason I felt that way is any different in TTRPGS. So I wonder if, even under your ideal constraints on DMs, you don't just see wide adaption of the current status quo, because bad pacing isn't fun.

Many games with explicit rules and procedures that either tell the GM when to trigger them, or have player-facing triggers that can be openly invoked also have relatively simple procedures for all actions.

I dont think you'd call "make an ability check" complicated; it's not until you're delving into umpteen pages of Spell text (and then interpreting a poorly worded natural language), or a whole bunch of procedures for exploration, or the minutia of combat that rules tend to slow down.

Many of the games which foreground non-optional rules to follow during play also stick most of the core procedures in simple and complete bits on a single page, and all the player-ability stuff on a single sheet!

In fabula ultima for instance, everything is a combination of 2 out of 4 stats (and each stat has an inherent dice rating, so you just roll). Abilities are succinct, the only complex part is a) freeform spell rituals and b) crafting!