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

[AnotherGuy]

Indeed. Or the bandits have become emboldened and completely disrupted trade, or taken over a town or who knows.

As created by the DM....

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You were, I thought, referring to 4e D&D at the time.

No. I was responding to someone who had said that he wants, and I quote, "some possibility of DIY", and was rejecting very specifically PbtA games for (allegedly) not allowing that. Hence, I was talking about PbtA games, because Micah was.

None of the WotC editions have much potential for serious DIY or kitbashing unless one wants to rebuild the system from the ground up. I came to this conclusion with each one after buying its initial three books and then reading them in a kitbasher's frame of mind: how can I tweak or alter or mash this system into something I'd want to run and-or play.

I disagree. I think they have plenty of potential. It's just not "sure, I guess you can disassemble it entirely and literally reinvent the entire thing, if you want?" level. Expecting every game to be a LEGO set isn't a fair standard.

And I never mentioned anything about guarantees. Any kitbashing of any kind is and always will be in large part a work of trial and error, even with systems that by their design make such things easier to do.

But your argument hinges on that being the difference--that the "easier to do" systems make it a walk in the park. But it isn't. In my experience, it's actually a lot harder with these allegedly-"easier" games, because they'll fight you tooth and nail in the testing phase. Since you cannot easily see the connections that are still there, you'll miss them over and over and over again, and may only find a serious problem months (or even years!) after you thought you'd squished them all.

Agreed that you can see the problems, and there's loads of 'em. All that does is strongly discourage doing anything to the rules, which is doubtless just what the designers want but maybe not what every table wants.

You're going to have to defend that claim, because I don't buy it. Being able to see where things go wrong before you get started is fundamentally encouraging, IMO and IME, because it means you know you'll avoid the bazillions of false starts you'd have to endure in a system where you have no bloody clue whether what you're doing is even remotely going to work.

Like...your argument is literally saying that you're more encouraged to walk across a field with 95% of the hazards carefully labelled, than you are to walk across a field that has no labels whatsoever and which is filled with invisible land mines. I dunno about you, but I'm a hell of a lot more confident walking across a field that has the vast majority of the major hazards already labelled. Doesn't mean it's guaranteed safe--a few hazards might've been missed or overlooked--but you're going to have a MUCH easier time crossing that field than the one where literally every step could have a landmine and you won't know until it explodes!

Again, comes back to trial and error.

Or, to be more accurate, random guessing-and-checking, hoping you eventually stumble upon a workable solution.

There are better ways to navigate a minefield than sending soldiers across it until they've stepped on almost all of the mines. Someone giving you a map of where most of the mines are known to be is not discouraging you from navigating that field. They're helping you--rather a lot, actually. By knowing where most of the mines are, you can focus on walking where they aren't--or you can try your hand at defusing them, forearmed with the awareness that you're doing something risky.

The advantage we have today over 45 years ago is the ability to go online and fairly quickly find what others have tried, along with some general outcomes of those trials, meaning there's a lot less wheel-reinvention required.

Less, sure. I'm not certain about a lot less.

Even if I grant that, it applies just as much to the minefield that you've got a map that shows the locations of most (but not all) of the mines.

 

[Lanefan]

As created by the DM...

So?

 

[SableWyvern]

As created by the DM....

Yes. The general background events going on in the world are managed by the GM according to their processes. No one in the thread had ever disputed that, as far as I'm aware.

 

[AnotherGuy]

So?

The convo which I picked up began with @AbdulAlhazred (but likely earlier) where they mentioned how much of everything is GM decided, even the bandits in @Bedrockgames RE tables. A conversation about how much content is GM decided was then argued between @Maxperson and @EzekielRaiden, with Maxperson adamantly saying that the GM content is much lower than others in the thread purport. @SableWyvern and then jumped into the convo regarding the bandits where it is often the case where content is created but doesn't see the light of day only for you and Sable to then make that content see the light of day even though the PCs never engaged with it.
i.e. Content sees the light of day one way or another in Storyteller fashion (pinging @Hussar).

Queue "But na-ah!"

 

[SableWyvern]

The convo which I picked up began with @AbdulAlhazred (but likely earlier) where they mentioned how much of everything is GM decided, even the bandits in @Bedrockgames RE tables. A conversation about how much content is GM decided was then argued between @Maxperson and @EzekielRaiden, with Maxperson adamantly saying that the GM content is much lower than others in the thread purport. @SableWyvern and then jumped into the convo regarding the bandits where it is often the case where content is created but doesn't see the light of day only for you and Sable to then make that content see the light of day even though the PCs never engaged with it.
i.e. Content sees the light of day one way or another in Storyteller fashion (pinging @Hussar).

Queue "But na-ah!"

When I replied to @AbdulAlhazred I already stated that if the bandits were a likely encounter, the PCs would know they exist.

The question isn't one of whether the PCs are aware of things that exist in the world. Of course they do, and they must.

The question is whether everything the GM makes needs to be the focus or important to the PCs, and the answer to that is, no.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That claim is literally impossible. Also taken out of context. The context of what they said is that everything in the setting is available to make decisions with, not that they consider the entirety(or even remotely close to it) of the setting when they make a decision.

The overwhelming majority of decisions even those people who made that claim make, will only be taking into account the locality that the PCs are in. Once in a while something they do will reverberate further, but at that point it's still the PCs causing the wide ripple, not the DM.

Whatever can be a contributor to the decision...is still relevant. Because guess who gets to decide what things DO contribute to the decision?

That's right, THE GM. AGAIN.

You cannot exculpate yourself for making decisions "based on context" when the one, and ONLY, person who gets to decide what counts as context and what doesn't....IS YOU. YOU decided what the context was. You decided whether or not to admit X as a contributing factor or not. The setting literally can't make you do anything.

 

[AnotherGuy]

When I replied to @AbdulAlhazred

Apologies I'm not clear what you're telling me here.
Are you asking me when did you reply to @AbdulAlhazred or correcting me that you replied to them?

 

[SableWyvern]

Apologies I'm not clear what you're telling me here.
Are you asking me when did you reply to @AbdulAlhazred or correcting me that you replied to them?

Accidentally hit post. See full response added in now.

 

[pemerton]

What’s actually being referenced here are mechanical constraints such as those found in fiction-first or player-first systems like Powered by the Apocalypse. In those systems, when the fictional situation matches the trigger for a move, the move is automatically invoked and resolved. The referee (or MC) doesn't have the discretion over whether the move is invoked And once the move is invoked the roll as made and the result adjudicated per the description of the move. For example:

View attachment 406605

But this kind of mechanical constraint is not germane to the broader debate around GM constraints that been going on in recent posts. The example offered is a result of the designer deciding that the system will be made using a player-first/fiction-first approach.

First, I'm not sure that a rule about when to call for rolls is a mechanical constraint?

I mean, is the principle that a GM in 5e D&D initiates a combat situation by calling for initiative rolls a mechanical constraint? It seems to be a rule/principle/convention about when to invoke a particular mechanic.

Maybe this is just terminology? I guess I would generally think as a "mechanical constraint" as one which flows from the deployment of a mechanic, rather than one that governs the deployment of a mechanic.

Second, I don't see how/why this is not germane. It seems absolutely germane! The rules for player-side moves in AW create a clear boundary around when the GM is allowed to make a move, which should generally be a soft move and when the dice are rolled to decide who gets to go next, and what sort of thing they are allowed to say.

An analogue in Gygax's AD&D would be that if a dragon breathes on a PC, the GM is not at liberty to just say what happens. Rather, there is a rule for specifying the threat posed by the breath in terms of hit points of damage, and the player of the character is entitled to roll a saving throw (albeit subject to any circumstance-based modifier that the GM imposes, as per p 81 of the DMG).

Of course, there is a tradition in RPGing of regarding dice rolls as nothing but a prompt or aid for GM decision-making. But that is not the only way they can be thought of. There is another tradition in RPGing, which regards the rules around when dice are to be rolled, and how the outcomes of those rolls are to be applied, as pretty fundamental.