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

[SableWyvern]

Like I said I don't have an issue with any of the above...since we share a lot of it. My contention is not necessarily that GM decides everything but that when I speak of a driving force I don't solely make it the PCs. I recognise my role in that driving force too.

Now all of us (players with similar styles) have different degrees of how much the GM drives the story in our particular campaigns but I'm not making a comment on that.

That sounds reasonable to me. I certainly wouldn't dispute that by choosing to set my next sandbox in the Savage Realms, encouraging the players to maintain a body of troops, detailing the levels of grittiness etc that I'm have a large impact on the overall style of game. The things I choose to provide detail on are going to have an impact on where the players initially focus their attention. And every decision I make during play, every judgement call and ruling, effects what happens next.

What I take exception to is when people claim that because I'm doing the things above, the game in play will be primarily GM-driven, that because I control the world the players are unable to make meaningful decisions etc. @pemerton talks about scene framing; that's really all setting creation is, just on a larger scale. In both cases, once the scene/setting is presented, we are handing things over to the players to actually drive play.

 

[SableWyvern]

How would you describe as an example whereby the party became aware of an ambush on their lives so they cast invisibility and made their way from A to B without incurring the ambush. Did they not bypass the encounter?

Well, you can easily say they engaged with the encounter by responding to the situation and taking action. But this kind of semantic quibbling adds nothing of value to the conversation, because everyone knows exactly what happened and it matters not if we use slightly different words to say the exact same thing.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm just struck by the language of "bypass", that's all.

Especially in conjunction with the idea of an "obstacle", to me it suggests the idea of the players trying to reach a "finish line".

Is that how you ran your "traditional" games? Because speaking for myself, and from what I've seen of almost everyone else on my side of the debate here, that isn't it at all. If that's how you ran your games, it's no wonder you don't seem to really understand what we say about how we run them.

If you're hiking in the woods and run into a thicket(an obstacle) and have to go around(bypass) it, do you suddenly have a finish line ahead of you? Well, neither do we.

 

[pemerton]

I don't care about "tests".

In D&D you would call it a check.

It made sense for what was happening that there would be guards. I set up what I think will interesting obstacles, opportunities, interactions.

Sure, we all do that.

It was the idea of bypassing something that I was struck by.

Is it really so hard for you to imagine that the PCs may, at any given time, have an objective in mind that they are trying to achieve? Or that there may be obstacles that lay between where they are now (physically or metaphorically) and where they want to be, that they need to overcome in some way if they are to reach that objective?

No. That all seems to be descriptions of some fiction.

Bypass an encounter or bypass a plot hook, though, don't read to me like descriptions of some fiction. They look like descriptions of stuff that happens at the table - in particular, about relations between what the players have their PCs do and some GM prep and associated expectations.

And that is what I am curious about.

If you're hiking in the woods and run into a thicket(an obstacle) and have to go around(bypass) it, do you suddenly have a finish line ahead of you? Well, neither do we.

The poster that I replied to didn't talk about "bypassing some underbrush." Which is all about fiction.

The reference was to bypassing an encounter. That is a description of some actual thing in the actual world, where there is an "encounter" (but where? in the GM's mind? notes? somewhere else?) and the players bypass it.

This whole approach to "obstacles", "encounters", "bypassing" etc reminds me of this upthread from @Faolyn:

"You need to bring blood to the naga, but there's an assassin there who killed the guy whose blood you need." Now, I can't remember what exactly you said so I will say that for this version of the example, the naga said get me blood right now, you measly biped, or you will learn first-hand how far my jaw can dislocate!, meaning the PC has to hurry. Let's break down the tasks involved here:

Task 1: Getting to the sick room in time.
Task 2: Seeing a cup.
Task 3: Getting to the cup while avoiding the assassin, or Fighting the assassin, then getting to the cup.
Task 4: Getting to the corpse while avoiding the assassin, or Fighting the assassin, then getting to the corpse.
Task 5: Getting the blood in the cup and not all over you.
Task 6: Getting the blood back to the naga in time while keeping onlookers, guards, etc. from seeing you're carrying blood in a cup.

I think that's all of it. Any tasks I missed?

Now, lets resolve them:

Part 1: The PC has to both hurry and walk casual and possibly avoid people who are trying to get his attention. I can see any of a couple of different rolls being called here. Some sort of skill for the running, some sort of skill for the faux-casual walk (you know he's sweating bullets), some sort of skill to avoid having to deal with people who would delay him, and maybe even some sort of skill to talk his way into the area where the wounded guy is getting killed. This is dramatic, even possibly cinematic. Anywhere from 1-4 skills can be rolled here.

Part 2: The PC then gets to the sick room, which is laid out like any other sick room and thus has cups, bowls, jugs, and jars. Except you didn't describe them. So a perception-type check. +1 skill check.

Part 3 and Part 4: We'll combine the resolution of these steps as follows:

• If the PC decides to fight or try to drive off the assassin, that's combat. This is dramatic.
• If the PC tries to dodge around the assassin (whether the assassin is fleeing or lunging towards the PC), this calls for one or two dodge/acrobatics-type rolls. This is dramatic.
• If the assassin decides to flee and the PC lets them, then this calls for no rolls for them to then walk across the room and grab the cup--unless BW requires you to roll to walk across a room. This is not dramatic.
• I don't know how long combat in BW normally takes or how many die rolls are involved; quick research brought up a "simple martial conflict" and a "bloody versus test" and "full fight rules," my gods, with the idea that the latter two are for more important combats and holy crap this game has weapon speeds and does different damage depending on the armor worn what is this AD&D? Ahem. You can decide how important this combat is. But in D&D, let's say this would last, oh, three rounds, so we'll say a maximum of six die rolls. At least you don't need to roll for damage in BW. So anywhere from +0 to +6 checks.

Part 5 probably requires nothing more than a manual dexterity-type roll. +1 skill check.

Part 6 is going to be a redux of Part 1, only maybe harder depending on if they did badly in Part 5 and got blood all over them and also because they are carrying a cup with blood in it. +1 to +4 skill checks. Did you know that redux isn't in firefox's dictionary?

So, in my version of these events, there's anywhere from four to sixteen skill checks. Assuming you're going with a basic type of combat that's over quickly. It could actually be a much higher number.

Which is a very different approach to GMing from what I am used to.

 

[zakael19]

That terminology is certainly one of the contributing factors to people claiming PbtA feels restrictive or boardgamey. John Harper rephrases "Soft Moves" and "Hard Moves" as "set-up/telegraph" and "follow through", which I think does a better job of capturing the intent.

Note that like “separate” soft and hard moves are a post-AW convention conversational. AW just has Moves; when a player Ts up a golden opportunity or rolls a 6-, the GM then has the spotlight to make a move as “hard and direct as they like.” Thats just a move, but the game is telling the GM “you have the say here, and you should consider what it means, and how to make it irrevocable.”

I think we get “soft moves” from the game stressing that you should telegraph trouble announce future badness/announce offscreen badness as your most versatile move to “setup further play.” Since Harper is largely streamlining the PBTA move space, he takes that and a couple other GM moves (along with Act Under Fire), and makes an entire game out of it with a different dice engine.

 

[Maxperson]

Both Stranger Things and Critical Role are contributing factors, but they're a "win more" situation. It seems to have been a perfect storm of D&D's playtesting to ensure a broad appeal ("everyone's second favourite" edition syndrome) combined with geek culture being in the zeitgeist as evidenced by the popularity of Marvel movies, board games seeing a renaissance, etc.

Big Bang Theory also played a role. And more recently, Ghosts is helping keep it there.

 

[pemerton]

How would you describe as an example whereby the party became aware of an ambush on their lives so they cast invisibility and made their way from A to B without incurring the ambush. Did they not bypass the encounter?

In the fiction, the PCs avoided an ambush.

How was it resolved at the table? That will depend very much on the system details.

For instance: suppose some combination of map-and-key + timeline-based resolution - eg the GM has notes that say something like, "If the PCs pass through <such-and-such an area on the map> at <such-and-such a time> then there are ambushers waiting for them - which is used to adjudicate (i) the PCs becoming aware of the ambush, and (ii) the action of becoming invisible to avoid the ambush, then maybe "bypass the encounter" makes sense?

Is that what I'm supposed to be thinking of here?

 

[pemerton]

The idea that players can choose whether or not to do something shouldn’t be a foreign concept.

I am not talking about the players choosing something.

I am talking about the outcome of that choice being described as bypassing an encounter.

There is a hallway with two doors.

Behind Door Number 1 is an Encounter. You can imagine whatever you want here, but let’s say a talkative monster of some sort guarding treasure. The encounters is such that the players can either fight or negotiate with the creature. Furthermore, there are additional doors in this room that lead deeper into the complex, plus you can also go back in the direction you came from.

Behind Door Number 2 is an Encounter. Let’s say it’s a mystical library of some sort, complete with a knowledgeable librarian. Again, the PC can fight or negotiate. There are also more doors here.

Both rooms and NPCs are fleshed out to the same degree.

The PCs go through one of the doors, say Door #1. They meet the creature inside. Maybe they fight them; maybe they talk with them. They then go through the other doors and continue on.

They do not go through Door #2 or meet the creature behind it. They bypassed that encounter.

It’s possible that they can go back at some point and go through Door #2, and therefore get the encounter anyway, but it’s also possible that the GM has a timetable and after a period of time has elapsed, the librarian is off-duty. Or has gone to another location, or is dead, or any number of things. Since it’s a mystical library, the library itself may be gone. So that encounter would still be bypassed. They didn’t meet the librarian, didn’t potentially learn their information, didn’t potentially make a new ally or enemy.

So this seems to be assuming map-and-key resolution, with expectations about how the players will have their PCs respond to the elements noted in the key.

 

[SableWyvern]

Bypass an encounter or bypass a plot hook, though, don't read to me like descriptions of some fiction. They look like descriptions of stuff that happens at the table - in particular, about relations between what the players have their PCs do and some GM prep and associated expectations.

As per my later post, this sounds like utterly pointless semantic quibbling to me. To bypass is go around something instead of straight through it. You're trying to treat words as as highly technical terms of art, laden with all sorts of deep and very specific meaning, while we're just having a conversation over a beer and picking whichever word gets the general point across.

 

[pemerton]

The reference to an ambush reminded me of this from rpg.net - an old series of posts about resolving combat in Apocalypse World, which I was reading recently after someone drew my attention to them:

Baker: On this side: A.T. the gunlugger, Berg the operator, and Berg's friend Clarion the NPC with a shotgun. Going up against whom? Dremmer's gang? Where are they, and what are they fighting about?
. . .
How about Dremmer's gang have moved in on a water processing plant that used to deal with Berg, and are trying to ransom everyone's water supply.

Other poster: The plant's been set up in an old refitted steelworks, that looks like this, and the entrance looks like this.

That's the only safe entrance, and they've parked an old plated up van in front of the door, with a few guys set up with machine guns overlooking it. Dremmer's inside with a few of the guys making himself comfortable, and making an example of a few people, and they won't let any new contaminated water in until people agree they're in charge.

Berg's just heard about it, drums up the others and they bomb over there. Not sure what AT's plan is though..
. . .
Baker: Perfect. Hot damn.

The first thing to establish about GMing Apocalypse World here is that I, as GM, don't know whether AT and Berg (with Clarion) are going to be able to defeat Dremmer and his gang or not. It's not my business to decide that up front. AT and Berg might get killed. They might decide that it's more hassle than it's worth and accept that Dremmer is the boss of clean water now. That's cool too, we'll play to find out. Meanwhile let's go forward with the violence.

AT, Berg and Clarion pull up in Berg's truck outside the plant. I describe the situation - the plant, the entrance, the armored van, the Dremmer's guys with their machine guns in position, watching them, casually making sure they've got plenty of ammo handy. What do AT and Berg do?

First up: read the situation. This is a charged situation, and AT and Berg are both checking it out, looking it over, so they both get to roll the move. AT rolls a 10 so gets to ask 3 questions, Berg rolls a 9 so gets to ask 1.

AT: Who's in control here? Me: Well, it's not you guys, that's for sure. They're Dremmer's dudes, so I guess that means Dremmer is in control.

AT: Which enemy is most vulnerable to me? Me: The guy on top of the van. The other three guys all have more cover and better positions than he does. He's not a happy person right now.

Berg: Which enemy is the biggest threat? Me: Bad news there. They've got two guys, one above you on the structure to the left, one over to the right, who can get you in a nasty crossfire. Look out for that.

AT: What should I be on the lookout for? Me: Well, if it were you setting this up, you'd have these four guys up front, and you'd have a sniper backing them up somewhere overlooking. You don't spot anybody with just a casual look, but you do pick out a couple of pretty likely locations.

What's your plan, guys?
. . .
Here's their plan of attack. AT says: "Berg, you take out the guy on top of the van. Clarion and I will see if we can't mess up that crossfire they want us in. And keep your head down, I bet there's a sniper up there somewhere." It's not a subtle plan but it could work.

Berg and AT roll out of the cab of the truck. AT's on the exposed side. He sprints for cover to the left, firing his assault rifle kind of haphazardly at the guy looking down at him. Berg half-crouches behind the engine, bracing his elbows on the hood, firing his 9mm at the gang guy on top of the van. Clarion dives out of the bed of the truck and takes position on Berg's right, using the truckbed for cover, firing her shotgun at the guy on the right.

I tell them that all four gang guys open up. I don't mention the sniper yet.

Now that we know what's going on, it's time to make moves. We'll roll them in whatever order makes sense, understanding that the outcomes will all be basically simultaneous. AT and Berg will both make their moves as PCs, possibly more than one apiece, and I'll make my GM moves. Every character, PC and NPC alike, gets to do something, and some of them will be moves to roll for and some won't.

First up, Berg is trying to kill the dude on top of the van. There's no move for just killing a dude, because it depends. Since (a) the dude is shooting back, and (b) they're fighting for position, he's seizing by force. He rolls+hard, and he gets the +1 for reading the situation. He rolls a 9, so there'll be an exchange of harm, plus he gets to choose 2 of the options. He chooses to suffer little harm and inflict terrible harm. He inflicts: 2 harm for the 9mm, +1 harm for terrible harm, -1 harm for the dude's armor, for a total of 2 harm. He suffers: 3 harm for the machine gun, -1 harm for little harm, -1 harm for his armor, -1 harm for the armor his truck provides, for a total of 0 harm.

AT is acting under fire to get to cover, obviously. He rolls+cool, and he gets the +1 for reading the situation. He rolls a 7, so he flinches, hesitates or stalls, and I get to give him a worse outcome or a bad choice. Fantastic! I tell him that the fourth guy, the one nobody's shooting at, is shooting at him too, and that he can get to his position if he's willing to take fire from both of them, or otherwise he's going to have to dive behind the truck with the Berg and Clarion, and in neither case will he be able to make an effective attack just now. Which does he choose? Well, AT's a hardass who figures he can take a bullet or three, so he goes for it. From each of his two enemies he suffers: 3 harm for the machine gun, -2 harm for his body armor, for a total of 1 harm each, for a grand total of 2 harm. Now he's in cover where the guy above him can't get a good shot.

"What's Clarion doing?" Whenever the players turn to you as GM and wait for you to say something, you make a GM move. This time it should be a setup move, not a followthrough move, and I want to show off that Clarion's kind of a badass too, so I choose to put someone in a spot: the gang dude. "Clarion's cool, she's keeping that guy's head good and down. She'll be ready to rush him when you say go."

Let's stop a second here and see where we are with harm:

• The dude on top of the van has taken 2 harm, which is basically lethal for an NPC. I say that he's still firing now, but note to myself that he's going to stop firing and lie still before he hits anybody.
• Berg's truck has taken 3 harm, -1 harm for its armor, for a total of 2 harm. They won't be driving it away!
• Berg has taken 0 harm. On 0 harm I can choose to have him make the harm move, or not, and I choose not to.
• AT has taken 2 harm, which isn't lethal for a PC. He makes the harm move, rolling +2, and he rolls a 7. "You miss noticing something important," I say. "It's the sniper." I get to make a move, and I decide to take away their stuff: "you've completely lost track of where the sniper must be. You don't get that +1 anymore."

Everybody's done something, so that's the end of the first round.
. . .
The guy above AT is leaning way out, trying to find where AT went. He's holding on to his machine gun but we all know AT has him. AT opens fire. Because the guy can't effectively fight back, AT's going aggro. What he wants is for the guy to no longer be a threat, alive or dead. He rolls+hard, and his roll sucks, but with hard+2 and the +1 for reading the sitch (this is one of the enemies who's the biggest threat, recall) he still hits it with a 7. A 7-9 on going aggro isn't the decisive win that AT was hoping for, but it's still a win. I have to choose from the list and I choose to have the guy get the hell out of AT's way. "When you open fire, he drops his gun and runs."

So now Berg and Clarion are trying to find that sniper. Berg's player shakes his head like Berg's doing something really stupid, and Berg stands upright for a second to take a quick look around and maybe draw fire.

Berg's acting under fire. He rolls+cool and gets an 8. He flinches, hesitates, or stalls - and who can blame him! - and I get to give him a worse outcome or a tough choice. I go with the worse outcome, straight up: "you stick your head out, yes, and yes, the sniper takes a shot. Roll to read the situation but take -2 for flinching."

Oh, let me explain that. When I give people bonuses or penalties for stuff like this, I always give +1 or -2, following the lead of helping and interfering. Because his 7 to act under fire is a hit, Berg gets to do what he wants - read the situation fresh - but by flinching he's effectively interfered with himself.

Anyway he rolls+sharp to read the situation, -2 for flinching, and hits it with an 8. He gets to ask one question, and it's obvious which he'll choose. "What's my enemy's true position?"

This seems to me like a good moment for a recap. "Let's see," I say. "As you'd think, the sniper's in a nest up in the structure, above and behind. He's further back than you'd expect, though - maybe he's covering a different way in too or something. That's one. The guy on the platform to the left, AT scared the crap out of him and he's fleeing through the walkways over there. That's two. The guy on top of the van has stopped firing and is lying still. That's three. Clarion's still got that guy on the right pinned down, she's still waiting for your word to move. That's four. And the fifth guy, he was on the ground further back behind this smashed-up wall, he's on the move. He's going to take position behind the van, where he has a better angle on both you two and AT. In total: two guys out of the fight, two guys in the fight, plus the sniper."

Awesome. Everybody's done something, so that's the end of the round. Going into round 3, AT's going to take the guy diving for safety behind the van, Berg and Clarion are going to move on the guy to the right, and they know where the sniper is so they can minimize their exposure.

Shall I continue? I think that AT and Berg are going to win this fight after all, unless the dice really turn on them. Any questions, comments, observations?

-Vincent​

The GM's narration of the sniper, and of how the PCs do or don't succeed in avoiding being sniped, isn't based on map-and-key prep. The PCs might be "bypassing" obstacles and enemies in the fiction, but no one is "bypassing" anything at the table.