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

[Lanefan]

Alternatively: you're all assuming map-and -key and/or timeline-based prep and resolution, but for some reason are being coy about it?

Why would I be coy about the obvious. Of course I'm assuming timeline-based resolution, and mostly assuming map-and-key.

 

[Lanefan]

Assuming that they're playing Burning Wheel, then no. The whole point of the game is to focus on tests that will resolve key moments of conflict/crisis.

Not far upthread you directly equated tests with "checks" in D&D; and in D&D avoiding having to make checks you don't need to is almost universally the best strategy.

Here, it seems you're saying the game actively wants players to run their PCs into these "test" situations even if it's directly contrary to what a wise character would do. As "do what the character would do" is my primary mode of play, no wonder this all seems senseless to me.

Just what? Where does the "encounter" exist if it never occurred?

The potential for an encounter exists on the bridge.

It's possible that by sheer luck the PCs will bypass it without ever knowing it's there e.g. they sneak into the castle from the rear, do what they're there to do, and sneak out again the same way they came in.

It's also possible the PCs will bypass the encounter while knowing it exists e.g. they approach the bridge, see all those guards, and decide to go to a stealth plan rather than take them on.

In 1e, bypassing encounters is even baked into the rules! Xp are to be given for bypassing opponents as if the opponents had been defeated in combat (I seem to recall there's a proviso somewhere saying the PCs have to be aware of the opponents' existence thus they'd get xp for bypassing the guards in the second example above but not in the first).

 

[Lanefan]

It seems impossible to have a casual conversation around here about game design.

That's because there's not enough beer in the forum.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Apparently because GMs are power hungry control freaks who can't ever be trusted or questioned. It's not the world I live in, or at the very least it doesn't resemble any experience I've had over decades of play but it's pretty obvious where @EzekielRaiden stand on this.

Nope! Wrong. Incorrect.

My point isn't that this is anything like what the world is.

I am asking--I have been asking, for quite some time now--for the alleged constraints/limitations/fnord that you and others have repeatedly asserted are the thing that mean the GM's choices are not driven by what they choose to happen, but rather in some way "forced". I believe that was a word used to describe it--that the GM has no choice but to do X instead of Y, even though they might like to do Y, because of something that gets in the way. No matter what they might do, no matter how much effort they might expend, they'll just never be able to do Y because something forces them to do X.

Thus far, every single answer has been built on...a thing the GM has complete and absolute control over and which is not in any way separate from them. Context? GM decides what counts as context and what doesn't. Setting? That's literally something they wrote, or something they're re-writing from someone else's work. (E.g. I don't imagine that @Maxperson would merely accept it even if Ed Greenwood himself declared that, say, an alien species colonized a sparsely-inhabited portion of the Realms--nor would I expect him to never ever deviate from, say, the monster design of trolls to say that this troll is weak to lightning and cold rather than acid and fire, merely because--I am making this up, to be clear--all trolls in FR are weak to acid and fire.)

Players can declare actions, yes. But those actions can only be declared within a context entirely developed by the GM--and the consequences of those actions are, likewise, entirely within the GM's purview to control. It doesn't require outlandish things for the GM to still be fundamentally in control here.

It's an invisible railroad because we, as GMs, build the world and everything revolves around us. No matter how often we explain that it does not.

You build the world, populate it, make all decisions for all sapient and non-sapient beings, develop new parts of the world when you feel like doing so, decide what information the players will be allowed to learn or forbidden from learning, set the terms for any action they take, create and enforce all consequences of any action they take, and have complete control over what qualifies as relevant context for every single one of the foregoing things.

Yes. Characters take actions. You're still responsible for both 100% of the inputs that go into those actions, and 100% of the outputs that result from those actions. Because it all has to come out of the black box before players are even potentially capable of learning anything about it--and thus of doing anything about it. You cannot act when you have genuinely zero information.

 

[Kromanjon]

Okay.

What do you call it, then, when the DM...does that? When they engage in illusionism--making it seem as though the players are the ones running the show, when actually it's just the DM?

Because that's a thing. People have talked about it on here extensively. I can dig up at least one entire thread about it, if you like.

People tend to write a lot of things, that's true. Doesn't mean I have to buy in to every new term someone invents.

Also I would think that a DM would have a rather high opinion of themselves if they thought they could consistently and faultlessly outwit 4-5 other people for a sustained period. I find most players are highly intelligent, and can pretty quickly figure out that they're being deceived. A clever and charismatic DM might keep the charade up for a while, but it wouldn't last forever.

 

[Lanefan]

No, they don't get to mind-control the players.

But they do get to decide what options are "plausible". In other words...they get to decide the menu of things the players can pick from. Which is literally what I used very early in the thread as one of the softest forms of railroading, and nobody seemed to be particularly annoyed at that description at the time (not compared to various other things that elicited a much stronger response).

The low-level PCs have made camp for the night and are eating dinner around the campfire.

The DM (for what could be any reason whatsoever) introduces a Goblin to the scene by having it step into the firelight in a guarded but non-aggressive manner.

The PCs could respond in a myriad of ways, all the way from killing it where it stands to welcoming it with open arms and electing it leader of the party to ignoring it completely and going about their meal. There's no "menu" of possible responses, no railroad, no anything except players playing their characters true (in theory) to what those characters would do in that moment.

Question: What, exactly, prevents the GM from developing a reason why there would be goblins there, even if previously there definitely weren't? The players cannot see the notes, they'll never know that a new development contradicts that--like literally, it's not possible for them to know that. Even if the GM has already explicitly said in the most absolute and certain terms, "There are absolutely no goblins in <region>", it's been explicit that you don't want a "machine" world, you want a world controlled by a person. What stops that person from deciding, a week after saying "there are absolutely no goblins in the High Forest", that an expedition has been sent from Goblinia to the High Forest? As far as I can tell, nothing stops them from doing that. They then develop this expedition further--the goblins are trying to keep a low profile so they hide their numbers, forage, avoid settlements. Presumably they want something in the High Forest.

Ideally this wouldn't be a change made on the fly but certainly could have been something in mind all along: the PCs are told there's no Goblins in the High Forest because that's what the common knowledge is in town; in fact the Goblins have been quietly sneaking raiding bands into that forest all summer and are getting ready to unleash hell on the surrounding farms and villages.

Which means, if-when the PCs venture into the High Forest and somehow meet Goblins there, it should be a "wtf?" moment for the characters and by extension their players. It's then on them to - if they want - dig a bit deeper and find out what's really going on in that forest. Should be able to get a bunch of sessions worth of adventuring out of that set-up.

Not me! I'm still waiting for some kind of limitation or restriction or constraint that isn't, fundamentally, built on something the GM wrote and thus something the GM could revoke or rewrite or rework or develop (etc., etc., etc.) into nearly anything they want.

You'll be waiting a mighty long time, I think; probably until human DMs become replaced by AI or robots. At which point it'll become the programmers who control the black box, which merely shifts your issue one step farther away.

 

[Lanefan]

I am unclear as to why a long-form campaign is incompatible with illusionism.

It's hard to maintain an illusion successfully for any length of time. Sooner or later either the illusion is a) exposed or b) disproved.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The person whose rhetoric you are defending explicitly stated, "constraints are good". Exact words. Are you willing to disagree with that statement?

I should think it obvious that the answer is "no", but this thread has made clear that unless I spill a thousand words on every single thing that ought to be easily understood, I'll be ignored. (Of course, most will still ignore it because then I've said too much, but better that than getting skewered for things I never even actually said.)

So: Okay. We agree that some constraints are good. Do you agree, then, that that means you cannot reject a rule solely because it involves GM constraints? Because that would seem to be a logical necessity if one grants that some constraints are good.

At which point, the thrust of my argument remains: If you're going to declare that a particular GM restriction is bad, you have to actually show WHY it's bad, not just reject it on the basis of being a GM constraint.

Sure you can. And you get to disagree.

Pardon me for expecting an actual discussion, and not people shouting "I'm right because I say so!"

So what? I don't control 99.9% of what happens in the real world, but my decisions still matter to me and make a difference in mine and other's lives.

Yes--and you'll note that that's because those things are, in fact, genuinely forced by something beyond your actual control.

That's the key difference there. Barring those who believe in a particularly interventionist divine figure--which I would assume doesn't include you--you actually ARE forced into various decisions by the physical limitations of the world around you.

I have yet to be given a single limitation on GM power in this context that doesn't quickly (often almost immediately) loop back to being fully defined and controlled by the GM. Context? Defined by the GM--both what gets to go into the context in the first place, and what qualifies as relevant forever after. Player actions? Players cannot act until they're given information by the GM, so their actions are always conditional on what the GM actually lets them know, and as I've said a few times now, the GM has 100% total control over what consequences result from those actions. Plausibility? Anything can be made plausible with a bit of effort, especially in a universe with magic, as I've argued several times now and haven't gotten a meaningful response beyond "nuh-uh! Magic has rules!" (Rules invented as part of the setting......which means invented by the GM, and trivially easily broken by the GM if they just do a little prep work first.)

Give me a limitation that doesn't loop back to being under the GM's control, and I can take seriously the idea that the GM isn't the one responsible.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, we're all just players, who strut and fret a time in the setting through our PCs and then, barring resurrection magic, are heard no more.

But who, then, is the Shakespeare to the players? Because the natural extension of this analogy--which I assume you really did not intend--is that Shakespeare is the GM. Y'know, the one who defines all of the locations...who writes and portrays every incidental character...who completely controls all opposition forces...who has absolute power over both what information the players are allowed to know and what consequences arise from anything and everything the players elect to do...

And by the language you're using to describe this, that's bad right? The portion that the players contribute to the game doesn't matter?

I mean, if one is saying that player agency matters a great deal and is the core centerpiece of the approach, then yes, I would say that it is bad to have one person with that particular kind of power involved in the process.

I'm not saying the players actions definitely don't matter. I'm saying that the players' actions aren't, and cannot be, any kind of limitation on the GM--because the GM controls all possible inputs into the decision-making the players can do, and controls all possible outputs from those decisions. The former, because the players literally cannot know anything about the world unless the GM tells them. That's literally the explicit thing happening here, as has been repeatedly described by many different people. Players can and will presume a lot, but presumptions are not actually capable of supporting action--they fade at the slightest encounter with contradiction, which is the moment when the GM actually informs them. And then the latter because, again as I have understood it from nearly every poster "on your side" here, the GM is the sole decider of results--all rules can and will be broken if the GM feels it appropriate, and guess what, the GM is the sole decider of whether it's appropriate or not. Hell, even the need to respect the player's die rolls was not unequivocally supported!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The low-level PCs have made camp for the night and are eating dinner around the campfire.

The DM (for what could be any reason whatsoever) introduces a Goblin to the scene by having it step into the firelight in a guarded but non-aggressive manner.

The PCs could respond in a myriad of ways, all the way from killing it where it stands to welcoming it with open arms and electing it leader of the party to ignoring it completely and going about their meal. There's no "menu" of possible responses, no railroad, no anything except players playing their characters true (in theory) to what those characters would do in that moment.

By putting the goblin there, you have just broken the past context and rewritten things to include goblins, even though there objectively weren't any before and if the players could see your notes, they'd know that. Hence, by doing this, you have just proven that context and setting are not in any way a limitation. In trying to disprove a small claim, you have surrendered the greater. I don't think that's what you intended to do.

You'll be waiting a mighty long time, I think; probably until human DMs become replaced by AI or robots. At which point it'll become the programmers who control the black box, which merely shifts your issue one step farther away.

But that's what people have repeatedly told me is the case. They've repeatedly said that the GM cannot just act as they like, that there really IS something that limits them. This means either you're wrong, or they have been wrong this whole time. Which is it?

 

[AnotherGuy]

In the fiction, the PCs avoided an ambush.

Sure, avoided is a better word.

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

Agree.

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?

That scenario with much less detail prepped by me, happened.
The idea was the ambush was to occur outside the inn the PCs were stationed at on their way to the Council meeting which was called for 9am.
But whether I had prepped a map-and-key + timeline-based resolution is unimportant. Those details I could whip up there and then, bringing out a map of a street or drawing it on our laminated hexagonal grid or even use ToM (which is my preferred).

PCs came down from their inn-rooms for breakfast, found a Zhentarim faction agent watching them. They were aware she was Zhent as she was the Zhentarim representative that had been booted from the Council.

She implied she had valuable information she could share immediately as a sign of good faith that she would be an asset for the Council if they vouched for her re-admission with the other councilors. She mentioned that the Cult of the Dragon and the Zhents seems to share similar contractors and word had spread that the Cult were looking to do some sort of retaliation.

She mentioned the ambush and the PCs, who were not at their best resource wise, took the necessary precautions. Whether it was true or not was never revealed, but it was a fun roleplaying interaction at the table.
Dice were only used to determine tonal shifts in conversation and approaches used based on how the PCs reacted.

EDIT: Personally I didn't want to run a combat, but it made sense (in the fiction) that the Zhentarim would make a move towards the party. With the PC who opposed the Zhentarim the most, now assumed dead it was an ideal opportunity and allowed me to flesh out the NPC for a future heavily political engagement which the PCS were aware of.
I was also gaging (as DM and as the Zhent) whether any of the PCs were more sympathetic to the Zhents as the person to contact in the future.