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

[Bedrockgames]

Let me give a concrete example of what I mean. Let's say the PCs were framed for a crime (or possibly committed one, whichever you prefer). The plausible, but extremely boring, option A would be for them to wait for days or weeks in a jail they don't have the ability to break out of, until a judge finally arrives to hear their case. The slightly less plausible, but still fairly plausible, option B would be for the PCs' allies (who also oppose the tyrannical/oppressive laws of the land) to stage a prison breakout before that happens, both to help the PCs escape, and to have a little leverage over them ("we did break you out of jail...you could at least scratch our backs in return" kind of thing). A prison break specifically to help the PCs is simply, flatly, less plausible than the prison working as it has always worked. But it's also a hell of a lot more fun--and, importantly, still quite plausible, even if it is ever-so-slightly less plausible than the alternative.

The jailbreak though is less plausible than the staying in prison. I am not saying it wouldn't happen in such a game, but living world sandboxes are games where there are often lasting consequences for your actions (I think Arbiter of Worlds does a great job laying out a case for this). If the Gm stepped in and had them broken out, I think that could raise eyebrows in many campaigns. Plausible doesn't mean can happen. It means most likely. And if there are situations where there are lesser possibilities, then many GMs are going to roll. Or they let the players try to engineer their own breakout (but that is played out if it happens). If the whole party is in jail, the campaign might skip to when they are released, or they might start playing new characters. I am not saying breakouts can't happen, I am just saying that in the context of a living world sandbox, a jailbreak that is clearly being done to escape the potential of players being stuck in jail, will come off as artificial and not as guided by plausibility

This wasn't sandbox game, but in my mafia RPG, I gave prisons different ratings of security to deal with players trying to escape. Even outside sandbox play, it isn't something I would just make happen

 

[Bedrockgames]

There is nothing in the post you were quoting that said "interesting" does not or cannot come into play. @Bedrockgames talks about using realism as a guideline and says nothing about how "interesting" is (or is not) factored in.

I have been kind of doing double duty defending generic living world sandboxes (which usually favor heavy realism and naturalism) and defending my own Drama and Sandbox. I allow for interesting and dramatic things to happen, but I am very cautious and careful about it, because I do think that is where railroading can start if you aren't wary.

Reposting here. But this was my description of Drama and Sandbox in my core rules:

And this was a more recent effort:

So sometimes, I may be saying one thing in defense of the above, but that doesn't necessarily apply to my arguments responding to criticisms of realism in a standard living world sandbox

 

[Bedrockgames]

The jailbreak though is less plausible than the staying in prison. I am not saying it wouldn't happen in such a game, but living world sandboxes are games where there are often lasting consequences for your actions (I think Arbiter of Worlds does a great job laying out a case for this). If the Gm stepped in and had them broken out, I think that could raise eyebrows in many campaigns. Plausible doesn't mean can happen. It means most likely. And if there are situations where there are lesser possibilities, then many GMs are going to roll. Or they let the players try to engineer their own breakout (but that is played out if it happens). If the whole party is in jail, the campaign might skip to when they are released, or they might start playing new characters. I am not saying breakouts can't happen, I am just saying that in the context of a living world sandbox, a jailbreak that is clearly being done to escape the potential of players being stuck in jail, will come off as artificial and not as guided by plausibility

This wasn't sandbox game, but in my mafia RPG, I gave prisons different ratings of security to deal with players trying to escape. Even outside sandbox play, it isn't something I would just make happen

Also just one point to add about this, you keep framing this kind of situation in a way most sandbox GMs wouldn't. We would tend to think about the likelihood of other NPCs trying to break them out, not the likelihood of them being broken out. It is still lower on the scale of likelihood, but if you have an NPC you know in your bones would try to engineer a breakout, that seems more reasonable to me. But we are talking a character you know would try something like that (and there would still be a likelihood of failure). For me I would basically do a bunch of skill rolls for the NPC, or if he coordinated a group effort, give them a dice pool, assign a dice pool to the prison, and require like three successes for them to get to a place where they can break out the players. I wouldn't treat it as a foregone conclusion

 

[Bedrockgames]

Also we are talking about two very different aspects of GM decision here. One is how the GM responds when the players take actions (i.e. what over the hill if they keep going north when the GM doesn't have anything on the map for that) or if demand money from a wineshop owner at swordpoint. The other is the GM engineering situations to present as challenges and fun for the party. I think how people approach both these will vary. But I also think most sandbox GMs will lean much harder on plausibility in the former case and the latter case will be much more varied (i.e. what arises in the world around the players unprovoked). This latter one is where I saw the most staunch debates among sandbox GMs. And there definitely are people who will really lean into a naturalism that may feel too still or uninsteresting to some (I personally found many approaches to sandbox to be not exciting enough for my tastes).

 

[AlViking]

If one's personal perception of what feels plausible or realistic is what is doing the deciding, I don't understand how that differs from what I said. It just means GM Q tries to direct their feelings at properties X and Y, rather than properties A and B. And, I'll note, plenty of people have already admitted that doing what feels right or what feels like it will contribute to a more exciting experience is still a thing, even for the most rigorously sandbox-y GM who prioritizes other things first.

It even seemed at least reasonably non-controversial, by this thread's standards, when I asserted that what I think most people actually DO is an exchange rate between various priorities. That is, if we say 1 "point" of interestingness is only worth 0.01 "points" of plausibility, then something needs to be worth 100+ interestingness points in order to be a fair exchange for even a single point of plausibility lost in the doing. Such a standard doesn't mean this GM would never choose interestingness despite a loss of plausibility, but rather that they expect a very high return for the investment, so to speak. If the GM knows that option A would be profoundly, overwhelmingly boring and dull, but very slightly more plausible than option B, which would be profoundly exciting and engaging and still very plausible, it seems...rather unlikely that even an extremely strident sandbox-y GM would choose the former option. Now, if it were the difference between a merely mildly uninteresting but overwhelmingly plausible option C vs a merely mildly or only temporarily interesting/exciting/etc. but wildly implausible option D, naturally that GM and indeed most GMs would choose the former, as it is clearly the lesser of two evils. "Maximally plausible but profoundly boring" loses to "Almost maximally plausible but profoundly exciting", even in cases where "maximally plausible and slightly uninteresting" wins out over "almost completely implausible and somewhat interesting".

I, and as far as I can tell, everyone else has stated that they take into consideration what will be interesting along with everything else. It's not like we can physically measure that we have 20 grams of plausibility versus 15 grams of interesting versus 22 grams of some idea I just came up with that would be really cool. Typically I think of options that would be fun and interesting and then weigh that against plausibility and continuity. Consistency and continuity of the fiction along with long term possibilities matter more than what will be beneficial to the characters.

Let me give a concrete example of what I mean. Let's say the PCs were framed for a crime (or possibly committed one, whichever you prefer). The plausible, but extremely boring, option A would be for them to wait for days or weeks in a jail they don't have the ability to break out of, until a judge finally arrives to hear their case. The slightly less plausible, but still fairly plausible, option B would be for the PCs' allies (who also oppose the tyrannical/oppressive laws of the land) to stage a prison breakout before that happens, both to help the PCs escape, and to have a little leverage over them ("we did break you out of jail...you could at least scratch our backs in return" kind of thing). A prison break specifically to help the PCs is simply, flatly, less plausible than the prison working as it has always worked. But it's also a hell of a lot more fun--and, importantly, still quite plausible, even if it is ever-so-slightly less plausible than the alternative.

If they sat in jail for weeks and months, I'd just narrate those weeks and months perhaps with a few minutes of RP about being in prison depending on the group. If the characters have NPC allies that would be able and willing to break them out of prison, that is also a possible option. If the characters are in a fight with a tyrannical government and they've gone out of their way to gain allies, it might make sense. Even a mysterious benefactor could be an interesting twist especially if there is no dramatic jailbreak, they just get woken up in the middle of the night to find their cell door unlocked, the guards asleep and their equipment in the hall. It sets up an interesting mystery. That mysterious benefactor could be some evil NPC just hoping to use the characters because there are factions fighting for control of the crown and would most likely be one of the factions I had in my notes.

But again, there is no scientific formula here. They aren't going to be set free just because the leader of the kingdom changes their mind unless I previously decided that the ruler is known for chaotic and inconsistent decisions.

If there is a GM here who would choose to make the players play through hours of "you can't escape from the jail cell, it was literally made to hold people like you, you just have to wait until the trial begins", rather than having a plausible-but-not-AS-plausible exciting prison-break sequence, I will gladly retract the criticism. But I'm fairly confident there isn't anyone here who would choose the maximally-plausible but terribly-boring option when a highly, but not maximally, plausible option exists that would be way more fun to play.

Like I said, there would never be hours of play just sitting in jail. There might be hours of RP as the players mix and mingle with the inmates, struggle to survive a cutthroat prison or what not but it's just silly to argue that a GM would make people sit around the table staring at each other for hours on end.

 

[Bedrockgames]

If one's personal perception of what feels plausible or realistic is what is doing the deciding, I don't understand how that differs from what I said. It just means GM Q tries to direct their feelings at properties X and Y, rather than properties A and B. And, I'll note, plenty of people have already admitted that doing what feels right or what feels like it will contribute to a more exciting experience is still a thing, even for the most rigorously sandbox-y GM who prioritizes other things first.

The problem with it is it glosses over the role of judgment. The GM isn’t just directing feelings. The GM is examining the situation and asking themselves ‘what is most plausible here?’. Why that matters is it yields a very different result than ‘what is most exciting here?’. And even if the GM is combining the two as in your other example and asking ‘what is most plausible and exciting here’, that yields different results. You are going to feel like you are in three entirely different worlds if you play in games with three GMs asking three different questions. Again, no one is saying it is an actual simulation of the real world, or truly realistic.

What this does mean is different GMs handle these questions differently and have different answers. People are okay with that. I think you want a concrete set of mechanics that make sure things like this would be handled the same way every time, which is fine. That is a level of consistency across tables we aren’t looking for

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think that's probably the more likely cause, but you could also see how this could very plausibly flow from principles based on the assumption that the world keeps progressing. For example, we could posit this wasn't the henchmen being idiots, it was deliberate sabotage due to one of them being replaced by a doppelganger, plausibly one hired by the character's enemies if they hadn't opposed one so far in the campaign.

Externally, such a scenario would appear to be identical to what has been described, but rather than "getting on with the module" there would potentially be motivation to investigate the circumstances and chase down this new threat. This, I think is what's being got at with the "black box". From the outside, this appears to have the hallmarks of some fairly heavy handed railroading but from the inside it may follow plausibly and realistically from player actions and NPC motivations. If we can't distinguish these cases at the table, it seems it may lead to some of the problems described.

Yes, that would be exactly my concern with something like this.

 

[Enrahim]

Yes, that would be exactly my concern with something like this.

Well this particular situation should be quite easy to resolve. If you straight up ask the GM "Was this due to something we do not know, that could be interesting to investigate further, or do you just want us to go on with this module?" Would you feel overly concered you wouldn't get a truthful answer?

 

[darkbard]

I was asking less about what the rulebook says and more about why you chose to run it that way. Plenty of RPGs encourage referees to structure things a certain way, but many of us adapt or reinterpret those expectations depending on what we’re trying to get out of the game.

I think this creates real problems in the hobby and it accounts for why we see seemingly erroneous understandings of certain games (particularly narrativist ones like DW and especially BitD) presented on these boards and elsewhere: some players don't treat a game and its rules as a discrete set of principles and processes to be understood on their own terms and instead look to get something else (what they're trying to get) from the game. And, so often, what they expect is limited by the "received wisdom" of what TTRPGing is "supposed to be," ie framed by the kind of normative views about D&D that we see exerting pressure in this and similar threads.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yes, that would be exactly my concern with something like this.

You should read Arbiter of Worlds (or if you haven't check out @SableWyvern's ACKS thread link). I am not saying it will change your view but it gets into this topic and addresses it well in my opinion. It also places greater emphasis on rules than this thread has. One way it measures these kinds of things is by consequences of choices made. And the basic idea of Arbiter of Worlds is the GM has four functions and in order of priority they are: Judge, Worldbuilder, Adversary and Storyteller (and storyteller is placed last for a reason). My experience is a lot of people who like living world sandbox like ACKS and Arbiter of Worlds (doesn't mean they agree with every point made in the GM advice, but it has a good deal of clout)