Realistic Consequences vs Gameplay

[hawkeyefan]

I think I somewhat disagree. I don't necessarily consider my notes completely immutable, but I do need a very good reason to disregard them. Primarily for reasons of verisimilitude, as I described.

I think plenty of interesting play experiences can arise from sticking to your notes. Having to deal with an offended baron isn't necessarily any less interesting than having the Captain depose him.

Yeah, I’m not saying to always abandon your notes. If you have ideas that are engaging and don’t disrupt the flow of the game, have at it. I prep when I run 5E, so I’m not anti-prep.

What I mean by “hold on loosely”, is more along the lines of treating your prep as a rough draft. Maybe it’s as awesome as the game is likely to get....in which case, yeah run it as is! In other cases, it may not be as good as it can be. If so, leave yourself the option to change things.

Nothing’s set in stone until it’s introduced in play. (And technically it’s not even set in stone then, either, but @Lanefan may hear me say that and if so, the thread will have yet another tangent). So until it’s established in play, everything is mutable.

I know that making a change on the fly could have larger ramifications for other things you’ve planned. Two things on that. One, it’s okay...you’ll get it all to work. Two, maybe consider not prepping so far in advance.

Personally, I think a big part of the issue given in the OP is that the DM tried to adhere too strongly to the way the Baron is presented in the book. Had he changed things a bit, sure they may have contradicted the book....but the game may not have suffered this disruption to play. The players aren’t going to read the book after and then say “hey that Baron wasn’t as implacable as he should have been WTF?!?!”

Your notes are no different.

So I’m not saying not to prep, and not to let things play out per the things you’ve prepped. But consider how and what you prepare, and then consider the flow of play at the table, and how the PCs have influenced or changed things, or how they’ve reacted to the fictional world. Change things if it makes sense to do so, or if playing them out as expected will be a problem.

 

[FrogReaver]

This isn't quite true. The fictional success does have a causal relationship, it's more that the causal relationship may have been heretofore unknown. It still needs to follow the established fiction and be genre appropriate. The example with the Captain, for instance, still directly hinges on the insult, so it's rooted in play, even if it introduces a previously unknown causal relationship that the Captain chooses now to talk to the Burgomaster about the town's agreement with the insult.

Narrating that a tiny meteor fragment suddenly impacts the Burgomaster right after the PC's insult that causes miniscule brain damage that leaves the Burgomaster amenable to the PC's message would not be acceptable because it isn't grounded in the fictional state as established and isn't genre appropriate.

I appreciate the feedback but I don't understand why that's not an acceptable success state in the "fictional success" model. In such a model the success determined the baron would be amenable and the DM narrates how that occurs. Now I'm not saying it would be a particularly good success state to choose but to claim it's inconsistent with that methodology is hard for me to see.

It is more fluid, but it's not wide open. And, I say this as someone that went through a similar evolution to what you describe, almost exactly. I, maybe, have had a bit more time to chew on the concepts, which might explain any difference? Have you tried PbtA games? They really thrive on this adjudication style.

Never done a PbtA game. But I'm just not seeing what keeps such a methodology from being wide open - other than my already stated support for the notion that it's typically best when such a methodology is grounded in causal relationships with your action being the direct cause.

If I was to go down the path of defining I would suggest a kind of hierarchy where a 1st order causal relationship is one where your action directly causes the success state to be reached - directly convincing the baron to change his mind with your words. Then there would be a 2nd order causal relationship where your action causes something that happen that then directly causes the success state to be reached - your action triggering the call for guards whose actions then move you into the success state. Then I would say that there are 3rd order causal relationships, ones where the success state is reached even more indirectly than that. Then there would be actual non-casual relationships which your meteorite example would fall under.

So I think using the word non-casual before was probably not accurate on my part as in every case but the last there was some in-fiction chain of causality that could be traced. What I really meant when I said non-causality is non-1st-order causality. Thanks for helping me clarify my thoughts.

 

[FrogReaver]

Thinking more about the discussion of causality. Say you try to jump across a 50 ft canyon. The DM allows a check and you roll a 20. You fail to jump far enough, but a friendly angel grabs you from certain death and flys you on to the other side. This is a 2nd order causal relationship as I defined above because your jump action directly led to the actions of the angel.

But this doesn't feel right does it? It's a bit too spectacular I think. Which means to me that a success state framed in even a 2nd order causal way is not enough to properly constrain the "fictional success" model to lead to good success states.

 

[Maxperson]

If the GM decides that a particular orc cannot be killed by application of the resolution mechanics - eg no matter what the players roll to hit, the GM is resolved to declare it a miss - I would call that railroading.

And for combat, it would be. For skill resolution and NPC behavior, it isn't or at least doesn't have to be. It depends on why the answer is no.

If the GM decides that a particular forest is not passable - eg no matter what actions the PCs declare about drawing the machetes to cut through underbrush, reading the compasses, etc the GM will narrate that they have failed to make iany headway - I would be very curious as to what is going on. If the GM is trying to hard frame some other scene or context, why are the players declaring these forest-passing actions? At best something has gone badly wrong with the GM's attempt to frame the scene; at worst we have a railroad.

Cool, cool. Still not the same as an NPC reaction or skill check.

If the GM decides that a particular NPC will always do X or always do Y - s/he cannot be influenced by a PC regardless of what actions the players declare - to me that looks like a railroad through-and-through.

Nope! The guard captain who was an orphan saved by the orphanage and has a soft spot for all the orphans there is simply not going to burn them all to death regardless of what you try when you attempt to influence him to do so. It's not railroading to simply inform the player that there's no chance of success. You might be able to influence him to get rid of the drunk corporal, though.

Whatever the players do, they can't affect the fiction except to push it along some path or other already decided by the GM. To me the whole point of a RPG is it's not a choose-your-own adventure.

That's not true. There are many avenues that are outside known prep. Nobody can write down every or even anywhere remotely close to every possible reaction, regardless of what @Ovinomancer thinks. The DM will know some things that will auto fail, some that will auto succeed, but the vast majority are going to be unknown and many of those will push things down paths other than what the DM has planned.

 

[FrogReaver]

Shifting back to 1st order causal relationships for a moment. They aren't actually constrained to lead to "good" success states either. What they do that higher order causal relationships do not is limit the spectacular (at least when preceded by a rule where dice rolling can be exempted for auto failure and auto success).

So perhaps the guiding principle should really be, choose the most fun and least spectacular success state that you can when narrating success. I think that accounts for the competing priorities of fun and verisimilitude and leaves open success states from all orders of causality.

 

[FrogReaver]

That's not true. There are many avenues that are outside known prep. Nobody can write down every or even anywhere remotely close to every possible reaction, regardless of what @Ovinomancer thinks. The DM will know some things that will auto fail, some that will auto succeed, but the vast majority are going to be unknown and many of those will push things down paths other than what the DM has planned.

So, this I agree with on the surface but want to urge caution because IMO DM's are often too simplistic and even biased in their treatment of what NPC personalities in relation to what they definitely will and will not do. I think there needs to be certain limitations on the ranges of NPC reactions (such as you can't convince this merchant to give you all his goods) - but I think anything that is going to cause auto success or failure in relation to NPC's needs to be very carefully considered as it usually isn't serving an actual purpose and likely is going to be too limiting on the range and tone of social interaction the players may want to have. That's part of the issue many of us have with the impossible to insult burgomaster that this thread was started about.

I think that in most games if a player ever played his PC as strictly to predetermined personality as the DM does his NPC's that such a player would be quickly booted for disruptive behavior / bad faith play. Does anyone disagree?

 

[Maxperson]

So, this I agree with on the surface but want to urge caution because IMO DM's are often too simplistic and even biased in their treatment of what NPC personalities in relation to what they definitely will and will not do. I think there needs to be certain limitations on the ranges of NPC reactions (such as you can't convince this merchant to give you all his goods) - but I think anything that is going to cause auto success or failure in relation to NPC's needs to be very carefully considered as it usually isn't serving an actual purpose and likely is going to be too limiting on the range and tone of social interaction the players may want to have. That's part of the issue many of us have with the impossible to insult burgomaster that this thread was started about.

I agree with this. I don't say auto no with NPCs all that often. Usually there is a roll involved or a fair amount of the time, a flat out yes.

I think that in most games if a player ever played his PC as strictly to predetermined personality as the DM does his NPC's that such a player would be quickly booted for disruptive behavior / bad faith play. Does anyone disagree?

Possibly. I play with players who stick pretty true to their PCs personalities, goals, etc. Sometimes one does get kicked out or walk out of a group over it. That's rare, though. Usually they find a way to stay in character and make it work.

 

[FrogReaver]

One meta observation.

I'm not sure if it's being cooped up in our homes for social isolation, rioting let ya'll blow off some steam, fear of the end of the world as we know it due to covid-19, or what.... but this is one of the longest running discussions on EnWorld that hasn't been derailed by petty back and forth bickering. I am impressed!

Perhaps we should take names of who is not here... I jest, well maybe halfway jest

 

[hawkeyefan]

Nope! The guard captain who was an orphan saved by the orphanage and has a soft spot for all the orphans there is simply not going to burn them all to death regardless of what you try when you attempt to influence him to do so. It's not railroading to simply inform the player that there's no chance of success. You might be able to influence him to get rid of the drunk corporal, though.

So, do you think that a minor NPC is typically going to have:
a) such a detailed background
b) that also relates to potential actions in the present game
c) that will effectively shut down a very possible action?

I mean, I've never been in a game where any NPC had such strong feelings about orphanages that influenced their view about an actual orphanage that the PCs wanted to burn down. This seems like an absurd example that isn't really likely to come up.

But it does offer a good example of how these kinds of details can be decided in play. Instead of the Gm deciding all this ahead of time about this relatively minor NPC, he can instead call for a roll when the PCs interact with him, and then based on the results, some relevant detail can be decided to explain the result. If one has not been determined ahead of time, then the success or failure of the PC can help shape the NPCs traits.

That's not true. There are many avenues that are outside known prep. Nobody can write down every or even anywhere remotely close to every possible reaction, regardless of what @Ovinomancer thinks. The DM will know some things that will auto fail, some that will auto succeed, but the vast majority are going to be unknown and many of those will push things down paths other than what the DM has planned.

This seems far more reasonable, and lends itself much more to what I've just described above. All those middle examples that aren't auto succeed or auto fail, typically rolls are what's involved. So those rolls can do double duty.....let us know if the PCs succeed or fail, and also possibly the reasons why.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think that in most games if a player ever played his PC as strictly to predetermined personality as the DM does his NPC's that such a player would be quickly booted for disruptive behavior / bad faith play. Does anyone disagree?

This is a great observation and I don't disagree at all. One note PCs are involved in far more of the game than a one note NPC may be....so they can certainly be much more of a burden.

I also think if a GM suggested to a player that they were being too flexible with their character's actions, that they weren't adhering strictly enough to established behaviors or to alignment, the player would likely not take that too kindly. I say this with 5e and more modern versions of D&D in mind, where alignment was not as essential and impactful as it used to be.