Realistic Consequences vs Gameplay

[FrogReaver]

Let me lean in on another bit about genre appropriateness. There's been a few examples in the thread about things like getting a dragon to give up it's hoard on a roll or a king his kingdom. This goes to genre appropriateness. In a genre of game that includes dragons having hoards, the genre expectation is that dragons do not give away their hoards. Similarly, in a genre that has kings, they don't give away their kingdoms on a single ask (or really multiple ones). This is where you can leverage genre logic to evaluate action declarations.

So I think we have a vastly different notion about what genre appropriateness actually means because I wouldn't relate any of that to the category of "genre appropriateness"

It's not reasonable to try to jump a 50 foot chasm in D&D as a low level character not leveraging any special means.

But the action itself - attempting to jump a 50 foot chasm is rooted in the fiction and genre. It's just we all know what the outcome will be unless there's help!

grounded in the fiction (I can justify a success and failure within the existing fiction),

See that's a helpful definition, even if I don't think your term lines up very well with that definition. You will only use existing characters to help narrate/explain a success. So no sudden angel out of nowhere etc. I think that's probably enough to keep things from outlandish results.

 

[FrogReaver]

I would hope it's the standard strived for in all games, actually. Almost everyone that's posted in this thread has seemed to want to ground things in the fiction. Even as I disagree with @Lanefan's examples of play as a matter of preference, I don't see what he does as anything other than being grounded in the fiction. @Lanefan doesn't run how I do, nor do I think I'd enjoy his games (again, preference), but he's a very principled and coherent advocate for his style and I don't see anything wrong with it. As a matter of general principles, we agree to more than we disagree, but our disagreements go straight to core preferences for me, and, I think, for him.

There was an important "not" missing from my statement you quoted. Sorry about that.

 

[Ovinomancer]

So I think we have a vastly different notion about what genre appropriateness actually means because I wouldn't relate any of that to the category of "genre appropriateness"[/quote[
I've spent quite a number of words trying to explain what I mean. Perhaps it's your turn to explain what you see genre appropriateness means.

But the action itself - attempting to jump a 50 foot chasm is rooted in the fiction and genre. It's just we all know what the outcome will be unless there's help!

Okay, I think I might have grasped a key point of missing information here. When a character makes an action declaration, they're doing so with the intent that their goal is the outcome. If this isn't true, we're way out of bounds. If the player's intent doesn't align with the genre logic of the game/setting, then this is when the action is genre inappropriate. Presumably, the player of the jumping character intends to successfully cross the chasm with their action declaration. But, that doesn't fit the genre -- low level characters do not jump 50' chasms with a bit of a run-up. That takes something extra. So the intent violates the genre logic.

See that's a helpful definition, even if I don't think your term lines up very well with that definition. You will only use existing characters to help narrate/explain a success. So no sudden angel out of nowhere etc. I think that's probably enough to keep things from outlandish results.

How does "grounded in the fiction" not line up with "can justify both success and failure within the establish fiction?"

And, no, the fiction might establish how an angel showed up (again, "an angel pledged to save me"), but it's genre expectations that says one doesn't absent appropriate fictional positioning. Genre expectations in D&D are that angels don't randomly show up to aid you leaping chasms. (Well, I'd wager that's not a broad genre expectation in D&D. I suppose you might have a setting where it's appropriate, in which case you'll have a lot of chasm jumping.) Fiction wouldn't stop it because, fictionally, angels exist and they can show up. There's nothing in the fiction of the example to prevent an angel showing up, although, absent good reason, it would be a credibility straining occurrence. Hence, genre logic is a better choice for this.

Now, you could justify this with genre, if your game features things like guardian angels, or that the PCs are chosen by gods for great things. This is a case where the genre might indeed demand that you have an angel show up. This would be an excellent option for a fail-forward or success at cost option. You can't actually jump the chasm, but your guardian angel shows up and saves you, but now you're geased to fulfill a mission from the gods as payment. All, of course, provided this is part of the game's established genre logic.

 

[Ovinomancer]

There was an important "not" missing from my statement you quoted. Sorry about that.

If it goes where I think it does, yes, that makes for a very different statement.

 

[FrogReaver]

Well, I'm talking about grounded in the fiction here, not genre inappropriateness, so I wasn't presenting examples to illuminate that.

Then let me clarify. I certainly don't see how any of those actions aren't rooted in fiction either.

You think it's genre appropriate to declare an action to cure a man of blindness using a magic spell in a hard sci-fi game?

Yes - so long as there is a GM that can decide the success or failure of that course of action and thus ensure it fails

I think that we are either talking past each other in some fundamental way, or the nature of our disagreement on this subject may be intractable.

I think it's simpler. The terms you used to reference your ideas sucked to illuminate them IMO.

No. I run 5e primarily. Genre appropriateness is very important to me. I run a high-fantasy game in Planescape, so players declaring actions about building a bomb using modern chemistry would be genre inappropriate for me -- the action would fail because alchemy, not chemistry, is real in this setting.

Then they can try all they want. The result will be no bomb. But the action itself fits very well within the genre. A person that doesn't fully understand or has some novel understanding about how alchemy works is trying to use it to do something that is impossible to do with it. That to me fits perfectly in the genre we are talking about.

I don't really see how choice of game invalidates genre expectations in any way.

I explained that. It has to do with who authors the fiction. In a game where the player could author fiction then he could presumably use alchemy to create that bomb but such cannot happen in a game where the DM is the sole author.

That the scenario be grounded in established fiction

The word established there makes a mountain of difference. It's something I think you've been leaving off to now but using the form "grounded in fiction".

and be genre appropriate.

See, I don't see how that as long as the GM is the resolver of actions that anything can be done in the setting that goes against genre and if the outcomes of all your actions are thus always genre appropriate I'm not sure how focusing on the genre appropriateness of the resulting fiction after an action declaration has been resolved and narrated could ever work as a constraint on action declarations.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I think it's simpler. The terms you used to reference your ideas sucked to illuminate them IMO.

Not much more to discuss, really, is there?

 

[FrogReaver]

your post is a bit jumbled

One thing you wanted me to do is define genre appropriateness. I don't think there are "genre appropriate actions". Instead it's about "genre appropriate outcomes".

I think there's a need to elaborate a bit on genre's that revolve around codes of conduct. I would say at that point the act of declaring an action against your code of conduct is also itself an outcome of breaking your code of conduct and if breaking your code of conduct was genre inappropriate then your action by itself in this case yielded a "genre inappriate outcome". However, even in the case of codes of conduct it's still about the outcome, its just that your action at that point has become an outcome to itself. This is quite unlike other actions.

 

[FrogReaver]

Not much more to discuss, really, is there?

If you take my stance as unchangeable then you really haven't been paying attention to my interactions in this thread. On the other hand, maybe your stance in unchangeable, in which case there really is nothing more to discuss. Let me know.

 

[Campbell]

In my experience running and playing a host of OSR, indie, and mainstream games the amount of fiction that gets established or expanded on that could have potentially impacted play is massive. Unless you are going to write 10 page backstories for player characters, spend months preparing before a single session is played, and keep immaculately detailed and rigorously annotated notes you are going to be establishing so much fiction that you are going to get it wrong sometimes. Even If you do all that you will still likely get it wrong sometimes.

Our minds cannot even really contain one character's entire fictional life - much less a world or multiverse.

This is probably just my OSR and indie bias shining through, but my primary focus will always be on keeping things as compelling as possible. This passage from The Nightmares Underneath, an OSR game about delving into madness inducing nightmare realms, captures my feelings on how to run D&D type games fairly well.

What You Do

The main things you do as the GM are: put the players’ characters in situations that you think are interesting and present them with challenges that you find engaging. It’s definitely not your job to beat them, to win the game, or to make them lose. But it’s also not your job to make sure they win, to entertain them, or to tell them a story. Pay attention to what they find interesting and engaging about the game you are playing, and try to incorporate, or reincorporate, those elements you find inspiring yourself. Playing an entertaining game and creating an enjoyable piece of fiction is every player’s responsibility. As the GM, you’re something of a facilitator—and probably the one who will end up doing the most work—but that doesn’t mean you’re the one in charge. You don’t have to be the boss.

You may be called the “Game Master,” but it’s really just a legacy term, used here because it is so common. If you’re a master of anything it’s a master of ceremonies— you’re a presenter and a facilitator first, not the star of the show. The real stars are the other players and their characters. They won’t have much to do if there’s no dungeons for them to raid, that’s true, but without those characters, that dungeon is just going to sit there, collecting dust.

 

[Lanefan]

Not number of decision-points.

Set of possible solutions to any given decision-point being winnowed by the GM toward 2 or, especially, 1.

As in, the GM will only let one choice succeed and all the rest must fail no matter what?

If yes, I agree - that's railroady...perhaps.

However, there's also nothing wrong with now and then a situation where, while the players for whatever reason have reason to believe there's a choice of options, there really isn't. They just don't know that.

A hypothetical example: consider a party trying to gain access to a building or castle, which unknown to the players has been sealed against access* except via the sewers, which the defenders assumed were already sealed and never checked on. The players, however, think they have options such as trying the main door, trying to fly to the roof and go in that way, trying to climb to what looks like a window but is now bricked up from the inside.

Now if the players/PCs come up with something truly inventive (or destructive!) that bypasses the sewers as an access, let it happen and let the chips fall where they may; but in normal play the sewers will eventually turn out to be the only viable access - never mind a party might luck out and try the sewers first without realizing they've stumbled onto the only way in! (as DM I've had the latter sort of thing happen more than once, in different situations)

* - maybe due to some Necromancer taking years to cast a spell inside without interruption that the PCs have been sent to interrupt, or whatever other in-fiction reason/backstory exists.

The more a game features this paradigm, “the more railroady it will become.”

Perhaps.

It's kind of analagous to a choke-point in dungeon design - in general they're not great but now and then having one makes sense, so in it goes.