This is very different from my own experience. An approach to play in which the details of the situation are established by the GM as part of responsive framing and in an interplay with action declaration and resolution creates a very high degree of immersion and vibrant, evocative fiction. To give a concrete example: the giant steading in my Cortex+ game that I posted about uphtread was more “real” and vibrant in play than the G1 steading that it was inspired by – precisely because the description (including its smell, its wolves, the barn with the giant oxen, etc) were all established as part of the dynamics of play rather than being narrated unilaterally by the GM from a pre-authored description.
Nothing wrong with different preferences.
No offense intended, but I don't recall your post about the giant steading, and I'm not going to dig it up. It sounds though like you had the players invent some of the details for you (akin to how DungeonWorld is meant to be played).
Nothing wrong with that. PbA games are great IMO. I actually was a Kickstarter backer for DW. I can definitely see how having your players add details to your world would help to immerse everyone through shared world building.
My players however, don't enjoy it in all contexts. They're happy to cooperate if the details pertain to their character. Describing their character's best friend or their favorite tavern in the town they grew up in.
They're significantly less keen on sharing the world building when it's something their characters don't have a connection with. That's the sort of thing that they want to discover and explore through their actions and my descriptions. They really enjoy discovery in this particular context.
Putting these posts together, I gather than when you refer to the world and my game world, you mean something like “the stuff that’s written down in the GM’s notes” together with “the stuff that the GM extrapolates in imagination from his/her notes”.
And you seem to be saying that that stuff includes outcomes of action resolution – that is, the GM’s predetermination, or decision on the spot by extrapolation, about what NPCs will or won’t do when sincere action declarations are made with the goal of influencing those NPCs.
That’s very different from how I run my games (be those D&D or other systems).
I don't really see it as outcomes of action resolutions. I see it as a description of characteristics that help determine logical outcomes.
It's akin to how a door might be made of wood, iron, or elemental ice. A wood door will burn, but it won't rust. Iron will rust, but producing a flame hot enough to melt it would not be easy. Elemental ice might neither burn nor rust, so a different means must be found if one wishes to pass through it.
Similarly, a truly honorable guard isn't going to take a bribe regardless of how persuasive you are. However, appeals to his honor will be very effective. Of course, that trait has no bearing on his gullibility (just as an example).
I’m not sure what you mean here by having to deal with.
The way I see it is this: the players encounter the baron. In the ensuing interaction, the players try and influence the baron. The GM decides – based on extrapolation from his/her notes – that as a result of one aspect of that attempt (eg the insult) the baron is now offended and wants to punish the PCs.
What has happened there is that the scene has transitioned from one of negotiation to one of coping with a threat of punishment simply by way of GM decision-making. The players didn’t want the situation to transition that way, but the GM decided anyway without the use of any action resolution framework that would determine whose preference about the fiction should prevail.
That is a very high degree of control exerted by the GM over the unfolding of the ingame situation
Whereas I see it as being similar to jumping off a cliff. Ideally, the character should be aware of the cliff, rather than it being some sort of gotcha while stumbling around in the dark. However, once they do fall, gravity takes over. I see that as a perfectly normal degree of control, and nothing more than perfectly normal event resolution.
If the baron's trait is that he has a fragile ego, then he will become angry if insulted. Obviously, that might not apply to all insults. A clever enough phrasing might allow you to make a insult sound like a compliment to him, in which case he'd be pleased rather than angry.
However, he doesn't suddenly lose his fragile ego just because the players decided to be rude towards him. I see nothing wrong with that.
This goes right back to @FrogReaver’s point that I pick up just below, and my response is very similar (and consistent with what I’ve already been saying in this post): why is the GM including this NPC in the scene, given that the players (for whatever reason) regard it as important to burn down the orphanage?
The GM could include a guard captain with whatever motivations. Or could have the strength of the captain’s feelings be established as an outcome of resolution rather than as an input into resolution. So why include this particular captain? What effect is it meant to have on the play experience?
I think that the bit I've bolded should be NPC. With that correction, I completely agree. Setting up impossible/inflexible NPCs whose reactions are pre-scripted pushes the players towards expedience - what you call survival, accumulation of wealth and a murder-hobo direction. And the NPCs becomes puzzles to be solved within this motivational framework.
The difference between the unswayable NPC and the monster that is immune to fire is captured by FrogReaver. Having to find a way of defeating a monster without using fire is an optimisation problem. But having to make friends with a NPC whose goals you oppose is about compromising your principles. Hence this sort of rigidity in establishing and narrating NPCs pushes the game towards expedient play.
The same thing is present in the idea of making "smarter choices". Smarter here means expedient. What about making passionate choices?
Why do you have to make friends with the baron? You don't, to the best of my knowledge. I'm fairly certain that CoS doesn't have anything in it that requires befriending the baron. I'm not even aware of a requirement to meet him.
The players could have ignored the baron and continued on their adventures. They could have met with him, decided he's insane, and then left and plotted to overthrow him. Instead, a single player decided to provoke the baron while in his seat of power.
Even that could have been saved, IMO. The other characters could have salvaged the situation by apologizing on behalf of the rude character, claiming that he's their village idiot but quite capable with a blade, and then telling him to wait outside until the grownups are done talking. Or they could have stood their ground together and probably killed the baron and his troops.
Instead, one guy tried to hold the baron hostage and two PCs decided they wanted no part of this. We all know the old adage "never split the party" but they did, despite all being physically present in the same space.
I don't see what the DM did as heavy handed. Unless they were trying to react to the scenario and the DM wouldn't let them, but that doesn't sound remotely like what was described, to me.
In many, perhaps most, D&D games, a big part of the game is gathering treasure by using player-side resources to overcome obstacles. That's why talking a dragon out of its horde is not a feasible action declaration.
In a game with a different premise - eg Cortex+ Heroic - suddenly talking a dragon out of its horde becomes quite feasible. In that system there is no resource or resolution difference between fighting and talking - the difference is purely in the fiction - and winning a treasure is just adding another trait to your PC sheet. I haven't had a dragon talked out of its treasure in that system, but I have had a PC talk the dark elves at the bottom of a dungeon out of their treasure. It was pretty amusing at the time - the trickster PC escaping with the treasure while the other PCs were locked in battle with a group of dark elves.
Are walls in dungeons railroading? Often not - they frame the challenge. The players expect them, and have them narrated to them in advance of action declarations. They are part of the framing and provide the expected ground for action resolution. Are secret doors railroading? It depends on the details, but they can be.
Shift the context slightly: can walls and secret doors be railroading in an urban intrigue adventure? Absolutely! Because in that sort of adventure - which doesn't have the exploration-and-map-every-square aspect of a classic dungeon - narrating walls, secret doors etc can essentially become a tool that the GM uses to shape all transitions from scene to scene, block certain approaches to resolution, etc.
I disagree. The reason that dragons don't just give you their treasure isn't because it would be unbalanced. I give XP regardless of how players overcome an encounter. Kill the dragon, get the XP. Overcome the dragon by other means (talking to it) and you get the same XP. Given that, it wouldn't be unreasonable to extrapolate that if you kill the dragon you get its treasure and if you overcome it some other way you still get the treasure. I have no issue with the party tricking the dragon somehow, like luring it away and then making off with the hoard.
No, the reason that a dragon can't simply be convinced to give you its hoard is because dragons are avaricious and love treasure. It's like making a persuasion check to have a loving parent let you take their child away from them. Maybe it might work in some truly extreme circumstances (Zeus comes down from the heavens and demands the dragon's treasure, or the child will die if they remain with the parent).
However, when I say an NPC won't do something I don't mean it's 100% impossible. If you beat down the dragon and give it a choice between death or losing its hoard, it will most likely choose to live another day. A few strange humans walking into it's lair and threatening it is arguably not a good enough reason. Those humans are more likely then not going to die if they fight, as far as the dragon is concerned. It is a dragon after all, and it doesn't know that those humans happen to be player characters.
Re the last sentence: bullies use that particular technique all the time. And there's plenty of them in the world!
On the bigger picture: focusing on
leverage and ono
clever ways to circumvent encourages expedient play.
@FrogReaver already made this point.
What about
passionate play? I remember when I ran Bastion of Broken Souls (mechanically adapted to RM and integrated into an ongoing campaign): I ignored all the stuff in the module that said (in effect) the only way to deal with this NPC is to fight him/her. In one case there was an angel who was a living lock to the gate the PCs wanted to pass through: they could only open the gate by killing the angel. The PCs didn't want to
fight the angel. One of the PCs, through an impassioned oration (as reflected in strong checks using the RM social resolution framework, which is not that sophisticated), persuaded the angel that the only way for her to fulfill her duty was to allow the PC to kill her. Which he then did. It was both more dramatic and more tragic than a PC-vs-angel fight. The fact that the module writer forbade it in his text just tells me that either (i) he doesn't have a very good eye for drama or (ii) he thinks that the game will break down if it drifts away from expedient play, in which NPCs are just obstacles and/or puzzles.
But expedient play will never really resemble the source fiction, because very little of the source fiction is about expedient characters. Certainly not LotR. And not REH Conan (despite the occasional assertion one sees to the contrary.)
Yeah, a trait like "will not let the PCs pass without a fight" is generally a bad trait unless the creature is mind controlled (or something) and literally has to do it.
Why won't it let them pass without a fight? Does it seemk death in glorious combat? Is it simply because it promised to do so to someone who abandoned it eons ago? Is it protecting someone or something?
Each of those possibilities will lead to different potential outcomes. For example, in the abandonment example, if the PCs convince it that it was abandoned, it could let them pass after realizing its duty is pointless. If it is protecting something, it will probably not less them pass unless they can convince it that they can protect it better. In the case of seeking glorious death, it could be quite difficult to circumvent the guardian without fighting it.
Just because something can be done badly doesn't make it bad.
