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Respect Mah Authoritah: Thoughts on DM and Player Authority in 5e
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8439051" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>Isn't the question <em>what counts as doing it well?</em></p><p></p><p>Everything else being equal, a typical way of doing a film or TV show or advertisement well is to have everyone made up and dressed neatly, even beautifully. America takes this further than Britain, but even in British television shows the teeth are normally clean, the hair brushed, the clothes ironed, etc.</p><p></p><p>Part of the presentation of the car in a car advertisement is that it is clean and shining.</p><p></p><p>Now - suppose I return home after an extended absence, and my family greets me: is that greeting <em>even better </em>if they have brushed hair and neat clothes? Or is that an irrelevance? If they surprise me by driving to the station to pick me up, and the first I know about it is when I step onto the street and see them standing by the car - is that moment <em>even better</em> if the car has been freshly washed?</p><p></p><p>Maybe these are matters on which opinions differ, but I don't think the questions are merely rhetorical, with an obvious answer of <em>yes</em>. For my part, I think the answer is <em>no</em>. We are in different domains of value.</p><p></p><p>In the context of RPGing, what are we trying to evoke with our "evocative descriptions"? When I play a RPG, I want to be <em>engaged in the fiction and inhabiting my character</em>. What will evoke that is not vivid descriptions of things external to me, but the framing of situations that speak to what is internal. Of course the descriptions have to be <em>adequate</em> - tell me who is there, what they're doing, etc - but I'm not looking to be swept away by someone else's storytelling.</p><p></p><p></p><p>This prompted a few thoughts on my part:</p><p></p><p>(1) I'm not talking about playing D&D. I'm talking about playing Burning Wheel. So why are you trying to present your D&D-style "storytelling" approach as if it's universal to RPGing as such?</p><p></p><p>(2) The reason I'm talking about Burning Wheel is because the discussion with other posters has raised questions about how authority can be allocated, what is it like to play RPGs without centring GM-authored backstory, etc. It's a forum conversation, not a blog.</p><p></p><p>(3) Your conception of D&D is in my view overly narrow. Upthread I posted this:</p><p></p><p>Now I don't have [USER=16814]@Ovinomancer[/USER]'s familiarity and experience with 5e D&D. But I know that AD&D can be used to play a game that is situation first rather than backstory first, because I've done so - and done so over 30 years ago, before Prince Valiant was published and about two decades before Burning Wheel was published. And I don't think 5e is much weaker than AD&D for this purpose.</p><p></p><p>So while noting Ovinomancer's very cogently-expressed doubts about the last sentence of my earlier post, I stand by what I posted. And the individual reader can form their own view as to whether I am being too generous in my conception of how 5e might be used, or whether Ovinomancer is setting too high a standard of adequacy for a system to support situation-first RPGing.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8439051, member: 42582"] Isn't the question [I]what counts as doing it well?[/I] Everything else being equal, a typical way of doing a film or TV show or advertisement well is to have everyone made up and dressed neatly, even beautifully. America takes this further than Britain, but even in British television shows the teeth are normally clean, the hair brushed, the clothes ironed, etc. Part of the presentation of the car in a car advertisement is that it is clean and shining. Now - suppose I return home after an extended absence, and my family greets me: is that greeting [I]even better [/I]if they have brushed hair and neat clothes? Or is that an irrelevance? If they surprise me by driving to the station to pick me up, and the first I know about it is when I step onto the street and see them standing by the car - is that moment [I]even better[/I] if the car has been freshly washed? Maybe these are matters on which opinions differ, but I don't think the questions are merely rhetorical, with an obvious answer of [I]yes[/I]. For my part, I think the answer is [I]no[/I]. We are in different domains of value. In the context of RPGing, what are we trying to evoke with our "evocative descriptions"? When I play a RPG, I want to be [I]engaged in the fiction and inhabiting my character[/I]. What will evoke that is not vivid descriptions of things external to me, but the framing of situations that speak to what is internal. Of course the descriptions have to be [I]adequate[/I] - tell me who is there, what they're doing, etc - but I'm not looking to be swept away by someone else's storytelling. This prompted a few thoughts on my part: (1) I'm not talking about playing D&D. I'm talking about playing Burning Wheel. So why are you trying to present your D&D-style "storytelling" approach as if it's universal to RPGing as such? (2) The reason I'm talking about Burning Wheel is because the discussion with other posters has raised questions about how authority can be allocated, what is it like to play RPGs without centring GM-authored backstory, etc. It's a forum conversation, not a blog. (3) Your conception of D&D is in my view overly narrow. Upthread I posted this: Now I don't have [USER=16814]@Ovinomancer[/USER]'s familiarity and experience with 5e D&D. But I know that AD&D can be used to play a game that is situation first rather than backstory first, because I've done so - and done so over 30 years ago, before Prince Valiant was published and about two decades before Burning Wheel was published. And I don't think 5e is much weaker than AD&D for this purpose. So while noting Ovinomancer's very cogently-expressed doubts about the last sentence of my earlier post, I stand by what I posted. And the individual reader can form their own view as to whether I am being too generous in my conception of how 5e might be used, or whether Ovinomancer is setting too high a standard of adequacy for a system to support situation-first RPGing. [/QUOTE]
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