D&D 5E Resting and the frikkin' Elephant in the Room

[Caliban]

And here is why it seems impossible to help you and many of you others on these forums understand why large segments of people have always and continue to play D and D in a fundamentally different way than you:

1) You steadfastly refuse such a fundamentally obvious point as people preferring to play games without referees:

I don't think this is nearly as "fundamental" or "obvious" as you seem to think it is. It certainly doesn't match my experiences.

Not trying to bash your gaming style, which seems be an attempt to do turn D&D in a "real life" CRPG where the players are limited to options planned out ahead of time by the DM, but which has much more detailed and rich combats because of all the pre-planning.

 

[Tony Vargas]

But - but - but - but ...

where's the Elephant?

Still Resting comfortably in the Room with us, while we pointedly Ignore it.

I think you're putting a lot of emphasis on trying to avoid something that's a pretty integral part of the game design (DM input), and that's the sort of thing that for many people pushes you outside of the realm of what they consider D&D (or an RPG).

That's certainly not how I read shoak1's points. It looks to me like the emphasis is on structuring DM input in a consistent way: it comes at the beginning of the play process, mostly all done by the time everyone sits down and starts gaming. It's a perfectly legitimate style and hardly unknown - its just no more the super-majority style he thinks it is than the way you play or I play is (though the way I DM, I'm quite confident, even if it is not the way most 5e DMs run, /should/ be, because it just works better for 5e than anything else! so there). Shoak1's approach strongly supports a sense of fairness, process-sim verisimilitude, the 'CaW' style, and probably works for some players' "immersion" (that being such a subjective factor it can be used in support of or against anything, but what the hell, might as well dip that poisoned well myself at this point).

That doesn't make it wrong, just not what folks are used to.

Not what you and the few people arguing with him are used to, anyway.

You're going to find further trouble from many gamers, because a lot of the players that are so focused on the rules, rather than the game, are rules lawyers. Much like a rules lawyer, you're attempting to reduce the fun of the DM, and potentially other players.

While rules lawyers often reduce the fun for all involved, it's not necessarily their intent or motivation. It depends on how they channel their proclivities. The rules lawyer who dominates play with an overpowered/over-versatile/over-involved PC is certainly out to secure his own enjoyment at the cost of others' in a zero-sum model of fun. But one that's arguing the case of his fellow players, as well, may intend to contribute to the success of the group, particularly if he views the game as a challenge to the players, rather than a challenge to or story about the characters. There are even rules-lawyers who bring their expertise to bear on behalf of the system, itself, striving for fairness and consistency - ethical, even noble, but taken too far, can stifle fun on both sides of the screen.

It's not that people think improvisation is acceptable-and-desirable, it's generally something that's required of a DM. It's part of what defines the game, and also differentiates it from things like computer games, video games, card games, board games, you name it.

Most other RPGs, too. 5e "the game"
in question, (and TSR-era D&D in general) doesn't just welcome DM improvisation 'in the fiction,' it /requires/ DM "improv" - in the form of exercising judgement on the fly to make rulings - to function.
Though, really, a DM can bank a lot of such improv as prep - fixed DCs for every task the players might think of in the coming scenario, for instance.

That's kind of the point of the game, is that it's much more than a board game.

All RPGs are. And not because the DM improvises in the moment, nor because the rules require frequent manual adjustment by the DM to keep purring along. RPGs are theoretically, 'infinite games,' that is, the reward for success in play is to continue playing. Practically, time constraints prevent them being literally infinite, and D&D has often had a top level you don't go past, and play often becomes untennable before then, anyway - the published 5e D&D adventures, for instance, top out around 15th.

Shoak1 is not turning D&D into a board game, he's just playing it in a style that front-loads the DM's contribution and emphasizes tactical challenge as the measure of success that allows continued play in what is still an RPG and notional an 'infinite game,' and, yes, in that he is probably somewhat hampered by the unstructured nature of 5e's resolution system - one of many ways in which 5e still has room to strive towards its 'big tent' goal.

Your play style sounds quite consistent with board games.

Nonsense. It is quite consistent with playing a game, and RPGs are games.

Edit: I just wanted to reiterate that I don't think the way you are playing it is "wrong."

Then don't imply he's playing a boardgame rather than an RPG, because that is flat-out telling him he's doing it wrong.

Does Monopoly have a referee? Does Battlestar Galactica? Does Life?

Heh, I I suppose a lot of folks believe life does have a Referee - and they really don't want to go to the penalty box after the game.

It is MUCH MUCH more common for people to play games without referees !!! Why?

Because most games are simpler than RPGs and/or have less riding on them than formal competitions and/or are finite games that don't need new material constantly generated for play.

Even then, even the simplest most casual games (like Monopoly) can have house rules and players can resolve issues that come up in play, acting as a referee by consensus.

Because most gamers don't like having someone decide things for them - they like to play in a predetermined world and BEAT IT. So it confounds me that you cant see why some people would want to minimize the referee's role in D and D, interjecting themselves in between player cause and effect. I GET that you like the DM to do so - I REALLY REALLY do.....But I'm really baffled that you don't see how it runs counter to the way most of us gamers think.

(snip tremendous amounts of prep)...
Finally I built all the sets in 3D, picked out the figures and got everything ready.

OK, now I want to play in your game. Y'know, to gather data, not because it sounds awesome or anything...

I'm sure you mean well, but to be fair, it seems here like you are roping D and D off from board games, slapping the RPG-only label on it, ignoring the other aspects of D and D and its history of intermixing with other genres.

Yes, D&D started as a follow-on to a slightly innovative wargame called Chainmail, crossed with a now-all-but-forgotten boardgame called Wilderness Survival (whence we get the classic 'hexcrawl'). It's now recognized as the first RPG. It didn't change from a wargame to an RPG, though, it's still a small-scale wargame, just a small-scale wargame in which you RP your 1:1 figure.

Drawing a line between the Game (with or without 'board' in front of it) and the RP of RPG does the hobby a disservice.

Which highlights one of several very fundamental differences between what's defined as a boardgame and what's defined as an RPG. RPGs, almost without exception, have within their structure some sort of referee or GM or DM

That it's even theoretically possible to have an RPG without a GM points to it not being such a fundamental difference, afterall. Games that are in no way RPGs have referees, too.

It's a common trait of an RPG to have a GM, but not because it's a defining trait, but because RPGs tend to be wildly complex compared to boardgames, and because, even with that complexity, it's hard to design a robust enough system that covers the full scope implied by most RPGs - so most of them /need/ a GM just to keep them from crashing & burning.

However, you've here highlighted a second major difference between (almost all) boardgames and RPGs: in a boardgame you're playing as an individual, and playing to win against the other players. In an RPG you're most often playing as part of a group and not trying to win against the other players. You could be said to collectively be trying to win against the game world

And, there /are/ cooperative boardgames in which you play as a group, 'against the game.' And, for that matter, RPGs (at least, their systems) can be played competitively - old-school 'skilled play' had a definite competitive as well as cooperative aspect, old-school 'tournaments' were competitive by design, 3.x/PF can be played as a system-mastery competition (derided as 'winning at chargen'), and modern PvP is competitive.

A boardgame (almost always) has a clearly defined win condition - you reach home first, you destroy all the other armies, you checkmate the king - and the game ends when a player (or a predefined number of players) reaches this point. An RPG never has such a thing: there is no predetermined win condition, and no defined end point - you can't "win" D&D.

Ding! Yep, a notionally 'infinite' game. That's a big difference.

The other, of course, is role assumption - playing the role as well as the game, I mean, it's in the name, 'roleplaying game.'
No role? not roleplaying.
No game? not roleplaying.

The biggest misconception in the broader RPG community is not just that you can have one without the other, but that you somehow can't combine them, when that's the very essence of what an RPG is: both RPing & Gaming.
That's the false dichotomy of the Roll vs Role debate, that's the false, er, trichotomy (that really sounds some sort of surgery) of GNS, that's every forumite expressing disbelief that someone else plays differently than them and insisting that they are representative of 'most' gamers, and roping off 'RPG' around their little style.

 

[Ristamar]

Shoak1 is not turning D&D into a board game, he's just playing it in a style that front-loads the DM's contribution and emphasizes tactical challenge as the measure of success that allows continued play in what is still an RPG and notional an 'infinite game,' and, yes, in that he is probably somewhat hampered by the unstructured nature of 5e's resolution system - one of many ways in which 5e still has room to strive towards its 'big tent' goal.

The 'infinite game' element is increasingly irrelevant in discussions regarding distinctions between board games, CPRGs/MMOs, and traditional tabletop RPGs. Aside from official expansions, plenty of board games with referees allow people to craft custom scenarios for extended play beyond the packaged content. Computer games often have expansions and community/mod support, and successful MMOs are driven by ever expanding content.

 

[shoak1]

So now let's compare our styles:

What I did to prepare my game was to read through the book, and then I pre-selected the results of the fortune reading. I picked the areas I thought would be the most interesting and placed the quest items in those places. I think leaving it up to chance can be fun, but I preferred to decide ahead of time. This also allowed me to tailor things to the ongoing story from our campaign. There were a couple of areas that I decided not to focus on all that much (mostly the haunted keep of Arghynvostholdt, just didn't appeal all that much to me).

All the same so far.

I didn't worry about wandering monsters and the like...I tend to decide those kinds of things during the game.

So here our paths deviate. In my way of thinking the DM deciding something this important on the spot, after seeing the health of the party, what they have done so far, etc, taints the purity of the players' cause-effect dynamic. In effect I see it as Big DM shaping things rather than the player's actions doing so.

I did decide that no long rests would be possible in the wilds of Barovia; anytime the players camped, thw wolves and other creatures would harry them all night to the point that they could not benefit from a rest.

We both seem to make sure to have placed rest restrictions - I used a ticking clock instead which I felt let them manage their own resource though. My method also served to limit their ability to rest-fight-rest which throws off the delicate balance I create (since Big Challenge is our focus not Big Story).

So when we started play, things began as expected with the encounter in Barovia with Donovich and his vampire son locked in the cellar, and in meeting Ireena and her brother. I also had the PCs encounter one of the hags from the Old Bonegrinder selling dream cakes, setting that up for them. They were specifically seeking a witch due to the campaign story, and so they were very suspicious of that. So Barovia led them to a choice between seeking refuge at Vallaki or to go further to Kresk, far to the west.

Did you decide ahead of time to put the hag there or was it on-the-fly? And if you didn't pre-decide to put her there was there a reason?

So the PCs went to Vallaki first. I find Vallaki to be a dynamic environment, so we wound up spending a lot of time there. The PCs were looking for Rictavio and other clues based on the card reading. They ran afoul of Izek Strazni and the Baron's other men. I set up the whole Bones of St. Andral subplot. I made it so that the bones actually protected the whole town from vampire infestation, but only the priest knew that. The bones being stolen, and the vampires in the coffin shop was something the PCs wound up having to deal with.

Again, did you decide ahead of time to put bones sub-plot there or was it on-the-fly? And if you didn't pre-decide to put it there was there a reason?

I assume while in town your group played it traditionally in the sense of, "I walk up to the innkeeper and say hi." This as opposed to my method (admittedly unusual) to abstract the town interaction into a series of skill challenges and encounters.

Vallaki is a prime example of the kind of environment where the players can go a lot of different directions. Lady Wachter and her sons, loyal to Strahd, wanted to overthrow the Baron and take over in Strahd's name. So the PCs were kind of caught in the middle of this struggle, and had to decide how to handle that, while still trying to find Rictavio and follow up on other leads. I did not dictate how they went about this, or which side they would choose in the power struggle...that was all up to them. They wound up eventually killing Izek, which weakened the Baron enough that the Wachters easily overthrew him. The players could just as easily have decided to simply get the hell out of town and not get involved, or they could have decided that the Wachters needed to be taken out...any number of options.

The two house scenes were rather easy to detail and construct so I gave them the option of either fighting with the Watcher or the Baron or both, but pre-manufactured a reason (I forget what) why they really should take one of the three options - so while they did have the option to just leave, it would have cost them something.

So when I say "improv" or "making things up on the fly" I usually don't mean making things up whole cloth right in the moment. Instead, I mean taking an existing environment, and deciding how the PCs' actions cause things to change, and how the inhabitants of that environment react, and how that causes more change. Using my judgement to decide how things play out.

In my method, I spend an extra 15 mins prep time working out contingencies - the probability of the town guard intervening when they hear the alarm sounding at the Baron's residence, and the strength of the intervening force, etc. While this doesn't preclude my need to decide things on the fly, it greatly reduces the frequency of Big DM intervention between player cause and effect. Call me DM Light

I like this back and forth comparison of prep and play using a specific example. Maybe we can take it further. What would you say the percentage of playing time is that you spend in combat, as opposed to dialog, physical challenges, exploration, and roleplaying? How important is combat (%wise) to the overall results of a campaign, as opposed to strategic choices, skill use, exploration, and roleplaying? How careful are you in structuring and balancing encounters and rest to PC level?

Let's both answer these questions and give examples from our Strahd campaign. I'll do mine in a bit after breakfast

 

[shoak1]

Don't think of it as being the point of the game. RPGs have referees pretty much because they need to have them. Unlike board games that define everything a unit in the game can do (in this, they're much like computer RPGs because programming is necessary to enable the player's avatar to do anything), RPGs can't really encode all of the possibilities that may spring from a player's brain. Some form of adjudication will inevitably be necessary that will require someone to play the role of arbiter/referee/judge and some form of improvisation will be necessary. Trying to do away with that in an RPG, particularly when there may be interpersonal interactions involved, would only make the rule set too cumbersome to use. This is why computer RPGs have pick lists of statements to select when interacting with the NPCs. They can't account for everything a player might try to say so they limit the choices available to the player to a manageable set of relevant statements.

I agree totally, and would add only that while we agree a referee is neccessary, we disagree on the amount of intervention he must do between player cause and effect - Big DM vs. DM Light if you will.

 

[shoak1]

That's certainly not how I read shoak1's points. It looks to me like the emphasis is on structuring DM input in a consistent way: it comes at the beginning of the play process, mostly all done by the time everyone sits down and starts gaming.

Exactly.

It's a perfectly legitimate style and hardly unknown - its just no more the super-majority style he thinks it is than the way you play or I play is (though the way I DM, I'm quite confident, even if it is not the way most 5e DMs run, /should/ be, because it just works better for 5e than anything else! so there).

Actually I would guess that currently Big DM style has a 70% share and DM Light a 30% share of 5e's player base. But among the old timers playing 5e its probably more 90-10.

Shoak1's approach strongly supports a sense of fairness, process-sim verisimilitude, the 'CaW' style, and probably works for some players' "immersion" (that being such a subjective factor it can be used in support of or against anything, but what the hell, might as well dip that poisoned well myself at this point).

That's what we strive for.

5e "the game" in question, (and TSR-era D&D in general) doesn't just welcome DM improvisation 'in the fiction,' it /requires/ DM "improv" - in the form of exercising judgement on the fly to make rulings - to function. Though, really, a DM can bank a lot of such improv as prep - fixed DCs for every task the players might think of in the coming scenario, for instance.

Well said. I like your term "banking" the improv.

Shoak1 is not turning D&D into a board game, he's just playing it in a style that front-loads the DM's contribution and emphasizes tactical challenge as the measure of success that allows continued play in what is still an RPG and notional an 'infinite game,' and, yes, in that he is probably somewhat hampered by the unstructured nature of 5e's resolution system - one of many ways in which 5e still has room to strive towards its 'big tent' goal.

Again you better articulate what I have been failing to adequately communicate.

OK, now I want to play in your game. Y'know, to gather data, not because it sounds awesome or anything...

lol

Yes, D&D started as a follow-on to a slightly innovative wargame called Chainmail, crossed with a now-all-but-forgotten boardgame called Wilderness Survival (whence we get the classic 'hexcrawl'). It's now recognized as the first RPG. It didn't change from a wargame to an RPG, though, it's still a small-scale wargame, just a small-scale wargame in which you RP your 1:1 figure.

Precisely.

It's a common trait of an RPG to have a GM, but not because it's a defining trait, but because RPGs tend to be wildly complex compared to boardgames, and because, even with that complexity, it's hard to design a robust enough system that covers the full scope implied by most RPGs - so most of them /need/ a GM just to keep them from crashing & burning.

Exactly - and the DM doesn't have to be Big DM he can be DM Light.

And, there /are/ cooperative boardgames in which you play as a group, 'against the game.' And, for that matter, RPGs (at least, their systems) can be played competitively - old-school 'skilled play' had a definite competitive as well as cooperative aspect, old-school 'tournaments' were competitive by design, 3.x/PF can be played as a system-mastery competition (derided as 'winning at chargen'), and modern PvP is competitive.

Ding ding ding

The biggest misconception in the broader RPG community is not just that you can have one without the other, but that you somehow can't combine them, when that's the very essence of what an RPG is: both RPing & Gaming.

Yes ! (Steve bows to Tony)

 

[Tony Vargas]

The 'infinite game' element is increasingly irrelevant in discussions regarding distinctions between board games, CPRGs/MMOs, and traditional tabletop RPGs. Aside from official expansions, plenty of board games with referees allow people to craft custom scenarios for extended play beyond the packaged content. Computer games often have expansions and community/mod support, and successful MMOs are driven by ever expanding content.

I'd noticed the 'cooperative' rubric had been encroached upon dramatically by boardgames. The 'infinite' theory is, well, theoretical, no game goes on forever, and few D&D games even reach the top levels available in their respective rulesets. Obviously, the 'referee' as key distinction is untenable, as any striped shirt on a ball-field demonstrates.

That really leaves RPGs as simply nothing more or less than the combination integration (not mere juxtaposition) of Gaming & Roleplaying. Omit either the Roll or the Role and they cease to be RPGs, they're just cooperative games or cooperative storytelling exercises. Circle your wagons around a GNS "-ism" and you're not playing an RPG anymore, it's just a Game, or just a simulation, or just free-from RP.

 

[shoak1]

Yes, D&D started as a follow-on to a slightly innovative wargame called Chainmail, crossed with a now-all-but-forgotten boardgame called Wilderness Survival (whence we get the classic 'hexcrawl'). It's now recognized as the first RPG. It didn't change from a wargame to an RPG, though, it's still a small-scale wargame, just a small-scale wargame in which you RP your 1:1 figure.

This jives with the history of D and D that I lived through. Lets go to the quote that I began with here:

Lewis Pulsipher was a prominent contributor to White Dwarf in its early days. The following quotes are from his article in an early number of White Dwarf (my copy is in Best of White Dwarf vol 1, 1980):

D&D players can be divided into two groups, those who want to play the game as a game and those who want to play it as a fantasy novel . . . The escapists can be divided into those who prefer to be told a story by the referee, in effect, with themselves as protagonists, and those who like a silly, totally unbelievable game. . . In California, for example, this leads to referees who make up more than half of what happens, what is encountered and so on, as the game progresses rather than doing it beforehand. . . . [T]he player is a passive receptor, with little control over what happens. . .
Gary Gygax has made it clear that D&D is a wargame, though the majority of players do not use it as such. . .
The referee [in a skill campaign] must think of himself as a friendly computer with discretion. Referee interference in the game must be reduced as much as possible . . . Effectively, this means that the referee should not make up anything important after an adventure has begun. He should only operate monsters encountered according to logic and, where necessary, dice rolls. . . . Occasionally an adventure will be dull, because players take the wrong turns or check the wrong rooms, while others may be 'milk runs' because the players are lucky. Referees must resist the temptation to manipulate the players by changing the situation. Every time the referee manipulates the game on the basis of his omniscience, he reduces the element of skill. . .
The referee who, for example, schemes to take a magic item away from a player is incompetent. If the player doesn't deserve the item he shouldn't have obtained it in the first place. Don't lie to the players when speaking as referee. If players can't believe what the referee tells them they are case adrift without hope. . . .​

​

Now while Pulsipher’s rant was filled with rancor and definitely derogatory to Big DM it does show the split between D and D players very well.

I first began playing D and D circa 1976 at the age of 9. I was fascinated by the three little brown books (which I still have) and was giddy when the Blackmoor, Eldricht Wizardry, and Greyhawk supplements came out. My first experience playing with people came soon thereafter when the older kid next door invited me to play with him and his friends. But to my dismay, the DM just started making everything up on the fly. My decisions seemed small and inconsequential next to Big DM. What did it matter what I did if the DM could just add monsters as he saw fit? If he decided what was behind the door I opened when I opened it?

Fortunately, within short order modules started coming out. Wow! Fixed scenarios rather than a DM just making stuff up!!! Then Basic D and D came out with B1 and I started learning how to make up my own dungeons. Soon at school I found new people to play with – and they played the way I envisioned it – with fixed stuff in the world and a DM Light running things. I was hooked. I even started playing solitaire lol...

Still, D and D was such an infinite world and it didn’t have enough structure – what happened in G1 if the giants became aware of your presence? How could you survive? Did the DM have to fudge things to give you a chance?

Then 3.5 came out and I was in heaven. Encounter to Encounter, and minis – thank you God!!! Now Castle Greyhawk was actually playable !!!! DM Light was ecstatic !!!

But this seemed to take a bit of the roleplaying out of it, which dismayed me. But 4.0 changed everything. While I hated the total redesign thing, now there were a wealth of modules, including player made, that included DCs, skill challenges (OMG a way to abstract and actually play with skills in a concrete way?!?!), and again an encounter to encounter format. This was perfect (except for the complete deviation from the original D and D traditional rule set).

Then 5e came along and returned to the core rules (which was refreshing) and fixed many of the old game imbalances (like caster dominance). But unfortunately for me, along with it came an emphasis on Big DM and Big Story. Then I go into the forums and find them overwhelmed with those who seem to think Big Story and Big DM are integral to and inseparable from the game…

Which brings me to this post:

The biggest misconception in the broader RPG community is not just that you can have one without the other, but that you somehow can't combine them, when that's the very essence of what an RPG is: both RPing & Gaming.

Yes. Why must it be one or the other? Why can’t those of us that prefer Big Challenge and DM Light more than Big DM and Big Story get some of what we want ? Why must Big Dmites always fight us every time we bring up balance issues when they find it so easy to just have Big DM change things for their table? Why can’t those of us DM Lights have a more rigid and balanced ruleset that the Big Dmites can then tweak to suit their taste?

 

[billd91]

I agree totally, and would add only that while we agree a referee is neccessary, we disagree on the amount of intervention he must do between player cause and effect - Big DM vs. DM Light if you will.

The amount of intervention or improvisation a DM must do is going to depend a lot on how much the players stay within defined parameters of behavior. Playing well within the box = less improv and intervention. Playing a bit more off the wall = more improv and intervention. In my experience, keeping players well within the box falls somewhere between teaching pre-schoolers to play Advanced Squad Leader (getting them to make engine noises while moving their tanks is the easy part) and herding cats. It's possible, but very difficult.

 

[shoak1]

The amount of intervention or improvisation a DM must do is going to depend a lot on how much the players stay within defined parameters of behavior. Playing well within the box = less improv and intervention. Playing a bit more off the wall = more improv and intervention. In my experience, keeping players well within the box falls somewhere between teaching pre-schoolers to play Advanced Squad Leader (getting them to make engine noises while moving their tanks is the easy part) and herding cats. It's possible, but very difficult.

Its not difficult if that's the way the game is played - just like if I play Monopoly with friends its not difficult keeping them on the board. I would argue that being able to roam freely off the board is a feature of your playstyle, rather than an inherent and neccessary feature of D and D.