D&D 5E Roleplaying in D&D 5E: It’s How You Play the Game

[Krachek]

What you're proposing here is largely incoherence, though. By that I mean that players have no basis to understand which mode of play will be deployed at which moment. This can be fine if no one cares, but I don't find it particularly useful in discussion of how RPGs can play because it fundamentally discards any principled approach to play and stands in the field of "system doesn't matter." If system doesn't matter, then there's no statement that can be made that any given RPG system or subsystem achieves any real usefulness. That's definitely a position that can be taken and defended, but seems inapt for a discussion of how you can approach the play of the game because it discards that as a concept in it's premise.

Players usually know in which kind of play style they are involving into.
The system of DnD, include the concept of random encounters, that are usually creatures, but can take other form such as object, clue, tracks. Those random can be neutral, harmful or helpful for the PC. The encounter can take the form of an exit way.

The system of DnD, allow the DM to roll or decide for random encounter, and to some extent to roll or decide for the nature of the encounter.

So the system is allowing the DM to roll or decide for an exit way for a party in need. Be a secret door, a pit, a ventilation shaft, a window, a breach in a wall.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Players usually know in which kind of play style they are involving into.
The system of DnD, include the concept of random encounters, that are usually creatures, but can take other form such as object, clue, tracks. Those random can be neutral, harmful or helpful for the PC. The encounter can take the form of an exit way.

The system of DnD, allow the DM to roll or decide for random encounter, and to some extent to roll or decide for the nature of the encounter.

So the system is allowing the DM to roll or decide for an exit way for a party in need. Be a secret door, a pit, a ventilation shaft, a window, a breach in a wall.

You seem to be describing the exact thing I'm talking about as if it rebuts it. If the GM is free to decide whatever they want at whatever moment, then as a player I'm unmoored in being able to predict what result a given action will have. I don't know if the GM is going to be sticking to a process or just going with the flow or some other thing and so play becomes not one where the player is trying to engage with the fiction and the system and forge forwards but rather one where the player is engaged with the GM and trying to slant to get the GM to decide in a way favorable to the player. That this argument is also one that goes straight to "system doesn't matter" should be apparent, and thus dismisses any argument that this is a D&D based argument -- it works as well in any other system.

That said, there's no reason to avoid this if it's what the table enjoys. It's not wrong. I just don't understand it's usefulness in a discussion of how different approaches to the game can work and what differentiates them. This argument starts by dismissing that as a useful consideration and just goes with the approach "let the GM tell you what's happening." It's usually paired with some exhortation to "trust the GM," but I find that to be a trivial statement -- I'm not really going to be long playing in any kind of game where I don't trust the participants.

 

[clearstream]

This feels like a false dichotomy, to me, in that these categories don't really apply in any consistent way to the play of RPGs. I could not separate out a given moment of play into either, or rather, I could make arguments in either direction for a given moment of play.

In Baker's model there is fiction, players, and game. (Game includes map.) @AbdulAlhazred and @pemerton might be thinking of fiction as Baker does. The dichotomy you call false is in that model, or can you clarify what you mean?

They seem to have suggested that in SYOR ludic state doesn't produce stakes: only dramatic state drives them. (Apologies if I have that wrong!) I'm saying that ludic and dramatic states get to play ball! They don't have to be separated. Perhaps you are saying that in an RPG they actually can't be? That would be in agreement with what I am saying, although I might hedge on shouldn't be.

The genius of the model is it's beguiling focus on player-characters. Think of the Baker-Care Principle. It's had amazing results that speak for themselves.

To follow along with @Lanefan's arguments about the secret door in his response to me, his arguments don't track. Of course someone knew about the door, but it doesn't follow that anyone alive or nearby knew about it. Ancient secret doors or forgotten ones are common tropes in the genre, and there's nothing special here that requires that this door be one that current participants are aware of. That argument just fails out of the gate due to a forced narrow focus. As for not noticing it earlier -- this is routine in even classical/trad play. You didn't notice it going past the first time, but when you search for it, you can find it. No, @Lanefan's argument is the same old one -- it's about prep's value as a game truth even when not yet revealed to the players.

One might see it like Chess, in which foregoing moves will matter to subsequent moves, and the players between them decided what the foregoing moves were as they came to them (taking a naive, pre-AI, view.) If each fact becomes thus established - adding to the game-state - then positioning matters to the return journey, right? The awful cliffs once established as awful are an ongoing barrier, which can then be addressed procedurally.

It's essentially arguing that SYORTD doesn't work because you don't want to play SYORTD but instead a different way.

In my case, that's not it. I don't think it is for others either. What I care about is a persisted and living world. In my experience, there is a certain amount of bootstrapping required to make that work. A critical mass of pieces in play. Relationships emerge. DW acknowledges the value of DM solo preparation to organise their thoughts. In DW that is clearly envisioned as secret: things players shouldn't know yet.

That's a valid decision, but how the different way works doesn't impinge at all on SYORTD's approach. It's like saying that apples cannot exist because fruit is orange, and that's because the only fruit is oranges. I mean, valid within it's circular premise, but not actually a valid argument against the existence of apples.

The fruit bowl contains both. I believe some are just expressing what they like about the orangey flavour of oranges. I am questioning whether some oranges aren't found even in our crate that we wrote "Apples" on the side of.

And that wraps back around to your dichotomy here -- it's not a matter of causal versus acausal, but a matter of when cause is established. All RPGs are both ludic and dramatic, in differing amounts, but one cannot escape the other because all RPGs are dealing in fiction, not actual causal systems.

So I say they cannot escape one another because game as game (state and system) will be causal. And you say they cannot escape one another because both are fictional. Either view makes a case for preferring to say dramatic and ludic, rather than narrative and fictional.

We trick ourselves into thinking they are causal because we imagine a series of steps, but often forget that most of this rationalization of causal chains starts as often by imagining the effect and working back to a cause. I mean, if I sit down to prep a session for a game of D&D, and decide to do a dungeon, I usually don't start way back in the causal chain and work forward to find out where the dungeon is, how it's laid out, what history it has, and what it's current state is!

Combat. So long as we use the grid and follow the rules, the next position of a participant is constrained by their current. The present HP of their foe is decrement by their damage die which they rolled only because they hit.

To be fair what you say has truth in it. Prep for an RPG tends to be sketchy rather than rigorously systematic. Still, there can be worthwhile forethought that is systematic to a useful extent. A trap marked on the map is just another way of expressing stakes.

No, I establish a dungeon is here and some facts about this dungeon (it has goblins!), and then blend it into what has already been established, often working backwards and forwards along the causal paths during iteration in design. The end result of this normal prep is a site that is both dramatic and ludic.

Likewise. What is made extant is benefiting from that working backwards and forwards.

Same with SYORTD. If something is already established, that doesn't change -- it's established, and can be used to ludically walk forward in play. If not, we can establish it through play, and that will also establish some causal pathway. It's not at all true that SYORTD is unconcerned with causation -- this can be a key impactor of play! It is true that the manner of determining causation is much closer to the establishment of fiction, and not at all tied to the GM's off-table play during prep.

In what sense is fiction used here?

The GM establishing details prior to play, and the manner those are established, are not really any different in these terms than how things are established in SYORTD play -- there's no real causal chain, only rationalized ones, and often order of rationalization is inverted. If anything, SYORTD is slightly more honest about this facet of how fiction is created than the mythology that has built up around prep and worldbuilding.

Given that established facts are respected the same way, one can ask

• Are dramatic and ludic states separable? And ought they to be, even if so?
• Is more gained from forethought than player participation in establishing game state?
• Is hidden knowledge valuable enough to prefer sometimes say "no"?
• Same question, regarding ludic constraints or limits?

I don't find either more honest, although where they are each more honest certainly differs.

 

[Ovinomancer]

In Baker's model there is fiction, players, and game. (Game includes map.) @AbdulAlhazred and @pemerton might be thinking of fiction as Baker does. The dichotomy you call false is in that model, or can you clarify what you mean?

They seem to have suggested that in SYOR ludic state doesn't produce stakes: only dramatic state drives them. (Apologies if I have that wrong!) I'm saying that ludic and dramatic states get to play ball! They don't have to be separated. Perhaps you are saying that in an RPG they actually can't be? That would be in agreement with what I am saying, although I might hedge on shouldn't be.

The genius of the model is it's beguiling focus on player-characters. Think of the Baker-Care Principle. It's had amazing results that speak for themselves.


One might see it like Chess, in which foregoing moves will matter to subsequent moves, and the players between them decided what the foregoing moves were as they came to them (taking a naive, pre-AI, view.) If each fact becomes thus established - adding to the game-state - then positioning matters to the return journey, right? The awful cliffs once established as awful are an ongoing barrier, which can then be addressed procedurally.


In my case, that's not it. I don't think it is for others either. What I care about is a persisted and living world. In my experience, there is a certain amount of bootstrapping required to make that work. A critical mass of pieces in play. Relationships emerge. DW acknowledges the value of DM solo preparation to organise their thoughts. In DW that is clearly envisioned as secret: things players shouldn't know yet.


The fruit bowl contains both. I believe some are just expressing what they like about the orangey flavour of oranges. I am questioning whether some oranges aren't found even in our crate that we wrote "Apples" on the side of.


So I say they cannot escape one another because game as game (state and system) will be causal. And you say they cannot escape one another because both are fictional. Either view makes a case for preferring to say dramatic and ludic, rather than narrative and fictional.


Combat. So long as we use the grid and follow the rules, the next position of a participant is constrained by their current. The present HP of their foe is decrement by their damage die which they rolled only because they hit.

To be fair what you say has truth in it. Prep for an RPG tends to be sketchy rather than rigorously systematic. Still, there can be worthwhile forethought that is systematic to a useful extent. A trap marked on the map is just another way of expressing stakes.


Likewise. What is made extant is benefiting from that working backwards and forwards.


In what sense is fiction used here?


Given that established facts are respected the same way, one can ask

• Are dramatic and ludic states separable? And ought they to be, even if so?
• Is more gained from forethought than player participation in establishing game state?
• Is hidden knowledge valuable enough to prefer sometimes say "no"?
• Same question, regarding ludic constraints or limits?

I don't find either more honest, although where they are each more honest certainly differs.

I'm uncertain why I'm being fisked, here. There's a number of these responses that, in going line by line, are missing the points being made in an attempt to rebut the individual lines with a touch of a Gish Gallop.

What you're defining as "ludic" state appears to just be a causal relationship - a leads obviously to b and so on until we get to the current framing. Your example of cliffs being established and thereby continuing to be an obstacle (for a given set of fiction) seems to confirm this. And this is what I understood your arguments above to be as well. And, in this case, my arguments as to why this is a false dichotomy hold. You seem to have separated play into a mode where such "ludic" concerns are paramount and a mode of play where they have near to no bearing. My argument was that this is, indeed, a false dichotomy because tension between these two is present in any mode of play -- hence why I said I could argue for both in any given moment of play and why I used @Lanefan's arguments to showcase that his supposed "lucid" frame (and the one you established your arguments on) is really just a matter of timing, not actual causation. @Lanefan established his causal patterns prior to play, whereas SYORTD does is mostly in play. The resulting fictions from each are just as causal, and the motivations can be just as dramatic (here meaning acausal in your framework).

The idea that SYORTD using dramatic needs as it's call for challenge doesn't mean that it's absent causation at all. It's does often use a reverse chain, but causation is still generated. For example, in trad play, the GM may have prepared a daunting cliff obstacle between location a and location b. He may have done this before play started or between sessions after players declared intent for their PCs to go from A to B. Doesn't matter, and this is the acausal part of generation -- there's no cause to make this cliff other than the GM's desire to do so. Any other causal factors here are rationalizations of this, not actual causes. It's fiction. So, when the party travels, they encounter the cliff, and have to overcome it. Dice will likely be used to resolve this uncertainty, but traditional D&D tends to focus on the task resolution rather than intent resolution. This means it doesn't matter what their players' intent is when climbing (get to the top, camp halfway up in cliff bags, getting to a nice nesting area to steal eggs, whatever) but rather what task they are undertaking -- you make climb checks until the intent is met or you fail and cannot continue. In SYORTD, a similar cliff would be generated because players have declared an action to go from A to B, but the reason holds dramatic tension -- they want to go to B for an important reason, not just a quick change of scenery. This is the dramatic driver to call for challenge, and so a cliff could be introduces as a challenge (likely because climbing is something a PC is invested in or has a motivation for or against). Here, again, the introduction of a cliff is acausal -- nothing causes this. However, once it is introduced, an entire causal chain is introduced just like it would be in the trad D&D prep scenario. Further, once this is introduced, it would remain a challenge to be overcome when going from B back to A (unless effort is made to avoid it, just like with Trad D&D). So, here the differences between your ludic and dramatic premises are just in timing of application (and there's nothing in the D&D framework that prevents a similarly ad-hoc introduction), and both causal and acausal fiction is created and rationalized.

As I said above, there's a mythology that's built up around worldbuilding and prep that supposes that prior imaginings are somehow reified as more real than current imaginings -- that there's some form of real causal chain that is created. This is false -- it's all authoring fiction and when you author fiction doesn't really make much difference to the next bit of fiction authored, which could be immediately after or weeks from now. It's a false dichotomy to attempt to separate fiction into causal and acausal modes to begin with because you can't really have just one, and further because all fiction is actually acausal entirely we just imagine causes that don't actually exist. Within the framework of the fiction it's good to imagine causes that can create a sense of reality, and it's perfectly fine to state that your (general you) personal preference is for fiction that adheres to certain imagined causal pathways over others, or that possess enough imagined causes to satiate. No issues here. But when claims start to be made that there's some actual difference other than preference -- that there's causal chains and acausal chains -- this is incorrect. It's all acausal imaginings, we just can acausally imagine that there are causes.

 

[Krachek]

You seem to be describing the exact thing I'm talking about as if it rebuts it. If the GM is free to decide whatever they want at whatever moment, then as a player I'm unmoored in being able to predict what result a given action will have. I don't know if the GM is going to be sticking to a process or just going with the flow or some other thing and so play becomes not one where the player is trying to engage with the fiction and the system and forge forwards but rather one where the player is engaged with the GM and trying to slant to get the GM to decide in a way favorable to the player. That this argument is also one that goes straight to "system doesn't matter" should be apparent, and thus dismisses any argument that this is a D&D based argument -- it works as well in any other system.

That said, there's no reason to avoid this if it's what the table enjoys. It's not wrong. I just don't understand it's usefulness in a discussion of how different approaches to the game can work and what differentiates them. This argument starts by dismissing that as a useful consideration and just goes with the approach "let the GM tell you what's happening." It's usually paired with some exhortation to "trust the GM," but I find that to be a trivial statement -- I'm not really going to be long playing in any kind of game where I don't trust the participants.

Indeed, know your players expectation and tolerance on DM fiat seem mandatory to satisfy players.

 

[clearstream]

What you're defining as "ludic" state appears to just be a causal relationship - a leads obviously to b and so on until we get to the current framing.

Ludic state is pawn-state + world-state + available-dynamics.

Your example of cliffs being established and thereby continuing to be an obstacle (for a given set of fiction) seems to confirm this. And this is what I understood your arguments above to be as well. And, in this case, my arguments as to why this is a false dichotomy hold. You seem to have separated play into a mode where such "ludic" concerns are paramount and a mode of play where they have near to no bearing.

That mistakes my meaning. I ask: how is fictional separated from narrative? Is fictional the game state? Is narrative free of (external to) some or all features of game as game (e.g. external to game state)? If it is, then what are the ways in which it is not enacting non-dynamic linear fiction... in the form of improv?

I'm not making the separation: I am asking if SYOR makes that separation? You seem to say it does not, and that it is just a matter of the means and timing of when game state is established. If that is so, then turning back on our path shouldn't we encounter play isomorphic with the play we would have found if the facts had been established in advance?

That question in turn asks: are you sure of really getting at what separates SYOR from D&D norm? Because some said SYOR drives stakes solely from narrative, forestalling the isomorphism suggested above.

My argument was that this is, indeed, a false dichotomy because tension between these two is present in any mode of play -- hence why I said I could argue for both in any given moment of play and why I used @Lanefan's arguments to showcase that his supposed "lucid" frame (and the one you established your arguments on) is really just a matter of timing, not actual causation.

Hmm... I think you think I am saying they are dichotomous. I am not. I am questioning a possibility that to say that stakes can be exclusive to narrative might be to go too far. The thought I wanted to put in mind is nearer what you have articulated.

 

[clearstream]

It seems like when and how facts are established is a secondary question. Whether hidden knowledge justifies SNADR is a byline.

Even if an SYOR-mode group were playing in a pre-established world, containing hidden information, the principle that solely narrative drives stakes could still apply.

So what is narrative, if it is nowhere in game state? Is it a property only of players?

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Fiskeds and Ludics and Fiats and Valiants... oh my!

Do I need to grok any of this? Or can my players just tell me what their PC thinks, says, and does so I can get on with the adjudications?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You may highlight a worthwhile distinction between dramatic and the ludic concerns. The dramatic doesn't care about system-state because it is acausal. There is a seeming that when the troll strolled into the room, that the troll is in the room because it strolled there, but in asystematic narrative we learned the troll strolled, we learned it was in the room, in our minds we connected those phrases dramatically, but there were no systematic dynamics in play. I can as well say the troll is on the moon: nothing prevents it. There is no distance between room and moon. There is only the test of what we find allows us to suspend disbelief.

What I am calling ludic concerns require that if the troll strolls into the room in this moment, in the game-world (which may be map, board, or models, or any consistently imagined space) then the room was within strolling distance and it is not possible for troll to stroll to the moon in this moment if that is too far for its defined means of travel. Similarly, characters can't find a secret door in a room in the game-world where none existed before, because if it did exist before that should have impacted earlier fiction. Any roll still comes up "no". The door's existence isn't conditioned solely on dramatic-facts, but also on ludic.

Stateful (ludic) versus stateless (dramatic.) Contingency versus unity of "fiction" and "world" state.

[EDIT For focus.]

Terminology aside we're good here, yes. So, I see what you call 'ludic' or 'position' in my case, serves a necessary function in that it indicates to us what is allowable within a coherent fiction, given genre and such. You cannot walk through the wall, you have to find a door. We are at odds in the contention that establishing certain types of new fiction for dramatic reasons is incoherent. I think it is unlikely to be impossible to imagine a secret door which nobody ever before discovered. Its also a pretty small edge case that it would have definitively enough changed the fiction previously for it to have been there such that it MUST be discounted as incoherent now. I mean, sure, its POSSIBLE, the PCs finding the door now and nobody else ever did, AND it being unbelievable that no NPC previously used it in such a way that the current fictional state was impossible to achieve, but this seems like a very 'spherical cow' to me, basically. I am not able to dredge up any case in real-world play where I would have been unable to accept such a thing. Were it to ACTUALLY come up, then I would assume the fundamental operational conceit of RPGs (at least the VAST majority of them) that the fiction is coherent, would thus reject said fictional assertion, just like a Dungeon World game might well reject the construction of a nuclear device for genre reasons even though there isn't really a clearly described rule about this.

My point is, I don't consider your 'objection' to be a very potent argument against Low Myth games where fiction can be established de Novo by application of mechanics from the player side.

 

[clearstream]

It seems like when and how facts are established is a secondary question. Whether hidden knowledge justifies SNADR is a byline.

Even if an SYOR-mode group were playing in a pre-established world, containing hidden information, the principle that solely narrative drives stakes could still apply.

So what is narrative, if it is nowhere in game state? Is it a property only of players?

@AbdulAlhazred quoting myself so that you can see thoughts have moved on. I believe the issue of establishing facts is a bagatelle. Is this narrative or drama by any means ludic? If so, in what way (that carefully avoids game state?) Etc...