Bill Zebub
“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
I mean, if you are willing to risk breaking some law of philosophy and possibly rending the fabric of space-time, sure.
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D&D 5E Roleplaying in D&D 5E: It’s How You Play the Game
- Thread starter Hriston
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AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Right, and its absolutely true that a Story Focused narrative kind of game could be played in, say, 5e. There are some issues, that @Ovinomancer has touched on at various points, but it is certainly possible. I'd also say that nothing forbids play that mixes things up and sometimes does things for purely dramatic reasons, and other times for more 'cause and effect' reasons (granting that cause and effect are illusory, etc.). Now, to be 'like DW' the broken tools, lost time, etc. needs to put dramatic pressure on the character, will he achieve his goals, and not just be a resource drain (those could coincide to a degree).
Hriston
Dungeon Master of Middle-earth (He/him)
I believe it’s to gain a way to settle conflicts between competing fiction. E.g. if a PC is the target of suggestion and fails their saving throw, the rule settles any conflict which might arise between the spellcaster's suggested course of action and the player’s roleplaying. I.e. the target “pursues the course of action you described to the best of its ability.” The player's authority over decisions about what their character does is thereby limited until the spell ends, their desire, like that of the PC, being subordinated to that of the caster where the two are in conflict.
Established fiction operates in much the same way as a rule. If the DM has described a solid wall in a dungeon, e.g., the player is constrained in their roleplaying to move their character along a path that does not pass through the wall. Where the DM's description of the environment and the player's roleplaying are in conflict, roleplaying is subordinated to what has already been established. This preserves the relationship between player and PC because although both the PC and the player would like for the PC to be able to walk through the wall, their desire is constrained by the prevailing fiction.
If a player's character is shoved by another creature, and the player loses a contest to determine the outcome, the player's will that their character resists the shove is subordinated to the outcome that the PC is moved against the will of both the player and the character. Or if a player says, "I kill the orc," and the DM says, "Not if the orc kills you first," and invokes mechanics that result in a win for the orc, then the PC is killed against the will of both the player and their character. The player's roleplaying is constrained to account for the fiction that their PC was forced to move or that their PC was killed (which is quite constraining indeed).
I think it's notable that in all of these cases, limitations on the player's roleplaying are in alignment with external limitations, magical or otherwise, faced by the PC in the fiction and that player and PC are thus aligned as well.
Now suppose that a group's understanding of the rules included limiting a player's roleplaying when it comes into conflict with what the group has decided is the will, desire, or inclination of the player's character. In this case the player and the PC are not in alignment but are opposed to one another. I'd be curious to know what such a group gains by creating such a conflict and by settling it in favor of what it surmises as the PC's decision over that of the player.
Are you referencing, here, Vincent Baker's clouds-and- boxes-and-arrows analysis?
Here's an early presentation of it: anyway: post a comment -
The fictional things and events and stuff in the game. The interactions of the players themselves. Dice, numbers, words, maps - real-world tokens, things, props, representations. Emily calls 'em "cues" and I think that's just right.
If you can pick it up and hand it to another player, or change it with a pencil and eraser, it's a real-world cue. If it exists only in our heads and our conversation, it's in-game.
If you can pick it up and hand it to another player, or change it with a pencil and eraser, it's a real-world cue. If it exists only in our heads and our conversation, it's in-game.
Here's another fairly early presentation of it: anyway: 3 Resolution Systems -
The cloud means the game's fictional stuff; the cubes mean its real-world stuff. If you can point to it on the table, pick it up and hand it to someone, erase it from a character sheet, it goes in the cubes. If you can't, if it exists only in your imagination and conversation, it goes in the cloud.
(If you remember this old post, you'll be like "where are the smiley faces?" They're looking down from above; they're the ones who enact the arrows. They were messing up the pictures' clarity.)
(If you remember this old post, you'll be like "where are the smiley faces?" They're looking down from above; they're the ones who enact the arrows. They were messing up the pictures' clarity.)
There are four elements of this model: they are (i) the fiction - the in-game stuff that's in our heads; (ii) the cues - real world stuff that is used in various ways to determine what it is that we are to imagine in our heads; (iii) the participants who do the imagining and handle the cues, in accordance with (iv) the rules of the game, which are represented by the arrows, and are enacted by the participants.
Baker does not draw any contrast between the fiction and the game as you suggest - rather, the fiction is what the game generates, and is something referenced from time-to-time by the game rules.
In terms of Baker's model, there are two ways of analysing this, which correspond to two different ways of playing D&D. The difference between them was a focus of much debate during the so-called "edition wars". From your couple of sentences I can't tell which way you have in mind.
Here's one analysis - let's call it "wargame" or even "boardgame" D&D. The combat rules take us from cues (positions on maps) to action declarations (movement and/or attacks) to changing the cues (moving tokens on maps, rolling dice) to further interaction with cues (comparing numbers rolled to various other numbers written down in places, like ACs and hit point tallies) to further changes to cues (eg changes to hit point tallies). This continues until all the hit point tallies on one side drop to zero, at which point we now return to the fiction, where we collectively imagine one side as having bested the other side in combat.
Of course, while playing a wargame like this the participants might imagine stuff - Magic the Gathering would be much less fun to play if there was no flavour text! But that imagining is mere colour - it is not something that the rules care about until we get to the end, and imagine one side as having bested the other.
I think a lot of D&D play treats combat in the fashion I've just described. My evidence for that is the frequency with which one see combat described as an "interruption" in roleplaying or as something that is to be strongly contrasted with "exploration".
But there is another way of approaching D&D combat, in which the rules require us to move from the cues to the imagined fiction as part of the process of play. The most common way in which this happens, at least in my experience, is when a player declares that they take cover (say by ducking beneath a table, or behind a shrub) and there is no way of moving from the cue (the tokens on the map) direct to the application of the cover rules without mediation via the shared imagining - eg how tall is the PC, how high is the shrub, is the PC prepared to drop prone to get the benefit of cover, etc. But it also comes up in many other contexts - eg the reason that the 4e wizard spell Icy Terrain can freeze a puddle, and hence turn it from one sort of terrain obstacle to a different sort of terrain obstacle, is because it is a Cold effect that can therefore freeze water. Here we have first an interaction of cues - the spell description includes the Cold keyword, and the rules tell us (4e PHB p 55) that Cold effects include "ice crystals, arctic air, or frigid liquid". And then in our imagination we - the participants - can all agree that arctic air and ice crystals are the sorts of things that might cause a puddle to freeze. Thus the rules permit, and maybe at some table are even understood to demand, that when a puddle is inside the AoE of an Icy Terrain spell it becomes frozen.
(Many critics of 4e took the odd combination of views that (i) the second sort of approach to D&D combat is preferable to the first, but (ii) anyone playing 4D&D by way of the second approach was playing the game wrong. While an odd combination of views, it does remind us that this is all about the rules of the game - in Baker's model, what arrows does the game establish between imaginings and cues.)
Again, assuming you mean Vincent Baker's model, you are mistaken. It does not draw any dichotomy between fiction and game. And for good reason! I don't understand how such a distinction is meant to work, given that - as Baker has also said - roleplaying is negotiated imagination and hence the whole focus of the game is on establishing and collectively "changing"/"manipulating" a shared fiction.
I don't understand the difference between a "ludic" and a "dramatic" state. I mean, I read this from your post 867:
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.
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.
And also your post 866: Ludic = game-world circumstances + character approach + more or less effective use of mechanics.
But here is why I am confused. First, you refer to the "game-world" as a map (which is, in Baker's model, a cue) or as any consistently imagined space (which is, in Baker's model, not a cue). A map can be a cue that constrains the creation of a shared imagined space - this is quite common in some D&D play. Or it can be the product of a shared imagining, a cue generated to then feed into and perhaps constrain further imaginings - this happens a bit in my Classic Traveller play and was very common in my Rolemaster play. It hasn't been something I've done much of in my Burning Wheel play, but it is certainly something that Luke Crane talks about in his Adventure Burner, especially in the context of Range and Cover resolution.
Therefore, and second, I don't know what you mean by game-world circumstance as a component of the "ludic". Do you mean what Emily Clare Boss (and, following her, Vincent Baker) calls fictional position? Or do you mean the state of some cue - say the position of a token on a map, or the number written on a page under the heading Tally of Hit Points Taken? Both can be important to resolution in most RPGs, but they are different things. (Though obviously related! The cues constrain the imaginings that establish a character's fictional position; and imaginings frequently dictate that certain cues be referred to or changed or created. The rules of the game tell us what these constraints and dictations are.)
Third, no RPG I'm aware of invites players to engage in the effective use of mechanics to realise a character approach within a fictional position than Burning Wheel. It is an extremely technical game, in my view on a par with Rolemaster and moreso than RuneQuest. But the rules of the game do not issue that invitation every time a player says what their PC is doing. Because the rules of the game give the GM a permission to change the PC's fictional position in the way the player wants it to change - this is saying 'yes' rather than calling for a roll of the dice - but that permission is contingent on the dramatic/narrative stakes of the declared action. The dramatic/narrative stakes of a declared action are (as I think @AbdulAlhazred has said) a property of the fiction considered not just as a set of things and events but as a story that includes protagonists who have dramatic needs, antagonists, moments of rising action, the possibility of climax, etc. The rules of a game can reference those properties of a fiction as much as they can reference such properties as the details of the imagined architecture, or the depth of an imagined river - say 'yes' or roll the dice, in its BW/DitV form, and in its 4e form, is an example of just such a rule.
The difference between @Lanefan's dungeon crawl, and @Oofta's preference for a GM-authored world, and my preferred approach in BW, Prince Valiant, and some other systems that I have mentioned, is not to be found in contrasts between the "dramatic" and the "ludic". It's to be found in the rules of the different games - in some they are expressly stated rules (eg BW has the clearest statement of its rule of any RPG I know) whereas the rules of Lanefan's game are to a significant degree implicit but can be inferred from his many normatively-laden statements about the responsibilities of the GM, etc. And it is to be found, in particular, in their different rules about when fiction is to be established, by reference to what sorts of properties of the fiction and what sorts of dispositions of the participants towards those properties, by which participants, at what stage during the action resolution process, etc.
The function of that prep, in DW, is to provide content for subsequent GM moves. But the process of making moves - soft moves, hard moves - isn't affected by that prep. So the GM is never permitted, in DW, to tell a player, independent of a check, that a declared action that triggers a player move fails because of some hidden/unrevealed aspect of the PC's fictional position.
That is a fundamental difference from the role of prep in (say) traditional AD&D. As I think I may have mentioned upthread, I GMed a couple of hours of White Plume Mountain a few days ago. Part of my job, as GM in that game, was to narrate results of declared actions without calling for checks by drawing upon the secret information about the fiction that I had but the player didn't (until they learned it via the process of me narrating those results).
Setting out this difference between DW and classic AD&D doesn't need any elaborate metaphysics: it just needs us to clearly state the different rules that govern the negotiation of the shared fiction.
A trap marked on a map is a cue. As I said above, there can be all sorts of different relationships between resolution processes and the production, consultation and alteration of cues. But I think what you have in mind is that someone - the GM, I guess - has, prior to play, prepared a map which has a trap marked on it. And I think you are imaging action resolution rules which say that if a player declares movement for their PC, and that movement - when traced out on the map - takes them over the place where the trap is marked, then the GM is to declare the triggering of the trap, or is to consult the trap-triggering procedure (eg in Moldvay Basic traps only trigger on a roll of 1 or 2 on a d6 : p B22).
A game played according to those sorts of procedures - prep procedures, and the resolution rules that presuppose them - will produce one sort of play experience. I personally experienced that sort of play a few days ago, with White Plume Mountain.
It is not impossible to use those procedures to generate narratively/dramatically stakes-oriented play, but my view is that they are not ideal for that.
As far as the cliff goes, there are any number of ways to resolve the action declaration We ascend/descend the awful cliff. Particularly if it is being traversed for a second or subsequent time by the same group of protagonists. (Robin Laws has a nice discussion of this in HeroQuest revised, especially pp 72-74, 81-82.) There are approaches to action resolution that preserve its character in the fiction as an awful cliff, but don't call for a check to be made to traverse it: those sorts of approaches are not suitable for @Lanefan given his goals of play, and may not be suitable for you, but they are readily available and well-known.
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This is like a backgammon player asking a chess player how they square moving their pieces with not making any dice rolls!
You are playing using one set of procedures, in which certain "cues" - maps that are pre-drawn and initially known only to the GM - play a central role in action resolution. "Say 'yes' and roll the dice" is a technique that is one part of a different set of procedures.
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
I'm a bit confused by this, because I cannot tell if this is an argument for how things should be inside 5e only, and not as a general case, or if it's being made as a general case. Either way I have some quibbles.
If inside 5e only, then the only argument that needs to be made is that 5e has stated where certain authorities and constraints exist for play. This includes that what a character thinks and tries to do is up to the player alone, outside of any specific mechanic that removes this authority (and there are a few, not all magical). This is simply a matter of agency and authority in the game -- absent this carve out, and with the vast authority and agency granted the GM, there's not much of a role for a player that could qualify as a game. You're just there to enjoy the GM's fiat otherwise. So, yeah, your playing piece has to be under your control (except, of course, when it isn't) or what's the point? That this control is extended to thoughts and feels and what you try to do is just the nature of this game, not anything more. Arguments that try to create some distinction between external and internal pressures (like someone trying to convince, seduce, or scare you isn't as external as a wall) are odd rationalizations of something that need no rationalization unless there's an attempt to establish this as some kind of general case argument for how "roleplaying" works. Roleplaying means a lot of things, and 5e's construct for it is definitely sufficient, but it's not necessary.
If this is that general case argument, then we're at a weird place where games that work extremely well with factors that can constrain what your character thinks, feels, or tries to do are suddenly being put in a "not roleplaying" position. That's just silly. Compels in FATE may not be to a person's liking, but dealing with them are definitely roleplaying. Facing down stakes in a Burning Wheel game that, if you lose, you have to acknowledge something you might not want your character to do, like being convinced to join a mutiny or rebellion or to forsake a lover or cause, suddenly becomes "not roleplaying." I don't countenance this argument at all -- if it's being made it's profoundly silly. There are plenty of good ways to constrain how a player has to interact with their character that add to the experience, and let the player really explore a mindset that isn't theirs, and that do a better job of mimicking how cognition works in the real than the strangely stoic and implacable D&D characters who's personalities, wants, desires, and urges are always 100% in control.
5e's approach is, to me, perfectly fine and cromulent for the game that 5e tries to be. 5e doesn't go for finding out who your character actually is when put under pressure in that way, it's more interested in if your feats of derring-do measure up than if your strength of character measures up. This is great, I certainly enjoy it for what it does and think that this kind of protection for player agency is good (and that 5e in general does an occasionally poor job of protecting it whilst simultaneously praising it). But the idea that this is some gold standard or expectation of what roleplaying in general should be? Hah. No.
You might find my presentation of Vincent Baker's model, not far upthread, interesting. It directly addresses this sort of thing.
With regard to your second sentence I've quoted, I think it's clearer to put it this way: there is a rule that says any proposed change to the fiction must be consistent with the established fiction - so eg if it is established that there is a wall between A and B, and a player declares (as their character) I go from A to B, then their declaration can only be countenanced if it includes some change/addition to the fiction that will render the wall a non-obstacle for their character. This could be anything from a phasing ability in a fantasy game, to the use of dynamite in a modern day one, to teleportation in a sci-fi or superhero one.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
So how, then, in that different set of procedures can a GM have the opposition proactively do anything to stop/hinder/gain an advantage over the party before the party interacts with them? Or is the opposition supposed to be passive (or. even, non-existent) until the PCs meet it?
Take my example of the spyholes above, where the opposition were able to keep tabs on us and react to what we were doing almost before we did it. How in your set of procedures can the opposition a) become aware of our presence without us realizing it and then b) use an unknown-to-the-PCs (and players) feature of the setting in their attempt to thwart us?
clearstream
(He, Him)
The dichotomy is to say the fiction is not in the numbers, words, maps, but elsewhere. In the cloud. As cues includes mechanics I think it is ludic. Without, we'd have improv, right?
The situation worsens and the group encounter the awful cliffs, which the DM marks on their shared map. The group wonders if they can’t scale the cliffs due to their dramatic motives (you started with "narrative" and I took @AbdulAlhazred's suggestion and switched to "dramatic" which it looks like you are okay with.) DM said roll.
Later, turning back on their path they come back to the cliffs which have been established as difficult to climb and dangerously high. This seems like a typical D&D situation. In the fiction there are cliffs. In the game cues there are cliffs. That is a dichotomy I question.
To get at it from another angle, it's not my experience that my D&D groups act for reasons that are not dramatic. They never as @Ovinomancer put it climb the cliffs just for the sake of getting to the top. So I wonder what the special nature of the dramatic is, under SYOR?
When I model out D&D I see that DM narrates results because in DM, fiction - hidden and revealed - is unified with game cues (which I think contain or have valency to fiction so that a change to them can be a change to fiction.) Only DM is in position to narrate the RPG state.
So I think something else is going on in SYOR. You appeared to hedge on DW implying a DM might SNOE (say no or expand) on matters other than a PCs fiction (which I think fronts could at times oblige.) I continue to feel that the case isn't simply black and white - you're doing SYOR or you are not - but mixed. If not why not?
clearstream
(He, Him)
What stands out to me here is that it is as you have framed them. They're justified in your framing.
Opposed is a matter of perspective. If a character is beguiled by another creature, has the same form as shoved.
Maybe at a primitive level it's the lusory revulsion for Black reaching over the board and moving White's pieces?
It strikes me that shared on-the-fly establishing of fiction - no hidden state - could be coloured similar. Invoking anxieties and putting at risk validation, until another perspective is applied.
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