RPGing and imagination: a fundamental point

[FrogReaver]

Please stop claiming offense at everything.

Please stop making this personal.

It’s getting old and seems more about you attempting to get opinions that differ from yours as somehow wrong.

Again, please stop making this personal.

If you really really believe I’m doing either of those things do us both a favor and stop responding to me. Ignore or block me if it helps. Because if that’s your belief then there isn’t any real communication that’s ever going to happen between us.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Just a guess but being player driven means something different to you than it does to us.

How one has a say, how the game is player driven - whether or not you personally are interested in those distinctions - they certainly matter just as much as who gets to author what content, IMO of course.


They've agreed to play the game. They've agreed to some social contract for doing so. Generally speaking those 2 agreements handle how the different inputs are handled. This is all extremely basic stuff. I'm happy to help, but it puzzles me as to why we keep rehashing these same questions every thread.

Well, it continues to amaze many of us that you all are not able to see how a lack of negotiation of the actual content of the material being played gives the GM, as sole generator of such content, an almost total stranglehold on the direction and content of play. The fact that we see such radically different rates of player intervention at that level (IE asking questions about the content of the fiction or how mechanical factors are mapped onto it/from it) tells me that there has to be something, likely self-selection within the groups you are running for, which leads to that.

There is a real difference here.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Please stop making this personal.


Again, please stop making this personal.

If you really really believe I’m doing either of those things do us both a favor and stop responding to me. Ignore or block me if it helps. Because if that’s your belief then there isn’t any real communication that’s ever going to happen between us.

I’m not “making this personal”. I’m talking about the contents of your posts.

They are frequently about the language used and not the actual content. In this reply, you don’t address any of the points of my last post, but instead attempt to tone police and accuse me of making this personal. I’m not… I’m trying to actually discuss something. You seem to be avoiding discussion and attempting to frame this in such a way that I’m in the wrong.

I can’t make you respond to the content, but I’ll call it out when you don’t do so.

To get back to the topic… everything you’ve described about how play works in D&D sounds like negotiation. Multiple participants finding agreement. It’s involved in just about any group activity, and RPGs are chock full of it.

 

[clearstream]

Well, it continues to amaze many of us that you all are not able to see how a lack of negotiation of the actual content of the material being played gives the GM, as sole generator of such content, an almost total stranglehold on the direction and content of play.

Terms like "stranglehold" exemplify the tone that prompted me to not respond to @hawkeyefan's earlier. They negatively characterise the experience of play many enjoy in the mode under discussion.

The fact that we see such radically different rates of player intervention at that level (IE asking questions about the content of the fiction or how mechanical factors are mapped onto it/from it) tells me that there has to be something, likely self-selection within the groups you are running for, which leads to that.

Surely an accusation that can cut both ways!

 

[clearstream]

The point is, in OUR play at least, there's nothing BUT negotiation. A lot of it gets built into indy games because that's the understanding of modern RPG designers, that this is what the rules are ABOUT. So, BitD has a process of negotiating an action roll in which the GM gets to state what position and effect are, but the players can question that, and a lot of things are expected to have certain values, or the player can push back by asking what the GM thinks these values are for different options. PbtA games instead might negotiate which moves, if any, are triggered, or maybe which sort of DD roll is going to be made, etc. Or in either game the players may push back directly on the fiction, much like they can in D&D.

BitD has scene setting processes that outright demand explicit negotiation. For example, the Devil's Bargain.

Picture a player continually explicitly negotiating every Ability Check modifier set by their referee in OSE. In common approaches to play that could well feel disruptive. It's not demanded or advocated as part of following those rules, under which players enjoy a flow of play facilitated by tacit agreements in place up front. That doesn't mean there is never a moment of overt negotiation, nor does it deny that agreements are implicit in every act of play.

I agree that modern RPG designers are generally aware of the relationship of rules to agreements, without that meaning they always design for overt moment-to-moment negotiation. They're also aware of what they can achieve by making erstwhile unspoken up-front agreements, spoken.

 

[clearstream]

To get back to the topic… everything you’ve described about how play works in D&D sounds like negotiation. Multiple participants finding agreement. It’s involved in just about any group activity, and RPGs are chock full of it.

I believe we previously found that the divide on this question was to some extent semantic. "Negotiation" - discussion aimed at reaching an agreement - sounds like something active. It implies a possible suspension and resumption of agreement, rather than a continuation of ongoing agreement. Consider this -

Jo and Addy negotiate on Monday about who will empty the dustbin for the rest of the week. They agree to take turns, starting with Jo. On Tuesday, they do not "negotiate" who will empty the dustbin, although surely Jo's ongoing agreement is in play in their doing so.​

​

Versus​

​

Jo and Addy negotiate on Monday about who will empty the dustbin for the rest of the week. They agree to take turns, starting with Jo. On Tuesday, Jo negotiates who will empty the dustbin. To Addy, Jo has forgotten what they agreed... re-entering negotiation implies that Jo might be going to propose a change to their earlier agreement.​

Folk can judge whether those two contrived worlds match what they meant by negotiation, and where there are differences. I give this example in order to advocate that posters spell out what they mean. That is, to describe what they picture happening at the table, potentially including their expectations about the thought processes of those involved.

 

[AnotherGuy]

If the players are driving the game, then they have input, right? Clearly, so does the GM. How are these different inputs handled? Surely there is some form of agreement that’s made, right?

In SKT the players, through their characters, decide from which giant ruler they wish to acquire a Conch of Teleportation.

Now the DM IMO can "screw" them over legitimately of course via

• The massively obese hill giant chieftain falling through a weakened floor (area attack spells...etc) and cracking her conch;
• The duplicitous cloud giant countess tricking them and locking them up, but which allowed them to rescue an ally dragon and escape her cloud fortress; and
• The possessed/brainwashed stone giant thane purposefully smashing the conch once discovering the characters' true motives for being there.

Why would a DM do this, I can answer for my own reasons - to maximise the use of the material within the AP. I did all the above three, but I did play the AP in an unorthodox way, in that we had multiple parties attempting quests and it was meshed with other modules and APs.

With the hill giant chieftain, the players discovered the Conch and its use only after it had sustained a hairline crack. The hairline fracture could be fixed but required re-attunement to the teleportation site (the site the players were needing to go by using the conch). The purpose here was discovery and not really to screw over the players;

The cloud giant countess saw the emergence of another group of characters, which saw the PCs discover how duplicitous the countess is, which is RAW, but they did rescue a VIP dragon for the broader campaign;

With the stone giant thane, a PC made an error by revealing their intentions after all the clues were given about the thane's instability and being in service to another. Other players at the table groaned as soon the error was made by the PC because they understood what was going to happen next. Also there had been an in-game warning not to go there (as it fulfilled a prophecy of failure).

One can argue that what I did was illusionism, one can also argue the above tells a cogent story. I do not get the feeling from the players that they were hard-done by. As a DM I always attempt to move the story forward even with failures, so even when they did not succeed in acquiring the conch they still won major victory points within the game for taking out the hill giant chieftain and the stone giant thane.
In mechanical terms, the earned +1 for each giant defeat on the ToD Council Scorecard.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The confusion is because when I asked if your game was purely “GM says” you replied:


So I don’t really know if the confusion’s entirely on my side.

The whole text I responded to was:

So @Crimson Longinus and @FrogReaver would you say your games are purely GM says? The players never or rarely have a say about anything other than what their characters do?

In D&D the players are in charge of their characters, the GM is in control of the rest. That's how the game works. Having control of the main characters of the fiction is a lot of control, especially if there is not some "adventure path" or "main plot" the GM is trying to get the characters to follow.

What I’m not interested in for this discussion is character decisions. I’m literally talking about playing the game… so the idea of “meta” is pointless.

It might be pointless to you, it is pretty damn important to some of us. To me the defining feature of RPGs is inhabiting a character and making decisions from the perspective of said character. And sure, to facilitate the functioning of game we need to sometimes step out of that perspective, but I want significant part of the decision making to be in-character not out-of-character.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I on the other hand would say that the vast majority of play is ENTIRELY this sort of thing. Some of it is a bit less explicit than 'why is the DC 19?'. In fact most of it is players making assumptions about the fiction and acting on them. MOST of the time the GM either doesn't explicitly see this, or there's this bit of pushing game. I mean, if you play with teens you will see it VERY EXPLICITLY when you get things like "well, actually swords don't work that way..." or something like that. Again, not really the typical form.

That sometimes happens and if frequent becomes an annoying distraction.

The point is, in OUR play at least, there's nothing BUT negotiation. A lot of it gets built into indy games because that's the understanding of modern RPG designers, that this is what the rules are ABOUT. So, BitD has a process of negotiating an action roll in which the GM gets to state what position and effect are, but the players can question that, and a lot of things are expected to have certain values, or the player can push back by asking what the GM thinks these values are for different options. PbtA games instead might negotiate which moves, if any, are triggered, or maybe which sort of DD roll is going to be made, etc. Or in either game the players may push back directly on the fiction, much like they can in D&D.

Right. Blades is intentionally designed to do this. Yet people were incredulous when I a while a go reported I found it unimmersive due the constant meta level discussions. But that is a designed part of the game. Whether it it a feature or a bug is matter of opinion. And whilst personally I can appreciate that different games are played differently and am willing to go along with different approaches for a change, I doubt this will ever become my favourite approach.

 

[Aldarc]

So I'm not saying that something like this never happens, but I don't think it is that common and I definitely do not see it as some sort of defining core feature. Most of the play is the GM describing the situation, and the players saying what their characters do, and the GM describing how that affects the situation. Sometimes we roll some dice to establish what happens. I wouldn't use a word "negotiation" to describe this. I also wouldn't call discussion that is just about clarifying the facts a negotiation.

Obviously I would use the term "negotiation" to describe this, but that is because I think that "discussion" is a weak to meaningless term to describe what is happening. My problem with the language of "disucssion" is that it implies something a bit more casual, rudderless or directionless, and less process-oriented.

For example, "My friends and I discussed roleplaying games" or "We had a discussion about the fiction." What about it? What was the nature of the discussion? What was the purpose of the discussion? Was anything resolved? It's fairly open-ended and vague. It sounds like you are just talking about something without any regard for purpose or process.

"Negotiated the fiction" gives a clearer, IMHO, idea of what the discussion is about or the stakes of the discussion. Even if I am clarifying the facts, it's about establishing the common fiction between participants. Negotiation here implies, IMO, a conscientious movement towards consensus regarding the ficiton, resolving it among everyone, and then repeating the process as needed.

I understand that the term "negotiation" doesn't work for you. Your mileage varies. It works for me. On the other hand, "discussion" feels like a vague, milquetoast word to describe what's transpiring when you have a "discussion that is just about clarifying the facts." It doesn't work for me. It tells an incomplete picture.