D&D General Story Now, Skilled Play, and Elephants

[Campbell]

A fair amount of my most frustrating experiences in tabletop RPGs have come from other people at the table trying to anticipate my needs or desires and trying to read the room. Being given wins I did not earn, GMs fudging for my "benefit", other players stepping back to share the spotlight when I would rather they just play their characters, GMs having NPCs act in out of character ways because they think it will make my character's personal story better, etc. For the game to be fun for me I just want people to play the game whatever that looks like for the game we are playing.

I can't really have fun if my mind is constantly on reading the room either. I can't play confidently when that's true. If the game we are playing is not fun when everyone is playing hard then we have a design problem to solve or maybe need to find a different game. Maybe solve some group compatibility issues.

Personally I'm really not a fan of negativity expressed around people trying to play games hard. I think it's mostly a design problem if playing hard results in the game not being fun. I get that some moderation especially when combining material from different books is often necessary, but the idea that a desire to play for keeps is a negative trait for players is not one I can get behind at all.

A lot of this relates to life philosophy stuff. I'm a lifelong athlete and a former soldier. Taking a disciplined approach to life is something I value highly, even in leisure activities. Trying hard is fun. Playing with other people who also try hard is fun. That often means I have to be more selective about the people I play games with, but I think it's an overall net win for my play experiences.

 

[Fenris-77]

Just to get a little more granular about what I meant 'impartial'. I was really talking about adjudication, not the entire approach to the game. In many ways you read honest there and it would also work. Honest about consequences, good or bad, honest about what the fiction demands, and honest about allowing the players to succeed and fail on their own merits and work (as opposed to being helped or hindered by some sort of Deus ex Machina from behind the screen).

 

[Thomas Shey]

See, I think playing the adversaries in the game (monsters etc) honestly and impartially is something very different from taking an adversarial stance against the PCs/players. I don't think there are actually that many DMs who take an actual adversarial stance, which is to say that they are somehow trying to 'win' some sort of contest against the players. That is what I was talking about though.

I won't say how things are now, but I certainly know there were GMs a number of decades ago (particularly in the D&D sphere) who pretty clearly took a very harsh and hard-nosed approach to DMing. They might not have been "unfair" but they were exceedingly unforgiving it they thought the players should be able to handle something. It might not technically be "adversarial" but from a player POV the distinction could seem--subtle.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Definitely. I wonder if posters who feel it does encourage an adversarial stance are thinking of the DM "winning", or maybe just offering an uncompromising challenge?

See my comment above.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Uncompromising challenge is the goal IMO, while the other bit is a load of bollocks.

The problem is that some of the same DMs classically had their own pretty specific idea of what the appropriate challenge level was, and were mighty unselfreflective when it didn't work out. It could look okay if you managed to pull it through, but when its Never the GMs Fault when you don't, ah...

 

[pemerton]

A fair amount of my most frustrating experiences in tabletop RPGs have come from other people at the table trying to anticipate my needs or desires and trying to read the room. Being given wins I did not earn, GMs fudging for my "benefit", other players stepping back to share the spotlight when I would rather they just play their characters, GMs having NPCs act in out of character ways because they think it will make my character's personal story better, etc. For the game to be fun for me I just want people to play the game whatever that looks like for the game we are playing.

I can't really have fun if my mind is constantly on reading the room either.

I've never really understood all the discussion and seeming anxiety around the GM's job of reading the room etc. Either I do it without noticing, or I don't do it at all - as it's not something I'm doing consciously!

I quite like this from Agon 2nd ed (p 74), under the heading "Things to Avoid":

* Don't try to tell a story to the other players. Stick to your three steps as Strife Player [= GM; the steps are Reveal, Ask, Judge] and let a story emerge naturally.​

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* Don't worry about anyone else's fun. They're the Hero Players and you're the Strife Player. They're entertaining you, and vice versa. The whole outcome of the session isn't on your shoulders.​

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* Don't pull your punches. Heroes are defined by adversity. If harpies attack the people and the heroes fail to defend them, then many are slaughtered. It's dark, but that's what was at stake. Follow through on the threats of the opponents.​

EDIT: to include page reference to the rulebook that was inadvertently omitted.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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* Don't pull your punches. Heroes are defined by adversity. If harpies attack the people and the heroes fail to defend them, then many are slaughtered. It's dark, but that's what was at stake. Follow through on the threats of the opponents.​

The only problem I've seen with this is its easy for players to see the good outcome as impossible (or at least vanishingly unlikely) whether it is or not (and sometimes they're right and the GM has misjudged). Either of those can lead to some pretty bad places.

 

[pemerton]

The only problem I've seen with this is its easy for players to see the good outcome as impossible (or at least vanishingly unlikely) whether it is or not (and sometimes they're right and the GM has misjudged). Either of those can lead to some pretty bad places.

I think this depends pretty heavily on the action resolution rules. I've made a post about Agon 2nd ed's rules here and so won't repeat it in this thread. But the short version is that it uses scene-based resolution. So this is not an issue.

(For similar reasons I've never had it be an issue in 4e D&D, or in MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, or even in Prince Valiant though this last game is a bit looser in its reliance on scenes for resolution.)

Your posts also reminded me of another active thread, on What counts as a detailed enough, permissible action declaration? One thing that has struck me about that thread, which is a little (though not completely) orthogonal to the question it asks, is how many posters - who are posting as GMs - think it's a big deal for a PC to convert a hunter to vegetarianism.

Now that particular example is probably not going to come up in many RPG contexts (it gets into that thread because it happened in the most recent session I'd GMed before starting the thread). But similar sorts of conversions seem to me to be fairly common both in RPGing and in adventure fiction: last night I watched Fast & Furious 6 and Michelle Rodriguez's character - who has lost her memory - is working for the bad guys but then gets converted by Vin Diesel to work for the good guys; in my 4e D&D game the PCs more than one released defeated NPCs after extracting promises to change their evil ways; in my Prince Valiant game the PCs, after their warband defeated a Hunnish warband in battle, converted the surviving Huns to Christianity and incorporated them into their warband; in Star Wars Luke converts Darth from evil to good; etc.

I think the problem that you identify - and an absence of conversions - is most likely to arise from a combination of (i) task-based action resolution in which player intent for the action and the scene plays little or no role in determining what happens, and (ii) play that is focused on the player solving the GM's puzzle (a bit like the bribing of the guard discussed upthread). I think tight scene-based resolution is the most reliable antidote to it, but it's not the only one: Classic Traveller is not scene-based in its resolution (except in a few discrete sub-systems), and (if I compare it to modern games) is a bit more like AW, but in our play of it - and using the reaction roll framework found in Book 3 - we've had no issues either with guards or with persuading villains to become good and join the team; or more generally with failure seeming inevitable.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well, yes, but that requires you to consider scene-based resolution desirable.

 

[pemerton]

Well, yes, but that requires you to consider scene-based resolution desirable.

That's not essential - see my comments on Traveller (which I reckon would generalise to most PbtA games).

But in any event I do think scene-based resolution is desirable! Not essential, but everything else being equal a good thing. Let it Ride can be an alternative, as even if resolution is not scene-based Let it Ride generates imperatives to start new scenes.