D&D General Supposing D&D is gamist, what does that mean?

[Aldarc]

Why do you suppose a game text like Stonetop's includes principles? What function do you feel they serve there?

Not that I either want to stop you from talking about Stonetop or think that the basic principles are all that different, but as Campbell is talking about Vincent Baker, then maybe asking the same question but regarding Apocalypse World (the well-spring of PbtA) might be a little more appropriate.

 

[clearstream]

I took a look at Traveller to gain more insight. It is up to the referee in Traveller what information a player-character can find out with Streetwise, and whether that information is true. The game text doesn't bind a referee to give a player information that is guaranteed to be true; the text outright states a referee can use informants to feed false data. It's even implied that sometimes referee may lie to the players.

One interpretation is that a referee ought to classify information into four types, and it is the type of information that decides whether it can be relied on. Suppose the "dirt" in some case "is the fact that the information contained in the library is false", then that would be type 4 and players cannot find it out by their own efforts. If the "dirt" is type three, it can be found out at a cost. A cost could be risks taken while searching for it, such as breaking into safes that turn out to be empty. It's not defined so it is up to referee. I found reviewers discussing the potential arbitrariness of the skill system, for example "It's 'make-it-up-as-you-go-along' time and it really strains the gameplay."

I believe Traveller can be played without difficulty as @pemerton describes, through following the appropriate principles. I went to the trouble of searching out this information because I feel there are some assumptions about 5e that folk are comfortable avoiding in relation to other games. Speculatively, folk adopted a practice toward those games (their social agreements) that resulted in grasping and upholding the game text to produce the play that they go on to describe.

Traveller Streetwise:

Spoiler: Streetwise

The individual is acquainted with the ways of local subcultures (which tend to be the same everywhere in human society), and thus is capable of dealing with strangers without alienating them. This skill is not the same as alien contact experience. Close-knit subcultures (such as some portions of the lower classes, trade groups such as workers, and the underworld) generally reject contact with strangers or unknown elements. Streetwise expertise allows contact for the purposes of obtaining information, hiring persons, purchasing or selling contraband or stolen goods, and other shady or borderline activities.

Referee: After establishing throws for various activities desired by the characters (such as the name of an official willing to issue licenses without hassle: 5+; the location of high quality guns at low prices: 9+), allow streetwise as a DM. If streetwise is not used, impose a DM of -5.

Traveller statements about refereeing information

Spoiler: Refereeing information

It is necessary for the referee to divide the information about his or her universe into four parts: 1) information which player characters would logically know by virtue of what they are, 2) information which player characters can find out with little or no cost, 3) information which player characters can find out only at great cost, and 4) information which the player characters would be unable to find out by their own efforts.

Type 1 could be such things as how to behave in polite society, or some simple data about a planet if the character has navigation skill. Type 2 could be information obtained from a library, from asking around at bars, hotel lobbies, and so on, or obtained by direct observation of some event or condition. Type 3 could be information that requires the theft of one or more documents (payment in time) or the bribery of some official (payment in money). Type 4 should be information about the true nature of reality, perhaps the fact that the information contained in the library is false with regard to the planet mentioned above, or other information for the referee's eyes only.

Informants serve to give the players information, and are ideal for those situations in which the referee needs to give false data, but does not feel like lying to the players outright. Informants may be experts the players consult (such as a university professor or scholar). passengers or crew of a starship the players are on, or people the players casually meet in the course of seeking rumors or employment.

The referee must decide how much information the group can find out, and how long it will take them. The referee reveals the information the players have discovered, and tells how much time was used up, and any other relevant details (or irrelevant details intended to throw the players off track) that the player characters may have noticed, like the fact that someone is following them as they leave the library.

As the adventure progresses, the referee will often have the urge to "help out" the players by providing them with information that they otherwise would not, or could not logically know. This is poor form, and the referee should resist this urge whenever it arises.

 

[FrogReaver]

Different games will have different answers, but generally speaking the most common answer I have seen is you get a chance to act when the GM asks you specifically what your character does. The spotlight and all the narrative tension is right on your character. If there is an in fiction conflict between characters we can handle that with mechanics like Burning Wheel's Duel of Wits or Apocalypse World's Interfere move. Otherwise we just go with the usual flow.

1. Frame scene/situation focused on a single character's perspective.
2. That character's player says what their character does (along with intent if applicable).
3. Narrative fallout + new framing (usually with a different spotlight character).

A big part of the GM's responsibility tends to be spreading around the spotlight to apply pressure to different characters and give everyone a chance to contribute.

So apparently the ‘magic’ happens with duel of wits or interfere. Can you elaborate on how either move would be used in such a Situation?

 

[niklinna]

I believe Traveller can be played without difficulty as @pemerton describes, through following the appropriate principles. I went to the trouble of searching out this information because I feel there are some assumptions about 5e that folk are comfortable avoiding in relation to other games. Speculatively, folk adopted a practice toward those games (their social agreements) that resulted in grasping and upholding the game text to produce the play that they go on to describe.

This is interesting. What kinds of assumptions do you feel that folk make about 5e that they avoid with relation to other games? Are the specific other games, or is it other games in general? Who are those folk?

 

[Campbell]

Why do you suppose a game text like Stonetop's includes principles? What function do you feel they serve there?

Considering a game like Apocalypse World, Monsterhearts or Stonetop I think we should take a holistic view of the fundamental structure of play (which Apocalypse World calls the conversation), the game's agenda, it's GM and player principles (Blades in the Dark calls them best practices), and its processes and mechanics. All are part of a cohesive game design.

From my perspective principles / best practices add an additional layer of accountability above and beyond the agenda, play structure and mechanics. They do not replace the need for any of the above. Apocalypse World calls upon its GM to :

• always say what honesty demands
• always say what the rules demands
• always say what your principles demands
• always say what your prep demands

Principles largely speak to thought process - what concerns should shape the judgement calls we are called upon to make over the course of play. I keep a printout of my GMing principles on hand to use for post mortems and to elicit feedback from players as to how well I am holding up to my end. For a game like Blades that also has principles / best practices for players I also will provide feedback on how well they are meeting the standards set forth for them.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You’ve hit on the distinction Baker is making between task resolution and conflict resolution. The first one, task resolution, is a fundamentally sim-oriented approach. It’s modeling whether someone can perform the activity in question. It’s divorced from why the PC may be attempting it. That’s how it is possible to open the safe but find no evidence or acquire information that proves to be false. Those facts are meant to exist in the world independently of the PCs and their needs, so it makes sense that those outcomes are possible.

Conflict resolution is about whether the PCs accomplish their intent. It would be poor form (if not cheating) on the GM’s part for them to have a player test for a conflict and win, then negate their win with false information or an empty safe. It’s the equivalent of killing the PCs (“rocks fall”) after they win a combat encounter. In both cases, they won, but the GM negated that and took away their victory.

This relates to the diagrams @Campbell shared and @pemerton reposted because conflict resolution provides a concrete way to end a scene that task resolution does that. After all, task resolution is just answering whether the PCs did the thing they did. It’s the equivalent of making an attack roll in combat. The hit may finish off the opponent, but it may not. The difference between combat and task resolution is that combat has a procedure to determine when it has ended (one side is dead or routed) while task resolution typically does not. The exception are tools like skill challenges, which allow the GM to frame the scene but the combined results of the PCs’ task attempts bring it to a resolution.

When you talk about something not really being 'locked in', my response is that in a system that resolves intent it is definitely locked in!!! For the info to be wrong requires a result of 'intent not achieved'. And the GM is NEVER allowed to just take that away. If the player literally staked the outcome somehow in order to gain something else, then sure. Otherwise the original 'intent achieved' result can't be invalidated simply because the GM wants, that basically undermines the whole system!

 

[clearstream]

When you talk about something not really being 'locked in', my response is that in a system that resolves intent it is definitely locked in!!! For the info to be wrong requires a result of 'intent not achieved'. And the GM is NEVER allowed to just take that away. If the player literally staked the outcome somehow in order to gain something else, then sure. Otherwise the original 'intent achieved' result can't be invalidated simply because the GM wants, that basically undermines the whole system!

What are your thoughts on locking in, but generally as a result of description and/or additional efforts (including other checks) by the player? For example, locking in the contents of the safe by describing and playing out acquiring information confirming those contents?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Who said anything about @Manbearcat being inaccurate? Not me.

What is getting muddled together? And what does in-fiction causation have to do with the relationship between characters and what is at stake in a situation?

In Burning Wheel, if my PC has a high skill in Lock Picking, then it is more likely that my PC will get what they want by picking locks, than is the case for another PC whose skill in Lock Picking is lower. This is not a model of how causation works in the fiction. It's not a model of anything.

REH's Conan is more likely to achieve his goals, as protagonist, by fighting than is (say) JRRT's Frodo. In Burning Wheel, if I want to play Conan I need (among other things) a high score in fighting. If I want to play Frodo, I need (among other things) a high score in Perception. And if I want to play Sam, I need (among other things) a high score in Cooking. That's what makes it more likely that my PC will get what he wants - helping his friends endure their struggles - by cooking for them. As it happens, my knight PC Thurgon has a passable rating in Cooking. In building the character that way, I'm not just establishing a state of affairs in the fiction that this guy knows how to cook. I'm also sending a signal about my character: I aspire to achieve things by cooking.

Of course, if the opponents are tougher, then achieving a goal by fighting them will be harder (for Conan, or for anyone else). If a situation is more complicated or obscure - whether literally or emotionally - than it will harder for even an astute person to achieve their goal by understanding it. If all there is to cook with is what can be scraped together on the trail; or if the tastes of those I'm cooking for are so jaded that nothing but the finest cuisine will move them; then even an experienced cook will find it harder to achieve what they want by cooking.

There's nothing muddled about any of that.

I've never built a lock-picking character, but one of my friends I play with did once. Just like the examples I've given, that sent a signal too, that his character aspired to achieve things by picking locks. There was no muddle.

For each skill, there is a list of obstacles. The obstacles for lock-picking are based on the quality of the lock. Whether the test to open the lock could be augmented by (say) Incriminating Documents-wise; or whether the GM would just "say 'yes'" to the opening but call for a check on Incriminating Documents-wise when the contents of the safe are inspected; or something else; would depend on further details of the situation: how it was framed, and what the Beliefs of the characters are.

Right, so this is why HoML calls 4e skills 'knacks' instead. The guy with an Athletic knack is prone to approach problems as being solved athletically. If he runs into a situation that is not amenable to that he may be at a disadvantage compared to another PC. Having training in Athletics is really about rewarding play that honors your character concept, not modeling how great your prowess is. That's what emerges

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Right. You were referring to what @clearstream said. But @Manbearcat seemed to basically agree with the characterisation, calling it "objective DCs that attempt to model the internal causality of a world."


Your DC is based on difficulty of the task (quality of the safe) and the numbers the player is using to overcome that is based on the character's skill in lock picking. Yet, you use these number to generate probability of something completely unrelated (the papers being in the safe.) That is muddled.

And doesn't this create weird incentives? Two characters are staring at the safe, one who is excellent at safe-smashing and one who is just OK at lock-picking. Who should try to open the safe? The smasher, obviously, as they have better chance of generating the papers in the safe! And Athe forbid if someone who's utterly terrible with safes decides to touch it, that will mean there are no papers in it for sure!

Sure, but you are modeling the process as a way of assessing the GAME WORLD, not the story or the place of the PCs in that story. When I say lock picking is a measure of how much it will come up in play that the PC tries it, then the entire thing makes sense!

 

[niklinna]

What are your thoughts on locking in, but generally as a result of description and/or additional efforts (including other checks) by the player? For example, locking in the contents of the safe by describing and playing out acquiring information confirming those contents?

If locking in of this type (as contrasted with pre-scripted material) is part of play, then how it's done doesn't matter. The story—or the chain of events, to be more fussy about it—is being driven by generative dramatic concerns, not pre-scripted logical or dramatic concerns. I've been in Blades sessions where we went through several steps to investigate and inquire and determine where our objective must be (or even to generate the dramatic need for such a thing)—and that established that it was there, although the critical check at the climactic moment could scupper or complicate our efforts up to that point, for some other reason. I've been in Blades sessions where we players just put forward a likely fact in the moment, and because we succeeded on the check, it was true. (Or if we failed on the check, and the stakes were specifically that it was or was not there, then it wasn't there.) It all depended on how we wanted to go about things and where we wanted to dive into detail. In all cases, the stakes of each check were open and accepted as to how things would shake out, based on the dice roll (which, by the way, leaves room for "something bad's gonna happen, but you're not sure what"!).

Locking in of this type is not compatible with GNS process-sim play, clearly. That involves the GM establishing facts about the world ahead of time and sticking to them (although how players can be assured the GM is sticking to pre-established facts is an issue). It's also not compatible with GNS high-concept sim, if that means the GM reserves all right to what's true about the world at large from moment to moment. And those traits are generally expected of those kinds of play.