Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Supposing D&D is gamist, what does that mean?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="niklinna" data-source="post: 8636000" data-attributes="member: 71235"><p>While your 2 points above are a dichotomy, (1) is not an extreme; it's a spectrum. The point opposite (2) would be a pre-authored game-world in which all details and the story were fully specified and play would have no effect. That is, (1) is already the area where you can find or create balance.</p><p></p><p>As for where that might lie, you've left out the thing that matters—which is, <em>what matters to the players (including the GM)</em>. What issues do they want to explore? That's where you leave the blanks. Or make or find them, if using pre-authored material, by deliberate editing or seeking areas that haven't been fleshed out. Detail the rest in advance as much as you like—or fill that in during play too, since it <em>doesn't matter</em> so much. Unless the point of play is to experience a detailed world, rather than explore values in tension/conflict.... Or perhaps you want to do both! It's possible to have both, without Edwards's dreaded incoherence, as long as you're clear about what you're doing, when.</p><p></p><p>Any pre-established info is both blessing and curse, in that it provides a necessary departure point for exploration (you gotta start <em>somewhere</em>), but, since it's where you start, also discourages exploration (since you're already there). But there's more kinds of exploration than trekking to unknown lands, of course. The metaphor is unfortunately liable to taken as literal geography, so I'll clarify that this info could be about characters in the world, or factions, or social phenomena, ethics, and the like.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Edwards will Edwards—that is, make a dynamic tension into a do-or-die binary. I haven't read Stonetop's setting either, but I have read Over the Edge, and its setting is chock-full of the very stuff I as a more Story Now-oriented player might be expecting to generate and explore through play. NPCs and factions and plots are presented, named, and given gobs of detail about who they are, what they're up to, and how they're entangled with others. So in that particular case, I would say that most of OTE's setting gets in the way—particuarly because it's so interwoven and tangled (by design!) that it would be hard to remove anything in order to create blanks, and it would be hard to insert anything new without massive editing of many factions, NPCs, plots, etc. (Notably, however, OTE describes things as they are and where they're headed, but leaves it very much open as to how the PCs might muck with that.)</p><p></p><p>Now, I am familiar with Doskvol from Blades in the Dark, and that setting, although not 229 pages, is fairly detailed in some senses, but it leaves so much obvious open space that players and GM can grab onto a random named NPC/faction/location and run with it, because most often all a given element has is its name and a few key facts (is a noble vampire, has sway over a given neighborhood, is where the rich folk live). What setting is provided is not meant to be experienced, but built on, in play.</p><p></p><p></p><p>He did like to take an extreme position, didn't he?</p><p></p><p></p><p>"Balance" more often than not implies a stable state. But there is a dynamic tension between prior detail and open field. You can view it as a tug-of-war or a necessary tensile strength to hold a structure together, but because the thing in question is an RPG, things will be changing, and the open field of the moment becomes prior detail as soon as anything is established. As for the questions, well, that depends on the folks at the table! How much of their limited play time do they want to spend having stuff revealed to them, vs. generating it on the fly?</p><p></p><p></p><p>Like I said, you gotta start <em>somewhere</em>. And folks might not even show up unless they know what that somewhere is (genre, premise, hook, etc.).</p><p></p><p>I argue that it isn't a dichotomy. Or rather the dichotomy isn't in pre-authored/on-the-fly setting/world, but in specifically <em>what</em> in the world is pre-authored vs. on-the-fly.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="niklinna, post: 8636000, member: 71235"] While your 2 points above are a dichotomy, (1) is not an extreme; it's a spectrum. The point opposite (2) would be a pre-authored game-world in which all details and the story were fully specified and play would have no effect. That is, (1) is already the area where you can find or create balance. As for where that might lie, you've left out the thing that matters—which is, [I]what matters to the players (including the GM)[/I]. What issues do they want to explore? That's where you leave the blanks. Or make or find them, if using pre-authored material, by deliberate editing or seeking areas that haven't been fleshed out. Detail the rest in advance as much as you like—or fill that in during play too, since it [I]doesn't matter[/I] so much. Unless the point of play is to experience a detailed world, rather than explore values in tension/conflict.... Or perhaps you want to do both! It's possible to have both, without Edwards's dreaded incoherence, as long as you're clear about what you're doing, when. Any pre-established info is both blessing and curse, in that it provides a necessary departure point for exploration (you gotta start [I]somewhere[/I]), but, since it's where you start, also discourages exploration (since you're already there). But there's more kinds of exploration than trekking to unknown lands, of course. The metaphor is unfortunately liable to taken as literal geography, so I'll clarify that this info could be about characters in the world, or factions, or social phenomena, ethics, and the like. Edwards will Edwards—that is, make a dynamic tension into a do-or-die binary. I haven't read Stonetop's setting either, but I have read Over the Edge, and its setting is chock-full of the very stuff I as a more Story Now-oriented player might be expecting to generate and explore through play. NPCs and factions and plots are presented, named, and given gobs of detail about who they are, what they're up to, and how they're entangled with others. So in that particular case, I would say that most of OTE's setting gets in the way—particuarly because it's so interwoven and tangled (by design!) that it would be hard to remove anything in order to create blanks, and it would be hard to insert anything new without massive editing of many factions, NPCs, plots, etc. (Notably, however, OTE describes things as they are and where they're headed, but leaves it very much open as to how the PCs might muck with that.) Now, I am familiar with Doskvol from Blades in the Dark, and that setting, although not 229 pages, is fairly detailed in some senses, but it leaves so much obvious open space that players and GM can grab onto a random named NPC/faction/location and run with it, because most often all a given element has is its name and a few key facts (is a noble vampire, has sway over a given neighborhood, is where the rich folk live). What setting is provided is not meant to be experienced, but built on, in play. He did like to take an extreme position, didn't he? "Balance" more often than not implies a stable state. But there is a dynamic tension between prior detail and open field. You can view it as a tug-of-war or a necessary tensile strength to hold a structure together, but because the thing in question is an RPG, things will be changing, and the open field of the moment becomes prior detail as soon as anything is established. As for the questions, well, that depends on the folks at the table! How much of their limited play time do they want to spend having stuff revealed to them, vs. generating it on the fly? Like I said, you gotta start [I]somewhere[/I]. And folks might not even show up unless they know what that somewhere is (genre, premise, hook, etc.). I argue that it isn't a dichotomy. Or rather the dichotomy isn't in pre-authored/on-the-fly setting/world, but in specifically [I]what[/I] in the world is pre-authored vs. on-the-fly. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Supposing D&D is gamist, what does that mean?
Top