D&D 4E The Best Thing from 4E

[pemerton]

I didn't say you did. But I will discuss the hypothetical with others as long as it's used.

The only person to conjecture a hypothetical in which the players are offered the choice of taking their PCs left or right, but either way arrive at the prisoners "just in time", is you. No one else has discussed how they would adjudicate such a situation, or whether they would include it in their games - including me.

So I guess I'm far from clear what bearing you think it has on the topic of player agency, GM force, illusionism etc.

 

[pemerton]

You should check out PACE, its about 3 pages and rather FUDGE-esque but without dice.

I'll Google it.

For CoC these days I would either use Trail of Cthulhu, or else "Cthulhu Dark", which is a little 4-pager I heard about somewhere online and downloaded.

 

[JamesonCourage]

I thought that was what the discussion was about:

Right. But you asked about every choice being uninformed, didn't you? You said:

What are the players actually playing at that point? If a game is full of uninformed decisions

I'm pointing out that nobody is talking about any such game.

For me, (ii) means that it's an uninformed decision. The last line ("And so the players make an essentially random choice, with one of the choices meaning auto-fail.") really sounds like an uninformed decision.

I agree. Which is why I've labeled this one hypothetical decision as such.

That's clear. The only point I want to make is that I believe an uninformed choice is not a "real" choice in terms of the game.

Ah. I'm talking about meaningful narrative consequences, not the "game" portion. If that's what you're talking about, I agree.

I agree that uninformed decisions can have meaningful consequences; but from the player's perspective, if you don't have the information required to make a decision, in what way is the player going to think or feel that they made a decision?

If they later discovered the results of their decision, they would feel something based on the results, most likely. Perhaps feel unlucky if they failed because of it, or mad at fate, or reflect on how life can be cruel or unfair. If they get something positive from the decision, they might feel happy, or lucky, or satisfied, or confident.

If they never find out the consequences, then they probably feel nothing for it.

Either way, I'm not sure that it matters in terms of the decision being meaningful.

It'd be like playing soccer without knowing whose team anyone is on or what net you're trying to defend. Striking the ball or tackling someone is just as likely to be the right decision (given the goals of soccer) than not. Do the players in this game have any agency? I'd say very little: the only question is if you want to play to a tie or gamble with a 1-0 result.

Hmm, that's an interesting comparison to draw. You might actually have more information going into your example than in the fork scenario. You at least know that you can try for a draw, for example.

I still think you have great agency, though. It's just uninformed.

Also, you've once again described the entire game being played that way, rather than one decision point.

For me I think this ties back into the idea of a naturalistic world and how to maintain that while still allowing players to have agency (making informed decisions that affect the outcome of the game).

Which will be the case the overwhelming majority of the time.

For example: when designing random encounter tables for an area, do you weight the results so that the "more expected" result appears more often, or do you make each encounter as likely as another with the aim to make each encounter interesting? There was discussion earlier in the thread about how to determine how long it would take to cross the Free City of Greyhawk. I'd use a weighted random encounter table for various neighbourhoods, main streets, and back alleys. "Street festival" or "traffic jam" may be a common result on the main street, while "cutpurse" or "backstabber" may be a common result in the back alleys; this creates a (mildly) naturalistic world but also gives the players a choice: risk getting slowed down in the main street or an attack in a back alley?

That seems fine to me? You (as GM) get to create the setting, so I'm not sure there's a right or wrong answer to that. Depending on setting choices, you might get something closer to Discworld than something more grounded, but that's all personal taste anyway.

 

[JamesonCourage]

The only person to conjecture a hypothetical in which the players are offered the choice of taking their PCs left or right, but either way arrive at the prisoners "just in time", is you.

I mentioned the fork, but I didn't set the "left means exploring a library, which results in failing to arrive at the cultists" scenario. That wasn't me. Then the conversation drifted to scene-framing, and I adapted the hypothetical to fit that conversation.

No one else has discussed how they would adjudicate such a situation, or whether they would include it in their games - including me.

Then discussion over between us again!

So I guess I'm far from clear what bearing you think it has on the topic of player agency, GM force, illusionism etc.

I know you are.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The IDEA is OK, the problem is there's not a huge reason to do it except for 'skilled play', so maybe the agenda REALLY is 'skilled play', the testing of the player, not the character, at which point there is an antagonist that is embodied by the GM and so some semblance of fair play is necessitated. Naturalism is presumptively then an objective standard of that.

I don't think this is coming from a Gamist place. I mean, one of the oldest adages of RPGs is that "There is no winning or losing".

Mostly, I just want to play the role. I want to think of my character as a real person, and not the protagonist of a novel or a piece to be moved around a game-board. That probably also contributes to my preference for low-level games, where the difference between PCs and NPCs isn't so noticeable. Low-level characters are more relatable, so it's easier to think of them as real people.

 

[pemerton]

I just want to play the role. I want to think of my character as a real person, and not the protagonist of a novel or a piece to be moved around a game-board.

I'm not disputing your preference, or your knowledge of your own psychological states, but I think you might be exaggerating how those who do prefer other styles think of their PCs. There are some styles of skilled play where the character really is just a game-piece, but I think there are proponents of skilled play who "inhabit" their PCs - it's just that their PCs have exactly the right motivations to make hunting through ruined tombs for treasure a rational occupation.

When it comes to what I have called "player driven" play, the player doesn't think of his/her PC as the protagonist of a novel. S/he thinks of him/her as a person - it's just that, as a person, s/he has motivations and concerns that are (by real world standards) a little larger-than-life! If the system is well-designed, then protagonism and associated story will emerge without anyone having to actually think about the story.

I'm not saying that you, the human being Saelorn, could play in these styles and inhabit your character, because there may be features of them that are jarring to you. I'm just saying that you might be exaggerating the difference between your preferred mental state and the mental state that these other players get into when they play their PCs.

 

[pemerton]

I adapted the hypothetical to fit that conversation.

So is the hypothetical you are inviting us to consider this one?

1. The GM tells the players they come to a left/right "fork". The players choose one or the other. Whichever they choose, the GM tells them that their PCs come upon the cultists about to sacrifice the prisoners.​

Or is it this one?

2. The GM tells the players they come to a left/right "fork". If the players choose the right, their PCs will come upon the cultists about to sacrifice the prisoners. If they choose the left, their PCs will come upon something else (let's say, the office/library); and if, following that, the PCs then go down the right path, they will come upon the cultists about to sacrifice the prisoners.​

My view of (1) is that the whole thing looks like poor GMing (with a possible exception - see below). Why is the GM writing in a choice of paths, if in fact the fiction is going to be constant? Maybe there is a story to tell about the choice adding colour? I don't think I've ever heard of anyone doing (1) in D&D, which tends to be somewhat map-oriented.

The exception I can think of is if the GM is anticipating a chase/flight scene - and so expects the players to be keeping track of their choices so that their PCs can retrace their steps without getting lost.

(2), on the other hand, is completely standard for a wide range of play approaches. Classic D&D dungeons used to have "freeze frame" rooms - when the PCs arrive at the room the nymph is playing on her flute, or the dragon is asleep on its ledge, or the cultists are in the process of sacrificing the prisoners, or whatever. In the typical classic "freeze frame", the PCs have no causal connection to the events until they get there, though their may be an emotional connection (and likewise by the players): eg in another room the PCs may have acquired rumours of the prisoners, or learned that there is a musical nymph or a dragon in the dungeon.

Adventure paths have "freeze frame" rooms or situations. In I6 Pharoah, for instance (somewhere on the border between a classic dungeon and an AP), the dervishes will be looking for their missing members whenever the PCs arrive at the pyramid. I assume that Dragonlance, and the modern APs, are full of this sort of thing.

I'm not running classic dungeoneering, nor APs, but would use a set-up like (2). For the reasons I've set out at length upthread, mostly in conversation with [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION], I think it would completely deprotagonise the players, who are searching for the prisoners, to have the prisoners killed off-screen. And if I wanted to make time a factor, there are plenty of ways of incorporating that (eg via skill challenge) which would mean that the deaths didn't happen in a way disconnected from the players' knowing participation in the process of action resolution.

 

[LostSoul]

Which will be the case the overwhelming majority of the time.

Why? and how?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'll Google it.

For CoC these days I would either use Trail of Cthulhu, or else "Cthulhu Dark", which is a little 4-pager I heard about somewhere online and downloaded.

Strike! might work well too. I think they even included a bit of Cosmic Horror genre example for it.

ToC is of course interesting, I guess I'm not sure exactly how much relation there is between FATE/FUDGE and the Gumshoe System, they sound very similar.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't think this is coming from a Gamist place. I mean, one of the oldest adages of RPGs is that "There is no winning or losing".

I would argue that there is a form of winning and losing in Gygaxian Skilled Play though. Surely the players know when they are doing better or worse. There may not be a defined victory condition, but at the very worst there was competition amongst players as a central tenet of the game. It is said that Gygax gave a pizza to any player that got to level 20 in his campaign, and only 2 players ever claimed the prize.

So, no, I don't think there's really such an adage. I think the original concept was 'competition is fun'. Now, I'm not convinced that competition was always the primary aspect of play, and I certainly don't think that it has remained so, but then you are getting away from the roots of the game in skilled play.

Mostly, I just want to play the role. I want to think of my character as a real person, and not the protagonist of a novel or a piece to be moved around a game-board. That probably also contributes to my preference for low-level games, where the difference between PCs and NPCs isn't so noticeable. Low-level characters are more relatable, so it's easier to think of them as real people.

Sure, my only contention is that the character you are playing is already highly special and virtually unique simply as a given of the game. I don't know for sure what 3.x or even 5e have to say on the matter, but in AD&D and in 4e the very fact that you could gain XP and level up was an attribute shared only by the most significant PCs and (possibly, its not clear in all editions) NPCs. So, why then balk at their adventures and such being unlikely and ultra-mundane?