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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6587847" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>When you say "where it makes sense for the NPC to be", that is not a very limiting constraint. The NPC could be anywhere! Because you, as GM, can write any NPC you like with any reason whatsoever for being in some place, or some other place.</p><p></p><p>A GM, you can decide whether or not the NPC wizard lives in a tower. You can decide whether or not the passages are vunerable to collapse by evocation spells (or, for that matter, whether or not there are passages at all). And you can decide whether or not there is a mysterious stranger with a particular relationship to the "big bad" at place A, B or C, writing the NPC's backstory in such a way as to ensure that it "makes sense" for her to be there.</p><p></p><p>It's not as if the NPC springs forth fully written from the head of Zeus and demands that you must incorporate her, with exactly that backstory, into your gameworld.</p><p></p><p>As for the players being masters of thier own fates: in what sense? If they don't know that the mysterious stranger exists, or where she is (and why she is there rather than somewhere else), then it is <em>merest chance</em> that they encounter her. For instance, you decide that she is staying at the City of Greyhawk's Green Dragon Inn. But for whatever reason, the players decide to have their PCs stay at the Wizard Hat Inn. (Perhaps one of the players read a vignette about the latter online, and liked the sound of it.)</p><p></p><p>In what meaningful sense have the players chosen not to encounter the mysterious stranger at the Green Dragon Inn? None that I can see. They weren't in charge of their own fate. They made an essentially random choice - in my version, based on some consideration that is irrelevant to the actual play of the game - and as a result never encounter this NPC you have authored, and never even know that she was there to <em>be</em> encountered.</p><p></p><p>As I said upthread, there may be <em>reasons</em> for running a game this way, but player agency doesn't seem to me to be one of them.</p><p></p><p>It's metagaming, but it's not controlling where the PCs end up. It's controlling where they <em>start</em>. The action resolution mechanics will determine where they end up.</p><p></p><p>For instance, if the players decide that their PCs will stay at the Wizard Hat Inn, then deciding that the mysterious stranger is there, rather than at the Green Dragon Inn or any other of the known inns of Greyhawk is not violating any agency. That was, in part, the point of [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION]'s hypothetical of the die roll; and [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s much earlier remarks about random vs chosen encounters. Suppose that, as GM, instead of deciding that the stranger would be at the Green Dragon you had decided to roll a die to determine which inn she was at, and on a roll of 12 the answer is "the Wizard Hat Inn". Then if you rolled the die and it came up 12, having her be there when the PCs arrive would not violate any agency. Furthermore, given that the players know nothing of this stranger, and have made their choice of inn without any regard to any prospects of strangers being there or anywhere else, it wouldn't violate their agency just to forego the die roll and deem it to have come up 12. And furthermore, for the same reason, it woudn't violate any agency not to even bother with the random table, or the pre-determination of a location, and to simply decide "whichever inn the PCs go to, the mysterious stranger will be there."</p><p></p><p>What the players do about the presence of the mysterious stranger is up to them. That's where and how they exercise their agency - by deciding how their PCs engage the salient elements of the shared fiction, and then determining the outcome of that engagement via the action resolution mechanics.</p><p></p><p>In circumstances where the framing of conflicts is determined solely by the GM, without reference to any signals sent (implicitly or explicitly) by the players, the players don't get to make <em>all the choices</em>. Most of the choices have been made by the GM (eg the GM has populated the entire world, and so who the PCs will meet if they go to the Wizard Hat Inn rather than the Green Dragon Inn has already been decided by the GM). The players choices are confined to action declarations in relation to fiction authored by the GM.</p><p></p><p>Sure, but what counts as "forced". I have witnessed, played in and read about plenty of games in which, if the players actually want to have a session of RPGing, they have to pick up on <em>one</em> of the GM's plot hooks.</p><p></p><p>If the GM provides three options then there is a choice of carriages, but I still regard it as a railroad.</p><p></p><p>As a viewer of a mystery movie or TV show, or reader of a mystery novel, perhaps - though I'm personally not the biggest fan of the genre. </p><p></p><p>As a participant, not so much.</p><p></p><p>Part of the skill of authoring a mystery story is manipulating the audience so that they both see all the clues, but fail to put them together. In the context of RPGing, to me that smacks of GM domination of the story. If the players deem an NPC irrelevant through their play, then I generally don't want the GM to override that player choice by - N sessions later - suddenly springing that NPC on them as the lieutenant of the 'big bad'.</p><p></p><p>But perhaps you meant something else by "irrelevant"? I am talking about irrelevance at the table - the NPC gains no traction with the players. If you mean irrelevance <em>in the fiction</em> - ie the PCs reach the conclusion that the NPC is not connected to their goals - that is a completely different matter. If the PCs reach this conclusion because the players engaged with the NPC, perhaps talked to her, but failed in the relevant action resolution to learn her secret (eg poor Insight rolls) then that is a different matter. That is not an NPC whom the <em>players</em> have treated as irrelevant, if she has been a sustained focus in the course of play.</p><p></p><p>To give concrete examples from my actual play: I would never do any sort of "surprise reveal" for the tiefling sorcerers I mentioned upthread (allies of the cleric of Torog). They were of no interest to the players except as enemy artillery who had to be defeated in combat, and have played no role in any of the player that has occurred in the intervening 4-or-so years.</p><p></p><p>The patriarch who was a rival to the Baron, on the other hand, could be interesting to bring into play. The players (and their PCs) don't regard him as relevant to their larger cosmological concerns, but he was a NPC who figured in play, who was outwitted in a court case (resolved as a skill challenge), and who in that sense actually mattered to the players. If I brought him back into the game, the first question wouldn't be "Who are you talking about?" - whereas for the tieflings it would be.</p><p></p><p>In what sense was the GM neutral? The GM wasn't neutral as between the options the players might take: the GM wrote in two paths, the left and the right, and choosing the left path meant auto-loss. With no clues as to that possibility - in my example I stipulated that the left path looked reasonable.</p><p></p><p>I don't think that's good scenario design. In fact I think it's terrible scenario design.</p><p></p><p>That's why I compared it to "rocks fall". The GM could make a "rocks fall" check at the start of every session, declaring that rocks fall on a 10% chance. That would be neutral, but not therefore fair or sensible.</p><p></p><p>Or the GM could have a secret notation in his/her backstory: the god of rock-falling will make rocks fall, so that everybody dies, if anyone says a particular phrase or sentence twice in a row. When one of the players, speaking in character, says that phrase, rocks fall and the PCs all die. The fact that the GM can show the table his/her secret backstory doesn't vindicate that as an episode of GMing.</p><p></p><p>No. It's based on a belief that the GM is meant to author scenarios in which the players are able to make meaningful choices; not random choices where going left rather than right will be auto-loss.</p><p></p><p>See my example of the "god of rocks-falling" above: who would think that is good GMing? Putting in an auto-lose pathway is no different in my book.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6587847, member: 42582"] When you say "where it makes sense for the NPC to be", that is not a very limiting constraint. The NPC could be anywhere! Because you, as GM, can write any NPC you like with any reason whatsoever for being in some place, or some other place. A GM, you can decide whether or not the NPC wizard lives in a tower. You can decide whether or not the passages are vunerable to collapse by evocation spells (or, for that matter, whether or not there are passages at all). And you can decide whether or not there is a mysterious stranger with a particular relationship to the "big bad" at place A, B or C, writing the NPC's backstory in such a way as to ensure that it "makes sense" for her to be there. It's not as if the NPC springs forth fully written from the head of Zeus and demands that you must incorporate her, with exactly that backstory, into your gameworld. As for the players being masters of thier own fates: in what sense? If they don't know that the mysterious stranger exists, or where she is (and why she is there rather than somewhere else), then it is [I]merest chance[/I] that they encounter her. For instance, you decide that she is staying at the City of Greyhawk's Green Dragon Inn. But for whatever reason, the players decide to have their PCs stay at the Wizard Hat Inn. (Perhaps one of the players read a vignette about the latter online, and liked the sound of it.) In what meaningful sense have the players chosen not to encounter the mysterious stranger at the Green Dragon Inn? None that I can see. They weren't in charge of their own fate. They made an essentially random choice - in my version, based on some consideration that is irrelevant to the actual play of the game - and as a result never encounter this NPC you have authored, and never even know that she was there to [I]be[/I] encountered. As I said upthread, there may be [I]reasons[/I] for running a game this way, but player agency doesn't seem to me to be one of them. It's metagaming, but it's not controlling where the PCs end up. It's controlling where they [I]start[/I]. The action resolution mechanics will determine where they end up. For instance, if the players decide that their PCs will stay at the Wizard Hat Inn, then deciding that the mysterious stranger is there, rather than at the Green Dragon Inn or any other of the known inns of Greyhawk is not violating any agency. That was, in part, the point of [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION]'s hypothetical of the die roll; and [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s much earlier remarks about random vs chosen encounters. Suppose that, as GM, instead of deciding that the stranger would be at the Green Dragon you had decided to roll a die to determine which inn she was at, and on a roll of 12 the answer is "the Wizard Hat Inn". Then if you rolled the die and it came up 12, having her be there when the PCs arrive would not violate any agency. Furthermore, given that the players know nothing of this stranger, and have made their choice of inn without any regard to any prospects of strangers being there or anywhere else, it wouldn't violate their agency just to forego the die roll and deem it to have come up 12. And furthermore, for the same reason, it woudn't violate any agency not to even bother with the random table, or the pre-determination of a location, and to simply decide "whichever inn the PCs go to, the mysterious stranger will be there." What the players do about the presence of the mysterious stranger is up to them. That's where and how they exercise their agency - by deciding how their PCs engage the salient elements of the shared fiction, and then determining the outcome of that engagement via the action resolution mechanics. In circumstances where the framing of conflicts is determined solely by the GM, without reference to any signals sent (implicitly or explicitly) by the players, the players don't get to make [I]all the choices[/I]. Most of the choices have been made by the GM (eg the GM has populated the entire world, and so who the PCs will meet if they go to the Wizard Hat Inn rather than the Green Dragon Inn has already been decided by the GM). The players choices are confined to action declarations in relation to fiction authored by the GM. Sure, but what counts as "forced". I have witnessed, played in and read about plenty of games in which, if the players actually want to have a session of RPGing, they have to pick up on [I]one[/I] of the GM's plot hooks. If the GM provides three options then there is a choice of carriages, but I still regard it as a railroad. As a viewer of a mystery movie or TV show, or reader of a mystery novel, perhaps - though I'm personally not the biggest fan of the genre. As a participant, not so much. Part of the skill of authoring a mystery story is manipulating the audience so that they both see all the clues, but fail to put them together. In the context of RPGing, to me that smacks of GM domination of the story. If the players deem an NPC irrelevant through their play, then I generally don't want the GM to override that player choice by - N sessions later - suddenly springing that NPC on them as the lieutenant of the 'big bad'. But perhaps you meant something else by "irrelevant"? I am talking about irrelevance at the table - the NPC gains no traction with the players. If you mean irrelevance [I]in the fiction[/I] - ie the PCs reach the conclusion that the NPC is not connected to their goals - that is a completely different matter. If the PCs reach this conclusion because the players engaged with the NPC, perhaps talked to her, but failed in the relevant action resolution to learn her secret (eg poor Insight rolls) then that is a different matter. That is not an NPC whom the [I]players[/I] have treated as irrelevant, if she has been a sustained focus in the course of play. To give concrete examples from my actual play: I would never do any sort of "surprise reveal" for the tiefling sorcerers I mentioned upthread (allies of the cleric of Torog). They were of no interest to the players except as enemy artillery who had to be defeated in combat, and have played no role in any of the player that has occurred in the intervening 4-or-so years. The patriarch who was a rival to the Baron, on the other hand, could be interesting to bring into play. The players (and their PCs) don't regard him as relevant to their larger cosmological concerns, but he was a NPC who figured in play, who was outwitted in a court case (resolved as a skill challenge), and who in that sense actually mattered to the players. If I brought him back into the game, the first question wouldn't be "Who are you talking about?" - whereas for the tieflings it would be. In what sense was the GM neutral? The GM wasn't neutral as between the options the players might take: the GM wrote in two paths, the left and the right, and choosing the left path meant auto-loss. With no clues as to that possibility - in my example I stipulated that the left path looked reasonable. I don't think that's good scenario design. In fact I think it's terrible scenario design. That's why I compared it to "rocks fall". The GM could make a "rocks fall" check at the start of every session, declaring that rocks fall on a 10% chance. That would be neutral, but not therefore fair or sensible. Or the GM could have a secret notation in his/her backstory: the god of rock-falling will make rocks fall, so that everybody dies, if anyone says a particular phrase or sentence twice in a row. When one of the players, speaking in character, says that phrase, rocks fall and the PCs all die. The fact that the GM can show the table his/her secret backstory doesn't vindicate that as an episode of GMing. No. It's based on a belief that the GM is meant to author scenarios in which the players are able to make meaningful choices; not random choices where going left rather than right will be auto-loss. See my example of the "god of rocks-falling" above: who would think that is good GMing? Putting in an auto-lose pathway is no different in my book. [/QUOTE]
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