Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9760774" data-attributes="member: 42582">I haven't changed my mind on this over the past month.The Doom Pool doesn't involve manipulating anyone.To elaborate:In classic D&D (Gygax & Arneson; AD&D; B/X) the fundamental job of the GM is to (i) draw a dungeon map, then (ii) key that map (with monsters, traps/tricks, and treasure), then (iii) to referee the PCs' expeditions into the dungeon. There are two core aspects to that refereeing: (a) being fair in adjudicating the players' attempts to have their PCs acquire information (by listening at doors, using detection magic, etc); (b) framing scenes when the PCs open doors, or otherwise enter rooms (or similar encounter areas), in accordance with what the key says is there to be discovered/encountered.When a GM does (b) - that is, on the basis of their key, tells the players what their PCs encounter - the GM is not manipulating the players. They are just playing the game, in accordance with its rules and principles.Now, compare MHRP:There are no maps or keys. The GM is allowed to frame scenes, with up to three Scene Distinctions and whatever NPCs/opposition the GM thinks fits. But the GM is not at liberty to introduce new elements into the scene, except via the use of the Doom Pool to do so.So, for instance, when I use a NPC's action to add a die to the Doom Pool; and then spend that die to add an element to a scene; that's not manipulating the players. It's just playing the game, in accordance with its rules.To be honest, I don't think this focus on techniques sheds a lot of light.For instance, consider your fourth point: in map-and-key play, with fair refereeing, that's not railroading. It's just the GM doing their job as referee.And your final dot point only matters if plays is based around a map-and-key in the way that I've described above - ie with the GM using the map-and-key to coordinate scene framing, and the players acquiring information about the map and key (normally by declaring low-stakes actions that oblige the GM to provide that information) such that their action declarations about where to go are meaningful rather than random/arbitrary.But not all RPGing works in that fashion. For instance, when I GM Prince Valiant, I don't use a map or a key. When I open up the map of Britain (on the inside cover of my copy of Pendragon, which came as part of the Prince Valiant Kickstarter), or when I pull out my map of Europe c 800 CE (photocopied from my Penguin Atlas of Medieval History), and the players choose where their PCs are travelling to, this is about coordinating descriptions of the action (eg place names, coherent travel times) and the overarching themes/stakes. The players' choice of theme/stakes affects my decisions about what scenes to frame - that's what makes my Prince Valiant play not railroading - but I don't care about where they're travelling beyond that. I frame the scenes that I think will work.This is not illusionism - it's not a pretence that things are being decided one way when they're being decided another way, nor any sort of obscuring of how GMing decisions are being made. The players know exactly how decisions are being made: they know I'm choosing to frame a scene that I think is interesting relative to the themes and stakes the players have chosen.</blockquote>

Verification