The Quantum Ogre Dilemma

[Micah Sweet]

This is an important distinction and I agree with your point here. Re-using work you did is not the same thing as forcing an encounter in the moment regardless of what the PCs do.

In my opinion, the most important aspect of RPGs, the thing that separates them from every other form of game, is player agency. And that agency is Always On. If the PCs come to a fork in the road, they choose right or left. If there is "no discerning information" for that choice, the players are no using their agency to discover the distinctions. The game really does belong mostly to the players, not the GM, and it is up to the GM to be able to communicate the world to the players when they investigate it enough to make meaningful choices. But to be clear, flipping a coin at the fork in the road IS an expression of player agency, too.

I don't think I would say that the game mostly belongs to the players. That essentially makes the GM their employee. As a general statement that feels untrue. Are you talking about a specific game?

 

[prabe]

I don't think I would say that the game mostly belongs to the players. That essentially makes the GM their employee. As a general statement that feels untrue. Are you talking about a specific game?

The games I run aren't mine, they're ours. There are more of them than there are of me, so the game belong mostly to the players seems to check out.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I have hard time believing that a game where everything is prepped or even randomised will be functional. Like a lot of things can be, but I can't imagine that everything could, nor I think it is practical. Like do you have a random chart for "interesting thing that could happen when people go on market" or do you predetermine that wandering minstrel will be performing on the market a song that includes a plot hook on Thursday 2 P.M. and if the PCs go there at any other time they miss it? Or perhaps the minstrel just happens to be there singing the song whenever the players go there?

You're creating the straw man of perfect simulation in an attempt to invalidate my playstyle. My GMing goals are just that: goals. I strive to avoid forcing anything on the players outside of setting logic or their choices. If there is a "plot hook" (I dislike that narrative term, since my setting isn't a story with plot), it is either found in a specific place (where it remains even if the players don't go there), or it is potentially available in an area via a random roll. I don't put things in the PCs path because I want them to encounter them no matter what.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm open to feedback and discussion about my DMing style, but regardless of whether this ogre is quantum or not, any player who wants to argue about metagame topics in the middle of an encounter is very likely to get upgraded to an encounter with a Quantum Beholder.

If it's gotten to that point at the table, I feel things need to be addressed, whether that's suspending play for a brief conversation in the moment, putting aside the topic for after the session, or some other solution.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But we don't (that I know of, anyway). We're just playing a game that makes stories set in such a world. It doesn't break my suspension of disbelief in a novel when (genre appropriate) weird stuff happens to the protagonist, that's just kinda how (some) stories work.

Games and stories are very different things to me. A story is one way a situation could go, if the characters make certain choices and events play out in a particular fashion. I'm not running the game to tell a particular story, just to present a world for the players to explore through their PCs.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The games I run aren't mine, they're ours. There are more of them than there are of me, so the game belong mostly to the players seems to check out.

Then what is the GM's purpose in your opinion? To facilitate player awesomeness? That sounds like an employee to me. To tell a story where the players play the stars? That's a fine activity, but a different game than I want to play.

 

[AlViking]

Would the ritual have happened if the PCs don't stop it, and decide to do something else instead? I doubt every GM would have the same answer.

In my game? The ritual still would have happened. On the other hand, the ritual would never be world ending because I don't want to create a brand new world. It would have been quite bad for the city and surrounding region.

edit - there have been times when city states have fallen and there were dramatic long term campaign impacts when the characters did not stop something. Those things just won't be world ending because if the characters have to save the world odds are as a DM I'm going to guarantee it will happen.

 

[prabe]

Games and stories are very different things to me. A story is one way a situation could go, if the characters make certain choices and events play out in a particular fashion. I'm not running the game to tell a particular story, just to present a world for the players to explore through their PCs.

Linear authored fiction--novels, movies, et al.--are not TRPGs, and confusing the media is in fact one of my pet peeves. That said, the story the game makes is the way things go. There isn't a story in the games I run before things go anywhere. I'm not running the game to tell a particular story, either; I'm just presenting people, places, things, and situations to the players and seeing what happens.

 

[prabe]

Then what is the GM's purpose in your opinion? To facilitate player awesomeness? That sounds like an employee to me. To tell a story where the players play the stars? That's a fine activity, but a different game than I want to play.

Neither of those, actually. I present the players with fictional people, places, things, and situations, and they decide how their characters react, then I decide how the fictional things that aren't their characters respond. While I make an effort to focus the things I present to the players on the things their characters need, want, or are otherwise interested in, I'm not "facilitating player awesomeness," nor am I "tell[ing] a story where the players play the stars." Both of those, by the way sound an awful lot like denigrating someone else's playstyle (though not mine).

 

[Micah Sweet]

In my game? The ritual still would have happened. On the other hand, the ritual would never be world ending because I don't want to create a brand new world. It would have been quite bad for the city and surrounding region.

edit - there have been times when city states have fallen and there were dramatic long term campaign impacts when the characters did not stop something. Those things just won't be world ending because if the characters have to save the world odds are as a DM I'm going to guarantee it will happen.

This is why I just don't create literal save the world situations outside of supers games.