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Autumnal

Bruce Baugh, Writer of Fortune
I've had bad experiences with DMs who don't skip over enough. It can feel very frustrating, wandering around talking with NPCs but not finding anything interesting to do or interesting decisions to make.

Or maybe I just want to spend 100 gp buying spell components for Find Familiar x2, so I tell the DM I want to go to the market to buy it, and he starts describing being at the market... and I'm too new to tell the DM explicitly, "I'm not actually interested in the market. I was hoping you'd just say, 'okay, it's done and you have your components now' so I could go do something interesting."
Are you sure you’re not me? Can you account for your whereabouts on August 7th, 2021? :)
 

loverdrive

Prophet of the profane (She/Her)
I'm running a Fate game set right before 1986 Jeltoqsan events, and is planned to culminate in, well, Jeltoqsan, when a student demonstration of Qazaq people was violently suppressed by the soviet regime.

It is a dramatic game, things that happen to the characters are engineered to deal with themes of oppression, national consciousness and self-determination, and to draw parallels with recent Qandy qañtar that everyone at the table lived through. Nobody is under an illusion that I don't have a thumb on the scale.

Yet, we strive for realism. I've spent hours upon hours refreshing my knowledge of the history, digging through archived documents and talking to my ma who was there personally.




I have no damn clue what "realism" can entail in a fictional world with no reality to research. Goblins aren't real. Their socio-economic situation, class struggle or demographic crisis brought by hordes of adventurers aren't real. There's nothing you can draw from, nothing to research, nothing to verify the game for "realism".

Goblins aren't real, regardless of how "fair" and "unbiased" the GM pretends to be.
 

Autumnal

Bruce Baugh, Writer of Fortune
I think that what a lot of gamers have meant by realism is that given a set of assumptions, each of which is checked for fidelity to known realities when possible and for fairly well bounded divergence when not, they aim to trace out the consequences of a given set of starting concerns. It’s why I try to distinguish between rational and reasonable, and I didn’t even get into the side lecture about sensitive dependence on initial conditions and why extrapolation keeps failing.

Youes in the spirit of fewer lexical arguments,
Bruce

PS Further explanation outsourced to a famous British logician:

 

Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus
WTF???!!!! Impossible! I don't like it, therefore it is literally impossible, the most powerful sort of impossible! Listen to yourself. Listen to what you are told, your decisions are based on what you feel like playing, there's nothing reasonable OR unreasonable about having preferences, but there's no LOGIC to it.

No, we simply see through this whole charade Max. Years or decades ago we saw it in a rational light and stopped pretending it was somehow based on anything but whim. I say that, and yet I don't hate trad play. I find some aspects of it which some of you all seem to really cling to as negative, but there can be really excellent trad play, it just doesn't imagine that there's anything realistic going on.

There's no reason here. Tell me, what would be the 'reason' why orcs and not goblins? I don't think any world I've ever seen is constrained enough to put forth a MODEL BASED logical reason for one over the other, period. Its pure aesthetics or whatever.
:rolleyes:
 

clearstream

(He, Him)
I would say that's a idiosyncratic definition of real. Especially in an RPG context.
If one really accepts the sorts of arguments you and others are making, then my definition of "real" puts the work in the right place. To make the imagined world facts external to player purposes is to put the world on a "realistic" - physicalist or as it used to be called materialist - metaphysical footing from the perspective of their characters.

World facts that are external to and independent of player goals do not suit the purposes of dramatism. Various posters have been vocal in not seeing the use of such world facts... wondered aloud how such could be of use to player characters. I take that to agree with this point.

Meaning that if there is a form of realism that exists in setups where world facts are adopted without regard to characters, then that is clearly distinct from dramatism. "Realistic" is used to mean many different things: if for some meaning of realistic that meaning is also of use to and present in dramatism (i.e. if you are right for said meaning), then there is nothing about that meaning that makes modes prioritising it distinct from dramatism (beyond said prioritisation, which isn't nothing but is also an easily blurred line.)

Therefore the definitions of "real" worth having must include the one I propose: it has consequences that dramatism has no use for and should reject. The triumvirate of definitions I proposed work collectively; but this is the one that makes the resultant "realism" most distinct.

This information isn't presented to thwart players.
I've read something like this apprehension many times now. All I can say is that the externality or independence of the world facts is not intended to thwart players. They form their goals within the context of those facts, just as in real-life we act within the world: reality does not warp around our dramatic needs.

That's the GM. NPCs don't act on their own.
That's whoever or whatever process is controlling the NPCs. I should also call attention to the desirability of players conflicting with players in this mode. I don't find it ideal to assume a single harmonious party. Even where player characters are notionally working together, each should think about their character's motives within the world.
 
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clearstream

(He, Him)
Would creating characters that will milk the world facts for maximum drama not be dramatism?
Wonderful! One of the real joys of the mode is emergent drama. Your idea is an example of players forming "their goals within the context of those [independent world] facts".

Others have said that the independent world facts will thwart player dramatism. They will at least change how the drama plays out. Would you define "dramatism" to include such play? (What then does dramatism not include? Or does it include everything?)
 
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pemerton

Legend
Sim isn't a mode of play - it's a mode of GMing - or controlling play - aimed at concealing the GMs authorship.
I would contest this claim in the context of at least some purist-for-system play. That is not a mode of GMing to conceal authorship; it's a mode of action resolution intended to eschew the need for anyone to author the immediate outcome at least (and some of the RM resolution mechanics drift towards conflict rather than task resolution, though it's a bit patchy).

I'm assuming here that the mechanical processes are known to the whole table (eg the rulebook is public).

I think the pressure point on purist-for-system is what stops it becoming pretty boring? In my experience, the answer is - a drift (perhaps quite a sharp drift) into what The Forge calls "vanilla narrativism".
 

pemerton

Legend
We have different definitions of "real" in mind. Supposing some play lacked world facts beyond the characters, then I'd call it less real just in the sense that I am defining. I wouldn't necessarily call it less plausible.
There is no such play, to the best of my knowledge. (Perhaps Toon, which sits at the edge of my knowledge.) Even Over the Edge has "world facts" that are beyond the characters - eg it is set on Earth, circa the mid-to-late 1980s, and so it has all sorts of facts about (eg) Canberra and Buenos Aires.

If one really accepts the sorts of arguments you and others are making, then my definition of "real" puts the work in the right place. To make the imagined world facts external to player purposes is to put the world on a "realistic" - physicalist or as it used to be called materialist - metaphysical footing from the perspective of their characters.

World facts that are external to and independent of player goals do not suit the purposes of dramatism.

<snip>

Meaning that if there is a form of realism that exists in setups where world facts are adopted without regard to characters, then that is clearly distinct from dramatism.
In the first quoted sentence we have "external to player purposes". Given that someone has to have a purpose, I assume therefore the "world facts" serve some GM purpose (eg aesthetic pleasure in creation of a work of fiction).

Then in the last quoted sentence we have "adopted without regard to characters". But of course "world facts" can't be adopted without regard to anything - so again, I assume the GM has some reason for adopted them, again most likely some sort of aesthetic reason.

I don't see the connection between setting that reflects the GM's purposes and motivations and realism.

I think I am misunderstanding what you are critiquing. So far as I am concerned the players drive play. That there be world-facts external to and not contingent upon them does not stop them being the spotlight. Nor that a dramatic narrative arc is not pursued.
One of the real joys of the mode is emergent drama. Your idea is an example of players forming "their goals within the context of those [independent world] facts".
What you seem to be describing here is the players establishing their goals for play out of the material the GM has presented to them (what you call "independent world facts"). I don't really see how this is more realistic than any other way the players might establish their goals for play.

The mystery of Middle Earth is straightforward. In the Silmarillion and other works, and in the maps by his son, Tolkien supplied an abundance of information that fits the criteria for realism. Those can be supplemented from books such as the superb Atlas by Karen Wynn Fonstad. Tolkien undertook multiple projects in Middle Earth. Some of those projects were dramatic stories.

<snip>

Taking Middle Earth as an example, the path of the Deeping Steam is an externally true fact regardless whether players ever go to Helms Deep. I find that delightful and in some subtle sense powerful. I accept that you do not.


I suppose it depends on whether those facts are contingent or not. If they will warp around player characters then under my account you wouldn't be prioritising that facet of realism.
I don't know what you mean in saying that "the path of the Deeping Stream is an externally true fact regardless of whether players (characters?) ever got to Helms Deep.

Nor by the related remarks about facts being "contingent" or "warping". When I think of "warping" facts I think of dreamscapes and strange dimensions of the sort that Dr Strange often seems to visit. I have included such things in my FRPGing from time-to-time, but they are not typical of the sorts of setting I use in RPGing.

In combination with the previous blocks of quotes, the implication seems to be that where the fiction is not authored by the GM having regard only to their own motivations, but instead is authored by the players or in any event having some regard to players' purposes, the fiction is a "warping" one in which the "world facts" are "contingent". This implication is obviously false. The reality of the stone that the PC kicks to one side as they trudge along the road doesn't change depending on who authored the scene, the stone or the kicking.

Anyway: there is an "externally true" fact that JRRT drew something on a map. I've used that map in RPGing, though not the Deeping Stream. I've used other maps too - maps of places on earth, maps of Kara Tur, maps of the Grand Duchy of Karameikos, most often maps of the World of Greyhawk. Yet I am being told in this thread that my methods of scene framing and action resolution produce less "realistic" fiction than others. So presumably maps are not the key to "realism".

It's not about what the GM wants to do. It's about the effect of what he's doing. The method chosen denies players' the ability to drive play.

Now, if the players are indifferent to that, then it's all good. But again, I wish people would set aside the appeal to realism and call it what it is... "this game is about my world, not your characters".
I also wish that people would talk about decision-making processes. Eg how do we resolve the action declaration "I head west, hunting for the Orcs who slew my family!"

The fact that we resolve that via (say) a Wises check or a Spout Lore check, rather than via the GM checking their map and notes and from those extrapolating what happens next, doesn't mean that one fiction has "world facts" beyond the characters and the other doesn't!

Calling it the DM's agenda implies that DM has decided that the campaign will be about goblins attacking the party. If the DM is trying to force what he wants to happen, then yes it's an agenda. That's not what simulation does. Simulation looks at the area and if the party is walking two miles away from a goblin village that the DM knows is there when a random encounter is rolled, it's realistic/simulation to choose goblins to encounter.
You are describing here are method of answering the question "What happens next." In the method you describe, the GM resolves certain action declarations by reference to a map, a key, and associated random encounter tables. I'm pretty confident everyone posting in this thread is familiar with this method, which has been in use for close to 50 years.

The fiction that this method creates is not more realistic than the fiction created using other methods. Here's a concrete example: my Prince Valiant game, which uses a different method to create the fiction, is more realistic than any D&D or RM campaign I've ever played. Years pass. The warrior PCs have built up a war band. The PCs accrue castles by strategic marriages, by diplomacy, by clever tactics and bold strokes. You can read the actual play threads on these boards - where is the ostensible lack of realism?

the problem I'm identifying is people saying that my game is less realistic than theirs. That's not what should be the distinction that separates the two games. Both games present plausible events (such as they can be considered so in a fantasy world of some sort). What's real is what is decided to be real.

I think this is especially fraught when people are saying that having things related to the PCs happen to the PCs is unrealistic because the basis for their evaluation is a trad approach where the GM presents things for them to do as they wander through his setting. So if he's always presenting things that are relevant to them, it seems to push credibility.

But what if a game didn't work that way?
This too. When characters are deeply embedded in the context of the shared fiction, when the GM is framing scenes that speak to the concerns that are evinced in this way, it is not "contrived" in any particularly remarkable way that the PCs' lives revolve around the things they care about.
 

pemerton

Legend
So every event in your life has meet a dramatic need for you? Nothing has ever happened outside of your control and which has not been dramatic?

Sure they do. What is a dramatic need for your PC is effectively the same as someone in the real world who had a child kidnapped and getting the news that he has been found.
I reiterate: I am not a character in a work of fiction. I have no dramatic needs.
 

pemerton

Legend
You were correct, I was referring to the passage of time within the fiction.

So if I'm understanding you correctly, 10 years pass.
Where say in D&D, a DM like myself will narrate to the players what their characters have heard/learned about the changes to a region (imagined events necessitating real world action), your understanding is

The GM frames a new scene (real world action authoring new imagined events), which you say in AW this is referred to a soft move.

I'm suspecting, and please correctly me if I'm wrong or miss something, the only difference that may exist between the two would be the motive for the change in the fiction. Perhaps yours is necessitated by dramatic needs, where the former is because I am attempting to adhere to a simulationist principle (whatever that is). Is that a fair statement to make?
I think it's a fair statement, in the sense that what you're saying is that - in establishing the scene "After the passage of 10 years, . . . . " - a GM might apply different principles. I don't think one could infer, from the adoption of different principles, anything specific about the content of the fiction. Probably not even if one knew all the parameters of the established fiction. (Beyond trivialities that follow from genre.)

Another example. In the style of games you play, one uses clocks/die in order for a GM to make a hard move such as a change in the fiction and the gamist mechanic of that is foregrounded (i.e. the players are aware of it).
Would it be fair then to say that if the DM in your typical traditional D&D game foregrounded the mechanics about a future change and say used a different element, say fictional time (x days something occurs), to narrate changes in the fiction - the two play styles, at least in that example, would be similar if not identical?
How is the passage of fictional time ("X days") established as a part of the shared fiction?

One of the tightest games I know for this is Classic Traveller: jumping between worlds takes a week; time in port between jumps is a week; mortgages and crew salaries must be paid every month; the roll to meet a patron can be made once per week; etc.

So Classic Traveller can unfold in a way rather like a "clock".

On the other hand, in Prince Valiant the GM declaring that something will happen in X days (say, a curse will come to fruition after a week, if it is not lifted in some fashion) is just colour. There are no resolution processes or framing processes that take ingame time as an input or generate ingame time as an output. The GM can narrate stormy weather that makes travel near-impossible, or a horse coming down lame, or the roads being clear of bandits such that travel is quick and peaceful, just as they have a mind to.

In my experience, a typical traditional D&D game is much closer to Prince Valiant in this respect than to Classic Traveller. An exception might be if the players are resolving a situation primarily via spellcasting, and so are on the clock of rest - rememorise spells - cast spells - repeat. This is part of the significance of spell casting as a mechanic in traditional D&D - it shifts control over the fiction out of the hands of the GM and into the hands of the players. Gygax didn't describe it in those terms, but was clearly aware of the phenomenon. So was Lewis Pulsipher when he wrote that most experienced D&D players prefer to play MUs.
 

loverdrive

Prophet of the profane (She/Her)
Wonderful! One of the real joys of the mode is emergent drama. Your idea is an example of players forming "their goals within the context of those [independent world] facts".
Can we call the drama "emergent" if it is consciously engineered? It's not like the character just happened to be a person that would be interesting to watch interacting with these world facts, no, the character was grown in a lab.

(and then, if it is a completely fictional world, those facts probably were grown in a lab to be interesting too)
 

I think the pressure point on purist-for-system is what stops it becoming pretty boring? In my experience, the answer is - a drift (perhaps quite a sharp drift) into what The Forge calls "vanilla narrativism".
I suggest the pressure point is 'Who decides what these characters are doing?' and you've got three options -
  • the players do and you get a drift to vanilla narratavism (as you suggest)
  • no-one actually cares - the point is a meta-game of kudos amongst the participants (gamism)
  • a GM deciding everything that matters in the game
The practical upshot of which is that the Sim agenda is inseperable from GM control. Sim play is illusory - the only player is the GM who, ironically, spends their time desperately pretending not to play.
 

clearstream

(He, Him)
There is no such play, to the best of my knowledge. (Perhaps Toon, which sits at the edge of my knowledge.) Even Over the Edge has "world facts" that are beyond the characters - eg it is set on Earth, circa the mid-to-late 1980s, and so it has all sorts of facts about (eg) Canberra and Buenos Aires.
Yes, almost all TTRPG contains some world facts that are external to characters. Hence I emphasise the following dichotomy
  1. players author world facts in light of their dramatic intentions for their characters
  2. players author world facts based only on assumptions about the world itself
The former has frequently been described as desirable for dramatic or narrativist approaches, the latter prioritises externally or independently "real" world facts that provide a context for the activities of characters. I'm trying to stress here that I don't see this as about who authors those facts.

Some posters argue that simulationism is about prioritising referee authorship of world, and from there identify the significant problem that player goals can run into world facts that thwart them. That misses the lusory attitude expected in this mode. The external or independent world facts form part of the lusory means: they're accepted just like the net on a tennis court - an inconvenience that thwarts some otherwise possible actions.

In the first quoted sentence we have "external to player purposes". Given that someone has to have a purpose, I assume therefore the "world facts" serve some GM purpose (eg aesthetic pleasure in creation of a work of fiction).
Could be the group collectively switching between authorship and player modes, could be game designers, could be the canon created by some other authors, could be historical, could be procedural.

Then in the last quoted sentence we have "adopted without regard to characters". But of course "world facts" can't be adopted without regard to anything - so again, I assume the GM has some reason for adopted them, again most likely some sort of aesthetic reason.
I do take this as a misgiving worth addressing. I ask myself in what ways this isn't all about GM aesthetics? One answer is that in some modes it's perfectly acceptable for it to be about GM aesthetics. That's the preferred setup. However, if that is conflated with simulationism then it would deny simulationism to more collaborative play, and I think that's incorrect.

What you seem to be describing here is the players establishing their goals for play out of the material the GM has presented to them (what you call "independent world facts"). I don't really see how this is more realistic than any other way the players might establish their goals for play.
I have aimed to avoid making the kinds of claims you're resisting, except under the specific definition I have provided.
 
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clearstream

(He, Him)
Can we call the drama "emergent" if it is consciously engineered? It's not like the character just happened to be a person that would be interesting to watch interacting with these world facts, no, the character was grown in a lab.

(and then, if it is a completely fictional world, those facts probably were grown in a lab to be interesting too)
If some in a group strongly want to drift play, they might well be able to. As I've laid out elsewhere, I largely do not think in terms of homogenous play, only of heterogenous with certain approaches, agenda or purposes given more weight.
 

How is the passage of fictional time ("X days") established as a part of the shared fiction?
So, in my current Tyranny of Dragons campaign, the party uncovered that the Cult of the Dragon believes it is approximately 100 days from being capable in summoning Tiamat. For mechanics, which are known to the players, I decided on 90 days + 2d10.

In that time the party is rushing to complete quests in gaining allies and destroying Cult assets and resources (while also working through their personal dramatic needs). The purpose of that is to convince the Council (the representatives of various factions and powerhouses) at their next and final meeting, to strike the Cult and its forces united and with their full strength.

The measurement of in-game time is very important as the players decide which tasks to pursue and how to pursue them. But I understand your comments below about how one can view this as merely colour as their decisions affect how the end game plays out and not necessarily if the end game occurs or not.

On the other hand, in Prince Valiant the GM declaring that something will happen in X days (say, a curse will come to fruition after a week, if it is not lifted in some fashion) is just colour. There are no resolution processes or framing processes that take ingame time as an input or generate ingame time as an output. The GM can narrate stormy weather that makes travel near-impossible, or a horse coming down lame, or the roads being clear of bandits such that travel is quick and peaceful, just as they have a mind to.

In my experience, a typical traditional D&D game is much closer to Prince Valiant in this respect than to Classic Traveller. An exception might be if the players are resolving a situation primarily via spellcasting, and so are on the clock of rest - rememorise spells - cast spells - repeat. This is part of the significance of spell casting as a mechanic in traditional D&D - it shifts control over the fiction out of the hands of the GM and into the hands of the players. Gygax didn't describe it in those terms, but was clearly aware of the phenomenon. So was Lewis Pulsipher when he wrote that most experienced D&D players prefer to play MUs.
 

pemerton

Legend
So, in my current Tyranny of Dragons campaign, the party uncovered that the Cult of the Dragon believes it is approximately 100 days from being capable in summoning Tiamat. For mechanics, which are known to the players, I decided on 90 days + 2d10.

In that time the party is rushing to complete quests in gaining allies and destroying Cult assets and resources (while also working through their personal dramatic needs). The purpose of that is to convince the Council (the representatives of various factions and powerhouses) at their next and final meeting, to strike the Cult and its forces united and with their full strength.

The measurement of in-game time is very important as the players decide which tasks to pursue and how to pursue them. But I understand your comments below about how one can view this as merely colour as their decisions affect how the end game plays out and not necessarily if the end game occurs or not.
I get that the measurement of in-game time is important. But how is it determined that completing a quest to gain allies or destroy assets takes X rather than Y days? This is where my comparison between Traveller and Prince Valiant comes in, at least as I see it.
 

I get that the measurement of in-game time is important. But how is it determined that completing a quest to gain allies or destroy assets takes X rather than Y days? This is where my comparison between Traveller and Prince Valiant comes in, at least as I see it.
I see.
We use maps which provide exact distances to locations.
Either teleportation spells are utilised or the movement rates of horses, griffons, dragons and cloud giant castles are calculated.
Downtime days are measured. Players have complete control over Downtime days and are limited only by our table's restrictions as to how much can be done in a day of Downtime.
Date and Time of Day is recorded at the end of every session.

I'd say before the 100-day mark was discovered things were far more loose, but since I foregrounded that information, everything is mapped out.
 

clearstream

(He, Him)
I'm suspecting, and please correctly me if I'm wrong or miss something, the only difference that may exist between the two would be the motive for the change in the fiction. Perhaps yours is necessitated by dramatic needs, where the former is because I am attempting to adhere to a simulationist principle (whatever that is). Is that a fair statement to make?
This is an interesting way to put it. I've also supposed that it's largely down to what motivates the choice of world facts. One implication that should then be obvious is that "realistic" - under some senses of the word* - facts can be chosen regardless of motive. However, only those motivated by a "simulationist principle**" as you neatly put it are to be counted simulationist.

*Here I suggest two tests of "realistic", mapping to real-world counterparts, and conformance with some theory thought to be true of the world.

**Here I suggest the principle comes down to the dichotomy between A) players author world facts in light of their dramatic intentions for their characters, and B) players author world facts based only on assumptions about the world itself. So it is that the world facts are independent of the player characters that is distinctive of the simulationist principle. I take the principle to then be a composite of the first two tests and this one.
 
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