D&D General Why Editions Don't Matter

[pemerton]

That isn't relevant. That one could sit down and recite a story to others does not in any way equate to game play in which there are fictional pressures. This is apples and oranges.

In traditional game play, the DM is not "reciting a story to the others."

I don't understand how your post responds to mine. I was replying to something that FrogReaver posted, about the relationship between pressure in the fiction and the experience of play.

If I may distill this down to my understanding of your position - "A players knowledge of the rules impacts his decision making. Therefore, even if the fictional outcomes are the same the experience from the players perspective will can be different."

I'm really confused. Why are you reiterating the same stuff to me that I already said you had persuaded me about?

As the quote from Maxperson shows, it's not always clear what a post is trying to convey. In your case, I wasn't sure what you meant by "perspective", which is often a word used to contrast with what's actually the case. I wanted to make my view clear. If we're ad idem, great!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think the chess example is not a very good one because part of playing chess skillfully is memorizing the board and remembering the exact moves that are made in the course of game to analyze it later on. If you rearrange the board at any point any chess player worth their salt will know.

That does not address the larger point that is basically impossible to know (for certain) that a given player or GM's decisions are informed by the expectations of the game without reading their mind. There's a certain level of truth to that, but for practical purposes I think it is largely irrelevant. Our actions and decision making process will always be shaped by what is expected of us, which behaviors are incentivized and the tools we have available. Such impacts tend to be felt over time. I have direct experience of this as a player and GM of indie games where people acted contrary to the spirit of the game. It took a couple of sessions but I have largely been able to suss such incidents out.

The other thing is that I almost always spend some time talking shop with the rest of my group. Those conversations tend to reveal a lot about the attitude players and GMs have towards the game.

I personally think there's a better reason why the chess analogy doesn't work.

The proposal is that the DM can make "whatever moves" could get them to the displayed new state, so long as none of them are illegal. But you don't take 7 turns in a row (or whatever) as a chess player. You alternate. And forcing white to move a piece without knowing where the black pieces are would be awful--it would almost totally ruin the game experience. It doesn't particularly matter that Black is assiduously making no moves that aren't illegal while the other player can't see.

And if you don't do that--if you only allow one move at a time....then there's no difference between doing it openly and doing it secretly, other than the momentary surprise of "okay which piece moved, now?" For anyone actually invested in playing chess, there would be no other difference.

The problem is, there just...isn't a game that can be used in this kind of analogy, to the best of my knowledge. The closest analogy I can think of, and it isn't a very good one, is playing Battleship where one player is allowed to move their ships after every round of the other person's actions, but only to locations that aren't blocked off, and only if that ship hasn't been hit yet. And I hope that this illustrates just how frustrating and un-fun it would be to do that!

 

[FrogReaver]

The GM's experience of play is part and parcel of this. There are a multitude of things I would absolutely never do running D&D that I frequently do in other games because the constraints and principles introduce the specter of the unwelcome - outcomes that neither the GM or any of the players would choose on their own. Sometimes it's out of a sense of fairness, sometimes because we would have never thought of it otherwise, sometimes because it's fundamentally unfair and often because we don't want it to happen but the real possibility that it could happen is necessary for the tension of the game to be preserved.

To me this shows that the D&D DM is often still quite constrained in his decision-making despite the rules placing less constraints upon him.

 

[FrogReaver]

I don't take exception with anyone's preferences. Just what I view as unfounded claims about how other games work or that they are fundamentally providing the same sort of play experience. I also hope I am not coming across as judging play preferences.

IMO those unfounded claims aren't just popping out of the air. They are almost exclusively a result of what people are being told about a game coupled with a bunch of disagreement about what certain words and terms mean.

 

[FrogReaver]

That’s a lot of words to say “I make it up”.

I guess congrats on finding the most concise way to dismiss a post.

 

[Oofta]

While I cannot speak


My use of storyteller here is specifically related to making decisions as a referee (during play) that are influenced by what the referee thinks would make for a better story. I would also include scenario design that is built to pressure players into choosing particular goals for their characters or with a certain outcome in mind. Nothing wrong with that being anyone's jam I just do not view it as being a referee. Designing interesting settings and scenarios that provoke action is just GMing in my book.

Ah, I see said the blind man as he picked up his hammer and saw. Yeah, there is a difference between assuming an outcome versus setting things in motion and then refereeing the results. I fall into the latter camp, even if I do think about probable outcomes and effects that the most likely actions the PCs take will have. It's part of the fun of playing with a DM and not playing a video game which (even if it has branching logic) has a pre-scripted story.

I don't take exception with anyone's preferences. Just what I view as unfounded claims about how other games work or that they are fundamentally providing the same sort of play experience. I also hope I am not coming across as judging play preferences.

Gotcha, thanks.

 

[FrogReaver]

From my perspective in order for a game to be about rulings over rules a GM must be principally constrained to consider only the situation at hand and their understanding of the setting. For it to be a ruling it cannot just be deciding without constraints. You cannot both be lead storyteller and referee. You must choose one or the other.

A referee in a football game must make decisions about what constitutes illegal contact. There's alot of judgment there. Some referees are overall more lenient than others. Others are more lenient on some things and more strict on others. How the referees call things and how the players adapt to how they are calling changes the game experience for everyone. Yet, as the game is getting close to the end, there's a notion of referees becoming more lenient and 'letting them play'. This is very common in sports. It's a conceit I as a football fan fully agree with.

Are those referee's trying to be lead story teller and referee? I don't think so, but it seems your criticism here may be so broad that it would include that kind of behavior as well?

Maybe the more important question is: can a DM be 90% referee and 10% story teller? I believe they can, it sounds like you don't?

Addendum : In all of this I am not trying to say that 5e is lacking or should be changed. It's an excellent design well suited to its niche (although Numenera gives it a run for its money). I am only responding to claims I feel try to deny the fundamental unique value of other sorts of design and play processes. The flexibility claim in particular is one that really bothers me because it puts forward the implication that both the design of other games have not produced unique value and also puts forward the implication that the skillset GMs like me who have put in a lot intellectual labor to acquire could be just as easily achieved through other means. I find it deeply insulting because of the connotation that much of my last 15 years of experience as a GM have been wasted, but I am still trying to engage in good faith.

I get the feeling. That's usually how I feel in these discussions. If it helps, I view this more in the engineering light, there are these X things, you can't have all of them and so a game that chooses flexibility inherently is missing out on other good qualities. There's also the notion that more flexibility doesn't necessarily mean just more good choices. I've talked about both of those things.

I don't believe D&D is better than those other games, possibly better for me, but mostly it's just different.

 

[FrogReaver]

Ah, I see said the blind man as he picked up his hammer and saw. Yeah, there is a difference between assuming an outcome versus setting things in motion and then refereeing the results. I fall into the latter camp, even if I do think about probable outcomes and effects that the most likely actions the PCs take will have. It's part of the fun of playing with a DM and not playing a video game which (even if it has branching logic) has a pre-scripted story.



Gotcha, thanks.

There seems to be a divide though. 5e DM's mostly describe themselves as setting things up and putting things in motion (sometimes with an occasional thumb on the scale event - my most common being skipping what I think would have been an encounter if it's getting late).

But others seem to describe that same thing as trying to tell a story. There is a style of D&D thats closer to telling a story but it seems these 2 different things may be being conflated?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I guess congrats on finding the most concise way to dismiss a post.

While I agree that it isn't exactly a friendly response, there's a valid critique in there as well. That is, the first three points can be summarized as answering the questions:

• "Does the Duke care? How much?"
• "What would it cost?"
• "How long would it take?"

The answers to all of these questions is completely up to the DM, to a degree that the players really could not even in principle question it, making this "process" little more than deciding what story to narrate. The bullet-points which follow can be summarized with "be consistent" x2 and "do what sounds fun (to me as DM)" x3. While the players' interests are considered in an oblique way, those interests only exist insofar as they feed into Xetheral's own interests; note the repeated use of phrases like "my preference," "my deliberate bias," "my perception." This reinforces the DM-as-author (or at least DM-as-director) stance being taken here.

From there, they note that this isn't actually much of a procedure. Instead, it's a single, holistic, interconnected event, something that cannot be meaningfully picked apart in practice. That yet further emphasizes that this is, at rock bottom, an exercise in DM imagination more than player participation. Players can attempt to provide input, but ultimately the DM's brain is the black box that makes the system run, and truly changing how that black box turns inputs into outputs is going to be...difficult at best.

 

[FrogReaver]

Do the following procedures / expectations reduce overall flexibility (and not just GM flexibility)?

1. Ask questions and build on the answers. Throughout play ask provocative questions about the player characters' past and connections to the setting. Incorporate them into your scenario design, providing additional details that highlight that player character's struggles.

That's a fairly loose constraint. About the only thing it precludes is never asking provocative questions about the player character's past connections to the setting. So I'd say it removes 1 choice guaranteed. That's less flexibility, but it forces you into a state where more choices are going to be potentially made, which IMO would be more flexibility. I think I see your point.

This sounds similar to my thoughts on railroading/force. A single or limited use of such techniques may actually take the players to a state where they have alot more freedom of choice. Interesting parallels there I think!

2. When creating a player character any player may opt to design up to 3 NPCs that connect them to the game's setting. These characters will be useful assets in play, but will also expect favors in return. The GM is expected to feature these NPCs in at least some of the scenarios they design.

Greater player flexibility. Less GM flexibility. Unsure whether flexibility is overall greater.

3. When player characters arrive at a location that has not been explored in play they may choose to define an NPC contact who has access to useful information but they are also embroiled in trouble. The GM decides what that trouble is. If the player defines a contact then their character has been here before. The group decides what that character's reputation is in this location.

I am not asking if you feel they would add to the game or would work well for your table. Basically does giving players permission to define some setting elements with the expectation they will be featured in a significant way make the game more or less flexible?

I don't know about overall more or less flexible, but it does seem to add player flexibility and gm flexibility as separate axis.