D&D General Why Editions Don't Matter

[FrogReaver]

When I talk about play experience, and pressure on the players, I am not meaning the fiction and the imagined pressure on the protagonists.

Here's why: a group of people can sit down, and one of them recite a story to the others in which various pressures are experienced (in the story) by various protagonists. But that wouldn't be a play experience at all.

Instead of a single storyteller, we could imagine the story being told round-robin. That still wouldn't be a play experience.

The play experience that I'm talking about is not the experience of imagining events, but the experience of creating a shared fiction via the distinctive medium of the RPG which is (roughly, and in most cases) that one participant takes on a type of "backstory/adversity management" function, while the rest take on "protagonist" functions. What distinguishes RPGs, and hence play experiences, within this broad medium is the various procedures whereby those functions are constituted, and integrated.

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

 

[FrogReaver]

This doesn't seem to replicate playing chess. Now I'll admit I'm not a chess player; but I'd imagine part of what playing chess involves is not only seeing the pieces arrayed at any particular time, but knowing how they got there, so as to infer the "trajectory" of play (eg what is this other player trying to do) and responding to that. I don't think playing chess is just solving puzzle after puzzle.

Player A and B play your chess' game. After each of player A's moves player B rearrages the board keeping player A's pieces exactly the same and arranging one of his own pieces to a position that he could have legally moved to if they were actually playing chess while keeping his other pieces in the same positions.

From player A's perspective what's the difference in doing that and actually playing chess - or put another way, could player A tell you if what he just played was chess or chess' (if he hadn't been told ahead of time)?

 

[hawkeyefan]

I don't evaluate player performance?*

I don’t mean like a report card. But you don’t have an idea about when someone has a good game? Or a bad one?

What determines that in your opinion?

I disagree with what you deem as central. I don't believe players need to make perfectly informed decisions. I believe the need some information and have the ability to maybe gain more information. But I don't think they need to know precisely how everything works to make a tactical decision. To me tactical decisions based on incomplete information are just another type of tactical decision (and are more like the tactical decisions you actually experience in the real world).

I didn’t say they need to be perfectly informed. I’m saying that the players need to understand how the game works. They need to know the rules and procedures.

There are unknowns in D&D combat, but folks still know how it works.

I think systems and play cultures that encourage house rules are less contsrained when it comes to implementing new house rules. I might very well be mistaken but i don't get the impression that the culture around say blades in the dark is as open to houserules as the culture around D&D.

I’d say you’re mistaken.

I'll say this, the play experiences we have of players that enjoy such systems do show they feel it benefits them when the DM has that flexibility. Not everyone has that same experience obviously, but that's a common theme you see when the benefits of such a style are talked about from the players.

Sure. Again, it depends what you want out of play. I have no problem with a GM using their judgment. That’s a necessity. Granting them total authority is not a necessity. The more authority the GM has, and the more freely they can apply it, the less the game feels stable to me as a player. I don’t equate that instability with flexibility.

I don't think being focused on story relies on overriding rules. I can't remember the last time I didn't follow the rules unless it was one of my pre-established house rules. Of course there's a lot of wiggle room in 5E for rulings and NPC behavior.

Well when the rules say you can do whatever you want, sure there’s no conflict.

In moments where story and rules actually do come into conflict… where you have to choose which takes priority… the answer to that reveals a lot about that game.

They are never going to know that they've gone three hexes so therefore they are "due" for an encounter. In the real world we evaluate risk all the time without specific pre-planned structure or knowledge that we don't gather for ourselves.

“Due” in what sense? I mean, if it’s a check of some sort, why not let them know? The dice will decide what happens, not the GM.

If you as GM just decide they’re due for an encounter, then yeah, I guess I can see how you’d not share that. It breaks the illusion, I suppose.

The rules of the game should, ideally, reinforce the fiction. So the players knowing that a random encounter check happens with X frequency doesn’t translate to the characters knowing that. It corresponds to the characters feeling like they’re pushing their luck and it’s only a matter of time until they run into trouble.

The mechanics and the fiction can interact in indirect ways like that.

As a DM I'm not doing "whatever" in the moment. I've set the stage, decided what the NPC actors are doing and then react to the PC's actions. TTRPGs are always going to have a fair amount of GM decision making, mine just doesn't have much of a predefined structure that can be gamed by the players.

The use of game in such a negative way here is baffling to me. I mean… it’s a game. Why wouldn’t players want to game?

 

[Campbell]

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.
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.
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?

 

[hawkeyefan]

My procedure as a DM for determining how close the evil Duke and his scary knights are to tracking down the PCs goes like this:

(First, the duke wouldn't be pursuing the PCs adversarily in the first place except in response to actions the PCs took with the knowledge that it might cause the duke (or at the very least, some powerful political figure) to come after them.)

1. I'd start by determining how much of a priority the PCs have made themselves for the duke, considering any actions the PCs took (especially the success or failure of deliberate actions) to either increase or decrease that priority.
2. Based on the priority the duke places on finding the PCs and his overall available resources, I'd next determine the resources he would devote to tracking the PCs.
3. Finally, I'd determine how likely those resources would be to find the PCs in the elapsed time so far, taking into account the PCs' intervening choices (e.g. where to travel next, how high of a profile they're maintaining, etc.), especially the success or failure of PC actions intended to make it easier or harder for the duke to find them. The duke finds the PCs after the elapsed time catches up to the time required to find them, assuming the PCs are still in the area being searched at that time.

These determinations rarely give specific answers. When deciding between multiple possibilities, I consider the following factors:

• Consistency with material already established so far in play.
• Plausibility in the context of what the PCs know of the game setting.
• My preference for outcomes that cause the PCs' interactions with the setting to lead to learning more about, and becoming further involved with, other actors in the setting.
• My perception of whether having an encounter likely to lead to combat would be desirable, pacing-wise, at any particular moment, based on my read of the players' emotional state and current level of engagement.
• My deliberate bias towards ensuring that the PCs' actions impact the course of events and/or the state of the game setting.

I'd then repeat my process (tweaking the details, as relevant) to determine whether and how much the PCs learn of the Duke's pursuit.

Please note that although I've described my process methodically (based on reflective self-analysis), in actual use my process is more of an intuitive synthesis and less of a step-by-step resolution. I've been applying this process (with hopefully increasing levels of success) to running ad-hoc informal RPGs since before I knew D&D and similar packaged games existed, and continue to apply it with every system I run. Since I have a predefined process for running games, I prefer systems that provide useful action resolution mechanics and mechanical support for desired setting elements without trying to prescribe a specific process for running my game.

I realize that you would consider the fact that I need to bring in an external process for running 5e to mean that 5e is "incomplete" by your definition. However, from my standpoint, I suspect that any system you would consider to be "complete" would (unless it was written just for me) have process rules that would conflict with my personal process, and thus would be less useful to me as a tool for running games than "incomplete" games are.

I particularly liked this excerpt from one of the articles @Malmuria linked upthread, which quoted Brendan from Necropraxis as saying:

"[Lack of codification of procedure] is a weakness because it is notoriously hard to learn how to play an RPG (which involves conversational form, conflict resolution, rules math, and many other components) from a text alone. It is a strength because it leaves the borders of potential wide open, assuming that you want to use the rules more like a toolkit than a how-to manual."​

Using that terminology, I have a very strong preference for using a game system as a toolkit, rather than as a how-to manual. So, the how-to process elements you view as necessary for a game to be "complete", I view as actively unhelpful for running my game. I'm thrilled that there are both complete and incomplete game systems out there to cater to different preferences, but as far as my own use-case goes, I personally consider "completeness" (as you define it) to be undesirable.

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

 

[Maxperson]

When I talk about play experience, and pressure on the players, I am not meaning the fiction and the imagined pressure on the protagonists.

Here's why: a group of people can sit down, and one of them recite a story to the others in which various pressures are experienced (in the story) by various protagonists. But that wouldn't be a play experience at all.

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."

 

[Campbell]

Delete me please.

 

[niklinna]

To use a perhaps morbid analogy, the human spine is extremely flexible for a bonus object. If we were to shatter that spine, it would by definition have a larger number of options for directions it could move. However, I don't think most people would consider that an increase in "flexibility." That is the disagreement I am pointing to here. That more options can actually transform "flexibility" into "enervation," at least to some viewers, meaning that a larger number of options is not merely "pros and cons," it is straight up (subjectively) not flexibility anymore.

Because a shattered spine can bend in any direction, but can't actually support movement or action anymore, specifically because it permits (but does not support) movement in any direction. IOW, some will define "flexibility" as you have: more options, more flexible, always, no matter what. Others, like me, would define flexibility as "more supported options," meaning that an increase in options without support would not actually be "flexibility" and might even reduce it.

Looks like someone's been reading Bernstein!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Okay, so what does 'more supported options' mean and what does 'options without support' mean?

I'm going to use an analogy again, at least to get things started, but this one will at least be in the gaming sphere. Specifically how "open-world" games (be they single-player, ordinary multiplayer, or massively multiplayer) are designed...some well and some badly.

So, one of the selling points of many open-world games is the ability to, and I quote, "do whatever you want." This is a major thing that nearly all games in the genre will push, very hard, because it's such an unequivocally good thing, right? Freedom is always better than confinement, right? (Obviously being a bit facetious with this question.)

The problem is that a lot of games which pursue this perspective...fall short, shall we say. It is difficult to become invested in a game that gives you no reason to care about any of the things you can do. Having a central through line or clear and identifiable goals to accomplish is generally necessary in order to ground the experience and give worth and meaning to one's choices. By presenting a totally open world with no reason to do any specific things, the player will often be left floundering and is likely to wander away rather than getting invested. It requires a careful approach, or intentionally gunning for an experience like Minecraft, in order to give the experience enough starting purpose to make it worthwhile...and you may have noticed that even Minecraft added the achievement/"you made X" menu thing, which provides a guideline, a purpose, a reason to do things or seek out things.

That is very similar to the difference between supported options and simply available ones. In a game that supports choice, you have clear goals to pursue, but if you aren't interested in doing those things, the game is designed such that your tools actually do help you pursue other things instead. Lacking support is, well, much like how a lot of frustrated 5e DMs describe it: they have the power to do whatever they want, but no support in actually getting there. They can travel to any destination they can think of, but they don't know what places are worth going to, nor how to actually get there, nor what to do once they arrive.

This issue was particularly exemplified in the gaming culture of 5e that rejected the notion of providing DMs guidance. One that responded to anyone seeking advice with "you're the DM, you figure it out." It was an almost aggressively anti-advice culture of play, as though seeking advice was an error, something DMs should be taught not to do. This has softened over time, particularly with the rise of youtube DM-advice channels, but has not disappeared by any means.

Flexibility made by becoming rules-avoidant, rather than making open-ended and supportive rules, can lead to situations where you ask, "Well...what if I want to do X?" (where "do X" might be "make an evil ritual that needs to be disrupted" or "create a creature that evolves through multiple phases" or "create a legal dispute that the players need to solve") and the system's answer is...."figure it out yourself. Just make something up." That's not helpful, and likely, at least for me and folks I've interacted with in the past, to induce frustration and feelings of being adrift.

Looks like someone's been reading Bernstein!

Actually, I've never heard the first thing about him before today!

But yes, this is a useful analogy. That whole "you have to control each wheel of a car individually" vs "the rear wheels are locked forward and the front wheels can rotate horizontally but do so in sync" analogy is a really good one. Being able to point the front wheels in opposite directions is, technically, "flexibility" in the sense of "more options," but it is not supported because you do that and you're going to move nowhere. More wheel options actually leads to reduced movement, not increased.

 

[Campbell]

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.