Why the World Exists

[DrunkonDuty]

Hey Jack7.

Look, I kinda get where you're coming from for the game styles.

One where, at its extreme, the game world (GM) bends over and gives the PCs everything they want merely because they want it. There's never any challenge and everything rings hollow. Gets kinda dull. At the other end there's theone where the world (GM) does it's damnedest to shaft the PCs at every turn. Also gets kinda dull.

Both of these examples of extremes strike me as games I wouldn't enjoy much. But there is a huge amount of middle ground between the two. For example:

I'm about to start a new Champions campaign. And at the moment I'm asking the players what they want to see in it. I've asked questions about the game world, the moral tone, all that, and their characters and they're giving me answers. We're all contributing to the game from the the start. Yes, at the end of the day it will be up to me as the GM to create specfic plot devices, NPCs, organisations, challenges etc. Hopefully I will be able to provide the sort of challenges the players want to see. Also I want to provide them with the opportunity to let their characters do their stuff/show off their cool powers, it is a supers game after all.

So I'd say the fun pay off comes from various sources. Overcoming great challenges, looking good while you do so, getting shiny stuff, getting more points. And many more I'm sure. The emphasis on which of them is more important depends on the individual player. ANd some people do want a game where they always win easily and there's always just the right shiny thing in the orc's chest. I put it to you that the people playing the game this way are getting much more substantial rewards than mere in game stuff. They're hanging out with friends, enjoying company, sharing food and bad jokes. The game itself is just one part of a wider social event.

ACtually, the game is always going to be just a part of a wider social event. Don't read too much into it.

cheers mate,
Glen

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Gizmo33 wrote:
You can still save kittens whether or not the DM hands you a vorpal blade for doing

Never juggle vorpal blades and kittens together.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I was gonna make a long post but Twin Bahamut sums up my view basically entirely. The world exists for the players/characters because without them there is no world. The world exists (and not even a whole world it really is just what is presently visible/knowable to the PCs) as part of the medium to tell stories and go through adventures and to have fun!

This idea that a world is created just so the players accumulate power is ridiculous. It really isn't at all connected to creating a world for the players. You base the world around them so that the adventures, stories, characters, etc. that they meet is engaging and relevant to what is going on in THEIR STORY and part of THEIR WORLD.

 

[Kzach]

I think what, if anything, the "DM'ing is a skill, not an art" thread shows is that there are gazillions of ways of representing and playing the game. I feel I fall into neither category presented in this thread, and, in fact, part of my problem with the skill/art thread was that there are so many fine points of DM'ing style and play-style that you really can't create categories that suit everyone.

A little from column A, a little from column B, a little from Column C sub-section 3...

 

[FireLance]

Let me throw out a third possibility:

The World Exists For The Sake Of Challenging The Players - There is, naturally, a certain amount of fantasy wish-fulfillment going on. For some, that is part of the attraction of playing a fantasy role-playing game. However, the players have to earn their characters' rewards by displaying minimum levels of intelligence, tactics, planning, co-operation, courage, honor, luck, etc. (actual levels of intelligence, tactics, planning, co-operation, courage, honor, luck, etc. required will vary from DM to DM and from campaign to campaign). Under this approach, wish lists are not demands which players make of their DMs out of some sense of entitlement, but a communication tool to help the DM understand what the players want so that he can reward them appropriately based on what he thinks they deserve.

If as the DM you have already decided that you going to give the characters a reward for overcoming a particular challenge, I fail to see why allowing the players to choose which reward their characters get (within reasonable limits, of course) is a repugnant idea, or how it could reduce the heroism of the characters in any way.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

All I can think to say is this:

Some people will never choose to be heroes, no matter how necessary it is, if they do not believe they have to power to accomplish the task. Being fictional does not make a difference. For these people a game must give them at least the illusion of power if it wants them to bother being heroes.

 

[Jack7]

I'm gonna say that in general I agree with you,

But unfortuinatly contrary to my own personal beliefs I've found that the game works better if the world exists for the players, note, not the heroes, but the players. So the heroes exist for the sake of the world, and the world exists for the sake of the players.

I am not saying that the game does not exist for the sake of the players, it obviously does. (After all, it, as a gaming device must have a pragmatic function. And that function is as a setting for imaginary action of the players through the agency of their character.) I am saying it does not exist for the sake of the characters, as in, it does not exist to service the wishes of the characters.

If the characters are supposed to be heroes, then to be brutally honest, heroes don't run around saying, "I want this, or I demand that." Heroes say I'll sacrifice for this and I'll risk for that. And just because they find the world not to their liking, doesn't mean they start demanding it had better become the way they want in order for them to do their job.

Now heroes, like anyone, have needs. They need certain things to operate effectively. But when they don't get exactly what they want that is never an obstacle to action. Nor is not getting your wish list in any way reflective of being a hero. But I can see the opposite as being suppressive of heroism. Getting what you want all of the time does not make you heroic, it can make you a lot of things, spoiled, self-absorbed, entitled, dependent, lazy. But I've never seen getting what you want all of the time make anyone heroic. Heroism is the opposite of being given things. It is earning things, and sacrificing things. You cannot encourage the idea of "getting what you want when and how you want it" and the idea of heroism simultaneously. One idea becomes more alluring than the other, or one idea becomes more important than the other.

I think what, if anything, the "DM'ing is a skill, not an art" thread shows is that there are gazillions of ways of representing and playing the game. I feel I fall into neither category presented in this thread, and, in fact, part of my problem with the skill/art thread was that there are so many fine points of DM'ing style and play-style that you really can't create categories that suit everyone.

A little from column A, a little from column B, a little from Column C sub-section 3...

I completely agree. I made this observation (the thread) as a philosophical point about a function of game theory, especially as regards the theory of "heroic fantasy" games. I cannot say how or to what degree the idea of "give it to me" in any given game or world setting may function. (Indeed I have given my players and their characters their wishes, never at their request, but I have given them what they wanted or thought would make them more effective - I am not arguing for denial, I am arguing against entitltlement.) But if you take the idea of give it to me to its natural, logical, and eventual extreme then that leaves almost no room in that world for real heroism to function. Or even appear. As an ideal, and as a mechanic, the idea (give me what I wish because I have done such and such a thing, therefore I deserve the reward I most desire) of obtaining your desires simply because you desire them (through whatever actual means) is not I suspect going to lead to heroism of any kind.

Now this is not to say that heroes should not make demands, should not wish for things, should not even say things like, "if only I had a Holy Avenger sword, think of how effective I would have been against that demon and of how many of the lives of the villagers I could have saved." Or that the DM shouldn't pay attention to such observations.

But saying you want something, some device, article, or piece of equipment to make yourself more effective is far different from earning it, and from saying, "next time I go out I want, wish, or deserve this."

Anywho, although I haven't had the time to read everyone's response yet, I'm in kind of a rush right now getting the family ready for church. I'll try to respond to other points later on, and thanks for the responses thus far even if I don't agree with ya.

I was trying not so much to stimulate an emotional argument, as a philosophical one. But of someone wants to argue from their emotional response feel free to do so. I hope no one will hammer another if their emotions get riled up though.

You don't have to worry about me. I don't take things said to me on the internet personally, it's just an argument as far as I'm concerned. But I hope nobody goes plum wild and gets the thread shut down.

I wanna see what others think about the connection between entitlement and heroism.

See ya, and carry on ladies and gentlemen.

 

[Reynard]

Hyperbole notwithstanding, I agree with Jack7 on the basic premise that, generally speaking, there are two polar views on the interaction between setting and characters in your typical D&D campaign. One end of the spectrum is that the setting does indeed exist to serve the player characters, that it should be designed at all levels to support the preferences of the players. The other end of the spectrum is that the world is defined, it exists as it does and the player characters meet the world and interact with it on its terms, dealing with its challenges and rewards. But as a continuum rather than merely two options, most campaigns, I think, exists somewhere between the two.

Also, while I think that any edition can be played anywhere along the continuum as a matter of agreement between the players and the DM, edition matters in regards to the assumed location along the continuum. Earlier editions, with random treasure tables and encounter tables based on environment, lean toward the "world side". Later editions with concepts of Level Appropriate and Wish lists lean toward the "PC side". But even so, where the campaign sits has far more to do with what happens at the table than what is found in the rulebooks.

As to the relationship between heroism and entitlement (in general, not as a commentary on editions) is that the more "freebies" the DM gives the PCs, the less heroic they are. heroism (to me) is defined as the struggle against adversity, and the reduction of that adversity by fudging dice or providing all the right/best items or arranging events so the PCs are always on the "right track" reduces adversity and therefore reduces heroism (and cheapens victories).

I tend toward the "here's the world, it's a dangerous place, go master it!" school of DMing. As such, it is incumbant upon me, as DM, to allow PCs the freedom to interact with the "uncaring" world on their own terms, and provide the players with the information necessary to make meaningful choices and execute the world's response to their actions to the best of my ability.

 

[Cadfan]

As to the relationship between heroism and entitlement (in general, not as a commentary on editions) is that the more "freebies" the DM gives the PCs, the less heroic they are. heroism (to me) is defined as the struggle against adversity, and the reduction of that adversity by fudging dice or providing all the right/best items or arranging events so the PCs are always on the "right track" reduces adversity and therefore reduces heroism (and cheapens victories).

Fancy logic, but you're taking theoretical extremes and then extrapolating back to apply your reasoning to the completely benign. If I've got a player who's vision for that character is, amongst other things like personality and physical appearance, a desert dervish wielding two flaming scimitars, I'm not "reducing adversity" if I provide him a means to actually obtain said scimitars.

At most I'm altering and bypassing a genre convention that states that magic weaponry and equipment is to be found at random by scavenging amongst the dead, in contrast to the genre conventions of other styles of fantasy (such as comic books) where magic items are intrinsic to the wielder.

 

[Fenes]

I think it may come as a shock, but there's nothing heroic in playing D&D. Characters maybe heroic, players are not. A character doesn't know whether the sword he found was placed there after a wishlist, or by random rolls on a table. Neither makes his recovery of the sword more or less heroic. I consider the difference only relevant for metagaming, not for roleplaying.