Why the World Exists

[Majoru Oakheart]

I don't for a second expect the players to be singing hosannas to my ability as a referee when their characters get offed.

On the other hand, I don't expect them to sulk about it either.

I don't know. I expect people to sulk when they get killed off unfairly. I've certainly sulked before when it's happened to me. I've had players do it when it happened in my games. That's partially why I stopped doing it.

We shoulda been space toast. Instead we were very lucky.

I’ll take my good luck with my bad.

I guess, but in that scenario, if the GM didn't put the overwhelming ship in combat with you, you wouldn't need the luck. Instead it would have been a fair test of your combat ability that might have ended up with your death, but would actually require luck going badly for that to happen.

Obviously it’s a sentiment I share, on both sides of the screen.Now here’s my question to you: would an encounter with the privateers as I described it above, an encounter in which despite your best efforts your character is caught and later spaced by the raiders, would this be a deal breaker for you? Would this unlikely but deadly encounter make the rest of the campaign unplayable for you? Or is even the possibility of such an encounter happening in the game grounds enough not to play at all?

I'm not him, but I'd like to answer this anyway. I don't think I'd want to play in that campaign. In all the games I've played in there has been an unspoken(and sometimes spoken) agreement between the players and the DM that both of them want the same things out of the game. The most important one is that the game keeps going and doesn't result in the pointless deaths of all the PCs.

Everyone I know is willing to accept that bad luck happens, bad strategy happens and sometimes there IS going to be a TPK. But as long as we knew we had a fair chance and that our PCs were working towards something they considered worthwhile when they died, we are good with it.

Because everyone understands one thing: Everything that happens in the game happens because the DM wants it to happen. We understand that the DM has the power to overrule any random tables he's rolling on, the ability to fudge dice, and so on. Beyond that, he has the ability to decide what items go on that random table and whether or not he rolls on it at all.

Given these powers, if we end up in a combat with very few to no options that is going to result in our guaranteed death, we can only assume that the DM wanted us to die. If they didn't want us to die, they would have made sure we were capable of handling anything on the random enemy tables. Or they would have fudge the die roll to get a different enemy that we could handle. Or they would have decided that the captain of this ship was in a good mood and decided not to kill us. Or they would have come up with a way for us to survive in some form. Suddenly saved by unexpected allies, sudden weapon's malfunction on the enemy ship that lasts just long enough for us to run away, and so on. But, since none of this has happened, we can simply assume that the DM wanted us dead.

And that breaks the unspoken agreement that they DON'T want us to die. I think this fits into the conversation about fudging and CRs. Both of those suggest the DM is looking for a desired result. I don't see a problem with this because I think DMs SHOULD have a desired result. Even if the desired result is as simple as not ending the game in a TPK.

When I play a game, I expect that the DM has at least one hand on the wheel at all times and at least makes minor adjustments to make sure the game doesn't crash into a brick wall. The idea that a DM would simply let "realism", random tables, or "logic" cause a TPK never really enters into my head.

 

[Ariosto]

When we bring "fudging" into the game is when a character death indicates that the GM wanted that character dead. Otherwise, the GM could have "fudged" the death away.

In such a game (if one can call it that), it is as Majoru Oakheart wrote: "Everything that happens in the game happens because the DM wants it to happen."

I'm pretty fond of the view that "the GM is the rules," but there are limits. I'll leave it to each to impose those limits on himself, but I think that a certain amount of honesty from all parties is essential to fairness.

If something is unacceptable, then I think the wisest course is to state that plainly and make a rule against it. There's no more need for furtive fudging behind the screen: the referee can openly apply the rules of the game by which everyone has agreed to be bound.

That leaves the course of the game again in the hands of players no longer dependent on the GM's breaking of rules.

It might be a game in which the outcome is foreordained, but there can be interest in choosing how to get there. It seems essential that the players be willing to accept some less than optimal results, a range of somehow "better" and "worse" possibilities selected at least in part by their own meaningful choices.

At least it can be a genuine game of some sort!


Back to the game of D & D as it was formerly known:

To the extent that we DMs are concerned with verisimilitude, we're likely to consider that the world -- and other people -- existed before the PCs came along. If an environment is too dangerous for the PCs, then it is too dangerous for normal folks. So, some "straw dragon" scenarios may be too improbable for consideration.

At the same time, we cannot neglect to provide the necessities for such as "a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet."

In a game in which one hit has a 50% chance of killing an average 1st-level PC (yea, even in one a bit less harsh), no particular freshly-minted adventurer's life is likely to be a great saga. But each one must have the opportunity, so that eventually such worthies are forged.

That means treasures worth the getting, and toils and perils enough to have kept them from having been gotten already. As we have set them in the world to the end that doughty souls might seek them, so we have hardly made their legends so obscure as never to be learned! Indeed, we have so shaped the world that there is adventure aplenty to be found by any who would but quest for it.

Risk is part of the game. If your notion of good role-playing is saying, "Dungeons and dragons are too dangerous, so I'll just stay in Town," then maybe the game is not for you. Initiative is the mark of the potential hero, the leader, not the follower. If for some reason you "don't know what to do" and waffle around waiting for someone to tell you instead of GOING OUT AND DOING SOMETHING, then maybe the game is not for you. It's a game of "swords & sorcery," for the love of Leiber! Adventure is an end in itself! When there's a shortage of trouble, swordsmen and sorcerers make some.

And more often than not, trouble leads them to an early grave. Then we pick up dice, paper, and pencil ... roll up a new persona ... and come back swinging into the game that has no end, no final defeat. Fight on!

 

[Jack7]

I've been really busy lately but there are a couple of comments people made earlier I'd like to respond to as I get the chance. I'm gonna try and avoid overly complex responses though as I sometimes have the bad habit of engaging in, and so I'm just gonna try and take comments I want to respond to one at a time.

You even manage to throw in a cheap "video game" quip that doesn't even make the slightest bit of sense (what kind of videogame even works like that?), so you have already hit on some of my biggest pet peeves.

Maybe I didn't explain this very well. I have a tendency in my mental analyses to see trends, and to just subsume the details thinking everyone else will just instinctively understand what I mean by implication. As my friends, associates, and family often remind me, not everyone looks at A and then can, or will, jump to J without having explained to them all of the letters or elements in-between. I often jump around things in my mind making connections that others might not immediately see without going through all of the other intermediate steps. But I often do that's just the way I think. So I often have the tendency to jump around, even in time. With casework for instance I often (not always but often) jump from my first examination of evidence to the right conclusion, but then I have to backtrack from the end all the way back to the beginning to explain to everyone else how I got there, even when I'm sure I'm right and am not even certain how I got there myself - I can't initially prove it. Whereas I've often seen a lot of other fellas who go from A to B to C to D and so forth before they feel comfortable drawing any kind of conclusion. I get that difference in approach and respect it, it's just not my normal way of thinking or making an analysis, analyzing clues, or making deductions.

So, that being said here is what I was actually implying. Not that, as I think you are thinking, that a certain way of playing D&D or a certain edition of D&D or any other game is WOWey, or video gamey, in the sense of modern video games and everything that implies. What I said was:

This way of looking at the world is far less like a video game full of self-imposed (auto-programmed) Easter Eggs and far more like the real world. Yes, you can create things at your own expense, but there is no Santa-Clause DM/GM to whom one can avail oneself for that special, bright, shiny toy one so desperately longs for in his secret heart of hearts. (And this toy may be an item, object, device, situation, ability, or power – anything that encompasses a possession of some kind.)

What I meant by that was: I am looking forwards (not as in hopefully, but I can easily foresee the time) to the day when video games and computer games are a type of Virtual reality in which the end user self-programs or programs the game himself to ignore the rules of the world and instead gives himself the power to shape the world as he sees fit. You do though already see that with Cheat Codes. Cheat Codes often allow the user to ignore certain "Game Rules and World Structures," in effect creating a totally user-advantaged world in which the player can ignore the effects everyone else would be subject to. For instance a cheat code might make you invulnerable to harm, give you so many "hit or health points" that you cannot in effect be killed, cause you to automatically regenerated if injured, or give you the perfect and unstoppable killing weapon.

So in addition to those types of things I am also looking forwards to the day when the challenge of any video game is like a Virtual World without the threat of real risk, and eventually of RPGs that are similarly able to be programmed by the user (I'll give the DM my Wish List of things I desire, which are in effect my individual and personal Cheat Code) being, in effect, the same. I am of course exaggerating the idea a bit to make a larger point about the Game World.

Why should my wish list not include eventually the ability to regenerate whenever I fall below a certain number of hit points, why not give me a suit of armor that makes me invulnerable, and while we are at it why not let me program the game world DM, it is after all made for me, the end-user? (I could easily create such devices and defend them on purely mechanical and gaming notions, if my only criteria is that the game should be about what the player really wants above all other considerations.) So my Wish List or my Cheat Code becomes my ability to re-program the game world so that if effect "I Nero" become the world, not the character interfacing with the world. Take the idea far enough and eventually why have the DM design the world at all or structure how it works? Just let me (the world exists for me anyway) do it and I'll skip straight to level 3000, make myself invulnerable, give myself the best weapons and armor and so forth and I can go straight to butchering the gods and remaking the world in my Own Image? That is more fun after all than facing any sort of limitation to my ultimate aim of ultimate power and bad-assery.

Now does that often happen as I've just described above? Probably very, very rarely? As I said I am exaggerating for implicational effect.

But take the idea of wish lists and cheat codes and give-aways far enough and that would be the ultimate end, a Virtual Reality world in which the world is merely a plastic stage backdrop, worse yet it would be nothing more than a blue-screen that bears no virtual resemblance to anything other than a self-programmed and self-serving non-reality.

So that's what I meant even if that's not what I said.

By the way I think there is another good discussion about programming and role status in This Thread. I won't repeat here what I said, or what others said, there, but I think it is really a related discussion.

Because I think that certain forms of player-programming are good (within reason), even necessary to good games, such as when players program and reprogram their own characters to better interact with and interface with "their world." When they start programming and re-programming the World at Large, I personally see no value and nothing at all heroic in that. Because heroism is not programming the world to your best advantage, it is using the world as it is to create something better for everyone else. And that is definitely not programming, though it may subsume certain ideas about how you want the world to be, it is struggle. Heroism is not a wish for how the world will be, it is the hard work required to make it that way.

Anywho I gotta go. But I'm glad this thread kinda took off. (Though I wouldn't have imagined it before hand.)
Some of the comments have made me think about a lot of interesting ideas.
So, thanks for the comments.

 

[GnomeWorks]

Because everyone understands one thing: Everything that happens in the game happens because the DM wants it to happen. We understand that the DM has the power to overrule any random tables he's rolling on, the ability to fudge dice, and so on. Beyond that, he has the ability to decide what items go on that random table and whether or not he rolls on it at all.

...

When I play a game, I expect that the DM has at least one hand on the wheel at all times and at least makes minor adjustments to make sure the game doesn't crash into a brick wall. The idea that a DM would simply let "realism", random tables, or "logic" cause a TPK never really enters into my head.

I am constantly telling my players that it is never me, the DM, doing X or Y to them; it is the setting and its inhabitants. I never seek to kill off characters; NPCs, on the other hand, may want to do so very much.

The distinction is, I feel, an important one, to the point that I try to make it very, very clear to new players that this is what is going on. The playstyle you're talking about here would seem to eventually lead to antagonistic DMing, because the players will interpret the DM's actions as antagonistic (whether intended as such or not). I'm not interested in a "DM vs. the players" set-up, because in such a thing, the DM always wins. The reverse, though - where it is silently understood that the DM and players are all working towards the same goal - doesn't interest me, either; there, players may get the sense that they are "unique and special snowflakes," or that they enjoy some sort of plot immunity.

In my mind, as the DM, my job is to set up the parameters of the setting, to determine reasonable chances of various events occuring, and to ensure that the setting remains interesting insofar as adventurers are concerned. Once the ball is set in motion, my job is purely as rules-adjudicator and as the players' means to access the world; an interface that enforces the physics of the world in question. My stance - as the DM - regarding the PCs is neutral and uncaring, just as the stance of the universe towards them is neutral and uncaring.

Do I necessarily enjoy it when the game ends in a TPK? No, not really. But at the point where it becomes a TPK, the situation is ideally out of my hands: the events that led to the party's death were predetermined (by which I mean that they were placed there without consideration of the party, specifically). If a situation would logically or sensibly end in a TPK, then it should do so.

 

[jim pinto]

I am still reading the entirety of this thread, so I'm not sure if this was said yet…

…but scavenging the dead for treasure, isn't very heroic to begin with. Handing a GM a registry of items he can pick up for the "treasure shower" fits right in with the mercenary manner of this gaming trope. 1st Edition wasn't about Heroism, so the fact that some of these metagaming conventions survived through the iterations is indicative of so many other problems with the game that your original post can't really be about D&D anymore. It can be about a host of smaller press games or some home-brew heartbreaker that allows players to build the exact archtype they want. But D&D is about growing into your pants, not buying the right pair of pants in the first place.

3.x and 4E are cannibalized retinue, left-over from designers who did not approach the gestalt of the product, but rather fine-tuned the game design to the way people would "probably" play it. In essence, making D&D the former of your arguments… the game is there for the players and as such should respond to their id and not their intellect. That wasn't a slam. Gaming is about fun for the majority of people doing it. It is not a noble exploration of morays and/or counter-culture storytelling methods. It's perhaps (another reason) why people flee the gaming table and join MMOs.

Jack7, your original post is excellently-written and well thought out. I think it's a disservice to your theoretic argument and anathema to the concept of game forums that people would take offense to your obvious extreme and academic approach to game theory. Obviously a new (and/or extreme) opinion is going to invite controversy. But I don't recall you writing anywhere that Gamer65109 is a jerk and is playing wrong. If people are happy scavenging the dead for +1 swords, let them. I'm just sorry that in 35 years we haven't invented a new way to give treasure and/or XP to PCs other than killing and looting.

Again. That's for the post. Extremely enjoyable read.

 

[jim pinto]

With that out of the way, any player who comes to me with a wish list had also better be prepared to explain in some detail how she plans to come by these items. Consult with a sage or seek a divination to learn the whereabouts? Complete a quest on behalf of a powerful spellcaster in exchange for crafting it? Sneak into the guarded and warded armory of the king to steal it?

Does anyone remember Earthdawn? It had a system for putting XP into magic items to unlock future powers, so you kept the same weapon forever, but it just got more and more useful.

Is "finding" treasure such an enamored trope in gaming that we can't move away from it. Does it prohibits players and GMs from making more realistic game worlds? Or does every licensed product have to kowtow to the limitations and expectations of "treasure?"

[Insert Diablo which is essentially a dungeon-crawl simulation and hardly a game]

 

[Emirikol]

I play 4e in the WARHAMMER FANTASY world

I play 4e in the WARHAMMER FANTASY world.

That means that my world exists because some guys play miniatures wargames.

jh

 

[shilsen]

Risk is part of the game. If your notion of good role-playing is saying, "Dungeons and dragons are too dangerous, so I'll just stay in Town," then maybe the game is not for you. Initiative is the mark of the potential hero, the leader, not the follower. If for some reason you "don't know what to do" and waffle around waiting for someone to tell you instead of GOING OUT AND DOING SOMETHING, then maybe the game is not for you. It's a game of "swords & sorcery," for the love of Leiber! Adventure is an end in itself! When there's a shortage of trouble, swordsmen and sorcerers make some.

And more often than not, trouble leads them to an early grave. Then we pick up dice, paper, and pencil ... roll up a new persona ... and come back swinging into the game that has no end, no final defeat. Fight on!

Whether risk is part of the game or not depends on how you define risk. As far as I'm concerned, for example - what risk? If the player can just roll up a new character, there's no risk to the player. Perhaps the risk of not getting to play a certain character as long as they wanted to, but that's a pretty minor risk in my book, especially since it will (depending on the player) be offset by the opportunity to run a number of fun characters, the chance to have a heroic and memorable character death, etc. One could argue that there's greater risk in a game of chess, since you might actually lose, whereas in D&D, as you note, there is "no end, no final defeat." There is, in my estimation, no genuine and fundamental risk in the game (mainly because it is a game), which is just fine by me. It just invalidates a lot of the assumptions made in this thread, including many of the OP's.

 

[Jack7]

Jack7, your original post is excellently-written and well thought out. I think it's a disservice to your theoretic argument and anathema to the concept of game forums that people would take offense to your obvious extreme and academic approach to game theory. Obviously a new (and/or extreme) opinion is going to invite controversy. But I don't recall you writing anywhere that Gamer65109 is a jerk and is playing wrong. If people are happy scavenging the dead for +1 swords, let them. I'm just sorry that in 35 years we haven't invented a new way to give treasure and/or XP to PCs other than killing and looting.

Again. That's for the post. Extremely enjoyable read.

I appreciate that point of view Jim, I really do.

I also hope that as time wears on here (on this site) and the edition wars die away that others will not automatically equate a criticism with a scree or a personal attack. (I don't understand feeling personally attacked by a discussion of gaming ideas anyways, but to each their own.)

You can't improve anything without carefully examining and analyzing it, and without criticizing it.

So, it doesn't bother me that people on the internet (after all I don't know them) automatically criticize my ideas or even me personally, but it does sort of amuse me every time automatic assumptions are made about my, or anyone else's "real intentions" in saying something.

So I get where you are coming from.

Nevertheless I am used to my ideas being sort of reflexively criticized, not just here, but in matters like casework, Intel analysis, inventing, experimentation, a whole host of things. (You should hear what my wife calls me.) That's just part of the game when you take a view which is "an extreme approach" as you would say. And I know what you mean by that.

Now I'm not saying the ideas I presented in the original post are new by any measure, but I kinda suspected some would object to them form the very beginning, and that's fine by me. That's the way life works.

I kinda wish sometimes that people would slow down a little and actually listen to what is being said before having a reflexive reaction sometimes, but, C'est la vie. I don't always explain things perfectly either. And sometimes better things happen in the meantime by the arguments that break out when people misunderstand each other. This thread has given me a lot of ideas simply by the arguments that have broken out over this or that, discussing stuff I had never originally intended or even thought about. And personally I like that kinda thing. To me personally it is far more important that some new or better discovery be made than that everybody like me or agree with me.

But I do appreciate people like you stepping back and carefully examining a thing before making automatic assumptions.

Anyways, see ya.

 

[Ariosto]

The "programming the world" aspect of play that Jack 7 brought up is indeed a part of many games. I would not call them "role-playing" games, though. "Narrative" and "story-telling" are terms currently in common use.

In such a game, the player's POV is not so much that of a character in a world as that of an author creating a fictional world.

Experience suggests to me that such a game calls for rules designed with that process in mind, not haphazardly hacked or "fudged" RPG rules. It can make good use of the Game Master role, but the assumption that a GM is necessary -- and that he or she ought to have all the powers customary in an RPG -- can really screw up the design.