You're doing what? Surprising the DM

[Abraxas]

That's not the only approach. Many games, for instance, use metagame rationing (4e, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, Maelstrom Storytelling, HeroWars/Quest, and many others).

I find that approach unsatisfactory. YMMVAAD

 

[pemerton]

Hussar has admitted and repeatedly asserted that this plan's purpose was to change what the story was about. Moreover he's confessed that if his plan to change what the story is about is thwarted, he's going to get 'shirty with the DM'. He has repeatedly admitted that this tactic was to force the DM to handwave the travel through the desert. In other words, all his recent protests about how he wasn't trying to steal narrative authority from the DM don't hold water. We have a whole thread about him admitting to doing that very thing.

<snip>

What's really troublesome about this is that having offered a plan he thought both foolproof and unbeatable (unless the DM cheats), and which further more he believed signaled that he didn't want to play in the desert, that not only must the DM respond to his proposition, "Ok, you make it across the desert without difficulty.", but if the DM responds in any other way, such as, "Ok, you begin riding the giant centipede across the desert. You find it rather difficult to hold on to its smooth chitinous back. Ahead you see the terrain becoming more rugged, and a steep wadi cuts across your immediate path to the north.", that the player is perfectly in the right to get 'Shirty' about it because the DM has ulterior motives and is cheating and is a jerk and so forth and so forth. My problem is precisely that that player has asserted virtually unlimited narrative authority, and is willing to go OOC and get angry about it to back up his claim to authority.

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] has made it clear that the point of summoning the huge centipede was to circumvent the desert trek. That is, he as a player was hoping to reframe the current ingame situation, from one of "How do we cross the desert?" to "Now that we've crossed the desert, how do we achieve our goal?".

D&D traditionally has many mechanics which have more-or-less this function: flight (at least in some modes), teleportation, ultra-high Perception bonuses (reframe scenes from "How do we find?" to "What do we find?"), ultra-high Diplomacy bonuses in 3E (reframe scene from "How do we deal with this troublesome NPC?" to "What does this NPC do to help us?"), etc.

There is a serious design question about whether it is good to hide scene-reframing capabilities inside what are generally action-resolution mechanics. For instance, it produces the sort of confusion/conflict we are seeing in this very thread - a player like Hussar tries to reframe the scene to avoid having to engage in action resolution with a scene s/he doesn't like, and the GM responds by treating the reframe as a move within the previously framed scene rather than an attempt to move to a new scene.

But the real issue is - who gets to control scene framing? If the game's answer is "The GM" then there is a huge onus on the GM to frame decent scenes. And if the players are using their resources to try to reframe towards scenes that they find more interesting, I personally don't blame them for that!

Narrative control in D&D isn't the sole purview of the DM.

<snip>

the player concedes to the DM rights to create the setting, to play out the NPC's, and generally govern everything external to the player's character. The player can no more dictate outcomes to the DM, or settings to the DM, than the DM can tell the player what to do.

<snip>

a player who thwarts the DM by announcing that the conjuring of a giant centipede leads to the logical outcome 'we get across the desert without playing through the journey' and who is essentially arguing for the viritually unlimited player right to set bangs and scene frame is failing to trust the DM.

If you don't even want to play out the details arising from your own propositions, you don't need me at the table. You can call out propositions and announce the outcomes without me, because at that point I've been excluded from the game anyway.

If you set your own goals and recieve, "Yes, and then..." as a responce to your propositions (as opposed to, "No, you can't do that."), I think that you are being dealt with fairly. If you set your outcomes, then you don't need a DM.

I think that here you are running together action resolution and scene framing.

Hussar is not expressing any general desire to "set his own outcomes". He is using the tools that the game - rightly or wrongly - gives to him to reframe scenes away from ones he finds boring to ones he finds interesting.

And he is under no general obligation to "trust the GM". In the labyrinth example, he's talking about 20 hours of play. GMs earn trust by framing scenes that their players want to engage. And by recognising signals to the contrary - such as the summoning of giant centipeds to avoid having to actually play out the trek across the desert.

If the players actually signalled clearly and respectfully that they had no interest in travel, I'd probably only be able to accomodate that by having teleport portals arranged around the world to provide a reliable way to get from A -> E without actually having to make assumptions about B,C, and D in between. You can't just say that 'Hey, we crossed the desert'

<snip>

Crossing a desert and going through a labyrinth are part of stealing the Sorcerer-King's artifact. If there wasn't significant challenge in stealing the artifact, why hasn't someone done before (again, my simulationist default perspective)? So you say, well, I just want to get it from the Sorcerer-King's tomb. Ok fine, but the Sorcerer-King's tomb is a large trapped filled dungeon. Now the PC says, "Well, I'm not interested in dungeon crawling either." So are we to have teleport portals leading from the square outside the Inn in town, directly to the inner sanctum of the Sorcerer-King's tomb?

I guess that would be one way of doing it. Another well-known technique is that of "say yes or roll the dice" - that is, crossing the desert or passing through the labyrinth is handled by fairly speedy free narration, and the action is recommenced in a situation that is engaging to the players.

the value of stealing Sorcerer-King's artifact is directly proportional to all the difficulties that were overcome in getting the artifact. If I don't have to cross a desert, navigate a deadly dungeon, fight deadly foes, solve a riddle and wrest the artifact from the Sorcerer King's undead hands, isn't all just rather anticlimatic and meaninglesss?

Speaking as a player for my part, my RPGing rarely involves leaving the living room. So the real question is, what bits of my PC's imaginary life am I interested in dealing with in any detail? And as with Hussar, the trek across the desert is probably not one of them. As to whether it is anticlimactic to free narrate the corssing of the desert, not as such, no. The Indiana Jones movies free narrate plenty of travel (with doted lnes over maps). Citizen Kane doesn't show us the journalist travellingto New Jersey or Florida. Yet there are plenty of climaxes in these films.

I handwave things all the time in order to cut to the chase. But players are no position to make that judgment, because it requires knowledge of what's in the desert.

Obviously this is not a point on which there is universal agreement, as far as RPG preferences and techniques are concerned. For instance, when I am GMing I rely all the time on signals sent by the players as to what is or is not interesting to them.

As for things being in the desert - if the players summon a huge centipede, and there is (say) a hidden temple in the desert that I think would be interesting for them to encounter, it's pretty easy to narrate "After X days of hard riding on your summoned centipede, you see some worked stone sticking out of the desert sands in front of you."

There are some approaches to play where this won't work - for instance, it won't work with highly exploratory Gygaxian skill-based play, where discovering the hidden temple is meant to be a reward in itself, earned by effective hex-crawling, use of scrying spells etc. But I am pretty confident that Hussar, like me, has little interest in that particular playstyle.

 

[pemerton]

That doesn't prevent you from having a challenge that one or more of the players finds un-fun.

Of course not. As I said in my reply to Celebrim above, a big challenge in being a GM - especially if the game is built fairly self-consciously around scene-framing - is to set up situations that will be fun to play.

To some extent there's no substitute for experience, but I think system can help quite a bit as well.

What do you do in the middle of a scene when it becomes obvious some one at the table isn't having fun?

If you mean "what does one do in general?" I would say it depends heavily on what system resources are available to the GM.

If you're asking me what do I do as a GM who is running 4e, I take advantage of the resources the game gives me - most centrally, choices about what NPCs/monsters do - to try and change the circumstances of the player's PC, so as to change the real-life situation of that player.

 

[Abraxas]

Of course not. As I said in my reply to Celebrim above, a big challenge in being a GM - especially if the game is built fairly self-consciously around scene-framing - is to set up situations that will be fun to play.

To some extent there's no substitute for experience, but I think system can help quite a bit as well.

I don't think it matters what the game is built around, setting up fun situations should always be the goal. If not why in the world would anyone play?

If you mean "what does one do in general?" I would say it depends heavily on what system resources are available to the GM.

That's not what I meant I have found, however system is irrelevant when someone isn't having fun unless it is with the actual system itself.

If you're asking me what do I do as a GM who is running 4e, I take advantage of the resources the game gives me - most centrally, choices about what NPCs/monsters do - to try and change the circumstances of the player's PC, so as to change the real-life situation of that player.

So you would try to cater to that one player even if the rest of the group didn't have the same feelings?



Anyways, just a couple other comments. Currently I am in a game where one of the players is actively trying to reframe situations constantly to make things fun for him. In doing so he is making the game less fun for me and I believe others. In most cases, when any player is not having fun (myself as a player included) I am usually more satisfied with the DM reframing things to get the best fit for the whole group. It has been my experience that generally most players don't have the necessary information regarding the other players (or the campaign as a whole) to reframe things in a way that really makes the most people happy.

 

[Celebrim]

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] has made it clear that the point of summoning the huge centipede was to circumvent the desert trek. That is, he as a player was hoping to reframe the current ingame situation, from one of "How do we cross the desert?" to "Now that we've crossed the desert, how do we achieve our goal?".

I would argue that reframing a game situation is a meta-power, and not something that is usually on a D&D character sheet. His ability to summon a huge centipede is ability to alter the in game environment. It is not the same as having the ability to alter the game, and when you conflate the two then there is going to be problems.

D&D traditionally has many mechanics which have more-or-less this function: flight (at least in some modes), teleportation, ultra-high Perception bonuses (reframe scenes from "How do we find?" to "What do we find?"), ultra-high Diplomacy bonuses in 3E (reframe scene from "How do we deal with this troublesome NPC?" to "What does this NPC do to help us?"), etc.

No, you are confusing function with outcome. Teleportation has the function of transporting you within the in game world in a reasonably reliable instantaneous method. This has the expected outcome of causing a new scene to be framed - the destination you arrived at. But the function of teleportation isn't scene framing, nor does it give the player the right to set the scene. The right to change your in game space, whether it be by walking across a room or teleporting, doesn't give you meta authority. You have narrative control in as much as you have certain reasonable expectations with regards to proposition outcomes and within the world teleporting is probably a reasonable rare and powerful ability. But you still can't set the scene.

There is a serious design question about whether it is good to hide scene-reframing capabilities inside what are generally action-resolution mechanics. For instance, it produces the sort of confusion/conflict we are seeing in this very thread - a player like Hussar tries to reframe the scene to avoid having to engage in action resolution with a scene s/he doesn't like, and the GM responds by treating the reframe as a move within the previously framed scene rather than an attempt to move to a new scene.

That's because it isn't actually a scene-reframing capability. It's merely action-resolution mechanics. There isn't an attempt to hide it; it just isn't there. And beyond that, Hussar's attempt to reframe the scene with a summon centipede involves not merely mistaking action resolution for scene framing, but involves a blatant attempt to circumvent action-resolution itself.

I think you are trying to draw a sharp distinction between scene framing and proposition resolution that from the perspective of the DM doesn't necessarily exist. In a traditional RPG approach, there aren't necessarily big jumps between scenes. Instead, each scenes flows into the next one like frames in a movie, with the assumption of very little time passing between them. For example, the DM responds to, "I summon a huge centipede", would lead to a scene like, "Ok, there are sparks and a smell of brimstone and an undulating 40 foot long hundred legged terror appears.", which might lead to, "I mount the centipede and head north into the desert.", which quickly leads to the next scene of, "Ok, you begin riding the giant centipede across the desert. You find it rather difficult to hold on to its smooth chitinous back. Ahead you see the terrain becoming more rugged, and a steep wadi cuts across your immediate path to the north." In each case the DM is acknowleding the PC's proposition, validating it, describes the outcome and awaits the next proposition. Each new outcome is itself the scene that the PC is expected to respond to.

The DM is continually setting the scene, and the PC is continually directing the action with in it which leads to the next scene according to the logic of the setting. These big jumps between scenes where we stay stationary and do intraplayer RP until that pitters out and then we do a bang and big jump to a new scene aren't really a part of traditional D&D.

But the real issue is - who gets to control scene framing? If the game's answer is "The GM" then there is a huge onus on the GM to frame decent scenes. And if the players are using their resources to try to reframe towards scenes that they find more interesting, I personally don't blame them for that!

If you look at my description of play above, you'll see that the responcibility for scene framing always lies with the DM, but the DM hasn't really asserted full control over the scene. The series of scenes is actually to a large extent being determined by the player, with the DM filling in the details. And yes, there is always a huge onus on the GM to frame entertaining scenes. And yes, players are always trying to direct the action within a scene using thier resources to make the situation more interesting for themselves, however they define that. And I don't blame them for that either. But again, this is such a vague description of the how a player does that that it is meaningless.

And he is under no general obligation to "trust the GM". In the labyrinth example, he's talking about 20 hours of play. GMs earn trust by framing scenes that their players want to engage. And by recognising signals to the contrary - such as the summoning of giant centipeds to avoid having to actually play out the trek across the desert.

Well sure, DMs can show that they aren't fully trustworthy. You are under no obligation to trust a DM that show ineptness or demonstrates that he lacks the emotional framework to DM fairly.

I guess that would be one way of doing it. Another well-known technique is that of "say yes or roll the dice" - that is, crossing the desert or passing through the labyrinth is handled by fairly speedy free narration, and the action is recommenced in a situation that is engaging to the players.

I'm aware of the techniques, and though I'm not completely in agreement with your description of 'say yes or roll the dice', I'll let it slide as off topic. I'm telling you that they aren't applicable here. You can't handwave events of potential substance. I agree you should handwave events without substance. Even if we are playing a nar game, the story teller is perfect in his rights to counter with a bang of his own. You say, "We drive to St. Louis"; I say, "But you run out of gas in Kansas." But nar games are marked by their lack of detail. The world is created as you go. The desert doesn't exist until you decide to enter it. It has no story meaning until you vest it with meaning. But that isn't the situation here. I've previously created the desert. I know the things that are in it. The counter bang is therefore inevitable, because I know there is an event in the desert and probably lots of them. And I don't know how the player would react to them. It is not possible to hold within my head, 'They crossed the desert' and 'No events occurred'. What you are proposing to create is therefore a non-linear story line. At a later point it is entirely possible that the knowledge the character gained crossing the desert would be referenced. There was a crossing of the desert and things happened in it, but we kept them out of the current story with the possibility of coming back to them. That's just a headache. That might be acceptable within the structure of a nar game, but one of the reasons I have little interest in nar games is that they don't ever seem structured to the sort of 200 plus hours stories that I'm used building up within a campaign. Those quick bangs are possible because the story is emphemeral anyway.

Like I said, if this is the movie of the story, you should handwave any passage of time that is event free. But, for example, you wouldn't tell the story of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost arc handwaving from the arrival in Egypt to the point say where they descend into the snake pit. Lots of important story points occur during that part of the journey. Nor would you handwave the journey from the time when Indiana escapes the snake pit, until he recovers the Arc again. Lots of excitement occur along that part of the journey. When you tell me you want to handwave the crossing of the desert, that's fine, if the crossing of the desert corresponds to part of the story in which nothing exciting happens. But if the crossing of the desert involves a battle up and down dunes and through wadi's between a giant centipede and a monstrous scorpion, while the PC's leap back and forth from the backs of two beasts, or the discovery of the lotus eaters and thier fields of valuable magical flowers, or of the black pyramid where is entombed the body of the dead god, or whatever then that's not a part of the story you reasonably handwave least of all in an RPG where the DM doesn't know what is going to happen in the desert and what choices the players would make.

Obviously this is not a point on which there is universal agreement, as far as RPG preferences and techniques are concerned. For instance, when I am GMing I rely all the time on signals sent by the players as to what is or is not interesting to them.

Well, I do too, but my usual responce is to make sure that the powergamer has loot to find in the desert, the thespian has reasonably RP oppurtunities to find in the desert, the problem solver has riddles to solve and traps to uncover, and so forth. It's not usually resolved by granting scene setting authority to a player who frankly has no clear idea what the setting actually is.

As for things being in the desert - if the players summon a huge centipede, and there is (say) a hidden temple in the desert that I think would be interesting for them to encounter, it's pretty easy to narrate "After X days of hard riding on your summoned centipede, you see some worked stone sticking out of the desert sands in front of you."

Well, sure, and if the desert is really only a shrodinger's map, and this is a railroad where the players always do what I want them to do, and if there is nothing else but the abandoned temple in the desert, and there is nothing set by the prior scene that makes the remainder of the day important, then a handwave like that is what I'm likely to do. But that is a lot of big ifs and it's is not at all clear to me that I'm really offering the players more freedom and control running the game that way.

 

[pemerton]

So you would try to cater to that one player even if the rest of the group didn't have the same feelings?

Not necessarily - obviously juggling conflicting preferences requires nuance and is highly context-sensitive.

But I think it is possible to please all the players much of the time. For instance, there is a big difference between "Player A would enjoy a desert trek" and "Player B is longing for a desert trek". I can satify both A and Hussar easily enough by not including a desert trek, or free narrating it, and cutting to something else that both will enjoy. And in many situations, there is no need even to reframe - just to introduce a new complication that speaks to the bored/irritated player. (For instance, if the PCs are exploring a building, and one of the players is looking bored, tell them that their PC notice a blood stain, or an amulet of his/her patron god, or an idol of his/her patron god's nemesis, or something else that will trigger that player's interest.)

Even in the case of Player B, s/he can be satified by free narrating the desert trek provided that there is something else that s/he is longing for, and that that other thing is incorporated into the game; but I agree that that is trickier.

I have one player who loves the idea of largescale (wargamey) battles, and I'm sure he would love such a thing to occur in the game. But I am hopeless at running such things, and even with a good referee they are vulnerable to mechanical grind and the leeching out of drama, and of the fiction more generally. So I have never included one, even though I know this particular player would love it. I make sure that there are other things in the game that he also loves.

 

[pemerton]

I would argue that reframing a game situation is a meta-power

<snip>

you are confusing function with outcome. Teleportation has the function of transporting you within the in game world in a reasonably reliable instantaneous method. This has the expected outcome of causing a new scene to be framed - the destination you arrived at. But the function of teleportation isn't scene framing, nor does it give the player the right to set the scene. The right to change your in game space, whether it be by walking across a room or teleporting, doesn't give you meta authority.

Well, I could equally respond that you are confusing what the rulebooks say - these are characterised as action-resolution mechanics - with how these things are actualy used at tables.

The whole debate over Perception and Diplomacy checks in 3E, the angst over scry-buff-teleport, etc, is a debate over who is to enjoy scene-framing authority, and what degree of force the GM is entitled to use to overrade player use of their PC abilities to reframe.

Imagine how many debates could be avoided by clear designer commentary, pointing out that for some players a high Diplomacy score means that they want to have intricate action resolution experiences involving social situations - and then giving the mechanics to handle that - whereas for others a high Diplomacy score means that they never want to enage in social action resolution, and want to use skill-check based reframing as an alternative! Then each table could simply work out which option applies to them.

In a traditional RPG approach, there aren't necessarily big jumps between scenes.

Sure. That's why you find players trying to use action resolution mechanics for scene-reframing instead, and why even trad RPG designers include mechanics that lend themselves to such use in their games.

I personally don't see the point of coyness, though. It may be that back in the 70s and early 80s the relevant analytic framework was not available, but now that it is, let's use it! How many Traveller games were wrecked, for instance, by struggles between players and GMs over scene-framing that were hidden inside debates about whether or not the PCs can buy passage to another planet? Insisting that this is all about action resolution won't make the struggle disappear - it just makes it hard to work out what is really going on, which is a prelude to sorting out the conflict.

Hussar's attempt to reframe the scene with a summon centipede involves not merely mistaking action resolution for scene framing, but involves a blatant attempt to circumvent action-resolution itself.

Whereas I thnk it is more illuminating to note that the lack of interset in action resolution on Hussar's part is one clear indicator that what he is really trying to do is to reframe the scene.

players are always trying to direct the action within a scene using thier resources to make the situation more interesting for themselves

That is not what I said, though. I said that, when players are given the power to reframe scenes, they are likely to use them to reframe boring scenes in more interestig ways.

Due mostly to my trad sensibilities, though, I prefer to run a game where the GM is in charge of scene-framing; and player desires to reframe are handled informally via conversation and "social contract". And it is certainly possible to design a game in which action resolution mechanics don't bleed into re-framing capabilities. 4e is only one of many examples.

You can't handwave events of potential substance.

I'm prepared to treat that as true in virtue of tautology. The question is, what makes an event be one of potential substance? I can tell you that in my game trekkig across a desert would not, as such, satisfy that description. I have a reasonalby strong aversion to all travel/trekking play, and would be happy to free-narrate all of it, but my players enjoy a bit of it from time to time and so I do my best to indulge them. But I think I am right to say that in over 30 years of GMing, struggling against the elements has never, in itself, been a focus in my games. (The closest I can remember coming was when a PC caught a cold from sleeeping out in the cold and rain, and then - as part of the action resolution mechanic for a particular penatly-ignoring martial arts move in Rolemater, ended up escalating his penalty from -10 to somewhere above -70, and hence nearly died of pneumonia before the other PCs got him back to civilisation.)

From which I infer, having done so, that overland travel is very easily handwaved.

nar games are marked by their lack of detail. The world is created as you go. The desert doesn't exist until you decide to enter it. It has no story meaning until you vest it with meaning. But that isn't the situation here. I've previously created the desert.

<snip>

Well, sure, and if the desert is really only a shrodinger's map, and this is a railroad where the players always do what I want them to do, and if there is nothing else but the abandoned temple in the desert, and there is nothing set by the prior scene that makes the remainder of the day important, then a handwave like that is what I'm likely to do. But that is a lot of big ifs and it's is not at all clear to me that I'm really offering the players more freedom and control running the game that way.

I don't really see what Schroedinger has to do with it. It's possible to have a pretty detailed map and still incorporate new/unexpected elements. For instance, I ran a City of Greyhawk game for several years using the boxed set maps, and it wasn't very hard to include new/unanticipated details.

And I don't really see what the railroad comment has to do with anything. Here are two exercises of GM scene-framing authority:

(1) "As you ride your centipede through the desert, you find it hard to hold on and are in danger of sliding of its chitinous back. Give me a Ride check."

(2) "As you ride your centipede throught the desert, you think you see some worked stone sticking out of the sand in the distance. Give me a Perception check."​

You've made it clear that you have a fondness for (1). I personally, both as player and GM, find (2) more interesting. And I certainly don't see (2) has any special railroading property that (1) lacks.

 

[Celebrim]

Well, I could equally respond that you are confusing what the rulebooks say - these are characterised as action-resolution mechanics - with how these things are actualy used at tables.

The whole debate over Perception and Diplomacy checks in 3E, the angst over scry-buff-teleport, etc, is a debate over who is to enjoy scene-framing authority, and what degree of force the GM is entitled to use to overrade player use of their PC abilities to reframe.

I don't agree. The real debate in that case is over whether in game social and mental challenges are tested by player abilities or character abilities, where the complexity in the debate is that there is no wholly satisfying answer for either side. In other words, it is a debate about what sort of propositions a DM should treat as valid. The ability to frame the scene is only of tangental interest to the debate. You are here using 'scene framing' in an overly broad manner.

Imagine how many debates could be avoided by clear designer commentary, pointing out that for some players a high Diplomacy score means that they want to have intricate action resolution experiences involving social situations - and then giving the mechanics to handle that - whereas for others a high Diplomacy score means that they never want to enage in social action resolution, and want to use skill-check based reframing as an alternative! Then each table could simply work out which option applies to them.

Yes, that's certainly true. But it's notably not a discussion of or commentary on how to frame scenes, but how to offer and validate propositions involving social and mental tasks.

That's why you find players trying to use action resolution mechanics for scene-reframing instead, and why even trad RPG designers include mechanics that lend themselves to such use in their games.

Again, I don't entirely agree. While it is true that one of the many reasons players will attempt to offer outcomes as propositions is a desire to reframe the scene, offering outcomes instead of propositions is a much larger topic than that and incompasses far more than that. Likewise, powerful and reliable mechanics can exist in a game without the designer even concerning himself with scene framing. Teleport doesn't exist in D&D out of a desire to give players scene framing abilities (for one thing, as I've argued it doesn't actually do that), but because teleportation is something that exists in magical settings. What you see as coyness I see as a firm statement that player driven scene framing is not being put into play. What you see as a reasonable desire to reframe boring scenes, I see as just one particular variation on what is one of the most disruptive things players can do - attempting to bully the DM. Most often I see outcome as proposition being offered with the intention of no more than action resolution. The goal isn't to handwave, but to attempt to gain control over both the call and response by forcing the DM to give the responses the player desires. For example, the most common argument that immediately arises in response to outcome as proposition is whether the DM's response is correct. This is the root cause of almost all rule-laywering and goes hand in hand with all power gaming. One of the most common arguments I'll see from a player who offers outcome as proposition is, if the desired outcome isn't forthcoming, that the player deserves a retcon because clearly he would have never attempted X had he known that Z rather than Y was the outcome. This far more often done attempting to hijack the smooth moment to moment scene framing that occurs in traditional D&D than it is ever done to try to reframe scenes as it is typically done in a nar game. If a player doesn't want to play out something that is percieved as being trivial, that proposition is usually offered OOC - "Can I buy a +1 longsword?", for example.

That is not what I said, though. I said that, when players are given the power to reframe scenes, they are likely to use them to reframe boring scenes in more interestig ways.

And I disagree. When players are given the power to reframe scenes, they will typically use them as 'I win' buttons. Hussar's example is exemplary in this regard. The problem is that Hussar isn't reframing a scene, he's trying to skip it. Actually reframing a scene involves offering a counter bang that changes the meaning of the scene. Extending the earlier example, the player proposes the scene, "We drive to St. Louis.". The story director proposes cutting the action to the most interesting scene in this journey, "You run out of gas in Kansas.", perhaps with the intention of making the scene play out a 'man vs. nature' conflict or perhaps with the intention of introducing a horror element like attack by zombies. The player however doesn't want to do either of those things, so proposes the bang, "When I get out to change the tire, a pickup with six beautiful giggling college aged girls stops, and one of the passengers asks if I need help." Now that is actual scene reframing. We are still in Kansas, and still out of gas, but the scene is about something completely different now. In D&D, generally players don't have meta-resources to reframe a scene directly like that (though, I have considered from time to time allowing my 'destiny point' mechanic to allow optionally buying scene reframing), but they do have the ability to reframe the scene indirectly. To my mind, Hussar reframed the scene by conjuring a giant centipede. Where he goes wrong is changing the scene reframing 'bang' to an outcome, "We get across the desert." Even in a nar game where you have meta resources, it's just rude to try to exit a scene that someone else has offered you. It doesn't matter what style of RPG we are playing, though it is relevant we are playing D&D, you just don't up and try to force a curtain close on the rest of the players especially without even trying the offered scene. If the scene isn't working, then you can take that up OOC, but bullying and browbeating other players - and the DM is a player in this sense - is always wrong whether this is D&D or Fiasco.

And going further, by offering the 'bang' I conjure a giant centipede and use it as as mount, he is implicitly offering to explore having a giant centipede as a mount. This is the 'coolness' factor he is talking about, and something that it is reasonable and likely everyone (including the DM) is going to be happy to explore. But Hussar expects by his own declaration that what is really cool about the centipede is that it is an 'I win' button, and is frustrated if exploring the notion of traveling through the desert on the back of a centipede isn't treated that way. In other words, Hussar wants this scene to not be about the centipede, but Hussar's characters triumph over the difficulty in the scene. If Hussar is in a game where moments of awesome are few and far between, we might be sympathetic to that. If Hussar wants an uninterrupted progression of triumphs and is framing scene after scene in that way, then we are likely to be less sympathetic.

The question is, what makes an event be one of potential substance? I can tell you that in my game trekkig across a desert would not, as such, satisfy that description.

First of all, that's of course a statement you can make about your game. You are however in no position to make that statement about anyone else's game. Trying to find gas after running out in Kansas could be really boring. You might not be interested in playing out what it feels to sit on the side of the road 50 miles from anywhere waiting for someone to stop. I might not be either. But unless you know that zombies or pretty coeds aren't about to show up, you really can't say what a scene is about. Struggling with the elements is likely to be only a small part of what journeying across a fantasy desert is about. In my game for example, sleeping in the rough always involves an endurance check. The main purpose of this is not to provide significant difficulty to the players, but to remind them that sleeping in the wild without shelter can be uncomfortable and remind them to do things like carry bedrolls and other reasonable comforts unless they happen to be 18 CON paragons with the Endurance feat that can sleep like babies on a glacier wrapped only in their cloak. It would be a tiny part of a sessions events. We wouldn't actually be playing out 'man versus nature' in any depth. It's just a reminder that it is there. The real meat of play would likely by the inhabitants of the desert or the fantastic locations within it, which means that this ostencible 'travel/trekking' play is actually moderately disguised dungeon crawling. In fact, I may have actually designed the entire desert as the first level of the Sorcerer-Kings tomb. It's possible I haven't even mapped it out as a hex crawl, but a dungeon map classic cRPG style. In all of those cases, the overland travel is not easily handwaved but is integral with the arrival at the destination and can no more be handwaved than exploration of the tomb.

I don't really see what Schroedinger has to do with it.

Schroedinger's map is when both the left and right forks in the road lead to the same destination. It's when no matter what path you take through the desert, at the end of the first night's travel, you find the 'Lost City', and thereafter the Lost City is in that location. When I cut to location like that, then I've implemented Schroedinger's map. You have no choice but to encounter what I want you to encounter.

It's possible to have a pretty detailed map and still incorporate new/unexpected elements. For instance, I ran a City of Greyhawk game for several years using the boxed set maps, and it wasn't very hard to include new/unanticipated details.

That's not the same thing even as the example you provided. Redetailing maps at finer scales, or inventing descriptions for empty (or nearly empty) 'rooms' on the fly isn't the same being able to scene frame a particular location as you suggested in your example. Being able to reliably scene frame an unknown destination depends on some variant of schrodinger's map.

And I don't really see what the railroad comment has to do with anything. Here are two exercises of GM scene-framing authority:

I don't notice any difference between your two scenes really. I'm likely to offer both up circumstantially to the particular challenge occuring. Both are very different than cut scening to an arrival at the Black Pyramid or some other destination which just happens to always lie along the direct line of the PC's travels.

 

[Lanefan]

A few points here:

1. If I've got 5 players at the table and for some reason one of them isn't engaged in a particular aspect of the session while the other four are, I'll run for the four. Majority rules.

That, and I've learned over time that players' tastes tend to be different enough to make it a very rare event to please them all at the same time. Fact of life.

2.

There are probably 10 threads in EnWorld where people ask for advice on how to build a maze, and in all of them my short answer is, "Don't." Mazes are terrible elements to include in a game, and if you are going to include them you are better off 'cheating' than running them from a standard simulationist framework. The problem with a maze is that they are typically very long railroads in that there is one right way through them. They also violate the rule that a dungeon shouldn't contain empty rooms.

First off, who says there only needs to be one way through a maze? It's easy enough to design a maze with numerous entrances and exits, and a few locations within that cannot be accessed any other way. And just as easy to design it so the usual find-the-path tricks such as the right-hand rule don't work...

Second off, where does this "rule" about no empty rooms come from? I can't remember where I saw it but I recall reading somewhere that a well-designed dungeon has at least as many empty or non-encouter rooms as not. (says he, who forgets this on a regular basis when designing adventures...) Besides, just because a room is empty the first time you see it doesn't mean it has to stay that way.

Lanefan

 

[Celebrim]

First off, who says there only needs to be one way through a maze? It's easy enough to design a maze with numerous entrances and exits, and a few locations within that cannot be accessed any other way. And just as easy to design it so the usual find-the-path tricks such as the right-hand rule don't work...

No one says there has to be a single way through the maze. However, this brings up the question of 'why do you need a maze at all'? If there are multiple entrances and exits, and multiple paths through the maze, what you have isn't a map of a maze, but a map of a non-linear dungeon. Woot! This however typically doesn't occur to the novice DM seeking to include a maze in a dungeon because of it is a classic trope of fantasy to have a maze. Most DM's include mazes with the idea that they add some special interest beyond that of a normal dungeon and that they are equivalent to puzzles or riddles. Both in my opinion are wrong. Mazes make poor puzzles since they are solved either randomly or thoroughly and neither is an intellectual excercise, and they are generally inferior to a dungeon in all respects unless they are functionally identical to a dungeon in all respects.

If you really must have a Maze in the dungeon, you need to create a design that is fun to play and not merely redundant, actually involves puzzle solving because there are clues to be found, discourages solving it by being thorough (which wastes play time), and avoids the problem of empty rooms. Even being lost and going the wrong way should involve finding things of interest.

Second off, where does this "rule" about no empty rooms come from?

Ooops. My rule, YMMV, but here is the post: Celebrim's 1st Enworld Post

Obviously it really is less of a rule than a guideline but I think it is a very good guideline.

I can't remember where I saw it but I recall reading somewhere that a well-designed dungeon has at least as many empty or non-encouter rooms as not.

There is a very very big difference between a non-encounter room (that is EL 0), and an empty room. An empty room is one which has no description or a trivial description and no points of interest to make the room worth inspecting. They are like a scene in a play which has no relationship to anything else in the play. A room that has an infrequent encounter to discover (and perhaps some clues about that infrequent encounter to uncover) is definately not empty.

I'm not sure I agree with the guideline that your dungeon should have as many non-encounters as it has encounters (certainly my best designed dungeons IMO don't, though they usually have some), but such a guideline doesn't actually conflict with Celebrim's guideline of: "Avoid having any empty rooms."